An Article by Elizabeth Bicester on The Time Travel Diaries.
I suppose the first thing one should make clear is this: I did not set out to become a time traveller. Nor did I intend to marry a gentleman who regards unfamiliar contrivances as personal challenges and who believes that any button labelled Play is placed there expressly for his moral testing. Yet Providence, time, and a butterfly of questionable intentions decided otherwise.
My name is Elizabeth Bicester. I was educated at Cambridge in the latter half of the nineteenth century, where I acquired a respectable degree, a taste for natural philosophy, and a quiet certainty that the universe is considerably less well-behaved than most gentlemen suppose. I first encountered James Urquhart at a cricket match in 1873, where he appeared quite suddenly, dressed in a manner that defied all known conventions, and behaving as though he had misplaced not merely his hat, but his entire century. It later transpired that he was a science lecturer from the year 2015. I should add, in his defence, that he improved with familiarity.
The Time Travel Diaries are our attempt—often earnest, occasionally misguided—to make some sense of the consequences of that meeting. They are not so much a chronicle of events as a record of two people repeatedly discovering that time has opinions of its own.
They are called diaries, though this may be misleading. In truth, they are a conversation across centuries: between Victorian restraint and modern enthusiasm, between ink and illuminated screens, between a world in which ladies were expected to embroider quietly and one in which they are encouraged to update their software. Each volume records not only where we travelled, but how we conducted ourselves while doing so—sometimes with dignity, sometimes with haste, and occasionally with regret.
Time, as we learned rather early, is not a straight line but a most uncooperative substance. It bends, wanders, and occasionally deposits one in the wrong attic. The Martians—who are quite real and nothing like the postcards—understand this perfectly well. Mr Wells understands it too, though he displays a distressing tendency to arrive precisely when one is hoping for a quiet afternoon and a cup of tea.
There are adventures in these pages: caverns beneath Sussex, houses that exist in several centuries at once, telephones that refuse to behave, and futures that vanish with little notice. There is also romance, though it rarely presents itself in a tidy or dignified fashion. Loving a man from another century requires patience, fortitude, and a willingness to forgive an astonishing number of errors involving technology. I have found it best to think of these as character-building exercises.
James approaches time with theories, calculations, and a touching faith in buttons. I approach it with people. Somewhere between these methods we have managed, against all reasonable expectation, to build a life together. When time slips, when certainty dissolves, it is not equations that steady me, but the knowledge that he will be beside me, looking apologetic and already devising a plan.
You will not find in these diaries a desire to conquer history. Time does not respond well to such ambition. We have learned—sometimes at considerable inconvenience—that even the smallest action may echo far beyond its intention. James insists this proves time is a closed loop. I maintain it merely proves that he should pause before acting. We remain in affectionate disagreement.
If these diaries cause you to laugh, I am gratified. If they unsettle you, that is only proper. Time travel is not a heroic business. It is more often a matter of clinging firmly to one another, attempting to determine the year, and hoping the kettle remains functional.
Should you take anything from our experiences, let it be this: time may separate centuries, but it cannot diminish devotion. It may test love, delay it, and occasionally trip it up, but it cannot undo it. And if a peculiar device should appear in your home, I strongly advise you to ask questions first — and then ensure you are holding the hand of someone you trust when the world, inevitably, changes.
— Elizabeth Bicester (Mrs Urquhart)
P. S. Some of the diaries have been transcribed by Professor Rolleston in book form and also by electrical media, which I believe, in James world, is often preferable, on Amazon