Cecilia said, “Surely Emma’s meddling is Jane Austen’s point.”
“I realize that.” Sofie allowed herself the faintest hint of frost. Sometimes Cecilia seemed to think she was not terribly bright. “But she causes so much pain with her interference in that poor simple girl’s life—Harriet Smith, I mean. I hope Emma’s marriage with Mr. Knightley will put an end to this tendency.”
“There is nothing wrong with trying to help people,” Cecilia said, filling her tiny plate with the smoked salmon the Furstenbergs imported from Norway. “Emma’s flaw is not that she is a busybody, but that she is not an intelligent busybody. She’s so infatuated with Harriet that she doesn’t see that her friend is too limited to attract even so silly a man as the pastor, Mr. Elton, much less someone as sophisticated as Frank Churchill. Emma is a romantic, when she needs to be a realist. You have to be sensible and clear-eyed about people you want to help—you have to think about what is possible for them.”
Indeed, thought Sofie. She allowed herself to say, “I think trying to manage other people’s lives is a tricky business.”
Cecilia looked up from her smoked salmon. “But when you succeed in helping them, such a satisfying one.”
* * *
—
Sofie wandered through the rooms alone. She never knew when what she thought of as “the bad feeling” would descend. Usually it was not inspired by the expected things, like the work of people she had known at school. It was never attached to Nils’s work. Typically it would be sparked by a painter who was more distant, more neutral. His work would exasperate her, sometimes because she could see the joy in the making of it, or sometimes because the opposite was true and she saw that it was mechanically done, the artist going through worn-out motions or following a new fashion by rote. At the Furstenberg gallery, people were enthusiastic about the work of a young artist who painted barren northern landscapes, mostly around Vasterbotten. Nils found her in front of one of these paintings and they stood looking at it together.
After a moment, he shot her a look. “Sofie?”
She covered her vexation with an expressionless face. But he understood the face and spoke into her ear. “But what is it?”
“His skies do not interest me.”
* * *
—
In bed that night in the hotel, Nils repeated his question.
“Sofie, what is it?”
“Nothing.” She was trying to escape the featherbed, which was too hot, without bothering him. He liked a warmer bed than she did. “I’m probably just a little excited from the party.”
He fell asleep, clinging to her. She managed to extricate one arm and both feet from the featherbed, while she went on thinking.
My dear friend Cecilia,
I keep returning in my mind to your remarks about Emma. And how the helpful person has to pay attention to who the beneficiary really is. I am touched that you want to help me, although I don’t think of myself as needing assistance.
But I urge you to apply your wise assessment of Emma to yourself. How many times must I tell you that I do not want to start a business making embroidery kits? You would do an excellent job of starting and running such a business. I would not, nor do I wish to.
Friends wish the best for their friends, of course. But, as you suggest, the important thing is to understand what is best for them, not you.
Yours very sincerely,
Sofie
She knew the letter was unfair, in that she made it sound as if she knew what was best for herself, when she didn’t. But Cecilia would never see the letter, and perhaps now she could sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
APRIL–MAY 1910
Glasgow, 3 April 1910
Dear Mrs. Olsson,
I wonder if you have any plans to visit your sister in Hampstead this spring? I am often in London on business for the School, and it would be a pleasure to see some of the exhibits at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in South Kensington, with you.
Yours truly,
MacDonald Lawrie
Sofie had not seen Martina for more than a year, since her sister’s last visit to Sweden. She told Nils she would like a trip to London for her birthday, which was in May.
“You want to go alone?”
“Yes, why not? You are so busy, and I don’t want to take the children out of school. Besides, I’ll only be alone on the train and the ferry. Martina and Francis will take care of me once I reach London.”
“It’s just that I had another idea for your birthday…I was planning to paint some nosegays of local flowers on the walls in your bedroom.”
You mean, she thought, in the nursery where I sleep in the corner.
“Nils, what a lovely idea.”
“Now you will have both. When will you go?”
Siljevik, 10 May 1910
Dear Sofie,
This is written on the fly, as I have a mountain of small crises, delays and artistic egos to tunnel through on the way to Lars’s upcoming exhibition. I envy you your visit to London, and I insist on hearing all the latest news about Martina’s family as well as any galleries, concerts, etc., you think worthy of mentioning.
I have a commission for you, if it is not too much trouble. My Boston friend, the collector Isabella Stewart Gardner, writes that I must read an American novel called The Awakening. The author is Kate Chopin, and it aroused quite a controversy when it first appeared, just at the turn of the century. Set in New Orleans. Bonniers does not carry it in their lending library, nor does Hemlins sell it. Could you inquire about it when you are in the London bookshops?
Many thanks, and I will write more civilly next time, when I hope I will have a bit more leisure.
Your harried friend,
Cecilia
P.S. I wonder how your Scottish friend will strike you when he is closer to home. I will need a full report on your excursion with him.
London, 18 May 1910
My dear Cecilia,
First, my commission. Unfortunately, Foyle’s knows nothing about The Awakening either, and the clerk managed to convey a subtle doubt that a novel by an unknown American author could be worth pursuing. However, his good manners and business sense reasserted themselves, and he is undertaking to order it and send it to you in Sweden.
It was no trouble getting to Foyle’s, as Charing Cross Road is not far from Regent Street, where Martina and I had been looking at upholstery fabrics in Liberty’s. The treasure trove that is Foyle’s drove all ideas of tassels and cording and jacquards from my mind immediately. I exclaimed and pored and piled up my choices, and then chose again and piled up different choices. I was giddy, until even the long-suffering Martina was chafing to leave. In the end I settled for four books by a writer who is new to me, E. M. Forster. The superior clerk seemed to approve of this choice, and I am anxious to begin reading.
But it will probably have to wait until I return home. This is a busy house. Martina’s husband, Francis, still works at the Natural History Museum, but he is almost equally occupied with his work for women’s rights. At dinner on my first night here, he talked about an address given to the Rational Dress Society by a suffragist named Louisa Becker. Although the Society is ardently opposed to corsets and lacing, Miss Becker supports moderately tight lacing because she claims that it releases the blood from what she called “an inactive locality” and leaves it available to be used in the brain. Heresy! The members of the society were so upset that their patron, Lady Harberton, convened a meeting in her drawing room, so that all could express their objections.
“Look at Aunt Sofie!” one nephew said to the other, during this edifying dinner table conversation. “She doesn’t wear any corsets at all.” All the family talk of undergarments leads to comments that would be impossibly rude in other houses.
“Lucky you,” I said to my moderately tightly-laced sister, “you have so much more blood available for your brain.” Francis did not find that funny, as he takes these questions very serio
usly.
Martina is redecorating her drawing room in the Arts and Crafts style, in rose and a soft green. She took me to Morris and Co., on Oxford Street, to look at fabrics and wallpapers. The customers sit on high stools, paging through sample books of wallpapers, or stand, fingering the textiles ranged along the walls. In spite of the fog outside and the amber light that falls from hanging lamps, we had stepped into a world of English meadows, orchards and thickets. Sometimes all the vegetation rambles uncontrolled over bolts of cloth or wallpapers, at other times it is held in check by trellises and fences. Martina reacted at Morris and Co. the way I had at Foyle’s—first drawn to a wallpaper with old-fashioned roses, then to one with clumps of primroses and bluebells, then to another with interlacing lilies.
Like many Morris designs, they all struck me as too dark and congested. But this is a heresy almost as grave as Miss Becker’s support of moderate lacing!
I steered my distracted sister to “Willow,” a simpler, lighter green paper under-printed with white hawthorn blossoms.
“More versatile,” I told her. “And it will work with your Japanese things.”
Then we found our favourite, an airy pattern called “Arbutus.” The tree’s diamond-shaped leaves and strawberry-like fruits hang from slanting, knobbly branches.
“See how clever, the way Mr. Morris added depth with this under-pattern of pale grey leaves on white,” I said to Martina. “Very japoniste.”
“Beg pardon, ma’am,” the attendant said. “Of course, the designer understands Mr. Morris’s principles. But her name is Kathleen Kersey.”
No doubt, London is so large and the British so enlightened there are more opportunities here for women. We took a sample of Miss Kersey’s pattern, and I expect that Martina will order it.
My visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum with Mr. Lawrie is scheduled for tomorrow, and I will send you all the details. And I expect a letter from you about what I am sure will be a triumphant show for Lars.
With friendliest wishes to the two of you,
from Sofie
The day appointed for Sofie’s visit to the museum with Mr. Lawrie was silvery grey, with rain that sounded like well-disposed but not overly enthusiastic applause. Still known to most people as the South Kensington Museum, it had been renamed the Victoria and Albert at the turn of the century. Its confident red-brick sprawl went on for blocks. She watched from the main entrance as Mr. Lawrie followed his umbrella down Cromwell Road. It bobbed, feinted, rose and fell in its owner’s attempts not to collide with other umbrellas on the crowded street. Mr. Lawrie bounded up the steps when he spotted her and dropped the umbrella, which immediately began collecting rain. Retrieving it in such a way that it dribbled water over her skirt, he shook hands happily.
“Mrs. Olsson, how delightful to see you. Would you like to leave your overcoat?”
He smiled down at her from his plaid height. Cecilia’s instinct had been prescient. Seen in something closer to his natural habitat, Mr. Lawrie looked less red and raw-boned. Even the checks on his suit seemed more muted. He manoeuvred her through the door to the coat check, fussing with her things and eventually handing over her coat, scarf and umbrella to the attendant.
“I wonder if you would like a cup of coffee in the restaurant before we go to the Textile Rooms.”
He led her down what was called the Ceramic Staircase, lined with gleaming yellow and white tiles painted with flowers. It was like being inside a gigantic centrepiece for a table. As they descended, he mentioned that the Victoria and Albert was the first museum in the world to have a restaurant. Sofie was amused: unlike the Swedes’ pride in having something that was the biggest in the country or the world, the British preferred having something that was the first or the oldest. She and Mr. Lawrie kept bumping into each other, because she did not know where she was going, and he kept stopping abruptly to tell her something else about the museum.
The dining room had been designed by William Morris more than forty years earlier, although in many quarters Morris was still considered “modern.” Below the green plaster, midway up the walls, were small panels painted with lemons, oranges, cherries, leaves and the occasional medieval damsel. Their gold background lit up the green gloom.
“Nils would love the berries and fruit on the panels,” Sofie said. “But I cannot get him to England very often. He says it is because the English did not choose to publish his books. That is partly a joke, I suppose.”
Mr. Lawrie was usually interested in anything to do with Nils. But now he smiled absently and drew her attention to the stained-glass windows by Edward Burne-Jones and Philip Webb. And to the waiter who was ready to take their order.
“Will you not have something to eat with your coffee? Their scones are very good. Or a Chelsea bun, perhaps, they have candied fruit in them but are not too heavy.”
She knew what a Chelsea bun was, but she was not hungry. A little more of the museum’s weak coffee, and she would be ready to see the exhibits.
On the top floor of the museum, the Textile Rooms were high-ceilinged and so cold she was glad she had kept her merino shawl. When she turned without warning and made contact with Mr. Lawrie’s tweed jacket, it gave out its own welcome warmth for a few seconds. Fabrics from faraway times and places were pressed between thin sheets of glass in wooden frames, and stored in oak cabinets. You pulled out a frame by means of a brass handle, then stared through the glass at a worn or fragmentary cloth, trying to penetrate to the soul of a Hungarian apron or an Irish shirt. Dutifully, she stared at the examples of what the curators called “peasant art”—the bouquets, the pairs of birds and stags, the double-headed eagles that decorated fabrics all over Europe. Was she only echoing the same meagre, repetitive vocabulary? Was it all as boring as it looked in these low-lit rooms?
And then, in a glass case against a wall, something spoke to her. It was a full skirt from Crete, in a warm, off-white mixture of linen and cotton. Like her own clothes, it had no waist. It began high, at the breasts, and was held up by two broad shoulder straps. A jacket or shirt would be worn on top of it, but there was a deep opening down the middle, for breast-feeding, perhaps, or ease of putting it on and taking it off. From the hem up to the knee, the skirt was covered with black embroidery, an intense garden of stylized flowers and plants. This maker, she thought, marvelling at the wildness and control of the design, did not judge herself against the work of others, did not fret about unimportant things, simply ornamented a useful garment with disciplined abandon. She was being silly, she knew nothing about this embroiderer. But there was something so assured about the black-and-white skirt.
“Look…the maker has signed it.”
Mr. Lawrie nodded. The signature was neither little nor large, but perfectly legible across the top of the embroidery band.
“Maria Pappadopoula, 1757,” he read. “Does the fact that it is signed surprise you?”
“Of course. Does it not surprise you?”
“Phoebe Traquair signs all her work, whether it is metalwork or embroidery or bookbinding.”
“Miss Traquair works in Scotland at the beginning of the twentieth century, which from your account sounds like a paradise for craftswomen. Maria Pappadopoula, whoever she was, worked in the middle of the eighteenth century in Crete, which I doubt was as enlightened.”
“I was teasing you. Do you not sign your works?”
“I put ‘S.O.’ in an out-of-the-way spot on most of the tapestries and hangings, sometimes on a tablecloth but never on clothes or curtains. I know, there is no rhyme or reason to it.”
On the way down from the Textile Rooms, they stopped on the second floor to look at the miniatures. She put her face as close as she dared to the cases, staring at portraits on vellum or ivory, almost small enough for a dollhouse.
“Here are a few by someone named Annie Dixon,” she pointed, “and this one is signed Christina Robertson.”
“Yes, it was a form in which a woman could make a living without much fuss, beca
use it was considered a craft and not so demanding as a full-size portrait.”
She looked at him to make sure he found that as ludicrous as she did and, reassured, she moved on to the next case. Anna Mee, born Foldsone, had painted a self-portrait on ivory at the end of the eighteenth century. Her eyes were almost violet and her runaway curls held strategically in check by a white kerchief. Mr. Lawrie said that she had supported her widowed mother and eight siblings with her miniatures.
“When she married Mee, he allowed her to continue painting as long as she confined her work to female sitters.”
She laughed, but she understood Mr. Mee. The relationship between the artist and the sitter was charged—although in her experience, the artist was almost always male and the subject female. She thought about Nils’s models. The children had grown up thinking it was quite natural for their father to spend the day closeted with a woman who was wearing no clothes. Sometimes they were assigned to guard him and the model when he posed her outdoors, leaning over the little bridge in the woods or lying under a tree. If anyone approached, they sounded the alarm. She thought back to the pictures—clothed ones—he had made of her when they were courting and newly married. Yes, there had been something. But not now. Now when she sat for him, she felt something almost like resentment coming from him. Or a hope that if he painted her from the back, as she tinkered with a shrub or set out linens to bleach, he could in some way contain her. Reduce her.
As they left the museum, Mr. Lawrie said, “I have a surprise for you.”
The surprise lived in a white-plastered house with heavy Doric columns at 5 Cromwell Place, just south of the Natural History Museum. It was John Lavery, their old colleague from Grez, and he was expecting their visit. As Mr. Lawrie had told Sofie and Nils in Askebo, Mr. Lavery concentrated on society portraits these days, inching closer and closer to the royal family. He was a widower, with a daughter away at school. In his second-floor studio, lit by a triple window, he was painting a portrait of a woman in a velvet evening dress, with a necklace of starry diamonds. Just before they arrived, he had been working on the irregular, softly gleaming folds in the midnight blue velvet. They admired the studio and the portrait, and then he took them downstairs, to a parlour lined with Japanese prints.
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