[Photo Credit: Philippe Roudaut, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]
Julia first visited Rouen in June 1896, while traveling with three girlfriends. She wrote to her cousins about its “squalid dirtiness.” In her rudimentary French, she had instructed their cabdriver: “We had seen the churches etc. and wanted to see [Rouen’s] streets aged and picturesque. I should say we did. Through every little narrow, evil smelling alleyway.”
When she returned with Avery in the autumn of 1898, they found the city’s facilities and sanitation still inadequate. They arrived “quite late that night & getting into a most peculiar hotel – from which we escaped with sighs of relief next morning, early – It’s not a good place for hotels, at least, it seemed so.”
While exploring the back streets, she and Avery photographed “a very queer piled up view from a little street, and if it turns out well will send it.” (This view may have resembled the one shown here.) Julia continued, “We had four days of wanderings there, avoiding the ‘picturesque’ streets after seeing a shower bath [meaning the contents of a flung chamber pot] from an upper window – The sewer arrangements you remember are primitive.”
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