A Strenuous Life: Letters of an American Woman Traveling the Globe 1912-1914

In 1912 a young, American woman, Alice Ross (1890-1980), began a two-year trip around the world. Her itinerary included Hawaii, Samoa, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, China, Burma, Siam, India, Turkey, the Levant, Egypt and finally through Europe on the Orient Express. In the history of the earth, few people can have made such a comprehensive and leisurely journey, and essentially none of those would have been attractive, eligible women. "In Honolulu they liked me because I was game for anything in swimming, which counts more than anything there. In New Zealand I seemed more animated and had more initiative than the girls there. In Australia the reputation of the American girl has opened the way there for any who go, and in the Philippines I was simply "a new girl", and there new or old they are few and far between, and there are so many men that I think they would rush even a broomstick in petticoats. Now dear, I take no credit to myself, for I know I'm only an ordinary being, and any girl would have had the very same experiences I had, for many men proposed and begged me to marry them." So Alice summarizes her romantic adventures. Progressive, intrepid, inclusive, athletic, curious, ambitious. Are these the qualities of an Edwardian woman? We had always known that my grandmother had had extraordinary opportunities to travel widely when young. Decades after her death the letters she had saved from her journeys were put in my hands. Read over her shoulder as this 22 year-old literally travels around the globe. Alice Ross Garey is the daughter of an admiral. As one of very few Western women in "the orient" she has an all-access pass ensuring the hospitality of royalty and potentates in every nation. Yet her voice is that of a down to earth gal. The Queen of Hawaii and Sir Flinders Petrie are among the VIPs she meets. That 5-star hotel you'd like to try? Alice slept there. She traveled by horseback, buggy, ship, sedan chair, camel, rickshaw, elephant, Wright airplane, automobile, and train. She's traveling through Europe only a few months before the outbreak of WWI. It's like these letters are recording the end of a way of life; in a few short months, the world will be engulfed in the worst horrors of modernity and everything will change forever. Alice is getting home just in time This is factual material which reads like fiction. More than 40 photographs.