Correspondence (incoming): Grant, Ida, 1887-1889

Governor very often, and wonder if we shall not have the pleasure of seeing you over here soon. We rather hoped that as the summer passed you'd need a change from even beautiful California and come in our direction to find it. Mrs Grant has been quite happy and really much better in health since leaving home. I think she will derive much benefit from the change she

has had and will go home in the fall, with the intention of returning here next spring. She says her home {missed ?} her in America { ?} { ?}, most natural, and I hope she will come over without feeling it far away, if she must go home, but we are only too sorry that she cannot make up her mind to live over here, while we are here. My children took the whooping cough on board the steamer on the way over, but from constant change of air, they have

Nov 14th 1889 Schwindgasse 4

My dear Mrs Stanford

We were so grieved to hear of your illness & Mrs Grant wrote to you immediately, but Colonel Grant refrained from doing so, and, I likewise did not write again soon, knowing how

of September, stopping on her way back in Paris, where her own daughter Nellie Sartoris, met her, and my sister and Mr Palmer saw a great deal of her. We hear that her voyage home was comfortable, and she is now having some improvements made in her own home, and also putting in the steam heat throughout. Buck and Fannie

you and the Senator are burdened with a large mail, though you would be glad to hear from Mrs { ?} and that if you were in need of rest, the most considerate friends would not trouble you often with letters. It was very difficult for us to think of you as ill, for we had seen you and the Senator both

so remarkably well, and really in better health than we had ever known you to be, last spring. I feel that perhaps, all the kind charities you were doing for others, and the addition to your beautiful home, may have been too much care for you. Mrs Grant left us, very much improved in health, to return to her own lovely home the last

mothers to have, but always a disappointment to their children. We know now that Mrs Grant is happier not to feel promised or confined to any one place, but not go back and forth, as change is a great deal to her, and she feared that she might get ill so far from her own land. There are only a handful

of Americans or English speaking people who live here, besides the young students who are studying. In this respect Vienna is so different from Paris or London, and the reason strangers do not remain longer than a few weeks, is I presume, that the court is most reserved, no one is ever presented except officially, and after once seeing the sights, doing some shopping and enjoying the opera

were extremely anxious to have her pass the winter with them, as Fred and I were to have her with us, but she seemed to feel that having always had her own house, she would not like the change of being permanently with anyone else, a nation

travellers pass on to more sociable cities; we however, are very happy and have more and more pleasure each day. Our official calls are necessary, and most happily for us, many friends from home have sent us letters with those who were coming for a short stay here to them we really see all Americans who come to Vienna. We are now almost