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An attempt to correct James’ regrettable misconceptions concerning Victorian society
From the diary of Elizbeth Urquhart ne Bicester.
“I would like anyone reading our diaries to understand that despite James’ suggestion that all Victorians have deranged relatives locked up in an attic, there were none in my family.
Unless, of course, you count Uncle Willoughby, who refused to recognise Victorian avant-garde fashion and insisted on arriving at dinner parties wearing an attire that only Beau Brummel and that rake, the Prince Regent would have been proud to wear during their infamous excursions to Brighton.
Nor, I also wish to record, was he at any time, locked in an attic for his, or our, protection. Though I must confess regarding the embarrassing attentions he afforded to my girlfriends down from Girton, on occasions I wished he were.
His character was nowhere more apparent than during the annual gatherings at his seaside residence in Bognor, which had acquired something of a reputation.
In his younger days, and in his older days too I might add, he was able to entice ladies of all impressionable ages to visit his cottage by the sea. Though I would hesitate to call it a cottage as it has five bedrooms, a conservatory, summer house and a stable for two carriages.
Its generous proportions were easily explained because in August, as with so many houses along the south coast, society abandoned London for the seaside. Sleepy villages were transformed into lively centres of music, dancing, flirtation and, on occasion, sufficient iniquity that sensible mothers thought it prudent to remove their daughters to elderly relations in remote country houses until the danger had passed. By Christmas, they hoped, enough innocence would have been restored to introduce them to some wealthy and, one trusted, reasonably agreeable gentleman.
My father took my sister and I there once to enjoy the remains of an Indian summer. Our Uncle had returned home to, I presume, recuperate, and repair his liver. When we arrived, by courtesy of an elderly man in a dog cart who collected us from the station, we were met by a rather large and flustered housekeeper at the gate who apologised for not meeting us as preparations for our reception were taking longer than expected.
The reason became apparent as we walked down the drive, for we observed a number of labourers in the garden manhandling furniture back into the house, filling large sacks with broken china and retrieving unmentionables from bushes and trees.
We did not reach the door as my father decided that his young daughters might not be prepared for what we might find inside and requested the housekeeper to find us suitable lodgings in the town, post haste.
I recounted this story to James’ sister, Jill, once who for days afterwards, begged me to find a way for her and her friends to time travel back to one of Uncle Willoughby’s parties. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for the preservation of what remains of my reputation, time travel doesn’t work that way.”
—An extract from The Time Palace of Mars, part of The Time Travel Diaries of James Urquhart and Elizabeth Bicester.