ELEVENTH LETTER
Wherein something is told of Sweden’s art and artists; the ancient rock-cutting of Bohus; the art treasures collected by the heroes of the Thirty Years’ War; Cederstrom’s picture of Charles XII; Carl Larsson’s pictures of the home; the mural paintings of the schoolhouses; also something about Sweden’s great authors and singers.
Stockholm, June 30.
My dear Judicia,
With your love for libraries and picture galleries I should not dare to send you this last letter from Sweden without telling you something about the Swedes who have contributed to literature and art, though, if I should attempt to go into the subject exhaustively, I fear that many names of Swedish artists and authors would be unfamiliar even to you.
Sweden’s first and original art gallery is a strange one indeed, for it is unroofed except by the blue dome of heaven, and not a canvas hangs upon its walls. Nevertheless it is one of the most interesting galleries in all Europe. It is found in the province of Bohus, on the west coast of Sweden, north of Gotenburg. Shall we call these old artists sculptors or painters? The material that they used was the solid rock, the face of the cliffs that slopes up gently from level fields. They did not chisel out a statue, but with some bronze tools in lieu of brushes they cut the figures which they would portray in the rock, not making them stand out as does the Lion of Lucerne, but cutting them like solid intaglios in the face of the rock itself.
So shallow are the cuttings that water has to be poured upon them to bring the figures out from the gray rock in which they are cut, but as the water trickles down from the bucket which the stout maiden who acts as guide and guardian of this picture gallery splashes upon the rock, wonderful shapes appear: viking ships, some large enough to be manned by a crew of one hundred men, evidently the warships of the long ago; men on horseback and men on foot; men plowing with yokes of oxen, while now and then there towers above all the men and beasts a gigantic figure with an ax or a thunderbolt in his hand, no doubt the God of War under whose ægis the old Northmen went out to battle.
The most common of these rock pictures are the representations of the viking ships, showing that in those days, as in these, the Scandinavians were great sea-faring people. The prows of these ancient piratical craft one often sees reproduced on the roofs of Swedish and Norwegian houses to-day. Of course these pictures are very crude, very much such as a child of five years of age would draw upon his slate to-day. But that is natural, for you must remember that they were drawn in the childhood of Scandinavia, at least twenty-five if not thirty-five hundred years ago, for it has been proved conclusively that they were chiseled by men of the Bronze Age of Sweden, which lasted from fifteen hundred to five hundred years before Christ.
We are very grateful to you, crude artists of the older time, for your pictures, for they tell us many things about ancient Sweden. They tell us that you sailed the seas in great ships rowed by a hundred men, though you do not seem to have known how to harness the winds to your craft, for we see no signs of masts or sails. We know that you had dogs and cows and horses, and that you plowed your fields with a crooked stick drawn by a pair of oxen. We know that you had carts that ran on two wheels, and that you were expert with spear and shield, and I venture to say that your art museum, old as it is to-day, will last longer than the Pitti or the Uffizi; and long after Macaulay’s New Zealander has gazed upon the ruins of London from his picturesque position upon the bridge, the pictures in your gallery will still lead mankind to speculate upon the kind of folk whom you chiseled in the everlasting rocks. No fire can destroy your gallery, no thief can steal your Mona Lisa, no conqueror can carry away your art treasures.
It is a far cry from the rock galleries of Bohus to the fine collections of old and new masters of which Stockholm and Gotenburg boast. Some of the finest pictures, too, are not found in the metropolis of either eastern or western Sweden, but in the palaces and castles which dot the interior of the country. I have already told you about some of these palaces like Skokloster and others, which contain Correggios and Titians and pictures of Paul Veronese, for in the Thirty Years’ War the mighty Swedish generals fell heir to many of the splendid picture galleries of southern Germany, and all they had to do was to pick out the best pictures by the greatest masters and send them to their northern home.
In those days “looting” was not “stealing,” at least in the eyes of the victors, and they had this excuse at least, that the pictures and works of art, if they had not taken them, would have fallen into worse hands. They would have reminded you that their great opponent Tilly, when he captured Heidelberg and destroyed the library, could find no better use for the most valuable manuscripts than to use them as a litter for his horses. In this way the Codex Argenteus, of which I have before written you, was taken when the Swedes captured Prague and sent on its far journey to Upsala.
I am afraid that most of the names of Swedish artists would hardly be recognized by you, though I think you would admire some of their paintings as much as I do. I have time and room in this letter to tell you of only two that greatly interested me.
Baron Cederstrom devoted himself to the period of Charles XII, whose tragic story you remember. Cederstrom’s greatest picture shows the body of the king borne on a stretcher by a dozen soldiers over the dreary, snow-covered, mountainous defiles that separate Norway from Sweden. “The pathos of this pitiable end to so glorious a career appears in the attitude of a solitary mountain huntsman, who, with his boy and dog, stands by the wayside as the procession passes. He is the only one to doff his fur cap and salute the remains of one who but a short time before made half Europe tremble, while the other half was lost in amazement at his extraordinary fortunes and prodigious victories.”
Another artist whose pictures are of unusual interest is Carl Larsson, the most popular artist in Sweden to-day. He is the painter of the home, of the fireside and the nursery, of the sitting room and the kitchen, of the boy and girl and the grandmother as well. His own son and daughter figure in many of his pictures.
One that especially impressed me was a canvas representing this same son and daughter gazing at a skull on the center table in their home. The look of serious half-comprehension on the girl’s face as she points out the skull to her brother, and of half-frightened awe with which he gazes at it, will not soon fade from my mind. Another portrait of his daughter leaning against a birch tree, the white bark and new leaves no purer than her own sweet face, is also a picture to be remembered. It has been copied upon so many postcards that the Swedes, at least, are not likely to forget it.
Mr. Von Heidenstam well characterized Larsson when he says: “His audacity, his love of novelty and adventure, the freshness of his impressions, the youthfulness of his enthusiasms, and his whole vision of life are Scandinavian to the core. In his pictures of home life, mostly taken from his own home, he is genial, happy, fond of bright colors, of flowers and sunshine, enraptured with existence, and prone to see its bright side.”
The Swedes are wise in not relegating all the paintings of their best artists to museums or picture galleries, which are seldom visited by the people, but many of the higher and even primary schools in Stockholm and other cities have been adorned with mural paintings by their best artists: Larsson, Prince Eugene, Oscar Björck, Thegerstrom, and Nils Kreuger are all well-known painters, who have put some of their best work upon the walls of Sweden’s schoolhouses, picturing landscapes, national customs, and some of the great events in Sweden’s history, and placing them where Sweden’s children cannot help being impressed by them.
I cannot honestly say that the chief charm of Sweden consists in the spell which her artists have woven about her, and I suppose few people would come to Sweden to study art. Her real fascination lies in her glorious out-of-doors—in her noble forests, her shimmering lakes, her glorious snow fields and frost sculpture in winter, her rushing rivers and turbulent rapids—all these things I have tried to tell you about, and this is the raw material of the artist.
Compared with Italy or Spain, Sweden’s art is yet very young, but, with such models as nature’s lavish hands has furnished on every side, it seems to me very probable that the great artists of the future will be found in these Scandinavian lands.
I wish they would spend more time in Lapland in midwinter. I wish they would paint for us the little trees that Jack Frost converts into white coral every day. I wish they would paint for us the rare combination of sunrise and sunset, and the glowing sky where the sun never rises at all. I wish they would show him to us not only on the longest day of the year at midnight, as they have often done, but on the shortest days, as he peers timidly above the horizon, or goes bowling along for an hour or two on its very edge. These are pictures which no country but Sweden furnishes in their perfection, and pictures which the Swedish artist could most easily reproduce and which would make his canvas immortal.
The authors of Sweden are many and well beloved. I can name but two of them here, though I fear the Swedes will never forgive me if I do not mention Bellman, their Robert Burns, and some others. I pick out these two because they are as well beloved in America as in Sweden. Tegnér is one of them. He may be called, perhaps, the Macaulay of Sweden, only his lays are not those of ancient Rome, but of ancient Sweden. Someone has said that “his heroic poems sent a thrill through old and young when first they were published.” He became popular throughout all Europe, and more than fifty translations of his poems are found in a dozen different European languages.
Longfellow made him known and loved by American readers by his beautiful translation of the Children of the Lord’s Supper. “The scene in the country church, decked out with flowers and evergreens for the solemn ceremony, the rustic boys and girls bowing and curtsying as they made their responses before the assembled congregation, and the attitude and words of the patriarchal pastor are all true to life.”
Another of your best-loved authors, Judicia, I must remind you, was also a Swede—Frederika Bremer. She was also more than a writer of charming tales. She was an ardent champion of woman’s rights, but I warrant you she would never have used dynamite in obtaining them, or have poured paint into letter boxes to secure “votes for women.” Her good work for their uplift is still carried on by the “Frederika Bremer Union.” It protects and encourages women who are struggling to make a place for themselves in the world, and seeks in every way to raise the standard of woman’s work and wages. Our former American Minister, Mr. Thomas, gives an interesting account of a call he made upon her in 1864, nearly fifty years ago, only a year before her death:
“Up three flights of a stone stairway to a little landing, I make my way,” he says. “A curtsying Swedish maid answers my knock and shows me into a cozy sitting room. Presently a little old woman with a decided stoop in her shoulders enters and meets me with extended hand and a pleasant smile, bidding me welcome with one of the sweetest voices I ever listened to. This was one forenoon in January, 1864. The cozy sitting room was in Stockholm in the fourth story of a brick house, on the long Drottning-Gatan, and the little old woman was Frederika Bremer, the great Swedish novelist.”
This was in the darkest period of our Civil War. Mr. Thomas asked Miss Bremer for her autograph for the Sanitary Commission Fair, soon to be held in New York, explaining that the proceeds would be devoted to the sick and wounded soldiers. “It will give me real joy,” she said, “to do anything to help on liberty in America, or to comfort the soldiers who have become disabled in fighting for it.” Her eyes beamed brightly as she spoke, and her whole manner showed how actively she was interested in our cause and country.
“This interesting tête-à-tête gave me the best opportunity for observing Miss Bremer,” continues Mr. Thomas. “The stoop of her shoulders was hid in the ample cushions of her easy chair. A neat, white lace cap covered her head. Her gray hair was brushed straight back from a noble, lofty forehead, white as marble, and her mild blue eyes beamed with a tender compassion that made one forget the great author in the sympathizing friend and compelled me to call her beautiful, for beauty of soul shone forth in every glance.”
I have quoted this intimate description, for there are few living Americans who have actually seen and talked with the gentle authoress, and I fear me there are few Americans who read her books to-day, but you have not forgotten how, in our early days, her pure and wholesome novels were justly admired and loved.
Do you remember the little girl who for some childish misdemeanor was shut up in a dark closet as a punishment, and how she found there Miss Bremer’s Home Life, and how she lay down at full length on the floor, placing the book as near the crack of the door as she could, reading the story nearly half through before the time of her punishment had expired? She gained more from her punishment than anyone but herself knew, for Frederika Bremer’s charming picture of home life remained with her as an inspiration through all her life.
Speaking of our early days, Judicia, I was reminded that we must belong to a former generation when I asked Aylmer when we were together in Luleå what he knew about Jenny Lind, the great Swedish soprano. Would you believe it, he had never heard of her? The singer who made the greatest sensation in America of anyone that ever crossed the ocean; the singer who was as good as she was beautiful, and whose voice was no purer or sweeter than her life! We at least know how the ticket offices were besieged by eager thousands who wished to hear her voice, and what extravagant prices, as they were then considered, were paid for her concerts. And yet Aylmer had never heard of this most famous of all northern warblers, of this great philanthropist, as she became in her later life! Moreover he confided to me that he had never heard of Christine Nilsson, a more modern singer of almost equal fame. Well, well, we must be growing antiquated!
There is one man who to be sure cannot be classed as an artist or an author, and yet I suppose he has done more for literature as well as for science and the cause of peace than any other man in Sweden. This is Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, an article which we chiefly associate with war, but which has really done more to revolutionize mining and engineering. Thanks to dynamite, it has been possible to bore the mighty tunnels through the Alps; to knock down the iron mountains of northern Sweden and send them off piecemeal to other parts of the earth; to dig the subways of New York and Boston and Chicago, and to tunnel the North River for the commuters of Manhatten. No man ever did more good with his vast wealth, or disposed of it more wisely when he died, than Alfred Nobel, and now each year magnificent awards of some forty thousand dollars each are given by this foundation to people who have achieved great things in physics, in medicine, in literature, and for peace.
You will observe, Judicia, that I have not bored you with any stories of Swedish games and sports, of skiing and ski jumping, of bobsleighing and rodeling, and that I have not even alluded to Swedish gymnastics. There is a method in my seeming madness, for though I am much interested in these matters, especially in the out-of-door sports, I am not quite so wild about them as is Aylmer, and, since they are common to all Scandinavia, I will leave them for him to describe and thus give his Norway a great advantage, when you come to hold the scales of justice between the eastern and western lands of the peninsula. But I beg you to remember that Sweden is quite as famous in these particulars as her sister kingdom across the mountains.
Faithfully yours,
Phillips.