Back in the pandemic summer of 2020 I wrote about the Grand Tour experiences of various women who travelled to mainland Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this post I will look at the writings of some women who came to Britain from abroad around the same time, sharing some of their thoughts and impressions.

First is Sophie von La Roche (1730-1807), an important figure of the German Enlightenment, credited with being the first female novelist in Germany with her 1771 work Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim which was published by Christoph Martin Wieland, a cousin to whom she had previously been briefly engaged. She was also the grandmother of Bettina von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, siblings who were famous Romantic writers. By the 1780s, already in her 50s, La Roche’s youngest child had left home and she was able to travel more easily, first in 1784 to Switzerland, then to France in 1785 before a trip to the Netherlands and England (London and its environs) in 1786 which she wrote about in Tagebuch einer Reise durch Holland und England. Quotes below are taken from an English version of this: Sophie in London 1786 translated from the German by Clare Williams (484.d.93.3).

Sophie von La Roche spent several weeks here with her son Carl and packed in a huge amount, lots of sightseeing and excursions but also visits with the great and the good and even being received by the Royal Family. Malcolm Letts (in his As the foreigners saw us, 474.d.93.17) gives us a flavour of how busy she was on one day, September 15th:

A typical day included visits to the Society of Arts, the Bank of England (Pluto’s palace), the East India House, to witness a tea auction, Billingsgate, where oysters were eaten, Bedlam, a bookshop in the Strand, Blackfriars, and a silversmith’s establishment at Westminster, after which a quiet evening was spent examining the properties of Argand lamps.

Much has been written about her and many researchers have commented on her gushing and perhaps biased admiration of England and the English. Here, for instance, J.G. Robertson writes:

As a traveller Sophie von La Roche was insatiable in her thirst for information, and blessed or cursed by an effusive temperament which lent itself readily to enthusiasm; and for no land was her enthusiasm warmer than for ours … she came to England prepared to find everything beautiful, and regarded us with the kindliest and most indulgent eyes.

Sophie von la Roche’s visit to England in 1786. Modern Language Review, vol. 27, 1932, pp. 196-203

There are, however, moments in her diary when less positive feelings are revealed, for instance on a visit to St Paul’s Cathedral. To begin with she laments how hemmed in the building is:

At first sight one cannot help wishing that Parliament would purchase a number of the surrounding houses and have them broken up so that the splendid pile might appear in all its dignity. For, although a square has been railed off all round, yet both it and the neighbouring streets are still too narrow.

She then declares the famous echo of the Whispering Gallery to be a hoax:

Our guide wanted to give us examples of the curious echo which repeats things word for word, and the English which he called out resounded quite distinctly, but when one of us, standing on the allotted spot, recited some German phrases, the echo remained silent – since the boy hidden aloft could not imitate them.

Finally her plans to go higher are also scuppered:

I very much wanted to climb to the gallery round the cupola … to view London and the Thames from there; but I was told that … nothing was visible but mist enveloping the city. So I did not trouble.

St Paul’s Cathedral was also on the itinerary for two other women visitors. First, visiting two years after La Roche in 1788, Anna Johanna Grill, a young Swedish woman travelling with her husband Adolph Ulric Grill, made similar observations about St Paul’s:

Denna ofanteliga byggnad ligger nog instängd så att man ej kan så noga se dess skönhet … denna vue hade warit förtjusande om ej den öfwer London wanliga starka stenkålsröken, hindrat oss se så långt som wi önskade.

[This incredible building is enclosed so that one cannot see its beauty very closely … this view would have been delightful if  London’s usual coal smoke had not prevented us from seeing as far as we wished]

And Johanna Schopenhauer, most famous now for being the mother of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, encountered the same visibility problems in the early years of the 19th century, having climbed up to the gallery with the hope of seeing the city and surrounding area:

Der heitere Tag berechtigte uns zu dieser Hoffnung, aber der Steinkohlenrauch der vielen Feueressen verbarg uns die Nähe und der dem englischen Himmel eigene nebelartige Duft die Ferne.

[The bright day justified this hope, but the coal smoke from the many fires hid the nearness from us and the misty scent peculiar to the English sky hid the far away.]

The 1997 publication Resedagbok från England, 1788 (9008.c.6495) is the travel diary of Anna Johanna Grill. She and her husband spent much of summer 1788 in and around London. Their time also included a fortnight or so on a circular trip around England, taking in Portsmouth and Southampton on the south coast before heading up to the popular attraction of Bath, then on to the more industrial Birmingham and Manchester and back to London via Derby and Northampton. She may not be as famous as Sophie von La Roche or Johanna Schopenhauer but the fact that her travel diary was republished in 1997 shows a growing interest in the writings of the more “ordinary” woman.

In her time Johanna Schopenhauer (1766-1838) was known as a novelist and salon hostess. She first travelled to England with her merchant husband while pregnant with her son Arthur because her husband wanted the child to be born on British soil but her health was delicate and a return to their native Danzig ensued where Arthur was born in 1788. Her extensive travels around England and Scotland which are documented in various editions were made with her husband and son in 1803-1805 but only written up 10 or so years later. It is not clear how much she had written down at the time so we may need to question how accurate her memory was.

She described visits to grand country houses such as Woburn Abbey, Blenheim and Chatsworth as well as attractions like the Tower of London, Hampton Court and Windsor Castle. She also wrote about the theatre in London and various museums. Her itinerary in England covered many of the places that Anna Johanna Grill had visited, including the industrial north.

It wouldn’t be a proper visit abroad unless there was something to find fault with, for instance the food. In my earlier blog post on travellers to continental Europe I quoted Elizabeth Craven complaining about this. In a neat parallel, here is Johanna Schopenhauer giving her thoughts on English food:

Die englische Kochkunst hat auch in Deutschland ihre Verehrer; wir gehören nicht dazu; uns graute vor dem blutigen Fleisch, vor den ohne alles Salz zubereiteten Fischen, vor dem in Wasser halbgar gekochten Gemüse …

[The English cuisine has its admirers in Germany too; we are not among them; we were horrified by the bloody meat, by the fish prepared without any salt, by the vegetables half-cooked in water …]

Katharine Dicks