About ten years ago, while wandering through the local flea market, I came across an enormous old scrapbook. It was not particularly impressive to look at. The cover was plain and rather battered, the corners worn and softened by time. But I have always had a soft spot for old scrapbooks, so of course I picked it up.

It was huge - not the sort of book you could tuck neatly onto a bookshelf. When I opened it and began turning the thick, pasted pages, it quickly became clear that someone had spent many hours creating it.
I already own a few old scrapbooks and they often contain similar sorts of things: newspaper clippings, photographs of members of the Royal Family, pictures of animals, comic strips, greetings cards, advertisements and scenes from distant places. These homemade books are fascinating little windows into the past. They show us not only what was happening in the world at the time but also what captured the imagination of the person who carefully cut out and saved each piece. This scrapbook was much the same. There were newspaper articles about the Royal Family, pictures of animals carefully cut from magazines, colourful illustrations, greetings cards… I also noticed a few dated pages - a newspaper clipping from 1934 and a small calendar page from 1935. So it was clear that the scrapbook must have been compiled sometime during the mid-1930s. I was interested to have a good look and so I bought it.

There is something rather touching about these handmade scrapbooks. In a time before television and electronic entertainment, imagination played a much larger role in daily life. Paper, pencils, books and scissors must have provided endless hours of occupation for children. I often wonder what motivated these scrapbooks. Were they simply a way to pass the time on rainy afternoons? Were they created to preserve memories? Or did the child who made them become completely absorbed in the task, constantly searching for new pictures and stories to add to their growing collection? Whatever the reason, the creators of these scrapbooks could never have imagined that one day, many decades in the future, their book might end up in the hands of a complete stranger living in an entirely different world.

And yet, that is exactly what happened.

As I turned the heavy pages at home, something particularly lovely appeared amongst the newspaper clippings and magazine pictures. Tucked between the heavily pasted pages were several drawings  -delicate little figures coloured carefully with what looked like pencil crayons.

They were fairies.

Each fairy had been lovingly drawn, coloured and given a name. Beneath each one was a small description written in neat, careful handwriting explaining who the fairy was and something about her character.

It was then that I realised this scrapbook was far more special than I had first thought. Because here, hidden amongst all the newspaper clippings and magazine pictures was the imaginary world of a young girl who had lived nearly ninety years ago.

A postcard that had come loose from one of the pages was addressed to “My dearest Rosamund”. The same name appeared in one or two other places within the scrapbook, so I feel fairly certain that it was Rosamund who created it.

Her fairies were magical .

“Fairy Blue Sky in her dance dress, made of pieces of the brightest blue sky, and trimmed with flowers cut from the rainbow. Her wings are made of rainbow too.”

Pixie Pookins: This dear little fellow looks after all the toy animals, and feeds them at night when all is quiet.”

“Fairy Bad Weather in her ball dress.  She always dances after a storm and looks sweet in her dress of wet flower petals”

“Princess Pot-Pourri is rather a proud young person, her name is really Pat-Pansy but she thinks Pot-Pourri is smarter”

“Fairy Rainbow in her dress of rainbow with bodice of the sun. Her wings are made of two big raindrops”

“Dear old Daddy pixie, he smokes an acorn pipe and is very kind and gives all the good pixie boys big pieces of dew cake when mummy isn’t watching”

“This is dear fat Mummy fairy, she mends all the cut torn dresses, wings, knees and shoes and gives medicines to the fairies who eat too much honey“Her favourite flower is the deadly nightshade – purple and yellow. She always wears purple and her hair is gold. Her wings are made of fairy gossamer dipped in the purple dye of the rainbow. Her name is Pansy.”

“Her bodice is made of sepals. Her first frill is made of rose leaves, her second of bluebells, her third of primroses, her fourth of poppies and her last of asters. Her wings are made of gossamer with all the tints of the flowers.”

What I particularly love about Rosamund’s descriptions is how many flowers appear in them. Sepals, primroses, poppies, asters, rose leaves, bluebells… her fairy world seems to have been woven entirely from flowers and the natural world around her.

At some point Rosamund was even given access to a typewriter, and two typed pages tucked between the scrapbook pages contain little fairy stories she wrote called The New Queen and The Reception.

In Rosamund’s story the fairies gather together while the king chooses a fairy to be his queen. The new queen, Bluebell, arrives in a chariot drawn by four white butterflies. Her wedding dress is made of bluebell petals with a train of primroses, while the bridesmaids wear primrose gowns and carry bouquets of bluebells. After the wedding, the fairies hold a reception seated upon a large toadstool. They eat honey cakes and drink dew from acorn cups while dancing in the moonlight. Later, an old gnome appears with a tiny violin, its strings spun from cobwebs and a bow made from a rose stalk and cobweb. When he begins to play, the most beautiful music fills the fairy gathering.

It is a wonderfully imaginative little story.

Reading Rosamund’s descriptions, you can  almost feel that perhaps she really did believe there were fairies living quietly at the bottom of the garden.

I often find myself wondering what became of her. Did she grow up still remembering her fairy stories? If she had children, did she tell them about Daddy Pixie and Queen Bluebell? Did anyone else ever see her drawings or read her little stories? Perhaps not.

And yet, quite by chance, many decades later I found her scrapbook and was given a glimpse into the magical world she once created.

I will probably never know anything more about Rosamund or her life. But I am very glad that, hidden amongst those old newspaper clippings and magazine pictures, her fairies survived.
And in the pages of that battered scrapbook from the 1930s, ‘dear old Daddy Pixie’ still sits quietly smoking his acorn pipe, while Fairy Rainbow spreads her raindrop wings and Rosamund’s little fairy kingdom continues to live on.