Origins

Although the Diary has pleased several generations with its humour and has been a palpable influence on talented writers right up to the present, almost nothing is known of the circumstances that produced it. Whether Burnand commissioned it for Punch, or whether the brothers offered the idea to him, is unknown. Burnand’s own memoirs, in two hefty volumes published in 1904 while the brothers were still alive, mention neither them nor the Diary. All we can say is that, if the idea was suggested to him, Burnand would surely have reacted positively. During his eight years as editor he had softened the magazine’s political radicalism and had taken its humour down-market, from pillorying the misdeeds of the great to celebrating the misadventures of the little man -- men like Pooter.

Even less, if possible, is known of the Grossmiths’ own attitude to the work that alone has preserved their names. Few of their private papers have survived, and none refer to it. It is rather extraordinary that although the brothers’ three autobiographical volumes review their active careers over many hundreds of pages, nowhere do they devote so much as a single sentence to the work that is their only surviving memorial.

Curiously, not one of the interviews that George gave to journalists in the 1890s had any substantial references to it either. The fullest of these interviews was by Raymond Blathwayt, a pioneer in what was then a new journalistic format. He interviewed George less than a year after the Diary was published. It is inconceivable that Blathwayt did not ask him about it, yet it is never mentioned in the resulting article. Such a transparent omission seems to imply an agreement to keep off the subject.[1]

How can this be explained? It may be argued, and has been, that the Grossmiths never regarded the Diary as anything more than a jeu d’esprit, thrown off in light-hearted moments between weightier and more profitable commitments. But there may be another explanation: the judgement of the first reviewers. See the page on the reception of the Diary.

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[1] Blathwayt (1893). There is just one non-specific phrase about Weedon’s being “part author with myself of several sketches which have appeared in Punch” (69). Other interviews by Hyde (1897) and Zedlitz (1897) do not mention the Diary.