Grace's Sister's Book

Two days ago, I told the story of my great-great-great-aunt Grace. Her sister, Jane, was 20 years younger. Somehow a children's book, The Lamp of Love, belonging to Jane has passed down through the generations to me. I’ve never read any of it, partly because of the Victorian prose, partly because of guilt that someone, almost certainly a very young me, has scribbled on it. I opened it today.


The first extra is of the title page. There is an illustration of the story on p.70. The story is a very short one, the second extra, not too bad to read; the plot can be summarised: a sad young lad is given a book by a kindly gentleman and the boy’s life changes for the better.

Actually the book gifted in the book, if that makes sense, does sound interesting. It was Watts on the Mind. Apparently Isaac Watts' work influenced Michael Faraday who found in it a guiding ethos for how to sort out truth and fiction, what we now call the scientific method. 

There’s a little more to this story. My maternal grandfather occasionally took me to visit an old lady who lived on the same road as him. I always assumed that they knew each other as neighbours. It was only when I started researching my family tree that it emerged that the old lady was the daughter of Jane.