Life Amongst the Troubridges: Journals of a Young Victorian 1873-1884

by Laura Troubridge

It was the journals of Grandfather Daniel Gurney's sisters, one of them Elizabeth Fry, which first fired 15-year-old Laura Troubridge to keep her own journals from 1873. The father of the six Troubridge children was Colonel Sir Thomas St Vincent Troubridge, a hero of the Crimean War who became an ADC to Queen Victoria, and who died a few weeks after his young wife in 1867. The six orphans then went to live at Runcorn in Norfolk with their grandfather. He was very old-fashioned and had changed nothing since the death of his wife, Lady Harriet Gurney, in the 1830s.

In Laura Troubridge's journals and memoirs, she records family life in Victorian England with vivid portraits of her relatives, governesses and tutors. She describes picnics and excursions, staying in country houses, visits to London and finally her engagement. Already she was designing decorative tiles and Christmas cards and illustrating children's books. Later, as Laura Hope, she became well-known as a pastellist and painted Queen Victoria's grandchildren at Osborne.

The journals are illustrated by the author's own drawings and by family photographs.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1999

About the author

Laura Troubridge was born circa 1857, a daughter of Sir Thomas St. Vincent Hope Cochrane Troubridge (3rd Baronet) and Louisa Jane Gurney.

She was a diarist and letter-writer. On 2 August 1888 she married Adrian Hope. They had two daughters. She died on 15 March 1929.

She should not be confused with her cousin and sister-in-law Laura, Lady Troubridge, born Laura Gurney, also a writer, who married Laura Troubridge Hope's brother Sir Thomas Herbert Cochrane Troubridge, the 4th Baronet.

Reviews

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exactly what I thought it would be, a narration of the family and domestic life of a teenager in the 1870s and 80s. Laura is engaging, humorous and readable. She discusses her inner and outer lives with the same bubbling jollity, switching between a list of the clothes that she owns and how she doesn't ever feel nervous meeting people with pleasurable ease.

Laura and her siblings lost both their parents when she was eight. Her description of the day they found out their mother died is deeply moving, and throughout her journals she refers to these events with solemnity, but quite open in her feelings. Growing up with their elderly grandfather has its struggles - he won't allow costume dances, they must sit and listen to a lot more bible readings than they would prefer, their country life is somewhat secluded - but Laura is an irrepressible optimist who, while waiting for her life to get more interesting, finds joy and pleasure in what she has.

With five siblings and countless cousins, she is rarely alone, but these diaries (actually a mix of her immediate writings and some later recollections, delicately edited by her granddaughter) leap off the page whether she is describing the dozens of entertainments she packed into a London visit, or slowing down and describing the feeling of a midnight New Years' Eve vigil, standing alone in a dark room gazing into a mirror as the clock strikes.

A book I have had on my shelf for years, it is enjoyable, evocative, and worth the time.

[Christopher Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enlighting.