The Anatomist - Bill Hayes [36]
The diary of H. V. Carter, January 1851
When the nineteen-year-old Carter writes on January 3, 1851, that he had gotten “shaved” that day for the very first time, it seems like something I would have done, right down to the six exclamation marks he uses to punctuate the announcement. Though diaries do not come with rules, all diarists know to record such events, the experience of the new, the starting points. Some of Carter’s firsts are unfortunate, as when he falls asleep during a lecture and, even worse, snores. (“Never did so in life before! Humiliating!”) Some firsts are nerve-racking but exciting, such as delivering his first speech before fellow students or being called out on his “first midwifery case.” (“Labour very easy, 3 hours, disturbed not.”) Some are sweet, such as his first secret rendezvous with a girl. And some find him a witness to history, as at the opening of the Great Exhibition, the first world’s fair, presided over by Prince Albert and held under the soaring glass arches of the Crystal Palace, not far from Kinnerton Street.
In the life of every diarist, the first of the year is a high holy day, a time for reflecting, for resolving, and, inevitably, for renewing your commitment to your diary. As expected, H. V. Carter—overachiever and micromanager that he was—goes to greater lengths than most would on this occasion. He completes a month-by-month breakdown of the year past, the highs and the lows, cross-referenced to the relevant day, as well as providing his typical summation of the day itself. On Wednesday, January 1, 1851, for instance, he notes that he stopped by the hospital in the morning, read several chapters of the recently serialized David Copperfield in the afternoon, went to church, then read some more, and that was pretty much it. “Not very auspicious opening of New Year!” he signs off, as if yawning at his lackadaisical day.
But no, that was not the complete story. In fact, on this day, Carter had begun keeping a secret from his keeper of secrets, a discovery I made quite by chance.
UPON TEARING OPEN the large envelope from the Wellcome Library in London, my first thought was, Oh no, they made a mistake. The document I ordered had clearly been reduced during the photocopying. How had they not noticed? H. V. Carter’s handwriting was almost too small to read. And on closer inspection, I could make out just enough to wonder if they had sent me the wrong document altogether.
Manuscript number 5819 was described in the archive inventory as a record of Carter’s thoughts on his “religious life as a Dissenter”—his allegiance, that is, to a church other than the Anglican Church, the official Church of England. The document was just fifty loose pages, so I had requested photocopies rather than microfilm. What I held in my hands, though, was not the religious tract I had expected. Rather, it was a diary. Another diary. A shadow diary, of sorts, which Carter had started just as the clock struck midnight on January 1, 1851.
He didn’t call it a diary, however. He christened it Reflections, a name meant to evoke the more meditative and philosophical bent of this endeavor. But the name would prove to be even more apt than he could have realized.