Travelling from the US to Europe in the latter half of the 1890s
Oh, god, but my Google-fu has failed me, and my search through the tags of this splendiferous comm has been fruitless. Even Google Advanced searching hasn't yielded anything. Perhaps you good gentles can help me with a few questions?
I have a character (male, early twenties, from a wealthy family but with little means of his own as his father has just cut him off without a penny in a moment of High Drama) in urgent need of passage from Boston to Venice. As he only has on his person a pair of silver cufflinks and a gold pocketwatch, I'm not sure he could afford the fare for one of the big ocean liners but I'm also not sure what other options would have been available to him. Basically, then, my questions are:
1) How would this poor young gentleman have got from Boston to Venice?
2) Roughly how long would this have taken?
3) How much would it have cost?
3b) How much would a pair of silver, mother-of-pearl inlaid cufflinks and a plain, gold pocketwatch (with a gold chain) have been worth, with a view to his selling them to pay for his ticket? Would that even have been feasible?
4) Am I being a complete twit, and should I, in time-honoured oh-god-the-deadline-is-looming tradition just skip over this bit of the story and hope to distract my readers with a sex scene later on?
I have a character (male, early twenties, from a wealthy family but with little means of his own as his father has just cut him off without a penny in a moment of High Drama) in urgent need of passage from Boston to Venice. As he only has on his person a pair of silver cufflinks and a gold pocketwatch, I'm not sure he could afford the fare for one of the big ocean liners but I'm also not sure what other options would have been available to him. Basically, then, my questions are:
1) How would this poor young gentleman have got from Boston to Venice?
2) Roughly how long would this have taken?
3) How much would it have cost?
3b) How much would a pair of silver, mother-of-pearl inlaid cufflinks and a plain, gold pocketwatch (with a gold chain) have been worth, with a view to his selling them to pay for his ticket? Would that even have been feasible?
4) Am I being a complete twit, and should I, in time-honoured oh-god-the-deadline-is-looming tradition just skip over this bit of the story and hope to distract my readers with a sex scene later on?