Grand Hôtel de l'Europe,
Aix-les-Bains,
Sunday.
My Dear Mary:
Our summer has been a perfect failure. I said in the very beginning if we followed John and the children's ideas it would be; but as I was in the minority I gave in. Fortunately we did catch the tail end of the London season. The others wanted to go straight on to Paris, but for that once I put my foot down—and all the trunks as well. It was very warm; still there was a great deal going on, so we didn't mind the heat, at least I didn't. Heat in London during the season is such a different thing from heat in Switzerland or some dull seaside place, where there is not sufficient distraction to take your mind off it. I was doing something every minute. That's the charm of London. Every hour of the day there is something, and if there ever was a dull interval I dropped into one of the picture galleries. You know you have to do that sort of thing over here. People talk about pictures, and some do it very well, too, and you really meet painters out. The children go and see things that are good for their education, you know—the Tower, where Mary Queen of Scots, or Anne Boleyn, I forget which, was beheaded, and the—well, all sorts of places like that. The heat made them rather irritable, and Evelyn had a rash, but I thought it was good for them to see all the historical sights. So we staid on just the same till after Goodwood. And the races ended my pleasure, for next we started for Lucerne.
I said all along there would be no one in the place. Of course people do go there, but on their way to somewhere else, or coming home at odd times, and not for too long. There is never really any society there. I knew it. I have had experience with it. Besides, we know the places that every one does go to in July and August. I preferred Homburg, with Aix at the end, but I would have put up with Trouville first, or Ostend, or even Dinard. But no, Switzerland it was! I hate it; I always did. It's too like its photographs. It has absolutely no style. It's all nature, nature, nature! The mountains and lakes, no matter how old they really may be, still always have the beauté du diable; and for a woman of my age—who has to resort to art to keep herself looking the slightest little bit younger than she is!—it gets on one's nerves, all this natural beauty! I prefer some place that has to resort to art, too, and make itself up a little with gorgeous hotels, casinos, theatres, and baccarat tables. Mountains bore me, and I hate to go on the water. There at Lucerne the mountains stood continually and solemnly around, just like elderly relatives at a family reunion, and the flat lake lies as uninteresting as the conversation of these estimable creatures would be. And then the people! The town crowded to suffocation, scarcely breathing space, and yet nobody there. To be sure once in a while one notices an extraordinary old frump go by, who turns out to be the Duchess of this, or Princess that, but I assure you one would have been ashamed to drive in the park with her (at home), unless she was placarded. Now and then somebody decent from New York or Boston arrived on a morning train, but, of course, they usually left in the evening, driven away by the glare, or the white dust, or by the eternal tourists. That man Cook has done more to spoil attractive places than any other dozen people in the world put together. Sometimes, of course, they are amusing. One day I went to see the Lion! Don't laugh. John bet me five hundred dollars I wouldn't go. So, of course, I did. Fortunately I'd heard the children explaining it or I shouldn't have enjoyed so much the following joke.
A woman and her daughter, both Cooks, (tourists I mean, of course, tho' heaven knows what the mother mightn't have been at home), stood in front of the monument.
"What's this, Clara?" asked the older woman.
CLARA.
Why this is the famous Lion of Lucerne, mother!