IN THE ’SIXTIES

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 109, 1 February 1935, Page 4

IN THE ’SIXTIES

Travelling in Andorra Andorra was little known to tourists until comparatively recent times. Probably the first woman traveller there was Mary Eyre, who published a book about her experiences (“Over the Pyrenees into Spain”) ln<lBGs. Both journey and book were undertaken for financial profit and Miss Eyre frankly proclaimed herself an unwilling traveller and envious of her more fortunate sisters with homes to stay in. A woman alone attracted undesired notice in those days, but in any day one imagines that this rather eccentric lady would not escape attention, what with her bitter railings against "wicked muleteers” and her arguments with exorbitant inn-keepers, whom she threatened to show up in her book —and did. Her luggage consisted of a carpet bag, a small travelling bag, a tin hat box, a roll of shawls, and her dog Keeper, who made the tour with her and seems to' have disliked it a.s much as his mistress.

It is interesting to learn what clothes were worn by a woman traveller in the ’sixties. Crossing the mountains on horse or mule she wore a grey waterproof cloak over a dark merino jacket and a dark lilac and white plaid gown. Her hat was a “flapping Leghorn.” Perched on a cumbrous man’s saddle, a sack with her shawls at one end, the bonnet box at the other, her carpet bag strapped on behind, and in her hand a leathern reticule and an umbrella —“What a figure I should have cut to eyes polite!” she dryly comments. Mention is made at different times of a bldek silk-like alpaca looped up over a black silk petticoat, a white straw bonnet, a black- lace shawl, and a brown holland Garibaldi trimmed with white braid (“fashionable in the extreme in Paris”). She sensibly had men’s shoes for walking, and in Barcelona (for she did Spain pretty thoroughly, and even more bitterly, as well as Andorra) she invested in a pair of “yellow Cordovan boots.” ""She was not entirely emancipated, for, out with Keeper in a bad thunderstorm, she admits to nervousness on account of “that detestable iron-hooped crinoline.” Keeper's iron chain, too, was a source of danger. “Once I thought of calling him and coiling it round his neck, but then I thought if he should be struck dead before my eyes I should feel as if I had killed him; so I carried it home myself.” Miss Eyre certainly did not lack courage, for on one occasion, treated insolently by a male fellow-traveller, “I felt in my pocket,” she mentions, “for the long clasp knife I carried and transferred it to the pocket of my jacket, fearing I might have to use it.” And one feels that she would have done so had the need arisen.

Here and there the author gets in a slap at the critics of her earlier book, “A. Lady’s Walks in the South of France.” One wonders what reception the second one received, and whether the proceeds made possible the little cottage of her dreams; or whether she and Keeper had to set forth again to face—-with courage but complaint—thc hardships of travel and t'he hostility of