Two Victorian Ladies on the Continent 1844-5 - An anonymous journal

This is the journal of Miss W., a lady in her forties, travelling through France and Switzerland to Italy, accompanied by a teenage girl, Minnie, for whom she is acting as guardian and tutor. Her journal provides an entertaining day-to-day account of their encounters and experiences: Charles Hallé is engaged as a piano teacher in Paris; they mix with the local aristocracy in Bern and the evangelicals in Geneva; they find themselves caught up in the worst floods in Florence before those of 1966; in Rome, they participate in the Carnival and attend an audience with the Pope. Having arrived in Venice, finally, and without warning, on 3rd June 1845, over a year into their travels, the journal ends mid-sentence with the words 'The stillness ....'

The journal is written in epistolary form. Indeed, the manuscript which forms the basis of this publication is undoubtedly a transcription made after the tour of the letters sent by the writer to her mother during it. After the first appearance of Murray's Handbooks to Continental destinations in the 1830s, writers of such travel journals no longer felt it necessary to duplicate guide-book information by recording historical and architectural details. Thus we find Miss W. uses her letters to give a deliberately person-centred account of her experiences. In writing to keep her family at home informed and entertained, Miss W. succeeds in holding the attention of the modern-day reader.

By the 1840s, nearly a third of British travellers on the Continent were women. However, the vast majority of these were accompanied by their husbands or by one or more male members of their family. For the first few months of this tour, however, the middle-aged Miss W. not only has no male support, but also has in her charge a teenager aged about 16. Even after the two ladies are joined by a young man, William, for the journey from Switzerland to Italy, Miss W. has to remain in charge. Thus she is able to give insights not only into the day-to-day experiences of travel in the period, but also into the ways women were perceived and perceived themselves. The relationship between the two female travellers emerges as very similar to that of the eighteenth century Grand Tour tutor and his pupil - but here neither participant is either male or aristocratic. However, the continuing belief in the educational value of travel is unequivocally affirmed.

Who were the two ladies? Were they related? Why were they engaged in this Continental tour and who was paying for it? Why did it apparently end so abruptly? Although neither the writer’s name nor place of residence is mentioned throughout the 500 pages of manuscript, it was possible through careful research not only to answer these questions, but to show how, during the course of this tour, the life of both Miss W. and of her pupil was fundamentally altered.

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