Flutterby™! : Sultry Climates

Last time we were in Oliver's Bookstore in San Anselmo, Charlene picked up Sultry Climates: Travel & Sex by Ian Littlewood (University of Sussex press release). It started a little dry, but now I'm fascinated by tourists, from James Boswell's explorations, through the gondoliers of Venice, to Byron's running off to Italy for "trade", to Paul Gaugin's spreading disease across the South Pacific while he tried to keep himself kept by 14 year olds. For those of you considering travel in the near future:

In a letter to Charles Kains-Jackson, who had complained that he could not see the beauty of the Swiss, [Arthur] Symonds wrote from Venice, `A friend of mine, an attaché at St Petersburg, says what is true: "You do not feel the beauty of a nation till you have slept with one of them"'.

In a footnote, Littlewood expands:

Compare, for example, the comment of a young Sudanese on his experiences in Britain: 'One thing I noticed was that you can never understand a people well enough ... until you are in bed with a woman.' (Hopwood, 245.) Or the photographer Mirella Ricciardi on her affair with a black fisherman in Kenya: 'At one with him, I was at one with Africa.' (Telegraph Magazine, 21 October 2000, p. 44.)