Since today is Valentine's Day, I wanted to share a "out of love" project by one of the Beloved BDC Docents, Laura Lewis. She describes her work preparing the Susan Wales Journal Digital Project, the BCL's 9th digital project with the Lowcountry Digital Library.
Hi everyone! My name is Laura Lewis and I have been a docent with the BDC since 2009. For the past three years, I have been working to transcribe and digitize the Susan M.L. (Makepeace Larkin) Wales Journal. I am proud to announce it is finally available for viewing through the Lowcountry Digital Library. The direct link is https://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/content/susan-m-l-wales-travel-journal-1887-1895/.
The Susan M.L. Wales is actually a collection of letters
written to her sister, Annie Flagg Wales Stratton, with vivid descriptions of
her travels as well as small drawings and watercolor paintings. Rather than sticking to single destinations,
she traveled extensively on her trips, which you can track through this map. Through passport and immigration records we
see that she made many trips across the Atlantic Ocean during her lifetime,
though the journal only records three of those journeys, 1887-1888, 1891, and 1893-1895. While she was not from Beaufort herself, Miss
Wales was aunt to Katherine (“Nancy”) Wales Stratton, wife of Niels
Christensen, Jr., and great aunt to Anne Christensen Head, local teacher,
author, and Pat Conroy mentor, who graciously donated the journal to the BDC.
Susan Wales was a member from 1892-1916 of the Boston Water Color Club, founded in 1887 as an art association for women, as they were not allowed in the male-only Boston Watercolor Society. Some of her trips to Europe were to study with great artists of the time, such as B.J. Blommers in Copenhagen and Vicente Poveda in Rome. She had paintings in the Boston Water Color Club’s annual exhibition for many years, and one of those paintings, “Monica” is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA. Through exhibition records from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, we get a glimpse of some of her other travels, through her paintings of Greece, Capri, Japan, and India. While it appears she continued painting, towards the end of the travel journal she complained about feeling that she had “gone backwards” in her painting. She had lost interest in painting, feelings that will be familiar to most artists.
Because she was a high society woman, and unmarried at that,
Susan did not travel alone, going with companion Sarah (“Sally”) Gooll Putnam (a
fellow artist, see side note paragraph below) on the first trip of the journal, and Mrs. J.
Noyes on the other two. While Susan
traveled first class whenever possible, staying in the best accommodations, and
not shying away from complaining about things that didn’t meet her standards, she
also tried to save money where she could, and faced the same problems as modern
travelers – the rooms being different than advertised, bad weather, too many
tourists, illnesses, and homesickness.
She had many complaints of the bad manners of others around her, hotels
where the guests were too “common”, and women whose fashion was either too
gaudy or not modern enough, but had almost no complaints about the locations
she visited or the local “peasants”, who she mostly referred to as “quaint” or
“picturesque”, a common attitude of the upper classes at the time. She also rode donkeys where necessary with
little complaint, and walked miles up mountains where it was too steep for the
carriages to have riders inside, which is rather impressive given her age
(48-56) and the clothing and shoes common among society women at the time.
(Side note: “Sally” was a skilled oil portrait artist, who
kept journals starting at age 9. The
Massachusetts Historical Society, in Boston, MA has a collection of her journals, which include many
watercolors, drawings, and photographs, similar to the Susan M.L. Wales
journal. Volume 17 covers the time
period that she was traveling with Susan, and even includes a photograph of
Susan! Unfortunately, only some of the
journals are available online, and volume 17 is not one of them. If you are ever in Boston, though, you can
stop by and check out the collection, available in the reading room on
microfilm or digital facsimile.)
The journal begins in 1887 in Netherlands, though she had already been traveling by the time she started the journal. It is not a complete record of her trips, sometimes missing months at a time. Susan and Sally both spent much time sketching and painting in the small towns and churches they visited in Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, and spent the winter in Munich before going home in early 1888.
The last part of the journal starts in August 1893, in
Italy, describing recent travels in Switzerland, where Susan and Mrs. Noyes met
the Royle brothers, English brothers they wound up traveling beside for a
while, and met with again in Egypt, where one lived. From Italy it was back to Switzerland for
some time hiking in the Alps, then a couple months in Italy, before arriving in
Cairo to spend two months on a steamer on the Nile, visiting ruins, painting,
and visiting friends. After another
month in Cairo, they traveled to Jerusalem to see the sights of the Holy Land,
then to Syria, and on to Austria via Rome.
They were in Bavaria in September 1894, then the journal skips ahead to
May 1895 in Saxony (she mentioned possibly spending the winter in Dresden), and
they traveled around Germany to many castles and cathedrals before going home
from Hamburg late that summer. There was
a cholera outbreak in 1894, which changed their plans of visiting Sicily,
Constantinople, and Greece, as she mentioned she was more afraid of the
quarantine than the cholera. She also
had to cancel her plans to visit India, China, and Japan due to malaria, which
she caught in Chicago and had a relapse of in Cairo.
The journal, being letters to her sister at home, are a mix
of descriptions of travel, gossip, queries about people at home, paintings, and
memories. Susan often writes of places
that remind her of visiting there with her sister Kate, sometimes bringing on
days of melancholy. She mentions animals
and funny things her young niece, Nancy, might be amused by, and often asks if
the souvenirs she sent made it safely.
There is a lot of discussion of the important or fancy people she met,
and she had secured introductions to Consuls and Baronesses and Ladies all
over, taking tea with them, as was the custom.
She seemed to enjoy traveling, but often talked about being homesick,
and missing everyone.
According to a newspaper clipping from The Evening Star Sun,
February 19, 1922, she lived abroad for 17 years. She died on September 11, 1927, and was
buried in the Mount Auburn Cemetery, in Boston, alongside her sister Annie,
Annie’s husband Solomon (“Sol”) Stratton, and some of her other siblings and
their families.
I hope that you enjoy this journal as much as I enjoyed working on it!
Grace's notes: Associated materials in the BDC Research Room include:
- WALES, SUSAN MAKEPEACE LARKIN, 1839 - 1922 vertical file
- CHRISTENSEN FAMILY vertical file
- HEAD, ANN (AUTHOR) vertical file
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