A London Family by Molly Hughes

[anef]

As part of the project to read books that have been sitting unread on my shelves for longer than six months I picked up the above, intending to flick through it.  After fifteen minutes I found that I could not put it down, and I've been reading it pretty constantly for the last couple of days. 

It's actually three books bound into one:  A London Child of the Seventies, A London Girl of the Eighties, and A London Home in the Nineties.  It's the story of the author growing up in Victorian times, with a family of four older brothers.  The first book deals with her home life and the second (so far) with her schooldays and her first work experiences as a teacher. 

Her father died unexpectedly when she was a child and there was very little money, so she decided to go to the best possible school so that she could earn a living.  Fortunately her aunt, a tin entrepreneur in Cornwall, managed to pay for this.  Molly's contemporaries were studying for Newnham and Girton (which presumably could not be afforded) but I was fascinated to discover that after matriculation she got a place on the very first women's teacher training course in Cambridge.  I was thinking vaguely of Homerton, but suddenly realised that as the Principal was Miss Hughes (no relation - the author's maiden name was Thomas),  this had to be Hughes Hall in its earliest incarnation.

It's a fascinating documentary of Victorian life - I was staggered by her description of going on a bus, which was so utterly different from now, and of the family taking trains down to see their relatives in Cornwall.  Trains were invariable late in those days, which makes you wonder how early commuters managed, but perhaps this was only long distance trains.  In the second book she describes a twenty-six hour train journey to visit her fiance's family in Aberdovey, which sounds appalling.  It also paints a fascinating picture of Victorian women's education - the Head of Molly's school was more or less inventing this from the ground up.

The bare facts don't give you any idea of the charm of the narrative.  The author has a very fast-paced, readable style and a lively sense of humour.  Tragedies happen but she does not dwell on them, being determined to extract the most from every situation.  Anyway, I think it's great.  It's fascinating and hugely enjoyable.  I was cursing the fact that the third book seemed to stop before the First World War, as she wrote it in 1937, but have just discovered from Wikipedia that there is in fact a fourth volume, set between the wars, which I have just ordered from Amazon.  Apparently she died in South Africa in the fifties.

Comments

[flick.livejournal.com]

Is this the actual three volume version you have? If so, can I borrow it?

I got the fist volume from Persephone, and loved it, but when I looked for the others I could only find a (rather slim, oversized) hardback with the 'highlights' of the three.

I loved the first one, although I thought that the Tragic Plot Twist (which I think is revealed in the Persephone commentary) was incredibly tragic.

[anef.livejournal.com]

Yes it is the 3 volume unabridged version (honestly, who would want to abridge it? Bizarre!) and you are very welcome to borrow it. If you mean the father getting killed on the last paragraph of the last page, yes, that was awful. I read on the internet that in fact he had lost all his money in one for these financial scandals (he was a stock-broker) and killed himself, but I don't know what basis the writer had for that statement.

The other books are all on Amazon in fact, but they have filed them under "Mary Vivien Hughes" so making them hard to find.

[flick.livejournal.com]

I read on the internet that in fact he had lost all his money in one for these financial scandals (he was a stock-broker) and killed himself, but I don't know what basis the writer had for that statement.

That was what I was talking about: the Persephone notes say that not only is that true, and that she didn't find out until many years later, but it's also what happened (iirc: it's a while) to *her* husband.

I'd love to borrow them. I was incredibly annoyed when my three-in-one volume arrived, I started reading it and then realised it was edited: it doesn't say it anywhere on the book!

[anef.livejournal.com]

Oh, no - not Arthur! I do hope you're wrong, but if that's what Persephone say, then I guess they would know. Maybe I'll take a trip over to the bookshop at lunchtime next week and read their notes.