by Tove Jansson
Darling Tootikki,
Friday night, just back from the big family party. Twenty-one Hammarstens had been scraped together at an inn on Lidingö on a hill in a deserted valley that looked like one of Arosenius’s melancholy spring landscapes. An old farmhouse with low ceilings and an open fire and Gustavian antique furniture.
We were left to our own devices and had the run of the place, and never in my life have I seen my reserved and well-bred relations so merry and relaxed!
But then I had made an impressive number of purchases at the off-licence! And raided the indoor markets by the bag load, bought flowers, and some roast beef that was kindly prepared by one family member, we spent the whole day organising everything and I feel a great sense of relief that it’s all over and went well. And I did so enjoy playing hostess for once to all those who were so kind to me when I was “a grubby little thing and scared of trains”.
Tomorrow it’s a newspaper lunch and a Bull conference and yesterday we had the publishers’ party at Berns with die Leander. Faffan was delighted to revisit the scene of his youthful sins, and Ham contemplated with amusement the dangerous restaurant which her clerical family forbade her from visiting. And one evening I went to Konows, a proper, quiet evening in which I was able to make better contact with them than ever before. And I had a chance to talk about you, at last!
Sunday evening. We leave tomorrow. I’ve got Monday’s cartoon strips done in pencil and for once I think I’ll have an early night. Faffan is out on his final beer stroll in the sparkling light of the night, Ham is packing. We were at Stallmästargården yesterday with her favourite brother Einar, but I was so washed out that I didn’t feel like eating or drinking – just tried to radiate goodwill.
You poor thing, feeling so awful after the party again. It really is too unfair, having to pay so dearly even when one has behaved with such moderation!
I wonder how Uca’s mix-up over the key resolved itself. As I go about here, longing for you, and lose myself in my hopelessly big bed – I find myself thinking of those who have to snatch every minute. We’ve the whole summer waiting for us and it isn’t far off!
I just had an interruption: Jörgen rang, furious about a whole-page article in Expressen claiming the idea for Moomintroll was stolen from Verner Molin’s Dark Sow and I ought to pay Molin compensation. The entire tabloid page of it was crammed with pictures and photographs. So I galloped down to Slussen to get a copy of the drivel and rang the editor to make sure my rebuttal will go in tomorrow. The piece said that Molin first exhibited his Dark Sow publicly in 1942, and that I was studying in Stockholm at the time. I studied there in 32, by 42 there was a bit of a war going on in Finland, unfortunately, so I couldn’t possibly have been influenced by Mr Molin, who is adamant that I stole his idea! Actually it’s quite bracing to get such a cold shower at the end of this whole week of marzipan, but I’m still angry. Jörgen was terribly kind and helpful – he’s a true friend.
I’m saying nothing to Faffan about all this.
Now – where was I. I’d planned to tell you about entirely different things – but never mind. For better or worse (but mostly better), Stockholm is over for this time and we are moving on. I love you awfully awfully much, Tooticki. Good night.
2nd April. London, a big room, heavy furniture, traffic noise, beautifully harmonising colours in the haze over the city, and colder. The hotel is in a narrow little street between the Strand and the Thames, very close to Fleet Street.
Sutton was there to meet us in the lobby but we were too tired to go out and merely collapsed into bed. Today we had a nice peaceful wander, ate at a little Chinese place in Soho, I found a good hairdresser – and tonight there’s a cocktail party for us with all the old boys of Fleet Street. Tomorrow, business with Sutton, ho ho.
The grass is green here and the fruit trees were in blossom in the suburbs. I’m absolutely determined to meet as few people as possible and say no to more or less everything, leaving myself the space to feel I’m alive and not a time and motion machine.
Hugs!
Your Tove
die Leander: Zarah Leander, Swedish singer and film actress who had enjoyed success in Nazi Germany in earlier decades.
SATURDAY NIGHT [undated, early April 1957, Sussex, England.]
Too-ticki, darling mine,
I’m looking out in the moonlight over the long hills of Sussex, near Kent. A black cat is asleep on my stomach and there isn’t a sound outside. Beside Ham’s bed stands a bunch of spring flowers, primula and violets, wood anemones and wild hyacinths. You would have liked to caper about with me in all this freshly unfurled greenery. All the fruit trees are white, the sunshine is punctuated by blustery showers, and endless serene and puffy pillows go scudding by.
You should be here, rather than getting snarled up in Guild intrigue and being dragged from pillar to post for the benefit of art. But we’ll do it again sometime, together. I always keep your most recent letter with me, read it over and over again, feel that you love me and that I can see you going about your business in Nordenskiöldsgatan, at the Ateneum, the Konsthalle, everywhere I can imagine you being.
There’s so much happening here, so fast and furious, a kaleidoscope of different surroundings, people and situations.
For instance there was the fancy cocktail party in our honour with a crowd of formally dressed Fleet Street types, every one of them sporting a Moomin tie – and long contract discussions with Sutton, and the gentlemen from Bulls who came over for a meeting on the sly to get me to influence Sutton in a way that would serve their interests … But just now it’s hard to summon my thoughts for an account of my complicated business, because today I’m more interested in the asparagus patch I dug over and fertilised, and Kipling’s grey stone house and endless grassy slopes of green velvet.
And then there was the nightclub where I was able to dance as much as I wanted and was made an enchanting fuss of and drank an awful lot of whisky, and was hungover for a while, and yet more conferences, a bit of shaky drawing, a strange negro club where all the ladies had silver eyebrows and a lunch at the Zoo that ended in the most surprising way.
They wanted to photograph me for the Evening News, so I had to climb onto an elephant. It was like scrambling up a hairy mountain, without a ladder unfortunately. I still smell of elephant. The picture with the zebra must have turned out quite oddly, because it got hysterics and tried to push me over.
But I was in raptures when they let me hold a bushbaby, a strange, fluffy little creature with little hands and enormous eyes. It was terribly cute and reminded me slightly of you!
And then they let me into the hippo pen while they stuffed him with cauliflower, presumably so he wouldn’t gobble me up instead. What’s more I was introduced to the only hairless dog in the world. A glum photographer recorded the whole thing with the comment: Oh well it’s all the same to me, animals or criminals – but they insist on their pictures …
Out here the animals are less exotic, gentle cows and goats and pigs and 28 cats in, on and around the house. Illingworth, the cartoonist who owns the place, can never bring himself to get rid of the kittens, so they’ll soon fill the whole of Sussex! He lives here with two old ladies who are involved in the village amateur dramatic society and make costumes for the cast. It was the opening performance tonight, so we traipsed off to the school and did our bit for local ambitions. The cat wants to sleep now, it keeps clambering over the letter – so I shall kiss you goodnight and vanish into an enormous, lonely feather bed …
Tove.
IN THE AUTUMN OF 1957, TOVE JANSSON WENT ON AN AUTHOR tour of Sweden. Her new book Trollvinter (Moominland Midwinter) was a success and the prizes came flooding in. The initial print run was 25,000 copies, far more than had been the case for the previous books in the series.
20 NOV. 57. [Malmö]
Darling Tooti,
Last night I pretended I was falling asleep on your arm, I imagined the pillow was you, and that made it much easier and le
ss troublesome to sleep.
I was in Småland then, but now I’m in Skåne again – I’m starting to have a better understanding of travelling salesmen … Sthlm, Lund, Tranås, Wärnamo, Malmö – tomorrow Hälsingborg, my last reading. Though of course travelling salesmen don’t get remotely spoilt, unlike me … But even so, all this travelling is dreary, through towns one is never able to visit properly – a perpetual string of new faces that never have time to be more than politely impersonal – sometimes a glimpse of somebody I’d like to chat to for longer – but then I’m on the move again.
The best part was the long journey down to Lund with Göran Schildt – I forged better contact with him than ever before and we spent all those hours talking about real, substantial things. And the author Maria Wine who was my companion in two towns was engaging and personal. Apart from them it’s been largely a kaleidoscopic sort of jumble – or in fact the surprising repetition of a particular “formula” – this is roughly how it goes: early morning wake-up call at the hotel, sometimes at ½ past 6, I throw together my things, grope my slightly (perhaps) hungover way through the morning darkness down to a train. Reading passes the time as I’m carried to the next town where yet another polite bookseller waits on the platform to accompany me to the town’s main hotel where my room has neon lighting, three walls in an understated creamy grey and the other in lilac or black. I eat a quick, solitary, overpriced meal in the hotel dining room and go to the shop to sign books. Half the kids in Sweden are called Christina or Agneta, the other half Jan or Michael. Then I return to the hotel and am interviewed about how Moomintroll came about, have a bath and a rest, get changed. Then I’m escorted to the party venue, parish hall or library, read about the squirrel’s funeral and listen to speeches of welcome, and Bach.
Then there’s more signing, and another interview about how Moomintroll came about. Sometimes the audience is younger and I opt for the winter bonfire and Sorry-oo’s wolves. Then I treat the bookseller to supper and later that night pay the hotel bill and request a morning call. In some ways it’s a lazy existence – in others quite a strenuous one: in that I never get any real privacy, can never take off my smile, have no space for thoughts other than of what is imminently expected of me.
The old gents here in Malmö didn’t invite me to supper, so instead I was able to spend it talking to you – and I’m grateful for that! And it’s satisfying, isn’t it, to eat a posh dinner in total privacy and propose toasts to whatever one feels like?
I’m toasting our coming Tootikki winter, when I can be with you, work with you and fall asleep with your arm around me. I don’t want to go on any more trips now before we start planning for the island, nor to meet any faces but those you and I are fond of. And I have the secret excitement of knowing that now I will be trying to describe my experiences, and you and your surroundings, in Finnish. It’s the biggest present you’ve given me for a long time, perhaps you don’t realise. Darling, I miss you so much and am utterly calm in the awareness that you need me just as much.
Tove
MIDSUMMER DAY. –58 [Helsingfors]
Darling,
I know you’ve already heard from Abbe what has happened.
I’m just writing now to let you know Faffan didn’t have any pain or anxiety. He didn’t know who we were, but he could see pictures on his wall, beautiful sculptures of young men and women.
It all happened terribly quickly, and I’m clinging to the thought that it wasn’t too hard for him.
Peo didn’t get there in time. I tried to ring him out there, there was no reply, but I finally got through to the pilot station.
It was me who told Peo he could definitely wait until Sunday evening to come. But Faffan recognised Lasse, I could see that.
Ham is calm and intensely controlled. I shall be with her until after Faffan’s funeral.
And my request to you now, my darling, is to stay calmly on our island – that’s the most important thing you can do and the one that will help me most. I shall come to you, as long as you don’t mind a little wait.
Let me hug you close
Tove.
WED. 25 JUNE. [Helsingfors]
Darling Tooti,
It’s reassuring to know you’re holding onto the summer for me out there. Next week – maybe even early next week – I’ll be coming back with Ham. It feels the rightest thing we can do.
We’ve talked quite a lot about control in general, and about Ham’s self-control. Right now, it’s the most dignified thing I’ve ever seen – and not gloomy, but glad.
Viktor Jansson, Tove’s father, died on 22 June 1958.
She is finding it terribly hard. They must have loved each other more than I properly understood. That was underlined again when we opened Faffan’s boxes yesterday evening. Such moments aren’t easy, as you know. But Ham made it into something positive – not horribly emotional. Touching, one might say. He had kept such an incredible amount. And most of it was to do with the rest of us – and then restaurant bills from occasions he’d enjoyed – plus other stuff, you know, the kind of things boys have in their pockets. No Secrets. He had none. His outer life was as transparent and simple as his inner one was complicated. Maybe I told you that after Faffan was on the island last summer, the two of us exchanged letters more personal and warmer than any we’d written before.
You can imagine how happy it made me to see that both of us had been carrying those letters in our wallets all year.
The whole studio is full of flowers that people have sent. They’ve been awfully kind. Kurt came dashing in from Kalvholmen to see us for an hour and was the picture of dejection. Enroth barged in. too, and said bloody hell, what can I say, but he liked Faffan and did we fancy a trip round town in the car to cheer us up. Then he went off with a canvas he’d given us and brought it back a few minutes later, signed and varnished. Everybody here at Lallukka has dropped in for a while, one by one.
But most people are away, of course, and Uca’s in Rostock. I only managed a quick word with her on the phone. She thought we were right to have a quiet funeral and avoid a big family get-together afterwards.
Tomorrow is Friday 27th, and the urn is to be interred on Monday.
Lasse has been wonderful and helped me with all the arrangements. It may sound stupid, but it’s actually the first time I’ve felt the support of having a brother. There’s such a horrendous amount to do and think about when a person makes their exit.
We put the notice in 2 Swedish and 2 Finnish newspapers, and in the latter we added Impi’s name to our own. All the papers have written about Faffan and the Association of Sculptors sent us some huge, bright white carnations. And a wonderful bouquet from the Artists’ Guild, through Koroma. And just think, Maija Karma and Aune Mikkonen sent flowers too!
Then we had to write letters to all the relations. Uncle Harald is on a driving holiday in Monaco, Einar is in Karolinska hospital with some sort of injected poisoning but likely to recover, it seems Torsten’s wife might have lung cancer.
We haven’t been able to get hold of Toini and Meri. And Misan has pneumonia, but is going to be all right.
We decided to ask Paul v. Martens, Lasse’s vicar friend, to take the funeral service, and I wrote something for him about Faffan, to help him be more personal and not have to resort to clichés.
We managed, with great difficulty, to persuade Impi to stay at her boarding house. She rang when she got my letter and was completely beside herself. I suppose it will now be a case of making arrangements for her to retire, without hurting her feelings. After all, Ham will have to move from here now, but not for six months, thank goodness. So there’s time to arrange everything for an orderly departure.
I asked Lasse if he’d had any thoughts about how he might organise his life in the future. He answered that he would still want some form of joint living arrangement with Ham – which I was delighted to hear.
Hamsie is an unconventional artist’s widow – she isn’t trying to cling on to everything t
hat reminds her of him; she wants to dispose of as much as possible, and for Faffan’s sake she doesn’t want to keep any of his substandard work. She’s taking a positive and healthy attitude and is able to be very objective.
We went together to look at flowers for the coffin, which is in a very light oak. We chose lily-of-the-valley and violets. We’re not having any hymns, just Bach’s Toccata and Fugue.
And in the midst of all the bustle, there’s a sudden vacuum in which all these arrangements seem so baroque and far removed, so irrelevant – and everything just feels awful and desolate. I really must have loved Faffan terribly dearly, despite his being so difficult.
We’ve just come home after seeing him for the last time. Tooti, he was shockingly small. He looked very much at peace.
The flowers are continuing to multiply here. Ham is on a constant round of clearing and sorting in the studio, and I’m helping her. She’s found a lovely clay head under some rags that haven’t been unwound for a long time and now she’s trying to rescue it, rework the surface and model it so it can dry without cracking. There are various unfinished things lying around that he hadn’t exhibited, they could have been very beautiful.
Abba can have Faffan’s gold family watch, we were thinking. I’m sure we’ll find a keepsake for you. And I’ll get some flowers from you in time for Friday.
You know what, Faffan’s watch stopped at the very time he died. Isn’t that a strange thing about watches – it often happens, apparently.
Darling, I wanted to write about all this in confirmation of the connection I always feel between us. I shall see you before long, and start working again. And we’ll put the roof on and do lots of things together.
I love you so much and you are always my great joy.
Take care of yourself. Ham sends a hug.
