Great Cities Through Travelers' Eyes

by Peter Furtado

  There was an elegant young Frenchman in the stage coach, who had arrived in Washington only the day before, but had become so much ennuyé, as he declared, at the sight of the city, that he had hurried away from it, intending never to return. Now, why was he disappointed? Washington certainly must be a very different city from what he had expected to find it. The seat of government, as such alone it appears, had not attracted him; for Congress, the Supreme Court, the President and all the machinery and accompaniments of it were there to be seen, but these he had not visited. He had missed the crowds and frivolities of Paris – I will not say the vices – and see how much we gain in having our capital in so great a degree as it is, divested of these. In Europe, courts corrupt capitals, and capitals courts and kingdoms.

  1974 JAN MORRIS

  By the later 20th century, in addition to being the seat of government, Washington had become a place to be venerated by American citizens and foreigners alike. Welsh travel writer Jan Morris (b. 1926) visited at the height of the Watergate scandal, 1974.

  From the centre of that allegorical cemetery [Arlington] one may look out across the Potomac to the grand sweep of the capital beyond. Nothing could appear much less American, for while America is above all a country of verticals, artistic, economic, symbolic, phallic, imposed splendidly upon the passive landscape, Washington D.C. is all horizontal. Nowhere is much flatter than Washington. The ground is flat. The style is flat. The architecture is deliberately flat. From up there in the Arlington cemetery the whole city seems to lie in a single plane, without depth or perspective, its layered strips of blue, green and white broken only by the obelisk of the Washington Monument and the Capitol dome, as the massed ranks of Arlington are interrupted only by the graves of specially important corpses. It looks like a city of slabs, reverently disposed, and only the jets from the National Airport, straining themselves with difficulty out of the ambiance, throw a bold diagonal across the scene.…

  Sometimes I took the day off from politics, and did the tourist rounds: but for all the grandeur and meaning of the city, for all the endearing pride of my fellow visitors, still these experiences only heightened my sense of intrusion upon some immense private performance. Inorganic by origin, Washington is unnatural in behaviour; but far from heightening everything as New York does, it spreads everything out, memorializes it, puts it in a park and reflects it in an ornamental pool. In New York, I feel more myself than usual, in Washington much less, for when I look for my own reflection in this city, statues and symbols look back at me.…

  Nowhere in the world is so inexorably improving. Elevating texts and aphorisms, quotations from statesmen and philosophers, Thoughts for All Eternity nag one from every other downtown wall, and make one feel especially perhaps if one has come in a high-school excursion bus, awfully insignificant. What giants there were in those days! How grandly they expressed themselves! How thickly they stand about! Innocent III, Napoleon, Moses and St Louis supervise the Senate subway; clumps of heroes wrestle with their standards, horseback generals plan their strategies again on plinth and plaza across the capital. ‘Where Law Ends,’ booms the Department of Justice, ‘Tyranny Begins.’ ‘Taxes Are What We Pay For a Civilized Society,’ retorts the Department of Internal Revenue. ‘Here Are the Ties That Bind the Life of Our People,’ the National Archives cry; and across the Avenue the Mission responds, with an unctuous chime of the carillon: ‘Come to me!’

  When we came down from the top of the Washington Monument, even the elevator operator dismissed us with an injunction. ‘Let’s all work,’ he said, ‘to clean up our country for the 200th anniversary just coming up.’ ‘Yes sir,’ we dutifully replied, ‘you’re darned right – you hear that, kids?’ He had not, however, finished yet. ‘And I’m talking,’ he darkly added, ‘about the mental aspects as well as the physical.’ We had no answer to that.

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Frontispiece Walter Crane, Frontispiece woodcut showing the author with his donkey. From Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, London: C. Kegan Paul, 1879. Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT

  12The Lighthouse of Alexandria. From Kitāb al-Bulhān (Book of Wonders), MS. Bodl. Or. 133, fol. 36a, 1330–1450. The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

  20Oudezijds Kolk Canal, Amsterdam, c. 1910. Unattributed postcard. Mary Evans/Grenville Collins Postcard Collection

  30T. Fielding, A Bazaar in Athens (detail). Engraving after Edward Dodwell. From Views of Greece part 1, 1821

  40Maidan Mosque, Baghdad, 1910s. Alamy Stock Photo

  49Da Jiang Hutong (detail), Beijing, 1987. Photo Jean-Marc Zaorski/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

  60Der Pariser Platz, Berlin (detail), c. 1840. Lithograph. Staatsbibliothek Berlin

  70Lane in the Copt Quarter, Cairo. Engraving. From G. Ebers, Egypt, Vol. 1, 1887

  79Michigan Avenue Bridge, Chicago (detail), 1930s

  88Olfert Dapper, A notional depiction of Damascus (detail), 1677. Engraving

  97Bull Alley, Dublin, c. 1900. Photo National Library of Ireland, Dublin

  107View of the Piazza del Duomo, Florence (detail), 1901. Photo Fratelli Alinari/Alinari Archives, Florence/via Getty Images

  116The Port of Canton (Guangzhou). Coloured engraving

  124Virtudes Street or ‘Sin Street’, Havana (detail), c. 1947. Photo Bert Morgan. Morgan Collection/Getty Images

  130Anglo-Chinese School, View of Hong Kong, 19th century. Oil on canvas. Private collection/Photo © Rafael Valls Gallery, London/Bridgeman Images

  137The Galata Bridge, Istanbul (Constantinople) (detail), c. 1880. Photo Sebah & Joaillier. Imagno/Getty Images

  146Interior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem (detail). Engraving by Riou and Gusmand. From Le Tour du Monde, Paris, 1862. Alamy Stock Photo

  156Dancers in front of the Potala, Lhasa (detail), c. 1945–50. Photo Heinrich Harrer. © Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich. Inv.-No. VMZ 400.08.01.689

  163Ludgate Hill, London (detail). Engraving. From Gustav Doré and William Blanchard Jerrold, London: A Pilgrimage, 1872. Alamy Stock Photo

  174The Calle de Alcalá [Madrid] (detail), 1836. Engraving by J. T. Wilmore from a drawing by David Roberts

  181The Kaaba, Mecca (detail), 1900. Photo S. Hakim. Royal Geographical Society/Getty Images

  189Mexico City. Engraving. From Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, c. 1572. Universal History Archive/Getty Images

  197St Basil’s Church, Red Square, Moscow (detail), c. 1947. Photo Robert Capa. © International Center of Photography, New York

  207Slum in Dharavi, Mumbai. Photo Krewitt/ullstein bild via Getty Images

  216Giorgio Fossati, A Perspective View of the City of Naples (detail), c. 1752. Engraving

  224Shipboard view of the Statue of Liberty, New York (detail), 1910s. Photo Edwin Levick, Getty Images

  234Rue Lepic, Paris (detail), 1890s. Photo H. Roger-Viollet

  247Aegidius Sadeler, View of the City [Prague] (detail), 1606. Engraving. Prague National Library

  253Augustus Earle, Corcovado Mountain rising behind Botofozo, Rio de Janeiro. Drawing. From Robert FitzRoy, Narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle, between the years 1826 and 1836, 1839

  261Giovanni Paolo Panini, Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti [Rome], c. 1756–58. Pen and black ink, brush and grey wash, watercolour, over graphite. Rogers Fund, 1971, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

  272E. M. Fakoner, Monument to Peter the Great, St Petersburg, 1766–76. Photo D. Sholomovich, Novosti

  282Timur hangs the architect of the mosque at Samarkand, 1552. From MS. Or. 1359, f.452v, British Library, London. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images

  287Hippies at corner of Ashbury and Haight Streets, San Francisco (detail), 1967. Photo Peter Larsen/Shutterstock

  297Pitt Street, Sydney (detail), 1945. Heritage-Images/The Print Collector/akg-images

  303View
of part of the Town of Timbuktoo taken from a hill to the east (detail). Engraving. From René Caillié, Voyage à Tombouctou, 1830. Royal Geographical Society/Getty Images

  310Ginza Street, Tokyo (detail), 1953–54. Photo Fosco Maraini. ©2006 Alinari/TopFoto

  321Detailed view of Venice. Woodcut. From Bernhard von Breydenbach, Sanctae Peregrinationes, Mainz, 1486

  333View from the tower of the town hall of the inner city with the new Burgtheater, Vienna, c. 1890

  342The US Capitol Building, Washington D.C., 1937. Photo Margaret Bourke-White/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

  SOURCES & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The editor and publishers are grateful to the copyright holders and publishers who have given permission to reproduce extracts in this volume. Every attempt has been made to contact copyright holders and secure permission. The editor and publishers are happy to rectify any omissions in future editions. The editions cited are those from which extracts have been taken.

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  67–69George Kennan, Sketches from a Life (New York 1989)

  71–72Nasir Khusraw, Safarnama, trans. W. M. Thackston, in Nasir-i Khusraw’s Book of Travels (Costa Mesa, CA, 2010)

  72–74Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa 1325–1354, trans. and ed. H. A. R. Gibb (London 1929)

  74–75Gustave Flaubert, Gustave Flaubert as seen in his works and correspondence: Eastern Journey, John Charles Tarver (New York 1905)

  75–77George Hoskins, A Winter in Upper and Lower Egypt (London 1863)

  77–78G. S. Fraser, A Stranger and Afraid (Manchester 1983). Reproduced by kind permission of the publishers, Carcarnet Press

  80–81John Walter, First Impressions of America (London 1867)

  82–83Mrs Howard Vincent, Forty Thousand Miles over Land and Water: The Journal of a Tour Through the British Empire and America (London 1886)

  83–85Rudyard Kipling, American Notes, in Selected Works of Rudyard Kipling, Vol. III (New York 1900)

  85–87Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (New York 1945). Copyright © 1945 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp

  89–90Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa 1325–1354, trans. and ed. H. A. R. Gibb (London 1929)

  90–92James Laird Patterson, Journal of a Tour in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Greece (London 1852)

  92–94Isabel Burton, The Inner Life of Syria, Palestine, and the Holy Land: From My Private Journal (London 1876)

  95–96Freya Stark, Letters from Syria (London 1942). Copyright © Freya Stark. Reproduced by permission of John Murray Press, an imprint of Hodder and Stoughton Limited

  98–99François de La Boullaye Le Gouz, The Tour of the French traveller M. de La Boullaye Le Gouz in Ireland, A.D. 1644 (London 1837)

  99–101Arthur Young, Arthur Young’s Tour in Ireland (1776–1779), ed. Arthur Wollaston Hutton (London 1892)

  101–02Jacques-Louis de Bourgrenet de la Tocnaye, A Frenchman’s Walk through Ireland 1796–97, trans. John Stevenson (Dublin 1914)

  102–05Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, Tour in England, Ireland, and France in the Years 1826, 1827, 1828, and 1829 (Philadelphia 1833)

  105–06Marie Anne de Bovet, Three Months Tour of Ireland, trans. Mrs Arthur Walter (London 1891)

  108–09Michel de Montaigne, The Journal of Montaigne’s Travels in Italy by way of Switzerland and Germany in 1580 and 1581, trans. W. G. Walters, Vol. II (London 1903)

  109–11Richard Lassels, The Voyage of Italy, or, A compleat journey through Italy: in two parts, with the characters of the people, and the description of the chief towns, churches, monasteries, tombs, libraries, palaces, villa’s, gardens, pictures, statues, and antiquities: as also of the interest, government, riches, force, &c. of all the princes, with instructions concerning travel (London 1686)

  111–12Anna Miller, Letters from Italy : describing the manners, customs, antiquities, paintings, &c. of that country, in the years MDCCLXX and MDCCLXXI: to a friend residing in France, Vol. I (London 1777)

  112–13T.Q. (Samuel Young), A Wall-Street bear in Europe: with his familiar foreign journal of a tour through portions of England, Scotland, F
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  113–15Mary McCarthy, The Stones of Florence (London 1959). Copyright © Mary McCarthy 1959

  117–18John Nieuhoff, An Embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham Emperour of China, delivered by their excellencies Peter de Goyer and Jacob de Keyzer, trans. John Ogilby (London 1669)

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  119–21Isabella Bird, The Golden Chersonese and The Way Thither (New York 1892)

  122–23Simone de Beauvoir, The Long March: An Account of Modern China, trans. Austin Wainhouse (London 1958). La Longue March Copyright © Editions Gallimard 1958

  125–26Alexander von Humboldt, The Island of Cuba, trans. J. S. Thrasher (New York 1856)

  126–27Frances Calderón de la Barca, Life in Mexico During a Residence of Two-Years in that Country (London 1843)

  128–29Graham Greene, Ways of Escape (London 1980). Published by The Bodley Head publishers. Copyright © Graham Greene 1980

  131–32Bayard Taylor, A Visit to India, China and Japan in the Year 1853 (London 1855)

  132–35Isabella Bird, The Golden Chersonese and The Way Thither (New York 1892)

  135–36Ian Fleming, Thrilling Cities (London 1963). Copyright © Glidrose Productions 1962; Copyright © 1959, 1960 by Thomson Newspapers Ltd

  138–39Chiu T’ang shu, in China and the Roman Orient: Researches into their Ancient and Mediaeval Relations as Represented in Old Chinese Records, F. Hirth (Shanghai 1885)

  139Benjamin of Tudela, The Itinerary of Benjamain of Tudela, trans. Marcus Nathan Adler (London 1907)

  139–41Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa 1325–1354, trans. and ed. H. A. R. Gibb (London 1929)

  141–42Pero Tafur, Travels and Adventures of Pero Tafur 1435–1439, ed. E. Denison Ross and Eileen Power (London 1926)

  142–43Jean Chesneau, Le Voyage de Monsieur d’Aramon, ambassadeur pour le Roy en Levant (Paris 1887)