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R.G.Reeve
(fl.1811-1837) Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land 1828
handcoloured aquatint; plate mark; 37.4 x 64.4cm Rex Nan Kivell
Collection; from the Pictorial Collection
Honore
Forster considers some early women voyagers
The experiences of the four remarkable women travellers who
are the subject of this article span a fascinating period
of discovery and change in the Pacific region between 1768
and 1851. Forsaking conventional domesticity, they chose,
for a variety of reasons, to undertake long and uncomfortable
voyages by sailing ship across a hazardous ocean. Records
of their remarkable ventures are to be found in the National
Library's collections.
The
first western woman to see, and sail across, the Pacific was
Jeanne Baré, a member of the French explorer Bougainville's
round-the-world expedition of 1766-69. (Her name is sometimes
spelt Baret or Barret, and she called herself Bonnefoy on
board ship.) Not surprisingly, she was at pains to conceal
the fact that she was a woman when joining the strictly all-male
naval vessel L'Etoile and it was not until the French ships
reached Tahiti in 1768 that her true gender was revealedthough
there had been for some time considerable suspicion and excited
speculation among the crew that the young 'valet' was in fact
a female. It was remarked upon that he grew no beard and was
never seen to wash, nor remove his strangely voluminous clothing.
The Tahitians soon recognised Baré's sex and made it known
in no uncertain terms. Bougainville took a pragmatic and generous
view of the matter, and pardoned the youthful 'Bonnefoy' who,
we are told, finished her voyage 'very agreeably'. It is not
altogether clear whether her employer, Philibert Commerson,
'doctor, botanist and naturalist of the King', had known of
the deception. We do know that Baré, who was described by
Bougainville as 'neither plain nor pretty' and about 26 years
old, was an orphan from Brittany whose curiosity had been
aroused by news of the planned voyage round the world.
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Part
of a Bay in Tahiti, South Seas
c.1850
watercolour; 18.2 x 26.3cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection;
from the Pictorial Collection |
Baré
proved herself an adept and courageous botaniser, and regularly
went ashore with Commerson collecting specimens. Commerson
(1727-73), whose achievements as a botanist have been greatly
underrated, was generous towards his helper: he dedicated
the plant genus Baretia to her (this includes a species
with ambiguous sexual characteristics). In 1785, when Jeanne
Baré was living quietly in the French countryside as Madame
Dubernat, a widow, she was granted a government pension in
recognition of her work as Commerson's assistant. Bougainville's
regard for the 'indefatigable Baré' probably helped obtain
this official largesse. The exact date of her death is unknown.
This
modest French country girl who was the first woman to visit
the Pacific and circumnavigate the world left no personal
record of her adventure. But some of Baré's fellow voyagers,
officers on the Bougainville expedition, wrote about her in
their ship-board journals and these, together with later research
about her life, can be read in Etienne Taillemite's fascinating
study, Bougainville et ses compagnons autour du monde 1766-1769
(Bougainville and His Companions around the World) (2
vols; Paris, 1977). Bougainville's observations on the Baré
affair appear in his Voyage round the World (London,
1772). They conclude with this wry comment:
It must be owned that if the two
ships had been wrecked on any desert isle . Baré's fate would
have been a very singular one.
Early
in the next century another young Frenchwoman set sail across
the Pacific, determined to accompany her husband on a dangerous
and lengthy voyage. Strong-willed and brave, with a lively
and enquiring mind, she proved to be an ideal helpmate, and
a perceptive observer. Her name was Rose de Freycinet (1794-1832).
She too, like Jeanne Baré, went to sea dressed as a man, though
in more elegant attire, and only briefly. She also had plants
named after her. An outline of her remarkable story has already
appeared in a 1996 issue of National Library of Australia
News ('The Captain's Wife Stows Away' (vol. VIII, no.
3), written by Marc Serge Rivière in conjunction with the
Library's 1996 publication of his book, A Woman of Courage:
The Journal of Rose de Freycinet on her Voyage Round the World
1817-1820. This contains the first English translation
of Rose de Freycinet's original diary, as well as supplementary
letters and information about the author and the Freycinet
family. The National Library also has two copies of the beautiful
1927 French edition of the diary, edited by Charles Duplomb.
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Joseph
Jenner Merret (1816-1854)
The City of Auckland N.Z.
watercolour; 19 x 31.3cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection;
from the Pictorial Collection |
Some
mystery surrounds my next Pacific voyager. Although her journal
was published in Paris in the 1850s, an English translation
did not appear in London until 1944. A slim volume, in wartime
austerity binding, it is now a rarity. The title page reads
as follows: 'The Journal of Madame Giovanni by Alexandre
Dumas. Translated from the French Edition (1856) by Marguerite
E. Wilbur.' Under its original French title, Journal d'une
Parisienne, this is not a well-known work by Dumas (1802-1870),
and is not included in the collected French editions of his
work. Dumas' role, he claimed, was merely to write down Madame
Giovanni's narrative for her, while 'scrupulously' sticking
to the facts and personal judgments in the notes and documents
supplied to him by the 'intrepid traveller'. The Journal
first appeared in Paris magazines in 1855, before publication
in book form in 1856. Popular demand led to later French,
Belgian and German editions.
Dumas' book described a series of voyages undertaken by a
newly-married 20-year-old Frenchwoman and her Italian husband,
a merchant. Accompanied by a piano and two armchairs, the
couple boarded the first of many sailing vessels at Mauritius,
thereafter visiting Hobart, Sydney, Auckland, Tahiti, the
Marquesas and New Caledonia en route to their final destination
of gold-rush California and Mexico. This epic journey, which
also included a trip to Hawaii from California, took 10 years
to complete. The vivacious Madame Giovanni was a keen observer,
interested in everything and everybody. Convict society in
Hobart, high life in Sydney, Maori and European behaviour
in Auckland, Tahiti's Queen Pomare IV and the Hawaiian King
Kamehameha were all subjects for her discerning eye. She did
not dwell only on her personal experiences, but offered firm
views on such subjects as the baneful influence of missionaries
in the Pacific and Britain's rigid rule over her colonies.
As a patriotic Frenchwoman, she was happy to see France become
Tahiti's protector, and was charmed by the Tahitian way of
life in an 'earthly paradise'.
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George
Baxter (1804-1867)
Pomare, Queen of Tahiti, the Persecuted Christian surrounded
by her Family at the Afflictive Moment when the French
Forces were Landing
engraving; 26.3 x 22.6cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection;
from the Pictorial Collection |
It
seems that there was a real person lurking behind Madame Giovanni.
She was Gabrielle-Anne Cisterne de Courtiras (1804-72), who
married an officer of the Napoleonic nobility, E.-J. Du Poilloüe
de Saint-Mars, in about 1824; by 1835 they had separated-but
she retained her title. To earn much-needed money, she took
up writing, and under the pseudonym 'Countess Dash' wrote
numerous best-selling historical romances and other popular
pieces. She became a member of Dumas' literary circle, preparing
and researching articles for him. The National Library has
a microfiche copy of her witty and insightful guide to marriage,
Le livre des femmes (The Women's Book; 3rd ed., Paris,
1864). The Countess de Saint-Mars was clearly a woman of keen
intellect, socially aware, with an elegant writing style.
The question is: did she really sail across the Pacific and
later pass on her reminiscences to Dumas for The Journal
of Madame Giovanni?
A
thorough examination of the text shows that although dates
are left vague, the significant events describedall
between about 1843 and 1851-are historically correct, and
the famous personages encountered are credibly, often warmly,
portrayed, suggesting close personal contact. The Countess
de Saint-Mars would in fact have been in her 40s during her
travels, and was never married to a Venetian merchant; nevertheless
it is feasible that she personally visited at least some of
the places described in the Journal. There is, of course,
the possibility that the Countess de Saint-Mars in her role
as journalist-researcher for Dumas made use of a variety of
up-to-date printed sources and recent eye-witness accounts,
and that Dumas then transformed her research into the highly
successful Journal. In the end, we have to accept that,
while it does contain a lot of reliable information, there
is much that is clearly fictional. Overall, however, the Journal
is a very engaging work. The narrator's droll and penetrating
appraisal of various levels of Australian society in the 1840s
as seen through French eyes make the discovery of this neglected
curiosity especially worthwhile to Australian readers.
The
last woman traveller in this survey, Viennnese Ida Pfeiffer
(1797-1858), was one of the most popular and admired authors
of her day, foreshadowing in many ways the globe-trotting
female travel writers to come. She wrote five books about
her remarkably wide-ranging journeys, all of them translated
very quickly into English. Her first, about a trip to the
Holy Land, appeared in 1844. Ida Pfeiffer's work attracted
the attention of scientists and geographers, and in 1856 she
was made an honorary member of the Geographical
Societies
of Paris and Berlin. The Prussian king presented her with
a gold medal, the Austrian government gave her monetary assistance,
and she won praise from Alexander von Humboldt, the famous
naturalist and explorer. Pfeiffer, a small, energetic and
down-to-earth woman who unhesitatingly faced danger and disease
on her travels, claimed that she wanted above all things to
add to the stock of human knowledge.
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Tahitians
Presenting Fruits to Bougainville Attended by his Officers
1768?
pencil and watercolour drawing:
9.2 x 6.9cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection:
from the Pictorial Collection |
Surprisingly,
perhaps, Pfeiffer and the worldly Countess de Saint-Mars share
some common ground, apart from the popularity of their books.
Both women took up writing as a way of making money when they
lost the financial support of husbands; and they both wrote
about Tahiti in the 1840s.
Ida Pfeiffer's Tahitian visit is described in Eine Frauenfahrt
um die Welt. Reise von Wien nach Brasilien, Chili,
Otaheiti [Tahiti], China, Ostindien [East Indies],
Persien und Kleinasien [Asia Minor] (published in Vienna
in 1850). Several·English translations followed. The National
Library's copy, A Woman's Journey round the World .
is the undated (1850?) edition, published in London, with
an unnamed translator, which went into at least six more editions.
Other popular translations appeared in the 1850s.
The island of Tahiti is described in chapter 7, 'The Voyage
from Valparaiso to Canton, via Tahiti'. The island's wild
natural beauty fascinated the Austrian writer, and the most
interesting sections of the chapter are those in which she
describes her hazardous journeys into the mountainous interior.
Perhaps less appealing to modern readers is her stern judgement
of the Tahitians themselves, whom she dismissed as lazy and
immoral, even depraved. Tahiti had just become a French protectorate
when she arrived there in 1847 (shortly before the visit of
Madame Giovanni), and she did not believe the French would
improve matters.
Ida Pfeiffer was a world traveller and a seasoned travel writer,
unlike the other women mentioned in this survey, but she shared
a questing and courageous spirit with those Pacific voyagers.
This comment in her preface to A Woman's Voyage is
revealing:
Many
will perhaps believe that I undertook so long a journey from
vanity. I can only say in answer to this . that nothing but
a natural wish for travel, a boundless desire of acquiring
knowledge, could ever overcome the hardships, privations and
dangers to which I have been exposed.
Honore Forster is an independent writer and researcher
living in Canberra. She has a long-standing interest in the
history of the Pacific
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