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Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes Bliss, July 24, 1912

Hôtel des Voyageurs

Ile-d’Yeu (Vendée)

24 July 1912.Wednesday.

Dear Mildred.

Next Monday I shall have spent here the three weeks I came to spend, and ought to be thinking of departing for Vienna. I may leave here on Monday itself—in any case please do let me know by return where I may find you in Paris—I hope to be there two or three days.

The Ile d’YeuThe Île d’Yeu, an island off the Vendée coast of western France. has been a success; it is pleasant in many ways, though rather too inhabited. Not by tourists or summer folk fortunately, but as its coasts are extraordinarily rich in fish, there are loads of those who pursue them. We gorge ourselves on lobsters, fresh sardines, crabs and other delightful creatures; and I bathe and initiate William, who howls when he is forcibly removed from the water. If one doesn’t keep one’s eye on him the entire time he makes for the open sea, in whatever attire he may find himself. I think it has all done me much good, and now for Vienna,The Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv (Archives of the City and Province of Vienna). and 5,000 words a day of Carlos QuintoCharles V (1500–1558), ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his abdication in 1556. and his scrawling secretaries. My one grief is that one Bibl,Viktor Bibl (1870–1947), an Austrian historian. professor of History in the Viennese university, and my boon companion, will not be there. Elisina calls him Bibelino, and he might be termed the Bibulous Bibl, for he knows every pub. where good wine may be had for miles around the Capital. Last year Elisina had to leave Vienna a few days before I went, and Bibelino came to the station, posy in hand, to see her off. On the way home he humm’d and laugh’d and said to me ‘Was ich meisten bereue, ist dass sie mich das Harmonium spielen nicht gehört hat!’“What I regret most, is that she has not heard me play the harmonium.” Tears not far from his eyes. What shall I do without Bibelino? He is the very essence of Vienna; there is no such flavour left in the Reichs Deutschen.“German Empire.” It’s a vicious habit this, of eating each course, as it were, in a different land, but it has its attractions.

Elisina and I both send our love to Robert.

Yours sincerely

Royall Tyler