In one fluid, irritated movement, Nils put down his cup and the paper, and scraped the chair away from the table. Once he was standing, he pulled off his glasses.
“I must get to work.”
He would sulk now, at least for a little while.
“Will you be wanting Felix and me, or are you working on something else today?”
The rhubarb was ripe and she and Felix had prepared most of the crop for bottling while posing for Nils. In his painting, the stalks were piled on one side of the low table in the kitchen garden, with bowls of trimmed and sliced rhubarb on the other side. Felix’s tongue distorted his cheek in concentration as he pulled off the peel in the broadest ribbons possible. Wearing her French bonnet, she leaned forward, pulling the last strings from a stalk. At their feet, a carpet of fan-shaped leaves, peel and strings deepened.
“In the afternoon, if it’s still fine. I want to spend the morning on sketches for the Gustafsson portrait.”
He was painting a portrait of the writer Richard Gustafsson. She nodded, without meeting his eyes. He left for the studio, and she returned to the paper.
Miss Lagerlof, like Ellen Key, couched the struggle for suffrage in terms of women being able to be more, not less, womanly when they had achieved their rightful place in society. Sofie reread the passage from her speech about the home being a loving realm where every talent is respected, then put down the paper. Miss Lagerlof, for perfectly good strategic reasons, idealized home life. On the other hand, as she had never married, perhaps she believed what she wrote.
Chapter Seventeen
SEPTEMBER 1911
THE DERRYS, AN English couple whom Sofie and Nils had met through Martina and Francis, were staying with them in Askebo, and the Vogts had invited the four of them to dinner and to spend the night. On the lonely road, as they neared Siljevik, they passed a cart and horse going in the opposite direction. A young woman was seated next to the driver, with a trunk in the back.
Cecilia was dressed in a forest-green watered silk that Sofie had admired before. But tonight it did not suit her. Her face looked drawn and distended at the same time. Lars seemed more or less his usual self, happy to show the Derrys around his collections, but he watched Cecilia out of the corner of his eye.
Apparently something had gone wrong with the servants. The maid who waited at table was too small for her lovely broderie anglaise apron and didn’t seem to know the proper side from which to serve.
“Forgive us,” Cecilia said to the Derrys, “Agnes is new to serving at table.”
In between the soup and the fish, Cecilia excused herself for a minute and Sofie went to the washroom on the second floor to sponge off some soup she had spilled on her dress. Coming out of the washroom, she found a strange, contorted shape in the hall, in the niche where the Vogts displayed a very large Chinese bowl on a stand. The shape was crouched over the broad bowl, almost as if it wanted to get into it. Its arms extended around the lip, but not protectively. It looked as if she—for now Sofie saw that the shape was Cecilia—was furious with the bowl and wanted to squeeze it almost to the point of shattering it.
“Cecilia, are you ill? Shall I call someone?”
She had no idea whom she would call, but Cecilia’s abandon and near-retching posture confounded her. Cecilia uncoiled herself from the bowl but lost nothing of her tenseness.
“No, don’t call anyone. I am a little under the weather, that’s all.”
“Just let me get Lars,” Sofie began, but Cecilia transferred her rage from the bowl to Sofie.
“Don’t get anyone!” she whispered so ferociously that Sofie instinctively stepped back. “Did you hear what I said? I just need some cold water on my face.”
Sofie gave an unconvinced half nod, and stood where she was, bewildered.
“Stop fussing!” Cecilia hissed, as if Sofie were making an unconscionable scene. “This has nothing to do with you!”
And with that, she vanished into the washroom. The rest of the evening was unremarkable. Agnes seemed finally to grasp that food was served from the left and drinks from the right. Cecilia reappeared with her livid face somewhat restored and chatted about her collection of English first editions with Charles Derry. And Sofie noticed only one other small, untoward thing, as they said good night to the Vogts before going to their rooms. Lars would often put his arm around Cecilia at this point in the evening, as they accepted their guests’ thanks. This evening, he moved to do that, when an almost imperceptible stiffening on Cecilia’s part stopped his arm in mid-air.
“What was it, do you think?” Sofie whispered to Nils, as they settled into bed in the smaller guest room.
“Cherchez la femme.”
He began to unbutton her nightdress.
“What do you mean?”
“Something to do, perhaps, with the woman and the trunk in the cart we passed on our way here.”
“Oooh.” He was clever. Another troublesome maid. Although she suspected this was a different kind of trouble. She shifted a little, releasing more of the nightdress to her front, so that he did not tear it with his unbuttoning. Poor Cecilia.
Chapter Eighteen
FEBRUARY 1912
ABOUT SIX MONTHS later, the Olssons were invited to dinner at Wilhelmina and Walther von Hallwyl’s new mansion in Stockholm. Walther von Hallwyl was on the board of the Comedy Theatre and the Lyric Theatre, both of which had commissioned works from Nils. The Hallwyls gave three formal dinner parties each February, one for the diplomatic corps and Stockholm society, one for family and the last for friends. Neither Stockholm society nor family, the Olssons were not really friends either, although that was the dinner to which they were invited.
Sofie admired the house’s dignified, closed street face on Hamngatan, but inside, things were not to her taste. The architect paid homage to a different, but equally sombre, historical style in each of the public rooms. Although the decor harked back to the seventeenth or eighteenth century, the house had every modern invention—elevators, indoor plumbing, a long-distance telephone. It was all hidden. Even the piano was smothered under a baroque cage of ormolu mounts and marquetry.
It was a relief to spot the Vogts in the baroque drawing room, standing in front of a marble fireplace so massive it might have been the entrance to a small house. Lars needed to consult with his engraver, and he and Cecilia both wanted to look at the seventeenth-century Dutch silver at Gustav Mollenborg’s shop, so they too had accepted the invitation and come to Stockholm.
“I wonder why there is no fire,” Lars said, looking into the great black hole of the hearth, the only empty space in the tapestried, coffered, chandeliered room. Waiters with trays of champagne flutes, each in his own obsequious dance, glided and bowed from one group of guests to another.
“Because Wilhelmina Hallwyl finds fires dirty,” Sofie said. “These public rooms have a kind of air heating, and the less important rooms, where pipes and radiators would not be so objectionable, are heated by steam.”
The drawing room’s pièce de résistance was a monstrous gilt cabinet, filled with equally ornate gold-painted teacups and teapots. Looking into its gleaming depths, Nils whispered, “You see, they like simple things too.” Sofie had to turn away before she laughed too loudly.
Dinner was a procession of thirteen courses, beginning with Hors d’oeuvres and Potage á la Victoria and going on to Filet de Turbot á la Normandie, Filet de Boeuf á la Parisienne, Vol-au-Vent and Perdreaux rôtis. Following a short intermission of greens, Salade and Asperges nouvelles, the guests staggered through no fewer than five sweet courses.
After dinner they were invited to tour the Hallwyls’ collections on the top floor of the house. Armour, porcelain, silver and paintings were displayed in separate galleries. Sofie and Cecilia strolled arm in arm and Cecilia, who knew a great deal about silver, pointed out the finest pieces to Sofie. The paintings looked as if they had been bought by the metre—one each of every Old Master still on the market, please—but even as she t
hought this, Sofie shrank a little from its snobbish sound.
Lars scorned the Rembrandt, although his own was equally dubious. He and Nils were no more enamoured of this conservative collection than Sofie was, but as they walked up and down the gallery, the men began to disparage artists the Hallwyls certainly would not have bought, the painters still called new. Picasso and Matisse took the lion’s share of their criticism, although Cézanne, Kokoschka and Kandinsky also came in for abuse. Lars, in some ways more modern than Nils, was scathing but calm. The fame or notoriety, as he saw it, of the new painters wounded Nils more closely. “They are malignant,” he said darkly, his forehead lowering at the thought of their baffling, deliberate clumsiness.
“Congratulations,” Sofie said. “You and the pope are in agreement. Pius X has just called for Catholics to take an oath against modernism.”
Nils looked disconcerted. He insisted, “They will not last. It is a fad. In fifty years, no one will remember their names.”
“It is hardly a fad,” Sofie said. “Cézanne has had a retrospective at the Salon d’Automne. Matisse is represented by Bernheim-Jeune in Paris, and Picasso by Kahnweiler. He has powerful patrons in the American brother and sister, Leo and Gertrude Stein. Matisse interests me especially, he is so sketchy and bold, with great blank spaces in his canvases. His flowers are wonderful, I think.”
It was not a long speech, but she meant it to have a bite. Cecilia gave her a look. The conversation stopped abruptly and the men drifted away to look at the Murillo. She and Cecilia sat down on a bench in front of a rather sweet Van Ruysdael.
Cecilia wore an expression that meant she had something to say, and would not be stopped. Sofie resigned herself.
“Sofie, everyone who sees them thinks your fabrics are superb. Ellen Key was telling me about the tablecloth and napkins on heavy linen you designed, each napkin embroidered with a different Swedish berry. Have you thought of having some of your designs reproduced, or even manufactured?”
“Not manufactured,” Sofie said sharply. “No. Some women in Askebo are weaving copies of the Navajo blanket I made for Nils’s bed. It’s a good way for them to make a little extra money. But other than that, no.”
Cecilia swept past the “no.” “I asked my brother about what would be involved in manufacturing some of your designs. Of course, he doesn’t work with fine fabrics, but talking with him would be a start. Look at the success William Morris’s fabrics and wallpapers have had.”
Sofie smoothed an invisible lock of hair.
“I have never understood the appeal of Morris’s claustrophobic vines and predatory flowers. Most of his designs are just a continuation of the gloomy rooms we grew up in.”
This gave Cecilia pause, but only for a moment. “Of course, your work is much airier and lighter than Morris,” she agreed cheerfully. “And more modern. I quite see that. I only meant that there is a market for good-quality textiles, and not only in Britain. And Fredrik would be happy to meet us—I thought I would go with you, for the first meeting anyway. Are you free next week?”
Sofie’s smile said, I am making an effort to be pleasant, but you are on thin ice.
“It’s kind of you to think about it, Cecilia. But there’s no point in wasting your brother’s time. Or yours, or mine. I don’t want my designs manufactured.”
Dear Cecilia,
Please don’t make appointments with your brother to discuss arrangements that do not interest me. I am quite capable of…
No. No, no.
Dear Cecilia,
I was too abrupt at the Hallwyls’. I do appreciate your generous interest in my work. My reason for saying no is not what everyone imagines, that Nils would not like it. I know people think that, but I refuse for another reason. I don’t know how to put it. I can only say I am not a designer of textiles except in the small way you know. I want something else, maybe I am something else. Forgive me, this sounds so silly, I don’t even know why I’m writing it. Really, I only wanted to apologize and thank you.
Your stubborn friend,
Sofie
Cecilia would have found both those letters incomprehensible, and the second even more than the first. As she did herself. Besides, she did not discuss Nils in that way with anyone.
Chapter Nineteen
APRIL 1914
Siljevik, 13 April 1914
Dear Sofie,
We had a rather interesting visit yesterday. Lars and I have been talking of hiring someone to do some curatorial and administrative work. The management of his work, the school and my other commitments keeps me more than busy. We would like to do something permanent, perhaps establish a public gallery of Lars’s work and our collections, in the way our friend Mrs. Gardner has done in her house in Boston. The old buildings Lars is buying need to be restored and displayed properly. And we talk of willing our house to the country, with its furnishings intact. All quite a lot of work, for which we need help. A young woman, a university graduate, came to be interviewed for this rather nebulous position. She has written a dissertation on Sweden’s traditional wooden buildings and apprenticed as a curator at the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin.
Her name is Lisbeth Gregorius. She is neither pretty nor plain, exactly, although she has a lovely carriage and does nice things with her hands when she talks. She is tall and still, but her questions were apt, and she had already done some thinking about our “foundation,” as she called it. I expect that Lars will choose one of the two young men who have also come to be interviewed, although their credentials are in no way better than hers. A pity, because I would have enjoyed getting to know Miss Gregorius.
I look forward to welcoming you and Marianne to my lacemaking school next week! It must be very satisfying to have a daughter who shares your interests—or at least some of them.
Your friend,
Cecilia
Marianne did want to learn how to make lace. But, she hastened to tell Sofie, not the quaint figures and even stories sometimes found in peasant lace. Instead, she wanted to learn some geometric, abstract patterns she could use to make bookmarks for her friends. Cecilia was happy to teach her, so Sofie and Marianne had arranged to spend a few days at Siljevik. In a corner of her study, Cecilia had equipped a small table with bobbins, the lacemaking pillow, pins, perforated pattern sheets and pictures of various patterns.
“Not Bockarna, certainly, not Krakspark, and not Halrad,” she said to Marianne, pointing out some of the most difficult. “Those are for later.”
“Those are not what I had in mind,” Marianne said, casually dismissing the Alpine peaks of the lacemaker’s art. “I like this one,” she said, of a simple-looking pattern with a diamond shape.
“That one needs a bit of experience too. Beginners start with a kind of lace called ‘Torchon.’”
“As in the French for tea towel?”
“Yes, exactly, because women edged their tea towels and even their underwear with it. Some lacemakers call it Beggar’s Lace because it uses a thick thread and not many bobbins.” She began pinning a pattern to the pillow and set Marianne to winding thread around the bobbins.
“You’re going to start with this bookmark.”
It was a loose honeycomb pattern with a tighter, diamond-shaped bit in the middle. So that Marianne could see the emerging pattern, Cecilia did the first few rows, twisting and crossing her bobbins and moving her pins with a dexterity that looked misleadingly easy. The bobbins made a gentle clacking sound. Then she slowed down so that Marianne could learn: “Cross over your threads, twist from right to left, and then place your pin under the stitch.”
“Did Mr. Vogt’s mother teach you?” Marianne asked, struggling to remember the order of the bobbins.
“She was my best teacher, and she taught me the patterns used around here in the Dalarna villages. But bourgeois girls in Stockholm in my day went to lacemaking classes, so I was not quite a beginner when I began to study with her.”
Sofie had planned to knit during the lesson. Now
she uncoiled her skein of wool, which looked like a braided loaf of bread, and looped it around the back of Cecilia’s desk chair. She began winding it into a ball while Marianne whispered, “Twist, cross, twist, cross.”
Eventually, as Marianne got more comfortable with her bobbins, she began talking about The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. Before she had had children, Sofie assumed they would all be eager readers. This was not the case—Tilda, for example, found in music the solace and the challenge Sofie found in books, and neither Sonja nor Felix enjoyed reading. Marianne was the keenest reader, and she had just finished George Meredith’s novel. She found the heroine, Lucy, supremely aggravating.
“She is such a perfect Patient Griselda—her bridegroom abandons her, she has no idea where he is and she is left to give birth and care for their baby alone. And when Richard reappears and confesses that he has been unfaithful to her, all she cares about is whether he still loves her. You can’t even speak about forgiveness, really, because she doesn’t seem to realize that he has done anything wrong. I wanted to shake her.”
Sofie kept on winding her yarn.
“You’re doing well,” Cecilia said to Marianne, “just remember to place your pins at an angle so the thread doesn’t slide off.”
“Don’t you find that pathetic?” Marianne asked her mother.
Sofie gave a noncommittal shrug.
Cecilia said, “Marianne, make sure that your pairs of bobbins stay separate from each other and from the other pairs. You mustn’t let them tangle.”
“But don’t you find that pathetic?” Marianne repeated, while she tidied her pillow.
“I don’t remember that part terribly well,” Sofie said.
“Perhaps the book is rather out of date,” Cecilia said. “It’s about fifty years old, I think.”
“Are you saying that you don’t think there are women who would respond the same way today?”
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