Book Review: The Diary of Iris Vaughan

And what I like most about blogging............

Sue discovered a second hand book shop recently and after doing some severe damage to the credit card, came home with some classics. One of them being the diary of Iris Vaughan. This has to be one of my all time favourites.

I am now reading it for the third time. The book comes complete with spelling mistakes and lack of punctuation – but that adds to the charm.

Iris Vaughan was the daughter an Eastern Cape Magistrate and started her diary at the age of eleven. Written at the time of the Anglo-Boer War, the diary gives a delightful account of life seen through the eyes of a child.

The reason her father gave her the diary is best explained by Iris……..

Every one should have a diery. Becos life is too hard with the things one must say to be perlite and the things one must not say to lie. This is something I can never get right. If I say you are an ugly old man, that is bad manners, and if I say you are not an ugly old man I am telling a lie and not speaking the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God. That is what the peopel say in the witness box when they are at a case in the courthouse. When they say this is a great sin to tell a lie. Pop says to the witness who is to speak about the prisoner what you are to say is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and the witness says so Help me God. Then he tells the truth and is not punished. But in our house it is not like that. The other day when Mr O. was eating with us he said You are my little sweetheart, and I said NO and he said Why not and I said So help me God becos you are such an ugly old man with hair on your face. For what I was sent to bed without any more dinner even jelly and had a good jawing about perliteness. All the time I said I was telling the truth Mom said Nonsense, you are just a rude little girl. So Pop said you have a diary and and write all the truth in it and when you cant speak the truth its better hold your tongue. That is why I am writing. Charles says it is all too much trubbel. Don’t ever talk and you wont be punished. But my tongue is an unruly member Pop says and will cause me to suffer much being a female.

The book is full of delightful anecdotes about the school choir, the arrival of the boer troops, and subjects such as the “Circus”, the “foto-taking man” and the “horse that escaped seizure in a female cell" .

Iris would probably have been a good blogger with her observations of life and delightful style of writing.

For me blogging is like keeping a journal of my life and writing about things that interest me. What I like about blogging David is that it is a personal journey, but one that can be shared. In the process I also get to meet a lot of interesting people – albeit in cyberspace. And unlike poor Iris I can tell the “the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth” and get away with it.