Along Cromwell Road, Kensington and a book recommendation

This photograph was taken   July 12, 1905 by Edward Linley Sambourne  (January 4 1844 –  August 3 1910) in Cromwell Rd , Kensington, London  .
Sambourne was a famous cartoonist for Punch magazine.

 She looks like a working girl going for lunch or a tea break perhaps.
 She is a pretty girl (you can enlarge the photo), serious as she peeks out from under the shade of her stylish hat.
A watch dangles from a pin on her chest. She will not be late!
Her shoes are dainty with fashionable (even today) pointed toes.
 You can just see the ponytail of her hair do behind her neck in this Edwardian era photo.
 When I see photos like this I am drawn into the story.
What she was thinking, where she was going, what is her name, her situation in life?
I look at the background and wonder what was transpiring around her.
Where did she go?  Was her life happy?
She is probably long gone as she looks to be in her late teens of twenties in this photo and since it is 1905 she would have been born in the 1880s sometime.

And just look at this young Edwardian girl walk along.  The photograph was taken on June 11, 1907 and the girl is immortalized, frozen in time and young and alive forever.

Isn't photography wonderful?   What would we do without it. So much is saved for us.  It is a window into the past, our own past as these are those who came before us.
Each photo we take is a memory and history frozen in place.

One day someone will look at our photos like this and wonder about us as well.
With blogging, however, we leave a bit of ourselves behind.

My book recommendation for this month  is "A Victorian Household: Based on the Diaries of Marion Sambourne" by Shirley Nicholson.
It is an intimate look into the life and times Sambourne's wife  born in the 1850s and passing away just before WWI in 1914.  She kept her diary faithfully for  years.
The Sambourne home was at 18 Stafford Terrace, Kensington and can be visited today. (make an appointment for the tour)