It seems that with my anxiety under control I’m getting more small tidbits of memory drifting to the surface.
I seem to remember walking past toy shops and seeing the brightly-colored box art of the era as a child in the 1880s, only to feel a bit put out because we were always a few pence shy of affording anything that nice.
About 125 years and a couple lives later, I remember seeing some Victorian toys and board games in an antique store in Richmond Upon Thames and being charmed by the gorgeous box art but this time about a hundred Pounds shy of being able to buy it as part of an admittedly growing collection of antiques from between 1877 and 1915. At the time I didn’t remember or understand what it was about these toys that tugged at my heart strings but in hindsight, it makes a lot of sense.