A Tale of Two Journeys: The Fry Diaries: France and Belgium in the Early 1800s - Hardcover

Fry, Joseph; Fry, Katharine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1902173201 ISBN 13: 9781902173207

Publisher: Millrace, 2005

Synopsis

A Tale of Two Journeys is the transcript of travel diaries kept by two members of the family of Elizabeth Fry, the famous Quaker prison reformer - her husband Joseph and eldest daughter Katharine.

In 1814, after the exile of Napoleon Bonaparte on Elba, British tourists were crossing the Channel in droves. Among them was Joseph Fry who chartered a sloop to take his carriage and party over to Calais. His shrewd and engagingly good humoured diary tells of their experiences in Bruges, Ghent, Brussels and Paris, and the hazards of early nineteenth-century travel - rapacious landladies, corrupt customs officials, blocked roads, fleas.

In Paris, when not dining with Frederick Faber, the banker, or breakfasting with the Hanburys, Joseph sets about sightseeing in earnest. He reports with pleasure on everything from the animals in the Jardin des Plantes to underground cafes, from the Sevres factory and Versailles to the Catacombs and warm baths.

Thirteen years later, it is the turn of Joseph's daughter Katharine to keep a travel diary. In 1827 she takes her brother and sister, William and Richenda, to Normandy, crossing from Southampton to Le Havre. Her journal is a mix of moods - enthusiastic descriptions of sightseeing and visits to orphanages, hospitals and prisons in Caen alternate with deep anxiety about her sister's health. The hysterical nature of Richenda's illnesses is carefully obscured, however: Katharine's young sister seems fatally attractive to men and has a tendency to fall unsuitably in love.

The two journals offer first-hand accounts of the English abroad in the early nineteenth century. Joseph's, written in the year that Mansfield Park was published, has the light-heartedness of the Regency period. By the time Katharine visited Normandy, Lord Byron was dead and the face of Britain was about to be changed by the arrival of the railways and the quickening pace of industrialisation. The era of romantic adventure would slowly be replaced by the Victorian ideals of enterprise and duty. Published for the first time in 2005, these Fry diaries are a valuable resource for historians and an engaging read for anyone interested in travel and society in the early nineteenth century.

About this title

About the Author

Joseph Fry, third son of a wealthy Quaker businessman, was born in London in 1777. In 1800 he married Elizabeth Gurney, later to become famous as Elizabeth Fry for her work in prison reform. He died in 1861, sixteen years after Elizabeth, having been cared for by his daughter Katharine.

Katharine, the eldest of Joseph and Elizabeth Fry's eleven children, was born in 1801. With her younger brother Daniel she worked for many years on the Family Record, a history of the Fry and Gurney families. She died in 1886.

Edition details

• Publisher: Millrace
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1902173201
• ISBN 13: 9781902173207
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160