In Our Collection
The Letters of Tess Mueller
1937-38 Around the world Trip
Compiled by Kathryn Englander
Tripp Accession Number 2005.65.0002
In Our Collection--The Letters of Tess Mueller. (Part One)
The collections at the Tripp Heritage Museum contain a number of family histories, scrapbooks, photographs, video tapes, audio tapes and other items donated by contributors from numerous families. One that I have recently reviewed is a binder of letters written by Therese Mueller of her 1937 around the world trip. She wrote letters to her mother and brother, from stops on her 14-month trip from July 1937 to August 1938. These letters were compiled by her sister-in-law’s niece, Kathryn Englander.
Therese Catherine Mueller was the daughter of Dr. Henry and Mathilda Czeikowitz Mueller born March 30, 1892. Her father was born in Germany in 1858. Her mother was born in Minnesota in 1869. She was an infant when the family arrived in Sauk City by 1894. Tess’s brother Otto Harmon Mueller was born March 23, 1895, at Sauk City. Otto married Dorothy Theresa Littel. Dorothy’s father Frank Xavier Littel was a long-time businessman (furniture retailer/undertaker) and a charter member of the Lake Wisconsin Country Club in 1925. Both families were members of the Sauk County Free Congregation. Theresa was the only graduate of the Sauk City High School in 1908. She had completed her courses in just 3 years. She attended the University of Wisconsin Madison, graduating in 1912. She started her teaching career at Mazomanie. Tess enrolled in the St. Paul College of Law and earned a law degree. She later began a long teaching position at Lindblom High School in Chicago. While in Chicago she took post-graduate courses at the University of Chicago earning a master’s degree in 1935.
1937 was a significant year in world history, marked by several notable events. The world had largely recovered from World I and was in recovery from the Great Depression. The Italians under Mussolini in 1936 had occupied Ethiopia. Hitler had been in power for the past 4 years. He convened a meeting in Berlin on 5 November 1937 attended by his military and foreign policy leadership in which Hitler outlined his expansionist policies. The meeting marked the beginning of Hitler's foreign policies becoming radicalized. By March 1938 Germany would absorb Austria and the Sudetenland into the third Reich.
In January and February 1937, severe flooding along the Ohio River affected multiple states in the U.S., leaving around 1 million people homeless. The Spanish Civil War continued throughout 1937, with significant battles such as the Battle of Guadalajara and the Battle of Brunete. Pablo Picasso completed his masterpiece "Guernica". On May 6th, the German passenger airship Hindenburg caught on fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock in New Jersey, resulting in 36 deaths. The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was completed and opened to the public on May 27, 1937. On July 2, 1937, aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to circumnavigate the globe.
It was in the midst of these world events that on Saturday, July 24, 1937, Tess Mueller and her travel companion, Bess Buchanan, aboard the “SS President Hoover” steamship passed under the recently completed Golden Gate bridge for a two-week passage to Yokohama, Japan. In mid-Pacific Ocean, the ship’s commander G.S. Yardley received a telegram on August 4th telling of “the threat of general war was strong in Tokyo, and that the Japanese army gathered in north China is expected momentarily to drive south…to an area which has a population or more than 20 million.” The Second Sino-Japanese War would soon commence with the Battle of Shanghai which was the first of 22 significant battles between the Imperial Japanese Army's National Revolutionary Army and the Republic of China. It lasted from Aug 13, 1937, to Nov 26, 1937, and was one of the war's greatest and bloodiest conflicts. It was later dubbed 'Stalingrad on the Yangtze' and is widely recognized as the battle that kicked off WW II.
It was with this background that Tess Mueller’s steamship docked at Yokohama on August 6th. On August 8th from the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, Tess writes to her mother.
“It was not hard to get through customs in Yokohama, all the officers were very considerate. Bess agreed to hire a taxi to drive to Tokyo. She had been insisting that we take the electric interurban, but the thought of my four pieces of luggage was too much for me. Even my legs were wet with perspiration.”
“This hotel was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright owner of Taliesin, you know. All of the rooms and corridors are low and rather dark. Our bath is an enormous sunken tiled one, the washstand is about a foot lower than any I have use.”
“We had lunch in a Japanese cafeteria yesterday; dinner at the Imperial Hotel; lunch today at the Seyoken Restaurant in Ueno Park. We have driven around the city and have seen all the advertised sights. At the shrine of the Second Shogun, a famous piece of architecture the Buddist priest had me ring the gong and taught me a little Japanese prayer to repeat to hammer strokes on the drum.”
“We don’t get any war excitement because we can’t understand Japanese. The people seem very quiet and unconcerned. Right now, no American can go to Peiping, but the trouble may be over in five weeks. We take the train tonight for Matsushima, a seaside resort nine hours north of Tokyo. From there we go to the mountain resort of Nikko because it is cool. I am having a good time although I do have homesick moments.
Perhaps unknown to Tess at the time, was that after her ship the SS President Hoover reached Hong Kong it was diverted from Hong Kong to evacuate US nationals from Shanghai. On August 30th the liner was moored in the Yangtze River, awaiting clearance to enter the Wysong River to reach the Port of Shanghai when, despite a 30-foot US flag draped on her top deck behind the bridge to identify her to aircraft as a neutral US ship, the Republic of China Air Force mistook her for the Japanese troopship Asama Maru and bombed her.
One bomb hit President Hoover's top deck, killing a crewman from the mess hall. Fragments from another bomb penetrated the main saloon, wounding six crew and two passengers. One of President Hoover's radio officers transmitted a distress call stating that Chinese aircraft were attacking her. Both an IJN destroyer and a Royal Navy cruiser came in response, but in the event only medical help was needed. Despite her casualties President Hoover sustained only minor damage, but she aborted the rescue mission to Shanghai and returned to San Francisco for repairs.
After repairs, the steamship SS President Hoover returned to service, departing from San Francisco on November 22, 1937, for Kobe and Manila. She was barely more than half-full, with only 503 passengers. During the voyage the Dollar Lines management signaled President Hoover's Master, George W Yardley, "You must be in Manila, absolutely urgent that you arrive not later than 6 a.m. 12th December, make all possible speed".
During a typhoon on December 11th President Hoover struck a reef off Taitung City in south-eastern Taiwan. Her bottom was torn open as far aft as her engine room and she came to rest with a slight list to port. It took 36 hours to evacuate the passengers who all survived. The ship was declared a total loss and after the owners retrieved some of the furnishings, they sold the ship for salvage. End of Part One--
Tess Mueller’s Around the World Adventures will continue in Part Two. Through her letters, Tess recounts her travels through the Sino-Japanese War zone. Would she get to visit Peking and the Great Wall of China. She further reports her journey throughout Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Manila, Bali, Java, Singapore, Bangkok, Rangoon Burma, Cambodia, Calcutta, Delhi and Jaspur India, the Suez Canal, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Athens, Sicily, Naples, Rome, Florence, Bolonga, Innsbruck, Munich, Rothenberg, Nurnberg, Vienna, Pague, Warsaw, Moscow, Leningrad, Stockholm, Norway, Scotland, England, and Ireland, She spent often one to eight weeks at each stop. There is way too much information for a single article in this newsletter so we will try to do her justice, by serializing her story over several of the next “Along the Riverway” newsletters.
In Our Collection--The Letters of Tess Mueller. (Part Two)
[Part one covered the first month of Tess Mueller’s 14-month trip around the world. Part two continues for three more months, travelling in Japan, Korea and China.]
On August 20th, 1937, Tess writes from Tokyo after touring Kikko.
“There must have been a mobilization order about the time we left Kikko, because a contingent of drafted soldiers took the same train we did. The mayor made a speech, friends stood around holding while flags with red circles, everything was very orderly and quiet. Just as the train pulled out someone started the national anthem, and everyone waved his flag. We picked up soldiers at every stop. Well-wishers were lined up along the right of way and waved their flags and heered. The school children were out in force. It was all very disheartening. From the beginning, in Tokyo we had noticed women standing at busy street corners to collect the thousand stitches for the charm belts for their soldiers. These are long strips of cotton cloth with a thousands little dots stamped on them. A thousand women embroider each one little dot, and I suppose, say a little prayer for the safe keeping of the soldier is to receive the belt.”
Later in the letter Tess writes: “We plan on going to Korea to stay one week in Seoul and two weeks in the Diamond Mountains and then return for three more weeks in Japan.”
The Diamond Mountains are in present day North Korea. Upon their return to Japan Tess writes:
“Now that the matter is settled against us, I must confess that we tried our darnedest to get to Peking if only for a week. The Tourism Bureau in Seoul, Korea, wouldn’t sell us a ticket so we tried again in Kobe, Japan. We went to see the consul one day. He urged us not to go. When we went to the OSK Steamship line the next morning the American consul had been in that morning and asked a special favor that they sell no tickets to Americans without the consul’s special ok in every case, so we quit trying.”
“On the train between Shimonoseki and Miyajima, Bess had the good fortune to sit next to the managing editor of a Japanese newspaper in Dairen. He thought we were very foolish not to go to Peking. He had been there just the week before. He assured us there were two passenger trains daily running between Tangtu, the port for Tientsin and Peking, and while he admitted that the passenger trains were shunted to a siding to let the troop trains pass, he insisted they always got there.”
This encounter gave courage to Tess and Beth to revise their plans and make their way to China.
Tess writes on October 15, 1937.
“We are on the “Chokomaru” anchored outside the bar, which cannot be crossed at low tide, waiting to get into Tangku and from there to Tsientsin and Peking. We have booked our return passage for two weeks from now, so that by the time you receive this, I shall be safe in Japan, and it will be too late for you to worry.”
Tess writes that after waiting onboard 12 hours for the tide to rise, they were able to disembark. They then had to wait 6 more hours before they boarded the train to Peking. They passed the time in a Kailin Mining Association Club House as there were no restaurants in Tangku. The building was bombed just the week prior. Tess continues with her letter of October 16th.
“The train left at the scheduled hour, 2:30 AM and got to Tientsin on time, 4 PM. The first-class coach was very comfortable and well taken care of. From the train windows this part of China appeared to be a land of the dead. I looked out over flat fields and saw endless stacks of grain and hay running off toward the horizon, or so I thought. Imagine my surprise when Miss Dyott said they were graves! The Chinese put conical mounds of mud over their dead: large mounds for important people, exaggerated molehills for lesser people. At the top of each mound, they wound a knob like the button on top of a mandarin cap.”
“The mandarin cap is very common here and finishes off the long Chinese Gown most appropriately. The northern Chinese are a tall sturdy muscular race with strong white teeth.”
“We took a long walk through the English and French concessions. The English section is most impressive with handsome new buildings. By the way, we saw some of the buildings wrecked in the earlier bombing near the station. In the French concession – which is a bit of Paris transplanted – we like best the food street, where vender after vender had trays of appetizing roasted ducks and roasted chickens, to say nothing of roast chestnuts, rolled pancakes, various kinds of fry cakes and many other things, the sight of which wetted our appetite for the very fine dinner we had here at the hotel.”
“We get up at 5:45 tomorrow to catch the 7:40 train for Peking …. These handsome Oriental cities amaze me. Did you know that Tientsin has over 3,000,000 inhabitants?”
From Peking China, October 23, 1937. “Our first week in Peking has been an unqualified success. Everything is so pleasant that it is hard to believe that the American Consul thought it dangerous for us to come here. We bowl along the streets in our rickshaws without a hindrance. We have covered the entire two week’s sightseeing program of the average tourist in the six days just past.”
From Peking China, November 8, 1937. “Last Saturday an English woman named Lady Wood, a Miss MacLean of New Zealand, Miss Plaum of California, a Chinese woman named Mrs. Chou, and I went to the Great Wall. The Japan Tourist Bureau and the Japanese embassy said it was entirely safe, and they were certainly right. It was not only safe, it was an extremely pleasant day. The wall was thrilling and the bright sunshine kept us warm even at a 2000-foot altitude. You should have seen me on my tall donkey! I had to stand on a rock to mount him, to the great amusement of some Japanese sentries.”
From Shimonoseki, Japan, November 15, 1937. “Here I am, on my way to Kobe to sail on the “President Taff” for Hong Kong on November 17th. The trip to Peking went off without a hitch in spite of all dire predictions. Even the trains ran on schedule for us.
There is always a two hour wait in Shimonoseki after the night ferry arrives from Fusan in Korea, but this hotel opposite the station is excellent. For a little less than 35 cents American, I have just finished a breakfast of fresh orange juice, oatmeal, ham and eggs, brown bread toast and coffee. I was casting up accounts the train yesterday and find that since landing in Japan on August 7, I have been spending at the rate of $6.00 a day which is considerably more than I expected to spend. The side trip to Peking came high, but I don’t begrudge a cent of the money, as I may never be able to afford to come this way again. I don’t spend $6 every day, but $600 divided by the number of days gives the average.
After spending 4 months traveling throughout Japan, Korea and China, Tess was ready to move on with 10 months and many thousands of miles to go, Part 3 will print in our Spring 2025 newsletter and will pick up her travels in Hong Kong, Manila, Bali, Jama, Singapore, Bangkok, Rangoon Burma, Cambodia, Calcutta, Delhi and Jaspur India, the Suez Canal, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Athens, Sicily, Naples, Rome, Florence, Bolonga, Innsbruck, Munich, Rothenberg, Nurnberg, Vienna, Pague, Warsaw, Moscow, Leningrad, Stockholm, Norway, Scotland, England, and Ireland, She often spent from one to eight weeks at each stop.
In Our Collection--The Letters of Tess Mueller. (Part Three)
By late November 1937 Tess Mueller, Sauk City High School graduate was in her fourth month of her around the world trip. Part Three continues her journey to South Asia countries including the Philippines, Java, Singapore, Bangkok, Penang, Rangoon, and Kuala Lumpur. Tess had become a firsthand observer of the opening acts of the Second World War. She had experienced the unresolved tensions in the aftermath of World War I, the rise of fascism in Europe and militarism in Japan. Key events leading up to the war that she witnessed included the aftermath of Japan's invasion of Manchuria, the Spanish Civil War, the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Germany's annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland. What follows are excerpts from Tess’s letters to her mother and brother back in Sauk City.
Tess departed Hong Kong arriving at the quarantine station for the Philippines on November 25. Tess writes. “All the first-class passengers who had cholera inoculation certificates were allowed to go ashore in a launch… a rather tedious four-hour trip. The port doctors took the cultures of the 750 third-class passengers and tested all of them to weed out the cholera suspects, which took so long that the ship did not tie p at the Manila pier during this cholera scare. They have tested about 18,000 people and have detected about 300 cases of cholera, mild ones all of them, with no deaths. Not a single case has got through the American filter here at Manila, to the great joy and gratitude of the Dutch in the East Indies.”
Tess’s aim was to “shoot the rapids” in Pagsanjan Gorge which she had read about in a travel book. With two other women passengers they lunched at the “much advertised Manila Hotel, where was had an indifferent lunch in what was practically an open-air dining room, with a superb view of Manila Bay."
“At 4:30 the next morning we were called to start on the gorge trip. One passenger and two boatmen to each narrow canoe. There was just light enough as we paddled up the wide, smooth-running river to see the coconut palm silhouetted against the sky. The light increased imperceptive but steadily, so that by the time we reached the gorge we could take in its full beauty. The rock walls were very high, almost sheer, but even so affording a foothold to ferns and palms and twisted banyan trees. We passed literally dozens of waterfalls instead of the promised half-dozen. It was the rainwater cascading down the mountains. The same warm rainwater which was steadily falling down on us from the heavens above. No matter. We were dressed in bathing suits, rope sandals and wide native hats. The river was swollen almost to torrent proportions. Which meant hard work for the paddlers going upstream. Half a dozen times the three of us had to step out of the canoes at the worst rapids to pick our way around or over the slippery boulders while the men sweated at their job of hoisting the canoes over. We understand that this is not necessary when the water is low. There are about 10 or 12 rapids in the gorge, with the calm stretches between, The up-river journey ends in a quiet fern-fringe pool, with Pagsanjan Falls tumbling into it.”
"The return trip was mildly exciting. You have seen men shooting rapids in northwoods travel films, haven't you I I am sure we would have made a good picture. It is the most exhilarating experience even an inhibited old timer like me want to whoop with joy. Going up I kept thinking how fearfully dangerous the return trip would be, but it was no such thing. It was just fun. My boatman and Miss Townsend's added several unnecessary thrills. Vessels had no accidents whatever when they learned that she could not swim. My two men overplayed their hand when they assured me just before the return that I must not be afraid that even if the canoe overturned, the two would tow me to safety. That even if the canoe was broken on a rock, they would rescue me. That was going to be going a little too far. After that, I just settled down to enjoy myself.”
“Going down, we careened over to one side of the gorge. Too close to a waterfall, the spray of which washed up washed my hat off my head. We slithered around the rocks. Sometimes we were going sideways and once even backwards. We were constantly shipping water and bailing frantically between Rapids. That is, the men were. Twice we were awash. I sat in water to my waist while my heroes boldly leaped overboard and swam, steering the canoe to a flat rock at the edge so that I could get I could step out while they emptied the boat. While they emptied the water. I had the time of my life; not once did I make an effort to save myself. My boat men were incredibly agile and skillful and I let them show off to their hearts content.”
Upon returning to Manila Tess discovered that she had received 22 letters. “I do love getting some letters at last. I spoke of you often to my companions. There are so many things I’d like to know. Please write often and omit no homey details…. This letter is too long for anyone except faithful family members to read. I feel sorry for you, but I just had to spill over; I had such a good time. Much love, Tess.
By December 4th Tess arrives in Bali after having crossed the equator. She received a certificate for crossing the equator. She participated in the traditional King Neptune’s Court onboard the “Tjisadane”, “with half a dozen passengers lathered and shaved and tossed into the swimming pool.”
“Bali in appearance comes just about as close to being a paradise on earth as any place could. In fact, it's beauty becomes a little monotonous. The remotest corners are more beautifully swept and garnished than the most celebrated city part at home. It is just too good to be true, but it is true just the same.”
Tess arrived in Calcutta India on January 2nd, 1938, after stops in Java, Singapore, Bangkok, Penang, Rangoon, and Kuala Lumpur. “We were quite keen about Bangkok. Chinese temples or wats really look Oriental. They are magnificent things, not garish or gaudy as the postcards lead one to think. We also enjoyed our trip by launch along the klongs or canals, which Bangkok is honeycombed. Angkor Wat was hard to get to, but well worth the effort. After 8 1/2 hours on the train, we had to do 167 kilometers by car. You stayed at a little French hotel and made no acquaintance, because our French was inadequate. The ruins of the temple we saw for the first time by moonlight, as all travelers are advised to do so. Then we threaded our way along the dark stone corridors. Bess was escorted by little Cambodian girl with an improvised lantern, and I by a boy with a flaring torch which smelled of incense. We came upon groups of Buddhist priests in saffron robes chanting in the deserted courtyards, it was all very satisfying.”
In Tess’s second week in India she “had a sunrise trip to Tiger Hill to be above a whole ocean of clouds and to see the rising sun touch first the topmost points of giant Kanchenjunga, which is over 28,000 feet and then one by one the more the other snow peaks of the Himalayas as far as the eye could reach. Mount Everest was a little white cone way off to the left. At Benares we saw thousands of pilgrims bathing in the holy Ganges. We saw two swathed woman's corpses on flimsy bamboo biers, placed in the water until the cremation pyres on the burning ghat were ready. At Clarks Hotel we saw snake charmers with three cobras. We watched a Mongoose kill a snake. We saw a perfectly remarkable sleight of hand performer do his tricks under our very eyes in the brightly lighted lounge.”
Tess visits Bombay, Madras, Madura, Kandy and Colombo Sri Lanka. She boarded the Rtotterdam Lloyd SS “Baloneran” on February 9th for arrival at Port Said in Egypt on February 18th She hoped to catch a glimpse of Gandhi before she departs she had written to Gandhi’s secretary requesting to meet but she apparently did not get a response.
Part four in our Fall Newsletter (September 2025) will cover the next leg of Tess’s travels including the great pyramids of Egypt. Then on to Palestine including Jerusalem, Jordan and Lebanon, Greece and then Italy.
In Our Collection—The Letters of Tess Mueller. (Part Four)
By late February 1938. Tess Mueller Sauk City High School graduate had arrived in Egypt. It had been seven months, since her departure from San Francisco. She had toured extensively in the Far East. Tess included a photo in her next letter from the Savoy Hotel in Luxor, Upper Egypt, on February 26th, 1938. “Florence and I are on camels, which we hired to ride around the pyramids and Sphinx at Giza. It was 5:30 in the afternoon and so the light was not very strong.” “Egypt is painfully expensive because this is the height of the tourist season, but it is a source of never-ending joy to an ancient history fan like me. We saw the temple of Karnak yesterday morning under the guidance of a dragoman, but we really enjoyed the temple at Luxor more on our own.” .... “The Savoy is a German hotel and very pleasant, except for the comments my companions make on the large group of Germans staying here. They look on them as Hitlerites and therefore villains.”
On March 10th. From the Hotel Fast in Jerusalem, Tess writes to her brother Otto. “I am wishing you many happy returns for March 23rd. With the $5 enclosed, I want you to buy yourself a real birthday present. I’d dearly love to be in Sauk to help Mother, and you celebrate the two great events only a week apart. Flowers are out on the hillsides. There is a beautiful Palestine anemone in deep purple and dark red which looks like a poppy of which I'm going to try to get some seeds. The flowers will look decorative on Crocus Hill.”
“Jerusalem is getting under our skins. We just love it. Half a dozen people warned us that we would be disappointed and disillusioned, but instead we have been tremendously impressed by our two days of sightseeing under the guidance of a Syriac Christian Arab who certainly knows his Bible history. Yesterday we drove to Bethlehem to see the Church of the Nativity. Every part of the stable has been parceled out. One sect controls the spot where Christ was born, another the manger etc. To prevent vindictive rivalry and bitter quarreling among the sects, all denominations have been forbidden to place articles of which are old or worn out. So, everything is tawdry and shabby and somehow touching and pleasing and in keeping with the tradition of poverty. Yesterday we also saw the Mount of Olives, today the Garden of Gethsemane, Bethany and the ancient and modern Jericho. Crossed the muddy River Jordan and ate our lunch on the shore of the Dead Sea. The mountains of Mohab and the hills of Judea are green now after the spring rains, and the grazing flocks of sheep and their shepherds probably look exactly like those of 1,938 years ago.”
“You suppose you can find Aman and Moan and Jerash and Petra on the map? They are all in Transjordania, one of the new British mandates. The head of the American Institute of Oriental Research told us yesterday noon that the road was open for the first time since the winter rains, and by 3:00 Florence and I had changed all our plans and agreed to go on a 5-day auto trip.”
On March 12, 1938 Tess writes “We started early this morning and have been driving up and down mountainsides all day long in the same comfortable 7 passenger Buick, I mentioned in an earlier letter. We ate our picnic lunch sitting on some boulders on the sunny top of the Mohab mountains. Then we went down, Florida River and started up the Gilead Mountains. This afternoon we visited Jerash an ancient Roman city (Jassassa), ruined by an earthquake, I believe. The main street, with its paving blocks still in excellent condition, was colonnaded from one end to the other. The Temple of Artemis was another imposing ruin.”
“We shall have to start out at 7:00 AM tomorrow in order to reach Petra before dark. The last few miles must be made on horseback through a gorge, too narrow for a car. I sent Otto a postcard picture of it. You can see why it is difficult for me to furnish you with an itinerary. It is wonderful to be able to change one's mind at any time in order to take advantage of a good opportunity.”
By March 27th,1938 Tess had arrived in Athens Greece. “I am really ashamed to start in again by telling you how crazy we are about Greece after raving at such length about Palestine. Perhaps it is a spring season which is casting its spell upon us in each country in turn. But if I hadn't decided that the Altar of Heaven in Peking was the most perfect thing in the world, and then a few months later decided that the Taj Mahal was even better, I would maintain that the Parthenon in the rain-washed air this afternoon was the most beautiful of all. I won't even try to describe the view from the Acropolis. The memory of it is one of the treasures I shall lay by for my old age. When that time comes, I won't envy my more thrifty friends of their dollars but shall cheerfully count out my pennies and revel in my memories.”
After leaving Greece, Tess visits the island of Crete and then a week in Sicily and planned to arrive in Rome by April 25, 1938. There were many German tourists in Rome when Tess arrived. “The town is jammed with Germans and most of the important museums and galleries are closed to our great annoyance and to the annoyance of a great many of the Germans also, I am sure. Germans are not allowed by their government to travel anywhere except in Italy and at times in Yugoslavia, because the exchange is unfavorable everywhere else. And at that they usually have to wait four months for their travel application to be granted. It must, under the circumstances, be very annoying to have to have nowhere to go in the rain. In Rome there will be a big parade tomorrow for which the Germans will have seats and we not.” “Don't worry about war scares, we always go to see the American Consul and take his advice and he knows more facts than our jingoistic American newspapers. Our schedule is never hard and fast as you have learned to your annoyance by this time as I gather from your protests, and if conditions look bad anywhere, we just change our itinerary, even on few moments notice.”
Upon arriving in Germany Tess’s letters become shorter in length and less frequent. She spends just a week in Germany and ten days to see Vienna, Prague, Warsaw and arrive in Moscow in late June staying four days. On June 25th Tess writes: “Dear Mother, It seem hard to believe that at last I am to see Russia”. … ‘It is nine o’clock and the sun is just deciding to set. It is light until 10:30 PM…. This New Moscow Hotel counts as third-class hotel. We pay between $4.50 and $5.00 a day for an all-inclusive program, including two hours of sightseeing each day. The New Moscow must have been one of the finest hotels in Czarist days. The dining rooms on the eighth floor command the most superb view in Moscow and are lined with light gray polished marble and have quantities of exquisite crystal chandeliers and wall brackets.”….
“Moscow is all torn up in a most ambitious building program. Whole blocks of houses are being torn down to provide modern huge open squares and the widest streets in the world…..The food also been very good so far, although have not been offered any caviar for my three meals up to date.”
From Leningrad Tess writes to her brother Otto. “Moscow is a city on the make. One is impressed with its energy and force and also with its ugliness. The only beauty spot in it is the ancients Kremlin, and that tourists are not permitted to see…. Leningrad, on the other hand, is pathetically shabby, but lovely. It is built on 101 islands and has 574 bridges and number of parks and palace gardens and tree-lined boulevards with water and water everywhere. In Moscow you just long for the sight of a tree. But the force, the power of this Russian nation is overwhelming.”
During the next four weeks Tess visits Finland, Sweden and Norway. She sails to England and departs Southampton aboard the SS Washington for home “which after all, and considering all, is the best place of all.” Tess’s fourteen-month trip around the world visiting 29 countries just prior to the start of World War II concludes. Upon returning to America, the Pioneer Press published her account of the trip on September 1, 1938. By 1952 Tess retired to Sauk City from her teaching career. She was a member of the Unitarian Fellowship Free Congregation and it's Ladies Aid, the National Federation of Republican Women and its Sauk County Club, the Sauk City Historical Society. And the Sauk-Prairie Hospital Auxiliary.
The collections at the Tripp Heritage Museum contain a number of family histories, scrapbooks, photographs, video tapes, audio tapes and other items donated by contributors from numerous families. One that I have recently reviewed is a binder of letters written by Therese Mueller of her 1937 around the world trip. She wrote letters to her mother and brother, from stops on her 14-month trip from July 1937 to August 1938. These letters were compiled by her sister-in-law’s niece, Kathryn Englander.
Therese Catherine Mueller was the daughter of Dr. Henry and Mathilda Czeikowitz Mueller born March 30, 1892. Her father was born in Germany in 1858. Her mother was born in Minnesota in 1869. She was an infant when the family arrived in Sauk City by 1894. Tess’s brother Otto Harmon Mueller was born March 23, 1895, at Sauk City. Otto married Dorothy Theresa Littel. Dorothy’s father Frank Xavier Littel was a long-time businessman (furniture retailer/undertaker) and a charter member of the Lake Wisconsin Country Club in 1925. Both families were members of the Sauk County Free Congregation. Theresa was the only graduate of the Sauk City High School in 1908. She had completed her courses in just 3 years. She attended the University of Wisconsin Madison, graduating in 1912. She started her teaching career at Mazomanie. Tess enrolled in the St. Paul College of Law and earned a law degree. She later began a long teaching position at Lindblom High School in Chicago. While in Chicago she took post-graduate courses at the University of Chicago earning a master’s degree in 1935.
1937 was a significant year in world history, marked by several notable events. The world had largely recovered from World I and was in recovery from the Great Depression. The Italians under Mussolini in 1936 had occupied Ethiopia. Hitler had been in power for the past 4 years. He convened a meeting in Berlin on 5 November 1937 attended by his military and foreign policy leadership in which Hitler outlined his expansionist policies. The meeting marked the beginning of Hitler's foreign policies becoming radicalized. By March 1938 Germany would absorb Austria and the Sudetenland into the third Reich.
In January and February 1937, severe flooding along the Ohio River affected multiple states in the U.S., leaving around 1 million people homeless. The Spanish Civil War continued throughout 1937, with significant battles such as the Battle of Guadalajara and the Battle of Brunete. Pablo Picasso completed his masterpiece "Guernica". On May 6th, the German passenger airship Hindenburg caught on fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock in New Jersey, resulting in 36 deaths. The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was completed and opened to the public on May 27, 1937. On July 2, 1937, aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to circumnavigate the globe.
It was in the midst of these world events that on Saturday, July 24, 1937, Tess Mueller and her travel companion, Bess Buchanan, aboard the “SS President Hoover” steamship passed under the recently completed Golden Gate bridge for a two-week passage to Yokohama, Japan. In mid-Pacific Ocean, the ship’s commander G.S. Yardley received a telegram on August 4th telling of “the threat of general war was strong in Tokyo, and that the Japanese army gathered in north China is expected momentarily to drive south…to an area which has a population or more than 20 million.” The Second Sino-Japanese War would soon commence with the Battle of Shanghai which was the first of 22 significant battles between the Imperial Japanese Army's National Revolutionary Army and the Republic of China. It lasted from Aug 13, 1937, to Nov 26, 1937, and was one of the war's greatest and bloodiest conflicts. It was later dubbed 'Stalingrad on the Yangtze' and is widely recognized as the battle that kicked off WW II.
It was with this background that Tess Mueller’s steamship docked at Yokohama on August 6th. On August 8th from the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, Tess writes to her mother.
“It was not hard to get through customs in Yokohama, all the officers were very considerate. Bess agreed to hire a taxi to drive to Tokyo. She had been insisting that we take the electric interurban, but the thought of my four pieces of luggage was too much for me. Even my legs were wet with perspiration.”
“This hotel was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright owner of Taliesin, you know. All of the rooms and corridors are low and rather dark. Our bath is an enormous sunken tiled one, the washstand is about a foot lower than any I have use.”
“We had lunch in a Japanese cafeteria yesterday; dinner at the Imperial Hotel; lunch today at the Seyoken Restaurant in Ueno Park. We have driven around the city and have seen all the advertised sights. At the shrine of the Second Shogun, a famous piece of architecture the Buddist priest had me ring the gong and taught me a little Japanese prayer to repeat to hammer strokes on the drum.”
“We don’t get any war excitement because we can’t understand Japanese. The people seem very quiet and unconcerned. Right now, no American can go to Peiping, but the trouble may be over in five weeks. We take the train tonight for Matsushima, a seaside resort nine hours north of Tokyo. From there we go to the mountain resort of Nikko because it is cool. I am having a good time although I do have homesick moments.
Perhaps unknown to Tess at the time, was that after her ship the SS President Hoover reached Hong Kong it was diverted from Hong Kong to evacuate US nationals from Shanghai. On August 30th the liner was moored in the Yangtze River, awaiting clearance to enter the Wysong River to reach the Port of Shanghai when, despite a 30-foot US flag draped on her top deck behind the bridge to identify her to aircraft as a neutral US ship, the Republic of China Air Force mistook her for the Japanese troopship Asama Maru and bombed her.
One bomb hit President Hoover's top deck, killing a crewman from the mess hall. Fragments from another bomb penetrated the main saloon, wounding six crew and two passengers. One of President Hoover's radio officers transmitted a distress call stating that Chinese aircraft were attacking her. Both an IJN destroyer and a Royal Navy cruiser came in response, but in the event only medical help was needed. Despite her casualties President Hoover sustained only minor damage, but she aborted the rescue mission to Shanghai and returned to San Francisco for repairs.
After repairs, the steamship SS President Hoover returned to service, departing from San Francisco on November 22, 1937, for Kobe and Manila. She was barely more than half-full, with only 503 passengers. During the voyage the Dollar Lines management signaled President Hoover's Master, George W Yardley, "You must be in Manila, absolutely urgent that you arrive not later than 6 a.m. 12th December, make all possible speed".
During a typhoon on December 11th President Hoover struck a reef off Taitung City in south-eastern Taiwan. Her bottom was torn open as far aft as her engine room and she came to rest with a slight list to port. It took 36 hours to evacuate the passengers who all survived. The ship was declared a total loss and after the owners retrieved some of the furnishings, they sold the ship for salvage. End of Part One--
Tess Mueller’s Around the World Adventures will continue in Part Two. Through her letters, Tess recounts her travels through the Sino-Japanese War zone. Would she get to visit Peking and the Great Wall of China. She further reports her journey throughout Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Manila, Bali, Java, Singapore, Bangkok, Rangoon Burma, Cambodia, Calcutta, Delhi and Jaspur India, the Suez Canal, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Athens, Sicily, Naples, Rome, Florence, Bolonga, Innsbruck, Munich, Rothenberg, Nurnberg, Vienna, Pague, Warsaw, Moscow, Leningrad, Stockholm, Norway, Scotland, England, and Ireland, She spent often one to eight weeks at each stop. There is way too much information for a single article in this newsletter so we will try to do her justice, by serializing her story over several of the next “Along the Riverway” newsletters.
In Our Collection--The Letters of Tess Mueller. (Part Two)
[Part one covered the first month of Tess Mueller’s 14-month trip around the world. Part two continues for three more months, travelling in Japan, Korea and China.]
On August 20th, 1937, Tess writes from Tokyo after touring Kikko.
“There must have been a mobilization order about the time we left Kikko, because a contingent of drafted soldiers took the same train we did. The mayor made a speech, friends stood around holding while flags with red circles, everything was very orderly and quiet. Just as the train pulled out someone started the national anthem, and everyone waved his flag. We picked up soldiers at every stop. Well-wishers were lined up along the right of way and waved their flags and heered. The school children were out in force. It was all very disheartening. From the beginning, in Tokyo we had noticed women standing at busy street corners to collect the thousand stitches for the charm belts for their soldiers. These are long strips of cotton cloth with a thousands little dots stamped on them. A thousand women embroider each one little dot, and I suppose, say a little prayer for the safe keeping of the soldier is to receive the belt.”
Later in the letter Tess writes: “We plan on going to Korea to stay one week in Seoul and two weeks in the Diamond Mountains and then return for three more weeks in Japan.”
The Diamond Mountains are in present day North Korea. Upon their return to Japan Tess writes:
“Now that the matter is settled against us, I must confess that we tried our darnedest to get to Peking if only for a week. The Tourism Bureau in Seoul, Korea, wouldn’t sell us a ticket so we tried again in Kobe, Japan. We went to see the consul one day. He urged us not to go. When we went to the OSK Steamship line the next morning the American consul had been in that morning and asked a special favor that they sell no tickets to Americans without the consul’s special ok in every case, so we quit trying.”
“On the train between Shimonoseki and Miyajima, Bess had the good fortune to sit next to the managing editor of a Japanese newspaper in Dairen. He thought we were very foolish not to go to Peking. He had been there just the week before. He assured us there were two passenger trains daily running between Tangtu, the port for Tientsin and Peking, and while he admitted that the passenger trains were shunted to a siding to let the troop trains pass, he insisted they always got there.”
This encounter gave courage to Tess and Beth to revise their plans and make their way to China.
Tess writes on October 15, 1937.
“We are on the “Chokomaru” anchored outside the bar, which cannot be crossed at low tide, waiting to get into Tangku and from there to Tsientsin and Peking. We have booked our return passage for two weeks from now, so that by the time you receive this, I shall be safe in Japan, and it will be too late for you to worry.”
Tess writes that after waiting onboard 12 hours for the tide to rise, they were able to disembark. They then had to wait 6 more hours before they boarded the train to Peking. They passed the time in a Kailin Mining Association Club House as there were no restaurants in Tangku. The building was bombed just the week prior. Tess continues with her letter of October 16th.
“The train left at the scheduled hour, 2:30 AM and got to Tientsin on time, 4 PM. The first-class coach was very comfortable and well taken care of. From the train windows this part of China appeared to be a land of the dead. I looked out over flat fields and saw endless stacks of grain and hay running off toward the horizon, or so I thought. Imagine my surprise when Miss Dyott said they were graves! The Chinese put conical mounds of mud over their dead: large mounds for important people, exaggerated molehills for lesser people. At the top of each mound, they wound a knob like the button on top of a mandarin cap.”
“The mandarin cap is very common here and finishes off the long Chinese Gown most appropriately. The northern Chinese are a tall sturdy muscular race with strong white teeth.”
“We took a long walk through the English and French concessions. The English section is most impressive with handsome new buildings. By the way, we saw some of the buildings wrecked in the earlier bombing near the station. In the French concession – which is a bit of Paris transplanted – we like best the food street, where vender after vender had trays of appetizing roasted ducks and roasted chickens, to say nothing of roast chestnuts, rolled pancakes, various kinds of fry cakes and many other things, the sight of which wetted our appetite for the very fine dinner we had here at the hotel.”
“We get up at 5:45 tomorrow to catch the 7:40 train for Peking …. These handsome Oriental cities amaze me. Did you know that Tientsin has over 3,000,000 inhabitants?”
From Peking China, October 23, 1937. “Our first week in Peking has been an unqualified success. Everything is so pleasant that it is hard to believe that the American Consul thought it dangerous for us to come here. We bowl along the streets in our rickshaws without a hindrance. We have covered the entire two week’s sightseeing program of the average tourist in the six days just past.”
From Peking China, November 8, 1937. “Last Saturday an English woman named Lady Wood, a Miss MacLean of New Zealand, Miss Plaum of California, a Chinese woman named Mrs. Chou, and I went to the Great Wall. The Japan Tourist Bureau and the Japanese embassy said it was entirely safe, and they were certainly right. It was not only safe, it was an extremely pleasant day. The wall was thrilling and the bright sunshine kept us warm even at a 2000-foot altitude. You should have seen me on my tall donkey! I had to stand on a rock to mount him, to the great amusement of some Japanese sentries.”
From Shimonoseki, Japan, November 15, 1937. “Here I am, on my way to Kobe to sail on the “President Taff” for Hong Kong on November 17th. The trip to Peking went off without a hitch in spite of all dire predictions. Even the trains ran on schedule for us.
There is always a two hour wait in Shimonoseki after the night ferry arrives from Fusan in Korea, but this hotel opposite the station is excellent. For a little less than 35 cents American, I have just finished a breakfast of fresh orange juice, oatmeal, ham and eggs, brown bread toast and coffee. I was casting up accounts the train yesterday and find that since landing in Japan on August 7, I have been spending at the rate of $6.00 a day which is considerably more than I expected to spend. The side trip to Peking came high, but I don’t begrudge a cent of the money, as I may never be able to afford to come this way again. I don’t spend $6 every day, but $600 divided by the number of days gives the average.
After spending 4 months traveling throughout Japan, Korea and China, Tess was ready to move on with 10 months and many thousands of miles to go, Part 3 will print in our Spring 2025 newsletter and will pick up her travels in Hong Kong, Manila, Bali, Jama, Singapore, Bangkok, Rangoon Burma, Cambodia, Calcutta, Delhi and Jaspur India, the Suez Canal, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Athens, Sicily, Naples, Rome, Florence, Bolonga, Innsbruck, Munich, Rothenberg, Nurnberg, Vienna, Pague, Warsaw, Moscow, Leningrad, Stockholm, Norway, Scotland, England, and Ireland, She often spent from one to eight weeks at each stop.
In Our Collection--The Letters of Tess Mueller. (Part Three)
By late November 1937 Tess Mueller, Sauk City High School graduate was in her fourth month of her around the world trip. Part Three continues her journey to South Asia countries including the Philippines, Java, Singapore, Bangkok, Penang, Rangoon, and Kuala Lumpur. Tess had become a firsthand observer of the opening acts of the Second World War. She had experienced the unresolved tensions in the aftermath of World War I, the rise of fascism in Europe and militarism in Japan. Key events leading up to the war that she witnessed included the aftermath of Japan's invasion of Manchuria, the Spanish Civil War, the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Germany's annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland. What follows are excerpts from Tess’s letters to her mother and brother back in Sauk City.
Tess departed Hong Kong arriving at the quarantine station for the Philippines on November 25. Tess writes. “All the first-class passengers who had cholera inoculation certificates were allowed to go ashore in a launch… a rather tedious four-hour trip. The port doctors took the cultures of the 750 third-class passengers and tested all of them to weed out the cholera suspects, which took so long that the ship did not tie p at the Manila pier during this cholera scare. They have tested about 18,000 people and have detected about 300 cases of cholera, mild ones all of them, with no deaths. Not a single case has got through the American filter here at Manila, to the great joy and gratitude of the Dutch in the East Indies.”
Tess’s aim was to “shoot the rapids” in Pagsanjan Gorge which she had read about in a travel book. With two other women passengers they lunched at the “much advertised Manila Hotel, where was had an indifferent lunch in what was practically an open-air dining room, with a superb view of Manila Bay."
“At 4:30 the next morning we were called to start on the gorge trip. One passenger and two boatmen to each narrow canoe. There was just light enough as we paddled up the wide, smooth-running river to see the coconut palm silhouetted against the sky. The light increased imperceptive but steadily, so that by the time we reached the gorge we could take in its full beauty. The rock walls were very high, almost sheer, but even so affording a foothold to ferns and palms and twisted banyan trees. We passed literally dozens of waterfalls instead of the promised half-dozen. It was the rainwater cascading down the mountains. The same warm rainwater which was steadily falling down on us from the heavens above. No matter. We were dressed in bathing suits, rope sandals and wide native hats. The river was swollen almost to torrent proportions. Which meant hard work for the paddlers going upstream. Half a dozen times the three of us had to step out of the canoes at the worst rapids to pick our way around or over the slippery boulders while the men sweated at their job of hoisting the canoes over. We understand that this is not necessary when the water is low. There are about 10 or 12 rapids in the gorge, with the calm stretches between, The up-river journey ends in a quiet fern-fringe pool, with Pagsanjan Falls tumbling into it.”
"The return trip was mildly exciting. You have seen men shooting rapids in northwoods travel films, haven't you I I am sure we would have made a good picture. It is the most exhilarating experience even an inhibited old timer like me want to whoop with joy. Going up I kept thinking how fearfully dangerous the return trip would be, but it was no such thing. It was just fun. My boatman and Miss Townsend's added several unnecessary thrills. Vessels had no accidents whatever when they learned that she could not swim. My two men overplayed their hand when they assured me just before the return that I must not be afraid that even if the canoe overturned, the two would tow me to safety. That even if the canoe was broken on a rock, they would rescue me. That was going to be going a little too far. After that, I just settled down to enjoy myself.”
“Going down, we careened over to one side of the gorge. Too close to a waterfall, the spray of which washed up washed my hat off my head. We slithered around the rocks. Sometimes we were going sideways and once even backwards. We were constantly shipping water and bailing frantically between Rapids. That is, the men were. Twice we were awash. I sat in water to my waist while my heroes boldly leaped overboard and swam, steering the canoe to a flat rock at the edge so that I could get I could step out while they emptied the boat. While they emptied the water. I had the time of my life; not once did I make an effort to save myself. My boat men were incredibly agile and skillful and I let them show off to their hearts content.”
Upon returning to Manila Tess discovered that she had received 22 letters. “I do love getting some letters at last. I spoke of you often to my companions. There are so many things I’d like to know. Please write often and omit no homey details…. This letter is too long for anyone except faithful family members to read. I feel sorry for you, but I just had to spill over; I had such a good time. Much love, Tess.
By December 4th Tess arrives in Bali after having crossed the equator. She received a certificate for crossing the equator. She participated in the traditional King Neptune’s Court onboard the “Tjisadane”, “with half a dozen passengers lathered and shaved and tossed into the swimming pool.”
“Bali in appearance comes just about as close to being a paradise on earth as any place could. In fact, it's beauty becomes a little monotonous. The remotest corners are more beautifully swept and garnished than the most celebrated city part at home. It is just too good to be true, but it is true just the same.”
Tess arrived in Calcutta India on January 2nd, 1938, after stops in Java, Singapore, Bangkok, Penang, Rangoon, and Kuala Lumpur. “We were quite keen about Bangkok. Chinese temples or wats really look Oriental. They are magnificent things, not garish or gaudy as the postcards lead one to think. We also enjoyed our trip by launch along the klongs or canals, which Bangkok is honeycombed. Angkor Wat was hard to get to, but well worth the effort. After 8 1/2 hours on the train, we had to do 167 kilometers by car. You stayed at a little French hotel and made no acquaintance, because our French was inadequate. The ruins of the temple we saw for the first time by moonlight, as all travelers are advised to do so. Then we threaded our way along the dark stone corridors. Bess was escorted by little Cambodian girl with an improvised lantern, and I by a boy with a flaring torch which smelled of incense. We came upon groups of Buddhist priests in saffron robes chanting in the deserted courtyards, it was all very satisfying.”
In Tess’s second week in India she “had a sunrise trip to Tiger Hill to be above a whole ocean of clouds and to see the rising sun touch first the topmost points of giant Kanchenjunga, which is over 28,000 feet and then one by one the more the other snow peaks of the Himalayas as far as the eye could reach. Mount Everest was a little white cone way off to the left. At Benares we saw thousands of pilgrims bathing in the holy Ganges. We saw two swathed woman's corpses on flimsy bamboo biers, placed in the water until the cremation pyres on the burning ghat were ready. At Clarks Hotel we saw snake charmers with three cobras. We watched a Mongoose kill a snake. We saw a perfectly remarkable sleight of hand performer do his tricks under our very eyes in the brightly lighted lounge.”
Tess visits Bombay, Madras, Madura, Kandy and Colombo Sri Lanka. She boarded the Rtotterdam Lloyd SS “Baloneran” on February 9th for arrival at Port Said in Egypt on February 18th She hoped to catch a glimpse of Gandhi before she departs she had written to Gandhi’s secretary requesting to meet but she apparently did not get a response.
Part four in our Fall Newsletter (September 2025) will cover the next leg of Tess’s travels including the great pyramids of Egypt. Then on to Palestine including Jerusalem, Jordan and Lebanon, Greece and then Italy.
In Our Collection—The Letters of Tess Mueller. (Part Four)
By late February 1938. Tess Mueller Sauk City High School graduate had arrived in Egypt. It had been seven months, since her departure from San Francisco. She had toured extensively in the Far East. Tess included a photo in her next letter from the Savoy Hotel in Luxor, Upper Egypt, on February 26th, 1938. “Florence and I are on camels, which we hired to ride around the pyramids and Sphinx at Giza. It was 5:30 in the afternoon and so the light was not very strong.” “Egypt is painfully expensive because this is the height of the tourist season, but it is a source of never-ending joy to an ancient history fan like me. We saw the temple of Karnak yesterday morning under the guidance of a dragoman, but we really enjoyed the temple at Luxor more on our own.” .... “The Savoy is a German hotel and very pleasant, except for the comments my companions make on the large group of Germans staying here. They look on them as Hitlerites and therefore villains.”
On March 10th. From the Hotel Fast in Jerusalem, Tess writes to her brother Otto. “I am wishing you many happy returns for March 23rd. With the $5 enclosed, I want you to buy yourself a real birthday present. I’d dearly love to be in Sauk to help Mother, and you celebrate the two great events only a week apart. Flowers are out on the hillsides. There is a beautiful Palestine anemone in deep purple and dark red which looks like a poppy of which I'm going to try to get some seeds. The flowers will look decorative on Crocus Hill.”
“Jerusalem is getting under our skins. We just love it. Half a dozen people warned us that we would be disappointed and disillusioned, but instead we have been tremendously impressed by our two days of sightseeing under the guidance of a Syriac Christian Arab who certainly knows his Bible history. Yesterday we drove to Bethlehem to see the Church of the Nativity. Every part of the stable has been parceled out. One sect controls the spot where Christ was born, another the manger etc. To prevent vindictive rivalry and bitter quarreling among the sects, all denominations have been forbidden to place articles of which are old or worn out. So, everything is tawdry and shabby and somehow touching and pleasing and in keeping with the tradition of poverty. Yesterday we also saw the Mount of Olives, today the Garden of Gethsemane, Bethany and the ancient and modern Jericho. Crossed the muddy River Jordan and ate our lunch on the shore of the Dead Sea. The mountains of Mohab and the hills of Judea are green now after the spring rains, and the grazing flocks of sheep and their shepherds probably look exactly like those of 1,938 years ago.”
“You suppose you can find Aman and Moan and Jerash and Petra on the map? They are all in Transjordania, one of the new British mandates. The head of the American Institute of Oriental Research told us yesterday noon that the road was open for the first time since the winter rains, and by 3:00 Florence and I had changed all our plans and agreed to go on a 5-day auto trip.”
On March 12, 1938 Tess writes “We started early this morning and have been driving up and down mountainsides all day long in the same comfortable 7 passenger Buick, I mentioned in an earlier letter. We ate our picnic lunch sitting on some boulders on the sunny top of the Mohab mountains. Then we went down, Florida River and started up the Gilead Mountains. This afternoon we visited Jerash an ancient Roman city (Jassassa), ruined by an earthquake, I believe. The main street, with its paving blocks still in excellent condition, was colonnaded from one end to the other. The Temple of Artemis was another imposing ruin.”
“We shall have to start out at 7:00 AM tomorrow in order to reach Petra before dark. The last few miles must be made on horseback through a gorge, too narrow for a car. I sent Otto a postcard picture of it. You can see why it is difficult for me to furnish you with an itinerary. It is wonderful to be able to change one's mind at any time in order to take advantage of a good opportunity.”
By March 27th,1938 Tess had arrived in Athens Greece. “I am really ashamed to start in again by telling you how crazy we are about Greece after raving at such length about Palestine. Perhaps it is a spring season which is casting its spell upon us in each country in turn. But if I hadn't decided that the Altar of Heaven in Peking was the most perfect thing in the world, and then a few months later decided that the Taj Mahal was even better, I would maintain that the Parthenon in the rain-washed air this afternoon was the most beautiful of all. I won't even try to describe the view from the Acropolis. The memory of it is one of the treasures I shall lay by for my old age. When that time comes, I won't envy my more thrifty friends of their dollars but shall cheerfully count out my pennies and revel in my memories.”
After leaving Greece, Tess visits the island of Crete and then a week in Sicily and planned to arrive in Rome by April 25, 1938. There were many German tourists in Rome when Tess arrived. “The town is jammed with Germans and most of the important museums and galleries are closed to our great annoyance and to the annoyance of a great many of the Germans also, I am sure. Germans are not allowed by their government to travel anywhere except in Italy and at times in Yugoslavia, because the exchange is unfavorable everywhere else. And at that they usually have to wait four months for their travel application to be granted. It must, under the circumstances, be very annoying to have to have nowhere to go in the rain. In Rome there will be a big parade tomorrow for which the Germans will have seats and we not.” “Don't worry about war scares, we always go to see the American Consul and take his advice and he knows more facts than our jingoistic American newspapers. Our schedule is never hard and fast as you have learned to your annoyance by this time as I gather from your protests, and if conditions look bad anywhere, we just change our itinerary, even on few moments notice.”
Upon arriving in Germany Tess’s letters become shorter in length and less frequent. She spends just a week in Germany and ten days to see Vienna, Prague, Warsaw and arrive in Moscow in late June staying four days. On June 25th Tess writes: “Dear Mother, It seem hard to believe that at last I am to see Russia”. … ‘It is nine o’clock and the sun is just deciding to set. It is light until 10:30 PM…. This New Moscow Hotel counts as third-class hotel. We pay between $4.50 and $5.00 a day for an all-inclusive program, including two hours of sightseeing each day. The New Moscow must have been one of the finest hotels in Czarist days. The dining rooms on the eighth floor command the most superb view in Moscow and are lined with light gray polished marble and have quantities of exquisite crystal chandeliers and wall brackets.”….
“Moscow is all torn up in a most ambitious building program. Whole blocks of houses are being torn down to provide modern huge open squares and the widest streets in the world…..The food also been very good so far, although have not been offered any caviar for my three meals up to date.”
From Leningrad Tess writes to her brother Otto. “Moscow is a city on the make. One is impressed with its energy and force and also with its ugliness. The only beauty spot in it is the ancients Kremlin, and that tourists are not permitted to see…. Leningrad, on the other hand, is pathetically shabby, but lovely. It is built on 101 islands and has 574 bridges and number of parks and palace gardens and tree-lined boulevards with water and water everywhere. In Moscow you just long for the sight of a tree. But the force, the power of this Russian nation is overwhelming.”
During the next four weeks Tess visits Finland, Sweden and Norway. She sails to England and departs Southampton aboard the SS Washington for home “which after all, and considering all, is the best place of all.” Tess’s fourteen-month trip around the world visiting 29 countries just prior to the start of World War II concludes. Upon returning to America, the Pioneer Press published her account of the trip on September 1, 1938. By 1952 Tess retired to Sauk City from her teaching career. She was a member of the Unitarian Fellowship Free Congregation and it's Ladies Aid, the National Federation of Republican Women and its Sauk County Club, the Sauk City Historical Society. And the Sauk-Prairie Hospital Auxiliary.
Condensed and edited by J.W. Hart (2025)
Tripp Accession Number 2005.165.0002
Tripp Accession Number 2005.165.0002