The Diseased Rich at Baden-Baden
1901
A great deal of grandeur always makes me homesick. It isn't envy. I don't want to be a princess and have the bother of winding a horn for my outriders when I want to run to the drug store for postage stamps, but pomp depresses me.
Everybody was strange, foreign languages were pelting me from the rear, noiseless flunkies were carrying pampered lap dogs with crests on their nasty little embroidered blankets, fat old women with epilepsy and gouty old men with scrofula, representing the aristocracy at its best, were being half carried to and from tables, and the degeneracy of noble Europe was being borne in upon my soul with a sickening force.
The purple twilight was turning black on the distant hills, and the silent stars were slowly coming into view. Clean, health giving Baden-Baden. In the valley of the Oos, with its beauty and its pure air, was holding out her arms to all the disease and filth that degenerate riches produce. — Lillian Bell in Woman's Home Companion.
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