Maud: The Illustrated Diary of a Victorian Woman

Maud Berkeley was a remarkable woman. Born into the amiable comforts of the Victorian middle class, she was an acute observer of the world around her both in her sketches and her prose.

Even in the confined world of the Isle of Wight, she contrived to squeeze every ounce of pleasure out of life. We follow her adventures, on walking expeditions, at picnics, dances; as she throws herself wholeheartedly into amateur dramatics, concerts, tennis matches, dressmaking and painting classes.

Whether in her ironical and amused picture of her father- ‘The Great G’, as she calls him -or of the milieu of tea parties and disastrous country outings, she brings incomparably to life the foibles and obsessions of a lost and gentler age.

For the twentieth century reader the picture is all the more extraordinary for the restraints and ambiguities of Victorian society. Was it quite proper to accept a cup of tea from a male acquaintance who had directed Maud to the boat in Portsmouth? Probably not. Would it be ‘fast’ to let shy Mr. von Hacht paint her portrait, even if he pictured her as the perfect type of British spinster? Emphatically yes.

There is the ever present desire to find freedom through a suitable husband. When she marries her delightful widower, she begins a new series of adventures in London, with shopping sprees, visits to the alarming Turkish baths and chaperoning her ebullient young stepdaughters.

Elizabeth Longford’s introduction gives us all the benefit of her knowledge and incisive understanding of the Victorian Age. Her grand¬ daughter Flora Fraser has adapted Maud’s diary superbly-elucidating where necessary and placing Maud’s remarkable story in its true historical context.