Diary of a Victorian Teenager: The Journal of Octavia Grimston

Diary of a Victorian Teenager: The Journal of Octavia Grimston

On 1st February 2007, at an antiques fair near Lincoln, I bought a tatty, dull-looking brown notebook with a broken brass lock dangling from the edge of its cover. This unpromising piece of wreckage, fit only for kindling (no pun intended) turned out to be a Victorian journal written by Octavia Grimston, a young woman born into a privileged upper-class family which once resided at Kilnwick Hall in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The journal, full of fascinating historical and social detail, begins in January 1862 at Pau, a small French city close to the Pyrenees and the Spanish border. Pau was a very popular overwintering place for wealthy Brits in the Victorian era, and here it was that Octavia had numerous adventures and encounters before coming home to Kilnwick Hall via Bagnères, Luchon, Biarritz, Paris and London. Following her return, she gives a detailed description of evading an unwanted suitor, and then records her visits to Ireland and Scotland, before telling the story of the whirlwind courtship with her future husband, her first kiss, the wedding at Kilnwick, and then the honeymoon in France and Italy. The final entry, from the 1870s, concerns the happiness of having her first two children, of which there were ultimately nine, the life-threatening illness of one of them, and the sad demise of close friends and a beloved sister. At that point the journal abruptly ends and Octavia sinks into the shadows, from whence I hope I have rescued her.