A poetic record of a German tour in 1889 by a small group of souls including George Nathaniel Curzon, later Viceroy of India

Souvenirs de Voyage. August 1889. Privately printed by Harrison and  Sons, Printers in Ordinary to Her Majesty, St.Martins’ Lane, W.C. [no date but most likely 1889]. 8vo.

26pp. There is no title page. Contemporary half vellum with blue cloth and black leather title gilt Souvenirs de Voyage 1889 , all edges yellow. The binding is perfectly sound but there is damp staining to the cloth and vellum in the lower quarter. The staining only penetrates the text block a little along the lower edge of the margin and mainly to the later pages. Presentation inscription in a bold hand in ink but unsigned Au Baron Ribblesdale de la part d’une des Voyageurs. Londres le 17. Aout 1890. The use of une shows that the writer was female. The poem recounts the coninental trip across Europe which lasted 14 days. The small group is not easily identified in the text although I would imagine they were largely members of that aristocratic and literary group know as The Souls which was formed in 1885. The one person mentioned on the first page as a member of the party is George Curzon [son of Baron Scarsdale and later 1st Marquess & Viceroy of India]. Others mentioned only by first names  and needing further research are: Harry & his wife Daisy, Archie & his female companion, possibly Amélie who joined the others at Cologne. The party then travelled up the Rhine by Mainz, Bayreuth, and Nuremburg to Ratisbon, Linz and Salzburg. The last destination is Herrenchiemsee, where the writer finds little to admire in Leopold II’s palace.

A work very much of its time, this book could aid research into the politcal and social elite of those days. Sir David Gilmour’s biography of Curzon is interesting about The Souls and he mentions that Curzon had an affair with the wife of the 4th Baron Ribblesdale which may possibly link to the dedication.    aug9/1

Provenance: I acquired this book in a Scottish collection decades ago and have just decided to let it go from my private collection.