SOURCE: Marambaud, Pierre. “Diarist.” In William Byrd of Westover, 1674-1744, pp. 106-16. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1971.

[In the following excerpt, Marambaud examines Byrd's diaries, which, the critic maintains, are examples of intimate self-expression but also valuable historical documents.]

Byrd's diaries were not published until recently. According to family traditions, he never failed to keep a detailed journal in shorthand when absent from home.¹ In fact, as we now know, he kept it at Westover as well as when he was away, and it is fairly probable that he did so throughout most of his adult life, but that a great part of it has been lost.

Three portions have come to light in our century. The earliest known diary, covering the period from February 1709 to September 1712, was purchased from the estate of R. A. Brock in 1922 by Henry Huntington as part of a collection of Virginia manuscripts. It lay in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, until it was discovered in 1939. Deciphered by Mrs. Marion Tinling (who was also to transcribe the other shorthand diaries) and edited by Louis B. Wright, it was published in 1941 as The Secret Diary William Byrd of Westover.

Another part of Byrd's diary, from August 1739 to August 1741, was published in the next year. First identified in 1925 by the librarian of the University of North Carolina, it fills a large part of two notebooks in Byrd's handwriting which belong to that university. Miss Woodfin heard about them in 1936 when she was gathering material for a biography, and she finally edited and published these manuscripts as Another Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover in 1942.²

A third portion, the second chronologically, dating from December 1717 to May 1721, had been since 1876 in the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond. It remained unnoticed until news of the discovery of the other portions caused it to be brought to light. It was not published immediately, however; Byrd's relation of his sexual excesses during that period of his life partly explain the hesitancy of the Virginia Historical Society; and there are those who believe that Byrd's reputation has suffered rather than gained by the publication of The London Diary. But in addition to his life in England until December 1719, this diary does cover more than a year after his return to the colony, and there is no denying the fact that, besides permitting a truer apprehension of some sides of his character, it provides useful information about the sincerity of his reconciliation with Spotswood. It was finally edited and published by Professor Wright in 1958.

When the existence of these diaries became common knowledge, Byrd was hailed as “an American Pepys.”³ Like his famous English counterpart, he had written a day-by-day account of his life that he had really intended to keep secret. In England the first book on shorthand, or “characterie” as it was then called, had been published in 1588 by Timothy Bright: Characterie, or The Art of Short, Swift, and Secret Writing by Character. In this title the word secret was not the least important. In following years, Protestant travelers to countries where the Inquisition was powerful used to carry Bibles in shorthand. There was then no palpable distinction between shorthand and cipher. Such modes of writing had two great advantages: a busy man was glad to be able to write more swiftly; but since the system was little known, he could also count on comparative secrecy, which sometimes was of no mean interest to him. Pepys's shorthand had been based on that of Thomas Shelton, who had explained his method in his Short Writing in 1626 and later perfected it in his Tachygraphy in 1638. Byrd used a different system of writing adapted from that of William Mason, the most famous stenographer of London in the later decades of the seventeenth century.⁴ In 1672 Mason published A Pen Pluckt from an Eagle's Wings, which after several reprints appeared in a revised version in 1701, La Plume Volante, or the Art of Shorthand Improved. This, the author said in his preface, had been “composed after forty years' practice and improvement of the said art, by the observation of other methods and the intense study of it.” Mason used to teach his system to lawyers, parliamentarians, and other people, and his last revision was the one employed by Byrd, with small modifications. It omits most vowels, and a dot can have more than half a dozen different meanings. As Byrd, unlike Pepys, wrote even proper names in shorthand, these had to be identified from a skeleton of consonants, a sometimes impossible task. This was really a secret writing at the time, particularly in Virginia, four thousand miles from Mason's school.

Mason's book does not seem to have been in the Westover library, which suggests that Byrd was already familiar with his system when he came back from England in 1705. He may have started writing his diary some time after the turn of the century, in 1702 or 1703, as an exercise in shorthand, and then gone on partly out of habit, and partly because he found some personal interest in it. But why should a man keep a diary if he expects it to remain secret?

A person of romantic disposition may write a journal intended for others; and as a result it may show a tendency to exaggeration, whether in self-idealization or in the proud and defiant exposition of personal shortcomings. The writer tends to paint himself as he would like to be seen, not as he is. But this is a particular kind of diary, of little interest to the reader as far as reality is concerned, unless he can see through the false portrait. It is more like an autobiographical novel than a diary. Such is not the case with Byrd or Pepys or most of the diarists of their time.

More interesting is the man whose aim is sincere self-analysis, who wants to follow the old precept “know thyself,” generally through a desire for moral progress. Addison once recommended to every one of his readers “the keeping a Journal of their lives for one week, and setting down punctually their whole series of employments during that space of time. This kind of self-examination would give them a true state of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about.”⁵ The diarist's stimulus may also be mere narcissism, a yearning to contemplate one's own life almost from the outside, as one might look at a stranger's, but with greater curiosity and more intimate knowledge. Or finally the diary may be regarded as a means for locating past events at their proper date and in their true perspective, another memory more faithful than the human one because time cannot efface written words so easily.

In many places Byrd's diary is certainly nearer the last type, though the preceding motives cannot be set aside entirely. The need for secrecy results from the intimate nature of some of the writer's revelations. He recorded what could be told to no one but himself. Professor Wright remarked that “by some quirk of character a few individuals feel impelled to write down even their meannesses; perhaps it is an instinct for purgation through the confessional.”⁶ Byrd, like Pepys, really felt the urge to say everything, as a Catholic may do in confession, and in fact many of the secret diaries which have eventually come to light were written by Protestants, who lacked the emotional outlet that confession affords. This accentuated self-consciousness was expressed in many Puritan diaries of the seventeenth century, both in Great Britain and in New England, whereas in Catholic France the more formal autobiographies were more common. Though Byrd was no Puritan, he was deeply religious, and this instinct for purgation may partly explain the existence of his diary, along with the universal and timeless autobiographical impulse, the irresistible need to talk of oneself to oneself.

Byrd freely admitted his moral failings to himself, particularly in The London Diary, which records the period after the death of his first wife when he launched into the cheapest pleasures of the flesh that the town could provide. He certainly had more to confess at that time than when he lived at Westover, or even when he let himself slide into gambling habits during his visits to Williamsburg. But the other portions of the diary also contain intimate revelations which he could not have intended for any reader but himself, not even the closest friend or relative.

The conviction that his diary would always remain secret led him to record with uninhibited sincerity all sorts of particulars about his daily routine and his main preoccupations: his food and work, his illnesses and remedies, the books he read and the people he met, the pleasures and sorrows he experienced, a complete catalog of his sexual life, and of prayers said or forgotten. We can expect the sincerity of such diaries to be greater than that of most autobiographies or personal letters, which are always intended to be read by others, even if only by a restricted circle. A man may deceive himself or intentionally close his eyes to certain facts, but when he is honestly looking for truth, such writings may be considered the nearest possible approach to complete sincerity, because they reveal his innermost self.

Byrd's diary is intimate but not introspective. It is very different from the many Puritan autobiographies or diaries written in New England during the colonial era. Samuel Sewall's Diary, for instance, gives a picture of contemporary life and an intimate record of his social and business activity, but its main concern is his spiritual life, which engrossed his thoughts. Jonathan Edwards's Diary is first and foremost an intense, and sometimes morbid, quest for personal holiness and moral perfection among “sinners in the hands of an angry God.” John Woolman's Journal, no less sincere but less morbid, is the spiritual autobiography of a Quaker who, in his endeavor to be “faithful to the light,” came close to being a mystic. The constant self-examination of each of these writers, as he passed through temptation, doubt, struggle, ecstasy, humility, or pride, was but another pilgrim's progress to the Land of Beulah and the Celestial City. Except for Sewall, these diarists had little or nothing to say about this world, about everyday life, about social facts, customs, behavior, or dress.

Not so with Byrd. His religion was no mere lip-devotion, but like Pepys he was a sensualist to the core. In him as in Pepys there was much more of human frailty than in those overanxious Puritan diarists of New England, or in John Evelyn, self-restrained and serious. Byrd did not exaggerate his weaknesses; neither did he idealize himself. A well-balanced individual, he just stated facts plainly, and he did not seem to feel any real shame, although he expressed sincere regret at his failings: “Then went home in the chair and kissed the maid till I committed uncleanness, for which God forgive me”; “Then walked home, but took a woman into a coach and committed uncleanness. Then I went home and prayed to God to forgive me.”⁷ He knew that perfection does not belong to this world; it was not within his reach; but on the whole he was not too much perturbed, apparently, about God's forgiveness.

Like Pepys again, Byrd expressed his concern for trivialities and domestic problems of the simplest kind. Here is his record of an ordinary day at Westover in 1710:

I rose at six o'clock and read the Psalms and some Greek in Cassius. I said my prayers and ate milk for breakfast. My maid Anaka was better, thank God. The Captain's bitch killed a lamb yesterday, for which we put her into a house with a ram that beat her violently to break her of that bad custom. We played at billiards. It rained with a northeast wind. I ate roast beef for dinner. In the afternoon we played at cards and were very merry. The pool lasted so long that we played till eleven o'clock at night. I neglected to say my prayers, but had good health, good thoughts, and good humor, thanks be to God Almighty.⁸

Vanity, lust, or ambition were faithfully and objectively recorded. “I had a great deal of wit this day, more than ordinary,” Byrd noted on October 29, 1710. The diary also reveals more engaging qualities, which give greater dignity and charm to his personality. Here is the portrait of a man emerging entry after entry, no saint assuredly, but a man in whom good and bad were blended.

Both Byrd and Pepys always did their best to keep up appearances and to hide their weaknesses behind a veil of dignity and respectability which fell when at night they were alone with pen and notebook. Outwardly they show a stern sense of propriety. Between the grave and dignified figure of Councillor Byrd as he appeared to his contemporaries and the man so frankly revealed in his diary, there is the same kind of difference as between Mr. Pepys, the respectable, hardworking civil servant, and the author of the famous nightly confessions. Humanity then appears without disguise, as we can never see it except perhaps in ourselves. With both diarists, instinctive egoism did not preclude public zeal. The spirit and the flesh sometimes clashed in an unexpected manner: “In the afternoon I took a flourish with my wife, and then read a sermon in Tillotson.”⁹ Thus is man shown in all his changeableness or even his contradictions.

Besides their significance as a work of self-expression and a picture of eternal humanity, Byrd's diaries are of particular value as historical documents. Like Pepys's volumes again, they are all the more trustworthy as they were not intended to be published. And they are all the more useful as they represent the only Southern diaries of the early eighteenth century to have been written by a man of importance. After the record of Renaissance exploration and early settlement found in the famous narrative of Captain John Smith, or the less known description of Virginia by the first Secretary of the colony, William Strachey, in The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania, there is very little direct information about that part of America. The misrepresentations of Oldmixon's account of the colony in his manuscript for The British Empire in America, published in 1708, led Robert Beverley, Byrd's brother-in-law, to write his own History and Present State of Virginia in 1705. A similar work was published in 1724 by the Reverend Hugh Jones with the same intention. And in 1727 appeared another study of The Present State of Virginia and the College¹⁰ in which Commissary Blair had a hand. But such pictures were not unaffected by Virginia prejudices; Hugh Jones himself insisted that “if New England be called a receptacle of dissenters and an Amsterdam of religion, Pennsylvania the nursery of Quakers, Maryland the retirement of Catholics, North Carolina the refuge of runaways, and South Carolina the delight of buccaneers and pirates, Virginia may be justly esteemed the happy retreat of true Britons and true churchmen.”¹¹ These authors felt it their duty to stand up for Virginia and were themselves tainted with partiality. If we except Byrd's, the first Southern diaries of any real interest are those of Landon Carter, Byrd's son-in-law, and of Philip Vickers Fithian, a graduate of Princeton who in 1773 went to northern Virginia as a tutor for the children of Robert Carter, one of “King” Carter's grandsons.¹² But these, as well as George Washington's own diaries,¹³ give a picture of a later generation.

Thus Byrd's diary stands out as the only extensive one from the South during the early eighteenth century, and almost during the whole colonial period—the only counterpart of the fairly numerous New England journals. This gives it considerable importance for the study of American history. Written by a prominent figure in the colony, it brings as much information about political affairs as about everyday life on a plantation. Though with long interruptions, it covers thirty years of the history of Virginia. That period saw the formation of a society which was to give leaders to the new nation half a century later. The publication of Byrd's diaries has helped to correct some vulgar errors about colonial life and has greatly increased our knowledge of those formative years—as much perhaps as all the collections of public records concerning Virginia. Through Byrd's pages we reach a better understanding of the Virginia ruling class. We can realize the true proportion of activity and leisure in the lives of the great planters, or the very indifferent comfort of their houses despite relative luxury. We are more conscious of their paternal attitude toward servants and of their difficulties with people who were too often incompetent and ill-trained. We discover the barriers raised by class consciousness in the smallest details of everyday life, not only between master and servant, but also between white indentured servant and black slave. We are given a clear picture of manners and customs, and of economic and political conditions, from the supreme importance of the sovereign weed tobacco to the sessions of the Council or the duties of a militia commander.

These diaries, widely separated in time as they are, bear evidence of a natural evolution both in the colony and in Byrd's personal life. At the beginning, Indian raids still threatened Tidewater plantations; by the forties, the frontier had already been pushed back to the foot of the Appalachians, and Indians had almost completely disappeared from the coastal plain. The first portion of the diary shows the married man in his late thirties, with a quick-tempered young wife who knew little about household management; in those strenuous years the planter was trying hard to improve and extend his properties, personally supervising the work of his overseers. In the second portion (or at least the part of it that was written in Virginia), the widower in his middle forties looked after much of the domestic husbandry, with the help of a few white servants that he had brought back from Britain with him; between two voyages to England, he reorganized his plantations, which had lacked the owner's supervision for too many years; but his interest was still turned toward London, where he hoped to return in the near future. The last portion pictures the Colonel in his late sixties, surrounded by a family again, in a quiet household. He no longer intended to leave Virginia, and managed his properties from Westover. He traveled less often to his scattered plantations but still went on frequent visits to Williamsburg. He was richer and could afford more leisure in his old age, although he was still active and his diary never became retrospective.

Another evolution, however, can be observed in the entries themselves, which became shorter and shorter as the years passed. They cover about fifteen lines each in The Secret Diary, though they sometimes reach twenty. They average twelve lines in The London Diary and only seven or eight in the last one. Samples of ordinary days chosen from each of the diaries in the same month of the year will give a fair and easy illustration of the change.

On August 12, 1710, Byrd wrote,

I rose at five o'clock and read a chapter in Hebrew and some Greek in Lucian. I said my prayers and ate boiled milk for breakfast. I danced my dance. I had a quarrel with my wife about her servants who did little work. I wrote a long and smart letter to Mr. Perry, wherein I found several faults with his management of the tobacco I sent him and with mistakes he had committed in my affairs. My sloop brought some tobacco from Appomattox. Mr. Bland came over¹⁴ and dined with us on his way to Williamsburg. I ate roast shoat for dinner. In the afternoon Mr. Bland went away and I wrote more letters. I put some tobacco into the sloop for Captain Harvey. It rained and hindered our walk; however we walked a little in the garden. I neglected to say my prayers, but had good health, good thoughts, and good humor, thank God Almighty.

Ten years later, on August 2, 1720, he wrote:

I rose about five o'clock and read a chapter in Hebrew and some Greek in Lucian. I said my prayers and had milk for breakfast. The weather was cold and cloudy, the wind west. I danced my dance. Sam G-r-d-n's mare broke into my pasture, of which I sent him word and let him know I would shoot her if she came there again. I wrote some English till dinner and then ate some fish again. After dinner I put several things in order and then wrote two letters to Williamsburg till the evening and then took a walk about the plantation. At night I talked with my people and particularly with Tom who had taken a vomit because he had an ague. His vomit had worked very well and he was better, thank God. I said my prayers and retired, but committed uncleanness, for which God forgive me.

And here is the entry for August 13, 1740, after twenty more years had passed: “I rose about five, read Hebrew and Greek. I prayed and had tea. I danced. The weather was very hot and clear, the wind southwest. I read Latin and played piquet and billiards and read Latin till dinner when I ate roast pigeon. After dinner we played piquet again and I read Latin till the evening when we walked to visit the sick. I talked with my people and prayed.”

The last example is more concise by far. This is not to be entirely attributed to the lesser activity of the old man, since it appears even in Byrd's way of reporting the same facts. It is no wonder then that the first diary, more detailed and set for a longer period in the Westover surroundings, should be the most interesting in the eyes of the modern reader. It therefore seems that if other portions of Byrd's diary were to be discovered now they would add little to what is already known of him. Professor Wright finds that “the entries are often dull, tedious and repetitive.”¹⁵ This cannot be denied when Byrd's diary is compared to Pepys's. The latter is more gossipy, a desirable quality in this kind of writing. Pepys wrote an average of thirty lines to describe the events of each day. The shorter its entries, the more repetitive a diary appears, particularly if it is used to record trivial facts; this is a characteristic of Byrd's Another Secret Diary. We never feel that Pepys is too lengthy, and we sometimes wish Byrd had given a more detailed account of his life at Westover. Had his aim been to reconcile everyday life and spiritual life, Byrd might have been more detailed in his entries. But he was not an introspective man, and his even temper and moderate sensitivity helped prevent those feelings of uncertainty and restlessness that made men probe into their souls. This aspect of Byrd's character is reflected in his very style, with its small number of adjectives, words which are essential for description of places, events, and feelings.

Another reason for Byrd's occasional tediousness may be found, of course, in the greater monotony of daily life on the plantation, as compared with the variety of London life. This is why The London Diary, more than the other two, calls up memories of Pepys and invites comparison with him. There we can see Byrd strolling in St. James's Park with the fashionable crowd, or going to Will's Coffeehouse to talk with friends, paying visits to ladies, attending conferences in connection with the political affairs of Virginia, putting in an appearance at Court and kissing the King's hand, going to plays, concerts, masquerades, and assemblies at the Spanish ambassador's, dining at Pontack's with the members of the Royal Society before a meeting at Crane Court, visiting friends at their country places, and going to Tunbridge Wells in summer when the fashionable world deserted the town. Inevitably the parts of this diary written in Virginia pall upon the reader and seem weaker by comparison, except perhaps for Byrd's visits to Williamsburg, when he meets friends and attends sessions of the Council. Byrd's diary, though as frank as Pepys's, is inferior in wealth of details and in variety. Where Byrd's entry runs thus: “Mr. Custis told me several things concerning managing the overseers which I resolved to remember,”¹⁶ Pepys would probably have gone on to explain what these “several things” were. Perhaps Byrd felt this advice was too complex to be condensed in the few lines of an entry; or that he could remember it easily, so that it was not worth writing down. In any case it shows that Byrd did not give a thought to the feelings of a prospective reader. In this respect his diary may be judged superior to Evelyn's. The latter, partly because it was not in secret writing, is less confidential. Its entries, irregular in length, were not always written day by day. Byrd left us a continuous flow of entries of fairly even length describing what he did or saw each day. In the whole course of his three extant diaries, he interrupted his record of events only twice: on the last two days of 1709 and during a month's illness in the fall of 1740.¹⁷

These documents are really the daily chronicle of an age, jotted down on the spur of the moment, without giving a second thought to turns of expression. While disclosing the interesting personality of a versatile man, they also bring to life a complete panorama of eighteenth-century Virginia and are for the student of the period an unequaled mine of information. Details, allusions, remarks, and passing judgments weave an ample and close backdrop; they lay out a variegated, lifelike mosaic which restores the atmosphere of colonial Virginia with the utmost truthfulness. Yet these diaries may easily be disappointing on a literary plane: Byrd can but suffer from a comparison with Pepys in this respect, as a good Elizabethan dramatist must from a comparison with Shakespeare. There is only one Pepys as there is one Shakespeare; which is no reflection on others, but rather an acknowledgment of superhuman size, as high above the rest, to repeat Dryden's apt quotation of Virgil, “Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.”

Notes

1. Marion Harland, His Great Self, [Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1892] p. 17. In her girlhood in the middle of the nineteenth century, the author of the novel had been a friend of the owners of Westover (descendants of the Harrisons of Berkeley).

2. Another Secret Diary, p. vii.

3. Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling, “William Byrd of Westover, an American Pepys,” South Atlantic Quarterly, XXXIX (1940), 259-74.

4. The discovery was made independently by Mrs. Tinling and Edward J. Vogel (Another Secret Diary, p. iv-v).

5. The Spectator, no. 317, March 4, 1712.

6. Secret Diary, p. viii.

7. London Diary, March 2, May 1, 1718.

8. Secret Diary, Feb. 23, 1710.

9. Ibid., Sept. 10, 1710.

10. Henry Hartwell, James Blair, and Edward Chilton, The Present State of Virginia, and the College; by Messieurs Hartwell, Blair, and Chilton. To which is added, the charter for erecting the said college, granted by Their late Majesties King William and Queen Mary of ever glorious and pious memory, (London, Printed for J. Wyat, 1727)

11. Present State, p. 83.

12. The Diary of Colonel Landon Carter of Sabine Hall, 1752-1778, ed. Jack P. Greene (Charlottesville, Va., 1965); Philip V. Fithian, Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian, 1773-1774, ed. Hunter D. Farish (Williamsburg, Va., 1943); see also Louis Morton, Robert Carter of Nomini Hall: A Virginia Tobacco Planter of the Eighteenth Century (Williamsburg, Va., 1941).

13. Diaries, 1748-1799, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Boston, 1925).

14. Richard Bland was Byrd's neighbor and lived at Jordan's Point, facing Westover on the south bank of the James.

15. Secret Diary, p. xxv.

16. Ibid., Feb. 13, 1712.

17. Another Secret Diary, p. 104. In case of a short illness of two or three days, Byrd would catch up again after he had recovered (for an example, see Secret Diary, June 5, 1712). There are no entries for April 7, 1712, and March 21, 1740. Two other interruptions, Jan. 6-Feb. 13, 1721, and Sept. 8-Dec. 5, 1739, are due to leaves missing in the manuscripts.

Bibliography

Wright, Louis B., and Marion Tinling, eds. The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709-1712. Richmond, 1941.

Woodfin, Maude H., and Marion Tinling, eds. Another Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1739-1741. Richmond, 1942.

Wright, Louis B., and Marion Tinling, eds. The London Diary (1717-1721) and Other Writings, of William Byrd of Virginia. New York, 1958.