Letters from Tove

by Tove Jansson

  I won’t lose more than a fortnight with Guerin, in any case, because they take a holiday over Easter, which Holy doesn’t bother with. Yesterday I was sitting at home feeling gloomy and dull and dashing off an angry, glowering self-portrait. Then there was a knock, and in came Madame and Monsieur Chataïn, bearing a box of pastries. They had sought me out because they “had a feeling” I was all alone. That was kind of them, wasn’t it? So they invited me back home for diner and then to a theatre, “l’atelier” in Montmartre, and a performance of a play from classical antiquity, but modernised. The scenery was fantastically well done, and the costume colours were beautiful. Pluto, who spoke argot by the way, came down to Earth and gave discontented humans all the money they wanted, then everything went to pot and they wanted their poverty back. That was the main thread. Tomorrow I’ve been invited to dejeuner with Madame, who’ll be on her own with the kids; Gilbert’s off to Belgium in his car for a few days. The Bäcks have been very kind, too. Things were a bit dismal at first after they found out about my cigarette smuggling, but now they’ve finally got Irina home to her father they’ve calmed down and are trying to unwind after the whole wretched episode. There were complications to the very last, they got to Antwerp an hour late for the boat, and only caught up with it in a motor launch after much telephoning, telegraphing and running about, and Irina had to climb aboard via a rope ladder, out at sea. Bad luck really does seem to pursue that girl! Everything’s gone wrong for her, and the last thing she did was to pour some greasy stuff on her floor that drove the concierge wild, and set fire to her painter’s smock. At any rate, she’s made considerable artistic strides here without, as her papa feared, losing any of her “personality”. It’s true, though, that life would be impossible for her as a Spaniard’s wife. There would be no painting, anyway. He didn’t answer that farewell letter I devised with such effort and diplomacy, and Irina was depressed about that. I do hope she won’t later reproach me for that “service”, which was surely the most sensible thing to do, but not what she wanted deep inside.

  So that’s that. This evening it’s the Grande Bal, the annual one, at Beaux Arts. I was to have gone with Féri attired in gold and to the sound of cymbals, but with things as they are, I really can’t be off enjoying myself while he sits brooding up in his poky little studio. Wherever I go, this sort of mess ensues. I’m enclosing two photos of him in case you’re interested in how he looks. Is he like your Hungarian? Didn’t he also once say, “I don’t want to see you for a week”? That’s what Féri did, he wasn’t going to jump straight into the Seine, but he wondered if I would plant flowers on his grave. Well, I hope you don’t think I’m taking this as lightly as I make it sound. It’s immensely sad to know one’s ruined at least two or three months for another person, as that’s how long these wretched things usually take. Perhaps longer in this case, since he wanted to marry me. Mais, parlons nous d’autres choses. I do wonder how to set about finding a hotel for Papa. He’d certainly be very comfortable at Hotel des Terrasses, but it is a little out of things. What I’d like best would be for him to take a room here at Medicis – but it’s rather seedy and I don’t know if the other rooms are as pleasant as mine. Maybe he’d like to share a room with me? It would be cheaper, after all. Will you ask him about all that, and whether there’s a particular district he’d prefer, such as Montparnasse? It’s going to be so much fun having him here – hope he can stay a bit longer. And also – is there any particular item of clothing I could give Per-Olov for a present on the 23rd.

  Monday. Now all the canvases are glued, and the concierge has softened so much that she even lets me boil the water for my glue in her kitchen. Holy received his lost sheep with open arms today and veritably pounced on what I’d produced at Beaux Arts. He was beside himself over Moses and the muscle man. I really did escape from the dreadful Guerin in the nick of time – Beaux Arts was a place for having fun or hoping for the Prix de Rome, and possibly one gleaned some superficial technique to use in disguising one’s mediocre talents. He danced around the studio and went quite pale at the thought of the terrible danger I’d escaped from. – Now I can have a little laugh to myself about it all. What an odd time it’s been!

  But I’m now extremely curious to see how I get on with my latest ploy, to stop smoking. So far I can officially claim 24 hrs. If I last more than a week I’ll feel proud of myself, if I do two I get a new hat. The silly thing is that when I don’t smoke I get this wild craving for patisserie, or chewing gum. – Yesterday at Madame Chataïn’s was exceedingly tranquil. After dejeuner I devoted myself to drawing with the kiddies, ball games with them in the garden, playing with building bricks etc. We presented the drawings to Madame. When she finally let me go it was nearly evening and I went to Pontoise for a swim, and then to a colourised South Seas film. At the piscine I saw a gentleman in leopard-skin swimming trunks and a red cap with a bow at the back loudly hail each young man he met with a: Vous aimer ces femmes? There are some very strange fish here. In the bistro next to Beaux Arts I spent 10 minutes listening with growing astonishment to a boy I took for a particularly precocious and cynical thirteen-year-old – when he got up he proved to be a young lady, somewhat over 20. – I wonder whether I can be bothered to go back to that establishment at all. I can’t understand, for instance, why you have to use the dirtiest colour you can come up with for the background, which happens to be an indeterminate beery shade, a beige-ish mauve made up of all the palette scrapings smeared there by students over the years. It’s fair enough to “follow nature”, but not to “paint it as it is” too much, you have to see the value of accentuating and intensifying the essentials and playing down anything that’s superfluous to the picture.

  This evening I’m off to rive droit for a stroll around the big boulevards. One eventually tires of the Quartier Latin. Lots of love to you and the others! Irina might come round tonight, with my muff. Take great care of yourself!

  Tove.

  grippe: Influenza.

  argot: Slang.

  Mais, parlons nous d’autres choses: Let’s talk about something else.

  Vous aimer ces femmes? Do you love these women?

  That establishment: Beaux Arts.

  PARIS. THURS. 14 APRIL –38

  My beloved Mama!

  Today it’s thoroughly grey and cold – it’s bound to rain on Good Friday again this year. I stayed home from Holy today to get my canvases ready for the State competition. I just went down for a 4 fr. breakfast, pain blanc, butter, cheese, boiled beans. And in spite of it being a “short day” and me not knowing what to do with my hands and fangs (as Samu says) because I’m so nervous about my tableaux drying, I can’t stop myself answering your two lovely letters at slightly greater length. Or perhaps it’s even three? I do so enjoy sitting down to chat to you about whatever occurs to me; it scarcely counts as a letter any more – no need to bother rounding it off properly, it’s as if you’re simply here with me for a bit, while I smoke my post-breakfast cigarette. My abstinence only lasted a week, so no hat for me. Or maybe a very small hat. You’re right that I go round without one even though it isn’t really chic, but foreigners are allowed to do that. Still, now I don’t smoke until after breakfast, and a lot less than before – and what’s more I know now that I can stop if I want.

  Now just imagine, I shall be as fair as a flower in bloom before long, having been so carried away by my “success” at the Kunsthalle that I’ve gone and ordered myself a grey skirt suit! Sheer madness, isn’t it? But I got the material terribly cheap at a gentleman’s wholesaler’s in rue du Temple. I went in and said I was buying for a tailor (which was partly true.) You grow very bold here – you have to, or helplessness and loneliness come washing over you. Imagine it, with black gloves, hat and stockings and the shoes you’ll perhaps send with Papa and a little touch of blue or pink at the neck! I’ve already been for one fitting and it’s going to be beautiful! Like this [see illustration right]. And I’ve had a permanent wave. I had to do all that b
ecause I was getting depressed about my painting and Féri and myself. As you well know, such things can help – it’s funny, but true. These past few days I’ve been throwing oil paint around me like a lunatic. Holy’s gone to the country to paint trees before everything gets bunged up with “spinach”, and what’s more they’ve got a model I really don’t like, because she looks like a woman I was scared of when I was a child, so my working from home for a week is fine. Next time they’re going to paint a rather jolly still life with shells.

  No, I’m not going back to Beaux Arts. But as I said, the experience was definitely worth the 300. And when I get home I shall make some money out of the whole thing by writing about it. For now I just want to paint and, in any time I have over, to look around and just “be”. It’s only now I feel I can start working calmly and in earnest. Expect I’ll stay at Holy’s until at least 15 May, then I very much want to go to Brittany. Somewhere with sea and flat, windswept beaches with all sorts of exciting bristly plants, and the indigenous population in attractive costumes and lots of boats with coloured sails. You know how we sometimes conjure up such an idyllic picture of a region we’ve never seen and are utterly convinced that it matches reality. I shall go on my own because I’m happiest that way. Everybody here makes promises and plans and talks about so much that they never actually do. And I’m starting to learn to enjoy myself all on my own. Carlstedt’s given me an address where he says I’ll find all the things I’m looking for. He’s just back from Africa where he got through 50 litres of eau de cologne warding off the typhus epidemic, did 400 sketches and bought an alarming amount of brocade and jewellery. Now he’s wondering whether to take some peacocks with him to Finland – and any day now we’re off to the flea market to look for leopard skin!

  Tomorrow, or even this evening if they dry in time (I paint almost exclusively with Mastic these days) I shall send my canvases by registered post, weighing exactly 2 kg. Because it’s going to be so expensive I’ve had to make a selection so I’m sending: 1. “The woman at the mirror” (the one Irina is showing), 4 the still life with the doll, 2 the still life with the wine bottle, 8 the anemones, 3 the river at Jainville, 5 the apaché cellar, 7 Holy’s studio, 6 my hotel room and a canvas of a 9 girl with lilies that I dashed off in two days in the most frantic exhibition rush. It might be more sensible after all to submit the things that are already on show, since they’ve already found some kind of favour with the powers that be. You’ll have to see, you and Papa. But I’m convinced that the self-portrait and the studio window are both better than the things I’ve just done. The Muse knows. It did me good to hear that Irina thinks I’ve made progress – but despite her undoubted talent, she’s no foolproof authority. Don’t be embarrassed to write and tell me you don’t like my pictures. I’d planned to send them with my winter clothes but when I rang FÅA they said it would take at least 15 days to send the suitcase home. So that’s coming later, with the other paintings and drawings in it. [ … ]

  You know what, it’s done me some good to hear that people like my stuff. I was so depressed for a while because I could see my swift descent into a second-rater who would shame her forefathers. Now I believe in myself again.

  – Now that I won’t be going away any time in the next four weeks, at least – it doesn’t matter when Papa comes. I know how much he dislikes deciding in advance. Just write a few days beforehand and tell me if I need to find a room for him.

  Irina certainly set her prices rather on the high side. (Or her father did.) I’m happy with mine, don’t want them any higher, not yet. It’s stupid, anyway – there isn’t a living soul who’d pay over 2500 for a canvas, unless he’s a Serlachius. He’s been here, incidentally, buying up French art like mad. As a result, Finland’s risen considerably in French artists’ estimation. A rich country that cares about supporting culture!

  Wouldn’t it be a better idea to take all my things with me to Brittany and then come straight home from there? But I’ll have to see later on. And yes, I have considered allowing myself a week just to “fool about” somewhere. There’s plenty to be learnt from one of those, too. Féri had planned “en ce temps là” a week in Fontainebleau for us to live and paint together, and it’s largely because I got cold feet and refused that relations went downhill as they did. I’m very suspicious of young men who want to take you “to a quiet little place where we can stay at an idyllic inn together, undisturbed – and paint.” Maybe if they varied their turn of phrase a bit – but I’ve heard it three times in a row already.

  Well, the streets are quiet now. I think a lot gets exaggerated in the Finnish newspapers. – How nice that the party was so animated! It’s made me sad that you so often feel you’re the outsider somehow. And it’s great that you sang at the Society of Illustrators! They can really do with it, they’re complete spiritual sclerotics, the lot of them. Irina’s right when she says our artists are gloomy and take no pleasure in their work. Here, the pleasure sometimes gets rather out of hand. I’m thinking of Beaux Arts (as a parallel to the Atenaeum). Yes, I could have studied there “to have a good time” but my pictures would undoubtedly have been less fun, everything brown-on-brown.

  What a shame about Grandmother. I hope there isn’t anything seriously wrong with her leg, but she always gets in such a state when she’s ill. Of course I shall write. As soon as I get these canvases sent off. – Yes, I thought you’d like Irina. So her papa’s already shut her up with her easel. She’s abnormally docile, that girl.

  Torsten wrote to me, too, a sort of distress call because I’d gone quiet for a couple of weeks. He asked if he was meant to “vanish from my landscape in shame”. How daft it is to imagine oneself forgotten and out of favour if the other person doesn’t write for a while! I only had my first letter from Carin Cleve yesterday. But we haven’t fallen out, for all that. She’s had a hard time, poor thing, and is finishing at Sköld’s now, to try for the Academy. She’s not coming here in the spring. – Now I must get back to my canvas. This letter looks rather untidy but I’m up to my neck in paint at the moment. Take great care of yourself and hugs to Papa and the boys.

  Lots of love, your Noppe.

  P.S. I shall sit here waiting for the Mastic to dry until 7 o’clock when the post office closes. If there are any patches of red or green that are too bright, say, there’s nothing to stop you toning them down with a bit of oil paint. I honestly don’t know myself any more what’s good and what’s useless – I’m glad to see the back of the whole bag of tricks! You can keep the photos of Féri. I might pack Sommers into my suitcase too, so you can see what he looked like. Thank you for the hepaticas. It’s all violets here. KISSES!

  Tove.

  Samu: The artist Sam Vanni, sometimes called Samuli. See Letters to Maya Vanni.

  “success” at the Kunsthalle: In the Annual Artists’ Exhibition in April, TJ was awarded the Finnish Art Society’s so-called “Ducat” prize of 3000 Marks.

  Serlachius: Industrialist and art collector Gösta Serlachius.

  Sköld: Otte Sköld, Swedish artist and professor of painting, ran his own art school in Stockholm.

  hepaticas: A plant; a herbaceous perennial of the butttercup family, usually violet in colour.

  SUNDAY 24 APRIL –38. PARIS.

  Beloved Mama!

  True, it is only three days since my last letter, but the long Sunday and good news from Holy lead me to substitute a rather longer epistle for the traditional card. You may remember me talking about a still life with shells, the first piece of work this spring I was pleased with.

  Holy returned from his séjour in the country yesterday (he only gives his critiques once a week these days, but in great detail) and really liked the painting – said it was my best work. Sadly it’s too late to send it in for the State Competition. He just wanted one corner of the background a bit warmer to intensify the light, and the outline of one of the shells accentuated. He also delivered his verdict on the woman with the lilies. He was pleased with me for tackling such a tri
cky problem. He very much liked the lilies and her face, but claimed (as Papa so often has!) that the canvas was disjointed because of the different manières, and would benefit from being cut in two. I don’t intend doing that, however, and will try to solve the problem instead, even if I end up spoiling the whole thing. He also looked at a small study of a boy’s head in which I had tried to clarify a pure cadmium purple background with elements of blue and brown against the boy’s pale brown face and a light green blouse. I think Holy feels I’m making progress. Since getting the canvases sent off to Finland I’ve worked much better. That’s partly because I no longer have the pressure of putting things on show or painting for exhibitions, partly because my interest isn’t torn between work and emotional relationships with other people, and partly because I’ve decided to devote my remaining time here entirely to painting. You know that if we feel our work is going in a positive direction, if we’re inspired by the urge to reproduce something beautiful we’ve seen and our thoughts are absorbed only in that, we are happy in our work even if we don’t leave our room for a week. I have now succeeded (I think) in liberating myself from the influence of the Beaux Arts, those over-admired idols and the urge to paint loud pictures, just to impress. Today I was at the Musée de Luxembourg and noted with a certain satisfaction that I no longer got stuck in front of every canvas, confusing myself with the diversity of manières and styles of perception, but calmly walked past things that did not fit with my way of seeing, and knew for sure what I liked and what I could learn from.