Apr 12, 2018 - Sale 2473

Sale 2473 - Lot 255

Price Realized: $ 688
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(JAMAICA.) Diary of an early tourist excursion to Jamaica. [1], 101 typed carbon pages, 10 1/2 x 8 inches, bound with clasps into a painted cloth cover with worn silk lining; first 4 leaves coming detached with some dampstaining, otherwise minimal wear to contents. Vp, 31 January to 8 April 1891

Additional Details

The Jamaica International Exhibition of 1891 is often considered to be the birth of the island's famous hotel and tourism industry. The exhibition on opened on 27 January and ran through 2 May. This diary describes the journey of an affluent woman with her husband to Jamaica via the steamer Adirondack, arriving on 7 February at Kingston's Constant Spring Hotel, newly built in preparation for the exhibition. They made their first appearance at the exhibition on 13 February, and the next week took a journey inland to Porus, Mandeville, and Spanish Town, returning to Kingston before debarking on 3 March for a cruise around the island, stopping in several Jamaican ports such as Port Antonio and Montego Bay before returning to Kingston. The trip concluded with a journey across the island on 22 March, and a final steamer ride home.
The commentary on Jamaica is generally sarcastic, and its tourism infrastructure in particular meets with scorn: "Jamaican hotels will have to get a better class of Yankees to run their hotels than they have done, if they want much of a reputation. Mr. Merritt, former manager of the Constant Spring, lost his place the first of January for poor management and . . . the manager at Myrtle Bank dethroned because of his grossly immoral tendencies" (page 65). She was also unimpressed with the Exhibition, and repeated the rumor circulating among Jamaicans that "it is some trick to reduce them to slavery again. . . . The exit whisks them away to slavery and they are seen no more" (page 69).
The author does not sign the diary, but makes frequent references to New Haven streets (see Morocco Street on page 41, and her apparent home address on Trumbull Street on page 38, for example), gives her initials as M.E.B. on the title page, names her husband as George, and apparently gives her own name as Mary Elizabeth on the second page. The author may be Mary Elizabeth Blake Bushnell (1823-1916), who was married to the Rev. George Bushnell, a Congregational minister in New Haven, CT. This typescript was apparently prepared for family distribution shortly after the journey; this copy is marked in pencil "Auntie from Grace."