Introducing Harriet

Today’s breakfast is yet another recipe from Gwyneth Paltrow’s It’s All Good cookbook. A wonderful smoked mozzarella frittata. Recipe can be found here.

When I grew up, in Sweden in the 1970’s, there was this haunting song playing on the radio a lot, about an old man, who, after purchasing a dream book, dreams about a girl he’s known in his youth. In his dream, he realizes she is the only one for him. In the dream, they run into an old mill, and he calls out for her, but she is gone and he cannot find her. At the end of the song, he wakes up, with tears in his eyes, frantically searching the dream book for an answer that clearly does not exist.

Harriet Löwenhjelm (1887-1918) is the name of the poet who wrote this song, “Beatrice-Aurore”. Last year, when I revisited Sweden for a longer period of time, I decided that I wanted to know more about her.

Harriet was only 31 when she died of TB. A girl from a noble family, it seemed she never really fit in. She was a talented illustrator and poet, but I think her family was a bit embarrassed over her drawing and writing and just wanted her to find a suitable husband. But Harriet, who was very beautiful, never married. She had many friends, but one in particular – Elsa – was especially important. To Elsa, Harriet revealed her dreams and hopes. With her, she shared her poems.

Together with Mattias Käck, a young librarian and founder of the Harriet Löwenhjelm Society, I visited the now-empty sanatorium where Harriet died. On a gray and sinister day in October, we drove the road that goes up, up, and deep into a pine forest. The sanatoriums of old were built on high altitudes where the clean air was supposed to heal patients affected by TB. It was an eerie remnant that met us up there among the tall pine trees by Sommen, a lake as clear as a teardrop. Today, the enormous Romanäs just sort of sits there majestic and huge like an old dame with nothing left to do.

Elsa has promised Harriet to see her before she dies, and now Harriet is dying. A telegram has been sent to Elsa, who is in Russia working as an aid for the Red Cross. Throwing herself on the train back to Sweden - a train filled to the brim with injured soldiers - Elsa travels through a Europe darkened by war. Finally, nearly a month later, she arrives at Romanäs. It’s the 22^nd of May, the most beautiful time of year in Sweden: The sun is shining, the windows are open, and there’s a gentle breeze in the lace curtains. Birds are singing. Dirty and tired from the long trip, Elsa hurries up the stairs to Harriet’s room. There they are now. Hugging, smiling, crying perhaps. Happy to see each other again. Harriet quietly hands Elsa two hand-written books.

“This is my literary production,” she says. “Please make sure they get published.”

The following night, with Elsa’s hand in hers, Harriet dies.

Though we are told by the current owner of Romanäs that we aren’t allowed to, Käck and I sneak inside. The insides are in impeccable order and, we gather, much unchanged since Harriet’s days. The style is Art Nouveau, fresh, clean, and very light. To my astonishment, I see fresh flowers in a vase. We have to move quickly, we aren’t supposed to be here. We take photos: Me with my phone, Käck with his palm-sized camera. We whisper as we hurry from room to room trying to locate the room, number 18, in which Harriet died.

“They’ve painted over the numbers, it’s impossible,” Käck informs me.

Then I notice a small, framed layout of the rooms, old and stained, leaning against a wall. And there we find room 18, a smallish corner room without direct access to the loggia in the back. Room 18 doesn’t face the back with a view of the lake, it faces the front of the building, with the entrance, a door red as a stigmata. We rush there.

“Here then?”

The room bathes in the weak yellowish afternoon sunlight sifting in through the window. There’s an empty bed, a bedside table. The floor is dusty.

Click. Click. We take our last photos.

I will leave you with a poem Harriet Löwenhjelm wrote shortly before she died, a photo of her, sitting on the loggia at Romanäs, and another photo that I took of Mattias Käck who in turn was photographing the view from the room in which Harriet died. I will also challenge you to read some poetry today.

Harriet Löwenhjelm at Romanäs in 1918, shortly before her death.

Mattias Käck, librarian and founder of the Harriet Löwenhjelm Society, taking a clandestine photograph in room 18 at Romanäs Sanatorium. 

Take me. Hold me. Slowly caressing,

gently enfold me a little while.

Weep a tear for facts depressing,

watch me asleep with tender a smile.

Oh, do not leave, you do want to stay,

oh stay here till I myself must depart.

Lay your beloved hand on my forehead –

yet for a little while not apart.

Tonight I shall die. There flickers a flame.

A friend by my side is holding my hand.

Tonight I shall die. But who knows the name

of where I am going – unto what land?

(Translated by Anne-Charlotte Harvey)