Letters from Tove

by Tove Jansson

  But of course she’s got to try, and of course we’ll do our best to help. It’s rare for Maya to ask for help. I told her in my letter that you – in accordance with her wishes – knew all about it, and that she ought to call you to confer on dates. Both of you would prefer to come separately, I’m well aware of that.

  It is a pretty kettle of fish. But for me the main thing is that you visitors are comfortable here and feel that in spite of my moods and clutter, it’s a place you can come for some rest. If all my friends suddenly shunned Bredskär I would throw in the towel, because it would mean the best thing I tried to build had been in vain.

  – Now the whole lot are asleep, some of them on the floor. There are wet clothes drying on the stove and the mist is right outside the window. [ … ] Uca, do give my warmest regards to Kurt. I hope his germs aren’t dangerous. Kisses to you and Nita, and I really look forward to having you here!

  Tove.

  Landström: Björn Landström, artist and writer. He was artistic director at the Taucher advertising agency at the time.

  Tuulikki: Tuulikki Pietilä (Tooti). See Letters to Tuulikki Pietilä.

  Moune: The chanteuse Moune de Rivel.

  kiljun: Home-made wine.

  2.6.64 [Bredskär]

  Darling Vivica,

  Tomorrow Tooti’s going to town and I want her to bring you a report from the island – so you and Kirsten will know everything here is going better than I could ever have expected!

  Right from the start, a cordial, natural atmosphere, perhaps partly because I’ve made friends with Bredskär again – not sure how that happened. I presume largely because I’ve worked off a lot of my feelings in this book, which I fervently hope you’ll be able to read sometime over the summer.

  Or later, there’s no hurry. I shall be sitting on it for quite some time, until I’m convinced it holds together. It’s called “Pappan och havet” [Mooominpappa at Sea] and in retrospect it seems to me to be largely about Faffan. If it weren’t for the fact that it’s a touch pathetic and revealing, I’d dedicate it to him.

  It’s turned out rather melancholy, of course, despite my best efforts and despite the positive ending in which Pappa, Mamma and Moomintroll each find a way out of their individual loneliness and become a family again, and the lighthouse is finally lit on the beautiful hostile island to which Pappa has dragged them to assert his manliness and restore his self-esteem. Little My is with them to provide some much-needed contrast in les brumes nordique and the Groke has come to the forefront. Apart from them, just one slightly maladjusted fisherman who sculls about in the background and wants to be left alone.

  Anyway, you know how grateful I am to finally have a long, concerted stretch of time for working with true zest and a real sense of need – a rare phenomenon these days.

  I’m sure it was the Spanish trip that unknotted things for me, one of the nicest presents I’ve ever had from my friends.

  Today it’s sunny, with a sou’-wester blowing, “the darlings” and Nita are down on the sand, Lasse’s preparing clay for a bust of Sophia and Tooti is rummaging about in the attic for suitcases.

  I’m sad that she’ll be gone for such a long time – of course, but it feels like just the right time for a pause. There are the lithographic materials, a whole printing press of stones, which she bought for an amazing bargain price just before we came here and is going to install in the library and bring into use. And the possibility of going to Venice to superintend an exhibition in June.

  After a long break in her work it’s hard to get going again on an island like this, I think she needs her own surroundings and the stimulation that a new working technique can provide.

  What’s more, the old Ham friction is bound to set in again sooner or later, and I want to spare us the dreadful gloom of last summer.

  Yes, I’m sure it’s all for the best. And something happened yesterday that is going to resolve all our island problems, I got my permission to build on Klovharun!

  I certainly never thought I would pull it off when I went to Borgå to charm the Building Board with that rather antiquated map in my bag, I was convinced their wall would be adorned with the new one, with “Property of the State” stamped in red all over the archipelago.

  O how I’ve had to battle, and how many setbacks there have been – and I don’t suppose things will get any easier from now on, either, with lots more “irrelevant” obstacles to overcome – but I got my island, Vivica!

  It’s sure to be a long time before anything gets built there, but I know it’s mine, I can go there and root about in the soil, plant stuff, maybe make a jetty or a place for chopping wood. And Tooti won’t be so wound up.

  Yesterday evening, Lasse and Nita planted lots of bushes they’d brought with them from town and chopped down the little fir tree in front of the cottage. It’s going to look very good and, you see – it’s such a positive sign that they’re starting to feel part of Bredskär, taking pleasure in the ownership of it. Ham delightedly pitched in to help.

  Her birthday was a cheerful and festive occasion. Our first triangle week, warm and windless, was just heavenly. Ham herself suggested that she should sleep in the guest room and I accepted. Got up at 3 and lit the stove for her when the morning chill crept in. We tidied, repaired, got everything in order, Tooti made a handrail up the stairs to Ham’s room and helped her with lots of other little things.

  There, see, my island report is excellent this year! I’m so glad you and Kirsten are coming here, hopefully for more than just a few days.

  It must feel awfully desolate for you, now she’s gone off to her seminar.

  Lasse and Nita were full of praise for the premiere and eminent critics agreed with them. How wonderful that it was such a success! A special congratulatory hug to Kirsten!

  That must have been quite some theatre party you had. Lasse and Nita were glad you were all able to meet up so much. Isn’t Sophia even more delightful now you can have a bit of a conversation with her? She blends into the landscape like a flower and bawls every time she sees a boat, imagining it’s coming to take her away from here.

  Later: Tooti got her travel grant of 2000, so now she can go to Venice!

  A huge hug and warmest wishes!

  Your Tosla.

  Kirsten: Kirsten Sørlie, a Norwegian director who for many years worked in collaboration with Vivica Bandler and was one of her lovers.

  “Pappan och havet”: The book was published with the dedication “To a pappa”. It was published in English as Moominpappa at Sea.

  the Spanish trip: TJ and Tuulikki Pietilä went to Portugal and Spain in the winter of 1963–64.

  VIVICA BANDLER IS IN JAPAN WITH HER FATHER ERIK VON Frenckell on the occasion of the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Tove Jansson is in the initial hectic and exciting stage of building on Klovharun.

  VIKEN 24.10.64

  Darling Vivica,

  Your letter felt like you taking me in your arms and it conveyed an instant and total image of what you’re experiencing over there. Of Japan, much more intensely than anything I’ve read about the country – maybe because your account of it was so powerfully spare and on the specific wavelength that we share. [ … ]

  I find it utterly absurd that you’re so far away, a strange sensation of being abandoned. Of course I know we don’t meet up that often. But we exist, near each other, all the time – One can ring on a whim, or in despair, or for something very matter-of-fact. Anything at all.

  We didn’t have time to see each other those last evenings before you left. If we had, I would doubtless have poured out my latest fright: a pilot from Pellinge (representing the Fishermen’s Guild) has submitted a petition to the County Administrative Board requesting that my building permit be revoked because Klovharun belongs to the state and I could scare the birds and fish.

  The Building Board eventually ruled in my favour (after Gylling had drowned them in all sorts of documents) but the County Administrative Board is still considering the case. />
  Before anything could happen I set to work out there, having found out that cellars and blasting don’t count as building, but as upright timbering – and that uprights (the construction) are allowed to remain standing for the winter if roofed over. I rejected my first desperate idea of a dummy cottage, prefabricated Puutalo Oy style (for many different reasons), tried to hire some local builders but Pellinge was like a brick wall and I didn’t want to land Abbe in the soup of spiteful village politics that my island problems have evidently stirred up.

  Then Brunström, a fisherman from Kråkö (near Borgå), promised to help, despite the difficulties of working late in the season. He’s the one who once got a drift net tangled round his propeller and spent the night on Bredskär.

  So Brunström enlisted a blaster, a sailor and a boat builder plus the skipper of the Sophia and we set about it as if our tails were on fire, to get ahead of the authorities (Brunström doesn’t like them – nor does he the Pellinge folk, who claim he pinches the laveret from their nets. Which he almost certainly does)

  It’s been blowing a gale almost non-stop. The Sophia tried to come out with her cargo three days in a row, but had to turn back. A man fell down into the hold with the wheelbarrow but was miraculously unharmed. (I insured the lot of them after that) And a small boat sank. And Sophia ran aground, but not seriously.

  On the third day we got everything ashore, (it turns out I’m very good at shovelling sand. 35 m3) timber, sections of railway track, drainage pipes, metal, sand, cement and they threw a huge bridge from one rock to another over the spit, for transport of materials.

  At first I camped on Klovharun and the men stayed on Bredskär, but after one night of gale force 8 and pouring rain (apart from the practical inconvenience, it was glorious), I moved over with them and am sleeping in the attic. On Fridays I go back to town and to Ham, and on Mondays I return to Harun. We go out there before sunrise every morning and come back at dusk, and I’m their assistant and cook.

  All back and other aches have vanished along with all melancholy, my happiness is complete as I carry stone and sand and planks and make terrible cabbage soups in high wind.

  Tooti has returned from a trip with Lasse & co. that went well in every way, but she’s thrown herself into her printmaking and has only (today) come out to see the building work. I understand her – she’s got to be able to get on with her prints now, there’s been too much of a break for other things and her lithographic nerves are stretched taut. We’re staying at Abbe’s.

  That’s basically what has been happening here at home – or at any rate, the only parts I care about at the moment. I intend to fight for that island, you see, and I intend to keep it. Though I know they can pull down finished houses, I discovered that yesterday.

  There are lots of details from my own personal building site that I’m sure would amuse, interest and even enchant you – tiny things, little incidents and comments people made. Or images. But that will have to wait until we’re sitting in the studio or kitchen one evening. I’ve sort of been living aside from everything, differently, or it almost feels as if I’ve only now come alive. (terrible suspicion: because I don’t have to paint) Things are growing, taking shape, they come into existence if one only has the stamina, and fears and worries are about tangible things which can be overcome, a boat in a storm, cement threatened by rain, tents blowing away, food running out.

  Like you I’m forgetting to write about “The Olympics”. But I expect we’ll get round to it. And yes, Lasse has submitted two good instalments of the TV project. Much better than before. – I miss you, Vivica. But you’ll soon be home now.

  Tove.

  Puutalo Oy: Wooden House Co. Ltd.

  OCT. 69. [Helsingfors}

  Darling Vivica,

  I have your little brush that I’d intended taking with me to Sthlm – but then the TV show was postponed and I, useless person that I am, hadn’t the wit to post you the brush.

  So nice that you’re coming over, the seventh, isn’t it? By then I shall be back from the picture hanging and exhibition opening in Jyväskylä – and a few days later I have to dash back there so Tooti and I can take the whole lot down again.

  Here’s a cutting I meant to put in last time: examples of middle-aged absent-mindedness; Tooti cut it out the day it came but then took it down to the yard, realised what she’d done and dashed to Reima to buy a new one, gave it to me but I put it in such a safe place that I couldn’t find it again afterwards – and I expect you’ve read it long since!

  That’s just what it’s like – so how will we be by the time we’re 80? I’m functioning awfully well at the moment and producing a good deal, to my own amazement. Lasse and I have set up a COMPANY – Moomin Characters, registered and everything. Do you remember the Moomin craze ten years ago, with the promotion at Stockmann’s and Bitti trinkets and marzipan and candles and Batujewa’s puppet theatre? And My on sanitary towels? It’s all started up again thanks to our TV effort and the star of Moominry is shooting up to undreamt-of commercial heights.

  All of a sudden we’re stinking rich and stressed! It’s simply massive, the whole thing, they’re calling from the foreign ministry and telegraphing from Australia and Lasse’s taking at least five calls from abroad every day. He’s dealing with all the business correspondence, thank goodness, and doing it well. What’s more he’s designing commercial articles at the same pace as me and has gone and bought himself paints and brushes (!) and got such a shock when he saw how expensive sable brushes are!

  Bulls Press Service is sharpening its claws, talented housemaids have started making Moomintroll-shaped potholders again, the journalists are swarming like grey cats and Lasse Pöysti is singing Moomin songs on the radio, so by this point he must be pretty much a social misfit. Kuuskoskis had manufactured several thousand Sniffs before the customer in Sweden realised Sniff wasn’t in the TV programme and cancelled the order, then Fauni’s tried putting a saucepan on Sniff and he looked like a Catholic priest (not a Muddler). Lasse and I were chauffeured out to Järvenpää in Kuuskoskis’ big car for new contracts and new Muddlers and ancestors with luminous eyes. They gave us Peikko-juoma in one of their cafés.

  Oh, and Film-Takahashi in Japan has sent a case of a soft drink made by the gentleman who is financing the film, which apparently had its premiere in October. Unfortunately Takahashi didn’t send the samples of the film as promised, but he did send Lasse some cufflinks, composed to look like the badge of his clan (or whatever they have there) two thousand years ago, and I got some Japanese stories that were older still, and not a soul can read them. He and his family are coming in person at the end of November, to study the Finnish fjords.

  We’re drawing the line at Moomins on food. “Mmm, Moomin!” (Slogan) But we’ve done such a lot, including sheets of pictures for scrapbooks, paper dolls, greetings cards, Pop posters, books of sheet music, Moomin houses, blankets, curtains, dress fabrics, wallpaper, albums of poetry and photographs, diaries, nursery pictures – I won’t make you read through all the rest but there are new products all the time and it seems as if – well, I hadn’t realised just how important TV is to people. It’s incredible. Everyone is fixated on the magical date of 5th December.

  As you can tell, life has assumed new dimensions and without Lasse I’d never keep up. However, with the growing insight of age I’ve gone into this relatively calmly (none of the hysteria of ten years ago), picking and choosing in quite a matter-of-fact way and thinking that this is all positive, after all, and it’s happening right now, and it’s a gift and an opportunity and money means peace of mind later on, a buffer against more frivolous ideas while one tries to shape what seems more important and less lucrative.

  Naturally I feel a bit proud as well, not just worn out and petrified of what the next post brings. And sailing above it all is the cheering and reassuring awareness that our TV work is good, and you – mainly you – have made it so good. We’ve nothing to be ashamed of, we haven’t cheated the least litt
le scrapbook-picture manufacturer or child when our work is released. Isn’t that actually rather nice?

  That book I tried to write last summer wasn’t any good and the publisher didn’t want it, inside information – and what a brilliantly honest and non-commercial publishing house! The summer was too messy, too many people, but that’s an excuse really, one can write in spite of such things if one really has something to say. But I still believe in the idea behind this book, and in some sections of it. The setting is the forest in Nov.–Dec. and I want to go now – not to the island but to Pellinge, to immerse myself in the dismal decay of autumn before the snow arrives. (I’m so afraid it might start snowing!). God knows if I shall get that week, I do hope I shall be ruthless enough to simply take it. Otherwise another year will pass, won’t it, and I’ll lose the whole book, it’ll become a matter of conscience and duty, not a pleasure. You know. A hug for you now, Vivica. Welcome home. It was good that I was able to explain in writing – when I do it in spoken words, it sounds so foolish. This is just a quick cross-section – as a starting point for the seventh.

  Warmest wishes –

  Tove.

  Thank you for the little Ulla poster!

  the picture hanging and exhibition opening in Jyväskylä: An exhibition mounted jointly with Tuulikki Pietilä at the Alvar Aalto Museum.

  Lasse Pöysti: An actor.

  Fauni’s: The company Atelier Fauni made so-called Fauni trolls from the early 1950s. In the mid-1950s, its owners Helena and Martti Kuuskoski were licenced by TJ to manufacture Moomintrolls. Fauni’s Moomintrolls, eleven figures in all, proved extremely popular and were even exported abroad.

  Peikko-juoma: A fizzy drink.