[Rarebooks] FS: SOUTH AMERICAN HANDWRITTEN TRAVEL DIARY & SCRAPBOOK 1920-1921 (2 volumes)

[Ezra Tishman]

Ezra from Aardvark offers this century-old travel diary, in two parts.



Howell, G.N. (Mrs.). SOUTH AMERICAN HANDWRITTEN TRAVEL DIARY & SCRAPBOOK 1920-1921 (2 volumes). Portland, OR: Manuscript-Scrapbook Albums, 1921. 202-page handwritten travel journal/scrapbooks in two, black, flexible leather, three-ring, loose-leaf Simplex blank books with graph paper. Each stamped in gilt “Memoirs of South America” with “Mr. and Mrs. G.N. Howell” in gilt at bottom of each front cover. Each with 8 1/2” x 5 1/2” graph paper. The later diary apparently became wet at one point, whose cover shows spotting, facing, warping and rusty rings, with some stiffening to pages. Pages are numbered in upper right corner. Accompanying the notebooks are two small booklets — passenger lists for the S.S. Vasari, and the S.S. Andes.

South American travel diary of Mrs. G.N. Howell, wife of George.N.Howell, who owned Howell Shingle Co. with offices in Portland, Oregon and the mill located at Skamakawa, Washington. On December 21, 1920, the Howells embarked combination boat/train trip. Their daughter, “Vassie”, accompanied them on at least the initial leg of the journey, but mention of her falls off fairly quickly. The journey commenced in New York and steamed some 6000 nautical miles to Montevideo, Uruguay aboard the Lampert & Holt S.S. “Vasari”, and the R.M.S.P. “Andes”, and the S.S. Essequibo. The journey (and diary) on or about March 20, 1921.

Throughout this two-part diary-scrapbook are pasted-in commercial postcards, photo post cards, cut-outs presumeably from brochures or magazines, and numerous actual snapshots developed and taken by the Howells. There are photos of street scenes, beasts of transportation and/or burden (with or without their indigenous owners), houses, cathedrals, fountains, a sporting club where horseracing takes place, Also affixed to several page are menus, transportation, sightseeing entry and event tickets. Very Good (1) and Good Only (2). Leather-bound.  $550.00

Some Excerpts from the Diaries:

“In the course. of the forenoon everyone talked with his neighbor and I conversed with a Peruvian and learned that a particularly homely man whom we had classed as a Spaniard on account of his language is the Prime Minister to the League of Nations from Peru...(probably Víctor Andrés Belaúnde Diez Canseco ). This Prime Minister had asked the Howell’s daughter, Vassie, to dance. The Howells attended a bullfight at the Plaza de Toros, in Lima with the renowned matador Juan Belmonte Garcia (1892-1962). It has been written (Encyclopaedia Britannica) that seven matadors had been killed trying to imitate the style of the great Belmonte. Mrs. Howell writes: “...The spectacle was horrible, for four horses had been killed by as many bulls up to the time we left, but I should say that it was a superior performance as viewed by a devotee of such sport... I am not a devotee of the sport, yet it must have been good work...for the audience went fairly wild in their enthusiasm and threw their hats into the ring when the chief killer or “Matador” passed around the. ring after having shown his skill...” (on the next page are affixed several snapshots of the Plaza de Toros", packed with spectators, with the Andes in the background), and a ticket to the bullfight, affixed to the following loose-leaf page.

Later Mrs. Howell visited the Zoological gardens at the exposition and noted the captive condors there, and went on a train excursion. She noted seeing a Ford automobile, a “Tin Lizzie” ,which had been outfitted with railroad wheels to negotiate the tracks, and there are photos of this rolling wonder, as well as the family posing in front of several other train cars. From the photographs, daughter Vassie appears to be somewhere between the age of 14 and 16. After embarking, Mrs. Howell writes: “The ride (to Tacna) was one of the most desolate and dreary ones that I ever took, not a blade of anything green to be seen anywhere, all about us. sand, with a sprinkling of cobble stones and great hig hills that seemed to be. nothing but sand...”

Back on the water, between Autofogasta and Valparaiso Chile, Mrs. Howell writes: “Our ship made some better time the last 36 hours of the voyage, notwithstanding a head wind [which}...played havoc with the feelings of others beside the Howell family and there were only a few that could to to theirmeals and be on deck...People w ho had beenperfectly immune for the two days on the Atlantic when it was rough could not withstand the effect, and went down with the rush of the “land lubbers”. “We were surrounded by a perfect fleet of row boats who were the “Fleteros”, who would take passengers ashore with their trunks..."

From Valparaiso they boarded the Ferrocarriles Trasandinos, a single-gauge railway which snaked across the Andes for 243 kilometers, terminating in Buenos Aires, where they would board their vessel north, for back home. The Howells continued, visiting churches (a church program affixed), and The Valparaiso Sporting Club: “We remained until all but one race had been run, which would mean 6 or7that we saw, and a better behaved crowd of such a nature we have never seen. Not a single case of intoxication did we see and no boisterous acts and anything of an unpleasant nature, and we could n ot. help but contrast it with what we might have witnessed at some similar gathering in our own country, particularly, in days prior to prohibition.” 			$550


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