Grand Hotel Ribbagården
Grenna
Rikstelefon 30
(Öppen dygnet om.)Grenna den 15 Aug. 1926
Honey dear:-
I wonder if you are in a more attractive place than this! I'm sure it is different, but this is so surprising. Several people told us Gränna was charming, but we got no idea of it somehow. It's on the shore of a big lake, Vettern, a thing we could scarce see across yesterday though today the air is clearer and we find it maybe twice as wide as Vineyard Sound. It's long - at least 40 miles for a guess. At Vadstena we were near one end and yesterday we came down in the afternoon by a little electric train part way, about 1 1/2 hrs, and then by bus for another hour, all rather crowded and humble, and suddenly plunged into elegance and charm. What it is I know not - there are about a dozen portraits on the wall of the dining room, most of them topped by the same coat of arms and crown, there are carved sideboards and cornercupboards [sic], there are liveried persons about, quietly defferential, and waitresses in charming peasant costumes. There are autos and luggage - and such wonderful gardens! There are fruit trees trained on the wall, there are roses, only just going by, there are quantities of sweet peas all in wonderful blossom, and lots of other flowers - and how it all happens, how do we know. The elderly gentleman who is evidently the proprietor speaks English fairly well - contra Vadstena where we found less than anywhere so far - but I don't like to ask him whether he's an old sport who had to retrieve his family fortune by "taking boarders", but who being a sport does it with style and originality, or what it's all about. But here we are, and about to eat our Sunday dinner at 3:30. Breakfast we finished at 10:45 after a restful night under blankets with a most beautiful border in iris pattern. Our "dubble" room in the Annex has not too much light, but it's fairly grand all the same, especially the bureau, and carved corner wardrobe which I'd like to take home.
The town is a gem. We walked, as directed by Miss Klintberg, on the "high street" and found it a succession of small and large houses all with exquisite gardens full of flowers! Who lives in those houses? How do we know? Summer folks? Artists? Who? A dancer was to do interpretative dancing at the Good Templars Hall last evening, but we walked a spell, also down to the Harbor by a "Plant" School with acres of flowers and little trees and such, through an avenue of trees maybe half a mile long. The little lighthouses all along, on the Baltic and here are about big enough for parlor ornaments!
Later. The proprietor whom Anne has found to be a Baron v. Dübin came to converse with us at dinner - really wishing to know how we happened to come, though this question was but an incident in a long conversation. He says the town is populated by Gov't Civil Service pensioners who find it pleasant and with a long summer, by reason of the steep mountain in the lea of which the town lies. Now isn't that amusing? And these elderly persona have time to tend their flower beds! I judge Americans are rare.
Well, yesterday we went to the castle in Vadstena, an honest to goodness fortification in past centuries and still strongly built and whole. The moat is part of the harbor now, with nice clean water. The rooms are bare but impressive and all we understood was the abundance of Gobelin tapestries aforetime! There are traces of old frescoes, of Gothic chapel windows, and of one little fireplace in the corner of a huge hall. If we could only have understood Swedish, even as well as German, we could have gotten more! It was a big place.
We went for lunch into a nice little conditori place and hoped to get an omeette - but we'll never know whether we could have had it! We judged not, but the two nice maids nearly had hysterics over our futile attempts to make them understand, and so did we - so we finally went back to the hotel where omelettes were not unknown. Vadstena was less corrupted by outer influences than any town we've struck. I bought a bit of lace there - from the home industry, the heritage from St. Birgitta and her convent. The lace we found had not much beauty, but I bought a bit, just for fun. I'm sorry not to get to Brussels to buy your scarf, but I'll see what I can do in London. If I can't get what seems to me right, I shan't buy a black lace one at all, but just some less expensive thing, for you do wan tthe expensive one right. We were talking with some Americans from Washington on the Göta Canal boat, and became a little wiser about shopping in London. I did not know for instance that there are two Jaeger's, "the original Dr. Jaeger" and an imitator. The Washington woman knew a lot! We have seen no Americans in either Vadstena or Grenna, and no English in V-, but there have been some here, at least one family, in a huge automobile with true English luggage.
This forenoon we walked up Grännaberg, the "mountain" (= hill) to the east of the town. It's steep, but not more than twice as high as Prospect to the place where the everlasting eating is done. There's a Look-out, and a bit of a museum and a sizable restaurant with tables around everywhere. Never in my life have I seen so many tables out-of-doors nor such continuous eating and drinking, yet only three or four real drunks thus far. And the folks do enjoy the beer and wine so much! The regulated sale of spirits seems to work at least fairly well.
I went on back into the woods and they were beautiful fine trees, with mountain cranberries, very pleasant, in all the open spaces. Also a few blueberries (whorts?) and delicious red raspberries. Of the last I ate most a quart at lunch yesterday. And we found some good though small cherries at Vadstena. Cherries have been rather disappointing, from the accounts of our friends which represented them as most delicious.
This afternoon we've been out again, up the hill in another place, and found the cows being milked. There is evidently a trysting place between the milk maids and the cows. The maids in this case went with a cart and a huge can and two stools &c. The cows met them by the bars - the maids moved the stools from cow to cow and the animals didn't move while the milking went on. It's a law-abiding country. We saw this cart a mile away later on.
Aug. 16 Jönköping
Köping means village - it's in many names of places, so we inquired. And be sure you call it "chirping", done with a New England "r".
This morning we fooled around the town and bought "Polka griser" a special kind of peppermint stick of a size to suit Miss Searles, not very good to our thinking. We missed out on a castle-y island to which we should have gone yesterday. "You didn't consult me first", said the Baron v. Düben. He's a wily old sinner if ever I saw one, but his fried chickens were sure good! And the rates were not high, especially when you count the statuary in the garden and the ancestral portraits. His house was full of auto parties and the young danced cheerfully but very circumspectly of a Sunday evening, quite as a matter of course. The orchestra played some of the things we became used to on the "Stockholm". The dancing is much like our decent kind, the twain not at all far apart yet doing the dance quite simply. I haven't seen a tomboy Swede anywhere, nor a rambunktious [sic] child! And it is remarkable to see no "foreigners" in the street-car crowds except tourists lie ourselves. The population is much more than in England all of a kind. There are very few Jews, so few you don't see them. We have been conscious of more German tourists than of others - practically all the time we've heard German and only occasionally English, still more rarely French, except at the Congress.
We took a bus at noon and came on about 40 miles (?) to this thriving town. It makes more matches than any other place in the world (no admission to the factory). Our host at Gränna told us to eat lunch at Alphyddan in the Stadspark and so we did - and found a heavenly view, over Lake Vettern and a smaller one, the town with its towers and tiled roofs, and all about the hills with woods, fields and yellow grain and a gorgeous blue sky with clouds and racing cloud shadows - a matchless kind of day - but we hope our two auto days ahead will be at least fairly good. The trip looks very interesting - old churches, castles (for this is old Sweden) and the big Trollhätan Falls. And, this nice little hotel has running water, and even warm water and I have a full-sized wash nearly dry! It's fine - for we do hate to have dirty clothes in our suit-cases. But it has been a wonderfully clean summer. Also cool, thanks be.
Business. As to my moving. Do as seems best when you get there, but above all don't work over it! If it seems best to have that bunch of stuff in Skinner taken out before I arrive, just have them take it all and put it in my rooms anyhow. Mrs. Fairbanks was hoping, I think, to have the study ceiling whitened after Miss Wild got out, but it's not impossible to let it go and have it done at Xmas. Nothing seems to me impossible! I'd like to have my things moved when most convenient, so just use your judgment - but use it by telephone! I do not want you to work for my moving - that's not a fair game. I tied up the desk, so I think it will be safely moved, and nothing else is of value. Any fool ought to know my things from the college property in the room - and I think they were all marked, too, the articles of mine.
I'll send this on with my love. And I'm hoping to get letters when we get to Copenhagen, forwarded from Amsterdam. The Brussels mail we're having sent to England.
I hope the Gaspé region has been all you expected -