Since my parents were not young when they met and married, and it was around ten years after that before I was born, I only ever knew one grandparent - my mother's mother.
Granny was a Victorian. I don't know exactly when she was born, but she seemed a very old lady to me when she died in 1959; in actual fact, she was probably born no earlier than 1880. Granny was tall and stately and astonishingly upright - she had been raised in the era of the backboard,
a device which was strapped to the backs of young ladies for an hour or two each day to ensure that they held their spines straight, whether walking, standing or sitting, and she undoubtedly wore tight corsets throughout her life. She was not a cuddly person.
I don't think her hair was ever cut. She wore it up during the daytime (the backboard training coming in useful, to help her support all that weight), but at bedtime she took it down, brushed it out and formed it into a single, very long, plait. She could easily have sat on her hair, even when plaited, and washing it must have been a fearful business.
She was born into a wealthy and double-barrelled family in Warwickshire, and I have absolutely no doubt that she would have "come out" as a debutante and been presented at Court, as all aristocratic young ladies were in those days. I sometimes wonder what she would make of my life now as compared to hers then. She would probably tut-tut sadly over how I have "come down in the world", as well as attempting to encourage me to better posture and less sloppy habits of speech!