Isabella took a lot of Road Trips.

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Miss Isabella wanted to see everything. That's all. If proper Victorian ladies were expected to prefer the parlor to anything outside, it was nothing to her. She had little interest in being proper. Her interest was in the wide-world beyond.

She was boldly curious from birth. At age six she asked a campaigning MP, "Did you tell my father my sister was pretty because you wanted his vote"?

She was also sickly from birth.

Her aliments were vague, but persistent. The doctor thought her health would improve with an active life out-of-doors. Isabella took to the idea enthusiastically, becoming expert in riding and rowing.

When not outside, astride a horse or behind an oar, she was inside a book; as passionate about learning as doing. Her ambitions were wide and deep. By age sixteen Miss Bird was writing thoughtful articles for various periodicals.

In odd contradiction to all that activity she still suffered from "lassitude and insomnia".

I can't quite believe young Isabella suffered from "lassitude and insomnia". I think it was all an artful doge. I think Isabella experienced "lassitude" when confronted with some boring domestic duty, and "insomnia" when the exciting prospect of a new adventure kept her awake.

In 1854 she had opportunity to visit family in America. The doctor thought a sea-voyage would invigorate her. Her Father thought she should stay abroad for as long as invigoration required.

Isabella wrote home regularly, "lassitude and insomnia" apparently abated. Her engaging letters home turned into her first travel book: An Englishwoman in America.

She didn't stop traveling and writing.

Isabella followed her trip to America with a trip to Australia, then on to the Sandwich Isles - now called, Hawaii - where she wrote: Six Months in the Sandwich Islands. A few years later She recorded her adventure in Colorado as: A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains.

She wrote book after book filled with colorful description for each of her excursions around the world. I've read her Hawaii book and her Rocky Mountain book. I imagine all her books equally delightful. Miss Bird's style is cinematic. A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains would make a good movie.

What filmmaker could resist the temptation of turning Isabella's near romance with Mountain Man, Jim Nugent, into a full romance.

The mutual attraction of Isabella and Jim is written clearly, though Isabella tells it with proper Victorian decorum. The two spent many days galloping across the Rocky Mountain meadow valley known as, Estes Park.

They reveled in the wild beauty all around them, even when challenged with the lofty dangers of exploring afoot high up the snowy peaks.

Isabella evocative prose captures their explorations with poetic flourish.

Jim Nugent was drawn to Isabella's plucky adventurousness. Isabella was drawn to Jim Nugent's wild derring-do. She found him handsome despite his disfiguring scar.

Not long before Isabella's arrival Jim had run crossways a grizzly. The scuffle had left him with a gnarly scar on one side of his face and missing an eye. The bear wasn't so lucky.

Isabella, nevertheless, found him attractive, She thought Jim's predilection to incautious violence offset by his charming interest in poetry. She sometimes referred to him as her, "dear desperado". Nugent wanted to marry her. She demurred.

She later wrote, "Jim was a man any woman could love, but no woman would marry"

About a year after leaving Colorado, Isabella was informed that Jim Nugent had met his end, killed in a remote mountain cabin shootout.

The killer was never prosecuted.

Isabella was saddened by Jim's death but already far away in Japan, writing a new book: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan - her tale of life amongst the primitive Ainu people.

Miss Bird traveled the globe for the rest of her life, writing story after story of far-away people and places. There would be nothing like her nineteenth-century travel books until James Michener started writing his twentieth-century travel books.

Michener's books are technically historical novels, yet both writers share similarities. Miss Bird's books were first-hand accounts of the lands and peoples she visited. Michener's books were fictional novels of real lands and peoples he imagined.

The difference between experienced-fact and well-researched-fiction isn't all that great. James Michener's painstaking research assured verity for his fictional novels. Isabella's personal experience assured verity for the books she wrote.

Both wrote truly.

Isabella never stopped writing and traveling. Her total discography includes sixty books of world-wide travel, along with innumerable articles and essays.

On the day before her death, she was planning a new trip to China.

By K. L. Shipley

Website: https://www.eclecticessays