by Eighteenth century American visitors’ actual reactions to London grandeur turn out to be genuinely useful reading
Ahead of reading up on Buckingham Palace’s current summer opening, I revisited several eighteenth century American travel accounts describing early visitors’ reactions to London’s grandest buildings and ceremonies, and found the comparison between their genuine, unguarded astonishment and my own more jaded modern expectations genuinely instructive.
What These Old Accounts Actually Describe
Colonial era American visitors to London frequently wrote home with a specific, unguarded wonder at the sheer physical scale of British institutional architecture, palaces, government buildings, ceremonial processions, a genuine astonishment considerably less common in modern travel writing, which tends to arrive already primed by countless photographs and social media posts before ever actually seeing a place in person.
Why This Difference In Reaction Actually Matters
I think something genuine gets lost when we arrive at a place having already consumed thousands of images of it beforehand, these eighteenth century writers experienced genuine, first contact astonishment that modern visitors, myself included, simply cannot replicate no matter how impressive the actual building turns out to be in person.
A Specific Account That Stayed With Me
One particular colonial visitor’s account of touring a grand British residence describes a specific kind of disorientation at the sheer scale involved, a reaction I found myself trying, not entirely successfully, to consciously recreate in my own imagination ahead of reading further about the current palace tour.
What This Taught Me About My Own Expectations
I think modern visitors, arriving already fully briefed by photographs and reviews, experience something closer to confirmation than genuine discovery, a loss worth naming honestly even as I fully intend to keep looking at photographs before my own eventual visit anyway.
Further Reading
For more of my reading on colonial era travel writing, I have written previously at my author page.
Closing Thought
Sometimes the old accounts of genuine first astonishment teach you more than any actual visit fully manages today. More colonial reading at my author page.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
