Sofie & Cecilia

by Katherine Ashenburg

  What stitch would best convey the texture of the seed heads, and how far should the petals encroach into the pillow? Sofie bent her head over her worktable. It was a moment she loved, when ideas came so fast that she could not decide whether to thread a needle and try out some stitches on a small piece of linen or carry on drawing the whole design.

  She had been lost in her cushion for some time when she realized that Nils was standing on the other side of the worktable, holding a sketch and a large book.

  “Sofie, I need you.”

  She wondered if French knots would work for the seed head. The difficulty would be crowding them in closely enough.

  “Sofie.”

  Reluctantly, she looked up.

  “What is it?”

  “I need you to make some costumes for the mural. I can’t get anywhere unless the models are properly dressed. Here, I have some pictures of Renaissance cloaks and these close-fitting men’s hats that come to a sort of point on the cheek…and look at these high boots with red pom-poms at the top.”

  He was painting a mural he hoped would be hung in the main staircase of the National Museum, showing King Gustav Vasa’s triumphant arrival in Stockholm in 1523. Riding a white horse decorated with cornflowers, the armour-clad king entered the city, which had just been liberated from the Danes. The subject had preoccupied Nils for more than a decade, and was another bid to be taken seriously as a painter of monumental, not domestic, subjects. Preparing for it, he had pored over Donatello’s equestrian statues and Uccello’s frescoes, he had studied the armour at the Royal Armoury and the anatomy of horses at the Veterinary College. He had hired a white horse and had himself photographed riding it. Marianne and Sonja were put to use as models, holding a thick rope made of more cornflowers, and he even persuaded his irritable father to pose, presenting the keys of the city to the king.

  Such a large undertaking—an oil painting fourteen by seven metres—required money. Sofie had promised him ten thousand kronor from her inheritance. When he asked his patron, the Gothenburg collector Pontus Furstenberg, to lend him the same sum, Nils wrote him one of his mock-histrionic summaries: “Everything must be sacrificed to the painting! Sofie promises to give the maids notice. The children will be sent to the local elementary school. The farm, piano and books will be sold to the highest bidder, father and mother sent to the poorhouse—the main thing is that something is achieved in one’s short allotted span.” Sofie smiled obligingly when he showed her the letter. But she knew there was nothing jocular in the words “that something is achieved in one’s short allotted span.”

  “Well, what do you say?” He was shifting from one foot to the other.

  “But Nils, these boots…I’m not a cobbler. Nor a milliner.”

  “No, of course, forget the boots. But I’m sure you could make a hat like this one, that wraps the head closely. I’m thinking of that for my father. But the main thing is the cloaks. Do you see how this black one has slits for his arms and a stand-up collar?”

  She ran her fingers over the picture, as if it would give her a clue.

  “What about the fabrics?”

  “You can send Berta in the carriage to Falun, or go yourself if you’d rather choose.”

  She took one last look at her sunflower. Then she turned to his book of Renaissance paintings and studied the pages he had marked.

  “I’ll go myself. You need something that drapes but has some body too.”

  Relieved, he kissed her.

  “My darling muse. I can’t do anything without you.”

  Muse, she thought. Rough seamstress, more likely.

  “I’ll leave you the book,” he said. “And this sketch shows the figures who need clothes. I can work on the king’s armour today, but could this fellow have a cloak and hat tomorrow?”

  It would be a long evening and an early morning, she saw that. And she would need enough space on her worktable to cut out a cloak. She began clearing away her sketches, humming Markus’s old tune.

  He bought me a handkerchief red, white and blue

  But before I could wear it he tore it in two.

  Chapter Twelve

  JULY–OCTOBER 1907

  Siljevik, 12 July 1907

  My dear Sofie,

  I cannot argue that, literally, a cushion is a small thing compared to a mural that commemorates an important historical moment and is intended for the National Museum. But you know as well as I do, that is not how art is measured. The sunflower pillow sounds like a brilliant solution to an outworn motif, and I look forward to seeing it on my next visit.

  Something occurred to me as I read your letter. When Lars and I were in America, I saw that they are making something they call handicraft kits, where, for example, the outline of the sunflower would be printed on a piece of fabric, and the kit would include the necessary thread as well as directions. It’s a smart, very American idea, and I wonder if some of your designs wouldn’t be good candidates for this kind of thing? It’s something to consider, perhaps.

  Nils is very lucky to have your support and the use of your skills. What wonderful news that the museum committee is pleased with his sketches. The mural too I look forward to seeing.

  In friendship,

  Cecilia

  Askebo, 20 July 1907

  Dear Cecilia,

  How well you understand the way the anxious mind of an artist—or in my case, a craftsman—works. The handicraft kit is, as you say, a very American idea, and probably not for me. But thank you for mentioning it.

  To change the subject, Nils had a letter from Glasgow recently. Before I began reading, I admired the writing paper, with a simple design of pink and green rectangles on top—just the kind of design that the Glasgow School of Art does so well. The writer is a teacher of engraving there, named MacDonald Lawrie. Mr. Lawrie has read the German editions of Nils’s first two books about the house, and is taken with his ideas about decoration, as well as his paintings. He guesses correctly that Nils has studied the Japanese printmakers, as well as the English illustrators, especially Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott. Mr. Lawrie is planning a walking trip in Dalarna, and wonders if he might visit Mr. Olsson at his famous house.

  I convinced Nils that he should stay with us—it will only be for a night, and getting back and forth to a hotel in Falun is too much trouble.

  I hope this heat wave is over by the time he arrives, next Wednesday. But I think an admiring Scotsman might be just the tonic Nils needs!

  All the best to you,

  from your friend Sofie

  * * *

  —

  Mr. Lawrie had dark red hair, large red knuckles and an outrageously loud plaid suit that was far too warm for a Swedish midsummer. Sofie and Nils were baffled by his Scottish burr at first, but they caught his enthusiasm. Because Sweden was slow to industrialize, artists and writers from other countries found it a treasure trove of peasant arts, and nowhere more than in their own province of Dalarna. Mr. Lawrie had been walking around Lake Siljan, stopping off in the villages. He was charmed by the folk paintings, the weavings that hung from the rafters and the traditional dress women wore to church and in some villages every day.

  When he arrived, Nils and Sofie took him out to the picnic table, hoping to catch a breeze from the river before they gave him a tour. Nils drank cider, Sofie and Mr. Lawrie elderflower juice. At the first sip, his flushed face puckered and she saw that he wondered why it wasn’t more sugared, but he drank it down. Since they were strangers, they talked about mutual acquaintances. Nils asked about the Scottish artists he and Sofie had painted with in Grez. After leaving France, they had formed a group called the Glasgow Boys. Although they had since disbanded, several still lived in Glasgow. John Lavery had moved to London after his painting of Queen Victoria at the Glasgow International Exhibition impressed the English, but Mr. Lawrie knew him.

  Nils remembered one of Lavery’s paintings in particular.

  “In the first summer we were in Grez, Lavery paint
ed himself painting the main street, all done in greys, beiges, pale blue. We copied Bastien-Lepage and the other French painters in those days by limiting our palette. No trees, a few clouds in a pale sky, a poor street of plain, low, boxy houses.”

  “Those paintings of the artist painting himself painting out of doors were a feature of that time, weren’t they?” Mr. Lawrie said.

  Now that his glass was empty, he looked more comfortable in the dappled shade.

  “As if they were announcing, ‘No more studio, no more antique models,’” Mr. Lawrie continued. “‘We will paint Nature as she is.’”

  He probably meant to appear admiring but he sounded patronizing, as if he were describing a quaint but now unnecessary tactic. Sofie stared at the water, remembering another painting John Lavery had done, on another river, the Loing, the one of her in the hammock. The clink of the gold bracelet against the teacup, the sleepy river lapping half-heartedly at the bank.

  Nils leaned across the table and tapped Mr. Lawrie’s wrist.

  “The Swedish painters had a saying when we returned from France. We said we had to take off our French gloves and get into our peau-de-Suède. We still wanted to paint Nature as she was, but now it was a Swedish nature. Brighter whites and darker greens, for example.”

  Mr. Lawrie stared.

  “Peau-de-Suède. Oh, I see. Your Swedish skin, very good!”

  He gave a tired laugh, as if his sense of humour was exhausted by the heat.

  Nils showed him around the house. In the Old Room, he pointed out the seventeenth-century cupboard bed on whose doors he had painted the names of the famous people who had slept there. Mr. Lawrie did not recognize several of the best-known names, and Nils looked a bit crestfallen.

  “You see here the name Prince Eugen,” he said. “His father is the king, but he is a very fine painter who avoids court life as much as possible so that he can paint.”

  Mr. Lawrie nodded politely.

  “And this is a mirror that belonged to King Oscar’s mistress, Emilie Hogkuist. It was gold, but Sofie and I painted it this blue and white.”

  Now Mr. Lawrie looked embarrassed. Perhaps in Scotland one did not discuss mistresses in front of one’s wife, nor give their furnishings pride of place?

  “But what is this?”

  Mr. Lawrie had stopped in front of the table in the library, covered by a rough white cloth with a black-and-white checked tapestry border.

  “Sofie made that. The peasant women at Bingsjo, a village a little to the east of your route, taught her to spin and weave.”

  “It’s very fine. Very fine. But the designer knows something of the Wiener Werkstatte, and of the Japanese too. Perhaps Jessie Newbery in Glasgow. Who designed it?”

  “Sofie,” Nils repeated, as if he wondered why Mr. Lawrie was distinguishing between the maker and the designer.

  Mr. Lawrie’s cinnamon-coloured eyebrows rose.

  “My congratulations, Mrs. Olsson. I wish my colleagues in Glasgow could see this.”

  She smiled and moved as if to go to the next room. But he was not done looking at the cloth.

  “Your work reminds me of some pieces I recently saw in The Studio,” he said.

  “It’s possible. We are subscribers.”

  “Really? I never thought of Studio subscribers living in Sweden.”

  “The mail comes to Askebo, Mr. Lawrie.”

  She gave him a teasing smile, but she wanted to end this exchange, which she knew was tedious for Nils. Mr. Lawrie’s knuckles looked even redder, if possible, as if they were blushing.

  “Of course. Very stupid of me. But where does this braided fringe come from?”

  “It’s a specialty of this region. Women unravel the warp in a weaving and do this intricate plaiting, in different patterns. Some wives do their own plaiting, but many rely on women who walk from farm to farm, plaiting the fringes of towels and table linen in exchange for a little money or food.”

  “And what about this decoration, with the dragonfly and the pear?”

  “The dragonfly, I don’t know how that came to me. But it is such a good shape, isn’t it, that long body and those long wings at right angles to each other. As for the pear, while I was working on the design, Birgitta came into the room eating one. She said, ‘Mamma, put my pear into your weaving.’ Now, if you just come this way—watch your head—Nils wants to show you his bedroom.”

  When Nils showed him his room, with the bed tented in the middle, Mr. Lawrie’s eye went to the curtain between it and the room where Sofie and the girls slept. He is quick, she thought, as his reactions moved across his face like clouds in a fickle sky. Now that he knows I make many of the house’s table covers and curtains, he is not jumping in with influences. He knows we don’t like them rubbed in our faces. And this hanging is the most indebted of all to the Glasgow School, with that rose blooming at the top of that ruler-straight stem.

  She decided to help him.

  “It was a present to Nils. I wanted to give him some privacy but as you see he has no window, so I needed to make it in as loose a weave as possible to let in light. You recognize the macrame, I’m sure, and the middle section is the plaited work the local women do. I called it ‘The Rose of Love.’”

  “And this little beast coiled around the stem?”

  “It’s the worm that destroys the rose. But he is so far away from the blossom that he will do no harm.”

  Nils took Mr. Lawrie to his new studio, pointing out, as usual, that it was the largest studio in Sweden. Sofie wondered why Swedes always had to tell you something was the biggest of its kind. The studio was filled with sketches and details of Nils’s mural for the National Museum, as well as the mural itself, and Mr. Lawrie was suitably interested. But he also stopped at a square, low-slung rocker, painted red.

  “This reminds me of the work of the American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.”

  “Sofie’s, again.”

  “You design furniture too?”

  “Only in a small way. Our carpenter, here in the village, thought it so ugly that he delivered it under cover of darkness. He didn’t want anyone to know he had made such a clumsy thing.”

  They had a second guest for dinner, a small bustler of a woman named Marta Jorgensen. Before she married, she had been a gardener for Crown Princess Victoria at Tullgarn Palace. The German-born princess, full of Swedish patriotism, had insisted that her servants wear the local folk dress and, to her surprise, Mrs. Jorgensen found that the full skirt, hemmed slightly above the ankles, was much easier to garden in than modern clothes, with their nagging corsets and longer, hobbled skirts. When she moved to Dalarna, she founded the Swedish Female Folk Dress Association, and she had come to Askebo to enlist Nils as a charter member.

  For dinner they had boeuf bourguignon. The weather was far too hot for such a dish, and Mr. Lawrie seemed disappointed that they were not having a Swedish meal. Nils explained happily that Sofie had learned to cook in Grez. Now their cook, Anna, used the notebook of French recipes Sofie had compiled.

  “When we set up housekeeping in Grez, Sofie’s mother sent her a copy of the Swedish wife’s bible, Housewife in Town and Country, by Mathilda Langlet.”

  As usual, the mere title was enough to make Nils and Sofie laugh—a little guiltily on her part. She tried to explain. Why would she want recipes for pea soup and meatballs, when she was learning how to make soufflés au fromage and coq au vin? Why live in the country dedicated to pleasure and grate potatoes for dumplings?

  But Mr. Lawrie did not see what was so amusing, nor did Mrs. Jorgensen, although she knew who Mathilda Langlet was.

  Nils steered the talk to Mrs. Jorgensen’s Female Folk Dress Association.

  “Sofie designed the Askebo costume just last year,” he told her. “Run upstairs and put yours on,” he ordered Marianne. She modelled the skirt lined with thin green, red and black stripes and the emerald-green bodice with silver clasps, worn over a white blouse. To demonstrate how a colour changed everything, she put o
n the red apron that was worn on happy occasions, and then the white one for funerals.

  Mr. Lawrie was disappointed to discover that these charming dresses were modern inventions.

  “Until recently, Askebo was too small to have its own dress,” Sofie explained.

  “Bigger villages do have traditional costumes,” Nils said. “And because provinces like Dalarna stayed almost medieval in their customs, the dresses had just begun to die out when people first set out to collect them.”

  A few decades ago, he told Mr. Lawrie, collectors and their assistants had travelled through the countryside with their rucksacks and walking sticks, and found people who were happy to sell them the complete suits of folk costumes they had just abandoned, from the embroidered stockings to the starched caps decorated with drawn thread-work. These peasants were astonished that ‘young gentlemen from the universities’ would waste their time and money on old clothes.

  Mrs. Jorgensen chimed in, wanting to describe all the strata of a folk costume to Mr. Lawrie. Methodically, she began with the first layer, the white linen shift. “When an engaged girl bundles with her fiance in the summer in the hired girls’ shed,” she told Mr. Lawrie, “she wears that shift.”

  “And bundling is?”

  “Why, getting into bed and cuddling,” Mrs. Jorgensen said, in the same businesslike way she had described the grafting of fruit trees.

  Mr. Lawrie blushed again. Was bundling not a custom in Scotland, Sofie wondered. Or was it a custom that was not discussed in mixed company?

  “But if the girl becomes pregnant, she is not allowed to wear the traditional Swedish crown at her wedding,” Mrs. Jorgensen added, as if this would reassure him.

  Seeing that they had a rapt audience, the Swedes talked on. For Mr. Lawrie’s benefit, they explained why yellow was a mourning colour in many villages—because mourning clothes could not be luxurious and the yellow dye came from a common larch tree. They warned him not to put his nose in those lovely embroidered waist bags women wore to church. Their owners often stored an onion in them, chewing it in church to keep awake during the long sermon.