The wonders of electricity, by Harriet Colley
An original diary written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.
In this diary entry, written in 1849, a young woman describes attending a public lecture on electricity at the mechanics’ institute in her town with her brother.
Thursday, 15th November. To the Institute this evening with George to hear Professor Marchbanks on ‘The Wonders of Electricity’. George had bought the tickets a fortnight ago, and has talked of nothing else since, so I went chiefly to oblige him and partly because Mamma said it would do me good to hear something besides the piano. The hall was very full and very hot, and smelt strongly of gas, wet umbrellas and peppermints.
The Professor is a large gentleman with magnificent whiskers and a voice that seemed to have been trained upon a parade ground. For the first hour he told us, at great length, about a frog, and about two Italian gentlemen who quarrelled concerning it, and I confess I lost the thread somewhere in the second Italian. Then he attempted to make a bell ring at the far end of the platform by means of a wire, and it would not ring. He tried three times. A man at the back called out to ask whether the bell was a Tory, and there was a good deal of laughter, and the Professor grew very red indeed.
I had quite made up my mind that the evening was a failure, when he asked for a volunteer from among the ladies, and George, the wretch, pushed me forward before I could protest. I was made to stand on a little stool with glass legs and to rest my hand upon a brass globe, while his assistant turned the handle of a great machine of glass and leather. For a moment nothing happened. Then I felt every hair upon my head begin to rise and part and stand out from my scalp, as softly as if a hundred tiny fingers were lifting it. The whole hall gasped. The Professor bade me hold out my other hand towards George, and a spark leapt from my fingertip to his nose, with a crack like a twig breaking, and George yelped.
I do not know how to describe the feeling. It was not pain. It was more as if, for an instant, I had been allowed to hold something that belongs to thunderstorms. When I stepped down my knees were shaking and my hair was all anyhow and I did not care in the least.
George has promised never to forgive me for his nose. I have spent the whole of my pin money for the month on the Professor’s little book, which was on sale at the door, and I mean to read every word of it, even the parts about the frog.
“The writer presents the lecture as a dull and disappointing evening.”
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120 exam-style questions on Eduqas GCSE English Language 2.1.1 Two unseen non-fiction texts, 19th and 21st century. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.