[Women's Travel]. Hunnewell, Christiana Sargent

[Manuscript Diary of Christiana S. Hunnewell Describing a 1905 European Excursion and a 1911 Trip to the Canadian and American West]

[Various locations: 1905; 1911]. [75], [59]pp. of closely-written manuscript in pencil and a few different inks. Contemporary commercially-produced black leather trifold pocket diary, with inner pocket, gilt titles on front cover reading, "My Trip Abroad." Minor edge wear and rubbing to covers. Internally clean. Very good. Item #2224

A manuscript travel diary kept by Christiana S. Hunnewell of Wellesley, Massachusetts, encapsulating journeys across both the European and North American continents. The first portion of the dairy, numbering seventy-five pages, are taken up with a trip to Europe in 1905 with her family. Hunnewell hailed from a very wealthy family and the group travels in style, hitting some of the more famous places in Europe, including Paris, Versailles, Lucerne, London, Munich, and the Italian Lakes region. She visits grand cathedrals, gardens, museums, and more along the way. The European trip lasts from July 10 to October 4, 1905. Following her last entry, Hunnewell takes a page to give her "General Impressions" of her European sojourn. She writes: "Europe is an amazingly interesting place & I long to see more of it. I splendidly well enjoyed the travelling. Certainly a most successful trip in every way - Nice a great favorite. Munich also & their picture galleries & the London National Museum I enjoyed most. Italian lakes lovely. London too sombre and melancholy. Paris the most fascinating place imaginable...."

The latter fifty-nine pages of the diary consist of her account of a trip out west in 1911, which took place from July 8 to August 28. Hunnewell and her companions travel with staff by Pullman car, steamship, and automobile to their various exotic locations. They proceed through the Great Lakes, passing through or briefly touring a number of major cities along the way, such as Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit ("very fine city...great boulevards, and fine separate dwelling houses with lawns and gardens, thousands of motor factories..."), Mackinac Island, Duluth, St. Paul ("beautiful city - a fine capitol & dwelling houses on wooded broad avenue overlooking the City and Mississippi from a hill..."), and North Dakota. They then head to Canada and eventually Alaska through Calgary, the Canadian Rockies, Lake Louise, Mirror Lake, Lake Agnes ("Mexican saddles desperately uncomfortable"), Emerald Lake, Kicking Horse River, Burgess Pass, Vancouver, and Victoria, providing wonderful commentary on the scenery and people in the course of her movements. Hunnewell takes a steamship to Alaska in late July, where on July 28 she sees "our first sign of man in the shape of a deserted village which is an Indian Cemetery - each corpse being put in a house." The next day Hunnewell reaches Ketchikan ("an uninteresting dirty little town with a large salmon cannery which I visit...") and then heads for Metlakatla Island, "where Rev William Duncan brought the savage Indians (cannibals) to live a Christian life." She then travels to Sitka, Killisnoo Island, Skagway, and Wrangell. She and her companions shop, fish, visit glaciers, the Treadwell mines, and the fjord at Rudyard Bay, and more, with the entries accompanied by more of Hunewell's candid observations. After about ten days in Alaska, Hunnewell and her party head down the coast to California, visiting both Yellowstone and Yosemite. Among her activities in California, Hunnewell goes horseback riding in the parks and again gives good descriptions of the area. The diary ends abruptly on August 28 with three simple words: "Salt Lake City."

The diarist of the present work was most likely Christiana Sargent Hunnewell Bartlett (1887-1969), the daughter of noted Harvard and Paris-trained Boston architect Henry Sargent Hunnewell. Christiana lived mainly in Boston and Natick, the latter after marrying Nelson Slater Bartlett, Jr. in 1913. The couple raised five children, but not before Christiana experienced the thrill of continental Europe and the wilds of Alaska in her younger days, recorded here.

Price: $1,250.00