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2. New Ventures
- University of Nebraska Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
(& _d'.,."X[\eh[b[Wl_d]m[ocekj^ for Europe, Alice read an article in the 8eijed7Zl[hj_i[h describing the experiences of an American woman who had lived in Germany.1 Alice invited the writer to lunch and gleaned the address of a pastor in the village of Leihgestern who boarded lodgers and gave German lessons. Through a combination of charm and appeal to charity, Alice persuaded the woman to write to the pastor and arrange accommodations for all five women. Their trip was motivated in part by economic necessity. In '.,. the income from Dr. Gibbens’s estate amounted to $',.&&. The war had been colossally expensive for both the North and the South. From '.,& to '.-/ the gross national product and per capita income declined. The boot and shoe industries were hit particularly hard, as these companies lost most of their Southern markets. Weymouth had many small shoe-manufacturing concerns at that time, so the local economy suffered.2 Alice and her mother and sisters decided they could live better on their small income in Europe than they could in Weymouth, so they decided to go to Germany. Perhaps, too, they felt ashamed of the doctor’s actions and were glad to leave their village, at least for a time. Under Alice’s leadership, in July '.,. the band set sail for the Continent on one of seven steamships that sailed from New York to Bremen that ( New Ventures d[ml[djkh[i (' month: the Kd_ed on ( July, the :[kjiY^bWdZ on / July, the >WdiW on ', July, the 8h[c[d on () July, the Ic_Zj on (+ July, the 9_hYWii_Wd on (+ July, and the 7c[h_YW on )& July.3 With the exception of the smaller 9_hYWii_Wd, whose (+ July voyage was her last, each ship weighed nearly three thousand tons and could carry close to nine hundred passengers while traveling at a speed of eleven knots per hour. These graceful long ships, with two or three masts, represented the latest in engineering know-how. Conditions onboard were far better than those the family had endured on their Vanderbilt ship in '.+,. The Gibbens group attracted the notice of a journalist onboard: “The most interesting passengers were a New England lady and her young daughters, all of an innocence and simplicity so superlative that one wondered how they could expect to survive a week on the Continent.” Their cousin Helen Merrill accompanied them on the passage, though she returned to America after a few months. Alice, now a dark-eyed, smooth-complexioned beauty, and her two pretty sisters attracted the attention of other passengers in addition to the journalist who wrote about them.4 As the group prepared to disembark, a rich, handsome Jewish man offered to escort them all the way to Leihgestern. Eliza Gibbens refused his offer on the grounds that she could not pay his expenses, but more likely it was because she feared the attentions of a Jew to her daughters. The ship’s captain, Neineber, took pity on the women. He invited them to lunch in his Bremen home and then escorted them to their train. From Bremen the Gibbenses traveled south nearly the length of Germany to the Hessen region. The bewildered, tired women disembarked from the train at Giessen, thirty-five miles north of Frankfurt. The Gibbenses were taken to a hotel and placed in an expensive suite. None could communicate well enough to ask for less extravagant arrangements. Alice spent the night on the floor beside Eliza’s bed to calm her frightened parent . The next day she learned that their living arrangements had fallen through. The pastor with whom they had contracted, Pastor Eckstein, was ill, so he had assigned their contract to another Leihgestern pastor.5 That day Alice and her band drove to the village in an open hack, past castles and Roman ruins. Alice’s strength was tested again when they reached the pastor’s home. The toothless man with long curly hair fell on them like a wolf. His [54.235.6.60] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 07:05 GMT) (( d[ml[djkh[i hard-looking wife, eager for their American currency, tried literally to pull them into her squalid house. Alice refused to let her group leave the hack. They immediately drove back to their hotel in Giessen. Guided once again by vague rumors, they left Giessen in the evening to avoid paying for another night in their hotel suite and headed south for Heidelberg. They stayed there for an undetermined time...