Seven Seas Magazine - August 1932

Front Cover, August 1932 Issue of The Seven Seas Magazine, Published by the North German Lloyd. Cover Drawing by Sue Williams. GGA Image ID # 128d7f385c

The Seven Seas, Vol. 9, No. 6 for August 1932. Photographs Included: Sidewalk Scenes on the Seine; Brittany; Jil Esmond, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Joan Crawford, Laurence Olivier Enjoying Dinner on the SS Bremen. Articles Include Promenade in Budapest, Frontispiece, Transatlantica, Thirst in Hungary, in a Vicar’s Vineyard, by Claudia Cranston, Heuriger, No Luck, by Frances Crane, Brittany, Arrival in France by Virginia Hersch, and Books for Bon Voyage by Donald Douglas.

Travelogue

I LOOKED OVER and saw Vienna. And it seemed to be waltzing, but Ji- that may have been because our plane was getting ready to land. I tried to recall that less than two hours before I had looked over and seen Venice disappear beyond a spiderweb of lagoons, and that in the meanwhile I had watched the needlepointed peaks of the Dolomites try their best to stretch up to where we were flying faster than I had ever flown before—or will again if I can help it.

It couldn’t have been at the most more than fifteen minutes after leaving the Lido that we flew over country whose utter flatness only made the mountains I could see in the dim distance ahead dreadfully menacing.

Yet somehow we managed to rise and rise (and I must admit without any apparent effort on the part of the plane or the pilots) so that by the time we had reached the lower slopes of the range, we were well above the tallest tips, to my intense relief.

It was, I suppose, from where I sat gazing down upon this regiment of stony spears, one of the really stunning spectacles of the world, and I tried to think of it as such.

But there were sudden little lurches which in spite of all my efforts to remain objective about this marvelous view, made my imagination turn to certain rather dire possibilities.

My fellow passengers were assuming an air of indifference to the scene that was filling me with fearful fascination. Some were feigning sleep; the rest were pretending to read.

The radio man was writing out some message he was receiving, and I remember hoping that it would be a good report, but about u hat I just didn’t know what to wonder.

He must have seen my anxious eye, for he smiled and shouted something which came to me in a whisper out of which I caught the sound of "Semmering’’.

And I looked out of my window to sec that we were no longer above the razor-like ridges of the Dolomites, but merely mountains ; and down among thei r snowy heights I saw with certain reassurance of our soon arrival the great resort that I had read was not so very far from Vienna.

And in a moment even these mountains had receded, and what was left of them were sweeping on, smaller and smaller, like wavelets of a surf that further back was really wild, until they finally dispersed themselves upon the plain.

In a few more minutes the city was in sight, and the radio man was screaming to me in Italian that we had set a new record for the run...Well, perhaps it was some consolation that I had made up a few minutes on the last lap, it having taken me all my life to reach Vienna.

My only concern was that in spite of all this speed I might already be from fifteen to fifty years too late. This was the fear that now replaced the one I had felt above the Dolomites.

But as I walked in the quiet evening up the Kärntnerstrasse I watched a fire-engine pass on its way to a fire, and on either running-board was a man with a hunting horn who alternately with his fellow horns-man would blow a haunting mellow phrase to clear the path ahead.

And in the cafes was a coziness as unsurpassable as the coffee; and as the wine kept coming on and on in little carafes, the 1Vierter Blut was played as though it had been written the day before. And I began to see that I needn’t have hurried, but was glad, after all, that I had.

R. P.

A Man Views Book for Sale in One of the Many Small Kiosks that Line the Seine in Paris. GGA Image ID # 128d1c8ea6

Dinner Table Guests on the SS Bremen Include Jil Esmond, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Joan Crawford, and Sir Lawrence Olivier. GGA Image ID # 128d37c9f4