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Writing about Victorian life ‘a pageant of snobbery’
INTRODUCTION
I make no apology for writing this account of the life and upbringing of a woman of the late Victorian era, because there has never been nor I think ever can be quite the same cleavage as that between the generation of which I write and that of to-day. It is another world, another era, and it is well that the present generation should realise something of this complete change in outlook, in ideals, in standards of value. The change in standards of value seems to me the most important change. We valued, more than anything, money, our social position, the good opinion of relatives and neighbours, an unbroken façade of family devotion no matter what the reality.
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There is a great awakening to-day and there are those who are giving their life and youth to the solving of world problems. To them we must look. The cry to-day is for reality, reality and ever more reality in family life, in business life, in social life and more than all else in religious life. So that the record of the life of one born in the thickest fog of unreality, but who never ceased to seek reality above all else, may be of interest to those who are ever on the same quest.
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