Laura Troubridge

Laura Elizabeth Rachel Troubridge (1858 – 15 March 1929) was a British diarist, letter-writer, artist and illustrator. A professional artist from an aristocratic background, she was known for her portraits of Queen Victoria and her family, and paintings of children and fairy subjects, generally in watercolour and pastel. Her book illustrations were admired by Oscar Wilde and Charles Dodgson. In 1966, her journals, giving an insight into Victorian life; and in 2000 correspondence with her fiancé during the period of their engagement, were published. Life Laura Elizabeth Rachel Troubridge was born in 1858 in Chiswick, Middlesex, England and baptised on 16 September 1858 in Turnham Green, Hounslow.  She was sister to Thomas Herbert Cochrane Troubridge, 4th Baronet and sister-in-law to Lady Laura Troubridge and Una Vincenzo, Lady Troubridge. In 1867 her parents, Louise and Sir Thomas Troubridge, died within a few weeks of each other and as an orphan she and her siblings went to live at North Runcton Hall in Norfolk with their grandfather, Daniel Gurney.  Her grandfather's sisters, one of them Elizabeth Fry, had kept journals and it was these that inspired Troubridge to keep her own journals from 1873. Troubridge was an aspiring young artist and 1879 she wrote in her journal “To the National Gallery…Met Tardy and went together to tea at Oscar Wilde's – great fun, lots of vague ‘intense’ men, such differs, who amused us awfully.” She lived with her grandfather until 1880. In 1966 her journals were published as: Life Amongst the Troubridges: Journals of a Young Victorian, 1873-84. She and Adrian Charles Frances Hope were engaged in 1884. But the young couple were not able to marry because of Hope's difficulties in finding a job that would support them both. They kept up almost daily correspondence. In their letters they wrote to each other about both public and private occasions in London and Norfolk and beyond. For example, after a dinner at Mary Molesworth's her fiancé writes to her “Mrs. Molesworth urged me to throw everything to the winds and marry you at once.” Their correspondence was published posthumously as the book: Letters of Engagement, 1884-1888: The Love Letters of Adrian Hope and Laura Troubridge.