Diary of "My Eastern Trip."
19th-Century Travelogue of a 19 year old Girl
Freeman, Mabel Vaughn. Manuscript Diary: “My Eastern Trip.” Elk Grove, CA to Baltimore, MD. Late September / early October-November 30, 1888.
Small 4to.; ca. 35 lined leaves; 20 filled in autograph in blue and grey pencil and ink, rectos and versos; marbled boards, detached in one piece; worn; fragile.
Autograph travel diary of Mabel Vaughn Freeman (Romaine), who traveled with her parents and grandmother from Sacramento to Baltimore by rail in the fall of 1888, at the age of 19. Her father, attorney Abraham Clark Freeman, edited American Decisions and American State Reports.
One purpose of the trip was to accompany her grandmother as far as Tilton, Iowa, so she could visit her brother, “who she has not seen since 54…” Freeman and her parents continued East, visiting her mother’s widowed aunt in East Palestine, Ohio; the family planned to pick up the grandmother on the return trip. They traveled across country by train, using cars to explore cities and towns. Freeman recorded her impressions of Salt Lake City, the Rocky Mountains, South Pueblo, Chicago, Leavittsburg, Niagra Falls, Albany, New York City and Baltimore. City by city, her observations—sharp, witty, conservative, and biased—reveal the strong attitudes of a sheltered and privileged American girl of the late 19th century.
Throughout the diary, Freeman compares and contrasts the cities she passes through with her home town. She has an eye for describing architectural details in cities and has a particular fascination with the organization of barnyards, fences and farmyards in the country. She frequently notes the size and abundance of garden plots and flowering plants; the view from roads traveled on; the differences between municipal buildings and residential homes; the climate; the cleanliness of cities and the places in which she stayed during the trip; and purchases made on their excursions. In Niagra Falls, for example, she notes that she purchased a blue satin bag connected to a fox head. She gushes, “there were a number of things made by the Indians but I thought the bag the most unique.”
It is clear from her descriptions of Chicago and New York that she is not too fond of big cities, and she views Eastern cities harshly. Even the grand Fifth Avenue homes of the railroad barons did little to impress her, due to their lack of grounds. Her entry on New York merits quoting in full (her spelling errors are too numerous to note each with a “sic”):
New York City—November 13th, 1888.
This is our fist day here, only, arriving in this city last evening. It was dark when we reached here, so I couldn’t realize how great a city she is, even this morning she did not appear any larger than Chicago but after I saw her from Brookline Bridge I changed my ideas. She is not a beautiful city nor a handsome one, but wonderfull in her compactness—brick & mortar everywhere you turn, the dwelling houses are, all so alike—the wealthy class have their homes built of a dark red stone, giving a gloomy appearance to the streets—block after block you pass built of this material—the [ ]parts of the city are built mostly of brick. I was very disappointed in Fifth Avenue perhaps I had got my ideas to high – the street is beautiful in its width – but the homes are nothing extra – I thought there would be some grounds to the houses – for no one pretends to live on that Avenue but millionaires – but instead the houses are built in solid, at home we would think they were tenements. No grounds, if there is a vestage, it is covered over with the ever lasting red stone—you can see by looking in through the windows that the interior of these houses are elegance itself, the curtains at the windows are worth fortunes—The Vanderbuilt family, have the finest homes on 5th Avenue—they are elegant but if they only had grounds to them how much more lovely they would be—on some parts of the avenue a front foot is worth $10,000, V
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