OUR EUROPEAN TRIP: A DIARY. Accompanied by CRUISE TO THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN: A DIARY. Two bound typescripts of a young man's tours to the continent, in 1925 and 1929

NP: np, 1929. Two typescripts bound in matching 3/4 leather and cloth; gilt titles stamped on spines. 28 cm. (144; 27) pp. Bookplate on front free endpaper of the first volume. Both in very nice condition. Accompanied by unbound typescripts of both travel journals, 21 cm., unnumbered sheets; some of the manuscript notes for the 1925 diary, containing additional notes not recorded in the typescripts (20) pp.; small broadside printing of "The McKean Party for European Travel - 1925," a single sheet, 25 x 15 cm., listing the members of the party with whom Bassett was traveling, and including his grandmother, Mrs. Esther West of Sandwich, Illinois; ten letters (truncated) from Edward and his grandmother to his parents back in Rock Island, Illinois, over the course of the 1925 trip, approx. 40 pp. in all, most with envelopes; and 26 postcards from the pair. Additionally, there is a group of letters from a trip Edward Bassett took with his own mother, from Dec. - Jan. 1930. This group of some 19 letters, approx. 142 pp., are all from Mrs. Ethel West Bassett home to her husband Elmer Bassett in Cleveland, Ohio, describing their trip across the Atlantic to London, and on to the continent. There is also a small group of paper ephemera, including various family school report cards, graduation notices, business cards (most related to Ethel and Elmer Bassett), as well as a scattering of letters from the 1880s and 1890s from earlier members of the family. In 1925, Edward Osborne Bassett accompanied his grandmother Esther West on a European grand tour, following his graduation from high school, and before starting his studies at Harvard. He kept a careful diary along the way and a steady correspondence with his parents. The trip from June to September included a cruise with a group put together by Horace McKean, a Union College professor of rhetoric who, from before the outbreak of World War I had been forming touring parties to visit European cities. The group included three young women from Mount Holyoke, Russell Sage, and the Emma Willard School, as well as some ten other people from New York and New Jersey. They disembarked at Cherbourg, moving on to Paris, Avignon, Arles, Nimes, Nice, and Monaco, before going on into Italy to tour Genoa, Pisa, Rome, Florence, Venice, and Milan. They also visited various places in Switzerland, Belgium, and The Hague before going to England. There Edward and his grandmother took a tour of their own into Scotland and Wales.
Edward's typed journals are occasionally flowery but also full of more careful observations. Aboard the RMS Homeric, their cruise ship he notes: “The heaven, now a blue-black dome, was studded with sparkling stars very bright and beautiful. Each one seemed a little lantern hung there by some soul while it sojourned upon the earth.” He is a little less lyrical describing their trip from Arles to Nimes on the only trackless interurban trolley line in France: "Two wires overhead supply the power and the road serves as a more or less satisfactory track." At Nimes they saw an old Roman amphitheater being used as a bullfighting ring where the previous Sunday seven bulls were killed and one man seriously gored. In Monaco he commented on the lost souls [presumably gamblers] he saw there, full of "such determination, such despair, such fanatical spectral hope.... Is it any wonder that in Monoco [sic] suicides are so frequent that they receive attention only from the undertaker." In Amsterdam, they visited the Dead Cities of the Zuyder Zee where a one-legged dockman played American patriotic songs on the coronet. Visiting the Bodleian Library, he commented that they were "rather careless and wasteful to neglect the construction of a fireproof library for this priceless collection...."
His youth and sense of humor emerge more in the letters home to his parents as he patiently attends to his grandmother's needs, her love of gossip and shopping habits. At one point he tries to dissuade her from sending his father a small statue she found in a shop, but “she likes it so much that, if it so happened that you couldn’t use it, I believe she would keep it if you just assumed that she sent it to you because there was no one at her house. That is just a suggestion.” Then he says “Here’s another secret. She says she intends to spend every bit of her money over here and she surely is spending it so that she will have to telegraph in New York.” In Venice he notes that their hotel is full of Americans and that the orchestra plays Jazz for dance music. He says he can't remember all they have done but he should be home shortly and his parents can "hook up some sort of electrical apparatus with my subconscious mind and listen to the story while I sleep."
The second trip in 1929 was also a gift from his grandmother after he graduated from Harvard Magna Cum Laude in economics and government in 1929, and before he went to Cambridge University for graduate work. This trip, from June to August 1929 took them from Boston, aboard the S.S. Calgaric to Reykjavik, Hammerfest, Lyngseidet, etc. and on to Bergen, Oslo, Stockholm, and Copenhagen before they went on to Berlin, Dresden, and Prague. He describes Prague as “very proud of their newly recovered liberty. There is in Prague a Wilson railroad station, a Wilson monument, and a Hoover street. Everyone is eager to speak French to strangers. On the other hand, although about ninety percent of the people can speak German, our guide estimated that not thirty percent would answer a question asked them in that language. They are very bitter in their animosity toward Austria and Germany.” From there Edward and his grandmother went on to Vienna and Innsbruck before continuing to Switzerland, Germany and France.
The trip at the end of 1929 is told only through Edward's mother Ethel's letters home to Elmer in Ohio. She and Edward departed on board the Cunard RMS Scythia in early December. The crossing was extremely rough- at one point she says it was raining pitchforks, with hurricane force winds and huge waves. They finally reached England on Dec. 10. In London they visited Hampton Court and Buckingham Palace using the subway to take them nearly everywhere they wanted to go for just 4 cents each way. Ethel gives a detailed picture of the subway cars. She also describes the many large trucks they saw in the city with small steam engines on the front which looked like small threshing machine engines. Once on the continent she enjoys Lucerne noting the "most marvelous of all local sights are the white enamel (spotless) street cars trimmed in light blue…. There are almost no automobiles on the streets & people use the streets as leisurely as the walks.” In Florence she observes that the city is dusty, occasionally muddy and that they are forever sweeping the streets "and seem to keep ahead of the dirt but never really get behind it." They arrive in Rome in January 1930 where there is a big wedding taking place. Their bags were searched for bombs. [This is a reference to the wedding of Princess Marie-Jose of Belgium to Prince Umberto of Italy- the last king and queen of Italy.] They moved on to Naples, Pompei, and Pisa before going on to Marseilles. The letters and diaries all give a detailed picture of Europe in the time between the wars. Edward Osborne Bassett was born in Beloit, Wisconsin in 1908. His father Elmer Ensign Bassett (1886-1955) was a salesman for various companies, including Remington Rand in Cleveland, Ohio. His mother Ethel Juanita West (1886-1931) was a graduate of Shurtleff College, the oldest Baptist college west of the Allegheny Mountains, and a leading institution of higher education in Southwestern Illinois. Two of her Shurtleff class admission cards for 1905-06, and one meal ticket from 1906 accompany this group. The family moved to Frankfort, Indiana where Edward attended school before they moved again to Davenport, Iowa. Edward graduated from high school there, valedictorian and a member of the debate team. He went on to Harvard in 1925, from which he graduated Magna Cum Laude in economics and government, then Cambridge University for graduate work. He served in the Navy during WWII, and was an economist with the Commerce Department in Washington, D.C. for 33 years. (Inventory #: 69977)