Victoria Rules

A 19th-century house in Johannesburg is chocked full of toys, furniture and the brooding style of South Africa's ruling upperclass when Britain's Queen Victoria ruled. Photo by Darren Taylor.

Victorian hosts entertained in a gloomy drawing room crowded with elaborately patterned wooden chairs, thick carpets, massive mirrors rimmed with gold, sparkling silver cutlery and polished ebony tables. Photo by Darren Taylor.

Love lives the Victorian life in her 22-room mansion. She cooks Victorian recipes without a microwave oven and sleeps in a teak four-poster bed. Photo by Darren Taylor.

Stern and uncompromising portraits of Victoria Regina hang in many of the rooms of Lindfield House. Photo by Darren Taylor.

A large gramophone player of dull gold holds pride of place in the library where Love maintains a large collection of gramophone records. Photo by Darren Taylor.

“Ladies were supposed to eat like birds," says Love while the other guests enjoyed a sumptuous feast of rich meats, pastries and puddings. Photo by Darren Taylor.

An organ, an anitquie piano and an 1894 mandolin grace the music room. Love says, "It was everybody’s duty to be able to play a musical instrument."  Photo by Darren Taylor.

Love inside the museum’s extensive library, which is musty from the many leather-bound books on its shelves, dating back to the 1800s. Photo by Darren Taylor.

Schoolgirls posed stoically in Miss Bowls' class in a local school, circa 1905. (Photo courtesy Lindfield House Museum)