- - -
Italian Escapades
6.
In March I was back on Capri and after some time Therese joined me. When she heard that I was going back home to Sweden to spend the summer with my parents in Norrland she had me vow to come visit her in Finland. That could probably be arranged, I said and promised to show up.
When, on my way home in May, I stopped in Paris I completely forgot about both Therese and Finland. Already the first evening at Café Rotonde I met the Serbian painter Milivoj Uzelac, a handsome man with sooty black fringe and dark passionate eyes, and a talented artist at that.
Uzelac had already spent a long time in Paris on a state grant but he was now out of money so he could buy neither canvas nor paint. I sent a telegram to my new publisher K O Bonnier and asked for an advance payment of 2 000 kronor. And, in those days, I got it.
Uzelac right away started painting two brilliant portraits of me, one of which is now part of the collection of the national museum of Agram and the other one, which I was given, I later donated to Karl Otto Bonnier, hence it is to be found at Manilla.
During our daily time together it became more and more clear that Serbia was the place to go for me during fall, not Finland. So I wrote a larking letter to Therese and told her that I had met a Serbian painter who very much appealed to me. After my visit to Norrland I would go straight to Serbia.
It appeared my soul was no longer possible to save. The Serb liked wine as much as I did.
Finally I made it home to Norrland. All summer I stayed out at sea on an island where my parents had rented a villa. As i had now switched from the sunny land of the grape to the barren abode of the pine cone I worked diligently on a serious book entitled ”Sinners”.
All the while Milivoj wrote and told me about his coming exhibition and sent me reproductions of his paintings. He was very successful and sold everything. ”So when you come to Agram we can roll around in dinars”, he wrote. It all sounded splendid and I was burning with impatience to transport myself there as soon as possible.
Therese, who seemed upset by my new plans, also wrote to remind me of my vow and said that she counted on my visiting Finland before I disappeared down in Serbia. On thinking it over I came to the conclusion that I might as well take a little jump over the Baltic. However, more then three days I was not going to sacrifice to Finland.
And as soon as I had had my passport settled for the trip to Serbia and money for my ”Sinners” I took a small suitcase and leaped over.
As I mentioned, I had set aside three days for the visit to Finland. This automn it will be 36 years since I came to live in this country.
Therese sure had a remarkable intuition. And the way she, despite certain difficulties, finally managed to bring the two of us together, well, it is all such a peculiar story with its grotesque, subtle and humorous elements that each time I think about it I am taken by the wondrous enigma of life and destiny.
Part four of six of Ulla's radio broadcast account from her youth on Finnish radio, from 1957.
- - -
Italian Escapades
4.
Sardinia back then was a fairly unknown and wild country, rarely visited by tourists. In order to help me with my trip my friend Italo Tavolato on Capri had given me a letter of recommendation, among others to Grazia Deledda. However, now there's no time for my adventures in the Sardinian mountain villages with their primitive and superstitious inhabitants. Because now my Destiny approaches, in November 1920 on Sicily and in Taormina.
I came to Taormina aroundt the end of November and decided to stay over the winter months to write about my Sardinian journey about which I had made notes on the island. While I oriented myself and looked for a room I put up at San Domenico where I right away met Georg and Hanna Pauli in company with Karl-Otto and Lisen Bonnier who were on a trip to Italy. Their old friend F U Wrangel was also present but he stayed at a pension.
This way I got acquianted with my new publisher Bonnier would take over my books since Olle Dahlberg had made a grandiose bankrupty the past year. However, I still knew nothing about these changes.
After a few days I found a room which I thought suited me both when it came to price and location. It was at the top of a towerlike house where the owner had a small antiques shop on the ground floor. The room had a lovely view over the sea and a big stove gave a sense of homelike atmosphere considering the approaching rainy season. In addition electric light was included.
A lively old Sicilian woman with a weather-beaten face and bushy hair cleaned for me and every morning as she groaningly had climbed the stairs she greeted me happily: ”Brava signorina, brava!”
That was indeed a refreshing morning greeting but as much as she busied herself with the furnace the smouldering smoke kept breaking in and the window had to be kept open in order not to suffocate. Finally we came up with the splendid idea to let a chimney-sweep examine the flue. It was found to be stuffed with bird nests.
As far as the electric light was concerned it was out of order every half hour in all of Taormina so running rushlights came in use most of the time. And it sure did rain. All the time and every day, so my room was a damp dump.
I had found a small trattoria where I had my meals with signora Gallina who always had cauliflower on the menu. So I mostly had cavolfiore, wine, and gorgonzola to live through the day.
Here is part three of six of Ulla's radio broadcast account on Finnish radio from 1957.
- - -
Italian Escapades
3.
Doctor Munthe had not yet written the Story of San Michele which led to a horrible invasion of old American ladies and other tourist hordes. Asphalt roads did not yet exist, neither buses or cars, chairlifts or similar arrangements.The Monte Solaro hillsides shimmered proudly and majestically and the walk to Anacapri with ever increasing contour lines all the way up to the old Hotel Molaro* from where there is a view over the Gulf of Naples and where the lights at night from Naples like a string of pearl lights bordered all of Posilippo. Those were unforgettable walks.
Since 1920 I have been to Capri seven times and sometimes stayed half a year. When I went the last time 1954 and saw the whole misery I told myself that this is probably the last time I come here.
”Capri nowadays is a waste bin framed with diamonds” an old cultivated Italian put it lately, saddened by the degradation of the island. Of course nature can't be ruined but God save us from all these elderly foreign women who, wearing shorts and with flabby thighs like accordion bellows loaf around on the piazza and pay for a lover, usually an ex chauffeur or a fishing boy who has climbed in life with the help of the distasteful charity of these ladies. Finito signora. At least for those who have lived on Capri before World War I.
This is where I settled at the beginning of April 1920 and stayed well into August. On the island their were plenty of Italian artists who in those days could rent a villa for a few hundred lire a month. The Germans who formerly flooded Capri were now after World War I completely gone. Mostly Neapolitans lived there, oftentimes in splendid private villas.
During all week the island was peaceful, only on Saturdays some Neapolitans would come to stay over the weekend and on Sunday mornings ordinary people would show up and go home again with the evening ferry.
Early mornings were for swimming among the rocks down at Torre Saracena. After the siesta everybody was working until meeting again around eight on the piazza to look at the evening ferry from Naples make the harbor. Later during dinner one would usually sit at the terrace of Café Morgana in the warm starry sky night of the South, drinking coffee or wine.
This is where I wrote a collection of Italian novels during the summer. I called it ”Seducers” (Förförare) and I had already had a few ideas in Rome. The rest I picked up at Capri, for that was an island where strange things always took place.
When the book was finished I stayed a few weeks in Venice but my real goal, which I had aimed for all summer, was Sardinia.
As mentioned below, this story, taking place in 1920, was read by Ulla Bjerne on the Swedish language radio in Finland (YLE) in 1957. She was 67 years old, looking back at her life and she read in a colloquial manner, improvising, I should think, from a written script. (On the picture above, from 1920, she was 30 years.) This is part two out of six. Sorry, some links are in Swedish only.
- - -
Italian Escapades
2.
One day I received a letter from Amelie Posse who asked me to pay a visit. I was good friends with her first husband Andreas Bjerre who had written Amelie and told her I was in Rome. In those days Amelie Posse lived in a big villa, or rather a small palace close to the St Peter's church. She had married för the second time with the Chech painter Brazda and they had two small boys who would always run around naked in the large garden.
Visiting Brazda you would enter a grand staircase through a small doorway on a tiny street and climb up several broad flights of stairs leading to another heavy door and not until treading through that one you would find yourself in a grand terrassed garden at the end of which lay the small palace and, further still, from its roof you had a lovely view of Rome. That's an anviable thing, having all of Rome spread out for one's eyes.
Over the years I went there several times and experienced their receptions with tons of small marquises and countesses who wanted to have their portraits painted by Bradzda. He was very fashionable there and in addition a most charming person. The hosts were lively and unaffected, everybody was having a good time and to amuse his guests Brazda would sometimes dance oriental dances swept in veils with clinking bracelets and golden bangles.
One day the Brazdas were going to Venice to look at lace-making and ceramics. Amelie asked if I wanted to stay in their villa in the meantime, to keep an eye on their children. To be sure, they had a sweet and young Swedish nursemaid but I suppose Amelie thought four eyes would be better than two.
I had just about settled in when I had what I myself thought was a brilliant idea. An occasion like this, when I for once had a whole palace to my disposition, had to be taken advantage of. Therefore I wrote an express letter to Gladys and invited her and our Italian gang to a party the following evening, at the Marquise Uljana's.
Brazdas young nursemaid was with me on the plan right away and was looking forward to seeing seven young Italians. But one thing was tricky with this whole operation and that was Amelie's Finnish kitchenmaid. She was a middle aged, grim and ill-tempered person who on the other hand cooked exquisite food. How was I going to make her accommodating and mild? For the party to happen she was simply necessary. Not only considering all the sandwiches that were to be prepared and the coffee that was to be served in the middle of the night, but also for the spirits which naturally were meant to get higher and higher with all the litres of wine I had ordered.
Then I had my second brilliant idea. I invited the kitchenmaid to the party, holding out to her the prospect of dancing with the artist boys. After this she took on the preparations with great promptitude. By nine o'clock in the evening I sat draped in Amelia's purple silk velvet cloak, with powdered hair and a string of pearls on my forehead, in a renaissance chair with a high back, right in the middle of the big lounge and received my guests with dignity.
The boys gazed at me. They didn't know what to believe. Did I really live here and was I maybe a marquise? The questions remained unanswered. And while the litres of wine poured down the throats the atmospere rose to exhilaration. I asked the boys, for heaven's sake, to court la cuoca, the kitchenmaid, and keep her spirits high, dance with her and preferably bring her out in the warm dark night onto the terrasses and kiss her deeply. Then I sat down by Amelia's grand piano and executed the dance music. Inbetween the dances the boys came up to me at the piano and reported laughing, ”Now I've kissed the maid!”
The three ladies, Gladys, the nurse- and the kitchenmaid danced until four in the morning when the night fog started to clear up and the sun anew rose over Rome. It was a succesful party and the kitchenmaid was delighted.
However, by now I thought I had sucked enough honey out of my Rome visit for this time and disappeared a day or so later with a train to Naples where I took a boat straight over to Capri.
And Capri in those days was the isle of bliss.
(To be continued)
This story, taking place in 1920, was read by Ulla Bjerne on the Swedish language radio in Finland (YLE) in 1957. She was 67 years old, looking back at her life and she read in a colloquial manner, improvising, I should think, from a written script. (On the picture above, from 1920, she was 30 years.)
I did the transcription and translation from Swedish. I have also split the text in six parts so as not to have anybody fall asleep.
- - -
Italian Escapades
1.
I always believed in fate and still believe everything of importance that happened to me in life was predestined.
How could I expect that, when on New Year's Day 1920 I broke up from a stay of many years in Copenhagen och went to Italy, Destiny awaited me there. Please don't believe that it was in a banale way in the shape of some kind of Italian man popping up. No, it was all much more artful than that.
As my books sold well back then my publisher Olle Dahlberg had not been stingy but given me a check of 5 000 kronor. That was a lot of money back then, the krona was highly valued so one got 25 lire for five kronor. I remember it because all summer long I stayed at one of Capri's most distinguished hotels, La Palma, and paid five kronor for a full board. But first and foremost I was, naturally, in Italy to experience Rome, so upon arrival I rented a room in a private villa on Via Cristina, close to Piazza del Popolo on Monte Pincio.
Since I hadn't come to Italy as a tourist but to stay as long as possible I didn't tire myself with unnecessary visits to all kinds of museums, nor did I look at too many ruins. I let everything come to me in due time and as it happened. The main thing for me was to get started right away with my new life in Italy and experience its people. And I knew the language well enough after having taking Italian classes, so I managed, if poorly, to begin with.
Already on the train to Milan I met some young Italian officers who belonged to the Queen's regiment in Rome. They recommended their own restaurant on the via Nazionale. To get a cotoletta alla milanese or a spaghetti I would every day walk through the most busy streets of Rome. The traffic, compared to the noise and roaring lambrettas of today, seemed almost peaceful.
Among the officers there were cheerful and handsome fellows attired in light blue romantic uniforms and gold braid hats. As the only woman in the group I was properly appreciated but I soon learned that as a female type they didn't understand me at all.
When one of them on a daily basis started harassing me with rather base declarations of love I refrained from joining the circle of light blue cloaks and instead I met some Swedish painters who had come to Rome. They were Leander Engström, Einar Jolin and Ewald Dahlskog.
Also, Frank Heller hade found his way to Rome and he was falling in love with Danish Annie Krogh whom he later married. Incessantly, Danes, Norwegians and Swedes arrived who once a week met at the Circolo Scandinavo where they would chat and drink wine.
For a Scandinavian, the warm sunny Roman spring with a profusion of flowers and blue Chinese wistaria clinging over ancient front doors and garden walls was a seductive experience.
We would make excursions to Tivoli and Gianicolo and stroll around the old neighborhood Trastevere with its winding narrow alleys and old dilapitated palaces and churches. However, foremost in my memory live the Sunday outings with Gladys Heyman and a bunch of Italian young artists.
Beautiful Gladys, who later married the composer Gösta Nystroem, had already since long lived in Rome and studied sculpture. Because of this she knew some Italian artists and as I had come to Italy to meet the locals and not Scandinavians I was soon made part of her gang. Besides Gladys the company consisted of seven happy Italian youngsters and one of them I remember specifically, a giant painter, a gladiator type whose name was Del Neri.
Early Sunday mornings we met and wandered out to some village on the Roman campagna, had breakfast there and dozed off during the late hours in the shade of a tree.
Our merry picnics usually ended at some small trattoria close to via Margutta where we had grilled lamb roast with a tasty and inexpensive wine.
They were very childish those Italians, keen on pranks and larks.
(To be continued)
