Country diary 1921: an Alpine idyll

20 August 1921 My door leads on to the open hillside, a rough trellis forming a shady arbour outside while the grass all around is made beautiful by fallen plums

After the sweltering heat of Vienna it is like coming to heaven to be in the Salzkammergut. My quarters are in a peasant's house with a spacious room containing the usual excellent spring bed and the usual quilted cover which is the despair of English sleepers. My door leads on to the open hillside, a rough trellis forming a shady arbour outside. The grass all around is made beautiful by fallen plums, unripe and useless, but most exquisite to see in their slender oval form and colours, shot rose and lilac and purple; the drought here has been very destructive. Now the rain has come heavily and such corn as is not yet stacked has been pitched upon long poles, and there are rows of these standing melancholy in the fields like gigantic Capuchin friars.

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