Postcards from the Past #1: Introduction
Facebook Post of July 7, 2020:
This summer from June 27th to July 14th, my husband, Howie, and I were supposed to be floating down the Rhine, Danube, and Main rivers on a Viking River Cruise. I was looking forward to taking a zillion pictures and writing all about it for our travel and retirement website (https://handaathomeandaway.com/). We researched the route, bought tickets, and started to get excited about our trip for exactly 12 days until we had to cancel because life happens when you are making other plans, right?
MaryKate (as she is inclined to do :)) suggested a 19th-century alternative: a two-volume 621-page travelogue by fellow Bay Stater Catharine Maria Sedgwick published in 1841 by Harper & Brothers. The books consist entirely of Catharine’s letters to “kindred at home” written during her fifteen-month trip through Europe visiting England, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Italy from 1839 to 1840.
When I started reading her letters, I found them hard to put down because it’s fun to read someone else’s mail. If you take a look at Catharine’s short bio on A Woman of the Century, you’ll see that she was not only a prolific and successful writer but a very good person. After working on that bio, I wanted to read her travelogue even more.
I’ll share the best bits with you here, so stay tuned for more about Catharine’s travels in a series that we’re calling “Postcards from the Past.”
Sources:
List of countries visited available at http://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/view/fa0357