Last week, Kerstin shared the travel diary of 10-year old Ernst Salomon. In the summer of 1841, Ernst and his family were visiting Särö, a fashionable spa on the Swedish west coast. In his diary, he describes the activities at the spa. Besides the bathing, they went for walks, picked seashells, and went horseback riding. In the evenings, the guests took turns hosting dinners and […]
Breakfast in Lübeck, 1847 and 2017
Lübeck, October 2017 Dressed in the fashion of 1847, Kerstin and I enter the breakfast parlor at Hotel Anno 1216. The early morning sun lights up the room. The décor of the room is exquisite. The table settings are elegant and on each table is a fresh cut tea rose. We get a warm welcome from the staff who shows us to our table and […]
The Silkworms at Bellevue
May God Preserve our Silk Worms Father told us last Monday when he was here, that the kind pastor, Mr. Lindström, who my sister and I have recently been acquainted with, had visited father at the palace that same day in order to ask if he could give us some silkworms that he couldn’t keep as he will spend the summer in Uppsala. Father had […]
The Moving Panoramas
Imagine a canvas that is over 4 miles (or 6.4 km) long! In the mid-1800s, a few artists painted landscapes on such long canvases. Of course, if you wanted to do an accurate painting of the Mississippi River for example – or at least 1,000 miles of it – you probably needed a few miles of canvas. Panoramas depicting landscapes and famous battles were […]
Will the real, extremely beautiful Baron Rehbinder please stand up!
Augusta’s Diary, August 1851 I thought about asking for the beautiful Rehbinder, but something, I don’t know what, stopped me. In the meantime, he is constantly before my eyes whether I am awake or asleep. What then does it really mean that, after three weeks, I still cannot erase the persistent memory of him? Should I, who is so wise, so cold, so impregnable, possibly […]
