Letters from Tove

by Tove Jansson

  As for Al Capp, now I’ve got the address I’m sending him Trollkarlens hatt (that’s the one with the best illustrations) along with a letter saying how I discovered his Schmoos and was tickled by their similarity to Moomin, and how enchanting I find his animals.

  In Liz’s book [added later: transl.] the names are mumintrollet – Moomintroll, Snusmumriken – Snufkin, Tofslan o Vifslan – Thingamy and Bob (Eng. expression meaning roughly “pass me that – whatever it’s called – from over there”), the parents, Moominmamma, Moominpappa. Sniff = Sniff, Snork = Snork, Hemulen = Hemulen.

  I think I’ve covered the most important points now. If you write anything, say less rather than more – no unnecessarily boastful facts. You know. I just wrote down what occurred to me – you can pick and choose.

  And finally, I want to say how absolutely delighted I am with the photographs you took in my studio. They’re the most authentic pictures to have been taken here, both of me and of the studio. Everybody likes them. Eva, thank you, congratulations. If you really did want to give me enlargements – or copies, of some, I’d be tremendously glad. A picture like that one of me by the window would be so nice to give to a friend who wanted a photo. A completely natural picture. And what’s more, I even look quite attractive, don’t I? Just think, I’ve never dared let anyone take a picture of me in profile before. Maybe one of the window photos (16, 12 and 8) no. 8 is best. Do you think I could have a couple of that one? And after those, I’m also delighted with no. 14, with me standing in profile beside the easel. Excellent light and movement! The studio pictures are first-rate, just a shame I’m pulling such a face in them. No. 4 has such brilliant tones and composition. I’d really love to have that one, and no. 17, and two where you’ve managed to incorporate the baldachin into the composition – especially rhythmically in no. 17. I bet you’re pleased with the pictures where I’m pouring coffee and looking like a sulky boy. No. 11 is good, with the dark face against the pale canvas. No. 16, too, with my head bent in front of the easel. What do you think of them yourself? Do write! [ … Last page missing]

  Eva Konikoff’s photo of Tove Jansson in her studio in Ulrikaborgsgatan: “a completely natural picture … I even look quite attractive.”

  Ham and I spent ten days: See Letters to Vivica Bandler, Unknown date in a snowstorm. 1950.

  Started writing the first Moomin story: The date of writing Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen [published in English as The Moomins and the Great Flood] was altered in the letter from 1944 to 1938 by TJ. She makes reference to the story in her diary in May 1944 with the comment: “Felt like tidying up Moomintroll’s wonderful journey and revising it.” She has “the Moomintroll book” finished in a couple of days.

  Jarno Pennanen: Author and journalist, an emerging left-wing radical and opinion former.

  Elisabeth Porch: Elizabeth Portch, Liz, who gave private lessons in English in Finland for some years. Lars Jansson was among her first pupils.

  Warburton: Thomas Warburton, translator and senior literary editor at the publishing house Holger Schildts Förlags.

  Dramaten: The Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm.

  dir Hogland: Director Claes Hoogland, dramatist and critic.

  TOVE JANSSON HAS A NEW LOVE: BRITT-SOFIE FOCK, WHO works as a goldsmith. They live together for a number of years and Britt-Sofie Fock sits for several paintings. The pace of work in the early 1950s is intense and Tove Jansson is engaged on numerous artistic projects. In 1952, she does two frescoes for Fredrikshamn’s “society house” or clubhouse, another fresco at Kotka and publishes her first picture book about the world of the Moomins, Hur gick det sen? (The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My). That year she also signs a contract for the Moomin cartoon strip with Associated Newspapers. “There’s a lot going on all at once”, she writes to Eva Konikoff.

  28 FEB. 52 [Helsingfors]

  Dearest Eva,

  Thank you for your long letter! So in four days’ time you’ll be working again. I wonder if you found a better place than last time.

  You know what, your whole letter was so much calmer and happier than for ages. Well, perhaps not happy exactly – but hopeful. It did me good to have another chance to talk to you for a while. I know now that the contact between us will never be broken again – even though the intervals will sometimes be long.

  Perhaps it was a good thing Barney vanished. The way people, friends, seem to vanish in New York. It’s not so easy here. One bumps into old mymbles, friends and enemies everywhere. It’s such a ridiculously small world – and Finnish intellectuals and artists in particular are forever tripping over each other. And getting hopelessly tangled up with one another. There are so few of us!

  Another group that’s few in number is the lesbians. The ghosts, as we call them – and as I shall call them in my letters from now on. That might be one of the reasons why Vivica attracted so many people’s attention. It seems to me that the world is full of women whose men don’t satisfy their need for affection, eroticism, understanding, etc. Lots of things a ghost can provide – though she can rarely provide respectable security and is over-sensitive = difficult in absurdum. It’s not surprising you didn’t connect with Vivica. She “shut down” and was quiet and impersonal in your company, because she sensed that you didn’t like her.

  You can definitively drop all your grudges now because she will never “let me down”! On the contrary, I know that she will be with me all my life as an utterly loyal friend and helper. And I realise now that I could never have received a better gift than that tough time when I was in love with her. It eventually made me into more conscious, more self-assured person and peeled away all those stupid, unnecessary ornaments of self-deception, restraint and naivety. I’m also very grateful to Atos – mainly for the intellectual strength he tried to give me. You probably know that we mymbled now and then, as friends – rather the way one might cuddle one’s old husband – purely for the pleasant familiarity of it. Now I’ve rearranged things a bit and made up my mind as to where to belong – and definitively ended all emotional involvement with him – but the friendship part is still there, of course. […]

  In emotional terms, these last few years have been very shaky and uncertain. Constantly in the early stages of falling in love, masses of concocted feelings and disappointments, casual new liaisons and the renewal of older ones – and all the while that uncomfortable sense of hanging in mid-air, seeking where there’s nothing to be found.

  I think I finally know what I want now, and as my friendship with you is very important to me and is very much founded on honesty, I want to talk this over with you. I haven’t made the final decision, but I’m convinced that the happiest and most genuine course for me would be to go over to the ghost side. It would be silly of you to get upset about that. For my own part, I’m very glad and feel intensely relieved and at peace. – These last weeks I’ve been almost exclusively with the one I’ve found, unfortunately just a short time before she goes off to France. We’re both equally happy. I’m also working like a thing possessed – inter alia on a couple of portraits and nude studies of her. She won’t ever be coming back here, but this time I’ve decided not to bury myself in grief.

  And the day will come when I feel able to start looking round for somebody else I can be fond of. It won’t be easy. And I’m afraid I shall look a little ridiculous. Can you imagine me making cautious enquiries of all ladies in collar and tie, or placing pathetic advertisements in Hufvudstadsbladet! “Who will take me to the distant shores of Lesbos!” The risk would be that they’d think I meant Esbo …

  But all that will come later. The main thing surely has to be feeling at ease with oneself and knowing what one wants.

  I shall be painting my murals all spring. In a few days the two canvases, each 5½ m, will be dry enough to paint. I had two youngsters from the Ateneum here to prepare and stretch them for me at an hourly rate. (“Old Naturalist exploits impoverished young geniuses for work of Mammon …”) The 1:1 sca
le tracing onto the walls is already done. And the sketch for the Kotka mural sent in.

  As regards the Daily Mail I’m still in correspondence with them about a Moomin cartoon strip. Would be a good thing for the publicity of my books. Bobbs-Merrill writes about the possibility of toys, perhaps solid, perhaps balloons, based on my Moomins. But it is no more than an idea, I believe.

  The picture book I did over the summer is off to the printer’s, and Warburton is dragging his feet interminably over his translation of the Moomin memoirs. And tomorrow I shall deliver a collection of 6–7 oils for the open exhibition at the Kunsthalle. There’s a lot going on all at once. But I’m enjoying my work – finally, after so many hellish years of failure and lack of productivity. Time to get a meal ready. So long until tomorrow!

  Next day.

  Hello Eva – today I can’t paint a single line or do anything sensible at all: the day before it has to be submitted. How very distasteful I find exhibiting! It’s going to be a terrific relief once the canvases are in, even if they’re then refused or harshly criticised. This is a sort of “come back”, you know, and I am terribly uneasy about it. Samuli, who now and then – twice a year perhaps, comes here and gives me critic, was rather positive, though. Dunno … And the day after tomorrow I start painting my walls. You can perhaps imagine it hasn’t been easy being in love with all that work around you. Time is simply melting away, you hardly dare to sleep – and though feel in a mysterious way stronger and more alive than ever before. I suppose I am happy.

  Peo’s departure still isn’t definite. Peter’s had bad angina and been in the epidemic hospital, Peo’s film is finished after a huge amount of work, Saga minds other people’s children during the day to earn a bit of money. If they are able to go I shall be delighted to be able to help out financially for a change. And once in Canada, Peo will apparently find a wonderful job in his line of work. We’ll have to see. Faffan’s been brighter and hasn’t been on the binge at all, not recently. He and I haven’t exchanged a single unkind word for years now. I wonder what I shall do for Ham’s 70th on 1st June. She refuses any kind of formal celebration and stubbornly insists on going out to Bredskär with me. But of course that just won’t do! What about Faffan? Well, she says, that’s the only present I want, to be alone with you on the island. Apart from that, she wants nothing for herself. I wonder how things will turn out. Kurt thinks we ought to go to Vienna with him for a week and Ham should then go on to somewhere like Florence.

  Eva, your Mexico plans sound bewitching to me. Of course I’d like to. But it’s a long way away, and lots can change. Why not …? It seems some money will be coming my way.

  Lasse’s still at the art shop and doing business with varying success, but undoubtedly with increasing proficiency and salesmanship skills. And his interest in it definitely seems lasting. He’s busy writing a novel about love, psychological.

  As for Sam, he’s become a tremendous bigwig in the art world, teaching at the Ateneum, sitting on lots of juries and committees, and is just as nice as ever, but with a much larger paunch. I suppose Maya has “calmed down”, as you put it, they’re getting along fine, but I think she’d quite like to do a bit more ghosting. I can very well understand that.

  The dressmaker’s workshop that wanted to buy my studio has backed out, but other prospective purchasers keep turning up for a look so who bloody knows what will happen.

  Where the summer’s concerned, I’m probably going to have another new cousin on the island, this time from Germany. But I’m sure I won’t feel as free and easy as last year. The Kotka fresco has to be painted and in a modest sort of way I’m wondering about a solo exhibition in the autumn. – Yes, Impi’s well for now, thank God, though one wonders how long it can last.

  Non-figurative = non-figural representation is actually “abstract art”. I share your view on that score. I can admire it while not actually “liking” it. But I do love Matisse.

  Right then, hugs and farewell for today. Next time I write, a lot of my jobs will be over and done with, my Bitti will be gone and spring might slowly be on its way.

  Kisses and please, burn my letters!

  old mymbles: Former lovers, male or female. Mymbling is used to mean more or less the same as sleeping with someone.

  THE ISLAND. 5 JUNE 52.

  Dearest Eva,

  thanks for your long letter – and for those glimpses of your February and April. Little Lynn and Howard, Rosa, Devora, Ada – I already feel quite familiar with them from your descriptions. But the most powerful threads running through your letters are those of work and the very lonely battle you are having with yourself. You write to me when you’re frantic, when you’re hopeful and when you’re strong – and I’m glad of that.

  [ … ] If only I could have you here for a week on the island! That’s how long I’ve been here with Ham. When we came I was on the verge of tears from exhaustion and nerves, but now calm skies, horizons, the quiet and the gentle monotony of the days have wiped all that away. It’s strange to think there was a time when I didn’t “like nature”. How stupid.

  A few essentials are increasingly crystallising out. A few people, jobs of work, settings. It’s as you say, one would prefer to have just a few desires (though those may be greater than ever?) and can muster no time or energy for anything superfluous.

  I’ve often described Bredskär to you. You know everything that generally happens here, what I get up to, and that I’m happy on my island.

  So I’ll tell you instead what happened in town this hectic spring.

  I had 4 big things accepted at the Kunsthalle, and I was lucky with the hanging, in the centre of a wall in the middle room. And better reviews than I had before the war. Maybe my painter’s block will ease off now. The best canvas was a portrait of Eric Fock’s sister Bitti.

  Other than that I’ve painted nothing but the murals for Fredrikshamn – “The Beach” and “Seabed”. Working full days most of the time – and they were ready a week before I came out here for Ham’s 70th birthday, just in time to be taken to F:hamn for mounting on the wall. It was one hell of a final spurt. What made it such a rush was cartoon-strip business getting in the way, a chance that I didn’t dare pass up. Mr Sutton (my Moomin agent in London) came over on the last day of April to agree a contract between Associated Newspapers Ltd and me, and I had to have synopses for 80 cartoon strips ready for him.

  I finished them the day he came. In the evening a big May Day Eve party for him at the studio for 20 people, guitars and Finnish brandy, irate caretaker, balloons, intrigues, dancing and morning coffee, the whole works. And on top of all that, a May Day business breakfast at Kämp – disturbed to some degree by the restaurant being full of students, singing and dancing and climbing pillars, and children playing and most of the guests from the night before.

  Mr. Sutton may have got a somewhat misleading impression of Finnish high spirits, but he certainly enjoyed himself. Admittedly he hid behind his grey English moustache when Vivica asked me to samba with her in the studio – but the contract was agreed and my synopses met with approval.

  Mistrustful as I am these days, I surreptitiously found an expert in all the chaos, and showed them the contract, which proved to contain a significant trap. The clever wording seemed at first glance to say I would receive a certain % for cartoon strips sold to other newspapers, when in actual fact this only applied to television, broadcasting and cinematograph rights. And they will hardly apply in the case of strips. So I got Sutton to put in a clause about my right to a % for publication in other newspapers.

  He’s handling the % for rubber articles (!) in America for me. Had a try at raising the royalty, but failed. Benn’s is busy with “Muminpappans bravader” [The Memoirs of Moominpappa] and a publisher in Switzerland is interested in “Finn Family”. The Mymble picture book is now at the printer’s here and has also been translated into Finnish. I’m firing off commercial letters in all directions and am amazed at the sheer volume of all the Moomin busine
ss. If the cartoons prove popular in London I shall be engaged for maybe 4 years to deliver one a day. Permanent employment – the first time in my life … They want them quite large with lots of detail and keep changing things and raising objections, so it takes quite a long time to finish a whole strip. Here on the island I’ve finally had time to make a start on them – I’ve got to deliver them regularly, in bundles of six.

  Where to put in murals and oil painting …?

  Just before I came out here, my sketch for the Kotka fresc [sic] was approved – it’s to be done in September. I’ve fixed up some paper and started drawing the composition in charcoal. And in October the ballet Pessi and Illusia opens at the Finnish Ballet. With my stage sets, to be done this summer. So as you see, it never rains but it pours. I’ve opted out of jobs for the Sw. Theatre and the Junior Theatre and various illustration commissions. Only taking the things I haven’t the heart to refuse, for the sake of the glory or the money. But no damn body buys paintings!

  In July, Bitti’s coming back from Paris and is going to spend some time on the island with me. You’ll realise how I’m anticipating that and trying to get jobs out of the way beforehand. Bredskär is a good place for stripmaking.

  6/6

  (and why not lovemaking too?)

  Uca’s been in Paris for a while making arrangements for a film she might make here with Peo behind the camera. She met Bitti while she was there, and of course I was agog to know if they’d make contact. It’s been preposterous always trying to keep them out of each other’s way because Mary portrayed them as monsters to one another, played them off against each other and turned them into fierce enemies. They wrote eventually, and were clearly neither rivals nor antagonists any longer.