It was hard for Fran Baronin to take her children to the country and leave Herr Baton in his lonely JiiiiggesilL'iiwobtuitog, his bachelor quarters, in Vienna, since they were all quite unused to being separated. Golf and commutation never came between Viennese couples, and the city was so small that most gentlemen could walk home from their offices for lunch and a nap each day. Husbands accompanied their wives to help select hats and gowns, and wives accompanied husbands when they went skiing and shooting.
However annoying these summer separations might be, they did have their pleasant little compensations. Herr Baron was forced to write his wife some of his amusing letters—the accepted Viennese combination of news, endearments, cultured quotations from Goethe and Schiller, and some risqué anecdotes, always written in French or English so that the servants and children wouldn't be shocked. No servant or child ever read any of the letters, which Fran Baronin kept locked away in a beautiful old glove box, but the possibility that they might provided a good excuse for a little trilingual showing-off. The summer separation forced Herr Baron to make love to Frau Baronin by long distance, and he used his imagination and the services of countless sympathetic assistants to help him arrange diverting little reminders for her. Having stayed behind in Vienna to work, he spent half his time contriving surprises and romantic messages for his vacationing wife and children.
He engaged a trio of musicians to sing her a Stäandchen one lovely summer evening. The fact that she was shampooing her hair when they gathered under her window did not at all detract from the charm of the message; she found that she could lean on the window sill and comb her hair to the strains of Schubert's “Näne des Geliebten,” “An Sylvia,” and all the other favorite love-songs Herr Baron had specified. When the musicians finally went down the hill. Frau Baronin thought she heard a very faint echo of the “Lorelei” from the valley below. On another occasion, Herr Baron had somehow managed to find an itinerant Italian organ-grinder, with a red-coated monkey, who came to play for the children. He ground through his entire repertoire while the little monkey extended his cap and collected every penny the children had saved. Whenever Frau Baronin looked out her window and saw anyone pushing a bicycle, or riding up the long dusty lull with a while parcel or a bunch of flowers, she knew Herr Baron was courting her from Vienna. The parcels usually meant something to ear.
The second compensation for the separation was a wild, wonderful, extravagant fling with all her favorite desserts and bakeries. Frau Baronin controlled herself only until she had attended to her social duties. She had brought along a soft, expensive, imported girdle—the sort of thing that could come only from Amerika—one high-necked, long-sleeved summer dress, white gloves, and a very becoming (lowered hat. This costume she wore as soon as possible after her arrival, when she took the children to call on her aunt at the Kaiser Villa. The children were always ill before and after the call, but managed to conduct themselves properly through the minor royal Jause, a kind of high tea. When the visit was out of the way, the girdle was discarded, the dress was hung away, and dirndls became the summer uniform. The laced bodices, full skirts, and gay aprons were so adaptable that all the extra Krapfen and Kugeln that would be eaten during the summer needn't show at all. Summer resort pastry needed room for expansion.
Anyone traveling in Europe could easily see where the Viennese spent their summers. Whether their homes were near Ischl or Salzburg, beyond the Semmering or across the Italian border in Meran, there they would find the Filialen of Vienna's renowned shops. A Filiale, as the word implies, is an offshoot of an established institution. A summer resort Filiale was the offspring of a shop that the Viennese considered essential, so essential, in fact, that the shopkeeper very wisely opened these little branches to accommodate his clientele in summer, That was the time when they needed him the most; they wouldn't have known how to get along without him. A Viennese lady could deal with many of her accustomed merchants in the summer, and, above all, she could eat all her beloved pastries and Torten at the Filiate of her Viennese confectioner. A change to another Konditorei would have entailed weeks of trials before Frau Baronin and her children would even have known which Torte they liked best.
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