They were talking over their plans one night, at the dining room table. They wanted to extend the long window in the parlour almost to the full width of the room. But first the National Museum needed to send Nils his prize money for the fresco competition. While they talked he kept drawing versions of the window, varying the panes, the hardware, the number of casements. Nothing satisfied him. He scowled, erasing design after design.
Finally he said, “I don’t understand why you think it is necessary to sleep in the nursery.”
So that was the trouble with the window. “Well, since I have to get up in the night with the baby, why not avoid waking you by sleeping closer to our little broken alarm clock?”
That was what they called Birgitta.
“Of course,” she continued, playing her trump card, “my parents always had different rooms, so that seems normal to me.”
“Of course. Yes, I see that would help with the baby. We can try it for a while.”
They never talked about their different origins. Nils liked to think of himself as a socialist and sometimes, when he became aware of the way the middle classes did something, he objected as a matter of principle. But usually he complied, as unobtrusively as possible.
Things would be different in Askebo. She watched him thinking about that while she darned Markus’s sock and he sketched a set of windows with casements at either end. For one thing, she would no longer wake in the night and find him nuzzling at and then sucking at her breast, especially when she was nursing a baby. Its hardness would soften with his suckling, something that at first slightly disgusted and then aroused her. And the way he curled around her was sweet, until she needed more air. But she assumed their bed-life would go on, regardless of where he slept.
That night in her bed in the corner of the nursery, Sofie could not sleep. Her mind filled with cranky children, cheap curtain materials and a man who had to paint his signature on every surface. Even at past ten o’clock, the Swedish midsummer light was so strong that, if she had had a window by her bed, she could have moved aside the curtain and written a letter. But she had no window, so she lit a candle and began to write.
Dear Professor Malmstrom,
I know I thanked you at the time of my marriage for the sketching umbrella you sent me. It still works perfectly and is a very clever invention. While cleaning out my husband’s studio recently, I came across it. Of course, I had given it to him. Perhaps you do not know that I gave up painting when I married.
I would just like to ask you one question, if I might. Why, since you troubled to give me a sketching umbrella, did you not encourage me more when I was your student?
Yours sincerely,
Sofie Falkner Olsson
She had no idea why she wrote this aggressive letter, since it could never be posted. Still, she supposed it did no harm.
Chapter Five
FEBRUARY 1899
IN THE BRILLIANT midwinter cold, Nils took her to Bingsjo, to see the work of an eighteenth-century folk painter, Winter Carl Hansson. The way to Bingsjo, almost directly north of Askebo and near Lake Amungen, sparkled with ice, coating the branches of trees, fringing roofs with icicles, glinting up treacherously from the ground. The house they wanted to see, square and dark red, was hardly warmer inside than outside once you were a few metres from the porcelain stove. Many of the family, who had crowded into the main room, wore their jackets and coats. Sofie huddled in her furs. In spite of the cold, the room was full of the flowers Hansson had painted on the stove, the walls, the doors and the big blue chest that stood in the corner. Flat blossoms rose symmetrically from low bowls on the panels of the chest. A long garland heavy with buds and leaves bloomed all around the wall close to the ceiling. It was like being inside a pleasure garden or a conservatory in an ice palace.
A loom dominated the room, the way a piano would in a middle-class drawing room. Against the wall a woman sat spinning wool, her foot, hands and wheel moving in a rhythm as intimate as breathing. Another woman, old and smoking a pipe, stood and worked at a piece of two-end knitting between puffs, and a young girl, also standing, whittled something. The woman at the spinning wheel did not speak Swedish and Sofie did not understand her dialect, but the spinner needed no words to see that the woman in furs was interested. Without taking her hands off the wool she was feeding onto the bobbin, she inclined her head toward the wheel to beckon Sofie over. Look, her fingers said, it’s easy. You just take the tufts of wool, spread them out to loosen the fibres and let them catch on to the end of what has been spun. Pumping the treadle steadily, she pinched the wool with one hand while pulling down on the twisting fibre. With her other hand, she thinned out the tuft. It looked impossible, like twisting a cloud and expecting it to become a strong piece of thread or yarn. And yet it worked. The accommodating fluff stretched and did not break; a simple twist transformed it into wool.
Come, the woman smiled, sliding off her stool and patting it. Nils had gone off to see the painted walls in the bedrooms and probably expected her to follow, but this interested her more. Sofie folded her coat onto the floor and sat down on the stool. Pressing Sofie’s thumb and forefinger against the wool, the woman demonstrated without words: pinch firmly, pull down and then slide your fingers back up. Later, Sofie would learn the words—whirl, bobbin, flyer, roving, slubs. She learned to like sheep’s wool because even when cleaned and carded, it had a certain stickiness that meant the tufts adhered easily to the end of the spun wool. Except on the coldest winter days, she would spin barefoot or wearing only a stocking because it helped the connection between foot, treadle, wheel, hands and wool. But now, she let the woman guide her hands and felt more at home than she ever had at the piano.
After a few months, once she was comfortable with spinning, Nils bought her a loom and set it up in the workshop. The loom was so large and its bump-bump-shudder so loud that she felt as if she entered a small, impregnable house each time she stood before it. Although this house only had one wall, the noise shut out the children, the maid, decisions about dinner, everything but the demands of warp and weft. It gave her more privacy than she felt at her desk in the upstairs hall.
But it was trying work, frustrating her impetuousness. Unlike the oil painting she had been taught at school, where you could follow your instincts and redo what you had done before, weaving demanded a finished design and the warp strung perfectly before you began. The discipline irked her. At the beginning, she often walked away from the loom in irritated impatience. You are impossible! she told it. But she hired a woman from Bingsjo to come and teach her, and gradually made her peace with its demands.
Chapter Six
JUNE–JULY 1901
CECILIA VOGT HAD not been exaggerating when she said that the Olssons’ house was famous throughout Sweden. Sofie and Nils never considered it completely finished and tinkered with it for years, but word of mouth began to spread almost before they gave up the Gothenburg flat and moved to Askebo permanently, in 1898. After 1899, when Nils published How We Live—twenty-four watercolours of the house with short essays inspired by the pictures—it seemed that most Swedes wanted to see the house, or at least pictures of the house. The Crown Princess, who had married the heir to the Danish throne, was one of those people.
In June of 1901, shortly after Sofie had first met Cecilia, a letter arrived.
Siljevik, 25 June 1901
Dear Mrs. Olsson,
I did not intend to write again so soon after your visit, but curiosity—one of my besetting sins—compels me. When you were here, you mentioned that the Crown Princess would be making a visit to Askebo. No doubt, she will find your house fascinating—I doubt there is anything like it in Copenhagen. If it is not too presumptuous,
I would enjoy hearing how it all went.
With my best wishes,
Cecilia Vogt
P.S. I wonder if you have had the time to begin reading Mrs. Gaskell.
Sofie was relieved. This was significantly warmer than Mrs. Vogt’s last l
etter, when she had skirted Sofie’s question about marriage. Well, she reminded herself, if you will ask questions that are baffling if not rude, you must be prepared for a cold answer.
Askebo, 28 June 1901
Dear Mrs. Vogt,
How nice to hear from you. Please don’t make apologies for your curiosity—many people would say that a seemly interest in the royal family is one of our Swedish duties! But seriously, the Princess arrives on July 1, and I will be sure and report afterwards.
Alas, I haven’t yet found the time for Mrs. Gaskell. We have had an early crop of strawberries and the usual rhubarb, so preserving them occupied me for some days. Also, Nils is painting the children and me having a picnic under a tree in the garden, and the posing eats into my reading time. He will be done with us soon, I hope, as the children are impatient to go fishing and swimming and I to read Mrs. Gaskell.
I will write soon with details of the royal visit.
Cordially,
Sofie Olsson
The Swedish Homecraft Association was more than happy to help with arrangements for the Crown Princess’s visit. Miss Zickerman, the Homecraft official who had already guided scores of dignitaries through the house, made her usual conscientious (“stuffy,” thought Sofie) plans. Usually she came round to a grudging appreciation of Miss Zickerman’s carefulness, but this time Sofie was out of sorts.
Dear Miss Zickerman,
I am looking forward to welcoming the Crown Princess next Monday. I hope you will not take it amiss, but I would like to do something different for her visit. I would like to give the tour myself, rather than rely on you as usual. It will begin at the lintel over the door on which my husband painted, “Welcome to the house of Nils Olsson and his wife,” and it will give a picture of our home and family rather different from the one familiar throughout Sweden. I fancy that Her Highness, and perhaps ultimately others, may find this of interest.
Until Monday, dear Miss Zickerman, I remain,
Yours truly,
Sofie Olsson
Of course, she did not send that letter. Instead, she wrote,
Askebo, 28 June 1901
Dear Miss Zickerman,
Thank you for your note about the Crown Princess’s visit on Monday. I have read of her interest in Japanese prints, and I will put out some examples of my husband’s collection on the picture rail in the workroom for Her Highness to examine after your tour. If her schedule permits, I hope that she will be able to stop for some coffee and apple cake afterwards. The peonies should be fully out by then, and it is one of the best times to sit by the river.
Looking forward, as always, to your tour, and until Monday, dear Miss Zickerman,
Yours truly,
Sofie Olsson
Askebo, 2 July 1901
Dear Mrs. Vogt,
Well, normal life resumes again. The early fruits are bottled and waiting for winter in the storeroom, Nils has finished his picture of our picnic (where we all look better behaved than we usually are), and the Crown Princess has returned to Denmark. So I have the leisure to write to you about her visit.
The Princess seemed pleased, and Miss Zickerman, her escort from the Swedish Homecraft people, also thought it went well. Between us, the Princess has a slightly weak chin and an expression in her pale blue eyes of being ready to be pleased. That might be part of the training of a Swedish princess, but it looked deeper than that. Perhaps because she lives in Copenhagen with her Danish prince, she seemed particularly touched by unpretentious but plainly Swedish pieces—a painted wooden box, for example, or an embroidered wall hanging from Bohuslan.
The Princess wears a bracelet made of cameos linked with golden chains. It is old-fashioned but, she explained, it had belonged to her mother-in-law. Each cameo pictures a different member of the Danish royal family. Whenever Miss Zickerman described something as “typically Swedish,” the Princess half-cleared her throat and rotated her bracelet. I wondered, was it aggressive (“Take that!” to the crowned heads in Copenhagen), nervous, or just something she does? I don’t know, but Nils laughed when I told him about it. He avoids these visits, and had gone to Falun for the day.
I could see that Her Highness, like most visitors to the house, was taken aback by its smallness. After years of looking at Nils’s paintings of the rooms, which he always paints from the wider side, people credit our simple cottage with a spaciousness that does not exist in reality. Visitors do not expect the dense warren that we live in, where one room opens unceremoniously into another without the dignity of a corridor. But the Princess adjusted, exclaiming with pleasure when she saw the location of a favourite picture, nodding happily when Miss Zickerman pointed out some of the landmarks—the row of hooks for the children’s coats that climb the side of the staircase, the folkloric dining room, the blue-and-white parlour, filled with light and inspired by the eighteenth century.
In the dining room, Miss Zickerman talked about our casual family life, where even the youngest children take all their meals with their parents. That was a new idea for the Princess.
She turned to the little drinks cabinet on the wall and said, “Mrs. Olsson, would you be very kind? I love the picture your husband painted from here, the one where you open the cabinet to take out some aquavit. Would you mind standing just there for a minute?”
I did as I was asked, turning from the little wall cabinet with the bottle in my hand, exactly as I had posed for the picture. The Princess was charmed that I was wearing the tortoiseshell comb that stands up in front of my topknot, just as in the picture. She thanked me, and promised she would remember that moment.
So, I think we acquitted ourselves well, and the Princess returned to Copenhagen with a good supply of stories about Nils Olsson’s famous house. And now, you and your husband must come and see it for yourselves!
With all best wishes,
Sofie Olsson
Of course, she could not describe the whole visit to Cecilia Vogt. One of the things Miss Zickerman had pointed out to the princess was the weaving by Sofie that hung between Nils’s bedroom and the dormitory where Sofie slept with the girls. While Miss Zickerman talked about the way they had opened up the dormitory, Sofie stared, not listening, at her weaving and the flowery border Nils had painted on the wall above it, for her birthday. Her laboured attempt to make something in the fashionable Glasgow style, centred on that stiff rose, suffered from its closeness to his effortlessly flexible, unspooling line.
As always, when she really looked at his blossoms, her body yearned. When she was younger, it had concentrated itself in her belly. Now it located itself further up, in her chest and head. The suppleness and strength of that line. The tenderness. Sometimes she wished that Nils would move with the times a little. But she could imagine what it would cost him to suppress that easy flow for something more nervous, more modern. Something more like her unsatisfactory rose.
In the dining room, Miss Zickerman pointed out the tapestry Sofie had designed for Nils’s bench at the head of the table, and the princess admired it. Saying obliging things was no doubt also part of a princess’s training, but what truly seemed to spark her enthusiasm was the room’s red-and-green colour scheme.
“So bold,” she said, sighing sympathetically. “And so reminiscent of Nils Olsson’s paintings.” Miss Zickerman was skilled at following a distinguished visitor’s interests. She seconded the princess’s appreciation for the red and green with remarks about Nils Olsson’s colour sense and flair for decoration. Sofie kept her face neutral, like a modest wife whose husband is being praised.
In the Long Hall, the princess asked about a painting Miss Zickerman had passed over.
“This oil of an artist in his studio. Is it an early work?”
Miss Zickerman looked at Sofie, almost apologetically. Sofie understood why. It was muddy and pedestrian, a portrait of her teacher, Professor Malmstrom. She had painted better pieces, and she had never understood why Nils chose this one, and only this one, to hang.
The pri
ncess was surprised at the answer.
“I did not realize that Mrs. Olsson had ever painted.”
Your gracious Highness,
Forgive me. I should have corrected Miss Zickerman at the time of your visit when you praised the dining room colours. My husband wanted something that continued the Gustavian look of the parlour, perhaps pale yellow and blue to go with the parlour’s blue and white. But the furniture in the dining room is stronger and more peasant-like, and I convinced him, finally, that those favourites of the Swedish countryside, red and forest green, were right for that room. It was my doing. Now he often writes about the need for strong, bright colour in this land of dark green forests and white snow.
With many thanks for your visit, and especially for your advice about the peonies. I will do as you suggest and be sure and let you know, through Miss Zickerman, if the bloom improves next season.
Yours respectfully,
Sofie Olsson
She did not send that letter, either.
Chapter Seven
OCTOBER 1901
THE AUTUMN AFTER the princess’s visit, Sofie read in the Dagens Nyheter that Dorotea Jonasen, her Danish colleague from her days in Grez, had three paintings in the Stockholm Salon. Nils was painting a triptych and was too busy to go. Although she loved looking at pictures with him—they stood close together, talking in lifted eyebrows, puffed cheeks, pursed mouths and half sentences that the other understood perfectly—Sofie was relieved. He would not have been the ideal companion for this excursion. After arranging to meet Hanna Hirsch—now Hanna Pauli since her marriage to Georg Pauli—she took the train from Falun.
As she made her way from Stockholm’s Central Station down to Stromgatan, she ran into Lars Vogt coming out of a cafe with a well-rouged woman. It was not yet noon, but they breathed brandy. Sofie was taken off guard, but Lars greeted her with his usual enthusiasm. He introduced them airily, “Mrs. Olsson, Mrs. Holmgren,” and he and his companion went south toward the Old Town.
Sofie & Cecilia Page 5