Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth CenturyAdams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport)
History
Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century
Adams, W. H. Davenport (William Henry Davenport)
Women travelers -- Biography
The suspense, the long journey, the combined mental and physical
sufferings which she had undergone, and the ravages of fever, reduced
her to a condition of such weakness that, at one time, her recovery
seemed impossible. But careful watching and nursing warded off the
enemy; and on her sixtieth birthday, October 14th, the doctors
pronounced her out of danger. But a fatal blow had been given to her
constitution; the fever became less frequent and less violent in its
attacks, but never wholly left her. Her mind, however, recovered its
elasticity, and with its elasticity, its old restlessness; and she once
more began to project fresh schemes of travel. All her preparations were
complete for a voyage to Australia, when a return of her disease, in
February, 1858, compelled her to give up the idea and to direct her
steps homeward.
In the month of June she reached London. After a few weeks' stay she
proceeded to Berlin.
Her strength, formerly exceptional, was now rapidly declining; though at
first she seemed unconscious of the change, or regarded it as only
temporary, and displayed her characteristic impatience of repose. But
about September she evinced a keen anxiety to return home; and her
friends perceived that the conviction of approaching death was at the
bottom of this anxiety. Growing rapidly feeble, she was conveyed to
Vienna, to the house of her brother, Charles Reyer; and, for a few days,
it seemed as if the influence of her native air would act as a
restorative. The improvement, however, did not last, and her malady
(cancer of the liver) returned with increased violence. During the last
days of her life, opiates were administered to relieve her physical
pain; and in the night between the 27th and the 28th of October, she
passed away peacefully, almost as one who sleeps.
MADAME DE BOURBOULON.
We must not omit from our chronicle of female travellers the name of
Madame Catherine de Bourboulon. Of her biography we know no more than
that, a Scotchwoman by birth, she married a French diplomatist, who, in
1860, was serving the State as French ambassador to the Court of Pekin.
* * * * *
In the month of August, 1860, she was temporarily residing at Shanghai.
It would be interesting to know what the Chinese people thought of this
handsome and self-possessed lady; unaccustomed as they were and are to
visits from European women, and unfamiliar as they were and are with the
idea that a person of the _grand monde_ in nowise compromises her
dignity by travelling about as freely and walking as readily as servants
and females of the lower classes. "To see ourselves as others see us" is
always instructive and interesting; and a sketch of Madame de Bourboulon
by the Chinese would not be less valuable than a sketch of the Chinese
by Madame de Bourboulon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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