Postcards from the Past #8: Aachen Cathedral, Germany
Instagram Post of July 28, 2020:
During her European trip, Catharine was 50 years old and already a famous author from a prominent family. From her letters, however, we can tell that she wasn’t a bit stuffy.
For example, while traveling from Brussels to the field of Waterloo, she wrote about how much she enjoyed sitting on the box next to the young coachman: “Travelling is a corrector of one’s vanities. I heard myself designated in the court to-day as ‘la dame qui s’assit a côté du cocher’--my only distinction here. I liked my position. My friend was intelligent and talkative, and not only gave me such wayside information as I asked, but the history of his father’s courtship and a little love-story of his own, which is just at the most critical point of dramatic progress, and of which, alas! I shall never know the denouement.”
One of the most delightful things about meeting people while traveling is that they have no preconceived notions about you other than what you tell or show them. To hear about Catharine’s steamboat ride from London and her trip to Germany, check out today’s Postcards from the Past #8 Facebook post at https://www.facebook.com/awomanofthecentury.
On July 11, 1839, Catharine’s traveling party took a steamboat from the River Thames in London to Antwerp, Belgium. In her letters, Catharine explained that “[t]he English go in troops and caravans to Germany and Switzerland for the summer … travelling for pleasure.” The steamboat’s accommodations, however, were less than luxurious. Her party had to spend a night aboard the steamboat, and she reported that there were thirty more passengers than berths, and those “luckless thirty were strewn over the saloon floor,” “[t]he servants were incompetent, and the bedding was deficient, and in the morning we had no place for washing, no dressing-room,” etc. Catharine’s party finally reached Germany via train and omnibus.
