Only 3 weeks until our Göta Canal cruise! Now is the time to read up on Victorian table etiquette. What food could you buy on a Swedish steamboat in 1850? Augusta never described in her diary what she ate on her Göta Canal trips – did she and her family bring their own food or did they buy food on board? What food could you […]
Berlin, 3 July 1847 “In a couple of exquisitely decorated rooms in Hôtel de Rome on Boulevard Unter den Linden, yours truly is sitting with pen in hand to recall from memory the wonderments I have seen since my arrival in the great Prussian capital.” This is Augusta’s first description of a hotel on the European continent during her and her mother’s journey down to […]
I have been in need of a hatbox ever since I successfully constructed a bonnet. Kerstin already has two hat boxes – one that she made from a round IKEA gift box and one that she received from a good friend. And of course I really wanted to make one too. This week we visited my cousin and talked about Augusta’s Journey and of obtaining […]
Two weeks ago, Kerstin and I visited the city museum in Norrköping. One special exhibition just happened to feature historical buildings threatened to be demolished. And when we walked in, we happened upon a seminar about conserving Sweden’s cultural heritage. Both the exhibition and the talk included Krusenhof, the estate where Augusta’s best friends and neighbors had lived. Sadly, the Krusenhof mansion, orangery, pavilion, and […]
– Do you remember when we tried on Augusta’s dresses in the attic of Aunt Agneta? Kerstin asked me. No … I didn’t remember that. I remember staying in the 18-century washhouse by the lake shore in which our aunt had lived during our childhood summers. – Sure you were there too! It was probably in 1977. There was an old trunk there with two dresses. […]
“The country side is so wonderful at this time of the year.” Augusta described her country surroundings in the spring – the blue sky, the song of the larch, the warmth of the sun – and Kerstin and I decided that after a winter of research, we should do an outing to Augusta’s home. Augusta lived at Loddby, an estate located just outside Norrköping. Her brother-in-law, […]
Loddby, 2 September 1850 This week we have been at Krusenhof and said goodbye to Eric. Our trips to this, my second childhood home, have begun again ever since my friends at Krusenhof [the family Hjort] have once more gathered in their home. How the road is dear to me and how well I know every single rock and every bush; they are all my […]
Stockholm,16 March 1851 Last Friday, I accompanied the Theodors to a dance soirée at The Bourse. It was pretty animated and, in the words of the Ribbings, it was “la crème de la socialite” who from the gallery looked down on the dancing youth – a colorful crowd of blue, white, red, and yellow ball gowns with matching flower garlands under which one often saw […]
Since Saturday evening I am here in Stockholm, our Swedish Paris, the dance-hungry’s Eldorado. Our journey here was miserable; unfavorable road conditions for the sleigh and grey, chilly weather. We ate bad food and slept miserably in cold, unpleasant lodgings, chatted with drunk coachmen, drank mulled wine, and finally arrived frozen and exhausted to our nice and beautiful Stockholm where we took in at Hotel […]
There is only one wedding described in Augusta’s diary, the wedding of her cousin Carolina Schubert’s daughter Johanna (Hanna). Hanna was 2 years younger than Augusta and they were best friends. On August 7, 1851, Hanna married Count Lars Eric Georg Sparre. There are no descriptions of what the women wore and especially nothing about how the bride looked. Given that Queen Victoria in 1840 […]