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Fireside
teas, shopping for ribbons, a half-sovereign in a little box and a vase
of wild flowers on the parlour table. Marjory writes of the simple pleasures
of ordinary folk's lives in a period now generally consigned to the glass
case of history.
Covering a three year period in Edwardian suburbia, a world of very local
horizons, the teenager's meticulously kept diaries speak only briefly
of Earth shattering events, but buzz with all the intricacies of everyday
routine and the frailties of human emotions.
But the darker side, too, creeps in: Influenza, early death, soot-filled
kitchens and the endless scrubbing of hallway floors and porches. This
was the world in which our great grandparents lived. Beneath the material
deposits of the intervening one hundred years, Marjory's world is still
present. |
