Special Collections Research Center
spcoll@wm.eduFinding Aid Authors: Benjamin Bromley, Public Services Archives Specialist.
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Preferred Citation:
Coral Patridge Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary
Processing Information:
Accessioned and minimally processed by Benjamin Bromley in November 2010.
Biographical Information:
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Scope and Contents
Papers, 1920s-1941, of Coral Patridge of New York, New York. Includes a travel diary of a trip she took by train from New York to New Mexico in the 1920s. Also includes 29 photographic prints, 9 of which feature New York City; some of the photographs also have descriptive information on the back. There is also an address book, a postcard sent from Germany, and a card with the history of the name "Patridge."
Subjects and Indexing Terms
- American diaries--Women authors
- Diaries
- New Mexico--Description and travel
- United States--Description and travel
- Women travelers--Diaries
- Women--Diaries
- Women--Travel
- Young women--Diaries
Container List
- Mixed Materials Small Collections Box 8 folder: 1 id78506
Papers and Photographscirca 1920s-1941Scope and Contents
Contains a travel diary, an address book, a postcard, and a card with the history of the name "Patridge." The following excerpts from the travel diary were provided by the seller and have not been verified. "Goodbye New York! All Aboard. The same old strident cry. Before every trip. And suggesting inevitably that optimistic philosophy - pushing on. Or is it breaking off? Anyway, it's change. And I like that. Besides, I am not a pessimist. The train starts slowly as tho' reluctant to go. We proceed cautiously in darkness, seeming to feel our way out. Emerge in the open, skirting the upper stretches of Park Avenue. Here the lordly avenue has gone to seed. Come to think of it, it never bloomed this far up. Thru the rapidly receding brick lanes, I catch fleeting glimpses of Central Park. What a happy thought to have imprisoned nature like that" "Not descending too suddenly from the poetic to the prosaic or anything like that, but you can tell a lot by the back of heads. Most of the men have that prosperous bulge above the collar. Looking the length of the car, I decide they are all bloated capitalists. Excepting of course that man over there with the lean and hungry look of Cassius - he's probably a proletariat. There's but one other woman on the car. She's seeking conquest. All frizzed up and so obviously open to advance that several of the men are casting tentative glances her way. She seems uncertain who to select. A lady from Rochester who has been visiting in Albany got on. She is one of those people upon whom silence imposes a hardship. She stores it up as long as she can. Looking wildly around for relief, she pounces upon me. Bang! Bang! went her conversational pop-gun..." "The Mohawk Valley is pastoral and needs summer and sunshine to appear at it's best. Rivers and mountains possess that rugged grandeur that withstands the seasons. But country like this looks shorn of it's verdancy, sort of bedraggled - like a pretty girl caught in the rain. While I slept we have climbed the Raton Pass (?) and emerged in New Mexico. The sky is bluer, the air dryer and more stimulating. And the landscape drenched with color. That wonderful color which artists first have to convey to canvas and the writer to put in words."