Pleasure Pilgrimage Revisited
Two Months on the La Touraine
I’m about to make a bold claim. I recently procured the world’s ONLY available copy of a book entitled “A Pleasure Pilgrimage” by Frank Burlingame Harris. This volume was “privately printed” in 1895 by Hobart Publishing Company in Chicago. Its longer name: “What Happened on the Cruise of La Touraine, February 6 to April 6, 1895” then, in smaller print, “Anecdotes Humorous, Historical, Personal by FBH, one of the pilgrims”. It was the first book by an author who died several years before his second book was published in 1901. (I first wrote about Harris and “The Road to Ridgeby's” several months ago.)
Harris was a mere lad of twenty-one when he wrote “Pilgrimage”. As outlined in the preface to “Ridgeby’s,” Harris was “engaged to accompany a party of American excursionists on a visit to the Mediterranean countries, a correspondent for several Metropolitan newspapers. His La Touraine experiences were gathered in a small souvenir volume.”
Only 21 years old, without financial resources, Harris’s print run was undoubtedly small, probably a couple hundred copies, which makes this book rare (sadly, NOT valuable… except for bragging rights). Harris doesn’t name passengers but rather describes them: the jolly passenger, the morose passenger, etc.* He also keeps readers posted on the romance between the “black-eyed young man” and the “laughing-eyed girl”. Even without knowing their background stories, readers become interested in these passengers.
The book also includes the ship’s manifest, all 250 people boarding in New York City, listed alphabetically plus their home communities. Being of a curious nature, I sought information on the Iowans who booked passage… and was not disappointed. It was a simple task to access profiles of these Iowa residents: Mr. C.R. Musser, Muscatine; Miss Helen Sherman, Des Moines; and Mr. and Mrs. Webb Vincent**, Fort Dodge.
--C.R. (Clifton Robert) Musser was a lumberman, a stock farmer, and a banker. In 1895, he was a single 26-year-old. Lumbering was the family business, launched by his father, logs from the north woods sent down the Mississippi to Muscatine for processing. Musser graduated from Iowa State University and was loyal to his Alma Mater, founding the Iowa State College Agricultural Foundation by gifting a dozen farms to fund demonstration projects throughout the state. He established one of the country’s leading Hereford herds and became a leader in the American Hereford Association. He was president of the Muscatine Bank & Trust for twenty years and served as board chair for fifteen more years. The Muscatine library is named for the extended Musser family.
--Helen Sherman, soon to become Helen Sherman Griffith, was 22 years old and, like Musser, traveling solo. (I was inclined to think they might connect, but alas, there’s no indication they even met, say nothing about a romance.) She also came from a distinguished family. Her father was Hoyt Sherman, Des Moines banker / insurance executive; her uncle was William Tecumseh Sherman. Another uncle, John, served as U.S. Secretary of State and Treasury, unsuccessfully seeking the Republican Party presidential nomination three times. Helen Sherman Griffith became a prolific author who wrote the “Letty Grey” books, a girls’ fiction series. In 1925, she published a best-selling novel for adults, “The Lane,” about a young woman born into society relocating to a small town and coming to appreciate her uncomplicated neighbors. Griffith’s childhood room at the Hoyt Sherman House Museum in Des Moines, was restored in 2021.
--By 1895, Webb and Catherine Vincent were already well established in Fort Dodge. As a young man, Vincent fought in the Civil War, then returned to Fort Dodge to launch his career. With several partners, he was early in the gypsum industry, a founder of the Iowa Plaster Company. In 1889, Vincent sold his gypsum holdings to a colleague on the First National Bank board. Vincent had been a bank board member since 1872 and became bank president in 1902. In 1911, he founded the Vincent Clay Products Company. Initially focused on farm drain tile, the company began making bricks and building tile in the 1920s. The company became widely known for heat resistant “golden glaze” brick and tile. The Vincent family home, built in 1872, is thought to be the oldest and is among the most historically and architecturally significant buildings in Fort Dodge.
So there you have it, three brief sketches of Iowans cruising around the Mediterranean thirteen decades ago. Harris’s travelogue is interesting… yet not nearly as compelling as the lives of this noteworthy traveling trio, people who I must admit, I previously knew nothing about. I’m most appreciative of the introduction provided by Harris’s book. And now you’ve met them, too.
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*Harris’s list includes the jolly passenger, the educated / absent-minded / reckless / distinguished / erratic / morose / affluent / poetical / Anglo-American / and the Boston passenger. I don’t know if these descriptions apply to those three profiled above.
**Unfortunately, I could find very little reliable or relevant information about Catherine Vincent other than she married her husband in 1870.
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I’m pleased to be part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. My colleagues:
Intense, human interest! Thank you.
what a fun column!