~by Colleen O’Brien
Reading diaries and journals is a soothing prescription after the hurricane has passed and the clean-up is as done as it can get as I wait for the insurance company. [Rocking back and forth, readingreadingreading, becoming draped in cobwebs.]
A good diary tells it all – the loves and the hates and the perfect weather and the disasters, the price of a loaf of bread and what’s for supper. Samuel Pepys, the “original diarist” (his moniker in the Western world), not only reports on the burning of London in 1666, but the foibles of his wife, his own extramarital affairs and the goings-on about town – the society side of London.
Few diarists are as candid as Pepys, and many diaries merely take note only of buying and selling of vegetables and cows and pigs and chickens. But as years go along, even these mundane notes inform of a different time of quaint customs.
I’ve kept diaries most of my life since I first was given one by my parents when I was in fifth grade. That diary had a lock and key, which I thought appropriate, because I wrote often of my heartthrob Jimmy, which I did not want anyone else to read. If I still had my daily reports, I could tell you what mushy things I wrote, but my mom had me burn all 10 of my yearly diaries when I got married. I’ve often wondered if she found scintillating lines that would embarrass me. Or her. Anyway, they are gone.
Pepys, who wrote for only 10 years, made elaborate plans for the safety of his diaries as well as the privacy of some of the more salacious parts. But all these many centuries later, Pepys is being depicted in movies and plays, the nature of his affairs no shock to current audiences. He had secrets, but if you keep a diary, the secrets will out. And had my diaries been preserved, I think their secrets might be touchingly funny, the main contribution being the quotidian thoughts posted by a 1950’s-‘60’s student immortalizing her daily life and epiphanies.
An inspiring surprise from reading diaries and journals is the secrets. They might be shocking or dull, but they will be so human – a path to the past and how humans behaved; which will be about the same as we behave now – and that will be the shock. And Pepys, seemingly candid to the core, left us with a sincere recording of events of his times and a good idea of how a man about town lived and operated 356 years ago.
Pepys wrote about not only the London Fire of 1666 but the Plague of 1655 – two major disasters of his lifetime and not the least bit boring reading for ours. We think we put up with a lot, in 21st century America – diaries can tell us differently.
Putting disaster in perspective is a hard thing to do; a thorough diary can help in the effort, no matter what our epic problem.
