Letter Written on Jul 22, 1928

Hotel Hammerand

Wien, Sunday, July 22

Honey dear: -

And I haven't written you a word from Vienna, and now we're leaving it. This is on the train and it may be impossible to write now.

Vienna is great. In spite of the 200,000 strangers, we had a fine time, though I must say they were omnipresent and at times we longed for peace. We had it to be sure at our hotel, one recommended by Mabel Hedge from Miss Reimer of Barnard, a charmingly quiet spot with no singers, mostly American guests and no parties. There was a little courtyard with ivy on the walls and up three queer plumy trees and Venus in the middle. Every dinner we ate out there. And there was an exquisite concert of chamber music, Schubert's of course, in the courtyard of his "Birth-house" only about 150 folks, - lovely music. The musicians were in a little balcony and the audience down in the flagged court with a little marble maiden at a fountain on one side and trees in a garden at the farther end. Several of the windows had cushions this shape [sketch of long rectangle with wavy bottom edge] fitting right on the sills, for folks to lean their elbows on as they looked out, common device in Vienna!

The Sängerbund fest was AN EVENT! I hope our papers will tell you about it - I'd like to know what they say. We now read the German newspapers and get some of the meaning. It has been the subject in these days and treated not only as a musical but as a political thing, bringing the German people together. One of our morning papers told of the significance of the two nations, one I read yesterday seemed to me to go farther in implying a closer union. Another said the extra sausages consumed by the 200,000 would stretch frim Vinna to Linz, a 3 hr. express train trip! (when I get a joke in German I feel encouraged.) There were 3 huge concerts in the new auditorium in the Prater (whose Haupt Allee is not like the Tier Garten). This thing is built of wood by remarkable bracing and holds 100,000, "Raucher Verboten." The seats are just benches, no backs to them. Entrances along both sides - Going to it was like going to a foot-ball game at Yale. At one place these Danube-like streams of folks were divided into two by a double row of police, holding hands.

You had a number on your ticket - but you sat any place in the general region and were thankful there was any seat left. The singers were in a great semicircle at one end, 40,000 of them. I think each band sang only once at a big concert. There were amplifiers for the speaker who announced the numbers and the president who made a few remarks, but I think not for the main singing, though it was broadcast for all Germany &c. And that music! If heaven is a place where folks sing and hear, the multitude will sound like that. Never, never did I hear anything like the majesty or beauty of that tone - organ-like, but alive. They sang two Schubert things, one a hymn, and then two patriotic things, both new, I should say. That huge audience - probably 70,000 inside for all aisles were packed with standing people - was quiet during the singing, and then how they cheered - as much enthusiasm as a foot-ball crowd! But different! Outside were maybe another 100,000 - and all the cheap side-shows and eats that go with a curcus! We left one number before the end, for two lone Amer. women in that crowd seemed to need the help of discretion in getting home. We had gone by a wrong trolley, because we could do it by changing and we could get on! But we wanted to ask how to find the right one! So I asked a policeman - who called another fair young one who spoke English and then about a dozen stood around in a friendly way to help us on!

Vienna courtesy is as real and sweet as you can imagine. The contrast to Berlin is amazing. Folks weren't discourteous there, but these were remarkable. And easily ten times as much English about shops and so on. The tram conductors, the traffic officers (who were busy), all the little people one meets, and the nice people, too - they all had it - just like the Viennese gentleman at Linz who took us to the car with an umbrella! 'Twas real and unfailing. I'd like to live in Vienna for quite a while. Why don't you consider it seriously? It's such a stunning place, too. Not so overpowering as Berlin, more versatile, I should say - and I'll bet it's more comfortable. Better eats, too, as far as our experience went, though we didn't suffer in Berlin.

Picture gallery - fine of course. No great picture like Dresden, but a fine collection. I never saw so many Velasquez-s together. Rubens was a prolific artist! But I wish he had done portraits only and left out those naked fat women. There is a splendid private gallery in Vienna which we didn't get to at all.

St. Stephans Dom is interesting, very, but all thse countries seem to have so many baroque monuments and altars even if the original is simple. The west portal of St. Stephan's is very much older than the rest and very quaint and simple, and the tower is quite splendid. No good glass anywhere yet.

In Vienna there was another great hygiene exhibition, "Frau und Kind," and again the Dresden Hygiene Museum did most of the impressive part. They get in so much science! There was more obstetrics than I try to teach, and a good bit of heredity, syphilis &c &c. Of course infant feeding - and such a series of bedrooms down through the centuries, ending with suitably furnished bedrooms, nursery, living rooms &c. And the folks were looking at things so carefully! It was all most interesting.

(Our Friends have done a good bit to help finance Frau und Kind)

One of the best things of course is medicine and Dr. von Pirquet's children's clinic. Dr. Sherwood gave me a letter to that great man but he was out of the city and gave the letter to the man I really wanted to see, the Dr. Helmreich whose work I knew of. He is a sweet man, about the Drinker age, able and intent in his metabolism studies and I had such a good time with him! He first took us about the clinic, 100 & 6 children in the hospital, often as many more dispensary cases each day, and then of course the other children's diseases. The place is white & blue tiled, with friezes &c of gay, playing children - oh, so fascinating. Maybe 50 children were sunning their backs on the roof, standing in a long line. Then we went to the lab. and he told me what he had done, and all so modestly and simply. I think he is one of the first assistants to the great man. Anyhow I'd like to see more of him. He gave me a lot of reprints, and I gave him mine - oh, 'twas a fine call!

Then we shopped - I could buy clothes in Vienna - the kind I like! They were there. I have a hand-bag - and a few other things. Oh, etchings! We have some of Kazimir's, the best one. Some of his are 50.00 apiece in N.Y. now, the earlier, scarcer ones - and one I have is lovely. He does Vienna & the little places. There's another man, Figura, who does Paris & Vienna, and Coernig, whose work I liked much. I almost bought you a real water color of the Tyrol mts. but didn't quite dare, though I liked it much. And if you don't like this bunch of stamps, you're no good! It includes that new Cyprus set - and some from these neighboring heathen parts.

But I must stop - the scenery is getting interesting.


Salzburg. Evening. To make a few more remarks about the Sängerbund fest. There were many small concerts - i.e. in the biggest city auditoriums. I went to one only, a memorial mass for a choir master who died this year in the old court church in the palace - very interesting and a different type of music to hear. - The crowds around the town were very decent on the whole. We saw a few drunk ones, and doubtless there were more, but 'twas the "ordinary man" who was there, not the university type in the main. Many had their wives along - and they did swarm into the Cathedral though only a few were at the Art Gallery. - For the big procession today there were bleachers (= "tribunes") all down one section of the Ring, each seat numbered and with flags on a coarse brown sacking for a front wall. This might have been a half mile long. Oh, yes, a green festoon along the top. The Viennese have a sense of harmony and finish in things. It made the shop windows by far the most attractive we've seen, though even these had by far too much in them. - My navy blue dress was cleaned for about $1.50 - very well. Everything is cheaper than in the U.S.A. I think, though not as cheap as in Praha. The papers spoke of this as the gayest time since the war. Dr. Pirquet is surely doing his best for the children. As soon as I finish a little book I have, "Vienna yesterday & today", I shall send it to you. It is excellent. The political situation is most interesting - we got the merest scrap about it - I wish you really would think about it - it seems to me so much more interesting than California.

Journey to Salzburg with little of interest, but this place is going to be fine though the haze would try your soul! We slept a while (had to rise at 5 a.m. for one of those early trains, but we got good places on it.) I really can approach a European station now without heart failure! The porter is everything - they never fail. Today's platform was wonderful - so many mountain climbers, ice-picks, Tyrolese hats and such clothes and parks! The men wear leather shorts with little pinked tabs hanging down at the side. This is well above the knee which is bare, even if the man is 50+. About 5 in. below the knee a woollen section begins, green or grey or dirty white. Then bare ankle, very low socks & hob nailed shoes. They are killing!

Here we have just stepped out a bit into a dusty town. Rain is needed much. Mountains right here, as high as Mt. Wash. but very hazy. We went to hear the carillon - poor - and an organ concert in the cathedral. It boomed and roared and showed off its stops but I heard almost no music. Cathedral a very "pure" 17th cen. Italian - highly uninteresting to me, though unlike anything I ever saw.

Vienna makes almost as good stuffed prunes as those you sent to the ship, and also a coffee variety of caramel that is great. And those fruit caramels, "Heller" is the firm - we get them occasionally in the U.S.A. This was suggested by my stopping to eat!

After the organ music, we passed up a little street just like stage scenery - it seems so un-real somehow - to a mountain R.R. - funicular, went up to the castle which "dominates the city" - beginning in 1077, though this is later, a little. It's like another set of stage scenery, though they might not bother to make the little harebells & ferns (trichomanes & others) in the rock crevices! Of course we went around, and 'twas as convincing a castle as I ever saw. And as usual we could eat on a terrace. We saw a fair sunset pink behind a blue mountain, and then the lights came out below us before we slid down the railroad. The river here rushes like the Danube, though not with its power. And all the churches have nice bells for the clocks.

Tomorrow we go to Berchtesgaden either by our own efforts on electric trains or by a motorbus. We get to Konigsee - but I fear there will be a heavy haze. It's a very dry time and there is no use in waiting for rain. We shall see the near mountains anyhow.

Your last two letters reached me in the wrong order, but the July 6 one was only 12 days, including forwarding from Berlin.

Very much love -
Abby