Mid-late Victorian.

By Amanda Hallay

ENCAPSULATING!
Sepia photo, hideous frame, plaid,
hoopskirts, ugly hairdos, childhood.

Name

Not so much a 'person' as a period of history stretching for most of the 19th century.

Relationship

None! Apart from a paper I once wrote on Edward Burne-Jones, I have no relationship with this terrible epoch.

Crime

• Suspension bridges.
• Photographs of dead people.
• Over-cluttered drawing rooms.
• Fathers with handlebar moustaches.
• Hoop-skirts.
• Crystal Palace.
• Rape of India.
• 'Music Hall'
• Pianos.
• Celebration of Childhood.
• Things in cases/cabinets.
• Tiger-skin rugs.
• Bad poetry.
• 'Keep-sake' type-of-junk.
• Plaid.
• Knickerbockers.
• Trams.
• Peach Melbas.
• Scary dolls.
• Prince Albert.
• Clothes with complicated fastenings.
• Sepia Daguerreotypes of unattractive people.
• Ugly hair-dos (female.)
• Ugly hair-dos (male.)
• Smelling salts.
• Boer War.
• Marrying-of-cousins.
• Parlour Maids.
• Crimea.

The list is endless. 'Victorian' is hideous. It is horrible. And - thank God - it is over!

If-You-Can't-Say-Anything-Nice-About-Someone…

Charles Dickens.