Stella Benson's diaries

I came across this quotation from L. M. Montgomery recently:

“Only lonely people keep diaries.”

She kept a diary from the age of nine, and this is where she wrote the above words. I think that they are probably true in some cases but definitely not in all.

Sometimes diaries are kept primarily for record keeping purposes, to be used for reference in the future if necessary. Isaac Asimov for example kept detailed but mainly factual diaries for much of his life.

Journalling is a possible outlet for creative people who must write. It provides a way of exercising writing skills and keeping them honed; it keeps the channel of inspiration open.

The quotation made me think of Stella Benson, who kept a diary from the age of ten until shortly before she died. It is certainly applicable to her. In Stella’s own words:

“To set down a record of my contact with people...is most necessary to me. Because my most continuous sensation is a feeling of terrifying slipping-away from people - a most devastating loneliness - I have to place on record the fact that I was human and that even I had my human adventures.”

Stella Benson’s diary keeping

Stella Benson, who interestingly was descended on her father’s side from the sister of the famous diarist Samuel Pepys, usually wrote in her diary every day. Her diaries are a log of events; they are a record of the places she visited, the people she met and what she saw and did in the real world. She was free to say exactly what she thought and felt about everything and everyone, including herself, in her diaries. They were a place where she could bare her soul and express her true self. They were the place where she could perform her self-analysis.

Logging and commenting on everything was perhaps a way of nailing her life down and anchoring part of herself in the real world.

These diaries were something that could be used as evidence that she was alive and human and did the things that real people do. Maybe she needed to prove to herself that there were areas of her life that were much the same as other people’s.

Stella Benson on the subject of diaries

Stella Benson had her imaginary secret friends, her ‘thought people’, for company, but she said this:

“...my diary, the most comforting friend of all.”

A diary can certainly be an ersatz companion, a friend who never interrupts and has no requirement to speak or be listened to. It is also a captive audience.

In her book of travel articles Worlds Within Worlds, Stella Benson says that a diary is a kingdom of which the writer is the unchallenged ruler.  This makes it a place of safety, a place where pretence can be dropped and the real self has room to breathe, a place where people can be looked at and talked about without their knowledge.

She also says this:

“Diaries are like dreams, an inward consolation to the outwardly humiliated.”

Sometimes people who are unable to assert themselves and state their positions can do it for themselves on paper. This applied to L. M. Montgomery too.

Stella Benson’s diaries

No one was allowed to see Stella Benson’s diaries. She told people that they were possibly worth more than all her published works put together.

While L. M. Montgomery’s diaries have been published in five volumes, Stella Benson’s diaries consist of 40 volumes. They were left by her husband in the safe-keeping of University of Cambridge Library.

They were sealed in three boxes until 50 years after her death. 

Together with her letters and published books, they provided the source material for Joy Grant’s biography.

Maybe they will all be published one day.