April 26, 2020
These posts are part of a series superimposing the art of Irish-American painter Robert David Gauley with contemporary text from letters my great-great grandmother, Christina Meyer, sent home from a trip throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. Together, they offer a vivid glimpse of travel in the last decade of the 19 th century.
Jerusalem, March 31, 1896
From Cairo we took the train to Alexandria on Wednesday the 20 th . Boarded a steamer around noon and after a thirty hour trip during which we were sea-sick we arrived at Joppa . . . and stayed at the Hotel Palestine until the next day. Joppa is a small hamlet with little to see but wonderful oranges grow around the town.
The following is a letter Christine received after leaving Jaffa (Joppa):
Jaffa, 16 April 1896, at midnight
Hotel Palestine, proprietors E. L. Kaminity and sons
My Christine Meyer,
I hope you will excuse the liberty I take in writing you this letter. I wish to ask you only 3 questions. First is your heart free. Second if one day you become my wife with yours and your Mother’s consent. Thirdly I hope some day to be your Husband, I hope you will answer me these 3 questions. You must think me mad for writing such a letter but my Christine I have loved once in my life a long time ago and I have forgotten the way to write those love letters . . . For many years no woman in this world has made my heart beat, only you when I saw you at the Hotel at Jaffa and since then I have been always thinking of you, the only thing I ask you not to encourage me if you do not mean it, because my heart is too old and would not be able to suffer such a blow, if I receive an answer from you I hope it will be as truly as I write these lines, and send me your next address. I hope you will excuse my rudeness . . .
From your truly friend,
Alfred Williams
