Evangeline May | 14th September 1878 

Oh, Mama, she’s amazing! She has loads of books and doesn’t care a fig about what she wears. There’s these tight cotton ‘trousers’ that she wears with some lovely jumpers, she calls them. Her hair is cut short and looks so out of fashion now, but on her she looks a beauty. It’s all naturally curled and a beautiful brunette.

She has two bags of presents for her birthday! Big, big bags too. She has her own camera! Honestly, you must meet her. And she’s so awfully polite.

‘I feel ashamed of you to take a liking of young girls with figure hugging clothes. I imagine she has hardly a figure. And jumpers? She a girl! And goodness what’s a camera?’

But Mama, I’ve finally met someone popular, well-off, polite and lovely. Aren’t you proud I’ve found such friends? 

‘Not at all. You disgust me – wanting to wear trousers and jumpers. And this camera talk. I hardly believe a thing about her. Your imagination has crept up on you again!’

I suppose it had, Mama was once right. It was time travel? It seemed a blur to me, but I so loved that girl. I never caught her name, she was some sort of ‘Whovian’. To me that sounded like a different race! But she seems very human… even with a Time Machine? She called it a TARDIS and it was, somehow, smaller on the outside. I found it most peculiar.

The whole travelling bit has slipped from my mind, and if she wanted me to forget. I held onto it though. This girl astonished me. I thought, well, I thought I loved her. It’s so silly! No woman here loves a girl. Pfft, it must be something of the ‘future’, as she called it. She said there was past, present and future – and explained it a s ‘wibbly-wobbly’ or something like that. I had heard of such words but not like that. It seemed awfully babyish to me. 

This girl, woman, really was so beautiful! Yet all she did was wash her face twice a day. I did too, but I looked a right red tomato. I must ask her what soap she uses, if I see her again. I doubt she’d use cheap old carbolic like me.

Papa said that I should begin writing seriously. But isn’t that what I do? I wish that one day I will publish these memoirs with that ‘Whovian’ lady at my side. She’s such a wonder! Mama says that now I’m 14 I should really ‘grow up’ but I’d rather kick off my stockings and go to the park with boys. Not sweethearts, however, I have never taken a fancy to boy. There’s rather that girl…

No, no, no. If Mama found this she’d be furious. I can’t possibly say I like girls more than boys. I have lots of friends, that are boys, and we sneak off to the park together. Papa says they are ‘urchins’ with ‘no propriety’ but no-one these days has enough money for school. Not even I can go myself. I have to learn ‘to be a lady’ and Mama says about ‘Finishing School’ in the years to come but you learn to curtsey and dance! It’s ever so un-scholarly. I prefer Mathematics and Literature.

– All photographs in this post taken with my phone –