Geneva, Aug. 19Honey dear: -
Isn't Geneva a nice city? We've just hired a little old man and a buggy with a parasol and gone around on our own itinerary. It cost about like the "shouter's" wagon, and we may know less at this moment, but the horse is a gentle beast and seemed to suit us.
Mont Blanc has been "out" both last night as we came in by train and part of the time this afternoon, though the light on it suddenly grew grey today. It surely is wonderfully impresive when all white and gleaming. I hope tomorrow to get up the Mount Seléve [sic] near here if the weather looks hopeful. It would be a little nearer Mont Blanc and doesn't take long. The Chamonnix trip makes too long and hard a day from here - we certainly do hate those early starts!
But that Lake! Isn't the water a little more brilliant blue than any you ever saw elsewhere? It seems to me perfectly gorgeous! We drove down to a place where we could see the two rivers come together, the Rhone from the Lake, and we know how it was grey and opaque from the Rhone glacier and how it got the Visp from the Matterhorn and all its neighbors, all loaded with sediment - sediment which must be filling up the Lake of Geneva for none is now in that lovely water! Well, this Rhone meets the Arve, very grey! The driver says that comes from the Mer de Glace, but I've not looked it up yet. Anyhow the mingling of the two was interesting.
We went to church at the Cathedral, a good orthodox service, only I couldn't understand it. Tomorrow night there is an organ concert to which we hope to go. The cathedral seems small, but the town empty, so we hope to get tickets. The organ is highly praised and the programme is good. The cathedral began as Romanesque and goes on to Gothic, with an absurd Greek facade - which doesn't hurt the inside. I wish we had a day to stop at Dijon, but we haven't. Tuesday we have to arrive in Paris late or else take a night train - which means that we see nothing! The train from Visp here was a real through express, fast and heavy - and it felt good to us, after all these little cog trains and such. Most of them are electrified. Oh, we looked into the huge electrical works here, built right out on that Rhone current, and as big as the Troll-hätten show in Sweden, though quite different in style. There must be 16-18 huge generators, all in one L-shaped room, and all immaculate.
We drove out by the League of Nations building and I sure did have a pang when I saw the inscription naming the Quai for Woodrow Wilson, "founder of the Lague of Nations." I wonder if he was! Anyhow he did a lot, even if we aren't decent enough to be in. The new site for the Palace is stunning, in a park with beautiful trees, and overlooking that gorgeous blue lake and with the view of Mont Blanc. The International Labor Office is a huge building, very severe and plain, but with a few sculptured decorations to relieve it. It has dignity in spite of its plainness. The present League buildings spills all over into annexes and such - they need the new palace. I've not seen the Hall of the Reformation yet, in which the general sessions are held.
I'd never seemed to know about the international monument to the Reformation - a thing as notable as the Lincoln memorial. I'll try to find some pictures. I've not read the inscriptions yet - it takes time - but it is a huge thing built against the slope of a hill, with gigantic figures of Calvin, Knox and two gentlemen I ought to know about but don't, Beze & somebody else. Then there are lesser lights like Roger Williams with appropriate reliefs like the signing of the Mayflower covenant and a long quotation from it. There may be 6 or 8 of these things. In front of the whole is a shallow pool with water lilies, and a terrace with steps leading down to the pool level. It's very effective - but Calvin &c are rather grotesquely patriarchal and Egyptian at first sight. I have an idea another look will be more appreciative.
There are lots of parks, and the few shops whose shades were up today make me fear for the morrow! They looked grand. The hotels we struck in Switzerland were the good middle grade, but expensive, and I have an idea this may be a bit worse. It is delightfully comfortable, and thanks be, vegetables are getting more abundant. The gardens and vineyards are very flourishing. I'd like to stay here until the League Assembly, but not so, we go on day after tomorrow. Alice has to find another dentist tomorrow - two fillings out, the one put in temporarily back a spell and another big one. Our bags came through very well from Innsbruck, fairly high express, but I think we should have paid more to have them with us, and it would have been difficult to manage, not over the Stelvio, though there luggage was weighed, but in the little Swiss mountain railroad trains.
We met three stunning tall Belgian girls on the train yesterday, who had been up at Sass Fee, a place in the next valley east of Zermatt, where the only access is by mule-back or walking! And there are several hotels there, with 50 beds &c apiece! These girls had walked 11 miles or more to take the train - and they looked sohealthy. There was also an intolerable English woman who knocked one of our bags on to her foot and then blamed Alice for it! (The porter now pulls down the shutters - we have both awnings and shutters!) But I must stop and write another note or two - acknowledge the Starr gift - thank you for the address. Oh - I'm sure I must have missed several of your letters. I've not heard now for ages, and missed some earlier. Part of it is tied up with the Cortina episode, but part of it must be some other calamity. Alice has just had here two of Ula's letters which had been lost out earlier, but hers have come through much better than mine and I do think you've written to me, even though I seem to have had almost no other letters. It would be pleasant to see some! Did I say that we stay at the Amer. Univ. Women's Club in Paris? Very pleasant, I hope. Good night -
Aug. 20. I'm on the top of the Grand Saléve and have communicated to the girl my desire for a small bottle of mineral water! This is French territory and while thirst is one reason, the desire for a little French change is another. There are a good many flies and wasps about, but in spite of haze it's a sweet place. Mont Blanc is blue in the haze, not white, and sometimes missing and only a part of the Lake is visible. It rained after lunch and I gave up the idea of coming and went to sleep - to wake to bright sun just before car-time. Alice had decided to sleep anyway. She's getting more let-down from the change in altitude than I am perhaps because she stayed higher these last days. But it was pretty good up there - she made two trips to the Gorner Grat.
This is the last mountain for the season, alas! They have been so lovely. It's not a very good specimen, though steep enough on the Geneva side, ledges mostly. It's the end of the summer and has been dry. And there are flies as in our small places. But the Geneva hotel is free from them, I think. It's an excellent place. If I stayed I'd be sure to gain back the few pounds I hope I've lost - and I don't want to!
The next letter will be from Paris, and I do hope I'll have some myself there.
Much love -
Abby -