A London Home in the Nineties

A London Home in the Nineties, which was first published in 1937, is the third volume in British author Molly Hughes’ entertaining and deeply moving autobiographical trilogy on her life in Victorian London.

Here, Hughes recounts in loving detail her engagement to and married life with Arthur Hughes in the late 1880’s, bringing up a family of her own, as well as her work as head of the training department at Bedford College from 1892 until 1897, where she played an important role in expanding and rationalizing the teacher training curriculum.

“NONE of the characters in this book are fictitious. The incidents, if not dramatic, are at least genuine memories. Expressions of jollity and enjoyment of life are understatements rather than overstatements. We were just an ordinary, suburban, Victorian family, undistinguished ourselves and unacquainted with distinguished people. It occurred to me to record our doings only because, on looking back, and comparing our lot with that of the children of today, we seemed to have been so lucky. In writing them down, however, I have come to realize that luck is at one’s own disposal, that ‘there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so’. Bring up children in the conviction that they are lucky, and behold they are. But in our case high spirits were perhaps inherited, as my story will show.

“DON PEDRO. In faith, lady, you have a merry heart.

“BEATRICE. Yea, my lord; I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on the windy side of care.”