It is a delicate procedure.  Wearing white cotton gloves that barely cover my hands, I am handed two manila file folders.  Inside the first are several typed pages – a transcription of what I really came to see.  I flip through them cautiously and quickly, not really knowing what to make of it.  The second folder contains a white envelope with “Charles Cather diary” written in pencil along the top right corner.  I empty the envelope and a very small, black book spills onto the table of the reading room.

The tender, little treasure is somewhat comical.  About two inches wide and three inches long (roughly the dimensions of a pack of cards), the diary is about one-quarter of an inch thick.  The cover – a thin veil of black leather that folds around the outside and seals in the front – is damaged and deteriorating, so I pry it open with care.  As I tenderly shift through the pages I am surprised by what I see.  I came to the Woman’s Collection at Texas Woman’s University expecting to find a Civil War diary.  What I am holding instead is a genre of book of which I am not familiar.

Inside the cover is the book’s title – “Pocket diary for 1865” – with the addition “A Blank Space For Every Day of the Year.”  That is exactly what I find.  Beginning with January 1, 1865, the micro-journal offers room for a small entry for each day, three days per page.  The title page concludes with “Published by the trade,” indicating that this diminutive diary is an item that was mass-produced by its anonymous publisher.

The attraction to this particular piece is found on the inside cover.  Written in pencil is the name “Charley” and below it “Charles Cather.”  Charley is Charles F. Cather, the father of Pulitzer Prize winning author Willa Cather, and this undersized book belonged to him nearly a decade before the birth of his famous daughter when he was a simple farm boy living in rural Virginia at the end of the Civil War.

The revelations on this journey are small, but like a dash of salt the effects can be quite pleasing.  As already mentioned, the discovery of a new genre of writing was the principal finding.  Although Charley’s diary does not break ground on any new areas of Cather scholarship, his simple collection of days does reinforce suggestions of the type of person scholars and Willa Cather characterize.  More importantly, the diary of Charles Cather reveals a year in the life of a rural teenage boy, showing what matters most – the weather, family, friends, and school.  And much like Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl, Charley’s life on a Virginia plantation during one of most important eras of American history exists almost entirely in the absence of the war that so heavily influenced life in 19th century America.

Pocket Diaries
Molly McCarthy’s study on pocket diaries shares many important details of the phenomenon.  Targeted at middle and upper class clientele, the mini-journals were seen as an important and necessary activity for the educated (281).  As William Cobbett explained in Advice to Young Men And (Incidentally) Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life, pocket diaries “disburden the mind of many things to be recollected.”  Cobbett recommended writing something every day, even if it was only a comment on the weather.  Cobbett reinforced the widely held belief that daily journaling was an important tool for teaching regularity and organization to young people (qtd. in McCarthy, 282).

As McCarthy points out, pocket diaries were hardly private.  They were employed by men and women to keep an account of daily life.  When concerning important events like the birth or death of a family member, the diary would be considered a necessary source.  Similarly, a daily account of the weather or the health of an individual would be used as a type of public document when needed to recall mundane events like “the last snow” or the first hints of an illness.  A daily list of visitors was routinely recorded, and lists of chores and other minor accomplishments were also regularly noted.  Although minute, pocket diaries were an important record-keeping device employed by people from all walks of life (294).

Charley’s diary does not deviate from the norm, and his use of a pocket diary implies a few things.  The simplest observation is that Charley probably received the book as a gift, perhaps as a Christmas present.  McCarthy suggests that presenting someone with a pocket diary was considered a significant and intimate act.  Charley, who was 16, may have received the book from his parents as an initiation into adulthood.

On the other hand, Charley’s older brother George has several pocket diaries preserved within the archives at the University of Nebraska.  Although George is one year older than Charley, his first pocket diary begins in 1868.  Whether George’s early diaries are lost, or if George was simply following the lead of his younger brother, it is impossible to tell.  In either case, the keeping of diaries by the two brothers intimates a social status held by the family.  The Cathers valued education and were most likely middle or upper class.

Charley’s Diary
Charley Cather and his family lived in Frederick County, Virginia, the northernmost county in the state.  Bordering at the time the newly created state of West Virginia, the county is to this day a quiet rural community surrounded by the soft, rolling ridges of the Appalachians.  Charley’s grandfather was a farmer and magistrate whose home was known for good conversation.  Charley’s father built Willow Shade, the family plantation.  His older brother, George, pioneered the family’s move to Nebraska in the 1870’s.  And so it seems that young Charley was surrounded by a strong patriarchal lineage.  As biographer Hermione Lee points out, however, the second son is often cut from gentler cloth, and this seems to be the case with Charley (26).

Charley attended law school for two years but returned to Frederick County to raise sheep.  Willa Cather described her father as “a mild, easy-going, boyish, eager-to-please, Virginia gentleman” (qtd. in Lee, 26).  Nothing in Charley’s diary would contradict her assessment.  Charley married Ginny Boak in December of 1872, and one year later Willa was born.  Then, in 1882, Charley moved the family to the Nebraska Divide that would be the inspiration for many of Willa’s stories.  Her semi-autobiographical retelling of the migration is captured in the opening chapters of My Ántonia.

The Charley Cather of the diary is not far removed from the man he would become.  Pocket diaries rarely held the private thoughts of their writer, and missing from this log are any hints of ambitions or dreams or even a glimpse of his future life.  As an organizational tool, it was used to document the weather, log visitors, and record the mundane daily activities of their owner, and Charley offers textbook examples of pocket diary writing with his early entries:

• Sunday, January 1, 1865 – A happy new year.  Father and Billy Smith brought Alpharetta home, a very cold day.  John and Giles over here this evening.
• Monday 2 – Has been pleasant all day; was cutting wood in the morning, hauled hay in the evening.  John and Billy over here this evening.

Although a farm boy, school was very important to Charley, and many entries concern his activities there:

• Monday, January 16 – Day very pleasant.  I started to school.  Father up Carpon today got loan of apples.  Uncle Dorsey here today.  T Miller and Poline here this evening.
• Wednesday, February 1 – Thawing today.  Father was up as far as Hooks today.  He got 16 partridges of Scot Wingfield and Perry.  Was at school today.  Bill Miller insulted Becky Hackney today.
• Friday, February 24 – Day very pleasant.  Had a great deal of fun playing ball.  Our side beat.  Father was at town today.  Girls did not know their Dictionary lesson.
• Thursday (March) 30 – Rained in the morning and the evening.  We scholars were playing ball again was reinforced by Jossy and Sam Hook.  Maggie fell in the run.  Becky has a sore throat.

Rebecca (Becky) Hackney is mentioned frequently in Charley’s diary. United States Federal Census Records indicate that two Rebecca Hackney’s lived in Frederick County, Virginia.  The elder was a slave owner born around 1818, and the latter was born around 1848, the same year as Charley.  It is a reasonable assumption, then, that the younger Becky attended school with Charley.

We first learn of Becky through the February 1 entry.  On February 3, Simon Caplen took her home in his sleigh.  On February 20, she went out sleigh riding, and the following day she was not at school.  On March 19, Becky brought a cactus to school.  On March 27, Ginny Boak, whom Charley would marry seven years later, came to school, and Becky went home with her.  By March 30, Becky had another sore throat.  On April 24, the doctor went to see Becky because she was sick, and he thought she would get better in the morning.  By the next day she had gotten much worse with “very little hopes for recovery.”  Charley adds in the memoranda section:

• Wednesday (April) 26, 1865 – Becky continues to get worse.  Dr. was to see her today; he had no hopes whatever.  She suffered much this evening.  She was a little flighty.
  
• Thursday 27, 1865 – Becky is suffering very much.  She was flighty all day.  Dr. Brown and Dr. S were to see her.  Dr. B. flattered them a little.
• Friday 28, 1865 – Becky very bad all day.  Very flighty.  She did not know anybody.  She kept calling for her sisters & mother.
• Saturday 29, 1865 – Becky has been speechless all morning.  She died this evening 10 minutes before 2 o’clock.

The next day Charley went to see Becky at Mrs. “Seiberts”, the grandmother of Ginny Boak, and the following day he attended her burial with his brothers and Ginny.  Mrs. Sibert is acknowledged, of course, as matriarch for whom Willa Cather chose her self-appointed middle name.  The funeral of Becky Hackney did not occur until June 12, nearly six weeks later, and Charley notes that a large congregation was in attendance.

Becky Hackney’s untimely death seems to be a significant event in young Charley’s life.  She may have been a neighbor or cousin of Ginny Boak, and at the very least Ginny and Becky were friends.  The shared loss of a friend and classmate brought together two people who would later marry.  Because prior diaries do not exist or were destroyed, it is impossible to speculate on any previous relationship between the couple, and the progress of the diary implies a connection that emanates from the tragedy both endured.

Civil War?
Willa Cather’s final novel Sapphira and The Slave Girl completes a circle, returning Cather to her roots in rural Virginia.  Sapphira Colbert and Rachel Blake are mother and daughter in the small Back Valley community of Charley Cather in the decade before the Civil War.  Sapphira and Rachel have opposing views on slavery, but like Charley, hardly seem to notice the events outside their small world.

Although Frederick County was strategically important to both sides in the war, Charley’s diary is rather quiet on the details.  Occasionally, between planting rows of corn or spreading manure, Charley will add lines like “yankees out tonight” or “I met some men in pursuit of horse thieves.”  In fact, from September of 1863 until January of 1870, the Union Army governed Winchester and Frederick County under martial law.  However, by the spring of 1865, the major battles of the war had long left Winchester and were nearly 200 miles south of Charley.

The early weeks of April provided most of Charley’s commentary on the war.  On April 4, he writes “confirmed that Richmond was taken,” and on April 10, he adds “great cannonading over Lee’s surrender.”  On April 15, Charley adds simply “President Lincoln died today.”

The summer brought lists of chores and comments about the weather, and life returned to normal for Charley.  By September, any mention of the war or the Union occupation had dissipated completely.  Charley returned to school, and his reports emphasized again his days at school – a new professor, new students, and “pleasant days” of no school after the professor’s wedding.  The corn and potatoes were brought in, the cane was brought down, and Thanksgiving and Christmas passed pleasantly without event.  Charley’s final entry summarizes the diary’s final months –

• New Year, January 1, 1866 – Snowy day.  We commenced our second quarter of school.  It was a happy mutiny of scholars.  John S. started to school.

Conclusion
Neatly inserted back into its plain white envelope, the pocket diary of Charles F. Cather is returned to its folder and filed away again in the vault that protects its brown, crackling pages filled with running ink and faded pencil.  Like the diary, I complete my journey without any great epiphanies.  I do, however, have a new understanding of its author and his legacy.  The irony of these little pocket diaries is that no matter how mundane and tedious its entries may be, the uniqueness of human perspective is preserved.  Charley Cather was like most rural teenagers of his day – focused on family, friends, and school; mending fences, husking corn, and spreading manure in the time between.

Charley is no Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn, but there are certainly glimpses of John Bergson of O, Pioneers! and Hillary Templeton from Cather’s “Old Mrs. Harris.”  Although not a great source for new scholarship, the pocket diary of Charles Cather provides an interesting segue into the genre of these petite journals kept so fastidiously by Americans two centuries ago.  Technology like PDA’s and micro-blogs like Twitter have replaced the diminutive diaries – replacing, too, a simpler, more pastoral time.

The real lesson, however, comes from the experience.  A certain amount of thrill is derived from these expeditions into the undiscovered countries of special collections.  Like archaeology, seldom do we find King Tut’s tomb or the Ark of the Covenant.  What we do find are relics of our collective past from which we have built the ideologies of today.  As William Faulkner shares, “the past is never dead.  It’s not even past.”

Charley faces life and death, weddings and funerals, and the end of an ugly war.  In his diary, the events of tragedy, loss, love, and redemption are placed with equal importance next to the routines of daily living.  Maybe that is the larget meaning of this little, pocket treasure.  Changing times are no different than changes in the weather.  The death of a president is not greater sorrow than the death of a friend, and a nation facing uncertain days can trust that potatoes will harvest in December and “gay times” will be had.

Works Cited

Cather, Charles F.  “Charles F. Cather Diary, 1865.” Willa Cather Collection, The Woman’s Collection. Texas Woman’s University.  Denton, Texas.

Lee, Hermione. Willa Cather: Double Lives. New York: Pantheon Books, 1989.

McCarthy, Molly. “A Pocketful of Days: Pocket Diaries and Daily Record Keeping among Nineteenth-Century New England.” New England