The Formal Call in the Making of the Baltic Bourgeoisie 9780367691257, 9780367691264, 9781003140504

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The Formal Call in the Making of the Baltic Bourgeoisie

This book studies the making of the bourgeoisie in the Baltic Sea region in the nineteenth century. This region was peripheral in comparison to England and France, with respect to urbanization, economic development, liberalism, and consumption. The bourgeoisie was still a classto-be. By the end of the century the bourgeoisie was a self-aware class incorporated in the European bourgeoisie. Their life style was mostly the same as in Western Europe, but there were also some cultural differences. The author argues that in the Baltic Sea area, this life style was shaped by both women and men. Thus, the study deals with the heterosocial life in private homes. Society life became an important instrument for defining and controlling the new social boundaries. This was also where, through the encounters among like-minded people, values and norms were tested, negotiated, and honed. This is studied in the context of the new ideals and morals connected to the bourgeoisie: a bourgeois work ethic based on industriousness and hard work, and the quiet family life of the home. The focus is on the calls, the hub around which society life was formed. No social interaction in the home was possible without morning calls. Kekke Stadin is Emerita Professor of history at Södertörn University in Stockholm. Her numerous publications include studies in urban history, gender history, fashion history, and Baltic Sea area studies. Most of her work deals with the intersection of social and cultural history.

Routledge Studies in Cultural History

101 British Concepts of Heroic “Gallantry” and the Sixties Transition The Politics of Medals Matthew J. Lord 102 Cultural Histories of Ageing Myths, Plots and Metaphors of the Senescent Self Edited by Margery Vibe Skagen 103 Coding and Representation from the Nineteenth Century to the Present Edited by Anne Chapman and Natalie Hume 104 Disability and Tourism in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Italy Luciano Maffi and Martino Lorenzo Fagnani 105 De-Illustrating the History of the British Empire Preliminary Perspectives Edited by Annamaria Motrescu-Mayes 106 Contact, Conquest and Colonization How Practices of Comparing Shaped Empires and Colonialism Around the World Edited by Eleonora Rohland, Angelika Epple, Antje Flüchter and Kirsten Kramer 107 The German Spa in the Long Eighteenth Century A Cultural History Ute Lotz-Heumann 108 The Formal Call in the Making of the Baltic Bourgeoisie Kekke Stadin For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Cultural-History/book-series/SE0367

The Formal Call in the Making of the Baltic Bourgeoisie

Kekke Stadin Translated by Lena Olsson

First published 2022 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Kekke Stadin The right of Kekke Stadin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-69125-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-69126-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-14050-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

Contents

Table of Imagesvi Forewordviii 1 Introduction1 2 The World as a Social Space17 3 The Representative Home35 4 Dressed and Ready to Call59 5 The Art of Paying a Call79 6 The Practice of Morning Calls102 7 Nordic Evening Calls or Continental Salon Life133 8 The Conversation about Society Life161 9 Closing Remarks169 References Index

171 185

Table of Images

2.1 Fredrika Bremer, 1801–65. Painting by Carl Gustav Sandberg, 1843. National Museum of Fine Arts (Nationalmuseet), Stockholm. 18 2.2 Skål i Idun [A Toast at the Idun Society]. Painting by Anders Zorn, 1892. National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm. 26 2.3 Polkan dansad vid kröningabalerne i Stockholm 1844 [Dancing a polka at the coronation balls in Stockholm in 1844]. Drawing by Nils von Dardel. The Nordic Museum (Nordiska muséet), Stockholm. 29 2.4 Slädparti på Brunnsviken [Sleigh riding party on Lake Brunnsviken]. Painting by Martin Rudolf Heland, 1810s. The Nordic Museum, Stockholm. 30 3.1 Merlo Castle (Merlo slott) Photo: Henrik Sundbom, Wikimedia.41 3.2 Hilma Bäckström, Mrs. Anderson. Drawing by Maria Röhl, 1861. National Library of Sweden (Kungliga biblioteket), Stockholm. 44 3.3 Table setting, the dining room, Hallwyl House, Stockholm. 48 3.4 The Greek Slave, nude figurine after a statue by Hiram Powers from 1843–44. 51 3.5 A zeneszoba (The Music Room) by Mihaly Munkácsy, 1878. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. 52 4.1 Aunt Green, Aunt Brown, and Aunt Lavender. Illustration by the Swedish author and illustrator Elsa Beskow, 1918. 67 4.2 Ferdinand Tollin på visit hos mig [Ferdinand Tollin call on me], by Josabeth Sjöberg 1844, Stockholms stadsmuseum (Stockholm City Museum). 70 4.3 Calling card bowl. Hallwyl museum, Stockholm. 74 5.1 Visiter på nyåret [Calling at New Year’s]. Drawing by Nils von Dardel. Nordiska museet (The Nordic Museum), Stockholm. 92

Table of Images vii 6.1 Magnus Wright, Portrait painted by his brother, Ferdinand Wright. Wikipedia Commons.  103 6.2 Kalaset hos pastorns [The party at the vicar’s]. Painting by Alexander Laureus, 1815. Finnish National Gallery, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki. Photo: Janne Mäkinen. 107 6.3 Et selskab af danske kunstnere i Rom [A company of Danish artists in Rome]. Painting by Constantin Hansen, 1837. National Gallery of Denmark (Statens Museum for Kunst), Copenhagen. 110 6.4 Marie-Louise Forsell, Portrait drawn by Maria Röhl in 1850, National Library of Sweden, Stockholm. 115 6.5 Hallwyl House, Hamngatan 4, Stockholm. The Hallwyl Museum. Foto Holger Ellgaard. 123 6.6 Wilhelmina Hallwyl, Painted by Julius Kronberg in 1895. The Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm. 125 7.1 Professor Erik Gustav Geijer, Painted by Karl Wilhelm Nordgren, 1837–40. Skokloster Castle, Sweden. 134 7.2 Professor Geijer’s home in Uppsala. Photo: Mattias Wennerström.136 7.3 Scener ut sällskapslivet på 1830-talet [Scenes from society life in the 1830s]. Painting by Carl Johan Ljunggren. National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm.  138 7.4 Vänner [Friends]. Painting by Hanna Pauli, 1900–07. National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm. 146 7.5 Sabbath-Nachmittag. Painting by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, 1860. Skirball Museum, Los Angeles. 149 7.6 Author Gurli Linder, 1893. Photo: Gösta Florman, National Museum of Science and Technology (Tekniska museet), Stockholm. 155

Foreword

When I was a child, one of my friends wondered why my parents spoke of having morning coffee although they drank it in the afternoon. I had never thought about this before, and I had no answer to give her. Through my work on this book, I have found the explanation. I have also learned the purpose of my grandmother’s small pink glass bowl with a brass foot. Therefore, it now sits, as it should, on the little sewing table next to the door of my drawing room. A research project in history can not only provide answers to the big questions concerning society and its development, but also throw light on seemingly trivial details in our lives. Work on this book has been conducted at Södertörn University, Stockholm, and I wish to thank all my colleagues and fellow workers for their inspiring perspectives and rewarding seminar discussions. I would, in particular, like to thank Professor Tom Olsson, who has read the manuscript in its entirety and provided many wise suggestions for improvement. Finally, I also wish to thank Lena Olsson, who has translated the entire manuscript into English. The work has been conducted within the framework of the research project The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which has been financed by The Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies (Östersjöstiftelsen). Strängnäs October 2020

1

Introduction

Paying a Formal Call on Wilhelmina Hallwyl in 1898 Wilhelmina Hallwyl was a dedicated collector of arts and antiques who had good contacts with the art world. We will, therefore, imagine accompanying a well-known Swedish artist paying her a formal call. This man is a painter in his mid-forties; his name is Carl Larsson.1 Admittance to a middle-class home in the Baltic Sea region at the end of the nineteenth century had become strictly formalized and was surrounded by a large number of rules of etiquette. It was important to know all of these in order to gain entry. Carl was well-­ prepared for this important call, and he knew what was expected of him. He handed his calling card to the footman, who took it upstairs to announce the arrival of the guest and state his business to the hostess. Wilhelmina Hallwyl received this type of formal call in the morning room. Carl was invited to sit down next to his hostess, and was able to have her full attention for just over ten minutes. After he had stated his business, he took his leave, pleased with his successful call. Paying calls had to be taken seriously. To a man who wanted to achieve success in life, in his profession, in social life, and in love, calls were indispensable. They were the path to the social life and status of the bourgeoisie. Calls were essential for the bourgeoise lifestyle in the northern periphery of Europe.

Middle Class or Bourgeoisie? The urban class whose way of life is studied here has been given several different designations by the research community, which may seem confusing. The middle class is an often-used concept, especially in Englishspeaking countries. With respect to England and France, the middle class has been described, in brief, as those who, unlike the aristocracy and the gentry, had to work for a living, and who differed from the working class by not performing any manual labor. 2

2  Introduction However, the concept of the middle class is also problematic. It encompasses many groups with different living conditions. Pamela Pilbeam has described the concept as “a morass, a minefield, even a veritable Pandora’s box. It is certainly a chameleon among definitions.”3 A consequence of the difficulty of delimiting the middle class has meant, among other things, that in England, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, this class has been divided into an upper middle class, a middle middle class, and a lower middle class, and into even more subdivisions, for instance, an upper lower middle class.4 The artisan and the small shopkeeper in the lower middle class had few things in common with the upper upper middle class other than their dreams of reaching its social status, pointed out Eric Hobsbawm.5 The French bourgeoisie and the German Bürgertum are concepts that often occur alongside the English middle class in the literature. In his article “The Middle Classes in Europe,” Jürgen Kocka discusses how these different concepts – but also the social categories to which they refer in different parts of Europe – are related to one another. They are not, he points out, completely synonymous with each other, but they nevertheless have enough in common that middle class can be used as an analytic category. He then restricts the concept to the upper echelons of this class, which he terms the middle class proper.6 Personal ability and merits, not a person’s ancestry, were the most important factors for achieving success in this group, according to Kocka. Rationality, emotional control, and a striving for independence are other characteristics that he foregrounds, but above all are education and learning.7 Eric Hobsbawm has used the term bourgeoisie, which he links to concepts such as power and influence. To belong to the bourgeoisie, one had to be someone in order to lead or in other ways influence people through one’s wealth and abilities.8 In addition to a person’s own competence, contacts and social networks were important. Hobsbawm foregrounds, in particular, fraternal orders and gentlemen’s clubs as places where the bourgeoisie constructed their networks.9 The picture drawn up by both of these prominent researchers, and also by many others,10 is strongly linked to the male gender. It has to do with power, qualifications, and professional positions, which during the nineteenth century could only be held by men. It also has to do with higher education, clubs, fraternal orders, and other institutions and organizations to which men had given themselves exclusive rights. It would strongly diminish the social category studied here and the lifestyle developed within it if we limit our field of vision to these homosocial contexts. Kocka mentions that there were women within the middle classes, and that their role was to transfer the cultural capital of a family to the next generation.11 Already in 1905, Georg Simmel emphasized how women’s consumption of fashion and other status symbols reflected the position of their families in the class hierarchy.12 According to this way of

Introduction 3 looking at things, women were to reproduce and demonstrate the status and way of life that men had created. In the present study, however, this traditional view of the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie is problematized. My argument is that bourgeois women were co-creators of the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie, and that they thus also contributed to creating the bourgeois position of power in the community. The emerging bourgeois lifestyle should, therefore, be studied in a context that can be described as heterosocial. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall took on the major task of studying the British middle classes from the perspective of gender. In Family Fortunes, they emphasize that class and gender always work in conjunction, and that the language of class formation is gender-coded. While the class identity of men was primarily created in public life, that of women was linked to the home and the private sphere. Davidoff and Hall describe it as two separate class identities, of which one emphasized, among other things, power, independence, and self-assertion, while the other was linked to subordination, dependence, and selflessness.13 Their analysis has the advantage of including both women and men, and it deals primarily with the respective male and female ideals of the middle classes and with the respective institutions developed by middle-class men and women. Such gender-specific experiences are also discussed here, but my main interest is in the part of a bourgeois lifestyle to which both women and men had access, i.e., social life in the home. The bourgeoisie was not uniform. Social space was usually divided into two main categories: the business world, where economic capital was at the center, and the world of those who represented cultural capital, who in German were called the Bildungsbürgertum (“the educated middle class”). The latter consisted mainly of people with an academic education: professors, civil servants, priests, physicians, lawyers, and the like. Eventually, also authors, famous artists, and other culture professionals were included in this group.14 In spite of these differences that existed within the bourgeoisie, the common features were so numerous that it can be viewed as a single class. It corresponds to Kocka’s middle class proper and is henceforth in the current text termed as the bourgeoisie. What is being studied here is thus an ideal lifestyle which many aspired to, but considerably fewer ever fully attained.

The Middling Sort of the World in 1835 Otherwise at Medevi are good people; not distinguished in either one or the other way. The middling sort of the World is abundant.15 Society life at Medevi spa in 1835 was characterized by what Swedish author and feminist Fredrika Bremer called “the middling sort of the

4  Introduction World.” The expression middling sort is no longer in use. It is linked to the term middle class as being the designation for those who, in social terms, were between the aristocracy and the working class and who were not peasants. When Fredrika Bremer wrote her letter, there were in Europe many different terms for this primarily urban, but in some parts of Europe still not clearly-defined, social stratum. The middle class was one of these terms, but there are only a few instances of the use of this expression in Sweden in 1835.16 The terms were many; none was common. In English, there was, for instance, the term the middling sort.17 With respect to Germany, German historian and author Wilhelm Riehl recommended the word Mittelstand. He linked this to the bourgeoisie and argued that Mittelstand was apt because the bourgeoisie was the true center of society.18 By the 1830s, in Russia, a stratum had emerged consisting of merchants, minor landholders, and intellectuals which, when translated into English, was called the middling state.19 All these terms demonstrate that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was uncertainty regarding how this new category was to be labeled, or described in terms of lifestyle and class. In France and England, the 1830s have been described as the triumph or breakthrough of the bourgeoisie. 20 It is true that in Scandinavia, there was what Bremer called a middling sort, a bourgeoisie-to-be, but it would take some time before the bourgeoisie as a self-aware class acquired a strong position. By the end of the nineteenth century, the bourgeoisie held an obvious position in society, also in Fredrika Bremer’s native country and in other countries in the northern periphery of Europe. La Bourgeoisie was a well-known concept and the Parisian bourgeoisie was pointed to as the obvious model. 21 An overarching aim of the current study is to examine how in the Baltic Sea region a vaguely formulated social group, the middling sort, developed into a class-aware bourgeoisie with a specific lifestyle. This social group manifested itself in both established arenas and new spaces, which it made its own. These manifestations were based on shared practices and personal experiences that the bourgeoisie gradually came to perceive as being their own special characteristics in the nineteenth-century society. An important aspect of the bourgeois lifestyle was an extensive society life filled with amusements. In her study of entertainment and cultural consumption in Germany in the decades surrounding the year 1800, Karin Wurst has emphasized that the amusements of everyday life played a larger role in the identity and distinctiveness of the upper middle class than was previously thought.22 This thesis is tested here through a study of the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie in the Baltic Sea area. Society life was an arena where common values, standards, and behaviors developed. My main interest is directed toward that most mundane, but at the same time most overlooked, aspect of society life, i.e., calls.

Introduction 5 In this book, I argue that the development of a unique lifestyle by the emerging bourgeoisie advantageously can be studied through calls and the entire culture of calling. I thus question the literature that, without any in-depth studies, has described paying and receiving calls as a female leisure activity. It has often been emphasized that this was something women in the upper social classes spent their days doing because their work effort was not required either for the family’s maintenance or for taking care of the household. 23 As is shown by this study, such an attitude is an over-simplification. Linking calls to women has, in addition, led to the underestimation of, or complete disregard for, the importance of these activities for the development of a bourgeois lifestyle and for the nineteenth-century society in general. One exception is Anne Martin-Fugier, who devotes some pages of her book, La vie élégante, ou, La formation du Tout-Paris 1815–1848, to paying calls. There she presents the state of affairs in Paris. 24 My study focuses on countries in the Baltic Sea region from the 1820s to the turn of the century in 1900. After the Napoleonic wars, this region consisted of Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, and the Russian Empire, which at that time also included the Grand Duchy of Finland and the areas that after World War I would become Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The Baltic parts of the Russian Empire, where the bourgeoisie spoke German, is included in the study, as is Prussia and, in a later period, Germany. I thus study the entire Baltic Sea region, but with a special focus on Sweden and Finland, which were located on the northern periphery of the Baltic Sea. 25 The cities in the countries in the Baltic Sea region were considerably smaller than Western European cities such as London and Paris. Among the larger cities was Berlin, which in 1830 had a population of around 240,000 and which by 1900 had grown to more than 1.8 million inhabitants. 26 Stockholm had around 80,000 inhabitants in 1830 and a population of 300,000 in 1900. 27 Riga was comparable to Stockholm. Helsinki, which in 1812 had been made the capital of Finland within the Russian Empire, had 13,000 inhabitants in 1830. At the turn of the century in 1900, the population had increased to 93,000 inhabitants.28 In addition to that of the capitals, the emerging bourgeoisie of the smaller towns in the region is also discussed, but to a lesser extent. The traditional society of the estates survived for a considerable time in this part of Europe. In the 1830s, the structuring principle of political organization was still the estate to which a person belonged, while the social organization into estates had begun to disintegrate. By the middle of the nineteenth century, a period of rapid political, economic, and social change had begun. In Finland, the Diet was summoned in 1863 for the first time since the country had become a Russian Grand Duchy, and in a liberal spirit, the freedom to conduct a business was introduced

6  Introduction in 1879. In Sweden, the compulsory guild system had been abolished in the 1840s, and in 1863, the freedom to conduct a business was introduced. There, the transition from the Riksdag of the four Estates29 to a bicameral parliament in 1866 symbolized the definitive end of the old social system of the four estates.30

The Place and the Social Framework One point of departure for this study is the idea that the Baltic Sea region is a relatively homogenous cultural sphere with the German cities as the center and Scandinavia along with Finland and the Baltic countries in the Russian Empire as the periphery. St. Petersburg was a metropolis in the far east of this area that attracted people from the entire Baltic Sea region.31 At the same time, the entire Baltic Sea region was peripheral in comparison to England and France, with respect to, for instance, economic development and liberalism, a civil society, and consumption. The situation in the Baltic Sea region will be compared to that in these Western European precursor countries. When Finland was ceded by Sweden to Russia in 1809 and became a Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire, urbanization was weak in both Sweden and Finland. The development of a bourgeois lifestyle had begun, but was still relatively unclear. The development that had already progressed relatively far in England, France, and other countries was, however, not unknown in Northern Europe; quite the contrary. Because of business contacts, travel, novels, books of etiquette, and fashion magazines, the conditions in other countries and regions were well-known.32 The same goes for Russia, where the elite developed a culture modeled directly on the Western European bourgeoisie.33 Knowledge of this lifestyle spread in part through the consumption of culture, which has been described as a characteristic of the bourgeoisie.34 During the first decades of the nineteenth century, the bourgeoisie/ middle class was still relatively small in the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea. In the German states, this social class is estimated to have made up approximately five percent of the population.35 In Sweden, it is estimated to have made up only around two percent of the country’s population during the entire nineteenth century.36 Among the bourgeoisie, businessmen were a minority.37 Nevertheless, the bourgeoisie had achieved a strong position in society at the turn of the century in 1900, including in the northern periphery of Europe. Sweden was clearly set apart from the Russian Empire and the eastern parts of Prussia in the sense that the dividing line between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie/middle class was unclear in Sweden. It is estimated that in Sweden in the nineteenth century, almost eighty percent of the nobility belonged to the middle class rather than to the aristocracy.38 Members of the aristocracy who were supported exclusively by their

Introduction 7 landed estates, as was the case in England or Prussia, were rare. In part, this is because the nobility in Sweden, and in Finland which was then a part of Sweden, had been required to serve the country as officers or civil servants since the beginning of the seventeenth century. From the end of the seventeenth century, a pure service nobility had emerged, whose members entirely or in principle lacked landed estates and were completely dependent for their support on their salaries in the service of the state. Already in 1680, this was true of two-thirds of all nobles in Sweden and Finland, and these nobles increased in number up until the beginning of the nineteenth century.39 During the nineteenth century, an increasing number of men from the nobility were active in the business world, as lawyers or physicians, and in other free professions. The proportion of noblemen marrying women from the bourgeoisie increased. The noble names of the men were combined with the economic assets of the women. Already at beginning of the nineteenth century, this was true of more than half of all marriages in the gentry, and during the 1860s, this share had increased to almost three-fourths. Also, among counts and barons, this was true of almost half of all marriages from the 1860s and thereafter.40 Sten Carlsson interpreted this as an expression of the social declassing of the nobility.41 However, others argue that this shows that the nobility was successful in adapting to the modern society.42 The result was that a relatively large proportion of the Swedish bourgeoisie was of noble birth. Thus, it is not possible to draw a clear line between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. Another difference between the countries in this study was in the role of Jews in the emerging bourgeoisie.43 In Prussia/Germany, what was called the Jewish Verbürgerlichung, the economic progress and embourgeoisement of the Jews, had occurred rapidly and successfully from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Shulamit Volkov argues that at the unification of Germany in 1871, the vast majority of Jews belonged to the bourgeoisie.44 In the Nordic countries, there were prominent Jews in both the world of business and the intellectual world, but the group was small. For instance, in Stockholm, the Jewish congregation in the 1840s consisted of a total of 400 people, including children.45 There is a considerable body of literature on how the bourgeoisie and its lifestyle developed in precursor countries such as England and France.46 Research regarding the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea has to a large extent focused on social interactions in the public sphere, in fraternal orders, gentlemen’s clubs, and other semi-public associations, and has only rarely looked at the private sphere.47 Among the exceptions is the book Culture Builders: A Historical Anthropology of Middle-Class Life by ethnologists Jonas Frykman and Orvar Löfgren, in which they study the bourgeois individual on the basis of various themes, one of which is the home. They emphasize that bourgeois ideology was materialized in the home.48 Ylva Hasselberg, who has studied certain

8  Introduction mill owner families who resided in the countryside and their building of social networks, has underlined the great importance of social life in this context. In several studies, Eva Helen Ulvros has discussed, for example, issues regarding friendship and social life among bourgeois women in selected small towns in Southern Sweden from 1790 to 1870. She points out that social life should not be seen as part of a purely private sphere, characterizing it instead as semi-public. The division into a public sphere dominated by masculinity and a private sphere linked to women, Ulvros insists, is far from unproblematic in the Swedish contexts she has studied.49 The bourgeoisie has occasionally been linked to a particular kind of morality. Some scholars have focused on sexual morality.50 Others have a broader understanding of morality. For example, Frykman and Löfgren have underscored that it was by dint of their abilities and high moral fiber that members of the bourgeoisie justified their leading place in society.51 Drive, a sense of duty, and self-discipline belong to the concepts mentioned in this context, linked primarily to the work of men, and not seldom to the American ideal of the self-made man.52 Is it possible to distinguish a new morality also in the northern periphery of Europe, and if so, how did it manifest itself in the lifestyle of the emerging bourgeoisie? The theoretical tools used in the current analysis of the lifestyle of the emerging bourgeoisie are Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of fields, capital, and class habitus. The emergence of the bourgeoisie was a process through which the field of bourgeois culture was established. A field in this sense comes into existence when people compete for something they share; in this case, say, how the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie was to be shaped and become dominant. Through rules of admittance and norms, such a field was a world in and of itself. The meaning of bourgeois culture was determined through negotiation and continual renegotiation among those who claimed to belong to the bourgeoisie.53 Certain assets were required in order to belong to the bourgeoisie. Among these is economic capital, which consists of economic assets and a knowledge of the economic rules of play. Symbolic capital consists of everything to which value is assigned within a specific field. For men, examples of this symbolic capital could be a reputable company name or an advanced academic degree; for women, the ability to play the piano or plan a seating arrangement so that all the guests felt that they had been given a place that corresponded to their social status. Cultural capital among the bourgeoisie could be, for instance, a refined use of language and being familiar with the literature, music, and fashion of the time. Social capital is, for instance, family relationships, friendships, and connections with different types of power centers.54 All of these various assets – capital – bestowed power on a person. The game played in the field of bourgeois culture was governed by unspoken rules, the doxa, an order that was perceived as natural and

Introduction 9 completely obvious. Only those who were conversant with this order had access to the field. If the unwritten rules were in any way threatened, support of the doxa would have to be manifested. The bourgeoisie is here seen as both inclusive and exclusive. It was inclusive insofar as ever more groups were included within it.55 This is a broadening of the field of bourgeois culture. It was exclusive in the sense that we, in line with Bourdieu, call distinction. The bourgeoisie distinguished itself from the aristocracy, the peasants, and the working class using various cultural practices. These might include, for instance, a way of speaking, dressing, or decorating one’s home, or certain rules of social interaction, which had been learned via similar conditions during childhood, education, and other types of socialization. These are summarized in the concept of class habitus, which means in part the practices in themselves and in part the ability to evaluate these practices, i.e., what we call taste.56 In order to better understand the connection between cultural practices and the processes that created a class awareness within the emerging bourgeoisie, another conceptual tool has been used: ritualization. By ritualization, is meant that everyday actions are given a special framing, or form that turns them into something special and significant. In this way, social structures and collective identities are shaped and reshaped.57 One goal of the present study is the analysis of the conditions in the countries in the northern periphery of Europe to contribute to a more detailed theoretical basis regarding the emergence of the bourgeoisie and its creation of a lifestyle of its own.

Masters and Servants Servants were constantly in the homes of the bourgeoisie, but they are almost invisible in the historical sources. The servants took care of the practical work in the household, and sometimes also provided personal care. They almost appeared to be a part of the house itself. In England, keeping servants, as John Tosh puts it, was not a consequence of belonging to the middle class, but was already by the 1830s seen as a precondition for being included among them.58 At least one servant, and preferably several, was considered necessary for a decent home. Calculations show that in England, more than forty percent of middle-class households had at least three employees in 1851, and eleven percent had five or more employees.59 Around the turn of the century in 1900, the wealthiest part of the British bourgeoisie could have up to around ten employees.60 In the bourgeoisie in the German cities, the number of servants increased significantly from the 1820s up to the 1870s or the 1880s. While in 1865, the banker Moritz von Bethmann of Frankfurt had no less than fifteen employees in his household, three-quarters of the households are estimated to have had only a single employee.61 Also in Sweden

10  Introduction and Finland, servants were a well-established aspect of the social identity of the bourgeoisie, but up until the 1870s, the number of employees was not particularly great. The most common was to have a so-called maid-of-all-work, or possibly two. During the final decades of the century, it became more common with multiple employees, but few households had as many as ten.62 A large majority of the servants were women. Footmen and other male employees in the household were in all of Europe considerably fewer than female employees and were a sign of higher status. Jürgen Kocka shows how the percentage of female servants in the German cities increased during the period 1816–61.63 There seems to have been a similar development in many places in the Baltic Sea region. In St. Petersburg, the proportion of women among the servants increased from seventy-five percent in 1869 to almost ninety percent in 1900.64 In Stockholm, male servants made up only a few tenths of a percent of the servant population. There, only the wealthiest had male servants.65 The Hallwyls of Stockholm belonged to the exclusive group that had male employees in their household. Among their ten employees were three men: a doorman, a manservant, and a chauffeur.66 Servants were a part of the bourgeois lifestyle in all of Europe, but the relationship between masters and servants could vary. In Sweden and Finland, the idea of service as a time of learning and a transitional period in youth, life-cycle service, persisted for a long time. Also in the middle of the nineteenth century, when servants could no longer count on eventually becoming masters themselves, this idea informed the relationship between servants and their employers.67 According to secondary school teacher Pelle Ödman, who was in England for language studies during the latter half of the 1860s, there was a clear difference between English and Swedish servants. “The cheerfulness, kindness, and readiness that one so often finds in Swedish servants, is replaced in English servants to a not insignificant degree with an all the more evident awareness of the position and duties of a servant.”68 Maidservants, cooks, and other employees were required in order to fulfill the bourgeois aspiration to have beautiful and comfortable homes, and also to hold dinner parties and other social functions in those homes.69 Servants should exist, but preferably not be seen or heard.

Contemporary Witnesses During the nineteenth century, how a person behaved was seen as an unmistakable sign of his or her class identity.70 For individuals who were not born and raised within the bourgeoisie, it was important to learn what rules applied – this was a prerequisite for being included. It is hardly possible to gain a class habitus through the study of books – the necessary signs are far too subtle – but for those who were uncertain

Introduction 11 in particular situations, etiquette books could function as initial support. Such books were published in large numbers during the entire nineteenth century and were clearly linked to the bourgeoisie.71 Michael Curtin, who has studied British courtesy and etiquette books, argues that this literature taught aristocratic manners to the bourgeoisie.72 In England, this literature was directed expressly at the middle classes.73 In the Baltic Sea region, the target group was more ambiguous: “those who belong to the World” or those who wish to gain “admission to the drawing-room.”74 In this study, these books are used in order to acquire insight into the rules and norms that applied. Another interesting group of sources are the weekly magazines and French fashion journals circulating in the countries around the Baltic Sea during the nineteenth century. These disseminated information on how the bourgeoisie lived in France and England. The most important and largest group of sources shows how social intercourse was conducted in practice. These are primarily printed diaries, memoirs, and letter collections written by both men and women from Prussia and its successor Germany, from the Baltic region in the Russian Empire, and from Finland and Sweden. Several of the writers traveled to other countries. They then commented on their impressions and reflected on cultural similarities and differences to their native countries, something that is of value for the current investigation. The material culture of the bourgeoisie was an important part of their lifestyle. Especially their homes were an arena for social interaction. By studying their homes, we access aspects of bourgeois lifestyle and forms of social interaction that were rarely expressed in words.75 Dress was another aspect of the culture of paying and receiving calls and of the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie that is discussed in this investigation. Contemporary novels and short stories complement the historical sources because they depict the habitus and describe experiences of situations and behaviors. Furthermore, they bring to life contexts in a different way than, for instance, museums can. Literary works many times describe circumstances in a larger-than-life manner, which can clarify the traces left in the historical sources. In order to understand the culture of paying and receiving calls and the lifestyle of the emerging bourgeoisie, we need to familiarize ourselves with how people in the Baltic Sea region thought about the social divisions of their society and their own positions within it.

Notes 1. Carl Larsson (1853–1919) is one of the Sweden’s most enduringly popular artists, best known for his watercolors. The farm where he lived with his wife, artist Karin Larsson, née Bergöö, is now a museum; see http://www. carllarsson.se/en/

12  Introduction 2. John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 13. 3. Pamela Pilbeam, The Middle Classes in Europe 1789–1914: France, Germany, Italy and Russia (London: Macmillan, 1990), 1. 4. Lawrence James, The Middle Class: A History (London: Abacus, 2008), 2. 5. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848–1875 (London: Abacus, 1977), 286; Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe 1780–1914: Enterprise, Family and Independence (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 191, 195; Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1986), 338. 6. Jürgen Kocka, “The Middle Classes in Europe,” The Journal of Modern History 67, no. 4 (1995): 783–95. 7. Kocka, “The Middle Classes,” 786–87. 8. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 287–88. 9. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 286–87. 10. Jerrold Seigel, Modernity and Bourgeois Life: Society, Politics and Culture in England, France, and Germany Since 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 1–6; David Blackbourn, “The German Bourgeoisie: An Introduction,” in The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the Social History of the German Middle Class from the Late Eighteenth Century to the Early Twentieth Century, ed. David Blackbourn and Richard J. Evans (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 2–3; Dolores Augustine, “Arriving in the Upper Class: The Wealthy Business Elite of Wilhelmine Germany,” in The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the Social History of the German Middle Class from the Late Eighteenth Century to the Early Twentieth Century, ed. David Blackbourn and Richard J. Evans (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 57; Martin Åberg, “En fråga om klass? Borgarklass och industriellt företagande i Göteborg 1850–1914,” PhD diss., Avhandlingar från Historiska institutionen i Göteborg, vol. 3 (Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg, 1991), 120–22; Anders Simonsen, “Bland hederligt folk: Organiserat sällskapsliv och borgerlig formering i Göteborg 1755–1820,” PhD diss., Avhandlingar från Historiska institutionen i Göteborg, vol. 27 (Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg, 2001), 96–123. 11. Kocka, “The Middle Classes,” 787. 12. See, e.g., Georg Simmel, Fashion: On Individuality and Social Forms (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 297–99; Elisabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams. Fashion and Modernity. New ed. (London and New York: Tauris, 2003), 122–23. 13. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes, rev. ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 14, 450–51. 14. Blackbourn, “The German Bourgeoisie,” 2–3. Cf. David Garrioch, The Formation of the Parisian Bourgeoisie 1690–1830 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1996), 232–35, who in his study of the Parisian bourgeoisie emphasizes that these groups made up the new elite after the French Revolution. 15. Fredrika Bremer, Fredrika Bremers brev, ed. Klara Johansson and Ellen Kleman, vol. 1, 1821–1838 (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1915), 347. 16. Göran Norrby, “Adel i förvandling: Adliga strategier och identiteter i 1800-talets borgerliga samhälle,” PhD diss., Studia historica Upsaliensia, vol. 217 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2005), 47. 17. Peter Gay, Education of the Senses, vol. 1 of The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1984), 18–31;

Introduction 13











Blackbourn, “The German Bourgeoisie,” 3–9; Crossick and Haupt, The Petite Bourgeoisie, 3; Madeleine Hurd, Public Spheres, Public Mores and Democracy: Hamburg and Stockholm 1870–1914 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 41. 18. Wilhelm Riehl, Die Naturgeschichte des Volkes als Grundlage einer Deutschen Socialpolitik, vol. 2, Die Bürgerliche Gesellschaft, 4th ed. (Stuttgart and Augsburg: Cotta, 1856), 197; Tom Ericsson, “Mellan kapital och arbete: Småborgerligheten i Sverige 1850–1914,” PhD diss., Umeå Studies in the Humanities, vol. 86 (Umeå: Umeå University, 1988), 9–12. 19. Catriona Kelly, Refinding Russia: Advice Literature, Polite Culture and Gender from Catherine to Yeltsin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 153. 20. Garrioch, The Formation of the Parisian Bourgeoisie, 1; Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 18–24; James, The Middle Class, 231–410. 21. Alvar Arfwidsson, “Från dam-världen i Paris,” Idun 3, no. 39 (1890): 478–79. 22. Karin Wurst, Fabricating Pleasure: Fashion, Entertainment, and Cultural Consumption in Germany 1780–1830 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005), xvii. 23. Tosh, A Man’s Place, 277; Daniel Pool, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Hunting to Whist – the Factors of Daily Life in 19th-Century England (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 69; Wurst, Fabricating Pleasure, 187; Lydia Murdoch, Daily Life of Victorian Women (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2014), 104. 24. Anne Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, ou, La formation du Tout-Paris 1815–1848 (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 92–93. 25. In Finland, the upper classes by then spoke Swedish and still today about five percent of the population have Swedish as their mother tongue. 26. Wikipedia: Die freie Enzyklopädie, “Einwohnerentwicklung von Berlin,” https://de.wikipedia.org /wiki/ Einwohnerentwicklung _von_ Berlin# Von_1825_bis_1919, accessed September 25, 2019. 27. City of Stockholm, “Folkmängden och dess förändringar 1720–2003,” https://stockholmskallan.stockholm.se/post/5494, accessed October 18, 2020. 28. Max Engman, Ett långt farväl: Finland mellan Sverige och Ryssland efter 1809 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2009), 182–84, 186; City of Helsinki, “Helsingfors historia,” www.hel.fi/helsinki/sv/stad-och-forvaltning/ information/historia (accessed September 28, 2018). 29. In Sweden, there were not three Estates as in most of Europe, but four; nobility, priests, burgers, and peasantry. 30. Sten Carlsson, Ståndssamhälle och ståndspersoner 1700–1865, 2nd ed. (Lund: Gleerups, 1973), 13. 31. Bengt Jangfeldt, Svenska vägar till S:t Petersburg (Stockholm: Wahlström & Wiksell, 1998), 9–10; Matti Klinge, Östersjövärlden (Stockholm: Atlantis 1994), 91–135. 32. Rachel Rich, Bourgeois Consumption: Food, Space and Identity in London and Paris 1850–1914 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2011), 7; Maureen Montgomery, “‘Natural Distinction’: The American Bourgeois Search for Distinctive Signs in Europe,” in The American Bourgeoise: Distinction and Identity in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Sven Beckert and Julia Rosenbaum (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2010), 40. 33. Kelly, Refinding Russia, 110, 137–53.

14  Introduction 34. Dieter Hein, “Soziale Konstitierungsfaktoren des Bürgertums,” in Stadt und Bürgertum in Übergang von der traditionalen zur modernen Gesellschaft, ed. Lothar Gall, Historische Zeitschrift, Beiheft NF, vol. 16 (Munich: Oldenburg, 1993). 35. Kocka, “The Middle Classes,” 784. 36. Tom Söderberg, Två sekel svensk medelklass: Från gustaviansk tid till nutid (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1972), 95, 169. 37. David Tjeder, “The Power of Character: Middle-Class Masculinities, 1800–1900,” PhD diss. (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2003), 225. 38. Söderberg, Två sekel svensk medelklass, 111; Ingvar Elmroth, Från överklass till medelklass: Studier i den sociala dynamiken inom Sveriges adel 1600–1900 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2001), 110, 300–01. 39. Ingvar Elmroth, För kung och fosterland: Studier i den svenska adelns demografi och offentliga funktioner 1600–1900 (Lund: Gleerup, 1981), 86–88. 40. Carlsson, Ståndssamhälle och ståndspersoner, 183–86. 41. Carlsson, Ståndssamhälle och ståndspersoner, 313; Elmroth, Från överklass till medelklass, 300. 42. Norrby, “Adel i förvandling,” 325–28. 43. Seigel, Modernity and Bourgeois Life, 376–410. 44. Shulamit Volkov, “The ‘Verbürgerlichung’ of the Jews as a Paradigm,” in Bourgeoise Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Jürgen Kocka and Allan Mitchell (Oxford: Berg, 1993), 367–70. 45. David Glück, Aron Neuman and Jacqueline Stare, ed., Det judiska Stockholm (Stockholm: Judiska museet, 1998), 25. When in the historical sources, a point is made of religious identity, this is obviously taken into consideration; otherwise no distinction is made between the Christian and the Jewish parts of the bourgeoisie. 46. Gay, Education of the Senses; Garrioch, The Formation of the Parisian Bourgeoisie; Carol E. Harrison, “The Bourgeois after the Bourgeois Revolution: Recent Approaches to the Middle Class in European Cities,” Journal of Urban History 31, no. 3 (2005); Michael Curtin, Propriety and Position: A Study in Victorian Manners (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1987); Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante; Tosh, A Man’s Place; Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes. 47. See, e.g., Torkel Jansson, Adertonhundratalets associationer: Forskning och problem kring ett sprängfullt tomrum eller sammanslutningsprinciper och föreningsformer mellan två samhällsformationer c:a 1800–1870, Studia historica Upsaliensia, vol. 139 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1985); Åberg, “En fråga om klass?”; Simonsen, “Bland hederligt folk;” Alexandra Ramsay, “Hufvudstadens hjärta: Filantropi och social förändring i Helsingfors – två fruntimmersföreningar 1848–1865,” PhD diss., Bidrag till kännedom av Finlands natur och folk, vol. 144 (Helsinki: Finska vetenskaps-societeten, 1993). 48. Jonas Frykman and Orvar Löfgren, Culture Builders: A Historical Anthropology of Middle-Class Life (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987). 49. Ylva Hasselberg, “Den sociala ekonomin: Familjen Clason och Furudals bruk 1804–1856,” PhD diss., Studia historia Upsaliensia, vol. 189 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1998), 98–99; Eva Helen Ulvros, Fruar och mamseller: Kvinnor inom sydsvensk borgerlighet 1790–1870 (Lund: Historiska media, 1996), 193–209, 334–35. 50. Gay, Education of the Senses; Mary Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York 1790–1865 (Cambridge and

Introduction 15











New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 116–27; Seigel, Modernity and Bourgeois Life, 336–75. 51. Frykman and Löfgren, Culture Builders, 27, 266. 52. George Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 7–41; Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 229–30; Irvin G. Wyllie, The Self-Made Man in America: The Myth of Rags and Riches (New York: Free Press, 1966); Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Free Press, 1996); David Tjeder, “When Character Became Capital: The Advent of the Self-Made Man in Sweden 1850–1900,” Men and Masculinities 5, no. 1 (2002). 53. Bourdieu, Distinction, 114–16, 120. 54. Bourdieu, Distinction, 114–16, 120. 55. Harrison, “The Bourgeois after the Bourgeois Revolution,” 383–85. 56. Bourdieu, Distinction, 2, 101–2, 170. 57. Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 81–83; Klaus-Peter Köpping, Bernhard Leistle and Michael Rudolph, “Introduction,” in Ritual and Identity: Performative Practices as Effective Transformations of Social Reality, ed. Klaus-­ Peter Köpping, Bernhard Leistle and Michael Rudolph (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2006), 9, 19. 58. Tosh, A Man’s Place, 19–20, 24. 59. Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 388, 468. 60. John P. McKay, Bennett D. Hill and John Buckler, A History of World Societies, 4th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 852. 61. Jürgen Kocka, Arbeitsverhältnisse und Arbeiterexistensen: Grundlagen den Klassembildung im 19. Jahrhundert (Bonn: Verlag Dietz, 1990), 122–23. 62. Kerstin Moberg, “Från tjänstehjon till hembiträde: En kvinnlig låglönegrupp i den fackliga kampen 1903–1946,” PhD diss., Studia historica Upsaliensia, vol. 101 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1978), 11–12, 23; Heli Haapasalo, “Trotjänare hos von Hallwyls,” in Smak av svunnen tid: Om mat och dryck i Hallwylska palatset, ed. Johan Rosell (Stockholm: Hallwylska museet, 2007), 2. 63. Kocka, Arbeitsverhältnisse, 120–22. 64. Angela Rustemeyer, Dienstboten in Petersburg und Moskau 1861–1917 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1996), 9. 65. Therese Nordlund Edvinsson and Johan Söderberg, “Servants and Bourgeois Life in Urban Sweden in the Early 20th Century,” Scandinavian Journal of History 35, no. 4 (2010): 430. 66. Haapasalo, “Trotjänare,” 2. 67. Carolina Uppenberg, “I husbondens bröd och arbete: Kön, makt och kontrakt i det svenska tjänstefolkssystemet 1730–1860,” PhD diss., Gothenburg Studies in Economic History, vol. 20 (Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg, 2018), 24–29. 68. Pelle Ödman, Ungdoms- och reseminnen: Vers och prosa, 2nd ed. (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1891), 29. 69. Edvinsson and Söderberg,“Servants and Bourgeois Life,” 428; Moberg, “Från tjänstehjon till hembiträde,” 12–13. 70. Curtin, Propriety and Position, 53. 71. Curtin, Propriety and Position, 68, 72, 285. 72. Curtin, Propriety and Position, 68, 72, 285; Philippe Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 88–89.

16  Introduction 73. Curtin, Propriety and Position, 41. 74. [Bengt Johan Törneblad], Goda tonen, synnerligen den stockholmska eller Fina verldens anständighet i sin stolta glans (Stockholm: A. Gadelius, 1814); Gottfried Emanuel Wenzel, En Man af Werld, eller Reglor för Ett fint och behagligt lefnadssätt (Strängnäs: Carl Erik Ekmarck, 1822); Ett fruntimmer [pseud.], Toilettkonst för herrarne, eller Anvisning för manspersoner att kläda sig med smak (Stockholm: Marquardska boktyckeriet, 1829); Gottfrid Emanuel Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen eller Grundsatser och regler för god ton och sant levnadssätt i umgängeslivets särskilda förhållanden (Göteborg: Bonniers, 1845); Knut Erik Venne Höökenberg, Vägledning i Konsten att skicka sig så man blir välkommen gäst i finare sällskaper, 2nd ed. (Stockholm: n. pub., 1857); Louis Verardi [pseud. Pierre Boitard], Goda tonen och den samma belefvenheten: Säker vägledning i sällskapslivet och alla våra förhållanden (Stockholm: Flodins förlag, 1859); Baroness de Fresne [pseud.], Sällskapslifvets grundlagar: En handbok för inträde och vistande i salongen (Stockholm: Sigfrid Flodins förlag, 1879). 75. Bourdieu, Distinction, 172, 466.

2

The World as a Social Space

The World and the Idea of the Hierarchy of Worlds In her previously mentioned letter, Swedish author Fredrika Bremer used the expression the middling sort of the world (werldens medelsort), which was typical for her time. Bremer herself had belonged to this middling sort since birth. She was born in a Swedish-speaking merchant family in Finland, but her family had moved to Sweden already when she was a small child. In 1828 she made her debut as an author with a collection of short stories, Teckningar utur hvardagslivet [Sketches of everyday life]. Three years later Bremer became acquainted with a young English lady, Frances Lewin (later Lewin von Koch). Through her, Bremer met the new liberal ideas. Bremer described her encounter with Miss Lewin as the beginning of a new epoch in her intellectual life.1 Fredrika Bremer later wrote several novels, and she supported women’s rights in Sweden and the abolitionist cause in the United States, which she visited for an extended period of time. By the middle of the nineteenth century, she was an internationally recognized author. The world was the term she used when referring to the social environment she depicted in private letters and in her novels. She mentioned the middling sort once or twice, but the word bourgeoisie hardly ever occurred in her texts. In the northern periphery of Europe, this social stratum had not yet taken shape as a class with an awareness of itself as a class. But there was a discernible we and this we was called the world. Le monde, the world, and corresponding words in various languages were often used in Europe in the nineteenth century. In a Swedish conduct book from 1814 the word world occurs in precisely this sense: “For we, up here in the great world, we have become so modest through our still stupid-fine manner of interacting, that we forgive all errors except those committed against the laws of social intercourse.”2 The great world was “up here,” that is to say in the higher social classes, and was connected with society life. The comment also indicates that great importance was attached to society life and its unwritten laws in the urban elite that was called the World.

18  The World as a Social Space

Image 2.1  F redrika Bremer, 1801–65, was not only a famous author, but she also fought for the rights of women and the abolition of slavery in the United States. Source: Painting by Carl Gustav Sandberg, 1843. National Museum of Fine Arts (Nationalmuseet), Stockholm.

For an elite to be understood as an elite, a form of exclusivity is presupposed. The world was a limited world and many had to be excluded.3 The demarcation against those who did not belong to notre monde, or at least to the semi-monde, was made visible in society life, and in the etiquette that had been built up around this.4 In Paris in the 1820s, un homme du monde (a man of the world) was, according to Anne

The World as a Social Space 19 Martin-Fugier, primarily a designation for politicians, persons with an academic education, and men who visited the salons. During the July Monarchy, there was a change based on two parameters, namely a sense of class and a political point of view. There developed, she claims, an expanding nebula of salons, societies, and coteries.5 The fields of bourgeois culture were divided into various sections, subfields. In the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea this division had begun, but had not yet progressed very far by the 1820s to the 1840s. In the capitals and other larger cities, the urban elite was considerably less numerous than in Paris and London, and boundaries were more fluid. According to German actress Karoline Bauer, this was true also of Berlin. In her memoirs, she claimed that the Berlin of her youth was still so small that there was an intimate and familiar atmosphere, and that it was possible to know “the entire world.”6 In most of the small towns in Sweden at this time, the urban elite was even less numerous, and the economic capital of the entrepreneurs, and the educational capital of the civil servants and priests, could be loosely combined into a motley society, which tried to mimic the lifestyle that existed in the center of Europe.7 Kristinehamn was a typical small country town. There everybody was invited to balls at Mrs. Knistedt’s, tradesman Berg, and the mayor during the 1820s. This so-called everybody consisted of between 100–160 people in total and included the few noble families of the town, the mayor and other local civil servants, lawyers, physicians, officers, priests, merchants, and a few mill owners who lived just outside the town itself.8 The world was there a relatively close-knit little world. In contradistinction, in Finland, different coteries were mentioned early on, even in the societies of small towns. In 1837, Zackarias Topelius, later a Finnish professor of history and also an author, described his native town of Nykarleby. He distinguished among five “carefully delimited societies that vied among themselves for precedence.”9 In a study by Alexandra Ramsay, a similar picture is drawn of Helsinki. Before 1850, social life in the Finnish capital was characterized by “inflexible barriers between different groups.” After this date, the boundaries between the various groups within what she calls the educated class began to disintegrate.10 In Tallinn (known until 1918 as Reval) in the Russian Empire, the boundaries between the different worlds were razor-sharp and remained so. The nobility was described by contemporary citizens as a very exclusive group that was separated from the rest of the inhabitants of the city. It was only in connection with balls and masquerades arranged by the governor that the nobility met civil servants and representatives of the bourgeois groups of the city. Otherwise, the different worlds led their separate lives.11 In a study of the relationships between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, Werner Mosse has claimed that

20  The World as a Social Space in Russia, as in France, contacts between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy were rare.12 Kocka argues that the boundaries drawn between different social strata were sharper in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe.13 The difference in this respect between Sweden and Finland during the first half of the nineteenth century is striking, since the two countries were the same country until 1809. The proximity to Russia and the fact that Finland from 1809 was incorporated into the Russian Empire can be part of the explanation for this. As was mentioned before, in Sweden the boundary between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie was diffuse. But the differences between Sweden and Finland also show that the development was not simple and uniform in the area as a whole, or a straightforward copy of conditions in France and England. Society, the bon société, high society, and corresponding terms were other expressions for the urban elite.14 Who was included in this group depended on the size and type of the city in question. In a Swedish university town, a differentiation between the academic world and the so-called high society was reported in the 1860s, but both groups nevertheless participated in a partially shared social life.15 At the end of the nineteenth century, the word world could be used in a more limited sense also in Sweden, which indicates that there was a greater division into different fractions within the bourgeoisie. At the beginning of the twentieth century, author Hjalmar Söderberg wrote in his novel Förvillelser [Delusions] about this division: “Jean Arvidsson entered, wearing a dress coat and a white scarf; he had represented his company at a party in the business world and was in the company of some gentlemen of a commercial demeanor.”16 This episode illustrates how different Worlds were thought to have different characteristics. The character Jean Arvidsson existed in an environment where men from a certain world, the business world, after the end of the business day met in a festive atmosphere. This was a form of homosocial interaction that took place within a certain circle, and which aimed mainly to promote the business and social status of these men. According to the author, the men of the World of trade were distinguished by a “commercial demeanor” – and a dress coat. The idea about there being several different worlds was widespread during the latter part of the nineteenth century. In the etiquette book Sällskapslivets grundlagar [The basic laws of society life], which was published in 1879, a chapter was devoted to describing these different “worlds.” At the top was the great world, which was the World of the royal court. To this world, people gained entry by dint of their lineage, but sometimes merit could also open its doors. The world of pleasure and luxury included people who slept during the day and amused themselves during the night, who spent their summers at seaside resorts and their winters in theatres and at balls. They were, in

The World as a Social Space 21 other words, young people with sufficient economic resources that work was not a necessity for their being able to support themselves and live a life of luxury.17 The third world was the world of civil servants who, according to the author, “not rarely believe they are better than others.” The world of learning dealt with profound research, while the world of finance was described as the most pompous of all worlds, but also the least educated. The military world, for its part, was said to set greater store by gunpowder than by gold.18 The four lower worlds according to this characterization were the world of the petit bourgeoisie (kälkborgare),19 the world of journalism, the world of the theatre, and, finally, the world of artisans. The artisans were at the bottom of this social hierarchy and, together with the petit bourgeoisie, they were included among the lower middle class. However, the author says that it was doubtful whether these people could be included in the World at all, because their lifestyle was only similar to that of the World on Sundays.20 According to this description, the World consisted of the nobility and the bourgeoisie, but not the lower middle class. The different worlds presented were all linked to an urban context, and the various forms of capital had different degrees of significance in the different worlds. These worlds were described as being arranged in a hierarchical order, and the aim of everybody was said to be to “advance upwards in the scale of different worlds.”21 The ultimate proof of success in life was to gain entrance to the “great world,” to be presented at court. For most people, this was an unattainable but nevertheless enticing goal. Lou Taylor has argued that in England it was precisely this ambition that made the bourgeoisie imitate many aspects of court etiquette in their social interactions, in the hope that this would give them a higher status. 22 Some of the worlds presented were a bit special and did not follow quite the same laws as did the others; they had long existed at the periphery of the world, as a kind of semi-monde. In these worlds talent was the symbolic capital that was most valued. Talent could be successfully used to create economic capital and status. The world of the theatre, which included all types of stage performers, was one of these. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, it could hardly be included in the emerging bourgeoisie in the Nordic countries. At that time this world had only a few people in it, and their status was, in general, low. 23 By way of the expanding consumption of culture during the nineteenth century, the world of the theatre grew rapidly and its status was elevated. Performers who became famous far outside the borders of their own countries also contributed to this. Among these were, for instance, Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova, and German pianist and composer Clara Wieck

22  The World as a Social Space Schumann. At the end of the century, leading artists had access to even the most prominent drawing rooms. 24 The performers and artists were incorporated into the world, or, to put it differently, they represented a widening of the field and talent was their primary asset. The same was true for the newspaper world. In the Nordic countries, journalists were a relatively new group, one which during the nineteenth century acquired an ever higher status. They had an intellectual and cultural capital and the ability to express their thoughts and ideas in the newspapers that were consumed by the urban elite. When this was complemented with social capital, the doors to the more prominent drawing rooms could be opened. In the novel The Serious Game (Den allvarsamma leken), author Hjalmar Söderberg provides an illustration of this. After writing favorably about a proposed construction project in the newspaper, journalist Arvid Stjärnblom is invited to a dinner and dance for young people at the home of the property developer, Mr. Randel. There he meets his future wife, Randel’s daughter, Dagmar. Through her the journalist gains access to higher worlds; his father-in-law is a member of the Masonic Order and a number of other fraternal orders, to which the future son-in-law is invited. During his engagement, Arvid also advances in his career at the newspaper and becomes a feature writer on cultural matters and an opera reviewer, two areas of journalism that had high status. Within the spate of a few years, his social, as well as his cultural capital, grows significantly. 25 Here fiction seems to have stayed close to reality as described by the contemporary journalist Claës Lundin. Lundin had, after a couple of years as an employee in a company in Hamburg, become a journalist and foreign correspondent, first in Copenhagen and then, between 1859 and 1867, in Paris. After this, he worked in Stockholm. Lundin had what was known among the bourgeoisie as urbanity. He describes how during the 1880s and 1890s, he was invited to dinners and suppers in what he called Society (societeten). 26 Well-known authors, artists, and journalists were welcomed when members of the Riksdag and businessmen held receptions and parties in order to display their and their families’ education and cultural capital. Outside the hierarchy of the worlds, there were, in addition, parvenus. This is what people were called who were not thought of as belonging to the world, but who, through their newly-gained wealth, laid claims to doing so. These individuals were spoken of as being pseudo-urbane, people who strove in vain to emulate the habitués of the world. Parvenus were described as people who were interested in extravagant clothes, elegant suites of furniture, and distinguished acquaintances, but who did not have ideals. 27 These people, the heterodox of the field, had economic capital, but because they lacked the symbolic capital that came from a long-term connection to the world and a classical education, they were thought to lack the correct habitus.

The World as a Social Space 23 In certain circles, it could take a very long time for newcomers to be accepted and welcomed into the community. This was the experience of Mathilda Broström, who was married to the founder of the large Swedish shipping group Broströms. In a letter from the end of the nineteenth century, she described the shame and indignation she had felt when calling on an acquaintance, whom she found in the company of “many elegantly dressed ladies.” The visit made it obvious to her that after almost twenty years the family business was still not respected in the ship-owning society of the city of Gothenburg.28 She and the rest of the family were still perceived as parvenus. The demimondaines, finally, were women who pretended to belong to the world by dressing elegantly and living in luxury, but who had neither the economic nor the symbolic capital that was current in the field of bourgeois culture. A few of them managed, through contacts with male members of the bourgeoisie, to live as semi-mondaines, at least for short periods of time. The designation demimondaines was later used mainly for high-class prostitutes. 29 Among the worst things that could happen to those who belonged to the World was to be excluded from it. This could happen because of scandals and unsuitable behavior, but also because of deteriorating economic circumstances that made it impossible to live in the way that was expected. In a French etiquette book translated into Swedish, the author emphasized that if someone were to lose their wealth, it was better to leave the world before the World left them. And, the author warned, a man of the World who had neither wealth nor talent was a parasite. 30 An ambition to advance in the hierarchy of worlds was perceived as being all but natural. In order to gain entrance to a higher world, economic capital was described, not unexpectedly, as a basic asset. But money was not enough. It did not open all doors, the conduct books emphasized. Social capital in the form of marriage, business contacts, and what were considered the right social connections, were other preconditions for social advancement.31 At the same time, all these were felt to be linked to social interactions. An ability to behave correctly in society life was described as the road to success and social advancement.32 Correct class habitus was thus foregrounded as a key to success. The contemporary concept for this was termed good manners (god ton) and it was furthermore described as a basic prerequisite for being able to advance to a higher world. What is interesting is that only those who themselves belonged to the World were considered able to determine what constituted good manners.33 Good breeding (belevenhet) was another expression of this and was often mentioned together with concepts such as morality (moral) and urbanity (världsvana).34 What was considered urbanity or good manners in more concrete terms was not always clear-cut. On the other hand, there

24  The World as a Social Space was no doubt that only those who possessed these qualities and abilities would be accepted into the emerging bourgeoisie. Decent (anständig) was another often-used keyword in the historical sources. In society life, decency was considered synonymous with good manners, a minimum requirement for the correct habitus.35 A person’s behavior and clothes should be decent, but so should his or her home. A decent home fulfilled the expectations people could have of those who wanted to belong to the World with respect to spaciousness, elegance, and comfort. The emphasis placed within the bourgeoisie on the ability to behave and carry oneself well is clearly illustrated in an English courtesy book from 1856. In this book, the author concluded that “etiquette is that code of conduct which is recognized by polite society, and to which all who desire to be admitted into fashionable circles must submit. It is the passport without which the traveler cannot proceed on his journey.”36

The Will to Choose a World Social life changed in Europe during the nineteenth century. Earlier, family ties, patron-client relationships, and other hierarchical structures had formed the framework for social interaction. During the nineteenth century, these structures were largely replaced by other criteria for social affiliation. This led to the development of new forms of social interaction. Subscription balls, fraternal orders, and other social gatherings, to which access was limited to a select few, became increasingly common. However, the most obvious change was that a greater part of social life took place in the home, where both women and men participated but where interactions also became more private.37 The home was not open to everyone; only a limited group of people had access. This can be seen as an expression of a desire among the higher social classes for greater exclusivity and an opportunity to themselves choose who could participate in their social networks; the will to choose a World. These changes in social life have been interpreted by Leonore Davidoff as an expression of acute difficulties in defining social boundaries.38 The will to choose a World was based in part on a paradox. There was an ambition to have as wide a social network as possible, and also a desire to limit one’s social interactions to an exclusive group. Through the study of the culture of paying and receiving calls, it is possible to see how the emerging bourgeoisie attempted to deal with these seemingly incompatible aims. The importance of choosing the people with whom one interacted socially was discussed in the Baltic Sea region, especially at the end of the nineteenth century. One participant in the public debate warned his readers of being “too quick to strike up unfamiliar friendships.” The crucial point when choosing one’s social interaction should be, he

The World as a Social Space 25 emphasized, a similarity of social position and education.39 In order to achieve a higher status, a separation from those who had a lower status was required; this was distinction.

The Season and the Society Life of the World Amusement was said to be the purpose of society life. In a pamphlet entitled Den goda tonen, synnerligen den stockholmska eller Fina verldens anständighet i sin stolta glans [Good manners, especially the decency of the Stockholm, or the elegantworld in its proud splendor] from 1814, it is said that the purpose of society life was for people to divert, enliven, and delight each other.40 Within the emerging bourgeoisie of the Baltic Sea area, society life was very active. It is true that servants made it possible for women to put more time into social activities, and men in this social stratum many times had an opportunity to, in part, control their own working hours. But all the time, commitment, and large sums of money that were put into society life suggest that its purpose was not simply to amuse; it also had a deeper social function. It is worth noting that fraternal orders, gentlemen’s clubs, and other homosocial associations were not mentioned when society life was discussed in publications in the nineteenth century. To the extent that these types of associations were mentioned at all, this was done mainly in connection with charity organizations or religious societies.41 Society life, for nineteenth-century people, meant primarily heterosocial interactions. The Season was the period in the year when the society life of the world was at its most intense. Irrespective of whether it was in London, Paris, or the smallest country towns in the Nordic countries, the Season was what mattered. In most places, it lasted from the New Year to Easter. However, there is one notation that states that the Season was still “flourishing” in May.42 In Helsinki in the 1830s, it was said that active society life had already begun by the middle of December.43 The exact chronological boundaries could vary, but it was above all during the Season that balls, dinner parties, receptions, suppers, and other social events were held, in both private and public contexts.44 People sometimes partook of both private parties and society life in public contexts on the same evening. It was not uncommon for a dinner party that began at 6:00 p.m. to be followed by a visit to the opera or the theatre, and that the evening concluded with someone spontaneously inviting people home for supper after the theatre.45 The Season meant, as one woman put it, “constant, continuous social interaction.”46 With respect to England, the Season has been linked to the sessions of Parliament, but it was also the time when the autumn hunt was done and everyone had left their country estates and were in the city.47 In the

26  The World as a Social Space

Image 2.2  Skål i Idun [A Toast at the Idun Society]. Idun is a Swedish cultural society for men “who in their separate careers devote their activities and interests to science, letters, and art.” This homosocial society was founded in 1862. In 1885, Calla Curman, wife of Professor Carl Curman, took the initiative to form a corresponding society for women, which was called Nya Idun [New Idun]. Source: Painting by Anders Zorn, 1892. National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm.

countries around the Baltic Sea, there was no such obvious connection to an institution, even though there was an established tradition of parties around Christmastime. Here the influence of the Western European bourgeoisie seems to have been of significance. Balls, and above all suppers, were frequently held in the Baltic Sea region, on weekends as well as on weekdays, during the first half of the

The World as a Social Space 27 nineteenth century. Fredrika Bremer discussed this in the 1830s, in a short story fashioned as a personal letter: Thou inquirest what I do in the great city of Stockholm […]. – Ah, my love – I eat suppers, and yawn! The day before yesterday I was at a supper; yesterday, I was at a supper; to-night also shall be at a supper, and if I am still alive to-morrow, I shall, alas! also to-morrow eat a supper.48 Life is described as a continual round of suppers. The image drawn in this short story appears to be exaggerated, but it was not a far cry from the life led by many people in the emerging bourgeoisie. Many diaries and letters show that the parties truly did follow one after the other, each and every day.49 A senator in Helsinki commented in 1820 that society life had intensified significantly after the city had become the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland. He himself was normally invited to four balls with suppers each week, he wrote to a close friend.50 His social life was not particularly active by the standards of the time; on the contrary, it was comparatively modest.51 Society life went on basically on all days of the week and often continued far into the night. Ernst Moritz Arndt, a German professor of history, had already been to Sweden a few times when he visited St. Petersburg. There he saw certain similarities in the social practices of the two countries. Great hospitality, invitations to social functions almost every day of the week, and late nights were what Arndt encountered in the Russian city. He described life during the winter as nightlife. “One almost never left a private party in the evening before midnight. Often not before two or three a.m.”52 During the Season, most evenings of the week, and also nights, were filled with society life. At the end of the nineteenth century, journalist Claës Lundin claimed that it was common for the bourgeoisie in Stockholm to be invited to four or five dinners a week during the Season, and almost as many suppers.53 That would amount to a total of around 120 private social gatherings during the Season alone, not counting the parties a person hosted him- or herself. To this should be added opera and theatre visits, charity soirées, and other social events in public spaces, and, for men, fraternal orders and other male homosocial associations. It is no exaggeration to describe the society life of the European bourgeoisie as hectic. The situation in the Baltic Sea region was similar in this respect to the situation in England. British diplomat’s daughter Dorothy Walpole described her experiences of the Season in London. In 1846, the year of her debut, she participated in fifty balls, sixty parties, and around forty dinners during these brief winter months. 54 That amounts to around 140 social events in a single Season. Added to these were all the calls

28  The World as a Social Space that were paid. It was not stated how many these were; they were far too mundane and frequent to even mention. The Season meant an active society life also in small country towns.55 The small Finnish town of Nykarleby had less than a thousand inhabitants during the first half of the nineteenth century. Here, as in other small towns, society life was key to cohesion within the Society of the town. But it was also an arena in which everyone defended their position.56 Those who wanted to belong to the World were extremely aware of the importance of society life to his or her social status, and this was carefully guarded. Dancing was very popular in Sweden and Finland, especially during the first half of the nineteenth century. There was dancing at balls, and also at dinners and suppers. A Finnish woman wrote in her diary about the private social events she had been to during the Season of 1822. At more than half of the dinners she had been to there had also been dancing, she noted contentedly.57 Elin Sirenius, the daughter of a wholesaler, wrote in her diary about the many balls and more modest dance receptions to which she had been invited during the 1870s, both at home in Gothenburg and at her family’s summer house in the county of Södermanland.58 Another young woman described how for a period of time she had been to private dance receptions every evening. It was in no way noteworthy to be invited to twenty balls during a Season. To this should be added public balls in connection with jubilees, royal birthdays, charity soirées, and similar events. 59 In the university town of Uppsala not only the county governor (landshövding), but also several professors, hosted balls during the 1840s.60 Dancing was popular in all circles. Dancing also occurred in connection with evening receptions and cultural evenings. In the home of a civil servant in Stockholm, where music evenings were held with recitations by the city’s cultural elite in the 1840s, the evening often concluded with “lively dancing.”61 When there was dancing, the food was often less elaborate.62 Dancing had a prominent place in society life in the northern periphery of Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century. At the end of the 1870s, a courtesy book still maintained that a young man had to be able to dance well, unless he was “not a cripple or in very poor health.” There were no excuses for not mastering this skill.63 At the turn of the century in 1900, the private balls and dances in connection with dinners and suppers had become less common, and thus the requirement to know all the fashionable new dances had lessened.64 Society life in private homes was still intense, but it had in part assumed another shape. Society life included a number of different amusements. Governess Louise Forsell worked in a family who lived in a country estate in Southern Sweden. On one occasion she for a time accompanied the

The World as a Social Space 29

Image 2.3  Polkan dansad vid kröningabalerne i Stockholm 1844 [Dancing a polka at the coronation balls in Stockholm in 1844]. In 1844, Oskar I became king of Sweden and Norway. When he was crowned in September of that year several balls were arranged in his honor. Source: Drawing by Nils von Dardel. The Nordic Museum (Nordiska muséet), Stockholm.

family to the small town of Vänersborg. On February 5, 1845, she wrote the following in her diary: This afternoon I have also received an invitation from the young gentlemen of the town to a sleigh riding party on Friday. This week the amusements pile up for some people. On Monday a roaring dinner party, on Tuesday a coffee party, on Wednesday a ball, on Friday a sleigh riding party, and on Sunday there is said to be a soirée at the Richerts’. The good people of Vänersborg certainly know how to amuse themselves!65 The sleigh riding parties she mentions were a popular outdoor amusement during the winter in Northern Europe, especially among younger people. The companies traveled together in horse-drawn sleighs over the snow, often on frozen lakes. Sleigh riding parties had a special frisson because they were an opportunity for a young man to invite the lady of his heart to sit with him in the sleigh, which normally only had room for two people.66 The romantic overtones were foregrounded by the Swedish author Emelie Flygare-Carlén, who, in a novel from

30  The World as a Social Space 1860 described the main characters getting engaged during a sleigh riding party.67 Englishman Llewellyn Lloyd, who visited Sweden and Norway in 1828 to hunt bears, claimed that the sleigh riding parties could include twenty sleighs or more, “each of which usually contain [sic] a Scandinavian beauty.”68 Often there was a measure of competition among the equipages, and they traveled at speed, considerably faster than with a horse and carriage. Usually, they rode home to someone in the company or possibly to an inn, where they were served hot beverages and a light meal.69 The sleigh riding parties were the outdoor amusement of the winter season, and in the Nordic countries during the first half of the nineteenth century, they were seen as part of the society life of the emerging bourgeoisie. During the summers, society life acquired a somewhat different character than during the Season. It was common for members of the bourgeoisie to move to their summer houses, where they had an active society life, although one that was in part different in form. Strolls in the park, rowing on a lake, croquet, and skittles are examples of activities to which guests could be invited, for instance between dinner and supper.70 Many also visited spas and seaside resorts, which often had an active society life. There people cultivated somewhat different acquaintances than at home, sometimes year after year.71

Image 2.4  Slädparti på Brunnsviken [Sleigh riding party on Lake Brunnsviken], Stockholm. Source: Painting by Martin Rudolf Heland, 1810s. The Nordic Museum, Stockholm.

The World as a Social Space 31 In cities large and small – from London to St. Petersburg, from Paris to Stockholm, in every place where there was never so small an urban elite – dinners, balls, suppers, and other parties, and also various kinds of receptions, followed one upon the other during the Season.72 In private letters, descriptions of the various parties and the people who were invited to different social events take up remarkably much space.73 The importance attached to society life can be linked to developments in the community in general and to a changing social space. It became important to conquer a place in the new social landscape. It was necessary to have economic and social capital, but this was not enough; a person also had to have the correct habitus. Good manners were a formalized expression of this.

Notes 1. Malla Grandinson, ed., “Fredrika Bremer and Frances von Koch: En samling brev,” Ord och bild 24, no. 6 (1915): 295; Frances Lewin von Koch, En familjekrönika: Porträtt och interiörer från 1800-talets engelska och svenska kulturkretsar, ed. Lotten Dahlgren (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1933), 9; Carina Burman, Bremer: En biografi (Stockholm: Bonniers, 2001), 76–78. 2. Törneblad, Goda tonen, 36–37. 3. Angela Rundquist, Blått blod och liljevita händer: En etnologisk studie av aristokratiska kvinnor 1850–1900 (Stockholm: Carlssons, 1990), 13. 4. Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, 96; Tjeder, “A Power of Character,” 162. 5. Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, 96–101. 6. Karoline Bauer, “Aus meinem Bühnenleben: Erinnerungen,” in Das Biedermeier im Spiegel seiner Zeit: Briefe, Tagebücher, Memoiren, Volksszenen und ähnlische Dokumente, ed. Georg Herman (Berlin: Deutsches Verlagshaus Bong, 1913), 54–55. 7. Louise Forsell, Mamsell Forsells dagbok, ed. Ingeborg Nordin Hennel (Malmö: Corona, 1988), 16; Hasselberg, “Den sociala ekonomin,” 95–96. 8. Lotten Dahlgren, Marie Charlottes dagbok: Bilder från en värmländsk småstad (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1931), 64–66. 9. Zackarias Topelius, Dagböcker, ed. Pia Asp (Helsinki: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2018), 515. 10. Alexandra Ramsay, Hufvudstadens hjärta. Filantropi och social förändring i Helsingfors – två fruntimmersföreningar 1848–1865 Helsinki: Finska vetenskaps societeten 1993), 34. 11. G. Sprengfeld [Gotthard von Hansen], Meine Vaterstadt Reval vor 50 Jahren (Dorpat [Tartu]: Schnakenburg, 1877), 51. 12. Werner Mosse, “Nobility and Bourgeoisie in Nineteenth-Century Europe: A Comparative View,” in Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Jürgen Kocka and Allen Mitchell (Oxford: Berg, 1993), 84. 13. Kocka, “The Middle Classes,” 788–89. 14. Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, 96. 15. Ann Margret Holmgren, Minnen och tidsbilder, vol. 1 (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1926), 172. 16. Hjalmar Söderberg, Förvillelser (Stockholm: Ljus förlag, 1906), 11. 17. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 24–26. 18. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 26.

32  The World as a Social Space 19. Kälkborgare (originally kälkestadsborgare) was, according to Nordisk familjebok (1911) a facetious and derogatory name for the petite bourgeoisie, but also denoted narrow-minded and small-minded people in general. 20. Crossick and Haupt, The Petite Bourgeoisie. 21. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 28. 22. Lou Taylor, Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983), 121. 23. Christina Ericsson, “Att vara eller inte vara: 1800-talets aktriser och kvinnligheten,” in Det evigt kvinnliga: En historia om förändring, ed. Ulla Wikander (Stockholm: Tidens förlag, 1994), 162. 24. Leonore Davidoff, The Best Circles: Society, Etiquette and Season (London: Croom Helm, 1973), 64. 25. Hjalmar Söderberg, The Serious Game, trans. Eva Claeson (London: Marion Boyars, 2001). 26. Claës Lundin, Nya Stockholm (Stockholm: Gebergs, 1890), 324–33. 27. L—d, “Verldsdamen,” in Tidskrift för hemmet 3, no. 3 (1861): 164; Curtin, Propriety and Position, 286. 28. Algot Mattsson, Huset Broström: En dynastis uppgång och fall (Göteborg: Tre Böcker, 1984), 36. 29. The expression demimonde originally came from a stage play with the same name from 1855 by Alexandre Dumas the younger. 30. Verardi, Goda tonen och den samma belefvenheten, 62. 31. Taylor, Mourning Dress, 121–22. 32. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 25. 33. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 24–25, 28; Clara Smitt, “Vårt sällskapslif V,” in Idun 1, no. 9 (1888): 59. 34. Verardi, Goda tonen, 1. 35. Törneblad, Goda tonen, 17, 24–25, 33, 66. 36. A Manual of Etiquette for Ladies (1856), quoted in Curtin, Propriety and Position, 55. 37. Tosh, A Man’s Place, 23. 38. Davidoff, The Best Circles, 23–25. Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 437. 39. Klaës Alfred Hagström, “Vårt umgänge,” Idun 3, no. 4 (1890): 35. 40. Törneblad, Goda tonen, 6, 92. 41. For instance, Lundin has a special chapter entitled “Bland ordensbröder, godtemplare och frälsningssoldater” [Among brothers in orders, good templars, and salvationists], where one section is devoted to fraternal orders and another to “secret societies.” Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 649–70. 42. Fredrik Åkerman, Presidenten Fredrik Åkermans PM: Dagboksanteckningar 1841–65, ed. with a commentary by Tomas Lidman (Stockholm: Kungliga samfundet för utgivande av handskrifter rörande Skandinaviens historia, 2015), 154. 43. Ester-Margaret Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832, (Helsinki: Söderström, 1947), 241, 243, 297. 44. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 324; Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 50–54; Martin-­Fugier, La vie élégante, 117–23; Murdoch, Daily Life of Victorian Women, 105. 45. Magnus Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840 (Helsinki: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1997), 133, 337; Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 50–54. 46. Lotten Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv: Dagboks- och brevutdrag (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1923), 105. 47. Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 50–51; Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, 117.

The World as a Social Space 33 48. Fredrika Bremer, “Letter about Suppers,” in Fredrika Bremer’s Works: A Diary, The H—Family, Axel and Anna, and Other Tales, transl. Mary Howitt, 4th ed. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853), 278. 49. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 105; Forsell, Mamsell Forsells dagbok, 71; Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 324; Bauer, “Aus meinem Bühnenleben,” 54; Ernst Moritz Arndt, Levnadsminnen (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1917), 192; Louise Munthe, En landshövdingedotter i Umeå: Louise Munthes dagbok från 1860, ed. Magnus von Platen (Umeå: Nordskandinavisk etnologi, 1983), 19; Topelius, Dagböcker, 668. 50. Ester-Margaret Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1812–1827: med en historisk översikt, (Helsinki: Söderström, 1943), 242, 257. 51. Topelius, Dagböcker, 798–819, 827–43; Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832, passim. 52. Arndt, Levnadsminnen, 192; see also Munthe, En landshövdingedotter, 19, Topelius, Dagböcker, 668; Elin Sirenius, Elins tonårsdagbok: Grödinge 1874–1800, ed. Barbro Gramén (Stockholm: Balkong, 2019), 33, 60, 62. 53. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 324. 54. Murdoch, Daily Life, 105; Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 50–54. 55. Jonas Törnblom, Dagbok från ett svunnet sekel: En rapsodi över människors tankar, liv och leverne i Södra Vi, Djursala och Vimmerby på 1840talet (Hultsfred: Södra Vi hembygdsförening, 1993), 61, 101; Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1812–1827, 296; Ulvros, Fruar och mamseller, 203; Eva Helen Ulvros, Kärlekens villkor: Tre kvinnoöden 1780–1880 (Lund: Historiska media, 1998), 140; Hasselberg, “Den sociala ekonomin,” 95–96. 56. Eliel Kilpelä, “Inledning,” in Zakarias Topelius, Dagböcker, ed. Pia Asp (Helsinki: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2018), xii–xiii. 57. Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1812–1827, 275, 294; Magnus Wright, Dagbok 1824–1834, (Helsinki: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1996), 149. 58. Sirenius, Elins tonårsdagbok, passim. 59. Ulvros, Fruar och mamseller, 202; Eva Helen Ulvros, Dansens och tidens virvlar: Om dans och lek i Sveriges historia (Lund: Historiska media, 2004), 177–80, 186–88. 60. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 117–19, 135, 149–51. 61. Hilma Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem vid mitten av 1800-talet,” in S:t Eriks Årsbok 1954 (Stockholm: Samfundet S:t Erik, 1954), 92. 62. Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem,” 93–94; Marie-Louise Forsell, Sällskapslif och hemlif i Stockholm på 1840-talet (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1915), 2–4; Marie-Louise Forsell, Herrgårdslif i Bergslagen för sjuttio år sedan (Stockholm: Bonniers 1916), 9–12; Törnblom, Dagbok, 61, 101–03, 119; Monika Fink; Der Ball: Eine Kulturgeschichte des Gesellschaftsstanzes im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Innsbruck and Vienna: Studien Verlag, 1996), 11. 63. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 40–42. 64. Ulvros, Dansens och tidens virvlar, 180. 65. Forsell, Mamsell Forsells dagbok, 71. 66. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 131–32, 143–44; Topelius, Dagböcker, 373. 67. Emelie Flygare-Carlén, Ett köpmanshus i skärgården, vol. 1 (Stockholm: Svenska vitterhetssamfundet, 2007), 20.

34  The World as a Social Space 68. Llewellyn Lloyd, Field Sports of the North of Europe, vol. 2 (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830), 192. 69. Fredrika Bremer, “A Diary,” in Fredrika Bremer’s Works: A Diary, The H— Family, Axel and Anna, and Other Tales, trans. Mary Howitt, 4th ed. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853), 122–27; Forsell, Herrgårdslif I Bergslagen, 11–12; Orvar Odd [Oscar Patric Struzen-Becker], Ur Stockholmslifvet: Nya krit-teckningar (Stockholm: Looströms, 1844), 126–38; Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 131–32, 143–44; Topelius, Dagböcker, 373; Munthe, En landshövdingedotter, 36–37. 70. Ödman, Ungdoms- och reseminnen, 42; Topelius, Dagböcker, 161; Sirenius, Elins tonårsdagbok, 23–24, 31, 42–43, 46, 50, 60, 103. 71. Elisabeth Mansén, Ett paradis på jorden: Om den svenska kurortskulturen 1680–1880 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2001), 152–65. 72. Gerd Eiler, “Meine Wanderung durchs Leben, Leipzig 1856: Pädagoge und Staatsmann Eilers,” in Das Biedermeier im Spiegel seiner Zeit: Briefe, Tagebücher, Memoiren, Volksszenen und ähnlische Dokumente, ed. Georg Hermann (Berlin: Deutsches Verlagshaus Bong, 1913), 53–54; Bauer, “Aus meinem Bühnenleben,” 54–55; Arndt, Levnadsminnen, 192; Wright, Dagbok 1824–1834 and Dagbok 1835–1840, passim; Koch, En familjekrönika, 66–67; Forsell, Sällskapslif och hemlif, 38–40; Hasselberg, “Den sociala ekonomin,” 93, footnote 5; Ulvros, §, 200–202; Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 437; Rich, Bourgeois Consumption, 97–99; Augustine, “Arriving in the Upper Class,” 57. 73. Topelius, Dagböcker, 536–43; Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, passim; Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1812–1827, 315.

3

The Representative Home

The forms and location of fashionable society life in the private homes of families placed new demands on people’s residences. They had to be adapted to provide enough space for receiving calls and hosting dinners, balls, and other parties. The home was an important aspect of the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie. In this chapter, we will study the ideals and power relations that characterized the homes of the bourgeoisie, and how their residencies were adapted to meet the demands of their social life. The way that we live provides the people around us with an almost infallible gauge of the social positions we claim to hold. What above all tends to be the basis for the esteem in which our fellow citizens hold us, what they believe they owe us, is the kind of apartment we have and the manner in which we have decorated it.1 A person’s residence was key to how his or her position and esteem in society were perceived, argued German architect Ferdinand Luthmer in 1898. He was far from alone in believing this. In Victorian England, for instance, moving to a new residence was considered a sure sign of social advancement – or declassing. 2 The residence was not only a home, it was also a place for representation. The home was not least a status symbol that clearly marked the social position of a family. It was “the quintessential bourgeois world,” wrote Eric Hobsbawm about the British bourgeoisie during the nineteenth century.3 The residence was a representation of the economic and cultural capital of the family, and it was here that a large part of its social capital was expanded and secured. The homes contributed to both creating and making visual social boundaries. Social distinction often includes a spatial aspect.4 As Linda McDowell, among others, has emphasized, it is power relations that shape places and spaces as well as the rules that define social boundaries.5 The homes and everything that could be found therein are part of material culture. Through this, we can access aspects of social affiliation

36  The Representative Home and lifestyle that were rarely expressed in words in the way that Luthmer did in the quote above.6 The representative home is seen here as a part of a bourgeois performance, where a family displayed outwardly the image it wished to convey of itself.

The Modern Bourgeois City During the first half of the nineteenth century, traditional city farms in wood or stone were common in Sweden and Finland and the rest of the Baltic Sea region. They were often constructed in two stories, and accommodated one or possibly two families. The ideal was bright and airy rooms, and the interior decoration was characterized by a sober simplicity. In the large-scale new construction projects in cities during the latter half of the nineteenth century, many of these city farms were torn down in order to make way for new and larger residential buildings.7 During the final decades of the nineteenth century, the character of cities changed radically, not least because of the new demands of the bourgeoisie for comfort and representativeness. By then, city apartments had become common in Helsinki and Stockholm, and other cities in Northern Europe. This was the predominant form of housing in cities such as Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Copenhagen.8 In Stockholm, an apartment usually had between six and ten rooms, “depending on the degree of wealth or the magnitude of the pretensions,” as a contemporary observer expressed it.9 A present-day study has shown that during the latter part of the nineteenth century the most common number of rooms was five to seven.10 The city palaces were the most expensive residences, those that fulfilled the ideals of the bourgeoisie to the highest degree, but they were the least common. They were large properties in the central parts of a city, owned and occupied by a single family. These modern buildings had many similarities to the old city palaces long owned by the nobility. In some cities, such as Cologne and Frankfurt, but to a certain degree also Stockholm and Helsinki, exclusive neighborhoods were created in the city center where civil servants, businessmen, cultural personalities, and others within the emerging bourgeoisie resided.11 It is true that traditional residential arrangements, with a greater social mixture within a single neighborhood or even in one and the same property, survived during the whole of the nineteenth century, but they became significantly less common.12 Where hovels once stood tightly squeezed And blocked out daylight from each other, There came one day with pole and bar A group of young folk gaily walking. ………………………… An old man now comes walking by

The Representative Home 37 And looks astonished at their razing. He stops; appears to grow distressed, When stepping in among the ruins. “—What are you building here, my friend? Will family dwellings soon appear here?” “—We won’t build anything again; It’s for the Boulevard we’re clearing!” “—Well! Our time’s custom: razing homes! But building them? — That is unheard of!” “—We clear the way for light and air; That certainly should be sufficient!”13 In 1883, the author August Strindberg wrote these in Sweden’s oftquoted lines, and they reflect many of the ideas about city planning that had begun to be realized in the streets of many European cities. New demands regarding hygiene and light changed the design of cities and residences. Wider streets and brighter and more spacious residences characterized a construction boom that swept across Europe during the latter part of the nineteenth century. In the Nordic countries, it was especially prominent in the 1880s and 1890s. The new ideas about city planning and the large residential buildings that were constructed made the city centers of the capitals of Northern Europe resemble the large cities in the center of Europe. Also smaller cities in the periphery of the periphery embraced the new ideas. This could be seen most clearly in Sundsvall, the fastest-growing industrial city in Northern Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century.14 After the entire city burned down in 1888, it was rebuilt in accordance with the new ideals. In spite of this city being the center of the successful Swedish timber industry, the city center was constructed entirely in stone. “The stone city,” as it still is called, was distinguished by the city palaces and decorated rental properties of the timber magnates with their spacious city apartments.15 Art historian Anders Åberg has called Sundsvall “the last city in Europe,” with reference to it being the northernmost city characterized by the same imposing, monumental building tradition as were Rome, Vienna, Paris, and other European metropolises.16 Trains, trams, and omnibuses improved communications and made it possible to live in detached houses both in and outside the city center. Exclusive suburbs to which wealthy city dwellers moved had already sprung up on the continent. In these were created partially secluded and socially cohesive environments. In London, Bedford Park was one of the first planned garden suburbs, and it was soon followed by many more.17 The popularity of living in the suburbs increased in England.18 A study of the English city of Bradford has shown that at the beginning of the 1850s, only seven percent of the bourgeoisie lived in the city center, while the rest had moved away to the outskirts of the city and to its suburbs.19

38  The Representative Home In Berlin, a large percentage of the bourgeoisie began to settle in Grünewald, and Fredriksberg acquired a similar status in Copenhagen.20 In Stockholm, residential quarters were originally created in the center, and only thereafter, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, were the garden suburbs established. Among the more exclusive garden suburbs were Djursholm and Saltsjöbaden, which expanded after a railway connection to the city center was built at the end of the nineteenth century. 21 Many of the detached houses built in the Nordic countries were modeled on villas in France, Italy, and, above all, Germany. 22 In coastal cities on the Baltic Sea in the latter part of the nineteenth century the railway, but also the steamboat traffic, enlarged the area in which the bourgeoisie could locate both their residences and their summer houses.23 Saltsjöbaden, for instance, had been a seaside resort before it became a garden suburb following the arrival of the railroad. In Riga, as in so many other cities, families moved out to their summer houses for the summer months, while the men worked in the city and joined their families at weekends. 24 In Turku, the timetable of the steamboat Helmis was modified so that during the summer men could go in to the city in the mornings and back to their summer houses in Runsala at the end of the working day. 25 Rügen, Travemünde, Gotland, and Pärnau were some of the exclusive seaside resorts where the bourgeoisie of the Baltic Sea region lived a fashionable archipelago life during the summers, in private or rented villas or in exclusive seaside hotels. 26 The bourgeoisie’s choice of residences, like their demands for hygiene and comfort, contributed to making the city increasingly segregated. On the one hand, the bourgeoisie gathered in exclusive neighborhoods in the city centers, and on the other, they moved to villas on the outskirts of the cities. These two conflicting tendencies have in common that they expressed an ambition of the bourgeoisie to acquire what they defined as decent residences, the kind that corresponded to their social position. This also meant that the bourgeoisie were separated from the residential neighborhoods of manual laborers and the lower middle class.

The Solid Home and a Man’s Workplace One characteristic feature of the emerging bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century was that the workplaces of men were increasingly separated from their homes. This was true, in particular, of businessmen and persons working in the professions, such as physicians, lawyers, and members of similar professional groups. According to French sociologist Martine Segalen, the separation between home and work happened early in England, where it was essentially completed by the mid-nineteenth century. In the rest of Europe, this development came later. This can be linked in part to the emergence of the garden suburbs to which the bourgeoisie moved their residences. 27 For instance, in Hamburg,

The Representative Home 39 the bourgeoisie still usually lived in the same houses as their commercial businesses during the first half of the nineteenth century. When the residences were later moved out to the garden suburbs, the businesses remained in the city centers. 28 In his memoirs, the German banker Carl Fürstenberg described the situation among the businessmen in Danzig (Gdansk), when he as a young man, in 1864, began his first employment. There, offices were located on the ground floor, and the owner’s family lived on the first floor while the top floor was often rented out. 29 In Berlin, at the beginning of the 1870s, Fürstenberg noted that companies and residences were sometimes located in different buildings, but these were still within walking distance, and sometimes even within sight, of each other.30 In Finland and Sweden, businessmen and factory owners usually had their residences and offices in the same building up until the mid-­ nineteenth century, or they had their homes close to both their offices and factories.31 One example of this is the Finnish businessman Joachim Donner, who in 1805 had a new, stylish house built in Gamlakarleby (Kokkola), where also his office and a shop for small items were housed.32 During the second half of the nineteenth century, the residences of the bourgeoisie were increasingly separated from a man’s place of work also in the northern periphery of Europe, but by the turn of the century in 1900, the separation was still not total. For example, physicians’ offices were often adjacent to their residences, and lawyers not infrequently had their offices in the same buildings as their homes. In such cases, the ideal was that the offices had separate entrances.33 Even when a man did not have his workplace directly connected to his home, it became common for him to have one or more studies for doing paperwork, but perhaps primarily for recreation and socializing. These were usually called smoking rooms or libraries.34 In the German fashion magazine Journal der Luxus und der Moden there was already in 1788 an article recommending that readers furnish such a room where the man of the family could read his newspaper and manage his correspondence without being disturbed. The room should preferably be adjacent to the parlor, the writer pointed out, “so that he can at all times speak to his wife.”35 Precisely such an interior was depicted by Fredrika Bremer in the novel The Neighbours (Grannarne), originally published in 1837: “Bear sits in his room writing letters. The door is open between us. I hear him yawn.”36 The husband in this novel has a doctor’s office in the city center, but lives just outside the city with his wife. He sits and writes in his study, while his wife writes in the parlor. While the man has his own room for paperwork, the woman has to use the reception room for the same purpose. Bremer herself knew very well what it meant to write not only letters, but also novels and short stories in the parlor. She had shared a bedroom

40  The Representative Home with her sister until she was thirty-three years old, and before that she had had to use the parlor as her writing room. This was a situation she shared with Jane Austen and other female authors of the time. Each had had to work in a room where she not only risked being disturbed by the rest of the family and by servants, but where she was also often interrupted by guests on morning calls. Perhaps she, like Austen, then chose to conceal her manuscript under a sheet of blotting paper?37 Not until 1834, when Bremer was already a relatively well-known author, did she experience, for women, the unusual luxury of having a room of her own where she could shut the door.38 The word solid was a word with positive overtones in the business world in both England and the German-speaking areas on the Baltic Sea, and also, from the second half of the nineteenth century, in the Nordic countries. It was a word used to denote both the company and the businessman himself, as well as the home. Claës Lundin’s contemporary comment regarding the city palaces that had sprung up in Stockholm during the 1880s is typical of the time. He felt that these were not only comparable to the old baroque palaces of the nobility, but that they surpassed them, “not least in their solidity.”39 It is evident that the bourgeoisie wanted to appear to be solid, reliable, and honest. Taste was a value that the bourgeoisie took over from the aristocracy and used to express their own cultural identity.40 Titus Suck has used the concept esthetization when discussing the manner in which the emerging bourgeoisie represented its social identity aesthetically.41 An aesthetic mind was a facet of a person’s education and was seen within the bourgeoisie as important symbolic capital, not least for women.42 What was shown outwardly, the façade, was fundamental to the impression the family made on the people around them. In order to enhance the beauty of older houses these, too, especially in the English-speaking world, were often adorned with sumptuous decorations when they were renovated. Stonemasons and Italian stuccoists were popular and embellished both the interiors and exteriors of many houses and palaces in Europe, all the way up to Sundsvall. A solid basic form with an aesthetically appealing surface made visual the encounter between the material and the spiritual that has been described as characteristic of the bourgeois world.43 During the latter part of the nineteenth century, taste was often historicizing, not least in the business world. It was as though people, by way of the architecture of the home, wished to place the origins of a family and a business far back in time. A Swedish example of this is Merlo Castle outside of Sundsvall, a fairytale-like summer house, built for the sawmill owner Fredrik Bünsow.44 But these villas and palaces were not meant to look old.45 On the contrary, they were modern and international, like the bourgeoisie itself. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, many businessmen and entrepreneurs began to give their houses a special identity, preferably with

The Representative Home 41

Image 3.1  Merlo Castle (Merlo slott) outside Sundsvall was the summer residence of timber magnate Fredrik Bünsow, built in a historicizing style, 1883–85. The architects were Isak Gustaf Classon and Fritz Eckert. Source: Photo: Henrik Sundbom, Wikimedia.

links to the family’s history – real or invented. Many amplified this individuality by naming their homes. Villa Hügel of the German family Krupp in Essen was well-known and was one of the more exclusive of its kind.46 In Stockholm in the mid-1860s, the banker André Oscar Wallenberg bought a summer house that had earlier been owned by the nobility. This house was then allowed to keep its name, Sirishof.47 The bourgeois culture was in part shaped in opposition to the lifestyle of the aristocracy, but it also had many aspects that included traditions taken over from the nobility. The naming of city palaces and villas was such a tradition. A beautiful and well-appointed home was important for demonstrating not only good taste but also modernity. This was true of both the exterior architecture of the residences and the internal division into rooms and interior decoration. Advances in science, technology, and architecture, as well as in modern design, helped the bourgeoisie develop their lifestyle, not least in the home.48 Modernity and comfort signified that the emerging bourgeoisie represented something new, while the connection to tradition and ancient ancestry demonstrated the simultaneous competition and intertwining with the aristocracy and the field of political power.

42  The Representative Home

Semi-public Rooms and Private Ones? The homes of the bourgeoisie increasingly stood out as a place for representation and social interaction. Interior decoration was to a large extent planned with the entertainment of guests in mind. The first impression of the home was considered important for how these guests would perceive the family. For this reason, the way in from the front door to the reception rooms was increasingly emphasized during the nineteenth century. In a brochure on interior decoration from the 1880s, the importance of the entrance hall and the stairway was underscored, “for we are given a more favorable impression of the house and of the people who live therein, if these [spaces] are harmonically and beautifully decorated.” And, continued the text, they should give a “warm and solid impression.”49 Marble, mahogany, bronze, and velvet were thought to give the impression of luxury and wealth, and for this reason, these materials were deemed suitable for the spaces first encountered by the guests.50 This intermediary space between outdoors and indoors should display both the economic capital of the family and its good taste and refinement. The reception rooms were perceived to be the most important rooms of the house. A study of city farms in Sweden in the 1840s has shown that representation was the governing function when planning a residence, while sleep was given low priority.51 This does not seem to have changed during the latter part of the nineteenth century; rather the reverse. In 1890, Claës Lundin commented in his straightforward style, “it is for the sake of large parties that one has a large apartment.”52 The reception rooms should preferably be many and spacious. Ideally, there should be at least one dining room, a larger and a smaller drawing room, and a library or a study in a bourgeois home.53 In British research, these rooms have sometimes been called semi-public, because this was where an important part of the social lives of the bourgeoisie took place.54 This was where the inner circle gathered for suppers and other parties, and where the doors were kept open for holding receptions and receiving calls. A family’s business was also represented in the home, and here old business connections were reinforced and new contacts were established. Alexandra Ramsay has described the bourgeoise homes in Helsinki as another side of business operations and of public life.55 The reception rooms were central to the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie and to their positioning in the field of bourgeois culture. The homes of the bourgeoisie during the nineteenth century have at the same time been described as a tranquil hearth, a place for rest, seclusion, and family life. John Tosh, who has studied conditions in England, describes the period between 1830 and 1880 as the climax of family life.56 “For the first time, doors could be closed to guarantee the privacy of the individual,” ethnologists Frykman and Löfgren have commented regarding this development with respect to Sweden.57

The Representative Home 43 Above all in Anglo-American research, emphasis has been placed on the importance attached during the Victorian era to separating reception rooms from the private section of a residence. In 1860, British architect J. J. Stevenson published a manual of architecture aimed at the educated general public. In this work, he emphasized that “the Plan must give isolation to the several parts.”58 The different functions of the home should, according to this view, be kept strictly apart. It was considered especially important to separate bedrooms from reception rooms. French historian Roger-Henri Guerrand maintains that the bedroom during the nineteenth century had become taboo, as though it were a sacred place that no outsider could enter without risk.59 In the city palaces, the different parts of the living quarters were located on different floors, or bedrooms were separated from reception rooms by long hallways.60 In many British homes, the drawing room and the parlor were situated so that there was only a single door through which to enter them.61 This minimized the risk of guests entering the private areas of the residence by mistake.62 Within the bourgeoisie in the Baltic Sea region, there was a completely different view of bedrooms. One example is Finnish author Johan Ludvig Runeberg, who furnished his home in Borgå in Southern Finland in 1857. There the bedroom was placed between the dining room and the drawing room. This meant that the dinner guests by necessity had to pass through the bedroom. In this room, there was, apart from the bed, also a lounge suite, which gave the room the character of a reception room.63 In Sweden, the bedroom was seen as a room that could be used as an extra reception room when there were many guests. Daughter of a civil servant, Hilma Bäckström, later Mrs. Anderson, describes this circumstance in her memoirs. During balls at the end of the 1850s, adult men usually retired to the study after the dance, while the married women gathered in the small drawing room. She and the other young people were obliged to make use of the bedroom of the host couple, where they socialized and had a pleasant time while the tables were set for supper.64 When a bedroom doubled as a reception room, it was usually the young, unmarried guests, those who had the lowest status, who were relegated to using it. The use of bedrooms diverged in this respect from how we know they were used in England and France. Claës Lundin, who had lived in both Hamburg and Paris, noted in the 1880s that in Stockholm, it was customary for guests to gather in the drawing room, the small drawing room, and the study, “yes, perhaps even in the bedroom, which in Stockholm is not a room closed to and inaccessible for those who are unauthorized.”65 Here, as in Berlin and Tallinn, it was common for a bedroom to be placed next to the drawing room and parlor.66 In the top social tiers in Russia it was also common during the 1870s for a

44  The Representative Home

Image 3.2  Hilma Bäckström, Mrs. Anderson, the daughter of a civil servant, described her childhood home in Stockholm in the book Verklighetsbilder [Pictures from reality] (1903). Source: Drawing by Maria Röhl, 1861. National Library of Sweden (Kungliga biblioteket), Stockholm.

bedroom to be connected to the reception rooms, if we are to believe Leo Tolstoy: He drew himself up, got out a cigarette, lit it, took a couple of puffs, threw it into the mother-of-pearl shell ashtray, walked briskly through the sombre drawing room, and opened the other door, into his wife’s bedroom.67

The Representative Home 45 In the Baltic Sea region, a bedroom was not a taboo room with a closed door, but was open to guests. It is altogether difficult to see in these homes, other than in a few exceptional cases, the division between private and semi-public that has been described with respect to Western Europe.

Those Who Used the Kitchen Entrance The servants were there to manage the homes and make an active society life possible, but were preferably not to be seen or heard. In the Baltic Sea region, the delimitation between a family’s rooms and the spaces meant for the employees became increasingly marked during the nineteenth century. It was no longer considered appropriate for the servants to enter the house through the front door, which was reserved exclusively for the family and their guests. The employees should instead use a special entrance, the kitchen entrance at the back of the house or another more secluded entrance. The same thing went for workmen, delivery men, and other people who provided services to the family.68 Newly-built houses on Drottninggatan in Stockholm were in the mid-nineteenth century described as modern and fashionable, because the apartments had a coatroom, a servant’s bedroom, and special backstairs.69 The backstairs were sometimes justified by the fact that the kitchens were situated facing an inner courtyard building. They made it easier for both people and goods to reach the kitchen.70 But even though it may have been true that backstairs were installed mainly for practical reasons, they nevertheless contributed to creating a visible separation between the emerging bourgeoisie and their servants. The sleeping quarters of servants had throughout Europe become increasingly separated from those of the family, except for those used by nannies, who slept together with the smaller children. However, during the nineteenth century, it became more common for younger children to have their own rooms so that they would not be forced to share a room with a servant.71 In Paris in 1828, construction had already begun of apartment buildings with large apartments for the bourgeoisie and with small rooms in the attics for servants.72 Also in Scandinavia, there were attic rooms for servants, but it was considerably more common for servants to have only a place to sleep, often in the kitchen, the pantry, a servant’s bedroom, or some other space adjacent to the kitchen.73 The same was true for a large portion of the British servants.74 The kitchen became the domain of the servants, where they worked, ate, and often also slept. 75 In the city palaces that were built toward the end of the nineteenth century, there was also in the Baltic Sea region the strict British division of a residence into a kitchen on the ground floor, reception rooms on the

46  The Representative Home first floor, and bedrooms on the second floor. There were often special interior backstairs for the servants, which made it possible for them to move about the house and do their jobs without being noticed. These city palaces were exclusive exceptions to the rule.76 The bourgeoisie seems, as far as it was possible, to have distanced themselves from the kitchen of the house or the apartment. It was typical in these circles that the kitchen was the part of the home that was modernized last.77 Pantries, serving passages, and other spaces, and in the city palaces separate floors, distanced the dining room from the kitchen area. Double doors and draperies were put up to further separate utility rooms from the rest of a residence.78 The family and their guests should not have to be bothered by cooking odors, the din of pots and pans and chinaware, or be at all reminded of the often hectic work that went on in the kitchen while they partook of their meals. Being invited into the kitchen in the home of another family was extremely rare already during the first half of the nineteenth century. On December 10, 1842, Professor Geijer and his family in Uppsala were invited, together with six other families, to pudding-making at the home of some friends. They all then went into the kitchen and positioned themselves around the stove in order to see how the pudding was made, before they eventually could taste it. This was described as a very special event, almost exotic.79 The distinct separation between kitchen and dining room was reinforced by there also being a division between socializing and work, between cleanness and dirt, between conversation and clattering, between stage and backstage, between that which should be on display and that which should be done in secret. The most evident division of the residence during the nineteenth century in the northern periphery of Europe was the demarcation toward the working classes.

Masculine Dining Rooms and Feminine Drawing Rooms Dinner parties and suppers were an important part of the social life of the emerging bourgeoisie, especially within the business world, and were aimed at a more limited circle of acquaintances.80 Here the dining room was important. In Sweden and Finland, the dining rooms of the early nineteenth century were often spacious and bright, with walls in light colors and white lace curtains. A typical Swedish dining room of the 1840s was described in the following words: At one of the shorter walls were a number of white-painted dropleaf tables, which were moved out and put in the middle of the floor at meals. Against the walls were black cane chairs that were moved up to the tables. Otherwise there were in the dining room only a pair of sconces and a glass chandelier with a blue base.81

The Representative Home 47 In the 1830s and 1840s, the dining rooms were often furnished according to older traditions, that is to say, the furniture stood along the walls when it was not in use.82 Later on, fashions changed according to the continental pattern, and the dining room table was placed in the middle of the room.83 Dining rooms were also expected to be spacious at the end of the century. “One does not know of such large dining rooms in individual apartments in other countries, and in Paris, one would find them vast,” commented Claës Lundin, who had lived in Paris for seven years. He also felt that in Sweden one must have large dining rooms because they were part of bourgeois culture, while at the same time they belonged to “the national customs.” 84 During the final decades of the nineteenth century, taste had changed in the Nordic countries, and it was by then the same as in the rest of Europe. By that time, the ideal was that the dining room should have a solid and masculine character, heavy and dark. The British architect Robert Kerr emphasized that “the whole aspect of the (dining)room ought to be that of masculine importance.”85 The furniture should preferably be made in a historicizing style. The Gothic style, in particular, was popular because it gave the impression of the hospitality of a lord of the manor.86 In the novel Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens describes the plate of Mr. Podsnap, who works in the City, as being characterized by a “hideous solidity:” “Everything was made to look as heavy as it could and to take up as much room as possible.”87 Claës Lundin was irritated with the dining room chairs having become so heavy that many women found it difficult to move them when they were to leave the table.88 The dining room was to express solidity and male authority, important watchwords of bourgeois masculinity. If the architecture of the room and the straight lines and compact shape of the furniture were perceived as masculine, the setting and decoration of the table had become a female affair during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Beautiful floral arrangements and artfully folded napkins were symbolic capital that demonstrated the aesthetic mind and cultural capital of a woman.89 In this way, the dining room was meant to be a testament to the authority and solid finances of the host, but also to the refined education of the hostess. The drawing room stood out as the room that more than any other represented the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie. It was the largest and most prominent room, regardless of whether it was the only reception room or if there were several.90 The function of the drawing room corresponded to that of the so-called stateroom in mediaeval and early modern strongholds and castles, a reception room in which the house was intended to show what it stood for.91

48  The Representative Home

Image 3.3  Table setting, the dining room, Hallwyl House, Stockholm. The lacunar ceiling and the large oak sideboard by the longer wall give the dining room a solid impression.

In Europe, the drawing room had acquired a well-defined role already at the end of the eighteenth century. The novel Briefe an Lina [Letters to Lina] by Sophie von La Roche was published in Mannheim in 1785. In the novel, the reader is introduced to the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie through the character of a young girl being shown around a house and being informed of the uses of its various rooms. In the drawing room, she learns that this room was especially important because this was where the guests acquired their strongest impression of the social

The Representative Home 49 position and taste of the owners of the house. The furnishings should be of a kind that made the guests feel at ease and allowed them to easily be entertained.92 At the end of the nineteenth century, the drawing room was described as the indispensable stateroom. Whatever the house had in the form of luxury, comfort, and art was placed in this room in order to “give the viewer an impression of wealth,” wrote an anonymous author in the magazine Idun in 1890.93 It was in the drawing room that a family displayed with splendor and magnificence what it had achieved, something for guests to admire.94 In homes with several reception rooms the grand drawing room, as it was then often called, was usually reserved for evening entertainment. Drawing rooms were coded female, and in time they became increasingly clearly so.95 During the latter part of the nineteenth century, people felt that it was appropriate for the drawing room to be furnished in a style that had by then begun to be perceived as feminine, that is to say the Rococo Revival style.96 Rococo Revival furniture gave an impression of space and lightness, and its softly sinuous lines were seen in contrast to the solid masculine weight of the dining room. In Sweden and Finland, the room where guests were received had previously been called a parlor (förmak). The difference was that a drawing room (salong) was usually larger and was considered more elegant than a traditional parlor. Both types of rooms were used during the nineteenth century to receive callers and invited guests. Often there were several drawing rooms or both a drawing room and a parlor. In such cases, the largest drawing room was used for balls and dinner parties while a smaller drawing room or a parlor was intended for receiving morning callers. In addition, the parlor often functioned as the living room of a family, where they gathered to read, do needlework, and socialize when they were not entertaining guests.97 The drawing room and the parlor also represented different opportunities for living up to the ideal lifestyle of the bourgeoisie.98 When Fredrika Bremer wrote the novel The Neighbours in 1837, she made a social distinction by letting the physician and his wife have a parlor as their reception room, while the wealthy Ma chère mère, in addition, has a large drawing room. The difference in status between the two types of reception room was amplified through the textiles: blue chintz and white muslin in the parlor and red damask in the drawing room.99 Silk damask and velvet were the primary textiles used for the drawing room. The captains of industry in Cologne were facetiously called Noblesse ob plüch, the velvet nobility, with specific reference to their decorated drawing rooms.100 The drawing rooms were supposed to be furnished exclusively for receiving guests.101 Their character as representation rooms meant that the furniture and other interior decoration should display good

50  The Representative Home taste and “a knowledge of the world and the times,” as one writer put it.102 In other words, they were to be furnished in a modern style and be adapted to the lifestyle and taste of the bourgeoisie. Appropriate, preferably illustrated, books should ideally be placed on small tables in order to provide additional testimony for the urbanity of the host couple, and to suggest suitable topics of conversation among the guests.103 For decoration vases, table clocks, and statuettes were suggested. The latter, however, could not be nudes, because this was considered indecent. The same was true of paintings; they had to be “appropriate to their subject.”104 The word decent and its opposite, indecent, occur often in the historical sources. A decent home was a home that represented the social position of its owner. A clear stand was also taken against things that were considered indecent, which included all nudity. Nevertheless, the naked female form was a popular motif in the decoration of the drawing rooms, especially in Victorian England. There, a white porcelain figurine in the form of a naked woman with her hands in chains was one of the most common ornaments in drawing rooms in the 1850s and afterward.105 One explanation, inspired by postcolonial theory, for this paradox might be that the statuette is a representation of a slave, a different kind of woman, who was not to be identified with the decent and honorable women of the bourgeoisie. The artist who created the original marble statue The Greek Slave was Hiram Powers, an American. He claimed to have fashioned it in a way that avoided anything that could upset the purest of minds.106 Perhaps the statuette in certain liberal homes could also have been a symbol of demands for the abolition of slavery? At the same time, from today’s perspective, it is difficult not to see the chains as symbols of women’s confinement within the homes of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie. These particular statuettes are not known from the Nordic countries, but there were other statuettes there, with similarly scantily clad or nude women.107 This type of ornament was obviously intended for a male gaze and for male (heterosexual) desire.108 At dinner parties, above all in the business world, it was common for the women to gather in the ladies’ drawing room after dinner, while the men withdrew to the study. At Merlo Castle, the previously mentioned summer residence of the Bünsow family outside of Sundsvall, there was a ladies’ drawing room, called Mrs. Bünsow’s Room (Fruns rum), which was used in this way. This type of drawing room was otherwise used to receive guests also during friendship calls or when someone was invited to tea or afternoon coffee. German writer Gottfrid Emanuel Wenzel summarized the view of the importance of drawing rooms to the bourgeoisie in the following way:

The Representative Home 51

Image 3.4  The Greek Slave, nude figurine after a statue by Hiram Powers from 1843–44.

The drawing room should show the refined education of the family, as well as their taste and their knowledge of the world.109 The drawing room would have this role within the bourgeoisie for a very long time afterward.110 But this was not simply a matter of exhibiting good taste; the drawing room was one of the arenas in which the lifestyle of the emerging bourgeoisie was shaped. Reception rooms stood out as one of the instruments of power of the bourgeoisie, based on financial and cultural capital, intended to increase both social capital and a person’s own status.

52  The Representative Home

Image 3.5  A zeneszoba (The Music Room) by Mihaly Munkácsy, 1878. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Good Taste and Vulgarity Taste was a value that the bourgeoisie took over from the aristocracy and used to express its own cultural identity. What is described as good taste was something that the upper classes saw as part of their privilege.111 The velvet draperies of the drawing rooms, the gilded frames of the paintings, the silver candelabra, the exclusive table clocks, and many other things testified to the economic success of the bourgeois man, but also to the personality and taste of the bourgeois woman.112 Good taste in the form of wealth and luxury also meant that an increasing amount of exclusive furniture and ornaments were placed in reception rooms. However, there was a point beyond which the number of luxurious status symbols had passed an important limit, when a room instead became overdone and, at worst, vulgar. Vulgarity, the lack of good taste and too much of a good thing, was considered characteristic of parvenus. Even when they had significant economic capital, they lacked good taste and showed that they did not quite belong in the field of bourgeois culture, according to this perspective. In a Swedish magazine article from 1890, the issue of how drawing rooms should be furnished to create the impression of wealth was discussed. The writer argued that this unfortunately often gave the

The Representative Home 53 impression of “surfeit, if the viewer is of a reflecting and discriminating mindset.”113 The comment expresses precisely this kind of distinction: it was only those who had a reflecting and discriminating mindset, those who truly knew what good taste is, who could see where the dividing line should be drawn between what is tastefully exclusive and what is vulgarly overloaded. Others linked vulgarity to the kind of people who spent more money on their drawing rooms than their finances actually allowed.114 In a British advice book on interior decoration, the author sighed that as long as people of humble means tried to furnish their homes in a way they could not afford, vulgarity would persist.115 In 1836, Fredrika Bremer visited Christiania (present-day Oslo) in Norway, which was then in a union with Sweden. She was shocked to see how ostentatiously the Norwegian bourgeoisie furnished their reception rooms, even in their summer houses. In a letter to a friend, she wrote that the Norwegian bourgeoisie “travel out there [to their country houses] but crawl back. They ruin themselves with luxurious furnishings on which they spend lavishly for these country houses.”116 Bremer did not mince words, and she described this extravagance as an expression of “pride, bourgeois conceitedness, bragging, and the vanity of this earth.”117 The desire to mark one’s social status and perhaps also financial or economic capital that could not be supported could, if worst came to worst, have completely different consequences than was originally intended. Material culture was such an important part of the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie that in a worst-case scenario it could lead to the verge of ruin. Up until now, my investigation has dealt primarily with the general society life of the emerging bourgeoisie and the environment where this took place in the cities of the Baltic Sea region. When drawing rooms and parlors were furnished this was to a large extent done in preparation for receiving calls. It is now time to focus on this most mundane form of social interaction. First, we will direct our attention to the guests and the preparations they made before paying calls in order to appear presentable.

Notes 1. Ferdinand Luthmer, Werkbuch des Dekorateurs: Eine Darstellung der gesamten Innendekoration und Festschmuckes in Theori und Praxis (Stuttgart and Berlin, Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1898), 1. “Die Art, wie wir wohnen, gibt unserer Umgebung einen fast untrüglischen Masstab für die Gesellschaftlische Stufe, welche wir einzunehmen beanspruchen… vor Allem die Art und Ausstattung unserer Wohnung pflegt für unsere Mit-bürger die Grundlage für die Schätzung abzugeben, welche sie uns zu schulden glauben.” 2. Tosh, A Man’s Place, 25.

54  The Representative Home 3. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 270. 4. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991), 55–57. 5. Linda McDowell, Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 4. 6. Bourdieu, Distinction, 172, 466. 7. Birgit Gejvall, 1800-talets stockholmsbostad, 2nd ed. (Stockholm: Kommittén för stockholmsforskning, 1988), 32–34. 8. Murdoch, Daily Life of Victorian Women, 93; Gejvall, 1800-talets stockholmsbostad, 11–13. 9. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 44; Samuel Norrby, “Familjen Hallwyl och huset Hamngatan 4,” in Smak av svunnen tid: Om mat och dryck i Hallwylska palatset, [ed. Johan Rosell] (Stockholm: Hallwylska museet, 2007), 13–15. 10. Gejvall, 1800-talets stockholmsbostad, 60. 11. Augustine, “Arriving in the Upper Class,” 50–51; Richard J. Evans, “Family and Class in Hamburg,” in The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the Social History of the German Middle Class from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century, ed. David Blackbourn and Richard J. Evans (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 130; Ramsay, “Hufvudstadens hjärta,” 55, Fredric Bedoire, Villastan: En sluten värld för Stockholms ekonomiska och kulturella elit (Stockholm: Langenskiöld, 2017), 22–40, 69–157. 12. Gejvall, 1800-talets stockholmsbostad, 55–56. 13. August Strindberg, “The Boulevard System,” in Selected Poems of August Strindberg, ed. and transl. Lotta M. Löfgren (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), 62–63. 14. Anders Brändström and Tom Ericsson, “Social Mobility and Social Networks: The Lower Middle Class in Late Nineteenth Century Sundsvall,” in Swedish Urban Demography during Industrialization, ed. Anders Brändström and Lars-Göran Tedebrand (Umeå: Umeå University, 1995), 254–55. 15. Interestingly enough, many of the city blocks of the Stone City in Sundsvall have names such as Vinsten (Profit), Brutto (Gross), Netto (Net), and Skatten (Tax). 16. Anders Åman, Stenstaden i Sundsvall (Sundsvall: Sundsvalls museum, 1988), 37. 17. Thad Logan, The Victorian Parlour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 21; Judith Flanders, The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed (London: HarperCollins, 2003), xxxvi. 18. James, The Middle Class, 251. 19. Theodore Koditscheck, Class Formation and Urban-Industrial Society: Bradford 1750–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 216–19. 20. Augustine, “Arriving in the Upper Class,” 50–51; Evans, “Family and Class,” 130; Ramsay, “Hufvudstadens hjärta”, 55. 21. Claës Lundin, Saltsjöbaden (Stockholm: Tullbergs, 1896), 11. 22. Anne Sumner, Borgerliga ambitioner och adliga ideal: Slott och byggherrar i Sverige kring sekelskiftet 1900, PhD diss. (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2004), 59, 97, 150; Bedoire, Villastan, 32, 41, 51, 89, 92, 105, 134. 23. Robert Dickson, Minnen (Stockholm: Nordstedts, 1920), 13. 24. Christina Douglas, “En kolonial elits sista strid: Tyskbalternas sommartillvaro vid Rigaschen Strand runt sekelskiftet 1900,” in Tidskrift för genusvetenskap 40, no. 2 (2019): 13–17; Kilpelä, “Inledning,” xiii. For

The Representative Home 55







those who did not have the opportunity to move to a summer house on the coast, “summer apartments” in Berlin at the outskirts of the city were mentioned as an alternative that enabled the residents to “breathe the scent of flowers.” Alexander Meyer, Aus guter alter Zeit: Berliner Bilder und Erinnerungen, (Berlin: be.bra, 2006), 34–35. 25. Ernst Lindberg, I Åbo på 1800-talet: Bilder och minnen (Turku: Åbo tryckeri, 1921), 174, 177–80. 26. Jangfeldt, Svenska vägar, 262–64; Klinge, Östersjövärlden, 130–32. 27. Martine Segalen, “Material Conditions of Family Life,” in Family Life in the Long Nineteenth Century 1799–1913, vol. 2, ed. David Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 30; Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 359, 365–67. 28. Evans, “Family and Class,” 130. 29. Carl Fürstenberg, Das Lebensgeschichte eines deutschen Bankiers 1870– 1914 (Berlin: Verlag Ullstein, 1931), 7. 30. Fürstenberg, Das Lebensgeschichte, 22. 31. Ramsay, “Hufvudstadens hjärta,” 35; Ulvros, Fruar och mamseller, 201. 32. Julia Dahlberg and Joachim Mickwitz, Havet, handeln och nationen: Släkten Donner i Finland 1690–1945 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2014), 66. 33. Tosh, A Man’s Place, 17. 34. Sophia Rasmussen, Fröknarnas tid: Två borgarhem från historicismens tidevarv, Klunkehjemmet och Aschanska gården (Stockholm: Santerus, 2019), 49. 35. Wurst, Fabricating Pleasure, 167: “damit er zu jeder Zeit mit seiner Weibe sprechen kann.” 36. Fredrika Bremer, Fredrika Bremer’s Works: The Neighbours, A Story of Every-day Life, transl. Mary Howitt, 4th ed. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1852), 35. 37. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas, ed. Morag Shiach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 86–87. 38. Bremer, Fredrika Bremers brev, 330–31. 39. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 43. 40. Bourdieu, Distinction, 11. 41. Titus Suck, “Bourgeois Class Position and the Estetic Representation of Class Interest: The Social Determination of Taste,” MLN 102, no. 5 (1987): 1090–92; quote on p. 1091. 42. Rachel Rich, “Designing the Dinner Party: Advice on Dining and Décor in London and Paris 1860–1914,” Journal of Design History 16, no. 1 (2003): 56. 43. John R. Gillis, A World of Their Own Making: A History of Myth and Ritual in Family Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 118; Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 271–72; Mary Jo Maynes, “Class Cultures and Images of Proper Family Life,” in Family Life in the Long Nineteenth Century 1799–1913, ed. David Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 207. 44. Augustine, “Arriving in the Upper Class,” 52–54; Gillis, A World of Their Own Making, 118; Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 194–96; Norrby, “Familjen Hallwyl,” 15–16. 45. Åman, Stenstaden i Sundsvall, 26. 46. Fürstenberg, Das Lebensgeschichte, 24, 228; Katharina Mayer, “Das Haus meines Grossvaters och meiner Eltern: Kindheitserinnerungen,” in Baltische lebenserinnerungen, ed. Alexander Eggers (Heilbronn: Eugene Salzer Verlag, 1926), 55, 59; Augustine, “Arriving in the Upper Class,” 52–54.

56  The Representative Home 47. André Oscar Wallenberg and Knut Agathon Wallenberg, Brevväxling mellan far och son, vol. 1, 1864–1877, (Stockholm: Stockholms Enskilda Bank, 1962), 90, 101. 48. Rich, “Designing the Dinner Party,” 51. 49. Om dekorering och inredning af boningsrum med särskild hänsyn till tapeter och bårder (Norrköping: Norrköpings tapetfabrik, 1889), 7. 50. Magasin för Konst, Nyheter och Moder 4, no. 7 (1827): 54; “Innertrappornas anläggning och konstruktion i allmänhet,” in Tidskrift för byggnadskonst och ingeniörsvetenskap 3, no. 1 (1861); Om dekorering, 7; Le Grand Monde: Chronique Hebdomadaire de la vie Élégante (1896): 8. 51. Gregor Paulsson, Svensk stad: Liv och stil i svenska städer under 1800talet (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1950), 115, 119–20. 52. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 324. 53. Roger-Henri Guerrand, “Private Spaces,” in A History of Private Life, vol. 4: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War, ed. Michelle Perrot (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 378; Tosh, A Man’s Place, 21. 54. Gillis, A World of Their Own Making, 120–21; Flanders, The Victorian House, xxvi; Rich, “Designing the Dinner Party,” 51. 55. Ramsay, “Hufvudstadens hjärta,” 35. 56. Tosh, A Man’s Place, 13, 27, 51. 57. Frykman and Löfgren, Culture Builders, 127. 58. Rich, “Designing the Dinner Party,” 52. 59. Guerrand, “Private Spaces,” 368; Logan, The Victorian Parlour, 5, 24. 60. Segalen,”Material Conditions,” 30; Gillis, A World of Their Own Making, 120–21; Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 190–92; Tosh, A Man’s Place, 22; Maynes “Class Cultures,” 206; Flanders, The Victorian House, ii–1. 61. Logan, The Victorian Parlour, 5, 24. 62. Gillis, A World of Their Own Making, 120–21; Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 190–92; Tosh, A Man’s Place, 22; Maynes “Class Cultures,” 206. 63. Paulsson, Svensk stad, 121–22. 64. Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem vid mitten av 1800-talet,” 94; Fredrika Bremer, Fredrika Bremers brev, samlade och utgivna av Klara Johansson och Ellen Kleman, del 2, (Stockholm: Nordstedts 1916), 291 (Letter to Malla Silfverstolpe, December 23, 1842); Helena Nyblom, Mina levnadsminnen, vol. 2, I Sverige 1864–1898 (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1922), 25; Topelius, Dagböcker, 378, 381. 65. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 325. 66. Mayer, “Das Haus meines Grossvaters,” 59–60; Ernst Siebel, Der grossbürgerliche Salon 1850–1918 (Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 1999), 114–16. 67. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, translated by Rosamund Bartlett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 12. 68. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 44; Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem,” 84; Gillis, A World of Their Own Making, 118–19; Rasmussen, Fröknarnas tid, 43. 69. Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem,” 105. 70. Dickson, Minnen, 4; Gejvall, 1800-talets stockholmsbostad, 95–97. 71. Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem,” 84; Catherine Hall, “The Sweet Delights of Home,” in A History of Private Life, vol. 4, From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War, ed. Michelle Perrot (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 73. 72. Guerrand, “Private Spaces,” 373. 73. Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem,” 84. 74. Flanders, The Victorian House, 63. 75. Ödman, Ungdoms- och reseminnen, 34.

The Representative Home 57

76. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 44; Norrby, “Familjen Hallwyl,” 13–15. 77. Gillis, A World of Their Own Making, 120. 78. Koch, En familjekrönika, 112–13. 79. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 121. 80. Rich, Bourgeois Consumption, 96. 81. Paulsson, Svensk stad, 140. 82. Karl Möller, “Ett borgarhem i Malmö under 1800-talets senare hälft,” in Elbogen, Malmö kulturhistoriska förenings årsbok 1999 (Malmö: Malmö kulturhistoriska förening, 1999), 113; Georg von Dettingen, “Erinnerungen,” in Baltische Lebenserinnerungen, ed. Alexander Eggers (Heilbrunn: Eugen Salzer Verlag, 1926), 129; Jonas Lie, Familien på gilje: Et interiör fra firtiårerne (Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Förlag, 1953), 16. 83. Gejvall, 1800-talets stockholmsbostad, 192; Flygare-Carlén, Ett köpmanshus i skärgården, 102. 84. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 324. 85. Robert Kerr, The Gentlemen’s House: Or, How to plan English Residences from the Parsonage to the Palace, quoted in Rich, Bourgeois Consumption, 47. 86. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 324–25; Rich, “Designing the Dinner Party,” 53–55. 87. Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, vol. 1 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1865), 99. 88. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 325. 89. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 327; Rich, “Designing the Dinner Party,” 56–58. 90. Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 117; Paulsson, Svensk stad, 115–16; Gejvall, 1800-talets stockholmsbostad, 216–18; Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 12, 377. 91. Gillis, A World of Their Own Making, 120. 92. Sophie von La Roche, Briefe an Lina: Ein Buch für junge Frauenzimmer, die ihr Herz und ihren Verstand bilden wollen, vol. 1, Lina als Mädchen (Mannheim: Weiß und Brede, 1785). 93. “Våra hvardagsrum,” in Idun 3, no. 8 (1890): 83. 94. Om dekorering, 10; Kelly, Refinding Russia, 161. 95. Rich, “Designing the Dinner Party,” 54. 96. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 325. 97. Gejvall, 1800-talets stockholmsbostad, 216–18; Guerrand, “Private Spaces,” 367. 98. Paulsson, Svensk stad, 116–17. 99. Bremer, The Neighbours, 28, 76, 265, 288. 100. Gisela Mettele, “Die private Raum als öffentlicher Ort: Geselligkeit im bürgerlichen Haus,” in Bürgerkultur im 19. Jahrhundert: Bildung, Konst und Lebenswelt, ed. Dieter Hein and Andreas Schulz (Munich: Verlag Beck, 1996), 167. 101. Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 117; Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 57. 102. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 57. 103. Kelly, Refinding Russia, 161; Rasmussen, Fröknarnas tid, 76. 104. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 57–58. 105. Logan, The Victorian Parlour, 129–31. 106. Gay, Education of the Senses, 396–97. 107. Rasmussen, Fröknarnas tid, 76–77. 108. In the Nordic countries it was not until the turn of the century in 1900 that the naked male body began to be represented in art. See Patrik Steorn, Nakna män: Maskulinitet och kreativitet i svensk bildkultur 1900–1915, PhD diss. (Stockholm: Norstedts, 2006), 13–17, 165–80.

58  The Representative Home 109. Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 116–17. 110. Guerrand, “Private Spaces,” 368. 111. Bourdieu, Distinction, 11. 112. Bonnie Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoises of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 67; Wilson, Adorned in Dreams, 123. 113. “Våra hvardagsrum,” 83. 114. Adolph von Schaden, “Berlin Licht- und Schattenseiten,” in Das Biedermeier im Spiegel seiner Zeit: Briefe, Tagebücher, Memoiren, Volksszenen und ähnlische Dokumente, ed. Georg Hermann (Berlin: Deutsches Verlagshaus Bong, 1913), 230–31; Murdoch, Daily Life, 95–96. 115. Charles Locke Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and Other Details, 4th ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1878), 19; cf. also Charles Horton Cooley, Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 2005), 139. 116. Bremer, Fredrika Bremers brev, 184–85. 117. Bremer, Fredrika Bremers brev, 184–85. Picture 48, 49, 50, 52.

4

Dressed and Ready to Call

A call was a kind of performance before the eyes of the world. For this reason, it was important to dress correctly, to have the correct accessories, and to be able to wear these in the proper manner. It was an aspect of the bourgeois culture of calling, visible to everyone. Through a person’s costume, the self is presented, and in this, we can see the social identity toward which a person orients him- or herself. In his classical work, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, Philippe Perrot has maintained that it is through clothing that groups and individuals give themselves meaning.1 Clothes have an identity-creating function because the clothing accepted in a group allows an individual to both show and feel a connection with the group and to share its norms and values. But as George Simmel had pointed out already in his 1905 study of fashion, the clothing accepted by a group can also signal the exclusion of other groups.2 Clothes and accessories indicate status and belonging in a way that can be immediately read by the people around an individual, long before that person has the time to speak or act. What is then said and done is interpreted by way of this first impression. Clothes have an identity-creating function also because they can contribute to giving the wearer a sense of economic power, urbanity, intellectual depth, or whatever that individual wishes to express. Clothes give the wearer a security and credibility in a given situation that can be every bit as important as the message itself. This is most clearly seen in situations where the choice of clothes has been “wrong.”3 The “right” clothes help us, as if by a kind of social magic, to act correctly in a situation. The entrance through a drawing room door, and the impression a person then created, were crucial for how he or she would be received by the hostess and treated by other people in the room. In the 1820s, a writer of courtesy books claimed that if the outside does not please people, it is pure coincidence if intelligence and virtue are appreciated according to their merits.4 He continued: “Because the world in general judges us according to our outer appearance, it is our duty to present ourselves in

60  Dressed and Ready to Call such a way that we at first glance win other people’s approval.”5 Their exterior was, in other words, the very first thing that was judged in people who came calling.

From Colorful Dress Coats to Discreet Lounge Suits If you pay an etiquette call, you should wear a costume that is at once most elegant and well-cared-for. Usually, black clothes are worn. If you are a military man, you could wear your uniform.6 These words on how men should dress during calls were written in the middle of the nineteenth century. Black was then the correct color for a modern man with ambitions, a man who wanted to be taken seriously. This was true not least when making calls and in other situations that strongly affected a person’s reputation and social status. A person who intended to pay a call should dress for the occasion, which meant being neatly and tidily dressed, but not in evening clothes.7 The outfit should be adapted to the purpose of the call, and to the person on whom one was calling. The more distinguished the household, the more important it was with an elegant and neat costume.8 During the first half of the nineteenth century, a frock coat or a morning coat was considered the most appropriate attire for a man during morning calls; he was then considered to be decently dressed. With this coat was usually worn striped or checked trousers.9 In France, a morning coat was sometimes thought to be inappropriately informal for the very first call paid to a very prominent person. Then it was considered most polite to wear a dress coat.10 A call was a way to pay one’s respects to a person, and one’s dress should signal deference to and respect for the person being called on. In the recommendation to dress extra elegantly when calling on people of distinction there is also an element of social aspiration. This meant that when calling on someone of higher status than oneself, wearing clothes linked to the more elevated world of the person called upon could function to wordlessly demonstrate that the caller also deserved to belong to this world.11 Clothes are a non-verbal form of communication. This communication often happens unconsciously, but clothes can also be used as deliberate tools to, for instance, signal higher status. Good taste was a keyword. However, it was important not to dress up, i.e. not to dress so much above one’s social position that it became obvious, or even over-obvious, that so was the case.12 In such circumstances the person in question was instead masquerading as someone else, wordlessly lying like a charlatan. Such a person was not regarded as someone who belonged in the bourgeoisie.13 A French etiquette book emphasized that in the same way that one single word is often enough to

Dressed and Ready to Call 61 reveal a person’s geographical origin, a single detail of a person’s dress gives away his or her social affiliation just as clearly.14 Good taste was a matter of knowing and using the minute, subtle signs that only an initiated group recognized. How a person arrived for a call was considered important for how that person should dress. A person who arrived in a horse and carriage should be more elegantly dressed than a person arriving on foot. Or rather the reverse: for a person who arrived on foot, it was in the Nordic countries acceptable to adapt to the weather and the dirt of the streets, and thus to arrive in somewhat plainer attire. How someone arrived obviously influenced the impression created by the guest. The number and standard of the horses, the quality of the carriage, and the visitor’s own apparel represented a social station; it was an obvious way to position oneself within the emerging bourgeoisie. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, the demands of etiquette for suitable clothing could make paying spontaneous calls difficult. A man in Uppsala, who in the 1830s, felt he was wearing the wrong trousers stated this as a reason for not accompanying a friend when calling on Professor of History Erik Gustaf Geijer. The young man had been enjoying the scenery in the neighboring park, and pointed out that it would be embarrassing to come calling in green trousers.15 In the first decades of the century trousers in bright colors were modern, but from the 1830s, trousers had more discreet colors. Thereafter, it was acceptable to wear bright colors only on sporting or casual occasions. From the 1860s, onward the discreet lounge suit began to be generally accepted as the working uniform of the bourgeoisie also in the northern periphery of Europe. Since the beginning of the century, colors had gradually disappeared from men’s clothes, from one article of clothing to another. In the 1830s, waistcoats could still be brightly colored and patterned with, for instance, flowers. In the 1860s, it was in principle only the cravat and gloves that could have bright colors. This is when chromophobia began to be a characteristic of the bourgeois costume for men. Earlier aristocratic aesthetic ideals had by then definitely been abandoned in favor of more industrious, strict, and discreet bourgeois ideals. This development in men’s fashion has been called “The Great Masculine Renunciation” by British psychoanalyst John Carl Flugel. This meant, he argued, that from this time forward men gave up the right to make themselves beautiful and aimed henceforth simply at being useful.16 Discreet clothing in a discreet color scale had, at the end of the nineteenth century, become a characteristic feature of a man of the bourgeoisie.17 Respectability and professionalism were two concepts that were linked to bourgeois masculinity, sewn into the very seams of the threepiece suit.

62  Dressed and Ready to Call When calling, outdoor clothes were left in the coatroom. Entering the drawing room dressed in an overcoat was considered rude in the Baltic Sea countries.18 Even a short call that lasted for only a few minutes demanded that the guest hang up his or her outerwear. However, there was one exception: men were not to leave their hats in the coatroom. According to the etiquette of the time, a man was supposed to doff his hat and hold it in his hand until he was asked to put it down or hand it to a servant. An etiquette book from the 1870s pointed out that the appropriate thing was for the host to make sure this happened. If not, the man would hold his hat in his left hand during his entire call. This was a signal that he, in accordance with good manners, intended to stay for only a short time.19 The hat above all others for bourgeois men was the top hat. Its enduring popularity can be explained by its expressing bourgeois decency through its rigidity and its somber gravity, while it at the same time it had an aristocratic touch in the sense that it made all physical activity impossible. 20 In his The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), sociologist Thorstein Veblen pointed out that no clothes or accessories could be considered elegant if they indicated that the wearer engaged in manual labor. 21 Men wearing top hats looked the same from a distance, but it was instead the more subtle details, such as the sheen and purity of the silk, that became the distinguishing features of this hat. 22 In 1866, German art historian Jacob von Falke wrote the book Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks [History of modern taste]. He connected the black top hat above all to liberalism. All the different groups “that are liberal thinkers […] gathered under one hat,” he commented. 23 The top hat stood out as the hat of the bourgeoisie and of those with liberal ideas. At the turn of the century in 1900, the high-top hat was primarily worn with a dress coat and a morning coat. For calls on weekdays more discreet hats were worn, such as Derbys, Homburgs, and Trilbies. In the summers, the flat straw hat became popular for strolls and calls. 24

Walking Canes and Other Male Accessories Accessories and little details became distinguishing marks after the discreet lounge suit increasingly stood out as a bourgeois uniform. The pamphlet Toilettkonst för herrarne, eller Anvisning för manspersoner att kläda sig med smak [Art of the toilet for the gentlemen: or, instructions for men to dress tastefully] from 1829 emphasizes that a complete costume was accompanied by some important accessories. These were a cane, a watch chain, a ring or rings, a lorgnette, and an umbrella.25 Fashion magazines continually presented the latest fashions also when it came to these male accessories. Thus it was stated in 1823, for instance, that in that year gentlemen’s canes should have knobs made from gold, agate, or amber. 26 It was exclusive goods that were presented in this way,

Dressed and Ready to Call 63 and it was emphasized that for something to be exclusive it had to be sober and pure in its style. Walking canes should express a man’s personality and position, and were mainly carried when strolling and when making calls. In contradistinction, a walking cane could not be used when performing manual labor. A walking cane was a characteristic feature of the bourgeois man. The golden age of the walking cane in Europe coincided with the heyday of the culture of calling, from around 1830 to 1914. In Paris in the 1890s, there were at least 250 shops that sold canes. In England and Prussia special manuals were published in the art of handling a walking cane. 27 The cane must not be used for support, as if the owner were an old man, but should be carried “as a toy.”28 But those who played too much with it were in trouble. Men who strutted about too much with their canes were a favorite topic of both fiction-writers and cartoonists. Such men were then often described as dandies or snobs. A snob was portrayed as a man who wanted to be, but was not, a man of the world.29 Being able to correctly wield a walking cane was an obvious part of a man’s performance among the bourgeoisie. During calls, a cane should always be left in the coatroom, where there were often special stands in which to put them. If not, they could be placed behind the rack for galoshes.30 For this reason, the host couple rarely saw very much of these canes. Nonetheless, they were important for the impression a man made, not just on the street, but also when arriving at other people’s homes. In addition, other guests could see them close up when they doffed and donned their outer clothes, which was important enough. Like the top hat, canes represented elegance and distinction in relation to those who, for economic or practical reasons, lacked an opportunity to carry them.31 After the middle of the nineteenth century, men’s accessories were supposed to be fewer in number and have a stricter style. A snuffbox, a lorgnette if the man was near-sighted, and a cane were the only ornaments a man should use, according to one handbook. Rings, gold chains, and fobs were no longer considered masculine, but were described as “outmoded fripperies” that were unsuitable for a man.32 Jewelry “suggests a rich upstart or an adventurer, who wants to flaunt his wealth or acquire unfounded trust,” commented another writer during the latter half of the nineteenth century.33 Jewelry had acquired a new meaning: when worn by men, it was a sign of the newly-rich parvenu, with whom no man from the bourgeoisie wanted to be connected. A man in the bourgeoisie could no longer come calling adorned with jewelry. Those accessories that remained for men became all the more important. On July 12, 1865, Sven Andersson Kinberg, a young teacher-to-be from a relatively simple background went by steamer from Gothenburg to a small coastal town to spend his holidays there. In his diary, he wrote that for a while he ventured onto the aft deck, the first-class deck, where

64  Dressed and Ready to Call the fine ladies and gentlemen were. He then noted that for a man in the wealthy bourgeoisie a good coat, a cane, a pair of fine gloves, and a pair of glasses to put on his nose a little now and then were required.34 During his boat trip, young Mr. Kinberg had learned how clothes and accessories revealed a person’s social status. A lorgnette, or for a younger man a pair of glasses, belonged among the male accessories that were often foregrounded. These were, especially within the academic world, seen as an expression of intellectual rigor and learning.35 Pelle Ödman, who studied in England in the 1860s, perplexedly noted that in England glasses were rare and perceived to be “a foreign absurdity.” There even quite young men carried lorgnettes, he pointed out.36 Since a call was a way to pay one’s respects to a person, one’s dress should announce deference to and respect for the person being visited. In addition, the call was an opportunity to demonstrate one’s economic and symbolic capital by way of one’s outer appearance. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, elegance for men within the emerging bourgeoisie to a large extent corresponded to aristocratic ideals, which bourgeois men had taken over, adapted, and made their own. Concurrently with the bourgeoisie growing stronger, the view on both masculinity and good taste developed into something completely different than it had been for the old aristocracy. When the bourgeoisie in the northern periphery of Europe during the latter part of the nineteenth century had developed into a self-aware class, the men dressed expensively, but soberly and discreetly.

Walking Dress and Reticule It was believed that Parisian women of the world needed to wear seven or eight different dresses a day, according to a French etiquette book from the 1860s. Their wardrobes were expected to be enormous, and every situation during the day required its own special outfit. Except for a morning dress, a riding habit, a dinner dress, and an evening gown, some additional outfits were mentioned, of which a visiting dress was one.37 For those who wanted to live according to this advice, not only a lot of money but also a good deal of time for both the women themselves and the maidservants who had to dress them had to be invested. Philippe Perrot claims that among the Parisian bourgeoisie women devoted nearly a third of the day to acquiring and changing clothes.38 Few women outside the very top social tier in the European metropolises would have had the economic opportunities or the time required for living up to this ideal. But considering the active society life with calls, dinners, and balls, two or three changes per day were often unavoidable for women in the emerging bourgeoisie even in the cities around the Baltic Sea. The quantity of clothes and the time spent on them signaled

Dressed and Ready to Call 65 that the woman could afford these expenses, but also that she did not need to work. But it did provide work for the seamstresses who sewed the clothes and for the laundresses and ironers who cared for them. In Northern Europe, women were advised to wear a costume called a walking dress (promenaddräkt) when calling. That was also used for riding in a horse-drawn carriage in a park. The walking dress usually consisted of a comparatively strict, but nevertheless elegant dress. Like the male costume, this was an elegance that had been adopted from the aristocracy and adapted to the bourgeoisie’s own needs. From the 1820s and afterward, women’s visiting clothes became ever more impractical. Tightly laced corsets and increasingly wider and more decorated skirts reshaped the female body in a way that impeded mobility. The stiff corsets limited a woman’s ability to raise her arms and made it difficult to bend over. In addition, a multitude of petticoats made the costume very heavy.39 During the 1850s, the steel industry began making crinoline frames from steel springs that were considerably lighter.40 But enormous lengths of fabric were still required for the wide skirts. With clothes such as these, a woman’s movements inevitably became slow and what contemporaries perceived of as dignified. The voluminous and decorated walking dresses were a manifestation of the economic success of the man in the family, but they can also be symbols of the women staying at home in their drawing rooms and receiving callers, rather than working or moving about in the city. When in 1868, the crinoline suddenly became completely unfashionable, a walking dress with a bustle at the back had already been presented in Paris.41 In spite of its being called a walking dress, it was difficult to walk in these clothes and uncomfortable to sit in them, something which was hardly practical for those who intended to go calling. The development of women’s visiting clothes thus diverged radically from that of men’s. While the requirements of professional life and the new masculine ideals of the 1850s to the 1880s had made the male costume simpler and more practical, women’s visiting clothes became ever more impractical and elaborate. In these clothes women, also during something as commonplace as a call, increasingly appeared to be an object to display, a mobile ornament for the drawing room. The difference between men’s and women’s clothes was then greater than ever. The change in the cut of women’s clothes did not take place in the Nordic countries until the 1880s. This should be seen against the backdrop of the changes in society and of women’s improved position. Opportunities for higher education and several reforms that improved women’s legal and economic position had by then contributed to making the suffrage movements strong in the Nordic countries. The newly-emancipated women were active; they felt that their corsets and wide skirts were impractical. In 1886, a group of Swedish women reacted against the fact that women’s clothes limited their freedom of movement

66  Dressed and Ready to Call and indeed their entire personal liberty. Inspired by the bloomer suit and other dress reform movements in England and the United States, they suggested a Nordic alternative, a simple dress in an ancient Norse style.42 Newspapers and magazines were filled with contributions to the debate on the issue.43 Professor’s wife Calla Curman, author Gurli Linder, and Doctor of Philosophy in history Ellen Fries belonged to those who strongly propagated for this so-called reform costume during the 1880s and 1890s.44 They all belonged to the intellectual fraction of the bourgeoisie and were active in the cultural life of Stockholm. The national dress reformers, but also novelties in French fashion, eventually changed women’s visiting costumes. As the turn of the century in 1900 approached, a two-piece, strict walking dress, under which was worn a high-necked blouse, was introduced, signaling a new type of bourgeois woman. These costumes were sometimes called toilette de promenade au piède, which suggests that it was a walking dress intended for going on foot, a simpler and sportier dress.45 Over the walking dress was usually worn an outdoor garment when arriving for a call. For the greater part of the year a coat was worn. A wide coat with a hood was long popular in the Nordic countries. This was also true of pelisses, fur-trimmed coats used during the winter. A matching hat and gloves were always included in the outdoor dress, in summer as well as in winter.46 Gloves were to a great degree distinguishing marks that separated the upper classes from peasants, workers, and other manual laborers. Both men and women of the bourgeoisie should, according to proper etiquette, always wear gloves outdoors and, in more fashionable contexts, also indoors. This could, according to a Swedish journalist, involve a bit of fiddling when the gloves constantly had to be taken off and put back on when being offered something to eat at balls.47 Since the Middle Ages, gloves had been the garment of the aristocracy, and a symbol of status and a privileged position. The bourgeoisie adopted gloves as class markers and made them a hallmark of their lifestyle. On the other hand, gloves were not to a great extent gender markers during the nineteenth century. Both sexes wore gloves in all colors of the rainbow and in a number of different models and kinds of leather. In the mornings, dark gloves should, according to etiquette, be worn, while bright colors were considered more appropriate for calls and other social duties. In the evenings, gloves should be pastel-colored, and, at balls, dazzlingly white.48 Knowledge about these codes was a part of the habitus of bourgeois culture. A young gentleman in a dark blue spring coat and red gloves exited a shop on Arsenalsgatan. His gloves were entirely new, he had just bought them in the shop. He was quite young, barely twenty years old.49

Dressed and Ready to Call 67

Image 4.1  Aunt Green, Aunt Brown, and Aunt Lavender. The books about the three aunts and their friend Mr. Blue are set in a small town in the 1840s. Mr. Blue has a top hat and a walking cane, the aunts have bonnets and parasols. Publisher: Floris Books. Source: Illustration by the Swedish author and illustrator Elsa Beskow, 1918.

The novel Förvillelser, originally published in 1906, opens with these lines. The author lets the gloves be a signal of the young man’s social affiliation. A contemporary reader who kept abreast of the etiquette of the time could also, on the basis of the color of the gloves, deduce that this happened in the afternoon. The above picture is taken from the children’s book Aunt Brown, Aunt Green, and Aunt Lavender (Tant Brun, tant Grön och tant Gredelin) by Swedish children’s book author and artist Elsa Beskow. Here the man, Mr. Blue, wears a top hat and uses a walking cane. The women wear bonnets, hats with large rounded brims. This was the most common type of women’s hat during calls and walks for a large part of the nineteenth century. Within the lower middle class and in the countryside straw bonnets were often worn. Smaller hats without brims were long worn only on festive occasions. Only in 1866 did capote bonnets and other smaller hats without brims also begin to be popular

68  Dressed and Ready to Call when calling. 50 Later, flat, wide hats with plumes became popular in these contexts. 51 The symbolic meaning of a lady’s hat at calls is illustrated in Fredrika Bremer’s novel The Neighbours, which was originally published in the 1830s. He. My dear friend, which bonnet do you think of wearing this afternoon? She.  My little straw bonnet with lilacs. He.  That? O no, wear the white crape bonnet, it is so pretty. She. That? My only state-and-gala bonnet! What can make you think of that, my angel? to sit in the cabriolet in the dust – and it perhaps rain [sic].52 A little over a week after the physician Lars Anders Werner has brought home his new wife, it was time to go on calls, as it behooved a newly-married couple. The wife’s choice of hats was so important that it became the subject of one of the couple’s very first arguments. The husband wished to display his wife in a little white crape gala bonnet, while she wanted something more practical. Because she naturally had to wear a hat; a woman without a hat was regarded as by definition belonging to a lower social class.53 Among women, a parasol filled the same function as the walking cane did for men. It was an accessory that signaled her social position; it was expensive, elegant, and followed fashion. In addition, it could be used for protection from the sun, but not while working. In Elsa Beskow’s illustration, Aunt Lavender wears a parasol that matches her clothes. Like the cane and the umbrella, it was to be left in the coatroom when calling on someone. On the other hand, women were supposed to carry a reticule into the drawing room when calling. This was a bag-like purse, often embroidered or decorated with beading, which hung from the arm on a silk cord. In Beskow’s drawing, Aunt Brown is carrying one of these. Here women kept money, a handkerchief, a comb, a fan, needlework, and other personal items.54 The reticule should of course be elegant, but it was a practical item and thus does not seem to have received the same attention in the fashion journals as the more pronouncedly status-­ signaling accessories. One etiquette book cautioned the reader that a person who had gone calling on foot should take care not to “enter [a drawing room] with dusty and dirty feet.” We must assume that by feet the writer meant shoes. However, the writer did not explain how this was to be accomplished. Dusty, and even worse, dirty shoes, were a sign of low social status, for both women and men. This was especially true in France and England, where only people of the lower social order were expected

Dressed and Ready to Call 69 to walk outdoors.55 An incisive illustration of the view of dirty shoes in British society, and perhaps in all of Europe, can be found in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth Bennet goes on foot to call on her distinguished neighbors one day when a carriage is not available. When she arrives her petticoat and stockings are dirty and her shoes muddy. Her neighbors are shocked, and when she has left the room they discuss her, as they perceive it, “almost wild” appearance. Walking three miles in the dirt shows “an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country town indifference to decorum.”56 The fact that she had walked disgraced her and made the host couple question not only her own but her entire family’s social position. It was in addition seen as nonchalance toward the host and hostess, who, because of this, had not been shown due deference. In Reval (Tallinn) in the Russian Empire historical sources consistently claim that within Society it was unthinkable during the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s to walk down the street, even if a person were only going to call at a neighboring house. In these circumstances, a carriage was absolutely necessary for a woman or man of the world.57 It is true that in the Nordic countries there were individual families where it was considered inappropriate for young unmarried women to walk, 58 but in general, it was more socially accepted there than in Western Europe and in Reval. Both men and women have described in their diaries and memoirs how they sometimes walked to their destinations when going calling.59 During the first half of the nineteenth century, women’s shoes were often made from very thin leather or fabric which could not tolerate wetness and dirt. These were shoes that are similar to the ballet shoes of later periods. Around 1815 the fashion journal Sofrosyne claimed that ladies who could not afford to be driven and who walked instead when going calling, often carried extra stockings and shoes in their reticules, so that they could change in the coatroom.60 The new technology that appeared in the 1840s, for making shoes by machine instead of sewing them by hand, fundamentally revolutionized shoe fashions. Shoes could then be made more stable and from thicker leather, but still be given a supple and elegant design. This technology arrived in the northern periphery of Europe during the latter part of the 1840s. Boots, which were sturdier but nevertheless elegant, became the highest fashion for both men and women from the 1860s and afterward. June Swann, who has studied shoe fashions in the Scandinavian countries, argues that differences between men’s and women’s shoes were smaller there than in the rest of Europe.61 Rain, snow, and dirty streets made it necessary to wear galoshes for a large part of the year. These could quickly and easily be removed in a coatroom and just as easily be put on again when it was time to leave. Galoshes, or overshoes as they were also called, had been used by both

70  Dressed and Ready to Call women and men in cities since the Middle Ages. Up until the middle of the nineteenth century they consisted of a thick sole made from wood, cork, or some other durable material, and a broad leather strap or upper made from leather, into which the shod foot was inserted. From the mid-nineteenth century, rubber galoshes and overshoes, which protected the entire shoe, became ever more common.62 When calling in the autumn, winter, and early spring, the number of galoshes was legion. Usually, there was a special rack for galoshes in the coatroom, but it was not always large enough. There are descriptions of coatroom floors overflowing with galoshes.63 Galoshes may seem prosaic, but could in the Nordic countries be given romantic symbolism. Swedish and Finnish sources relate that a polite young man always made sure to follow the lady of his heart to the coatroom when she was preparing to leave after calling, and he would then

Image 4.2  Ferdinand Tollin på visit hos mig [Ferdinand Tollin call on me]. Josabeth Sjöberg (1812–82) lived on small means, and rented rooms in Stockholm. Because she did not have her own coatroom, the guest, cartoonist Ferdinand Tollin, has left his galoshes and cane by the door, hung his coat on the chimney, and put his hat and gloves on the piano. Source: Josabeth Sjöberg 1844, Stockholms stadsmuseum (Stockholm City Museum).

Dressed and Ready to Call 71 get down on his knees to help her don her galoshes. This is described as a courteous and decent form of courtship, which made the lady both proud and happy.64 Galoshes were, for a large portion of the year, indispensable for society life in the north of Europe. The nineteenth-century bourgeoisie often discussed dress in terms of morality. The clothes were supposed to embody decency and good behavior.65 Unsightliness in clothes could provide a reason to suspect impure morals, one writer argued in the 1820s.66 For this reason, it is not particularly surprising that renewing one’s wardrobe was portrayed as a social obligation. A chronicler in Berlin estimated that every year he needed to renew his wardrobe with at least two new coats, two pairs of trousers, six waistcoats, and one hat in order to follow the norm for what he called “decent people.”67 Dress was a visual sign of taste and character, pointed out by a journalist in an article on fashion and taste in 1890.68 Appearing before the world made this clear to everyone in possession of good taste. Clothes expressed status and power, but they were also in themselves an instrument of power. The clothes, the accessories, and how these were used were an important part of the ritualization that developed surrounding calling and were part of the bourgeois habitus. This created a distinction relative to the lower social classes.

The Indispensable Calling Card Calling cards belonged to the necessities of life among the nineteenth-­ century bourgeoisie. They were an indispensable part of the culture of calling and of society life as a whole. The design of calling cards, but especially the noble art of using them, functioned as an additional marker of the distinction between the bourgeoisie and those who belonged to the lower social orders. Calling cards had existed in Europe already during the Early Modern period, but it was through the nineteenth-century bourgeois culture of paying and receiving calls that they gained their widest distribution. In the Baltic Sea region, it was then they became common. In the Nordic historical sources calling cards were often mentioned in the 1820s, while in Russia they were not mentioned in etiquette books until the 1840s.69 Calling cards became a part of the emerging bourgeoisie’s ritualization of social interaction. They were mainly used when calling, but they could also be used to send brief messages with a servant. In addition, they could accompany a present or a bouquet of flowers when paying one’s respects to someone, and in certain other contexts. Here it is the use of calling cards in connection with paying calls that is discussed. What should be written on a calling card could vary between different countries and cities. The impression is that the bigger the city, the more

72  Dressed and Ready to Call information the card should contain. Normally, a person’s name must always be mentioned, and for a man, his title should also be stated. If there was a single person who had this title, for instance Minister of Foreign Affairs, it was considered elegant to leave out the person’s name; the title was thought to say it all. In a large city such as Paris, it was considered impolite for a man to leave out his address, while in a smaller city such as Helsinki the address was unnecessary. Zackarias Topelius in Finland was only eighteen years old when on New Year’s Eve he bought a stack of calling cards. He himself would write on them and take them with him when going calling over the next few days. Whether he only wrote his name or if he also added something else, he does not say.70 In contradistinction to this, a woman was never supposed to state her address; it was considered inappropriate because, as one author put it, “it would then look as if she invited [men] to visit her.”71 In the early nineteenth century, it was common to have cards that had painted motifs on them or were decorated in some other manner. The map-maker and artist Magnus Wright in Helsinki sometimes undertook, while he was still unmarried, to paint calling cards to order. He was a painter of nature, and the men who ordered calling cards from him had their cards decorated with, for instance, wood pigeons or wild strawberries.72 In England calling cards decorated with different colorful symbols, for example, symbols of friendship, were popular.73 By the middle of the nineteenth century, mass-produced calling cards had outcompeted handmade ones. This meant that the cards became more uniform. Simple, undecorated cards or cards with only a simple frame were recommended during the latter part of the nineteenth century.74 Magnus Wright stopped painting cards to order the year before he married in 1839. He himself wanted to be modern, so soon after the marriage ceremony, he ordered printed calling cards for both himself and his wife.75 At that time the strict simplicity of the bourgeois greyscale had begun to prevail also with respect to calling cards. The design and use of calling cards were, especially from the mid-nineteenth century and afterward, something that was thought to distinguish the true bourgeoisie from upstarts and parvenus. This was revealed partly by the latter being seen as far too liberal in handing out their calling cards, partly by their cards being perceived as far too decorated, close to vulgar.76 In the courtesy book Sällskapslivets grundlagar [The basic laws of society life], published in Swedish in the 1870s, it was emphasized that calling cards should be as simple as possible. Decoration, and, in particular, color on the cards, was then considered a testament to poor taste.77 This did not prevent there being people who felt that decorated cards were beautiful and who were happy to use them. According to Lydia Murdoch, English women, in particular, continued, therefore, to choose colorful and decorated cards also later in the nineteenth century.78

Dressed and Ready to Call 73 When first paying a call at a person’s house, a guest was supposed to hold the calling card in his or her hand and immediately hand it over to the servant who opened the door. This was so that the servant could correctly announce the guest and his or her business. According to convention, a man should then leave two cards, one intended for the hostess, and one intended for the host.79 A woman left only one calling card intended for the hostess. However, in England, she could leave both her own and her husband’s card with his title on it, and in this way signal her social position. In Sweden, a woman would leave her husband’s card in addition to her own only if she was on a business call made on his behalf. If not, she only left her own calling card.80 Normally, calling cards were saved and were documentation of a family’s social network. They were, therefore, often collected in a dish or a beautiful bowl that was displayed in a prominent position inside the front door or just inside the door of the parlor or drawing room. In the Nordic countries, it was common to have relatively small bowls made from silver, colored glass, or china in which there was room for perhaps around ten calling cards. Among the wealthiest in the great city palaces, there were sometimes large showpieces for the calling cards.81 The bowl was emptied when it was full, and the cards were filed away. The cards of the most prominent guests might be left there for a long time, and were often placed in an extra visible position so that the other guests would be able to see that these prominent people were a part of the social circle of the host couple. To have many such calling cards demonstrated social capital that provided extra status. During calls and at parties guests would sometimes gather around the bowl and somewhat furtively investigate with whom the host family socialized.82 The calling cards then functioned as a demonstration of the family’s social status and extensive social network. The eagerness to both display and save the cards is proof of the importance that was attached to having as large a social capital as possible and displaying this to the rest of the world, almost as though it were a contest. An adult individual who had no calling cards could rarely count on being able to enter bourgeoisie circles. If a person without a card nevertheless made a formal call, for instance, a New Year’s call at the house of a superior, this was marked by the guest writing his or her name on a list of visitors, which on such special occasions was placed beside the calling card bowl. These calls, too, were documented and the lists were saved.83 Even a person who was already known to the people of a house may have to use a calling card. This was because there were two ways of paying a call, either in person or by card. The latter case applied when the person to be called on was not at home or was not receiving visitors. In such a case a calling card was left as a sign that the caller had been there to pay a call.84 The card was given to a servant, who placed it in the calling card bowl. During the first half of the nineteenth century, it

74  Dressed and Ready to Call

Image 4.3  Calling card bowl. Hallwyl museum, Stockholm.

could also happen that a special box was hung outside, by the front door, when no one was at home.85 There are even examples from Stockholm of how calling cards were jammed into a keyhole when not even a servant had been at home to receive them.86 In Paris, a calling card could also be given to the concierge.87 When calling by card the calling cards were folded in various ways in order to mark that an individual had been there in person and to indicate the purpose of the call.88 The folding was believed to have originated in the guest having sat and fiddled with his or her card while waiting to be admitted. These were subtle signs that showed that a caller was well versed in the appropriate etiquette. A small fold upwards toward the name side in the upper right-hand corner of the card, for instance, meant that one had paid a call in order to say goodbye, perhaps before a journey. The folds could vary somewhat between different countries and they changed over time. By the end of the nineteenth century, it seems to have been felt in certain circles in Western Europe that the knowledge of what the different folds meant had become far too widespread. In such cases, the straight edges were folded instead by those who wanted to signal their superior knowledge of etiquette.89 It was also possible to write short messages on calling cards in order to indicate more clearly the intended purpose of the call. In Scandinavia and the Russian Empire, it was most common to write abbreviations taken from the French system. So, for instance, p.r., pour remercier, was written for the purpose of expressing one’s thanks for a dinner or for someone’s

Dressed and Ready to Call 75 having paid their respects; p.p.c., pour prendre congé, indicated when a call had to do with saying goodbye; and when a call was made to deliver an invitation, this would be written out, followed by r.s.v.p., réponse s’il vous plait.90 Swedish abbreviations were sometimes used in Sweden. For instance o.s.a. (om svar anhålles) is still in use today for RSVP.91 Even after printed calling cards began to be used, it was possible to write a special greeting on them by hand. If a mother and a young daughter paid a call together, which was common, the card could be folded in a way that showed that the mother had brought her daughter with her, but it was more common for the daughter to write her name by hand on the mother’s card before it was handed over.92 If a person was on a journey and stayed at a hotel, the hotel’s name was written on the calling card, so that those who were possibly interested in making contact knew where to pay a return call. Those who exchanged calling cards with each other formed a social network. These people made up something of a world within the world, separated from each other vertically rather than horizontally, as fractions within the bourgeoisie. The professional areas of the men, but also their family connections, could form a basis for these divisions, but such social networks were constructed by both women and men. Calling cards declared the social position of a person; they were considered as both a kind of identification document and an entry ticket to the world to which the person believed he or she belonged.

Notes 1. Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 8. 2. Simmel, Fashion, 297. 3. Kekke Stadin, “Stormaktsmän: Mode, manlighet och makt,” in Iklädd identitet: Historiska studier av kropp och kläder (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2005), 32–33. 4. Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 3. 5. Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 8. 6. Verardi, Goda tonen, 35. 7. Verardi, Goda tonen, 51. 8. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 81. 9. Rudolf Broby-Johansen, Kropp och kläder: Klädedräktens konsthistoria, 2nd ed. (Stockholm: Raben & Sjögren, 1978), 192. 10. Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 114. 11. Stadin, “Stormaktsmän,” 32. 12. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 81. 13. Kekke Stadin, “Iklädd borgerlighet: När affärsmannen gick in i garderoben,” in Maktens män bär rätt: Historiska studier av manlighet, manligt framträdande och kläder (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2010), 106. 14. Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 114. 15. Anna-Lisa Liljebjörn Geijer, “Levnadsteckning,” in Anna-Lisa Liljebjörn Geijer and Agnes Geijer Hamilton, Två släktled berätta: Erinringar omkring Erik Gustaf Geijer, ed. Gordon Stiernstedt (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1947), 267.

76  Dressed and Ready to Call 16. John C. Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes, 2nd ed. (London: The Hogarth Press and The Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1940), 111. 17. Stadin, “Iklädd borgerlighet,” 94–122; David Kuchta, The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity: England, 1550–1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 18. Verardi, Goda tonen, 37. 19. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 51; Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 65; Paulsson, Svensk stad, 153; Curtin, Propriety and Position, 139. 20. Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 122. 21. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (London: Dodo Press, 2010), 113. 22. Verardi, Goda tonen, 37. 23. Jacob von Falke, excerpts from Den moderna smakens historia in “Några drag ur modets och klädedrägtens historia,” Tidskrift för hemmet 24, no. 1 (1882): 33–34. 24. Broby-Johansen, Kropp och kläder, 184; John Peacock, Men’s Fashion: The Complete Sourcebook (London: Thames & Hudson, 1996), 106–9. 25. Ett fruntimmer, Toilettkonst för herrarne, 25. 26. Magasin för Konst, Nyheter och Moder 1, no. 5 (1823): 40. 27. Ulrich Klever, Spazierstöcke: Zierde, Werkung und Symbol (Munich: Callwey, 1984), 24–25, 27. 28. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 58. 29. Lisseg [Aurora Lundquist], “Hemlif” in Idun 3, no. 39 (1890); Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 34; August Strindberg, I vårbrytningen (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1908), 113. 30. Strindberg, I vårbrytningen, 113. 31. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, 112–13. 32. Verardi, Goda tonen, 37; Kelly, Refinding Russia, 173. 33. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 59. 34. Sven Andersson Kinberg, S. A. Kinbergs dagbok: Anteckningar från seminarie- och lärarår i Göteborg 1864–1868, Årsböcker i svensk undervisningshistoria, vol. 105, ed. Olof Olsson (Stockholm: Föreningen för svensk undervisninghistoria, 1961), 128. 35. Ett fruntimmer, Toilettkonst för herrarne, 25; Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 59; Strindberg, I vårbrytningen, 110. 36. Ödman, Ungdoms- och reseminnen, 39. 37. Henri Despaigne, Le Code de la mode, quoted in Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 91–92. 38. Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 96. 39. Henric Bagerius, Korsettkriget: Modeslaveri och kvinnokamp vid förra sekelskiftet (Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 2019), 15. 40. Broby-Johansen, Kropp och kläder, 187. 41. Broby-Johansen, Kropp och kläder, 187–91. 42. See image, photo of Gurli Linder i in chapter 7 page 155. 43. Bagerius, Korsettkriget, 11–47. 44. Bagerius, Korsettkriget, 49–179. 45. Le Grand Monde 3 no. 29 and 35 (1896); Gunnel Hazelius-Berg, Modedräkter från 1600–1900 (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1952), 52, 57, 59, 63; Broby-Johansen, Kropp och kläder, 206; Ludmilla Kybalova, Den stora modeboken (Stockholm: Folket i bilds förlag, 1979), 296–97; Wilson, Adorned in Dreams, 37, 43. 46. Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem vid mitten av 1800-talet,” 96; Helen Persson, Empirens döttrar: Kultur och mode under tidigt 1800-tal (Stockholm: Signum, 2009), 108–10.

Dressed and Ready to Call 77 47. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 58; Verardi, Goda tonen, 37; Gurli Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm under 1880- och 1890-talen: Några minnesbilder (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1918), 3; Kinberg, S. A. Kinbergs dagbok, 128. 48. Magasin för Konst, Nyheter och Moder 3, no. 10 (1826): 80; Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 58; Odd, Ur Stockholmslifvet, 16; Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 106, 120–21. 49. Söderberg, Förvillelser, 1. 50. Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 103; Christopher Breward, The Culture of Fashion: A New History of Fashionable Dress (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995), 149; Persson, Empirens döttrar, 83. 51. Broby-Johansen, Kropp och kläder, 208–9; Kybalova, Den stora modeboken, 289–303; Kate Mulvey and Melissa Richards, Hundra år av mode (Lund: Historiska media, 2001), 11, 17, 21. 52. Bremer, The Neighbours, 37. 53. Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, Sara Videbeck and The Chapel, trans. Adolph Burnett Benson (New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1919), 6–7; Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 103–4; Persson, Empirens döttrar, 108–10. 54. Kybalova, Den stora modeboken, 470–72. 55. Verardi, Goda tonen, 37; Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 123; Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 403–4. 56. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, ed. James Kinsley, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 25–26. 57. Sprengfeld, Meine Vaterstadt, 27; Elisabeth Hoffmann, Bilder aus Revals Vergangenheit (Reval [Tallinn]: n. pub., 1912), 15. 58. Burman, Bremer, 23. 59. Topelius, Dagböcker, passim; Forsell, Sällskapslif och hemlif, 139, 145; Wright, Dagbok 1824–1834, 160, 176, 232; Kinberg, S. A. Kinbergs dagbok, 69. 60. Persson, Empirens döttrar, 21–22. 61. June Swann, History of Footwear in Norway, Sweden and Finland (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets, Historie och Antikvitets Akademien [The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities], 2001), 250, 266. “Perhaps because of the climate and the innate practicality of Scandinavians, the contrast between the sexes was less extreme and the move to dress reform more noticeable.” 62. Ernfrid Jäfvert, “Galoschens historia,” in Konsumentbladet: Tidning för kooperation och huslig ekonomi 20, no. 11 (1933): 8–10; Swann, History of Footwear, 248, 274–75; Forsell, Sällskapslif, 126. 63. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 316. 64. Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem,” 94–95; Topelius, Dagböcker, 668. 65. Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 30, 90. 66. Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 109. 67. Schaden, “Berlin Licht- und Schattenseiten,” 231; Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 58. 68. Helena Nyblom, “Moder och smak: Några iakttagelser,” in Idun 3, no. 11 (1890). 69. Kelly, Refinding Russia, xxii. 70. Topelius, Dagböcker, 507, 514. 71. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 68–69. The design and use of calling cards are said to have been fairly similar in France and in Sweden as late as the middle of the twentieth century. Marius Wingårdh, Så går det till i umgänge och sällskapsliv, 6th ed. (Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 1958), 190.

78  Dressed and Ready to Call



72. Wright, Dagbok 1824–1834, 229, 380; Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 39. 73. Murdoch, Daily Life of Victorian Women, 104. 74. Wingårdh, Så går det till, 189. 75. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 351. 76. Curtin, Propriety and Position, 57–58; Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 67. 77. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 68. 78. Murdoch, Daily Life, 104. 79. Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 156; Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 65. 80. Wingårdh, Så går det till, 196. 81. Daniel Fallström, “Dagmar Thomas,” in Idun 3, no. 39 (1890): 1–2; Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 83. 82. Rasmussen, Fröknarnas tid, 101. 83. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 82–83. 84. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 25, 350. 85. Topelius, Dagböcker, 955; Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1812–27, 278. 86. Märta Helena Reenstierna, Årstadagboken: Journaler från åren 1793–1839, vol. 2, 1813–1825, ed. Sigurd Erixon (Stockholm: Generalstaben, 1949), 83. 87. Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, 96. 88. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 68; Anne Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” in A History of Private Life, vol. 4, From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War, ed. Michelle Perrot (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1990), 277; Kelly, Refinding Russia, 170. 89. Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 277. 90. Kelly, Refinding Russia, 170; Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 69. 91. Wingårdh, Så går det till, 197. 92. Murdoch, Daily Life, 104.

5

The Art of Paying a Call

The art of both paying and receiving calls was fundamental to the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie. Frenchman Louis Verardi maintained that calls “are indispensable for people who have good breeding and savoir-vivre.” He furthermore stated that calls created links that could not be severed without also completely breaking off with the world.1 From this perspective, it was through calls that social life was constituted and held together. Formal calls and other visits to the houses of friends and acquaintances were definitely not something new. Especially within the aristocracy, calls had long been legion. But the extent of calls and the ritualized form that developed within the emerging bourgeoisie made them into something special during the nineteenth century. A study of calls helps us understand the emergence of the bourgeoisie and their formulation of a special lifestyle. Entry into what was called the world required both economic and cultural capital and preferably also social capital in the form of contacts in the right circles. But this was still not enough; in order to be accepted into the community, it was necessary to pass through several different symbolic gates. In the bourgeoisie, the way into heterosocial society life went via calls. A call was not just any kind of visit, it was a courtesy visit.2 In order for the call to be truly courteous, it was surrounded by a series of etiquette rules, which became very formalized over the course of the nineteenth century. The call did not require an invitation; on the contrary, it was per definition an uninvited visit to someone’s house. Swedish linguist Gustaf Cederschiöld was interested in the meaning of calls, and in an article from 1910, he distinguished between the words visit and call. To begin with, he argued that a visit could just as well be to a place as to a person, while a call was always made to a person. And, he continued, A visit can last for a long time, a call is very brief. […] Also in another respect does the word call have a greater limitation than visit: a call is, after all, generally a ceremonial courtesy visit, dictated by convention, e.g., for the purpose of beginning social interactions with a family, expressing one’s gratitude for an

80  The Art of Paying a Call invitation, etc., while a visit has a deeper meaning, [and] usually concerns more genuine interests.3 A call was by definition brief and was by Cederschiöld described as a kind of ceremony, formalized and regulated according to convention. Helena Reenstierna, who wrote diaries from 1793 to 1839, sometimes paid such uninvited visits to friends and acquaintances in the years around the turn of the century in 1800, and it happened on individual occasions that she then used the French word visite.4 From the year 1817 her calls became more frequent, and she then usually mentioned them as calls.5 Call was thus used about an uninvited, brief, formalized courtesy visit to someone’s home. In the Baltic Sea region, however, the word call had in practice a wider meaning. It is possible to differentiate between several different forms of social interaction in a person’s home that were included in the designation call: business call, formal morning call, friendship call, evening call, and night call. And within this larger framework, there were several subdivisions. Business calls dealt in some sense with business or someone’s professional activities. Especially during the first half of the nineteenth century, when businessmen, lawyers, and others often had their workplaces in or adjacent to their homes, these were calls according to the definition of the time. In Sweden and Finland business calls began to be discussed in the etiquette literature as something separate from other types of calls only during the 1840s. Here the authors addressed themselves especially to men, and requirements of formality were further stressed.6 Women were normally not expected to participate in business calls. There are examples of a wife waiting in an entranceway while her husband paid a business call when they visited a city together.7 These calls will not be studied further here. The so-called night calls were mentioned primarily during the 1820s and 1830s. They were not calls in a true sense, but were instead an invitation to a light repast after the theatre, a concert, or some other public evening entertainment. Often it was an improvised invitation made orally by a host couple in connection with a public performance. It was a visit that often began after eleven o’clock at night, and it was not uncommon for the call to last until around two o’clock at night.8 In England, such calls were known as bread-and-butter calls.9 The morning call was the most common call. It was a brief uninvited visit to someone in a more or less private matter. It could be a formal courtesy call or an informal friendship call. The difference between a formal morning call and a business call was fluid for the greater part of the nineteenth century in the Baltic Sea region.10 However, it was not possible to simply pay a call on a person with whom one wished to become acquainted without advance notice. Before this was possible, it was necessary to be introduced to the person in question.

The Art of Paying a Call 81

To be Introduced into the Right Circles The first step into a circle of acquaintances was to be introduced to one or preferably several influential people within this circle. The same was true when someone wished to get to know a particular person. A formal presentation was always necessary before some other form of contact could be made. The introduction and its importance can be compared to the requirement within the aristocracy to be presented at court before a person could be invited to balls and the like. An introduction was surrounded by a number of rules of etiquette that varied somewhat among different countries. For instance, in England, an introduction should, according to the etiquette books, happen appropriately in connection with a dinner party or in some other kind of formal context. Only after such a formal introduction had been made could two people take the requisite steps and measures to develop contact.11 A person who in all friendliness addressed someone without having been introduced could be regarded with great suspicion.12 The demand for an introduction can be seen as an expression of the bourgeoisie’s marking of exclusivity and distinction toward people who were not felt to belong to the right world. The mutual friend who was responsible for an introduction would first get the permission of both parties to introduce them to each other. In the British etiquette book Manners for Men from 1897, the author maintained that it was rude to introduce someone without having been permitted to do so. But this could absolutely not happen where the other person could overhear it. Everyone should have an opportunity to turn down making a person’s acquaintance without exposing someone to an embarrassing situation.13 In the northern periphery of Europe, it was also perceived as extremely embarrassing if a person were to turn down being introduced to someone who had expressed a desire for this. Swedish author August Strindberg experienced this. During an evening call on Director Sven Palme in the winter of 1892, he asked the host to introduce him to the older writer Viktor Rydberg, who was in an adjoining room. Strindberg and another guest, author Gurli Linder, could see in a mirror how Rydberg declined the request after which the host returned and excused himself, saying that an introduction was not convenient just then. The disappointment made Strindberg dash away from the reception.14 It was a social humiliation to be turned down, even when it happened discreetly. If some people were introduced to each other, for example, during a morning call, at the theatre, or at a public ball, the introduction was, according to British etiquette books, considered informal and only applied for the moment. Such an introduction was not considered a sufficient basis for developing a friendship.15 In practice, things were not always handled quite so formally. When Knut Wallenberg, as a young naval officer, participated in a

82  The Art of Paying a Call Swedish Navy visit to Plymouth in June 1873 he, together with a few other Swedes, was invited to a ball on the British flagship the Royal Adelaide. There he was introduced to a number of people, including three young women, with whom he danced. When Wallenberg, a few days later, visited an agricultural show, these women came up to him and shook his hand as if they had known each other for a long time. Because the young women’s parents seemed to find this completely natural he returned the greeting happily.16 His comment in a letter to his father shows that he knew of these formal rules, and also that these English families saw the introduction as fully sufficient for coming up to him and shaking his hand, since the ball in question had been for people who had been specially invited, and was not a public assembly. The ritualization of an introduction was one of the ways that created distinction. This had to do with choosing one’s social circle and marking a boundary between oneself and those with whom, for various reasons, one did not wish to associate. It was considered rude to break off a friendship with a person to whom one had been introduced. For this reason, it was considered important not to be introduced to someone who could become a social liability.17 In the Nordic countries rules in etiquette books regarding introductions were not quite as strict as the British rules, especially not during the first half of the nineteenth century. An introduction was usually considered fully valid even if it was made during a theatre visit or a stroll. In the Nordic countries introducing a friend could in certain cases be a reason for paying a call. In such cases, the friend was quite simply brought along on the call to be introduced.18 British travelers in the Russian Empire commented that there, too, the customs were more relaxed than in England.19 In the countries around the Baltic Sea, there is no information to suggest that a distinction was made between a formal and an informal introduction. During the first half of the nineteenth century, it was even possible to introduce oneself via a letter, without the intermediation of a mutual acquaintance. When author Fredrika Bremer, in August 1834, had read Minnen [Memories], a newly-published book by Professor Erik Gustaf Geijer, she was delighted and wrote him a letter. This functioned as an introduction, and six months later they met in person for the first time. The description of how this meeting came about differs between the two of them. In a letter Geijer wrote to his wife, he pointed out that he had been invited by old Mrs. Bremer, the author’s mother. According to Bremer, on the other hand, Geijer called on them uninvited. She had just been given her first room of her own, and in a letter she wrote that she was so happy that her very first guest in that room was Professor Geijer. 20 We will probably never know which version corresponds most accurately with what really happened, but Bremer’s version is the most

The Art of Paying a Call 83 probable one; a personal contact normally began with an introduction followed by a call, not an invitation. Regardless, this episode shows that a person introducing themselves via a letter could be sufficient, at least in literary circles.

The Introductory Call When all preparations had been made, it was time for the very first call, the introductory call. This was considered extremely important, since it was many times decisive for how the continued acquaintance would develop. An introductory call often contained a large measure of status signaling, and ritualized rules of etiquette were thus observed more strictly than was otherwise the case. An introductory call was an encounter saturated with power. A person who moved to a new place was always expected to make introductory calls on everyone it would be rude to overlook, and there could be many of these. In November 1828 Sophie Tengström, who was married to a professor in Helsinki, wrote a letter to her father. The family had recently moved to the city and had just begun to make their calls, as she expressed it. These calls were thus introductory calls. During the first two days, they were able to make eight calls on one day and seven on the other. The fact that they had not managed to make more she explained by their perambulating around the city on foot. 21 More introductory calls awaited them. With their first calls, a family should pay their respects to the city’s most prominent people and the superiors of the husband. This should preferably be done in order of precedence with respect to social status, which was often a delicate task.22 If one of the most prominent people was away and it was not possible to wait with the introductory calls, one had to find socially acceptable solutions. The bishop of Härnösand, Frans Mikael Franzén, was on an inspection tour when the new county governor, Fredrik Åkerman, arrived in the city at the beginning of September 1841. Åkerman was thus forced to violate etiquette by calling on persons further down on the social scale, who correctly should have been called on after the first introductory call had been made to the bishop. Nevertheless, it would have been rude to wait with these calls until Franzén returned home. In order to resolve the social conundrum created by his absence, Franzén signaled, when he came back to Härnösand, that Åkerman’s behavior was quite in order. He did this by surprising the county governor, already at 9:30 in the morning, with a call. The bishop, coming on what could be called a welcoming call, then delivered a little welcoming speech before he left. 23 Franzén’s actions meant that the social hierarchy of the city had not been threatened, and that the county governor did not have to be embarrassed about having violated the social order.

84  The Art of Paying a Call One basic rule that was common to all of Europe was that a person who had a lower social position or a lower rank in a workplace should pay the very first call on the person who had the higher status. 24 This was an order in which the person who was in a subordinate position requested inclusion in the social circle of a superior. If this were successful, not only did it provide an opportunity for extended and hopefully pleasant social interaction, but it was also in itself a small step upward toward a higher social status. If the person who had been honored with an introductory visit was interested in continued contact with the caller, he or she should pay a return call relatively quickly, within a few days or at most a week. The books on etiquette pointed out how inappropriate it was to pay the return visit already on the same day, because someone who did this could easily appear far too eager. 25 In England, it was expected that a person of lower rank would make an additional call, after which the relationship would have been established. 26 If an introductory call was not returned within a week, it was interpreted as a powerful signal; the person to whom the introductory call had been paid was not interested in a continued interaction with the caller. This could be experienced as a very humiliating loss of status, especially if it became known among their acquaintances. Under these circumstances, it was always the person who had the highest social status who decided whether a new person or family would be incorporated into a social network. A return call from a person with really high social status occasioned the lower-status individual putting a large exclamation point in his or her diary. 27 A person of a really high station could even pay a call to someone of a lower position without a previous introduction, if there was an interest in making that person’s acquaintance. 28 The higher a person’s social position, the more liberty that individual had to neglect the otherwise very strict etiquette for incorporating new people into his or her social network. 29 “See!” said she, snapping her fingers, “one can call that savoir vivre. Yes, these southlanders have not their equals anywhere in such things. We must see the man. I will invite him to my first great dinner-­party; yes, even if he does not pay me a visit before. Such politeness as this is worth seven visits.”30 Ma chère mère, the mistress of Carlsfors manor, was delighted over the live roe deer she had received from a new, as yet unknown neighbor. Such a present made it possible for her to invite the neighbor for dinner, even if he had not been introduced and had not made an introductory call first. This episode from Bremer’s novel The Neighbours illustrates the importance of paying a call in order for social contact to be established. Something extraordinary was required for a neighbor to

The Art of Paying a Call 85 be invited to a dinner or supper without first having paid at least one introductory call. And it was only a person with considerably higher status than that of the person invited who could in this way violate the rules of convention. 31 Calls were prerequisites for all social contact, and they also functioned as markers of a person’s social position. If two parties were found to be on the same social level, there could be complications in connection with an introductory call. There could then be a battle for the highest status, which manifested itself as nobody wanting to pay the first call even if they both felt that a contact was necessary. A young Englishman, who in the 1890s asked his mother to pay a call at the home of his fiancée, experienced this. He was then given the answer that it was the mother of the fiancée who should pay a call to his mother’s house instead. Neither of them wished to pay the first call, since each woman felt she had higher status than the other.32 In such a game of honor, it was a loss of prestige to pay the first call. But it had to be paid; politeness demanded that the parents of an engaged couple pay each other calls in order to initiate more a comprehensive social interaction between the two families. In France, in the German states, and in the Nordic countries it normally sufficed to pay one call in each direction for a relationship to be considered as established.33 When as a teenager Fredrika Bremer went on a longer educational journey around Europe with her family, they arrived first in Stralsund. After a couple of days, there the Swedish consul paid them a call and invited them to afternoon coffee the following day. In the morning before they were to go to the consul, Mr. Bremer brought his two daughters on a short call to the consul’s wife, while Mrs. Bremer stayed at the hotel and prepared for the coffee party. Even though they had already been invited, it would have been inappropriate to come to a coffee party without at least someone in the family having first paid a call to the house in question.34 The bourgeoisie during the nineteenth century was international, and its networks, business associations, and professional contacts often stretched across several countries. Private trips to Paris, London, Rome, and other cultural centers in Europe were a way for the bourgeoisie to develop their cultural capital. These educational journeys have been described as “a quintessentially bourgeois experience.”35 In the countries around the Baltic Sea, this view existed already early in the nineteenth century, and many sources testify as to how both men and women made at least one such educational journey.36 Urbanity and knowledge of the world were important concepts when the ideals of the bourgeoisie were presented; they were important symbolic capital. Travel, both within and outside a person’s own country, was also a way to expand one’s circle of acquaintances and thus increase one’s social capital. During the journeys themselves, and especially in new places, the travelers sought the company of people from a similar background.

86  The Art of Paying a Call Historian Mark Davies has in this context introduced the concept of functional familiarity. This had to do with travelers using their network of contacts – generally fellow countrymen – on journeys in order to gain access to people and to society life in a particular place. This provided security and familiarity, an opportunity to find the known in the unknown.37 In this way, the bourgeoisie of Europe became “one big family,” as Voltaire put it.38 The bourgeoisie had something cosmopolitan about it; the borders between countries were not social borders. Every opportunity was utilized to expand one’s social network to include one’s peers in other countries. In addition, traveling allowed travelers from the Baltic Sea region to be socialized into the lifestyle of the European bourgeoisie. The way into the society life of a new city was ritualized, and a prerequisite for being incorporated into it was to have the right habitus and to be able to see and adapt to the conventions in this particular place. A traveler who arrived in a new city in another country naturally had an advantage if he or she knew someone there who could take care of introductions to suitable people. Otherwise, letters of introduction or letters of recommendation could be the way into the community.39 Englishman Llywelyn Lloyd, who traveled in Sweden in 1828, claimed that in Stockholm it was enough to have a single letter of recommendation to be invited into all social circles. This suggests that in larger cities several letters of recommendation might be required.40 For those who were not well versed in the lifestyle, or who lacked the right habitus, it was difficult to enter into the local community. A large and well-maintained network of contacts was considered important, and good use was made of every opportunity to expand one’s social contacts. A Swedish family, who in the 1840s was to visit family and friends in another part of the country, can illustrate this. The journey was made by horse and carriage and took almost a week. On Sunday the family went to church in the place where they had spent the night, but where they knew no one. Before the family continued their journey, they had lunch in an inn. There they were addressed by a man who had noticed their presence at church. On the basis of their dress and behavior, he judged that they would make an interesting contact. Without a preliminary introduction, he invited the family home to a ball the same evening. The parents saw this as a good opportunity to establish contacts in this small town, and therefore accepted the invitation, even though it delayed them for twenty-four hours.41 A family passing through who had a lifestyle that demonstrated that they belonged to the right circles was an asset. The information about the visiting travelers spread quickly, and the newcomers were adopted into the local circles. Receptions, balls, and suppers with dancing were arranged in their honor on short notice. New visitors in a small town could be seen as a breath of fresh air for a society life that

The Art of Paying a Call 87 was experienced as far too routine or limited.42 Also in the German states, this form of socializing was much appreciated and common among artists, intellectual groups, and businessmen.43 Letters, diaries, and travel accounts from the Baltic Sea region during the 1830s and 1840s, testify to how both women and men on their travels had already within a few days been drawn into a busy social life in cities where they had never before set foot and where they had only intended to stay temporarily.44 It was considered an honor to be the family that could introduce new friends to their circle of acquaintances. It was a way for the family to display sizeable social capital to the people around them, which gave them extra status. Society life and such opportunities for increasing social capital could, at a personal level, result in new friends, but also in business contacts, political influence, and possible marriage partners for adult children. On the level of the community as a whole, it contributed to a more close-knit and powerful bourgeoisie. For businessmen contacts in the right circles were a prerequisite for developing new business contacts in other countries.45 The correspondence between the banker André Oscar Wallenberg and his son Knut during the 1870s and 1880s shows how a large network of business contacts and friends was created and maintained through their travels, primarily to France, England, and Norway, but also to several other European countries. The Swedish consuls in these countries were often the contacts who were responsible for their introductions.46 The consular system, which was reorganized after 1815, created new and improved opportunities for international contacts.47 The consuls themselves belonged to the same social tier as the travelers, and they have been described as socially competent men who were happy to help the travelers. It could even happen that Swedish private individuals when traveling could spend the night at the house of the Swedish consul in a city.48 In a corresponding manner, English consuls functioned as contacts for British people traveling in the Nordic countries.49 Consuls thus contributed to the emerging bourgeoisie in the Nordic countries being incorporated into the European bourgeois community and adopting its cosmopolitan image. Where there was no consul, business contact, or other professional contacts, the need for a formal introduction meant that traveling to other countries and places required careful preparations. It was then common to enlist the aid of the friends of friends within one’s social network. Before a journey, an acquaintance was contacted who knew someone in the place the traveler meant to visit. That person could then write a letter of introduction to a friend or relative, which the traveler could take along on the journey. Those who went on a tour that included several cities might need to contact several friends to get such letters of introduction.50 One English etiquette book recommended that when a

88  The Art of Paying a Call traveler arrived in a new city, the letter of introduction should be taken along when calling and should be handed, together with his or her calling card, to the footman or maid. The hostess in question could then see the connection and receive the unfamiliar guest in an appropriate manner.51 Those who completely lacked personal contacts in a place were obliged to introduce themselves. In one etiquette book from 1822, it was recommended that travelers in such cases send a servant to the most distinguished houses to leave calling cards and in this way let their presence in the city be known.52 Later sources emphasized the importance of making these introductions through a personal call. To merely send a servant in such cases was then described as being impolite. In England, this task was considered to be a wife’s responsibility if the travelers were a married couple.53 In the Nordic countries these calls were often made by husband and wife together.54 It was in circumstances like these important to acquire information about who were the key persons in the place in question, the people who could open doors to the social community. The reason for this was that it was extremely important to make the calls in the order of precedence, based on a family’s social position, beginning at the top.55 The constant struggle for status made it difficult to place everyone in an order of precedence that was universally accepted. For those who were successful, the journeys were often filled with balls, dinners, and other parties, as well as opportunities to further increase their social capital.

French Call and Friendship Call A call was primarily a formalized courtesy visit, even though calls were also made simply to see a good friend for a while. This meant that there were many both explicit and tacit rules for how such a visit should be made. German pedagogue Gottfried Emanuel Wenzel published several manuals on the art of deportment during the first half of the nineteenth century; many were also translated into Swedish. In one of these, there was a special chapter on calls where no less than seventeen different points were presented, to all of which an intended caller had to pay attention.56 Three of these were concerned in one way or another with aspects of the issue of time. A call should per definition be brief – on this, all writers in all of Europe seem to agree. In several etiquette books, it is pointed out that a call should not last more than ten or, at most, fifteen minutes, so that a caller would not appear too pushy or disturb the person called on. Others felt that twenty minutes was the limit. 57 In the twentieth century in the Nordic countries, very brief calls were denoted French calls, while in the nineteenth century, there was no specific term for such calls, since all calls were supposed to be just that – very brief. One

The Art of Paying a Call 89 source used the expression five-minute call when referring to the briefest visits. 58 The dilemma with guests who overstayed their welcome or appeared at an inappropriate time was discussed by the contemporary German writer Marie Calm, who argued that a hostess then sat as if on “glowing embers.”59 Perhaps this was what Marie-Louise Forsell in Stockholm experienced when she received a call when a veal steak was already on the table and her family could not eat until after the caller had left.60 Etiquette varied somewhat over time and among different countries, but the general rule was that formal morning calls should be kept brief. On very special occasions even a formal call could last longer.61 In March 1822 Harriet Lewin of the Hollies in Kent secretly married a neighbor’s son, Professor of History and future Member of Parliament George Grove. The marriage had happened against the will of his parents. By June of the same year, the parents seem nevertheless to have accepted the alliance. George Grove’s mother and sister then called at the Hollies just after one o’clock in the afternoon. This call lasted for an entire half-hour, noted Thomas Lewin contentedly in his diary. In this case, the special circumstances justified a call that was understood as lengthy. The call was returned, as was proper, exactly one week later.62 In Sweden and Finland, and probably also in the other countries around the Baltic Sea, relatives and close friends could stretch the rules of etiquette. In the first half of the nineteenth century, it was thus possible to stay for upward of an hour without this being considered extraordinary.63 But this applied to informal visits to friends, or friendship calls, and was not true of formal calls, i.e. those that were undertaken because of convention and social necessity. In his youth, Zackarias Topelius, later professor of history and an author in Finland, noted in his diary the number of calls that he himself paid as well as the number of calls that he received. Friendship calls he described as a pleasant time spent with good friends, which to him was something completely different from formal calls, which he described as officious.64 The line drawn between a formal call and a friendship call was sometimes vague, which could create some degree of uncertainty. Another diarist was a bit worried that he was troubling a family with calls that lasted far too long. And, he sighed, “here, too, the often quite stupid etiquette gets in the way for all of us.”65 He knew he violated etiquette when he stayed longer than what was prescribed, but he was – as yet secretly – in love with a young woman in the house and found it difficult to tear himself away. Not being generous with calls was another standard that was often emphasized. Even so, diaries and letters from the first half of the nineteenth century give the impression that a good many calls were made. Usually, this was not because the same family was visited far too often, but because the circles of acquaintances were extensive.66

90  The Art of Paying a Call The primary purpose of society life was to amuse, but also to establish and maintain social relationships and positions. An introduction and introductory call were gateways into this world, but the calls continued to be necessary entrances into the social life of the emerging bourgeoisie. In 1836, a young unmarried clerk in a small town in the south of Sweden claimed that as a rule he was invited to dinner three or four times a week, and, he admitted, if he had the sense to properly manage the “business of calls” he would no doubt have been invited every single night of the week.67 This was a reflection that was typical of the time. The more calls a person had the time to pay, the more invitations to dinners, balls, and other parties he or she would receive. Those who neglected making calls, or socialized exclusively in more limited social circles, could count on this having a detrimental effect not only on the invitations, but also on their social standing. They risked being perceived as a bit odd.68 The frequency of calls was, in the Baltic Sea region as well as in England, seen as an important gauge of the level at which one wished to maintain contact. Far too frequent calls to a family, or calls that were not returned equally often, could be perceived as inappropriately persistent. On the other hand, far too few calls were considered a signal of standoffishness and an indicator of a lack of interest in continued social interaction.69 It was important that there be a balance between the parties. This required everyone to keep track of when they had paid a call to someone and when that person, or at least a representative of that person’s family, had called on them in return. British etiquette books, therefore, recommended that everyone keep a list of their calls. In this list, the dates for both calls paid and calls received were to be registered, but also calling cards and other information of importance should be kept in this location. 70 To have many names in such a list and many calling cards in the calling card bowl was proof of considerable social capital, which signaled status and affiliation.71 The calls provided a basis for all invitations and, in general, for all society life in a home, and were thus important for a person’s social standing.

Formal Calls “All the world makes calls, but how and when to make them, this is, in interactions with the world, a question of the highest importance,” maintained one writer.72 This idea recurs often in the historical sources: knowledge of good calling etiquette was a prerequisite for social life in the emerging bourgeoisie. In certain contexts, it was considered absolutely necessary to pay calls. Such calls were considered formal morning calls, without for that reason being business calls. A new situation in one’s life had to be made known in the circle of one’s acquaintances, and that had to been done in person, through calls.

The Art of Paying a Call 91 Traveling was one such new situation, even if the journey was to last for only a week. Farewell calls, therefore, belonged among the obligatory calls.73 When Magnus Wright in 1831 had been given a position as a map-maker at the land surveying office in Helsinki, he moved to the capital from his parental home outside the small town of Kuopio. The final week in his parental home was hectic; he devoted a large portion of his time to paying farewell calls to the more prominent people of the community, as well as to neighbors and childhood friends. No one must be forgotten; this would have been perceived as being inconsiderate, even as a directly unfriendly signal.74 Five years later, when the same man had visited his parents in their home for a few weeks in the summer and was to return to Helsinki, the procedure was repeated.75 Farewell calls were an obvious part of society life also during the latter part of the nineteenth century. In 1876, young Elin Sirenius and her mother devoted their entire last day at their summerhouse to paying calls, before taking the night train home to Gothenburg.76 In order for friends and acquaintances to be made aware that a person was to depart on a journey, leave for his or her summerhouse, or move from the city, it was important to pay calls on all friends and acquaintances in the final days before departure. In the 1840s, Professor Atterbom in Uppsala was about to travel to Stockholm to participate in the annual Ceremonial Meeting of the Swedish Academy. Even if he only planned to be away for a few days, he considered himself obliged to pay farewell calls to the circle containing his closest acquaintances.77 The purpose was to make the journey known, so that those who may have intended to pay the traveler a call or invite him or her to dinner, a ball, or a similar function during the time when he or she was traveling, could be spared the trouble. A person who had been away and came home again announced this as soon as possible, and at least within a week, by paying arrival calls on friends and acquaintances. The same thing applied to those who arrived at or returned from their summerhouse. Through calls, they announced that they were back and ready to participate in social life again. Arrival calls also gave a person an opportunity to tell people about what he or she had experienced during recent travels or a summer sojourn, and to convey greetings from family or friends that he or she had met.78 This requirement applied to everyone. Even a famous artist such as opera singer Jenny Lind was careful to pay arrival calls on the first day after arriving in Berlin, Vienna, or some other city where she was to perform.79 New Year’s calls also belonged to the formal calls that must not be neglected.80 Already during the seventeenth century, the nobility had, with the New Year approaching, sent out New Year’s greetings in order to congratulate each other on having survived for another year. For those who were in the same city, a New Year’s call was an even more polite option. This custom was taken over by the bourgeois elite in the cities,

92  The Art of Paying a Call

Image 5.1  Visiter på nyåret [Calling at New Year’s]. Those who had celebrated New Year’s Eve until late in the night were, according to this cartoon, not always happy to receive New Year calls. Source: Drawing by Nils von Dardel. Nordiska museet (The Nordic Museum), Stockholm.

and a few decades into the nineteenth century New Year’s calls were already a well-established institution. Helena Reenstierna, who was eager to adopt all the novelties, did not mention New Year’s calls for the first time until New Year’s Day in 1829. After that year she received New Year’s calls virtually every year.81 She does not seem to have paid any New Year’s calls herself, which could be explained by the fact that she was, by the 1830s, in her eighties. A person who had reached that age should be honored by a New Year’s call, but was perhaps not expected to themselves pay such calls in the often inclement winter weather of that season. New Year’s calls were an opportunity for conveying one’s best wishes for the New Year, but they were also a polite signal that one wished to maintain contact during the coming year. In many cities in the Baltic Sea region, just as in Vienna, Berlin, and many other cities, people in Society devoted the first two or three days of the year to New Year’s calls. This was a tradition that lived on at least to and including the 1860s, probably longer.82

The Art of Paying a Call 93 One author wrote in his diary on January 1, 1838, that he and his wife had on that day paid forty-one calls, out of which eleven were done by leaving their calling cards, since both the hosts and hostesses were themselves out paying calls.83 The following year the couple devoted two days to making New Year’s calls, because their circle of acquaintances had grown during the year. To their great relief it had been necessary this year to pay calls by card in many places, a practice that other diarists also described as something positive.84 The important thing was clearly not to meet one’s friends and acquaintances; the important thing was to have paid one’s formal New Year’s calls and thus confirmed one’s social network of contacts. The norms for who was expected to pay a call on whom was part of the bourgeois habitus. The ritualization of New Year’s calls and other formal calls made these into performative acts for social positioning and distinction. Thus they contributed to making the vague category that was called the middling sort (or a similar term) during the 1830s in the northern periphery of Europe appear as a distinct class by the end of the nineteenth century. A person never neglects to deliver a cheerful or sad piece of news of importance to everyone, claimed Gottfrid Wenzel in his books on etiquette. As examples of such pieces of news, he mentions engagements, marriages, childbirths, promotions, and deaths. Neglecting to pay calls in these contexts was considered a serious violation of courtesy and good breeding.85 Respects should naturally be paid to a woman who had given birth through a childbirth call.86 To friends and acquaintances living elsewhere, it was common to, for instance, send engagement cards instead of paying calls, but otherwise, calls were what mattered.87 By making such events known through a call, it was possible to head off any gossip, but these calls were above all a confirmation that someone who was paid such a call was part of the same world as was the caller. Good manners also required that a married couple at least once a year paid a call on the husband’s supervisors and other superiors.88 This could sometimes be combined with a New Year’s call. At promotions, birthdays, and other events when there might be a reason to congratulate someone, formal congratulation calls were also supposed to be made.89 This meant that a person who had paid a call in order to announce receiving a promotion could count on receiving congratulation calls from those same people shortly thereafter. Calls following marriages were important, because the newlyweds in this way had the opportunity to display themselves as a couple. The wedding, and perhaps also the wedding dinner, were the central rites that established them as husband and wife, which, in addition, meant increased status for both women and men. But one’s entire circle of acquaintances was rarely invited to these functions. Marriage calls became additional ritualizations that manifested a couple’s union to a

94  The Art of Paying a Call wider circle and signaled that they also wished to maintain contact as a couple. This afternoon we shall begin our visits to our neighbours. I shall dress myself very nicely […] and mark only with what satisfaction Bear will present “my wife! my wife!”90 This quote is taken from the previously mentioned novel The Neighbours by Fredrika Bremer. When the main character has married and moved into the home of her husband in a different part of the country, the couple’s new living situation was supposed to be announced to everyone in his circle of acquaintances. When either of the newlyweds came from another city, and was not known in the place where the couple settled, these calls, as the quote above illustrates, became an opportunity to introduce the spouse who had moved in. During their honeymoon, newlyweds could rest from calls and other social duties. To Magnus Wright in Helsinki and his wife this honeymoon lasted for only one week after they had married quite informally. In contradistinction, the week thereafter was busy because they then paid their calls. On the Sunday they paid no less than thirty-four calls, and on Wednesday afternoon they paid another eleven calls. In addition to this, Magnus’s wife Sophie had made some calls on her own on the Tuesday while he was working.91 In total, they paid almost fifty calls, which shows the extent of their social network at the time of their marriage. The following Sunday was also intense, because no less than twenty-­ eight people made their combined return and congratulatory calls to them. According to convention, these were made within a week. That the greater number of such calls were made on Sundays shows that this was the day for making calls in Helsinki in the 1830s.92 This was when both men and women had the most time to make and receive calls. The demand for convention and decency was rarely as fixed as in connection with mourning. For this reason, condolence calls belonged to the formal calls that must not under any circumstances be neglected. At these calls, etiquette was also particularly strict, not least with respect to dress. At even the briefest of flying visits to a house in mourning it was necessary to show respect to the mourners by wearing black mourning dress. In such contexts, no one should allow their expressions of gravity and compassion to be contradicted by their clothing, pointed out one writer.93 From the seventeenth century and forward, the custom of large funerals and special mourning wear had spread from the royal court, via the aristocracy, to the elite of the cities, and eventually, by the turn of the century in 1900, it encompassed all social classes. Within the bourgeoisie ceremonies at deaths and funerals had become strictly ritualized by

The Art of Paying a Call 95 the mid-nineteenth century. In certain countries, for instance, England, where the bourgeoisie had Queen Victoria’s many years in widow’s weeds as a model, the mourning period for widows was extended from one year to almost three.94 In other countries, the traditional period of mourning usually remained a single year. In Sweden, the tradition of national mourning at royal deaths was abolished in 1860, which further decreased the use of mourning clothes. Unlike in England, the mourning period was also shortened for both men and women.95 However, black clothes at condolence calls were considered necessary also after this date. The long mourning period and the requirement to then wear only black led many to consider women’s black clothes sad and ugly. With the emergence of the fashion industry, mourning clothes according to the latest fashions were, therefore, introduced. In the fashion journal Journal des Dames et des Modes there appeared, in connection with the death and funeral of Francis I in Vienna in April 1835, an article on how mourning clothes could be à la mode.96 From this time forward people always had to have fashionable mourning clothes in their wardrobes.97 This pertained not only to all women from the house in mourning but also to everyone paying condolence calls. The ritualization of grief and its external attributes created a veritable industry surrounding deaths.98 For men mourning dress was less obvious. During the first half of the nineteenth century, it was common for men in mourning to wear a black cloak, but by the 1860s, this custom had come to an end. By then color had simultaneously disappeared from men’s everyday clothes, which were then dominated by a scale of greys. Therefore, the black clothes in connection with deaths and funerals did not deviate so much from the working clothes of the bourgeois men. The primary difference was that with mourning wear the cravat should be black.99 The ever more monochrome male fashions made it easier for men to pay condolence calls directly after work.100 A condolence call should be paid between a death and the funeral. Out of respect for the house in mourning, the condolence call should be kept brief, the conversation should be muted, and a person’s entire appearance should express compassion.101 In a short story by Hjalmar Söderberg, a situation in which the main character pays a call is described. Not until the maid opens the door does he realize that he has come to a house in mourning: “I […] felt, how I involuntarily adopted something of the deportment and facial expression of a gentleman on a condolence call, and how soft and discreet my voice became.”102 How a condolence call should be executed was a matter of course, it had been imprinted in the very fiber of one’s body. Calls were the foundation for all social intercourse because invitations to private functions should normally be made through a personal call. Exceptions to this rule were only accepted if many guests were to be invited, for instance to a large ball. In such cases, invitations were

96  The Art of Paying a Call made in writing.103 Another exception that could possibly be accepted was when the invitation was intended for close relatives and very close friends, who were to be invited to a simple coffee party or a supper with tea. In such cases, a brief written invitation, a so-called biljett (billet), could be sent with one of the servants.104 However, an invitation through a call was always the most polite course of action. The rules of etiquette with respect to invitations were carefully observed in the Baltic Sea region. Almost every single invitation to a dinner, supper with tea, ball, coffee party, music soirée, sleigh riding party with supper, or whatever the invitation was for, was preceded by an invitation call. For grand gala dinners and balls, the invitations were made in writing, but for what was perceived as more intimate functions, with perhaps only twenty guests or less, invitations were made through personal calls. Invitations to simple tea or coffee parties were during the 1830s and 1840s, also made through personal calls.105 Invitation calls belonged among the very brief calls, and often lasted for only a few minutes. In spite of this, the active society life, with many invitations every week, especially during the Season, necessitated spending much time paying and receiving invitation calls. All countries had their own special hallmarks of social affiliation. Michael Curtin has argued that in Victorian England invitations to dinner was such a hallmark. These were confirmations that the people invited belonged to the same class as the person who extended the invitation.106 In the cities of the Baltic Sea region during the 1830s, dinner parties do not seem to have been as significant a marker of social equality as Curtin suggests was the case for England. They were just as often an expression of belonging to the same network. A few days before Christmas in 1831, young Magnus Wright’s first Christmas in Helsinki, Colonel Tavaststjerna came to call on him. The colonel, who was Wright’s superior at the land surveying office, invited the young man for Christmas pudding on Christmas Eve, the most important and tradition-laden meal in Sweden and Finland. When Wright said he had already been invited out, Tavaststjerna asked him to come instead to dinner on Christmas Day.107 The difference in age and position between the two men was quite significant, but Tavaststjerna nevertheless took the trouble to personally call on the newly-employed young man, which was a generous gesture. Even so, it is difficult to believe that this dinner invitation could be a sign that the two men were socially equal. Instead, it reasonably had to do with patriarchal concern for a newly-employed young man, who was far from his parental home. Those who had been invited, for instance to supper, could possibly reply to the invitation directly, but were normally expected to pay a brief thank you call following the invitation in order to respond. This was appropriately done on the day after the invitation or otherwise in good time before the party. Like an invitation call, this could be very brief. A

The Art of Paying a Call 97 few days or no later than a week after the party the guests were expected to make a thank-you-for-having-us call (tack-för-senast-visit). Like the invitation and the thank-you-for-the-invitation call, this could be made by one person on behalf of a whole family. The thank-you-for-having-us calls were sometimes made by the unmarried young people in the household, when this was considered socially acceptable. After conveying a formal thank you to the hostess, the call could then turn into a friendship call on the younger people in the household. This then became an opportunity to discuss who had danced with whom, whether a person had had someone assist them with putting on their galoshes, and similar topics.108 One contributing factor to there being so many calls was thus that every evening party normally required three morning calls. By the 1820s, it had become good manners in Stockholm to express one’s thanks with a call also for other forms of showing respect. One example of this was when Captain Gustav Plank and Lieutenant Gustav Sivers paid a call on Helena Reenstierna on June 8, 1828, in order to convey their thanks for the flowers she had sent them as a name day present on June 6, the name day for Gustav in the Swedish name day calendar.109 At the beginning of the 1870s, written invitation cards had, to a large extent, replaced the time-consuming invitation calls. Within the bourgeoisie of Sweden and Finland, invitation cards were nevertheless soon combined with an invitation over the telephone.110 During the 1880s and 1890s, the telephone changed the prerequisites for invitations and social intercourse within the bourgeoisie of Stockholm and Helsinki. In these cities, the telephone was established and dispersed early on. The first telephone lines were drawn in these cities in the autumn of 1877, a mere year and a half after the telephone had been patented in the United States. At the introduction of the telephone, there were only a hundred subscribers in Stockholm, but three years later there were 5,000 subscribers, and ten years later Stockholm was the most telephone-dense city in Europe.111 Within the city’s bourgeoisie, there was at that time hardly anyone who did not have a telephone. Invitations by telephone call were, in the two final decades of the nineteenth century, considered both a modern and a personal way to invite guests. For larger parties, written invitations were still legion. When the telephone was wide-spread within the bourgeoisie but not as common in other groups, it functioned as a distinguishing mark. A telephone call was then a sign of the exclusivity and reciprocal proximity of the group. In the long run, the telephone also had an influence on how and where an individual’s social position was signaled to friends and acquaintances. The telephone directory became the new, modern way of distributing information about one’s title. It also had the advantage of being disseminated every year to all subscribers, who, in the first decades of telephone use, were mainly the urban elite. No man who received a promotion

98  The Art of Paying a Call neglected to report a more distinguished title in next year’s directory. In Sweden, the title listed in the telephone directory was so important that people who had the same surname were arranged alphabetically according to their titles, not their first names. This also resulted in the names of married women often being excluded from the catalog; they were made invisible. There is much to suggest that it was the telephone directory that contributed to calling cards losing something of their earlier import for private social interactions. In the bourgeoisie, the way into heterosocial society life went via calls. These were perhaps the most mundane part of society life, but this did not mean that they lacked rules. Several steps were required, each with its symbolic thresholds to negotiate, before it was considered appropriate to go calling on someone. When a contact had been established, it had to be maintained through a multitude of different kinds of calls. It was necessary to know all the rules of the game in order to gain admittance to the world of the bourgeoisie.

Notes 1. Verardi, Goda tonen och den samma belefvenheten, 70–71. 2. Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. (2016), s.v. “call,” n. 12. 3. Gustaf Cederschiöld, Om ordlekar och andra uppsatser i språkliga och historiska ämnen (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1910), 128–30 (italics added). 4. Märta Helena Reenstierna, Årstadagboken: Journaler från åren 1793–1839, vol. 1, 1793–1812, ed. Sigurd Erixon (Stockholm: Generalstaben, 1946), 43. 5. Reenstierna, Årstadagboken, vol. 1; Reenstierna, Årstadagboken, vol. 2; Märta Helena Reenstierna, Årstadagboken: Journaler från åren 1793–1839, vol. 3, 1826–1839, ed. Sigurd Erixon (Stockholm: Generalstaben, 1953). 6. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 81. 7. André Oscar Wallenberg and Knut Agathon Wallenberg, Brevväxling mellan far och son, vol. 2, 1878–1885, (Stockholm: Stockholms enskilda bank, 1962). 8. Magasin för Konst, Nyheter och Moder 1, no, 1 (1823): 7. 9. Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 277. 10. Forsell, Sällskapslif och hemlif, 113, 144. 11. Curtin, Propriety and Position, 130–31, 136–37, 143. 12. Flanders, The Victorian House, 278. 13. Charlotte Eliza Humphry, Manners for Men, quoted in Murdoch, Daily Life of Victorian Women, 78. 14. Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 50. Strindberg and Rydberg never were presented to each other. 15. Florence Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness (Boston: G. W. Cottrell, [1860]), Chapter IX; Murdoch, Daily Life, 130–31, 136–37. 16. André Oscar Wallenberg and Knut Agathon Wallenberg, Brevväxling mellan far och son, vol. 1, 1864–1877, (Stockholm: Stockholms enskilda bank, 1962), 170–75. 17. Flanders, The Victorian House, 278.

The Art of Paying a Call 99 18. Verardi, Goda tonen, 13; Topelius, Dagböcker, 391. For an illustration of how this could be done, see, e.g., Bremer, “A Diary,” 17–18. 19. Kelly, Refinding Russia, 86. 20. Bremer, Fredrika Bremers brev, 330–31 (letter to Böklin, March 3, 1835); Emil Färnström, Fredrika Bremer och Erik Gustaf Geijer (Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 1964), 15–16. 21. Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832, 65. 22. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 77; Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 63. 23. Åkerman, Presidenten Fredrik Åkermans PM, 31. 24. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 77; Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 62–63. 25. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 156. 26. Curtin, Propriety and Position, 130–31, 136–37, 142–43. 27. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 237. 28. Curtin, Propriety and Position, 130–31, 136–37, 142–43. 29. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 81; Verardi, Goda tonen, 71; Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 64. 30. Bremer, The Neighbours, 122. 31. Marie-Louise Forsell, I Stockholm och på sommarnöje 1849–1852 (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1917), 7; Curtin, Propriety and Position, 143. 32. Flanders, The Victorian House, 279. 33. Virginie de Senancour, “Un parfait honnête homme,” in Journal des Dames et des Modes 32, no. 2 (1839), 157–59. 34. Bremer, Fredrika Bremers brev, 4. 35. Montgomery, “‘Natural Distinction,’” 27–30, 40. 36. August Emil Lindblom, Reseintryck: Ur min dagbok 1840 och 1841 (Carlskrona: Ameen & Comp, 1842); Bremer, Fredrika Bremers brev, 4; Åkerman, Presidenten Fredrik Åkermans PM, 25, 74–75; Gunnar Dahl, Flickan och löjtnanten: två resedagböcker från 1840-talets Europa (Lund: Historiska media, 2000), 22–31. 37. Mark Davies, “A Perambulating Paradox: British Literature and Image of Sweden 1770–1865,” PhD diss. (Lund: Lund University, 2000), 63–67. 38. François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Précis du siècle de Louis XV, vol 21 of Oeuvres completes de M. de Voltaire (Lyon: J.B. Delamolliere, 1792), 245. 39. Wallenberg and Wallenberg, Brevväxling, vol. 1, 209; Louise Johansson, Resa med Jenny Lind: Sällskapsdamen Louise Johanssons dagböcker, ed. Åke Davidsson (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1986), 48–49, 51. 40. Lloyd, Field Sports, vol. 2, 190. 41. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 15–16. 42. Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832, 124–25; Åkerman, Presidenten Fredrik Åkermans PM, 62. Hasselberg, “Den sociala ekonomin,” 96. 43. Wurst, Fabricating Pleasure, 188. 44. Arndt, Levnadsminnen, 192; Per Ulrik Kernell, Anteckningar under en resa i det sydliga Europa, ed. Chr. Stenhammar, 2nd ed. (Linköping: Axel Petre, 1826), 220, 223, 231, 265, 275; Koch, En familjekrönika, passim; Johansson, Resa med Jenny Lind, 36–37, 42, 44; Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 23; Maria Nyman, “Resandets gränser: Svenska resenärers skildringar av Ryssland under 1700-talet,” PhD diss. (Stockholm: Södertörn University, 2013), 167, 169, 189–93. 45. Davies, “A Perambulating Paradox,” 190–91. 46. Wallenberg and Wallenberg, Brevväxling, vol. 1; Wallenberg and Wallenberg, Brevväxling, vol. 2, passim.

100  The Art of Paying a Call 47. Leos Müller, Consuls, Corsairs and Commerce: The Swedish Consular Service and Long-Distance Shipping 1720–1815, Studia historica upsaliensia, vol. 213 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2004), 45–48. 48. Johansson, Resa med Jenny Lind, 35. 49. Davies, “A Perambulating Paradox,” 63–66, 180, 184. 50. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 115; Wallenberg and Wallenberg, Brevväxling, vol. 1, 282–84, 287–90. 51. Hartley, Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, Chapter IX. 52. Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 156–57. 53. Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 66–67. 54. Fredrik Wilhelm Scholander, Fredrik Wilhelm Scholanders Uplandsresa 1851: En resedagbok, ed. Gurli Taube (Malmö: Allhem, 1955), 39–40; Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 257, 273; Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 44; Hasselberg, “Den sociala ekonomin,” 99–101. 55. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 77; Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 63. 56. Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 156–62; Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 77–78. 57. Verardi, Goda tonen, 36; Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 78; Hartley, Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, Chapter IX. 58. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 172. 59. Mettele, “Die private Raum als öffentlicher Ort,” 164. 60. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 172. 61. Verardi, Goda tonen, 71. 62. Koch, En familjekrönika, 36–37. 63. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 131. 64. Topelius, Dagböcker, 435. 65. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 107. 66. Ulvros, Kärlekens villkor, 140; Hasselberg, “Den sociala ekonomin,” 98–99. 67. Ulvros, Fruar och mamseller, 200–201. 68. Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 277. 69. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 67. 70. Curtin, Propriety and Position, 142. 71. Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 277. 72. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 62. 73. Topelius, Dagböcker, 1055; Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1812–27, 278; Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832, 297. 74. Wright, Dagbok 1824–1834, 192; Topelius, Dagböcker, 151, 153, 236, 370, 382, 672. 75. Wright 1997, Dagbok 1835–1840, 128. 76. Sirenius, Elins tonårsdagbok, 94. 77. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 123. 78. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 328. 79. Johansson, Resa med Jenny Lind, 35, 56. 80. Verardi, Goda tonen, 71. 81. Reenstierna, Årstadagboken, vol. 3, 107, 149, 186, 211, 233, 320, 367. 82. Topelius, Dagböcker, 117, 231, 514, 798; Munthe, En landshövdingedotter i Umeå, 16–17, Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 130; Johansson, Resa med Jenny Lind, 56, 58. 83. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 285. 84. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 349–50; Topelius, Dagböcker, 233. 85. Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 158; Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 78. Regarding calls in connection with engagements, see Wallenberg and Wallenberg, Brevväxling, vol. 2, 29.

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86. Reenstierna, Årstadagboken, vol. 3, 87. 87. Sirenius, Elins tonårsdagbok, 88, 186. 88. Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 274–75. 89. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 314. 90. Bremer, The Neighbours, 37. 91. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 257–59. 92. Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832, 125. 93. Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 94; Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832, 212–13. 94. Taylor, Mourning Dress, 136. 95. Nils-Arvid Bringeus, “Att sörja i svart vid kungliga dödsfall,” in RIG: Kulturhistorisk tidskrift 77, no. 2 (1994): 38–41. 96. “Modes de Vienne,” in Journal des Dames et des Modes 38, no. 14 (1835). 97. Revue de la Mode: Gazette de la Famillie (1884–87); Le Grand Monde (1896–98); Persson, Empirens döttrar, 122–24; Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 252–53; Taylor, Mourning Dress, 30, 120–22. 98. Taylor, Mourning Dress, 30, 120–23, 136; Persson, Empirens döttrar, 130–33. 99. Taylor, Mourning Dress, 134–35. 100. Stadin, “Iklädd borgerlighet,” 173. 101. Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 94; Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832, 212–13; Hartley, Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, Chapter IX. 102. Hjalmar Söderberg, Samtidsnoveller, (Stockholm: Liber, 1978), 123. 103. Verardi, Goda tonen, 24. 104. Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 156. 105. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 124, 140, 145; Bremer, Fredrika Bremers brev, 4. 106. Curtin, Propriety and Position, 143. 107. Wright, Dagbok 1824–1834, 222. 108. Verardi, Goda tonen, 24; Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 62; Sirenius, Elins tonårsdagbok, 115; 140; Topelius, Dagböcker, 178; Kilpelä, “Inledning,” xiii. 109. Reenstierna, Årstadagboken, vol. 3, 92. 110. Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 2. 111. Sumner, Borgerliga ambitioner och adliga ideal, 309; Statistikcentralen, “Från växeltelefonister till mobilfolk: telekommunikationens historia i Finland i ljuset av statistiken,” http://www.stat.fi/tup/suomi90/ syyskuu_sv.html, accessed November 6, 2015; Tekniska museet, “Telefonen,” http://www.tekniskamuseet.se/1/389.html, accessed November 6, 2015.

6

The Practice of Morning Calls

In the introduction to this book, we accompanied the artist Carl Larsson on a formal call to Wilhelmina Hallwyl in 1898, when the forms of calls were well established. In this section, we first meet a man who during the 1830s, often went on a morning call to Natalie and Anders Eric Crohn in Helsinki, before we return to the call at the Hallwyls’.

Morning Calls at the Dean’s On the morning of Wednesday, June 10, 1835, the then thirty-year-old Magnus Wright, map-maker at the land surveying office in Helsinki, drawing teacher, and artist, paid a brief call at the house of the county governor of Kuopio, Colonel Ramsay. Later the same day he paid a call at the deanery. The dean, Dr. Anders Eric Crohn, and his wife Natalie were part of the city’s educated elite, the emerging bourgeoisie. They belonged to the ecclesiastical circles, but the dean was also a professor at the city’s university and was thus associated with the academic elite. Twelve years later, when Natalie Crohn took the initiative to start the charity organization that was given the name Fruntimmersföreningen [The women’s association], their social network expanded. At that point, the Crohn family’s contacts with the family of the county governor and the foremost commercial families in the city, and in Finland as a whole, became even stronger.1 The Crohns definitely belonged to the higher worlds of Helsinki. This was Magnus Wright’s 215th call on the Crohns in three and a half years. This was far too many according to convention, and he knew that all too well. But there would be even more calls made to this home, many more, and he would, in addition, be invited to dinners, coffee parties, and suppers there. The reason for this was that Sophie Sallmén, 2 a young woman for whom Magnus had warm feelings, lived with the Crohns. This afternoon in June he had been given an opportunity to speak to her alone and had finally become convinced that his feelings were reciprocated.3 This call thus had a private purpose, while the call at the county governor’s was a formal call.

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Image 6.1  Magnus Wright. Source: Portrait painted by his brother, Ferdinand Wright. Wikipedia Commons.

Calls were a serious matter. To a young man who wanted to achieve success in life, in his profession, in society life, and in love, calls were indispensable. This is clear from the diary of Magnus Wright. In it, he carefully noted which calls he had made every day, and often also how long he stayed in each place and the people he met there. In addition, he, like many other diarists during the 1830s and 1840s, made note of which calls he himself received in his own home. Calls continued to be important within the bourgeoisie in the Baltic Sea region for most of the nineteenth century. This can be illustrated by the young naval officer Knut Wallenberg who, during a short visit by

104  The Practice of Morning Calls navy ships to Gothenburg in 1872, asked of his father, banker André Oscar Wallenberg, that he this time would not be required to make the calls he normally was expected to make on behalf of his father and the bank.4 When a few years later Knut himself had begun working in the banking world, reporting about calls continued in letters to his father. When he and his wife lived in Paris in 1879, he carefully listed the people he had called on, with respect to both friendship calls and formal calls as well as to business calls.5 Visits were made with the greatest seriousness, and they were events that were documented. After Magnus Wright became engaged to Sophie Sallmén, formalities were not as strict as they had been earlier; he was by now considered a friend in the house. It was nevertheless important to make a good impression, and for this reason, he, for instance, always made sure that he was clean-shaven and dressed for calling when he called on the Crohns.6 On the other hand, the young man was less strict when it came to how often he called at the Crohn residence, at what time of day he came calling, and how long he stayed. His wish to be close to Sophie often led him to call several times a week, and on some occasions several times on the same day. This meant that, up until his wedding, he most often made between four and seven calls a day, all calls included.7 Usually, he did not go to the Crohns’ before ten o’clock in the morning, but one time he was already there at 8:00 a.m. Otherwise, he could make calls during the greater part of the day. However, he was careful not to pay any calls during the time when the Crohns were having their dinner.8 On some occasions, the host couple had not wanted to receive guests, and for this reason, they had locked the front door. Wright respected that, even if he assumed that the family was at home. Only once did he consider sneaking in through the kitchen, but after an inner struggle, he pulled himself together and desisted.9 On Sunday, February 21, 1836, Magnus Wright knocked on the door of the Crohn residence at two o’clock in the afternoon. He did not live far away, so as usual, he had walked over for this call. When he had been admitted by the maid he left his galoshes, coat, and walking cane in the entrance hall. In the drawing room he found both the dean and his wife, and, to Magnus’s great joy, Sophie. First of all, he went up to the hostess, Natalie Crohn, who warmly welcomed him. The hostess was the key figure of the calls; it was normally she who was expected to receive morning calls even when her husband and other family members were present. Where the hostess was placed in the room was of importance for the formalization of the calls, and this was, therefore, regulated by the conventions of the time. According to Anne Martin-Fugier, who has studied the conditions mainly in France and England, the hostess should, when receiving calls, sit comfortably to the right of the fireplace in a room.10 If the reception lasted for several hours it could be nice to sit in a comfortably heated location. Charles

The Practice of Morning Calls 105 Dickens was well acquainted with the habits of the bourgeoisie. In his novel Our Mutual Friend, from 1865, he describes the place of the hostess: “Facing the fire between the settles, a sofa, a footstool, and a little table, formed a centerpiece devoted to Mrs. Boffin.”11 In his memoirs from his years of study in England, Swedish secondary school teacher Pelle Ödman described the drawing room as “the sumptuous throne room of the ladies.”12 In the 1880s, in England and France, the central role of the hostess during calls was made clear by moving her position to the middle of the room.13 Also, pictures of drawing rooms in Berlin from the 1880s and 1890s often show a comfortable chair placed at the center of the room.14 There is much to suggest that this chair was intended for the hostess. The advantage of this position was that the hostess could see all the guests who arrived and that they could come up directly to greet her when they entered the room. In Sweden, and very probably also in Finland, it became common considerably earlier for the hostess at receiving calls to position herself at the center of the room. In the 1840s, it was maintained that there should be an armchair placed a bit inside the room opposite the door.15 The chair should face the door, so that the hostess could see when the guests entered. This was exactly the way Wilhelmina Hallwyl had furnished her everyday drawing room in 1898. Placement in the room was a symbolic indication of the role of the hostess as the center of a family’s social life. A guest should always, after being announced by a maid, approach the hostess and greet her. The hostess could then shake hands and greet the guest while sitting down. When she did this, she would tilt her head and bend her back slightly in response to the guest’s greeting. In etiquette books published in the Nordic countries, it was emphasized that men should kiss the hostess’s hand only in circles where this was customary. The hostess signaled this by holding out her gloveless hand to be kissed.16 The guest was not allowed to do this if it could embarrass the hostess. If the person who entered was an adult woman or a man of high station, to whom the hostess wanted to show particular respect, the custom was, already from the early nineteenth century, that the hostess should get up and approach the guest. But courtesy had its limits; in order to maintain her dignity, the hostess was then to take one, or, at most, three steps toward the visitor, absolutely no more.17 This ritual appears to have been the same in at least all of Western and Northern Europe. Fredrika Bremer described this greeting in the following way in the novel The Neighbours: A silken dress rustled, and a lady entered, […] conducted by a gentleman. She looked altogether comme il faut, stepped quickly, but with

106  The Practice of Morning Calls great self-possession, through the room towards Ma chère mère, who raised herself majestically, and advancing a few paces to meet her, looked highly imposing.18 The hostess is here described as majestic and imposing. There is no doubt who was the main figure in this drawing room. In an English book of etiquette from 1860 the dignity of the hostess was emphasized even more: if it was a man who came calling, the hostess should get up, but not approach. In such a case, he was the one who should advance all the way to her.19 Pelle Ödman, who often compared the conditions in England to those in Sweden, describes a call he made on a couple of ladies. In greeting him each made a diminutive movement with her head or eyelids. Ödman wrote that, during his initial months in England, he found this coolness offensive, but later he became accustomed to the English and their more reserved way of greeting. 20 After a guest had greeted the hostess, it was polite to sit down next to her in order to state the business of the visit or simply to engage in small talk for a short while. For this reason, there was in many drawing rooms an additional chair next to that of the hostess and possibly a small table. When Magnus Wright came into the drawing room there were already a couple of guests there, with whom he was previously acquainted, and more people arrived after him. He was, therefore, expected to before long excuse himself and leave the place of honor next to the hostess to someone else in order to mingle with the other guests. 21 Because morning visits in the northern periphery of Europe in the 1830s went on for a large part of the day, there were rarely a large number of people in the room at the same time, even though there could be many guests during one single day. 22 But on Sundays, there were often many guests calling at the Crohn residence. When several other guests were already present, one book of etiquette recommended that a guest merely bow slightly to all the other guests, both on arriving and when it was time to leave. 23 It was considered rude to go around and greet each and every person, thereby interrupting the conversation that the other guests were presumed to be having with each other. Because this day there were only two guests it was, however, possible for Wright to shake their hands. Perhaps things became a little less casual when more guests arrived after a while? In contexts with many kinds of guests, it was important to find suitable topics for conversation with all of them. It would not do, as one writer put it, to talk about the fine arts with a financier or about share prices with a scholar or, even less so, with a poet. 24 The Crohn home was linked mainly to the world of learning. There the conversation could be expected to revolve around cultural issues or other topics relevant to the family’s network. Thus the risk of choosing the “wrong” topic of conversation was not so great.

The Practice of Morning Calls 107 Exactly what the conversations were about on this day in February we do not know, but it was in the middle of the Season and the entertainments of the city were at their most intense, so it is possible that the pleasures of the city were at least touched upon by Wright and other younger guests. Another favored topic of conversation in Helsinki was greetings from family and friends in other parts of the country and reports on what was happening there. When a person had returned from a journey, he or she was expected to relate, during a homecoming call, what was happening in the place from which he or she had returned, and to convey greetings to acquaintances in the capital. Letters from family and friends usually contained greetings and news passed on to the host couple or to one or a few of the other guests. Often such a letter was taken along and chosen parts were read out loud. 25 In this way, the call became something of a communications center. The conversation was expected to be about literature, music, or art rather than about personal matters, unless a person had had a promotion or some other happy event had occurred. In order to be sure that there was not a dearth of suitable topics of conversation, it was recommended that the host couple display a newly-published book, a journal with interesting cultural news from abroad, or pictures that guests

Image 6.2  Kalaset hos pastorns [The party at the vicar’s]. Source: Painting by Alexander Laureus, 1815. Finnish National Gallery, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki. Photo: Janne Mäkinen.

108  The Practice of Morning Calls could gather around. It was important to entertain the guests, but also, and maybe even more so, to display the family’s learning and urbanity. On the other hand, guests were expected to contribute to a comfortable atmosphere by presenting interesting topics. A few years earlier Magnus Wright had, together with his brothers Wilhelm and Ferdinand, published a large work containing illustrations, Sveriges fåglar [Swedish birds]. The illustrations had become popular and were increasingly circulated in both Sweden and Finland. These could be an appropriate and cherished topic of conversation. For calls to be pleasant for all parties, refined language and the avoidance of all controversial topics of conversation were recommended. Politics and religion belonged to the topics that were considered inappropriate, especially if there were strangers among the visitors.26 One source, who describes circumstances in Berlin, mentions particularly the taboo on religion, which he afterward linked to the fact that in the circle of acquaintances there were both Christian and Jewish families.27 Private topics should also be avoided, as should matters of which not all guests would have knowledge. Preferably a guest should endeavor to converse about things that were of interest to the host family.28 Calls were a way to pay one’s respects to the people in a house, and it was a guest’s task to entertain the host couple, in particular, the hostess, the key person of the call. In England, conversation with other guests in connection with calls is said to have been subject to a number of rules of etiquette. Many of these dealt with the struggle for status, the signaling of distance by the higher bourgeoisie in relation to those they considered to have a lower social status. For example, during a call, it was considered forward or even rude for someone to strike up a conversation with another guest who was felt to have a higher social status. In contradistinction, the opposite, that a more distinguished person addressed a person who was lower on the social ladder, was considered a friendly gesture. 29 Of importance when assessing a person’s status was the man’s profession, which thus affected the etiquette of both men and women. Vigilance regarding social hierarchy within the bourgeoisie and a person’s own position therein was an important part of calling and British drawing room culture as a whole. In the Baltic Sea region, a hierarchy of speakers is not mentioned in this way in any historical source, but this does not mean that there was not a perception of how differences in status had a bearing on conversations. Magnus Wright knew well that a call should be brief, but on this particular February Sunday, he stayed for two hours. During this time several guests had time to both arrive and depart. He made conversation with the host couple and the other guests, but most of all he tried to be close to Sophie, or at least keep her in sight. Not until around 4:00 p.m. did he take his leave and go home. He stayed long at the Crohns’, but otherwise, he tried to keep his calls brief. On one typical day, Thursday, January 28, 1836, he noted in his

The Practice of Morning Calls 109 diary that he had paid seven calls, all after 5:00 p.m. After the calls, he went to a party, to which he arrived at 7:30 p.m., obviously a bit late because by then the function had already been going on for a while. Seven calls in two and a half hours, including walking between the different houses and changing his clothes before the party, suggests that these calls were made according to etiquette.30 When a guest was about to leave it was enough to say goodbye to the hostess and the host, if he was at home, and possibly nod to any other guests who noticed the departure. If there were many guests it was possible in France to leave “in the English manner,” i.e. to leave without saying goodbye even to the hostess.31 The designation suggests that this was considered possible also in England. Two hours after Magnus Wright’s leaving the Crohns he could not resist the temptation to make an additional call on them. This time his stayed until ten o’clock at night, which is why around 9:00 p.m. he was invited to partake of a light supper with tea together with the family. 32 According to Daniel Pool, in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century, nothing was served during morning calls. It was only in the latter half of the century, when five-o’clock tea had become a British tradition, that refreshments began to be served in connection with morning calls.33 Then tea was usually served. This was true not only of England but also seems to have been the custom in all of Northern Europe. Often there was a tea table in the drawing room where petits fours and small canapés had been placed on the table.34 In Sweden, tea was often served, at least from the mid-1830s, in connection with morning calls that were made after dinner.35 Tea was usually served by the daughters of the house or by another young female relative. Marie-Louise Forsell in Stockholm describes in her diary how the responsibility of setting the tea table and serving the guests rested with her and her sister. They then shared the task, so that each served tea every second week.36 Tea tables had an important function in the social interaction that went on in drawing rooms and parlors. Also in Prussia, tea tables were an obvious part of the furniture of a drawing room.37 In Finland, coffee was also sometimes served.38 It may seem odd to serve tea and snacks during calls, which according to etiquette should last for no more than fifteen minutes. But there was here a certain difference between formal calls and those made to maintain a bond of friendship. Friendship calls could in reality last longer than etiquette allowed. Especially when men went calling in the 1840s in Sweden and Finland, they could remain for upwards of an hour; indeed, in certain cases for even longer.39 In Helsinki, one could then, if tea was served, talk about a “tea call” (te-visit).40 Also in France men were thought to have more time for a cup of tea than did women. Women were expected to make a larger number of

110  The Practice of Morning Calls calls during the same day and, therefore, had to make their calls briefer. But it was nevertheless not uncommon for women on friendship calls to stay for between fifteen and thirty minutes.41 Within the closest circle of friends, there was a somewhat more relaxed view on the strict etiquette requirements for brief visits. During the first half of the nineteenth century, there were in Sweden and Finland morning calls directed to men. These were often calls paid by a young unmarried man to another unmarried man. Both Magnus Wright and Zackarias Topelius made notes in their diaries about calls they received, but sometimes also about calls they paid to other young men. These could sometimes be farewell or arrival calls, but were often exclusively friendship calls.42 In such cases, tea was usually served, but a comment by Topelius implies that guests could also be treated to toddy on such all-male calls.43 Generally speaking, in such cases etiquette requirements among the young men seem to have been less important.

Image 6.3  Et selskab af danske kunstnere i Rom [A company of Danish artists in Rome]. The men have just finished their coffee; some smoke pipes of different lengths, two smoke cigars. Most of them are wearing their hats indoors. Etiquette was more relaxed in all-male gatherings. Source: Painting by Constantin Hansen, 1837. National Gallery of Denmark (Statens Museum for Kunst), Copenhagen.

The Practice of Morning Calls 111 A decent drawing room for receiving calls was, in the final decades of the nineteenth century, necessary for many people in order to maintain and preferably raise their social status. Author Agnes von Krusenstjerna grew up in the family of an upper-middle-class officer. In an autobiographical sequence of novels, she describes the life of her alter ego, Viveka von Lagerkrona, during the decades around the year 1900.44 After the retirement of her father from service as a colonel in the Hälsinge Regiment, the family moved from their large apartment in Gävle to a smaller one in Stockholm. Krusenstjerna here described the ideas about the importance of a drawing room. To a woman in the bourgeoisie, a drawing room for receiving morning calls was necessary for her class identity and perhaps also for her self-esteem: “The colonel’s wife had immediately reserved the largest room for her drawing room. She had to have a drawing room for receiving calls; she would have felt déclassé if she had had to be without this drawing room.”45 The lifestyle shaped in the drawing room and parlor was the responsibility and duty of women to at least the same extent as it was of men.46 The drawing room belonged to the more important arenas within the field of bourgeois culture, and it was a room with a woman at its center. The furnishing of these rooms was also to a large extent the responsibility of women. In 1878, American author Harriet Prescott Spofford pointed out in a book that furnishing in no way was a trivial matter. The study of interior decoration is in some respects “as important as the study of politics,” she argued, “for the private home is at the foundation of the public state.”47 Here if anything it was the reception room of the bourgeoisie that took on that role. The drawing room was one of the places in which the economic, social, and cultural capital of the bourgeoisie was represented, and one of the platforms for the power position of the bourgeoisie. Morning calls stood out as the hub around which society life was shaped and which held the field of bourgeois culture together. The ritualization of calls made everyday visits to friends and acquaintances into something special and significant.

The Long Morning Morning calls were paradoxically enough made primarily after 1:00 p.m.48 This can create some confusion regarding concepts when studying calls. Diaries from Helsinki and Stockholm in the 1830s and 1840s show that morning calls were paid almost throughout the day. There does not seem to have been a general rule regarding a particular time when morning calls were supposed to be made. In etiquette books, it was emphasized that it was important to know what was customary in the town or city in question.49 In other words, times could vary from country to country and from place to place, and they also changed over time. A person who

112  The Practice of Morning Calls wanted to live in the world had to keep abreast of the local customs. The only thing everyone could be sure of was that the morning all across Europe lasted considerably longer than to twelve o’clock noon. Within the bourgeoisie in Sweden and Finland, the morning was believed to continue for most of the day. In the 1830s, Magnus Wright in Helsinki used the word förmiddag (morning) about the day up until 5:00 p.m. Then began the afternoon, which according to his perception of time lasted until sometime between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m., when it was followed by the evening. For daughter of a civil servant Marie-Louise Forsell, who described the situation in Stockholm in the 1840s, it was morning until around 6:00 p.m., when the afternoon began. She used the word afternoon as a synonym for evening.50 In the 1870s, another young woman described how she visited a family in the afternoon, stayed a couple of hours, and returned home around midnight.51 Even in England morning in this context is said to have encompassed the entire day at least up to around 5:00 p.m.52 Within the bourgeoisie it was, in other words, possible to go on morning calls until around 6:00 p.m. In France and England, in spite of the term morning call, it was considered inappropriate to visit anyone before 1:00 p.m. During the morning the hostess was expected to devote herself to household matters and to going to the seamstress and running other personal errands. In these two countries, it was said that throughout the entire period from 1830 to the end of the century the time between 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. was reserved for social duties, for paying and receiving morning calls. 53 In England, it was not uncommon for the time recommended for a call to vary depending on how close the guest and the host couple were to each other. The closer the guest was to the hostess, the later in the day he or she could come to visit.54 The prolonged morning can be linked to the urban lifestyle of the bourgeoisie. Those who lived in this world were not dependent on the movements of the sun and on daylight, as were the lower social orders. Society life with dinners, suppers, and other private functions, but also theatre visits and similar things that lasted far into the night, affected both working times and the times during the day when meals were eaten. These meal times changed significantly within the urban elite during the nineteenth century. Dinner had, as the name suggests in languages such as German (Mittag) or in Swedish (middag), traditionally been eaten in the middle of the day. In the nineteenth century, this was still common within the lower social orders, but among the higher social classes, the time when dinner was eaten was gradually pushed forward. In Northern Europe, 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. was, at least up until the 1840s, a common time for having dinner among the bourgeoisie. This has been documented for both Stockholm and Helsinki and for the British cities of Leeds and Birmingham. In France, dinner is said to have been eaten an hour

The Practice of Morning Calls 113 later. 55 In the Eastern Baltic Sea region, the custom of having an earlier dinner was retained longer than elsewhere. The Baltic German population in Riga usually had dinner at 12:30 p.m. in the 1830s, but also there the time for dinner increasingly came to be pushed forward. 56 When dinner was eaten at some time between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m., dinner parties were not as common as they later were to become. Guests were invited mainly during the evenings or on Sundays. This meant that up until the middle of the nineteenth century it was considerably more common to invite guests for supper than for dinner. Supper could, especially if it was linked with a ball, be a larger meal with several dishes. But at least in the Nordic, countries it was also common to invite people for supper with tea or some other lighter repast in the evening.57 By the middle of the nineteenth century, dinner was eaten even later, first in Western Europe, but eventually also in the Baltic Sea region. In the 1860s, it began to be common in the higher social tiers in London and Paris not to have dinner until 7:00 p.m. or even later. By that time the father of the family had arrived home from work. In Riga and in Stockholm, 5:00 p.m. was the common dinnertime in the 1870s.58 At the turn of the century in 1900 dinner had been pushed even further forward also in these cities.59 Having dinner late was a distinctive sign, as something that marked one’s social status. In his novel The Serious Game, set in the 1890s, author Hjalmar Söderberg let the time for dinner indicate the social positions of his characters. The young, unmarried journalist Arvid Stjärnblom has his dinners at the Café du Nord at 4:30 p.m. Dagmar, who is the daughter of a property developer and Stjärnblom’s future wife, points out that “at home we don’t dine until six,” which was a sign that her family had a higher social status.60 The higher the social position, the later the dinnertime; the very latest dinners were usually had by the royal court.61 The ever-later dinner is connected to changes in the requirement for being present at work and the separation between the home and men’s places of work. When at the beginning of the nineteenth century the workplace was adjacent to or within comfortable walking distance of the residence it was possible for men to walk home to have dinner with their families and then return to work. When the distance between workplaces and residences grew larger, this was no longer possible. In small towns, men could sometimes, even during the latter half of the nineteenth century, have dinner at home in the middle of the day, but the cultural connection between late dinner habits and a higher social position affected dinnertimes there as well. If calls were to be paid after 1:00 p.m., there was nevertheless a limitation: it was considered extremely inappropriate to call on people during the time when people of a city or in a group had dinner or some other meal. In Sweden and Finland, the hours for calling were, therefore, divided into two periods for a large part of the nineteenth century:

114  The Practice of Morning Calls before and after dinner. How long these periods were depended on when dinner was taken in a specific city at a particular time. Toward the end of the 1830s, it seems to have become increasingly common in Helsinki to go calling after 5:00 p.m. In 1838, Magnus Wright described in detail the calls he made on weekdays to his male friends during what he and other Finnish men called the gossiping hour (skvallertimmen), which took place between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m.62 By this time of day many men in the emerging bourgeoisie had quit work and found it easier to go calling than earlier during the day. However, on Sundays calling hours still lasted throughout the day. In the 1820s and at the beginning of the 1830s, an appropriate etiquette was not yet firmly in place in the northern periphery of Europe. This is made clear by, among other things, the fact that calls, in general, were paid throughout the day, beginning early in the morning. This should not be interpreted to mean that there were many people who violated etiquette, but rather that there were no established rules for calls in the northern periphery of Europe. Beginning in the latter part of the 1830s, there was a slow development toward concentrating calls to the same hours as in England and France.63

In the Field of Tension Between Morning Calls and Work During the first half of the nineteenth century, men in Sweden and Finland made morning calls approximately as often as did women. In this section, I will discuss how it was possible for men to both manage their work and be as active as they were during morning calls. Marie-Louise Forsell, the daughter of a civil servant, noted in her diary the people who came calling. Thursday, February 23, 1843 was, as usual, filled with morning calls. Of the nine guests on this day, six were women and three were men. One day somewhat later was also a typical day, and then there were nine men and three women who called on the family.64 The examples are many, and they show that the culture of calling during the first half of the nineteenth century included both women and men, and married as well as unmarried people.65 When guests could come calling during the greater part of the day, many women in felt that this broke up the day and prevented them from performing their own duties.66 Heaven defend us from these morning calls – they will be my death. It is insufferable to use one’s entire day for the sordid prattle about balls, spectacles, weather, and wind – is it then not more than enough to in addition sacrifice one’s evenings as well? These rosecolored shackles – that consist of the politeness of others, and this politeness to which one voluntarily has to submit. One must kiss these shackles.67

The Practice of Morning Calls 115

Image 6.4  Marie-Louise Forsell. Source: Portrait drawn by Maria Röhl in 1850, National Library of Sweden, Stockholm.

Marie-Louise Forsell described morning visits as a compulsion, a compulsion one had to kiss; that is to say, accept it and learn to like it, she felt. She returned to this theme in her diary several times over the following years.68 Her comment was personal, but a similar ambivalence was expressed by many writers in the Nordic countries during the first half of the

116  The Practice of Morning Calls nineteenth century. Society life and, in particular, receiving calls were described as time-consuming, but also as things that under no circumstances must be neglected. These writers all had in common that they belonged to the emerging bourgeoisie. On Thursday, February 23, 1843, Marie-Louise Forsell commented resignedly that she would never again make plans for her mornings because she never had an opportunity to realize them anyway. The reason was that she was constantly interrupted in her duties by guests who came calling. She was tired of being tied to society life all day long.69 A few years later she burst out in a, for the time, very typical comment: “Here we are every day inundated with morning calls. I am extremely delighted to see my friends, but extremely tired of all these visits, which prevent me from going about my business and doing all the things I have to deal with and think of.”70 Her contact with her children, her management of household work, and private matters were neglected when the hostess constantly had to be available to receive guests. It was as in the poem below: although they did nothing they were constantly busy. Quite differently my life has passed Since last we spoke together, For I have seen the great wide world, And roamed the streets of Stockholm. Peculiar is my way of life, Perchance my days are humdrum? Ah! No, although I nothing do, My friend, each hour is busy.71 During the 1830s and 1840s, men in Sweden and Finland also felt that calling had a detrimental effect on their daily work, but this did not prevent them from paying many calls. Magnus Wright was among those who found it difficult to make time for both work and calls. Friday, January 13, 1832 is one of the days when he had his day filled with good friends and other men coming to call on him. He complained in his diary that this meant that he had not gotten any work done in the entire day. His workday became, as it did for the women, chopped up or even completely destroyed. Men’s own calls could intrude even more. Wright made a note of every call he paid. Let us, therefore, follow him on a few typical days in the years 1835–38. He was then permanently employed as a map-maker at the land surveying office in Helsinki, and he also worked one or two afternoons a week as a drawing teacher at a school; in addition to this, he gave private lessons in drawing to some students. The first two years he was a bachelor; the next two he was married. His working hours seem to have been more than full, but at the same time, his social life was incredibly busy.

The Practice of Morning Calls 117 On Tuesday, March 3, 1835, two male friends came to call on Wright early in the morning. He thereafter went to his job at the land surveying office, where he arrived at 10:30 a.m. After an hour and a half, he went home again, shaved, changed clothes, and went on a call himself.72 In this way, the work weeks passed for young Wright: virtually every day work alternated with calls and invitations to dinner, usually around 2:00 p.m., and sometimes also with coffee or tea parties later in the day, after which followed the amusements of the evening. Social life dominated his time. This was in no way unusual; on the contrary, there are many examples from Finland and Sweden of a social life that occupied a great part of the waking hours of both women and men during the first half of the nineteenth century.73 I interpret this as an expression of there being a social structure in these countries that at this time was vague and in the process of changing. Society life and the entire lifestyle that was connected to it was a way for individuals and families to find their positions and social identities in the community. Magnus Wright was well aware of his calling having a detrimental effect on his work. When he on March 1, 1836 had been employed at the land surveying office for one year, he decided that in the future he would come to work more often than previously. However, it proved to be difficult to stick to this commitment, and he rarely spent much time in the office. For example, on Monday, March 14, 1836, he made a note of holding a private lesson in drawing between nine and ten in the morning, whereafter he worked at the office until noon. After this, he paid a call before dinner, and finally, he went to teach for an hour at the school.74 He managed approximately four hours of work during that day; the rest of his time was spent on calls and other social interactions. On the Wednesday of the same week calls and strolls with friends filled up his entire day, which was something of a personal record. He neglected both his morning and afternoon classes at school, and his work at the land surveying office. “This contributed to my worries,” was his laconic comment.75 Two weeks later he again decided to begin to take his work seriously.76 His ambitions were good, and for a brief period he worked relatively diligently, but also during the coming years calls and invitations took up significant portions of his days.77 For several years it was the calls that won the battle for his time. By October 1838, he was a married man. He then renewed his commitment to go to work every day.78 This time he seems to have been a little more successful. He and his male friends then began to limit their calls on each other to after the end of the workday, at five o’clock in the afternoon, the gossiping hour.79 As a married man, he could entrust part of the responsibility for making invitation and thank you calls to his wife Sophie. It would be difficult to completely refrain from making morning calls, because some calls were connected to his work, while others were

118  The Practice of Morning Calls goodbye calls or other formal morning calls. But most calls were friendship calls to friends and acquaintances. If he completely refrained from making calls he would be cut off from the society life of the world to which he wished to belong. Even though men began to place a majority of their calls after 5:00 p.m., they also paid calls during the greater part of the day. How did they reconcile this with the demands of working life? I shall never forget the great impression that my entry into this comprehensive and well-organized government department made on me. I arrived at eleven in the morning, since this is the time that the department is supposed to open. […] At that fatal clock-stroke [2:00 p.m.] all the civil-servants jumped up from their places as if a fire had broken out. When I asked a young colleague what this meant, the old notary, who had overheard my question, observed: “The first duty of a civil servant, Sir, is to be punctual.” At two minutes past two not a soul was left in all those rooms.80 This quote is an excerpt from near the beginning of August Strindberg’s first novel, The Red Room (Röda Rummet), from 1879. The novel was a caricature of the conditions in Swedish government offices in the middle of the 1850s. In a footnote to later editions of the novel, the author claimed that this description was untrue after the reorganization of government offices.81 Working hours are in this context said to be between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., but many of the young temporary civil servants did not come in until around noon. This is framed as a parody and thus an exaggeration, but the description is closer to the reality that is described in diaries and memoirs than we expect. The historical sources testify to how also junior office workers and other employees in civil service departments and government institutions in Sweden and Finland during the first half of the nineteenth century acted relatively independently with respect to their working hours.82 While on a journey in the German states in the summer of 1846, county governor Fredrik Åkerman reflected on working times there and in his home country. He thought that “Sweden must be a rich country after all, because in general people in all classes of society work so little but nevertheless do well.”83 Also within banking, working hours appear to have been comparatively flexible during the three or four first decades of the nineteenth century. One illustrative example is Alexander Armfelt in Helsinki, acting manager of the Bank of Finland. In 1828, he had drawn up a schedule

The Practice of Morning Calls 119 for his working day. After being awakened at 8:00 a.m. and taking an indoor walk it was time for breakfast at 10:00 a.m. He would arrive at the bank at 10:45 a.m., where he stayed until he went home to dinner, which he had at exactly 2:00 p.m. After this, his working day was over and he could read the newspaper and make calls.84 Armfelt’s working hours were thus in principle the same as those mentioned in Strindberg’s novel. In reality, it turned out that Armfelt had problems sticking to this work discipline, especially with respect to the morning hours. When on one occasion there was a cash audit at the bank and his presence was required, he was awoken by a messenger at 9:00 a.m., which he described as “at an ungodly hour.” One reason for this reaction was that society life with calls during the day and suppers and balls until far into the wee hours also during the working week required sleeping in on mornings.85 The view of working hours described above conflicts with our traditional view of the bourgeois work ethic, characterized by hard work and an adherence to duty. A contributing factor for this (lack of a) work ethic in Sweden and Finland, and the tolerance that both private and public employers seem to have had for these circumstances during the first half of the nineteenth century, were the low wages of the junior civil servants, the so-called extraordinary officials (non-permanent employees). For those who did not have a fortune to live on, it was, as it was for Magnus Wright, often necessary to have additional jobs on the side in order to support themselves.86 This made it difficult for their employers to demand their presence on all days of the week. But a man in a high position, such as Armfelt, could also have short working days. Many men obviously chose society life before their work, which can in part be linked to the ideals that characterized the emerging bourgeoisie during the early nineteenth century. David Tjeder has studied the male ideal of the middle classes in Sweden during the nineteenth century. He shows how the emerging middle class initially took over the ideals of the aristocracy and partially reformulated them. The aristocratic male ideal was the “man of the world,” an ideal that was based on external display, a courteous manner, clothes, and appearance, rather than on character. The art of pleasing was key, and this was done more easily in society life than at work.87 It was also in society life that the emerging bourgeoisie found its social identity and position at a time of social turbulence. The duties of society life thus appeared just as important as the requirements of work, sometimes even more important. During the 1840s, voices began to be raised in the Nordic countries in favor of more stringent demands for men’s presence at their places of work and for greater efficiency. But, the demands of society life on

120  The Practice of Morning Calls those who wanted to belong to the world did not change. In Sweden, an adjustment of working hours and salaries for government employees in 1858 meant that junior civil servants would no longer be forced to have additional jobs other than their office jobs in order to support themselves. With this change, it also became easier to place more stringent demands on their presence at their places of work.88 From the 1860s, the bourgeoisie had grown sufficiently powerful in the Nordic countries for the aristocratic ideals to appear obsolete. By the middle of the nineteenth century, new ideals had begun to be established in the Baltic Sea region, above all in the business world. This can be illustrated by Thomas Mann’s novel Buddenbrooks (1901), where the third generation of the family, through Thomas Buddenbrook, takes control of the company in Lübeck in the middle of the 1850s. He represents a businessman of the new age, and the gentlemen of the Exchange nod approvingly at his eagerness to make money. “Thomas Buddenbrook’s desire to protect and increase the prestige of the old firm made him love to be present in the daily struggle for success.”89 Career and economic success began to increase in import. In the Nordic countries during the latter part of the nineteenth century, this bourgeois male ideal, characterized by a striving for wealth, career, and power, was established as a legitimate ideal, above all in the business world. It superseded ideals which during the early nineteenth century had been inherited from the nobility. In the United States, the new ideal was designated the self-made man. Character, a sense of duty, and hard work were seen as the road to success, especially economic success.90 This view of the successful businessman, together with a stricter organizational structure within the government administration and the universities, had an effect on the work ethic, and reduced the opportunities men had to make morning calls during their working hours. For the period of 1850–80, there are considerably fewer historical sources regarding morning calls in the cities around the Baltic Sea. But men who paid farewell calls and other formal calls are still mentioned as something natural.91 Young, unmarried men paid considerably more calls than older, married men.92 When Knut Wallenberg as a young naval officer was in the maritime city of Karlskrona on May 3, 1874, he shamefacedly confessed in a letter to his father that he on that day had not paid a single call.93 He had thus neglected to safeguard the family’s contacts in the city. At this time men had commonly begun to pay their morning calls at around 6:00 p.m. In the 1870s, the men in the Baltic Sea region had begun to limit their calls to special days and reception hours, usually following the end of the business day.94 In many families, the home was kept open for calls so that the men came home just in time for reception hours or when half the time had already passed. For instance, at the house of German industrial magnate Friedrich Alfred Krupp, it was common for guests to call on his

The Practice of Morning Calls 121 wife Margarethe, so that they were already present when he came home from work.95 This can be compared to France, where around the turn of the century in 1900, the requirements of work led to many people choosing to receive only evening calls, after 8:30 p.m.96 In a traditional, cohesive society there is a mutual understanding of how time is to be organized. When the new capitalist society began to emerge in the Baltic Sea region this previously self-evident view of time disintegrated. For a few decades there arose a lack of clarity, and perhaps also insecurity, when it came to the use of time.97 Only after the middle of the nineteenth century, when the new social landscape had begun to be clearer and acquire a more definite shape, could a new, more fixed view of the organization of time be established.

Returning to the Call on Wilhelmina Hallwyl We will now return to the artist Carl Larsson on his intended formal call on Wilhelmina Hallwyl one autumn day in 1898. Before such a momentous call, preparations were important. Carl had donned a new jacket and a black waistcoat with his striped trousers and a red cravat. His dress was perhaps not as formal as etiquette prescribed for this type of call, but a famous artist could take a few liberties. Over these garments, he wore his overcoat, a hat with a round crown, and mustard-colored gloves. It was autumn and it looked like rain, so he had chosen an umbrella instead of a walking cane even though this was not as elegant. His glasses were on his nose and in his waistcoat pocket there was a small pack of calling cards, but he had put one of these in his coat pocket, where it would be easy to reach. There are no diary notes or letters that describe this call. But based on what we know about the artist, the hostess, the etiquette of the time, and above all the social context, we can imagine such a call. After Wilhelmina’s death, the Hallwyl family home was preserved as a museum. And for this reason, it has been possible for me, as a historian, to go there in order to get a feeling for what Carl and other guests saw and experienced during a call. The purpose of repeatedly visiting the house, doffing my outer clothes, walking up the stairs and into the morning room has been to try and immerse myself into the experience of paying a call to a representative of the bourgeoisie at the end of the nineteenth century.98 The Hallwyls belonged to the business world, and were among the most distinguished bourgeoisie of the country, where the boundary with the aristocracy was fluid. Walther Hallwyl originally came from Switzerland and was of noble birth, but lived in Sweden as a businessman and entrepreneur. Through his marriage to Wilhelmina, he had been able to take over Ljusne-Woxna AB, the business empire of his fatherin-law, Wilhelm Kempe, which included ironworks, forest properties,

122  The Practice of Morning Calls a sawmill, and much else.99 Wilhelmina Hallwyl collected art and had a general interest in culture, which made it possible for the family, like several other families within the business world at this time, to show that they belonged to the cultural elite of the city. Their house on Hamngatan 4, which had been completed the same year, was one of the very last city palaces in Stockholm. It had been designed by the well-known architect Isak Gustaf Clason. The palace had an imposing and decorated frontage, influenced by Venetian Late Gothic and Spanish Renaissance architecture.100 According to Dolores Augustine, who has studied the foremost businessmen in Germany, this type of historicist architecture contributed to the image of the businessman as a cultured person, while at the same time it made the owners feel as powerful as Renaissance princes and the powermongers of other eras.101 At the turn of the century in 1900, these German businessmen were prepared to invest gigantic sums in their residences. The same was true also of a small but prominent bourgeoisie in the Nordic countries.102 Hallwyl House was a magnificent conclusion to an era of a little more than twenty years when large city palaces were built in northernmost Europe.103 The exterior was in both a symbolic and a literal sense the façade of the family facing the street and the people to be found there. The façade

Image 6.5  Hallwyl House, Hamngatan 4, Stockholm. The Hallwyl Museum. Source: Foto Holger Ellgaard.

The Practice of Morning Calls 123 was supposed to be representative and display the economic, social, and cultural values that the family felt they manifested. This house represents the most refined kind of bourgeois nineteenth-century residence and habits of life. It corresponds to an ideal that was sought after by many but realized in full by only a few. A person who wanted to call on the Hallwyls could not simply walk in, but first had to pass through the imposing gates. Gates were not likely to be found in every house, only in the most distinguished ones, and they were a manifestation of a strong symbolism.104 Like hedges and fences around the gardens of detached houses, gates can also be seen as an expression of a desire for the sanctity of private life and a marking of one’s ownership rights.105 The gates were an instantiation of a physical boundary between Hallwyl House and the teeming street life outside. They visualized a social boundary between those who were granted access and those who were felt not to belong there, distinction. The symbolic and physical boundary of the gates was accentuated by a gatekeeper. A guest had to state his or her business to this gatekeeper, and after he had checked that everything was in order, the guest was shown to the right door, or, in a worst-case scenario, was refused entry completely. The gatekeeper wore a livery: an ankle-long coat with large brass buttons and a cap.106 The uniform-like clothes reinforced the impression of authority; he was the one who decided who could enter and who could not. Carl had been directed by the gatekeeper to the gate on the left side of the archway, the one that led to the private residence. To the right in the archway was Walther Hallwyl’s office for the business complex, and further into the yard was a kitchen entrance.107 Visitors were thus sorted into business contacts who were directed to the right gate, private guests who were shown to the left gate, and those who performed some kind of work for the family who were relegated to the kitchen entrance. The door to the vestibule was an additional boundary that only the chosen ones could pass. With respect to bourgeois apartments in nineteenth-century Paris, Roger-Henri Guerrand has maintained that no uninvited guest could come further than the vestibule.108 In the entranceway, the guest was met by Eskil, the footman, who had been called on an intercom by the gatekeeper and told of the business of the guest.109 Carl knew that it was important to have a calling card at hand. He immediately handed this to the footman, who took it upstairs and announced the arrival and business of the guest to the hostess. The calling card was then placed in a gigantic pewter dish in the hall, and would eventually be filed away. Carl was in luck; the hostess received him and he was immediately let into the vestibule. He had thus passed the second important boundary of the house.

124  The Practice of Morning Calls Admittance to a bourgeois home in the Baltic Sea region at the end of the nineteenth century had become strictly formalized and surrounded by a succession of rituals. Some of these were material or spatial. In this wealthy home, there were several checkpoints along the way, which was hardly the norm. However, in the greater part of Europe, it had become common for there to be at least a doorknocker or doorbell by the front door. In Claës Lundin’s contemporary depiction of Stockholm from 1890, it is said that “an electric bell system has been installed in almost all new houses and in many there is also a telephone.”110 During the decades prior to the arrival of electricity, it was common with a woolen cord or a steel wire that was connected to a bell on the inside.111 It was customary for a visitor to be met there by an employee, preferably a footman as with the Hallwyls, or possibly a maid, who announced the visitor to the hostess.112 After the caller to the Hallwyls had left his outer clothes in the gentlemen’s coatroom, he was shown by the footman up to the state apartments on the first floor. The wide marble staircase was decorated with columns, statues, and candelabra bright with electrical light. The floor in the upper stairwell had mosaic inlays and there were magnificent urns filled with lilies and other flowers. Light poured in through a great window and from the walls rows of imposing portraits looked down on the visitor. Family portraits were a way to display the long history of the family; they were proof of solidity and tradition, a form of symbolic capital that was highly regarded. In addition to portraits of Walther and Wilhelmina Hallwyl in their youth, there were also paintings of Wilhelmina’s parents Johanna and Wilhelm Kempe, founders of the great business complex taken over by Wilhelmina and Walther. Other portraits were of Walther’s ancestors. Wilhelmina Hallwyl received formal calls in a room called the everyday drawing room. This corresponded to what in England was known as the morning room. This was a room where the mistress after breakfast gave instructions to the housekeeper regarding that day’s menu, any guests, table placements, and similar issues pertaining to the household, but where she also managed her correspondence. The hostess in this exclusive house thus had a room that could be called her own. It is true that this was a room that people passed through on their way to the three men’s studies – the smoking room, the billiards room, and the weapons room – but it was nevertheless a room of her own, at least in the mornings. Among married women, this was a privilege offered to very few. Most women in the bourgeoisie were now, as in the 1830s, relegated to using the parlor for both calls and for writing. In the everyday drawing room, the large chandelier shone welcomingly and under it was a table and three armchairs. In one of these, facing the door, the hostess would receive guests. The footman stood in

The Practice of Morning Calls 125

Image 6.6  Wilhelmina Hallwyl. Source: Painted by Julius Kronberg in 1895. The Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm.

the door and announced the guest, who walked directly up to the hostess and greeted her. In an open fireplace to the right of the door a fire was crackling in spite of the whole house being warm, very warm.113 In the opposite corner was a lounge suite and along the walls were some chairs, both armchairs for women and chairs without armrests considered suitable for male guests. The drawing rooms of the bourgeoisie were rooms intended to be displayed, but they were also rooms where people displayed themselves. Sofas, canapés, and other furniture intended for sitting were soft and relaxing, but they were not always considered flattering for the exterior

126  The Practice of Morning Calls appearances of guests. In the same year, 1898, German interior decorator Oskar Bie had published an article about furniture for sitting on and their use. He felt that for gentlemen ordinary chairs were most suitable, because these allowed a man to freely and easily show off his entire figure. In contradistinction, he warned, a man in a dress coat loses all elegance in a leather armchair. According to Bie, the most flattering places for women to sit were in armchairs, because the armrests attractively framed their soft curves.114 When furnishing a room people should not merely think about the beauty of the room and the comfort of their guests. It was also important to make sure that it was furnished to suit both men and women and in a way that promoted the elegant appearance of both host and hostess as well as their guests. In a corner of the room was the hostess’s little desk, which testified to her extensive correspondence, not least with artists and art dealers. Larger desks were associated with work and considered inappropriate in a drawing room. On the other hand, escritoires and the smaller so-called ladies’ desks were associated with letter-writing and private tasks, so these small desks belonged in this kind of drawing room.115 Also in the German area during the nineteenth century, escritoires have been described as a very well-loved piece of furniture. When the desktop was closed the desk turned into an elegant piece of furniture, often made from exclusive kinds of wood.116 Considering his business, Carl had the unusual luck of discovering that there were no other guests there before him; he was immediately offered to seat himself next to the hostess, and he was able to have her full attention for an unusually long while. When he had stated his business and they had conversed for a time, the footman announced two new guests. Carl then ended the conversation, said goodbye to Mrs. Hallwyl, and bowed in greeting to the new guests before descending the staircase. When he had put on his galoshes, the footman handed him his coat, his hat, and his umbrella. Carl left and went out into the crowded street, probably happy with his successful call.

A New Time and New Ideals The image of morning calls as a purely feminine occupation is not true for the countries in the northern periphery of Europe, especially not during the first half of the nineteenth century. Morning calls, both the various forms of formal calls and friendship calls, were made by men to almost as great a degree as by women. But it was primarily women who were perceived as the recipients of calls, even when their husbands were at home. Only after the 1860s, did a process of change begin that can be described as a certain feminization of the culture of calling. Condolence calls, paying-one’s-respects calls to superiors, and several other formal calls were also still necessary for men, while married men had delegated the friendship calls to women.117

The Practice of Morning Calls 127 In the last decades of the nineteenth century, callings were not as important as they used to be. This also had to do with the bourgeoisie being by then well-established and social positions having become clearer. The bourgeoisie no longer had to define the field of bourgeois culture or find and guard their position in that field. As long as this was of key importance, men were not prepared to completely leave this important task, which to a large extent was managed through calling, to women. In the social changes of the early nineteenth century, the culture of paying and receiving calls had been a way to create high accessibility, and thus also cohesion, within the emerging bourgeoisie. After the bourgeoisie became established as a self-aware class, the need for this was not as strong. The attempt to unite men’s work with society life contributed to calls slowly beginning to be pushed into the late afternoon and evening. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, when dinner was eaten later in the day, the times for calling were adjusted and became even more limited. Time and its use became a topical issue during the nineteenth century. E. P. Thompson and several other researchers have studied time in capitalist society. They have, in these studies, focused mainly on the new requirements placed on factory and manufacture workers and the time discipline required by new technologies.118 However, time was also an important factor in the lives of the emerging bourgeoisie. Throughout the nineteenth century, the amount of time occupied by society life was discussed as a dilemma. Already in 1814, one writer claimed that many people described society life as a pastime, but said that this was the wrong way of looking at it. Instead, one should be economical with time, he argued.119 Time had begun to be something valuable. The importance given to time also received expression in the homes of the emerging bourgeoisie, which were filled with elegant table clocks, pendulum clocks, and other timepieces.120 The difference between work and leisure time became ever greater over the nineteenth century, and eventually, these were rather seen as each other’s opposites.121 Time for work, society life, and family life was divided up in an ever more distinct manner; each had its own time. From the 1830s, critical voices began to be raised against society life occupying time to the detriment of work. Like Magnus Wright in Helsinki, many people perceived this as a moral dilemma. One of these people was the bishop and poet Esaias Tegnér. In a private letter, he complained that the city he resided in had become no more than a dinner and gambling table; offices and professions are only matters of secondary importance. My soul is disgusted by this wretchedness. Those who do not feel that life has any other purpose than to slay time in this manner do not really belong to any other society than that of the lunatic asylums and the jails.122

128  The Practice of Morning Calls When society life had become the most important thing, and work was a side issue, the community was nothing more than a lunatic asylum, he complained. This can perhaps be connected to the thesis of Frykman and Löfgren that the new bourgeois view of time included a complete ethical stance and a philosophy of life.123 This ethical stance, and, in particular, the work ethic, was known at an early date by the emerging bourgeoisie in the countries around the Baltic Sea. But it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that this new work ethic became generally accepted in practice. If society life was given the highest priority during the first half of the nineteenth century, then the work ethic had become increasingly predominant by the end of the century. A stricter time discipline applied not only to men. Also, many women within the bourgeoisie had at the end of the nineteenth century a more highly structured schedule. Many women in the bourgeoisie had by then involved themselves in charity organizations, suffrage movements, and similar activities, and a small but influential group of women worked for a living. It became necessary to limit morning visits to certain days of the week, and to have them increasingly late in the day. In this respect, the development was similar to circumstances in France. Time had become a structuring principle for the bourgeoisie in a completely different way than was previously the case.

Notes

1. Ramsay, “Hufvudstadens hjärta,” 52–53. 2. Magnus alternately spelled her name as “Sophie” and “Sofi” in his diary. 3. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 53. 4. Wallenberg and Wallenberg, Brevväxling mellan far och son, vol. 2, 46–61. 5. Wallenberg and Wallenberg, Brevväxling, vol. 1, 148. 6. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 26, 39, 134, 140, 143, 145. 7. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 128, 147–51, 170, 172, 257–59. 8. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, passim. 9. Wright, Dagbok 1824–1834, 22. 10. Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 274–75. 11. Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, vol. 1, 42. 12. Ödman, Ungdoms- och reseminnen, 21. 13. Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 274–75. 14. Siebel, Der grossbürgerliche Salon, 32–34. 15. Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem vid mitten av 1800-talet.” 16. Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 155; Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 81–83. 17. Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 106–7; Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 274–75; Curtin, Propriety and Position, 140. 18. Bremer, The Neighbours, 77. 19. Hartley, Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, Chapter IX. 20. Ödman, Ungdoms- och reseminnen, 38–41. 21. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 155. 22. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 131, 142, 154, 156, 159. 23. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 155.

The Practice of Morning Calls 129 24. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 65. 25. Ulvros, Fruar och mamseller, 24, 289–328; Elisabeth Mansén, Konsten att förgylla vardagen: Tekla Knös och romantikens Uppsala, PhD diss. (Lund: Nya Doxa, 1993), 113. 26. Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 81–82. 27. Eiler, “Meine Wanderung durchs Leben,” 53–54. 28. La Roche, Briefe an Lina; Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 116–17; Wenzel, Den äkta Gentlemannen, 81–82. 29. Curtin, Propriety and Position, 147. 30. Wright 1997, Dagbok 1835–1840, 128. 31. Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 275. 32. Wright, Dagbok 1824–1834, 229. 33. Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 68–69. 34. Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 275. 35. Eiler, “Meine Wanderung,” 53–54; Forsell, Sällskapslif och hemlif, 24. 36. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 24; Topelius, Dagböcker, 826. 37. In paintings of interiors from Berlin and other German cities from the first half of the nineteenth century tea tables are often depicted, but they are rarely set. Siebel, Der grossbürgerliche Salon, 33. 38. Wright, Dagbok 1824–1834, 257. 39. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 118–19, 131; Forsell, Mamsell Forsells dagbok, 42–43; Topelius, Dagböcker, 23; Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 133, 143, 257. 40. Topelius, Dagböcker, 826. 41. Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 275. 42. Topelius, Dagböcker, 125, 233, 353, 394, 401, 408; Wright, Dagbok 1824–1834, 230; Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 26, 39, 337, 343. 43. Topelius, Dagböcker, 352. 44. Anna Williams, “Diktens dynamiska sanning: Exemplet Agnes von Krusenstierna,” in LIR Journal no. 5 (2015): 211–12; Riksarkivet, “Agnes J F Krusenstjerna, von” (article by Ulf Örnkloo), in Svenskt biografiskt lexikon, https://sok.riksarkivet.se/sbl/artikel/11824, accessed July 30, 2018. 45. Agnes von Krusenstjerna, Dessa lyckliga år (Stockholm: Bonniers, 2010), 10. 46. Marjorie Morgan, Manners, Morals and Class in England 1774–1858 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 29–30. 47. Harriet Prescott Spofford, Art Decoration Applied to Furniture (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1878), 232. 48. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 72, 131, 149; Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 133; Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 341. 49. Wenzel, En Man af Werld, 156. 50. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 62, 72, 113, 116, 118; Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 128, 133, 257, 285, 349; cf. Munthe, En landshövdingedotter i Umeå, 35, 46, 51, who in the 1860s believed that the afternoon began at 4:00 p.m. 51. Sirenius, Elins tonårsdagbok, 43. 52. Ödman, Ungdoms- och reseminnen, 35; Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 341. 53. Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, 92–93; Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 274. 54. Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 68–69. 55. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 133; Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 16, 18, 20; Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 277; Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 385; Burman, Bremer, 20; Bremer, Grannarna, 14. 56. Georg von Oettingen, “Kinderjahre,” in Baltische Lebenserinnerungen, ed. Alexander Eggers (Heilbrunn: Eugen Salzer Verlag, 1926), 129. 57. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 137; Forsell, Sällskapslif, 1; Mettele, “Die private Raum als öffentlicher Ort,” 164.

130  The Practice of Morning Calls 58. Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 2; Gurli Linder, På den tiden: Några bilder från 1870-talets Stockholm (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1924), 67; Theodor Herrman Pantenius, “In Riga: Aus den Erinnerungen eines baltischen Journalisten,” in Baltische Lebenserinnerungen, ed. Alexander Eggers (Heilbrunn: Eugen Salzer Verlag, 1926), 105. 59. Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem,” 111. 60. Söderberg, The Serious Game, 71, 72. 61. Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem,” 111; Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 2; Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 325; Angela Rundquist, Blått blod och liljevita händer: En etnologisk studie av aristokratiska kvinnor 1850–1900, PhD diss. (Stockholm: Carlssons, 1990), 175. 62. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 337, 343; Topelius, Dagböcker, 537. 63. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 42–44, 74, 118–19; Kinberg, S. A. Kinbergs dagbok, 69; Wright, Dagbok 1824–1834, passim; Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, passim. 64. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 43–44, 119, 131. 65. Topelius, Dagböcker, 233, 353, 363–64, 368, 376–77; Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 132; Dahl, Flickan och löjtnanten, 16–17. 66. Bremer, Fredrika Bremers brev, 234 (Letter to Böklin, Monday April 29, 1833); Ulvros, Fruar och mamseller, 203. 67. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 38. 68. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 43–44. 69. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 43–44, 113. 70. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 149; Hasselberg, “Den sociala ekonomin,” 99–100; Ulvros, Fruar och mamseller, 204. 71. “Bref till en väninna i landsorten,” in Tidskrift för hemmet 2, no. 1 (1860): 61. 72. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 26. 73. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 43–44, 113, 144–45; Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832, 118; Ulvros, Fruar och mamseller, 202; Hasselberg, “Den sociala ekonomin,” 98–99; Åberg, “En fråga om klass?,” 140. 74. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 143. 75. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 145. 76. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 153. 77. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, passim. 78. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 333. 79. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 337, 343. 80. August Strindberg, The Red Room, trans. Elizabeth Sprigge (London: Dent; New York: Dutton, 1967), 6–10. 81. Strindberg, The Red Room, 11, footnote 1. 82. Hans Järta and Bror Emil Hildebrand, Brevväxling 1834–1847, ed. Kerstin Assarsson-Rizzi, (Stockholm: Kungl. samfundet för utgivande av handskrifter rörande Skandinaviens historia, 2017), 15, 128, 130, 137, 140, 146, 198, 234. 83. Åkerman, Presidenten Fredrik Åkermans PM, 179–80. 84. Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832, 42–43, 141. 85. Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832, 42–43, 141. 86. Torbjörn Nilsson, Ämbetsmannen i själva verket: Rekrytering och avancemang i en moderniserad stat 1809–1880 (Stockholm: SCORE (Stockholm Center for Organizational Research), Stockholm University, 2000), 6. 87. Tjeder, “A Power of Character,” 159–64.

The Practice of Morning Calls 131 88. Nilsson, Ämbetsmannen i själva verket, 6. 89. Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family, transl. H. T. Lowe-Porter (London: Vintage, 1996), 308. 90. Tjeder, “A Power of Character,” 199–225. 91. Eva Helen Ulvros, Kvinnors röster: Livsöden från det moderna Sveriges framväxt (Lund: Historiska media, 2016), 181. 92. Munthe, En landshövdingedotter, 35, 41, 51, 53, 59, 61. 93. Wallenberg and Wallenberg, Brevväxling, vol. 1, 191 94. Fresne, Sällskapslifvets grundlagar, 64. 95. Augustine, “Arriving in the Upper Class,” 71. 96. Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 274–75. 97. Henrik Ågren, “Tidigmodern tid: Den sociala tidens roll i fyra lokalsamhällen 1650–1730,” PhD diss., Studia historica Upsaliensia, vol. 185, (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1998), 24. 98. In a similar way, I have also visited other bourgeois homes in Sweden and Finland that have become museums. Every visit has contributed to new insights into this culture. 99. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 4, 28–30; 13–15. 100. Norrby, “Familjen Hallwyl och huset Hamngatan 4,” 15–16. 101. Augustine, “Arriving in the Upper Class,” 52–53. 102. Augustine, “Arriving in the Upper Class,” 52–55; Gillis, A World of Their Own Making, 118; Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 194–96; Norrby, “Familjen Hallwyl,” 15–16. 103. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 4, 28–30; Ramsay, “Hufvudstadens hjärta,” 35. 104. Hedvig Brander Jonsson, “Porten som gräns, öppning och manifestation: Portar och portalmotiv i europeisk arkitekturhistoria,” in Byggnader och betydelser: En antologi om arkitektur, ed. Britt-Inger Johansson and Christian Lovén, (Stockholm: Arkitektur, 2000), 112. 105. Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 361. 106. Jessica Söderqvist, “Don efter person,” in Ett sekel av dräkt och mode: Ur den Hallwylska samlingen, ed. Gösta Sandell (Stockholm: Hallwylska museet, 2011) 129. 107. Cf. Rasmussen, Fröknarnas tid, 44. In the residence of the Aschan family in Eksjö, there was a similar division between the company entrance and that of the living quarters, which there was reached via an inner yard. 108. Guerrand, “Private Spaces,” 365. 109. Intercoms were common in city palaces and private castles from the 1880s and 1890s. Sumner, Borgerliga ambitioner och adliga ideal, 309. 110. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 4, 28–30; Mathilda Foy, “Dagbok, 19 mars 1831,” in Frances von Koch, En familjekrönika: porträtt och interiörer från 1800-talets engelska och svenska kulturkretsar, ed. Lotten Dahlgren (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1933), 87. 111. Linder, På den tiden, 30. 112. Gillis, A World of Their Own Making, 118. 113. According to one of the museum guides, the temperature in the house at this time was 27 degrees Celsius (80.6°F). 114. Siebel, Der grossbürgerliche Salon, 150. 115. Dena Goodman, “The Secrétaire and the Integration of the Eighteenth-Century Self,” in Furnishing the Eighteenth Century: What Furniture Can Tell us about the European and American Past, ed. Dena Goodman and Kathryn Norberg (New York: Routledge, 2007), 194. 116. Siebel, Der grossbürgerliche Salon, 48–49. 117. Krusenstjerna, Dessa lyckliga år, passim.

132  The Practice of Morning Calls 118. E. P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” in Past & Present 38, no. 1 (1967): 33, 41–56; Frykman and Löfgren, Culture Builders, 13–41. 119. Törneblad, Goda tonen, 6, 92. 120. Frykman and Löfgren, Culture Builders, 31. 121. Frykman and Löfgren, Culture Builders, 41. 122. Elof Tegnér, Från farfarsfars och farfars tid (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1900), 282. 123. Frykman and Löfgren, Culture Builders, 40.

7

Nordic Evening Calls or Continental Salon Life

Society life in the home during the first half of the nineteenth century often consisted of free interaction among friends and acquaintances. To this also belonged evening calls, which were frequently mentioned in historical sources from the 1830s and 1840s and sometimes even later in the century.1 What was an evening call and how did it differ from what in the literature has been called literary and musical salons? In this chapter, the form and content of evening calls will be discussed, as will the social environment in which they were received and their importance for the lifestyle and class awareness of the bourgeoisie in the Baltic Sea region.

Paying an Evening Call on Professor Geijer in 1843 Erik Gustaf Geijer was a professor of history at Uppsala University in the first half of the nineteenth century. In his day he was very well-known, not only as a historian but also as a poet and composer. His engaging lectures attracted many students, but also women and men from an educated general public in Stockholm traveled the eighty kilometers to Uppsala to hear the famous professor. Geijer was also a member of the Riksdag, and both in this capacity and as a professor of history he was committed to social development. He was considered a celebrity, and when he passed away in 1847, one of the national newspapers wrote that his achievements did not have to be described because they were well known to every educated Swede. 2 In the political organization of the estates of the realm, Geijer belonged to the clergy, but socially he represented the new group that Bremer called the middling sort of the world, or more precisely, the intellectual part of the emerging bourgeoisie. Liberalism was an ideology that attracted the emerging bourgeoisie, as it also did Geijer. In 1838, the professor created a scandal in the rather conservative academic world by what has been called his defection (avfall). This was his conversion to liberalism, with which he had previously come into contact on a trip to England. In that year, Geijer argued for the new liberal ideas in an opinion piece in a major newspaper.3

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Image 7.1  Professor Erik Gustav Geijer. Source: Painted by Karl Wilhelm Nordgren, 1837–40. Skokloster Castle, Sweden.

The article created a stir and an acrimonious and long debate in the press. In 1844, he followed up his ideas in a well-attended series of lectures.4 Professor Geijer was a modern man and here represents that part of the emerging bourgeoisie which, unlike the business world, was linked to the written word.5 In 1837, he had bought an old city farm built of wood, a farm that was then already a century old and which was renovated according to the taste of the time and adapted to his family’s needs.6 The people who lived in the house in addition to the professor himself were his wife Anna-Lisa Liljebjörn, his daughter Agnes,

Nordic Evening Calls 135 who was then in her upper teens, and his two youngest sons, Alfred and Gustaf, and, during the year 1843, his 25-year-old niece Ulrika, usually called Ulla. The three women and several of their guests have described in detail evenings at the Geijer residence. In Professor Geijer’s home guests came to call virtually every evening during the 1830s and 1840s. Only when the Geijers themselves went on evening calls, or were invited to a ball or a supper, was their door closed. Their evening receptions have been described by scholars of literature as being a literary salon. Within the family, the Geijers themselves only spoke of “receiving calls.” The same is true of their guests, who uninvited arrived and left throughout the entire evening.7 This was common practice at the time, to describe uninvited visits as calls even during the evening. Daughter of a civil servant Hilma Bäckström in Stockholm emphasized especially that her family’s evenings were not by invitation, but that guests simply came to call on them. To these Bäckström evenings came Jenny Lind and other well-known opera singers, as well as musicians, authors, diplomats, and members of the Riksdag, and they made music together, recited poetry, and made conversation.8 This form of socializing was to a certain degree reminiscent of a salon, but it was not described in this way. In the Baltic Sea region, it does not appear to have been common to speak of holding a salon; this is a latter-day description, seen in the light of the literary salons of Paris and other Western European metropolises. Rahel Varnhagen has, for example, been described as one of the great salon hostesses in Berlin. She herself never used the word salon, but more modestly called her receptions Teetische, tea tables.9 In many city farms and apartments in Europe built before the nineteenth century, guests were admitted directly into a family’s reception room, without passing through any intermediary spaces. Wuthering Heights, in the novel of that name, was an old house already in 1802. The author, Emily Brontë, illustrated this by allowing the main character of the novel to note that in this house there was no “introductory lobby or passage.”10 Descriptions of city apartments in older houses mention narrow, dark stairways from which one entered the reception rooms directly.11 A Swedish son of a bourgeois family remembers that his childhood home, a single-story city farm of an older date, still had no coatroom in the 1840s. Because there were often fifteen to twenty guests calling, the only coat peg in the doorpost could get crowded. When this was full outer clothes were put on a sofa in a room facing the yard, while gentlemen’s hats lay on the windowsill.12 Other people describe how a maid took care of guests’ outer clothes and carried them to an empty guestroom, to the children’s room, or to some other more secluded space.13 The active society life of the bourgeoisie made this way of doing things impractical; it created a need for a room where the outer clothes of the

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Image 7.2  Professor Geijer’s home in Uppsala. Today it is the Dag Hammarsköld Center. Source: Photo: Mattias Wennerström.

guests could be placed. A coatroom, or tambur (entry hall)14 as it is called in Sweden, became a new kind of room for this purpose. Such rooms began to be planned for apartments in the Baltic Sea region from the end of the eighteenth century, but it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that they could be found in most homes.15 The Geijer family were modern; they had, when renovating the old house, provided a tambur, as they called it. There, the guests left their outer clothes, canes, and such items before entering. The Geijer house contained two drawing rooms, a parlor, and a study. The garden drawing room was on the ground floor and the second drawing room was on the first floor. In the garden drawing room, Anna-Lisa, Mrs. Geijer, received morning calls. Behind this drawing room the professor had two rooms of his own at his disposal. The outer room was furnished as a small reception room, a study, where he received formal calls that had to do with his work at the university and his duties as a member of the Riksdag. Behind this, he had a larger study with a desk, bookcases, and a sofa.16 Gentlemen’s rooms tended to be in the middle of the house but were nevertheless secluded. When the professor needed to work without being disturbed, he shut the door on himself in his rooms and let the women take care of the reception of calls. But this was only during the day, not in the evenings.17 A husband having his own, somewhat

Nordic Evening Calls 137 secluded rooms in a home was not unique to the Geijers, but it was a common feature in both the cities around the Baltic Sea and the metropolises of Western Europe.18 A man’s room was, as has been pointed out by John Tosh, “not so much sited within the home, as carved out from the home.”19 The evening calls were received in the upper drawing room and in the parlor, which was situated next to it. Half the drawing room was also used as a dining room. At meals two drop-leaf tables, which were otherwise placed along one of the walls, were opened and moved out into the middle of the floor. The room was furnished with the furniture against the walls. There was a long sofa, a sideboard, and a keyboard instrument, a square piano. Against the walls were also ten to twelve armchairs, which, like the other furniture, were painted white according to the Nordic taste of the time. Red curtains gave the room a warm hue. Against one of the longer walls was a tiled stove that heated the room in the cold season. 20 This was a drawing room to sit and move about in that could admit many guests. The furniture against the walls followed an old Nordic tradition, and this was also the way the furniture was arranged in the Germanspeaking area at this time. There the Biedermeier style had been the dominant style of furniture from the Napoleonic Wars up until the mid1830s. This style has been described as an early middle-class style.21 Up to the mid-nineteenth century, chairs were the most important furniture in the drawing rooms both in the Nordic countries and in the German bourgeoisie. Simple chairs were common, but padded armchairs, which gave the guests extra comfort, could also be found. 22 Paintings and drawings of Northern European drawing rooms at this time sometimes show guests standing, in order to admire a painting, look at some engravings that had been set out, or simply converse in a small group. The spacious furnishing contributed to it being easy for guests to move among different groups in the room, to mingle. All reception rooms were open to guests at the Geijer residence. When many guests came calling not just the drawing room and the parlor were used, but also Professor and Mrs. Geijer’s bedroom, which was beside the parlor. One could get into the bedroom from the parlor, but also through a small cabinet from the drawing room. All three of these rooms were open to guests during the evenings. In the bedroom, there was, in addition to a large double bed, a smaller lounge suite where guests could sit down for more intimate conversations. 23 Geijer’s niece Ulla related how she on one evening spoke to one of the male guests, a close friend of her fiancé. When the conversation became personal in some way, the two of them retired from the buzz of the drawing room. “We had a long tête-à-tête in the bedroom,” she said.24 The bedroom then functioned as a small, somewhat more secluded reception room in a way that was not uncommon in the northern periphery of Europe.

138  Nordic Evening Calls Evening calls usually lasted longer than morning calls, but they, too, could be very brief. Magnus Wright in Helsinki wrote about an evening in March 1836 when he wanted to meet his fiancée, Sophie. She was not at home when he arrived, which is why his call lasted only for a few minutes. After this, he made a number of brief calls to houses where she could be expected to be. As the city was small, and the distances short, he could easily walk between the different houses. When he finally found her he stayed for a while and had tea, before he had the honor of escorting her home at 7:30 p.m. 25 Making many brief calls in the evening was completely in order. At the Geijers’ there were reading aloud and discussions of topical literature. Newly published Nordic literature was frequently read, and Dickens, Goethe, Schiller, and other European authors were also popular. Also, plays were read, among others plays by Shakespeare and Molière. But when a young man ventured to read a little pamphlet entitled Quinnans pligter [The duties of woman] the evening resulted in general mirth and much laughter. 26

Image 7.3  Scener ut sällskapslivet på 1830-talet [Scenes from society life in the 1830s]. Song and music were important elements of both parties and evening calls. Source: Painting by Carl Johan Ljunggren. National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm.

Nordic Evening Calls 139 Music also had a prominent place in the professor’s family. Often it was the daughter of the house, Agnes, who sang and accompanied herself on the piano. Sometimes it was one of the guests or Professor Geijer himself who played, often compositions of their own. The professor’s wife, Anna-Lisa, who in her youth had played quite a bit of music, at this time appears to have completely stopped playing in a social context. 27 The bourgeois drawing room was, in principle, never without a keyboard instrument. In the Geijer house, there was around 1840 a square piano in both the first-floor drawing room and in the ground-floor garden drawing room.28 But a square piano was at this time a bit old-­ fashioned. As a gesture of friendship, the most frequent visitors to the Geijer home, therefore, collected some money and gave the family a modern pianoforte. 29 From the mid-nineteenth century onward, pianofortes had become the totally predominant keyboard instrument among the European bourgeoisie. One contributing factor to this was that this kind of piano began to be mass-produced and was, therefore, no longer fully as expensive as before.30 No bourgeois interior of the nineteenth century was complete without a piano, and no bourgeois daughter ever escaped the obligation “to practise endless scales upon it,” pointed out Eric Hobsbawm.31 In nineteenth-century novels, particularly British ones, there are descriptions of how the young women of the bourgeoisie were expected to display their musicality and grace by entertaining guests with music.32 In the Nordic countries and in Russia, it was not only women who might play the piano, since this was cultural capital also for men.33 When young Alexander Donner, son of a businessman, in 1814 was sent from his home in Finland to St. Petersburg to get an education and create a network of contacts in Russia, his father told him that he did not have to learn Latin, and that “instead of learning swordsmanship he can learn how to play the piano.”34 The sword of the nobility was exchanged for the piano of the bourgeoisie. Pianos were expensive and displayed the economic capital of the man of the family. The young woman who played the piano demonstrated the cultural capital of the family, her superior education, and her feminine beauty. This represented symbolic capital and was a clear distinguishing sign separating the bourgeoisie from the lower middle class. The young women have been described as aesthetic objects in the drawing rooms, and the music became a tool for enhancing their beauty. Making music was thought to make them more feminine.35 Recitations, literary discussions, and musical entertainment often belonged together.36 Music could be used to enhance the atmosphere of a text that was being read or to create a segue into the discussion that followed. During evening calls in the civil service world in Stockholm, there was also reading aloud and piano music. In the 1840s, the Forsell family

140  Nordic Evening Calls received calls in their apartment most evenings of the week. The number of guests was usually between twenty and twenty-five per evening, and guests arrived and left during the entire evening. When their daughter Marie Louise later married, she and her husband also received evening calls in their mutual home. They then attempted to concentrate the evening calls to Wednesdays and Sundays.37 Everyone in the house was expected to contribute to the comfort and well-being of the guests. In the Forsell family, it was the wife who arranged the lighting of the rooms and the catering for the guests, the husband was responsible for the card games, an unmarried woman who lived with the family entertained the guests with her conversational skills, and the daughters contributed with music and singing. 38 In another family, the daughter of the house entertained their guests with her musical talent, while her mother showed amusing caricatures and read chosen sections from her voluminous book of memories. The only people who were not mentioned in connection with evening visits, in either the Forsell family, the Geijer family, or in other families, were the unmarried sons of the house. Next to the music, women’s needlework was a natural part of evening calls in the 1840s. Like most other women at the Geijers’, Anna-Lisa Mrs. Geijer had some needlework with her, which she worked on while she listened to texts being read and to music, and sometimes also during conversations. It was common for women to always carry some needlework in their reticules.39 Sometimes it was a piece of crochet work, but more often embroideries, that were later mounted on cushions, tablecloths, antimacassars, or other textiles that adorned the parlors.40 During the first half of the nineteenth century, it was standard practice in Europe for women to do needlework both when they went on evening calls and when they themselves received callers.41 The needlework was an expression of the traditional notion that a woman should always have something in hand, including when she was resting.42 In addition, silk embroidery, fine lace crocheting, and other more exclusive needlework, signaled female symbolic capital, unlike, for example, the knitting of stockings. It demonstrated a woman’s skill, but also that she was among those who had both the time and the money to devote themselves to things that were not necessary, but merely decorative. Men, on the other hand, were not expected to have something in hand during evening calls. When Marie-Louise Forsell three weeks after her lying-in returned to drawing room life, she could not do needlework because of breast engorgement and pains in her right arm. She could then experience what it was like for men to enjoy themselves without needlework, as she herself put it. She arrived at the conclusion that she was happier with her needlework than without it.43 The view of women’s needlework in social contexts changed in the middle of the nineteenth century. According to Anne Martin-Fugier, it

Nordic Evening Calls 141 was, in France, considered inappropriate, even vulgar, for a woman to work when she received guests by the end of the nineteenth century.44 Women were then to devote their entire attention to their guests. Nor is needlework mentioned in connection with calls or receptions in historical sources from the Baltic Sea area in the 1880s and 1890s. At the Geijer residence in Uppsala, the Crohn residence in Helsinki, and other professors’ homes and similar distinctly intellectual environments, card games were not played with the guests. Card games were common in the business world and also happened in the civil service world.45 This seems to have been the greatest difference between the social evening gatherings of the different worlds. A skill at cards was not seen as cultural capital among learned people. On the other hand, learned people put more time into analyzing the literature that was read. Alas! What noble form did this my new ideal not present to my eyes, when I one evening came into the drawing room of the hospitable Mrs. A., wife of the Chief Judge! Her daughter Alba was at the tea table, busying herself with its arrangement.46 Around 9:00 p.m. the Geijer family had their supper. The guests that then remained were invited to eat with the family. The maid opened the drop-leaf tables, and put the food on the tables. Usually, there were at least a handful of guests at the table, sometimes much more. Most of the time they were offered a simple supper with tea, which was the norm in connection with evening calls. These meals were relatively simple during the 1840s, often consisting of sandwiches, sausages, waffles, and the like; even porridge could be served. It was something special when a family served lobster and pastry.47 The food was of minor importance during these evening calls; people were served what the family themselves were having. Around 10:00 p.m. the diners rose from the table and the guests left the Geijer house.48 Even though the food was simple, it was expensive to have guests for supper every evening. A good friend of the Geijers, Malla MontgomerySilfverstolpe, commented on their hospitality, which she felt was a little too expensive: Geijer was no businessman and his amiable wife was an excellent hostess, but perhaps not strikingly or domestically thrifty. Much was consumed in their house, they were both hospitable and generous.49 Unlike the Geijers, the Forsells in Stockholm had the tea table out and set with tea and a light snack throughout the entire evening. This meant that all guests were offered something, but no one was served a whole supper. At an evening call paid by Marie-Louise Forsell herself, she perplexedly noted that this family did not offer anything to eat or drink, but

142  Nordic Evening Calls “merely served their friends food for the soul.”50 Evening calls where the guests were not offered anything at all were unusual. Can these evening receptions be considered literary salons, or were they something else? Petra Wilhelmy-Dollinger has studied salon life in Berlin from the period 1780–1914, the height of salon culture in that city.51 She has drawn up a list of seven criteria that should be fulfilled for something to be considered a salon: 1 It crystallized around a woman, who “held court.” 2 It was conducted regularly, for example on a particular day of the week. 3 It ideally included persons of different social tiers and professional groups. 4 It was an informal gathering, but not one which lacked form. 5 Conversations about art, literature, philosophy, music, and politics dominated. 6 Salons had a greater or smaller influence on society. 7 The salon was a tolerant sanctuary, without statutes or ideological dogmas.52 Geijer’s home was described by his contemporaries as very open; the family received calls more or less every evening, no invitation was required. Everyone was welcome, but the circle was unofficially limited to an elite with an interest in culture. Often there were eight to twelve guests, sometimes considerably more. These consisted in part of a closer circle of friends made up of professors at the university, where some, like Geijer, were also writers and composers. Others were civil servants, among whom the county governor, in particular, often came to call. These were men, usually middle-aged married men, who had their wives and daughters with them. Some of the guests were personal friends of Anna-Lisa, Mrs. Geijer, with their husbands and daughters. Often Geijer’s students in history and other students with an interest in culture also came to call. One evening when there were unusually many of these, the niece, Ulla, commented that “it was black with students.”53 Among the guests, there were sometimes also cultural personalities and learned people from other parts of the country, who enjoyed traveling to the city to visit the Geijers. The most frequent visitor among the guests at the Geijers’, both when it came to morning calls and evening calls, was Count Adolf Hamilton. His daily calls with what with a smile was described as “far too transparent intentions,” resulted in his later marrying Geijer’s daughter Agnes.54 Like Magnus Wright in Helsinki, he knew that in this social tier calls were an appropriate way not only to win the heart of the young woman but also the acceptance of her parents. In Uppsala in the first half of the nineteenth century could be found much of what has been described by Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin

Nordic Evening Calls 143 as characteristic of a creative environment: informal networks, personal contacts, and unpretentious meeting places.55 One of these was, not least, the home of Professor Geijer. To many intellectuals in the country, it was seen as a favor to be allowed to call on the Geijers. The open homes and evening calls of the university town were not limited to those of the Geijers, even if theirs were the most well-known. Geijer’s fellow professor, poet Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom, was also one of those who received calls, if not as often as the Geijers did; County Governor Kraemer’s family was another.56 These activities they called celebrating Friday (hålla fredag), regardless of the weekday on which the reception actually took place.57 As late as the 1860s, one historical source describes how both County Governor Kraemer and several of the professors hospitably opened their homes to students and other people. In contradistinction, the part of the bourgeoisie that based their position on economic rather than cultural capital does not seem to have participated in these evening calls. Businessmen or other industrialists were not among those who called on Geijer or his colleagues.58 The forms and ceremonies were free; it was an open house where many guests came and went during the evening, “the guests poured in and out.”59 Several of the criteria drawn up for a literary salon were thus fulfilled. However, Wilhelmy-Dollinger’s two first criteria for a literary salon were not fulfilled by Geijer’s receptions. The callers came every evening; there was no particular evening when the salon was open to visitors, and guests arrived and left as they pleased during the entire evening. Nor were the evenings centered around a woman who “held court.” It is true that Geijer’s wife, Anna-Lisa, was at home and received guests as a hostess, but in the evenings she was not the obvious center of attention. She was described as a woman with the kind of feminine qualities that spread “cheer and comfort” around her. Her elegance, neatness, and distinguished character were also emphasized. She had been to a boarding school for girls for a couple of years, but she herself felt that her education and learning were poor. She lamented the fact that she did not have the capacity for the same spiritual fellowship with Geijer that she knew some female authors had with him, especially Amalia Imhoff Helvig and Fredrika Bremer.60 Anna-Lisa, Mrs. Geijer sometimes read out letters to amuse their guests, both new letters they had received from, for instance, Bremer and other cultural personalities, and letters she had herself received from Geijer in their youth. Otherwise, she was an amiable but discreet hostess during these evenings. It was during the morning receptions that she was at the center.61 Geijer was the central figure during the evening receptions. In terms of Wilhelmy-Dollinger’s definition, this was not a literary salon, even if there were several similarities to such gatherings. The evenings at the Geijers’ consisted of a heterosocial company where young unmarried women played an important role in the musical entertainment.

144  Nordic Evening Calls Women could be responsible for reading aloud and participate in the dramatization of plays in the same way as men, but it was men who led the discussions and made expositions. And last but not least, it was the host who was at the center. Perhaps this should be seen as a sliding scale where evening calls in certain homes had a lot in common with what were later called literary salons?

Friday Evenings with the Colonel’s Wife In Uppsala, there was, however, at the same time another evening reception that corresponded well to the definition of a literary salon. From 1820 and for many years thereafter colonel’s wife Magdalena (Malla) Montgomery-Silfverstolpe held a salon in her home. Her Friday evenings have been described as a distinct literary salon. During a journey in Europe in 1825–26, she had stayed for a longer period of time in Berlin, where she had, among other things, visited the salon of Mrs. Varnhagen and other salons in that same circle.62 It is possible that she was inspired by these. The Geijer family, whom Montgomery-Silfverstolpe counted among her close friends, sometimes came to her salon, as did some other professors’ families from the town. However, the nucleus of her circle consisted of a few Society women from the town. These could be described as Malla Silfverstolpe’s “court.” The guests all came on a particular day at a particular time, and usually stayed for the entire evening. Here it was normally the hostess herself who was responsible for reading aloud, unless it was an unpublished manuscript, when it was always the author him- or herself who did the reading. Plays were read together, with the parts assigned to persons in the company. Also here it was usually a younger female relative who was responsible for the musical entertainment, while the rest of the women did needlework. The hostess orchestrated the salon with a firm hand, and she had the ability to direct the conversation away from what was perceived as trifling to what was edifying. Young Agnes Geijer described Mrs. Silfverstolpe in the following words: As the center of her circle, she knew how to direct and enliven the whole, give the conversations an interesting turn, banish all petty gossip and always give an evening spent with her a touch of poetic charm and spiritual delight.63 The gender relations of this salon were complicated and interesting. The hostess sat in the middle of the room at a round table, where the literary works of the evening and often some other relevant books, as well as Swedish and European journals and newspapers, had been set out. The married women were placed around this table, where they sat and did their needlework. Young unmarried women were placed at small tables

Nordic Evening Calls 145 in an outer circle, and they were also expected to do needlework. Men were stationed against the walls. Several different descriptions also let us understand that the spatial division arranged by the hostess was often challenged by the guests in several ingenious ways.64 Perhaps the central position of the women was for some people still too radical in a literary context? The arrangement of the furniture and the allocation of places can, to a certain extent, be linked to how rooms were lit at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In Malla Silfverstolpe’s drawing room, there was a large chandelier above the central table. The light from this was perceived as so bright that guests in amazement believed that they had stepped into direct sunlight.65 Evening calls and other society life in the Baltic Sea region were for a large part of the year dependent on the ability to light drawing rooms and parlors.66 As late as the 1830s, lighting in bourgeois homes was still comparatively poor. At that time, tallow candles were still used, from simple thin dips for the kitchens to the finest molded candles with self-consuming wicks for the reception room chandeliers. Tallow candles smoked, and this was not a pleasant smell. For this reason, it was not uncommon for people like Mrs. Silfverstolpe to attempt to hide the smell by lighting fragrant incense when guests arrived.67 Lighting signaled festivities and merrymaking, but also affluence. A man from Tallinn remembered the festivities in the city in connection with the coronation anniversary of Czar Nicholas I in 1830. What made the greatest impression on him was that all the houses in the city were lit by at least one tallow candle in each window.68 Stearin candles began to be manufactured in France in the 1830s, and their use quickly spread across Europe. In Sweden, the Liljeholmen stearin factory opened in 1839. From the 1840s, these candles were in general use within the bourgeoisie, in spite of the fact that, or perhaps just because, they were expensive. They had the advantage of burning for a longer period of time and smoking less than tallow candles.69 One apartment in Stockholm where stearin candles were used early on was considered so bright and amazing that it was described as “a virtual fairy palace.”70 For those who wished to display their economic success, lighting had the advantage of being a luxury that could be seen by everyone, also those who had no access to the house but only passed by on the street. Well-lit windows testified to an active social life that people were happy to display, but they were also an expression of affluence. Kerosene lamps came in the 1860s and quickly became popular within the bourgeoisie. Initially, kerosene was expensive, but at the end of the 1880s, prices had gone down sufficiently that it had become considerably cheaper than both stearin and tallow candles. Kerosene lamps meant that larger family groups and companies could gather around a single lamp that hung over the table or was placed on it. Earlier one stearin

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Image 7.4  Vänner [Friends]. Kerosene lamps made it possible for somewhat larger parties to gather around a table. The picture depicts the Junta culture society (kultursällskapet Juntan) and the reading woman is the author Ellen Key. Source: Painting by Hanna Pauli, 1900–07. National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm.

candle had rarely been able to provide illumination for more than two people reading or doing needlework.71 When greater companies gathered, it had, therefore, before the arrival of the kerosene lamp, been necessary to sit in several small groups with candles distributed among all the groups. At dowager Mrs. Silfverstolpe’s the lighting was considered unusually good; the chandelier above the central table illuminated the entire table. It provided enough light for the married women to do their needlework. On the small tables around the central table, there was probably a single candle placed on each that provided enough light for young eyes. However, one particular older unmarried woman always sat without a candle. According to Agnes Geijer, in an armchair somewhat to the side and in the shadows, sits an older woman with furrowed features and shrewd, searching brown eyes. She is a silent spectator to the jousts of the wits and the heart that are held in this drawing room.72

Nordic Evening Calls 147 The woman in the corner was the hostess’s former governess and faithful old servant, who was originally from England.73 She was just as well-­ educated as the other women, but sat, because of her station, quiet and in the background in semi-darkness, knitting. Men were expected to merely listen to the texts being read out loud. Geijer’s niece Ulla mentioned that the hostess sometimes broke off in the midst of her reading and asked Professor Geijer or Professor Atterbom a question. They would then make an exposition on the literature, the professor of history in explanatory terms, and the latter, who was professor of aesthetics and literature, in more poetic terms. For this reason, Geijer would normally have notepaper with him, but he usually filled this with drawings rather than notes. When the reading and discussion were over everyone went into an adjacent drawing room where they listened to piano music, played by one of the unmarried women, took supper with tea, and continued the conversations about literature.74 Women appear as guests of honor of the hostess at her table; it was primarily to them that she read aloud. They had the role of an audience, and their needlework reinforces the impression of relatively passive listeners. Men were a bit in the background but were expected to step up to analyze and explain what was being read, and to contribute what one of the participating women called “games of wit” (snillelekar).75 They had the role of experts. These evening receptions became something of the university to which women had no access during the first half of the nineteenth century. For them, it became a route to an education from which they were excluded in public life. Active participation of adult women in discussions about literature seems to have increased over time. One source informs us that “the ladies talked about books, a little music was made.”76 Perhaps the women had by then acquired the experience and the tools necessary for throwing themselves into discussions about literature together with poets and professors.77 Another somewhat different type of social gathering reminiscent of these receptions existed also in other places in the Baltic Sea area. They were neither evening calls nor regular salons, but parties to which authors and other cultural personalities were invited along with members of the appropriate circle of acquaintances. Sometimes these gatherings were called music soirées; sometimes literature was at the center.78 One example is Johan Ulric Winberg, a businessman in the small country town of Karlshamn. During the 1820s, he sometimes invited literary guests to Stensnäs, an estate he had bought by this time. It was the host who was responsible for these gatherings while women are said to only have had an inconspicuous place at them. Eva Helen Ulvros, who has studied this, has emphasized that there was a bourgeois educational ideal where accomplishments in languages, literature, embroidery, music, and art were included, but many girls during the first half of the nineteenth century were only given

148  Nordic Evening Calls superficial knowledge in these areas.79 This was true, in particular, of the smaller country towns in the periphery of the periphery, where cultural life was less developed, but where cultural evenings and similar functions testify to an interest in taking part in a bourgeois lifestyle. In Sweden, during the Charles XIV John period (1818–44), evening calls, literary salons, and cultural evenings functioned as instructive educational environments for women, where literature, music, and other culture was discussed. But with one or a few exceptions these contexts were mainly male domains. It was men who were in possession of a higher education, and it was they who were expected to share a little bit of their learning with the women. Social issues and politics were sensitive topics that were not considered appropriate when there were many different people present who did not always know one another. They were above all considered inappropriate topics for women. Professor Geijer was a member of the Riksdag and had a great interest in social issues. But the conversations during the evening receptions were not about politics or social issues. In this respect, the professor’s family followed the recommendations of the etiquette books. Much later, Geijer’s niece Ulla remembered the society life in the professor’s family. Social questions and the enervating pressures of work that absorb contemporary people did not in the least concern the Society generation of the [18]40s. Intellectual pleasures, literature, music, the finer sides of life were their main interests, and never did they seem to lack time for this.80 In the Forsell civil service family, it was the wife who was responsible for reading aloud. When the family was alone or had only a close friend or two added to their number, conversation regarding literature included both women and men. But when guests came calling the book was put away, and instead the card tables were taken out. Here card playing belonged to society life while literature was associated with family life.

Longing for a Quiet Family Evening Family life became a prominent ideal in the bourgeoisie in large parts of Europe during the nineteenth century.81 Jürgen Kocka has maintained that in bourgeois culture the family became a goal in and of itself, a community held together by emotional bonds and basic loyalties.82 The period 1830–80 has been described by John Tosh as the climax of family life in England.83 In the Baltic Sea region, a quiet family life was also an ideal. However, this seems to have been in direct contravention of the expectations of the time for an active society life. In this section will be discussed how contemporaries viewed this dilemma and how it was handled.

Nordic Evening Calls 149

Image 7.5  Sabbath-Nachmittag. A family evening in a Jewish family. Source: Painting by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, 1860. Skirball Museum, Los Angeles.

The families in Sweden and Finland that I have been able to follow from the 1820s to the 1840s embraced all the ideals of family life. There was a pronounced desire to be able to spend the evening with the family, without guests. In her diary, Marie-Louise Forsell noted the occasions when the family had what she called “a delightful evening of loneliness.” These evenings were described as something of a luxury. Such an evening was, for instance, Friday, November 18, 1842, when “the always comfort- and amusement-giving Mamma read aloud for us from Ett äktenskap i stora världen [A Marriage in High Life (1828)],” a novel by the English author Lady Charlotte Bury.84 When the family was alone, it was reading aloud from topical novels that engaged them, not least the daughters. This was true of all the occasions when they had a family evening. In the Geijer family, the doors were open for guests seven days a week. On the evenings when they had not been invited out or were on evening calls themselves, it was extremely unusual that they did not receive visitors. Evenings without guests had to be marked with an X in the calendar, noted niece Ulla.85 An active society life intruded on family life. When on certain occasions there were no guests calling on them, the

150  Nordic Evening Calls evening was spent in the same way as otherwise: the family gathered in the drawing room where they read aloud from a book and played music on the piano, whereafter they had their supper.86 On one of these unusual evenings, the members of the family expressed “a general satisfaction over the unusual occurrence that they could eat their evening meal completely en famille.”87 On a holy day in 1843, the Geijer family planned to have a quiet family evening; one did not have to fear having callers on the eve of a holiday, pointed out Anna-Lisa, Mrs. Geijer. Nevertheless, three young men came calling. Because these men did not belong to their closest circle of acquaintances, the evening did not become quite the family evening they had hoped for.88 Quiet family life had to submit to the demands of social life. Very close friends of the house could be involved in family life. On one occasion, Magnus Wright arrived at the Crohn family residence around five o’clock in the afternoon. The Collin family, close friends of the Crohns, was then already present, along with an additional woman. Later in the evening “several strangers came and disturbed our liberty,” he sighed.89 He then regarded himself as belonging to the closest circle, and therefore allowed himself to stay almost the entire evening, while the others only stayed for a short while. The Swedish and Finnish sources from the 1830s and 1840s clearly indicate a conflict between two bourgeois ideals: a networking society life versus a quiet family life. Furthermore, many comments indicate a hesitation about how a culture of calling could be organized in order to make room for family life. For this reason, different strategies were developed in order to limit or even prevent guests from calling. In 1833, Fredrika Bremer enumerated three things she disliked: sick priests, priests who were away traveling, and inconvenient callers, to which one could not “say one is not at home.”90 There was thus a possibility of not receiving callers even when someone was at home. This meant that they were at home physically, but not socially. In such cases, the lady of the house usually whispered a discreet “no” to the maid who came and announced a guest to her, and it would then be the task of the employee to notify the caller that the master and mistress were not receiving visitors. This was acceptable if it could be done discreetly, but it could become embarrassing if it was made obvious. As is shown by Bremer’s words, it was not always possible to do this; it depended on who the guest was and on the specific situation. If a guest had a higher social status than the master and mistress of the house, this could be perceived as an insult and lead to a discontinuation of the contact.91 This was a social risk that everybody wanted to avoid. In Stockholm, where the drawing rooms usually faced the street, lighting functioned as a signal to those who might want to visit a family during the evening. When the drawing room lamps were lit, guests were

Nordic Evening Calls 151 welcome in, but if the family, on the other hand, wanted to be alone, the lights were kept softer and the curtains were drawn as an additional sign that callers were not being received that evening.92 Another way that was used to avoid unwanted callers was quite simply to lock the front door. At the Geijer family’s residence in Uppsala, where the front door of the house was open to visitors every day, it happened on a few occasions every year that they closed the doors, as they called it, in order to have a quiet family evening.93 But this did not always help, “because habitués used to enjoy circumventing the locked doors by contriving to get in via the kitchen.”94 By going over the instances in Sweden and Finland where the identity of the persons who got in through the kitchen is mentioned, one can see that without exception these individuals were young, unmarried men.95 This thus usually concerned men who did not have a family in the city with whom to share family life. In principle, unmarried women in these circles always stayed with relatives or were in some other way incorporated into a family. Zackarias Topelius kept a diary during his years of studying in Helsinki, far away from his parental home. On some occasions, he noted that an evening call had been prevented, and on several other occasions he wrote that a call had failed. There is much to suggest that he and his friends on those occasions had not been allowed in.96 Perhaps the eagerness of the young men to pay evening calls can be seen in part as compensation for a family life to which they did not, at that time, have access. Their longing for family life impeded the family life of their hosts; a paradox. Marie-Louise Forsell mentions that on certain occasions the family had locked the door and prevented all attempts to disturb “our delightful loneliness.”97 Then the calling card bowl was placed outside the door so that guests who had intended to call could leave calling cards on which they indicated their business. In families who did not have such a bowl, a special box was hung by the door instead, where calling cards could be left.98 Even when the family preferred to be alone, opportunities were provided for anyone who sought contact to convey their business via calling cards. All of these different strategies that were created to sometimes allow for having a family evening show that there was no established etiquette for evening calls. Calls were necessary and they were popular to make, but not always equally popular to receive. In the struggle between two bourgeois ideals – on the one hand, an active society life, on the other a harmonious family life – it was long society life that prevailed. In the Baltic Sea region, this was basically true of the entire first half of the nineteenth century. A constant availability for social intercourse was perceived as normal, even if it was considered problematic that this encroached on family life. The previously mentioned thesis of Frykman and Löfgren, that people during the nineteenth century for the first time could close doors to guarantee the privacy of

152  Nordic Evening Calls the individual must, therefore, be modified when it comes to the Nordic countries.99 It is true that there was a widespread ideal about being able to close the door on oneself and be en famille, but in the middle of the century this was still difficult to do in practice. For most women a room of their own where they could shut the door was a never-realized dream in the 1800s.

Evening Receptions in Stockholm in the 1880s and 1890s During the 1880s and 1890s, new forms of social interaction became popular in the northern periphery of Europe, that is to say, organized evening receptions. Journalist Claës Lundin lauded these as something new and beneficial in Stockholm society life. There “generally intelligent men and women could meet,” he pointed out.100 The most splendid reception, which became trendsetting for several others, was that of the Curmans.101 Carl Curman was a professor at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. He and his wife Calla had built a villa in a new garden city in Stockholm, and they moved in there in 1881. This villa soon became a meeting place for the scholarly and artistic elite of the city.102 The hostess, Calla Curman, has described these receptions in a book of memories. In addition, both author Gurli Linder and journalist Claës Lundin have written about their impressions of these functions. As was the case with the Geijers, we thus get the perspective of both the hostess and her guests. The Curman receptions were similar to the evening receptions of the early nineteenth century in England and France. At the beginning of the year, the Curmans sent out cards to friends and acquaintances and all those they would like to see as their guests. These cards were sent to more than a hundred people. On them it was stated which evenings their home would be open; for instance, the second Tuesday every month until May, between eight and eleven at night. Guests did not have to notify in advance that they were coming, but arrived and left during the evening when it suited them.103 At these receptions, the educated bourgeoisie artists, and, not least, the grandes dames of the women’s movement, with their wives and husbands, respectively met. Calla Curman proudly pointed out that she and her husband’s interactions with scholarly, literary, artistic, and musical circles made their receptions a meeting place for the foremost culture bearers of the time.104 Culture personalities from the neighboring countries who were temporarily staying in the city were invited and were happy to call on the Curmans. Thus far these receptions were like the receptions of the early nineteenth century. As the guests arrived they were served tea, so that conversations were had over a cup of tea. As a conclusion to an evening, a

Nordic Evening Calls 153 simple buffet supper with wine was usually served. The Curmans claimed to want to decrease the refreshments in favor of spiritual sustenance.105 Calla Curman was described as a brilliant hostess for these popular evenings. Her guiding principle was to provide spiritually stimulating entertainment, music, and free and easy conversation. Often members of Filharmoniska sällskapet [The philharmonic society], string quartets, and other guests supplied musical entertainment; sometimes the hostess did so herself. When most guests had departed toward the end of the evening, the hostess went around the room and unobtrusively pinched the arms of certain guests as a sign that they this evening were invited to a little follow-up gathering for a select few. The lamps were extinguished and the only light that remained on was the so-called moonlight lamp in the peristyle in the room called the Atrium, where everyone gathered. Then someone sang a romantic tune and someone else read a poem or played the mandolin or some other instrument.106 Music was important for creating the right atmosphere. In the business world, music could also be used as a way to soften minds in connection with business contacts. Knut Wallenberg and his wife Alice, during their time in Paris in 1879, were on an evening call to the Bonnet family. Alice entertained those present with a song that delighted them. But Mr. Mannbergner was not there this evening, which was a disappointment for Knut: “It would certainly have been fairly easy to soften him during the music; but within twenty-four hours hereafter I will have landed him, this I promise,” he reported to his father.107 As in the 1830s, there was a clear difference between receptions such as the Curmans’ and social interaction within the business world.108 Claës Lundin appreciated that at the Curmans’ and similar gatherings, unlike at the functions of the businessmen, cards were never played and nobody smoked.109 Author Gurli Linder, who spent much time in the 1880s and 1890s in the radical circles of Stockholm, expressed a similar view. And, she commented further, unlike in the more conservative environment of the businessmen, women, and men socialized together for the entire evening, in shared conversations in the same room. This was true not only of evening receptions but also, in more radical circles, of suppers and other parties.110 In those parts of the bourgeoisie where educational capital was more important than economic capital, society life was more heterosocial than in the business world. The tradition of men and women going to different rooms after dinner has been described as an English custom and it had applied within the Nordic business world at least since the middle of the nineteenth century.111 The gentlemen went to the study to smoke, drink cognac, and discuss business and politics, while the women were offered coffee and liqueur in the parlor or a smaller drawing room. This gender-segregated social intercourse should, according to contemporary etiquette, be relatively brief before the entire party was reunited.

154  Nordic Evening Calls Circumstances surrounding evening receptions were different from those prevalent in the first half of the nineteenth century, above all with respect to women’s roles. At the end of the nineteenth century, women’s recently acquired opportunities for higher education and other rights in society gave them better prerequisites for participating in intellectual conversations on more equal terms with men. Evening receptions provided women with opportunities for further improvement. In 1919, journalist and feminist Vera von Kraemer wrote an article on society life in Sweden during the 1880s and 1890s. She argued that the foundation for the women’s movement was laid in the drawing rooms. In order to acquire civil rights, women had to have knowledge, but this was not enough, she claimed, they also had to have an education. According to Kraemer, women had acquired such an education via the evening receptions, where they were allowed to participate in intellectual discussions and practice arguing for their views.112 Civic knowledge and training in rhetoric were skills that were considered important for full citizens who had the right to vote.113 Evening receptions came across as a stage of women’s emancipation, while they at the same time conveyed knowledge and culture in an atmosphere characterized by femininity. Evening receptions attracted female intellectuals and feminists of the time. Among the more frequent guests at the Curman residence were, for instance, newspaper editor Sophie Adlersparre, dramatist and author Anne Charlotte Leffler, several female authors with Ellen Key and Gurli Linder at the forefront, and Professor of Mathematics at Stockholm University College (Stockholms högskola) Sofya Kovalevsky. These were women who could be fully as clever at argumentation as the men.114 After one very successful such evening, the hostess noted contentedly that it had been “an Olympian evening” that realized her youthful dreams of content and inspiration, poetry and scintillation.115 The connection between conversation and civilization has been described as vital, but civilization should also then include democracy, which is what these women were fighting for.116 The Curmans’ evening receptions had several imitators, receptions that were similar in composition and content, but with a certain amount of variation.117 Among the more long-lived were the Palme receptions. Director Sven Palme had begun his career as an officer, but had later moved over to the business world. He was also a liberal politician. He and his wife Hanna had moved out to Djursholm, one of the new garden suburbs of Stockholm. The circle that paid evening calls to their villa overlapped partly with the Curman circle, but liberal politicians, diplomats, and officers also came to the Palmes’. The hostess, who came from Finland, made sure that guests from her home country were invited to these receptions. The Palmes were in a different fraction of the bourgeoisie from the Curmans, but the receptions were similar in format. The

Nordic Evening Calls 155

Image 7.6  Author Gurli Linder, 1893, in a reform costume inspired by ancient Norse artifacts. Source: Photo: Gösta Florman, National Museum of Science and Technology (Tekniska museet), Stockholm.

Palme receptions were appreciated in the same way as were the Curman receptions, because they brought together people of different ages and from different worlds.118 According to Gurli Linder, it was primarily the personality of the hostess that put an individual stamp on the different receptions, since she was “the central and uniting force among all the different elements.”119 The Curmans’, the Palmes’, the Millets’, and other receptions fulfilled all the criteria that Petra Wilhelmy-Dollinger has set out for a literary salon. At this time women’s general educational level had become high enough

156  Nordic Evening Calls that they could take control of the salon, not only during the long mornings, but also in the evenings. The receptions, to which one could come and go as one pleased during the prescribed evenings, were a meeting place for artists and intellectuals, politicians and businessmen. In Stockholm, the establishment of the new university college in 1878 thus contributed not only to cultural capital and educational capital acquiring greater importance than was previously the case, but also to an increase of opportunities for women to participate in the intellectual conversations of the cultural elite and of scholarly society. At the end of the nineteenth century, a clearer structure for the use of time had contributed to a more distinct division between family life and social life within the bourgeoisie of the Baltic Sea region. The limitation of evening calls to particular days brings to mind Anne Martin-Fugier’s description of how women in Paris received morning calls, “matinées,” and in the evenings held “soirées.”120 In this way, it had been possible to rectify what some people had perceived as a nuisance during the first half of the century: that guests would come to call virtually every evening. At the end of the century, it had also become more common with late dinner parties and suppers, which gave the host couple control over when guests would come to visit and who was allowed to come. A clearer structuring of time created better preconditions for combining an open home and society life in the home with family life. The more fixed structure of time, the demands of working life, and the continued expectations of an active society life could, however, be experienced as exhausting, presenting limited possibilities for family life. Above all, this was true of men in the business world. “He had not done a great deal of thinking, because he had led a life without pause, caught up in a rush of work and social commitments.”121 This description comes from a novel from the turn of the century in 1900 and concerns Consul Arvidsson. In the book, the life of the bourgeoisie was portrayed as very hectic; there was no time for reflection because work filled the days while evenings, and often also nights, were devoted to society life. When an older Swedish woman at the turn of the century in 1900 remembered her youth, it was precisely how time was used that she perceived as the greatest difference in comparison to her later years. While there had been plenty of time for society life and culture in the 1840s, she saw in her present only work and stress.122 The image of modern life, the life of the bourgeoisie, as a stressful life was an idea that often recurred at the end of the nineteenth century, not least in the fiction of the time.123 Discussions about being mindful of time, which had existed already at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were even more topical by the end of the century.124 But by then the bourgeoisie lived more in accordance with the view of time presented in

Nordic Evening Calls 157 Ecclesiastes: “There is a time for everything.” However, they also bore in mind what is written further on in the same chapter: “That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil – this is the gift of God.”125 Society life was still important and active, but it was structured so that it did not encroach on work and family life.

Notes 1. Munthe, En landshövdingedotter i Umeå, 21, 31. 2. Niklas Svensson, “Hur många strängar hade egentligen Geijer på sin lyra? Om beteckningar som kategoriseringsproblem,” in Historiens virvlar: Biografiska betraktelser tillägnade Eva Helen Ulvros, ed. Klas-Göran Karlsson, Emma Severinsson, and Ulf Zander (Lund: Historiska media, 2019), 151. 3. Malla Silfverstolpe, Malla Montgomery-Silfverstolpes memoarer, vol. 4 (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1911), 202; Liljebjörn-Geijer, “Levnadsteckning,” 150–51; Erik Gustaf Geijer, Om vår tids inre samhällsförhållanden: Historiska skrifter, ed. Thorsten Nybom (Stockholm: Tiden, 1980), 175–88. 4. The lectures occasioned an intense debate in the press all over Scandinavia, which led to them being published as a book the following year. This led, in its turn, to a bitter scholarly battle between Geijer and more conservative professors. Geijer, Om vår tids inre samhällsförhållanden, 175–88; Liljebjörn-Geijer, “Levnadsteckning,” 150–51; Färnström, Fredrika Bremer och Erik Gustaf Geijer, 13–32. 5. Lothar Gall, Bürgertum in Deutschland (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1989). 6. Ola Ehn, “Geijersgården i Uppsala,” in Uppland (Uppsala: Upplands fornminnesförenings förlag, 1984) 43–44. 7. Anna-Lisa Liljebjörn-Geijer and Agnes Geijer-Hamilton, Två släktled berätta: Erinringar omkring Erik Gustaf Geijer, ed. Gordon Stiernstedt (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1947), 267; Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 131. 8. Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem vid mitten av 1800-talet,” 94. 9. Mettele, “Die private Raum als öffentlicher Ort,” 166. 10. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, ed. David Daiches (London: Penguin, 1965), 46. 11. Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem,” 84; Dickson, Minnen, 25. 12. Möller, “Ett borgarhem,” 109. 13. Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem,” 94; Dickson, Minnen, 25; Bremer, “En dagbok,” 7. 14. The word tambur comes from French tambour, drum, and originally denoted a small porch outside the entrance, but has, in Sweden, come to be used as a synonym for coatroom. Gejvall, 1800-talets stockholmsbostad, 175. 15. Dickson, Minnen, 4. The French antichambre and the German Vorzimmer and Diele filled similar functions. 16. Liljebjörn-Geijer and Geijer-Hamilton, Två släktled berätta, 258; Paulsson, Svensk stad, 115–16. 17. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 131. 18. Linder, På den tiden, 43; Gejvall, 1800-talets stockholmsbostad, 225–29. 19. Tosh, A Man’s Place, 60. 20. Liljebjörn-Geijer and Geijer-Hamilton, Två släktled berätta, 259; Paulsson, Svensk stad, 116.

158  Nordic Evening Calls 21. Georg Himmelheber, Biedermeier 1815–1835: Architecture, Painting, Sculpture, Decorative art, Fashion (Munich: Prestel, 1989), 35. 22. Siebel, Der grossbürgerliche Salon, 46. 23. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 156. 24. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 161. 25. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 145–46, 356; Forsell, Sällskapslif och hemlif, 1. 26. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 121. 27. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 121, 139–46, 151, 153, 156; Liljebjörn-Geijer, “Levnadsteckning,” 80, 125; Eva Öhrström, “Borgerliga kvinnors musicerande i 1800-talets Sverige,” PhD diss. (Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg, 1987), 28, 95–96; Mansén, Konsten att förgylla vardagen, 47–48. 28. Paulsson, Svensk stad, 116. 29. Mansén, Konsten att förgylla vardagen, 32. 30. Tosh, A Man’s Place, 24; Kelly, Refinding Russia, 161; Åberg, “En fråga om klass?,” 151. 31. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 272. 32. Ödman, Ungdoms- och reseminnen, 21; Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 352; Möller, “Ett borgarhem,” 108. 33. Topelius, Dagböcker, 155; Rasmussen, Fröknarnas tid, 124–25. 34. Dahlberg and Mickwitz, Havet, handeln och nationen, 63; Kelly, Refinding Russia, 161. 35. Öhrström, “Borgerliga kvinnors musicerande,” 90. 36. Siebel, Der grossbürgerliche Salon, 32–35. 37. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 30, 37, 100, 135, 160, 162. 38. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 65. 39. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 150.158. 40. Rasmussen, Fröknarnas tid, 120–21. 41. Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 276–77. 42. Kekke Stadin, Stånd och genus i stormaktstidens Sverige (Lund: Historiska media, 2004), 290. 43. Forsell, I Stockholm, 4. 44. Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 276–77. 45. Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832, 127–28. 46. Fredrika Bremer, “Den rätta eller Hustru min” in Samlade skrifter i urval. Bd 1, Teckningar ur vardagslivet. Axel och Anna [m.fl. noveller] (Malmö: Världslitteraturen 1928), 302. 47. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 115, 124, 141, 159. 48. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 121, 139–46, 151, 153, 156; Liljebjörn-­ G eijer and Geijer-Hamilton, Två släktled berätta, 80, 125; Öhrström, “Borgerliga kvinnors musicerande,” 28, 95–96; Mansén, Konsten att förgylla vardagen, 47–48. 49. Silfverstolpe, Malla Montgomery-Silfverstolpes memoarer, 156. 50. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 2. 51. Petra Wilhelmy-Dollinger, Die Berliner Salons: Mit historisch-­literarischen Spatzirgängen (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2000), 2–4. 52. Wilhelmy-Dollinger, Die Berliner Salons, 38. 53. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 114. 54. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 107–33, 139–45, 152–59. 55. Mansén, Konsten att förgylla vardagen, 29. 56. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 135, 138, 148, 158–59. 57. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 144, 148.

Nordic Evening Calls 159 58. Liljebjörn-Geijer and Geijer-Hamilton, Två släktled berätta, 80, 125; Scholander, Fredrik Wilhelm Scholanders Uplandsresa, 39–40; Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 121, 139–46, 151, 153, 156; Öhrström, “Borgerliga kvinnors musicerande,” 28, 95–96; Mansén, Konsten att förgylla vardagen, 47–48. 59. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 130–31. 60. Silfverstolpe, Malla Montgomery-Silfverstolpes memoarer, 144–45, 156; Liljebjörn-Geijer, “Levnadsteckning,” passim. 61. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, passim. 62. Silfverstolpe, Malla Montgomery-Silfverstolpes memoarer, 11. 63. Liljebjörn-Geijer and Geijer-Hamilton, Två släktled berätta, 242. 64. Agnes Geijer-Hamilton, “En afton hos fru Silfverstolpe,” in Två släktled berätta: Erinringar omkring Erik Gustaf Geijer, ed. Gordon Stiernstedt (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1947); Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 113–14, 118, 139; Mansén, Konsten att förgylla vardagen, 47. 65. Elisabeth Mansén, “Salongen som artefakt,” in Herrgårdskultur och salongsmiljö: Rapport från en nordisk konferens på Leufsta bruk 12–14 maj 1995, ed. Erik Kjellberg (Uppsala: Uppsala University, Department of Musicology, 1997), 86. 66. Hoffmann, Bilder aus Revals Vergangenheit, 15; Paulsson, Svensk stad, 116. 67. Geijer-Hamilton, “En afton hos fru Silfverstolpe,” 234; Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem,” 87–88. 68. Sprengfeld, Meine Vaterstadt, 27. In Berlin, the Emperor’s birthday on August 3, was celebrated in a similar way, by putting out oil lamps in all colors of the rainbow. Mayer, “Das Haus meines Grossvaters,” 37. 69. Jan Garnert, Anden i lampan: Etnologiska perspektiv på ljus och mörker, PhD diss. (Stockholm: Carlssons, 1993), 49–53; Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem,” 88. 70. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 6. 71. Garnert, Anden i lampan, 81–92. 72. Geijer-Hamilton, “En afton hos fru Silfverstolpe.” 73. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 118. 74. Mansén, Konsten att förgylla vardagen, 47. 75. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 113–14, 118, 139. 76. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 113–14, 118, 139. 77. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 121. 78. “Hilda Dalman,” in Idun 3, no. 12 (1890), 129–30. 79. Ulvros, Kärlekens villkor, 110–12. 80. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 105. 81. Tosh, A Man’s Place; Frykman and Löfgren, Culture Builders. 82. Jürgen Kocka, “The European Pattern and the German Case,” in Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Jürgen Kocka and Allen Mitchell (Oxford: Berg, 1993), 6. 83. Tosh, A Man’s Place, 53 - 54. 84. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 16, 21. 85. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 105. 86. Liljebjörn-Geijer, “Levnadsteckning,” passim. 87. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 115. 88. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 105, 132. 89. Wright, Dagbok 1835–1840, 112. 90. Bremer, Fredrika Bremers brev, 234 (Letter to Böklin, Monday April 29, 1833). 91. Pool, What Jane Austen Ate, 67–68.

160  Nordic Evening Calls 92. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 15, 37. 93. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 105. 94. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 105. 95. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 7, 9, 21; Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 132; Wright, Dagbok 1824–1834, 22. 96. Topelius, Dagböcker, 146, 149, 150, 233, 345, 372, 380, 474, 554. 97. Forsell, Sällskapslif, 7, 9, 16, 19, 21, 72. 98. Topelius, Dagböcker, 955; Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832, 297. 99. Frykman and Löfgren, Culture Builders, 127. 100. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 331. 101. Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 43. 102. Calla Curman, Minnen (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1926), 307–8. 103. Curman, Minnen, 308–9; Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 3–4, 8–10, 15–18, 23–24, 43–44; Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 331–33. 104. Curman, Minnen, 309–13. 105. Curman, Minnen, 308; Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 22–23. 106. Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 2–5, 8–11, 40–41. 107. Wallenberg and Wallenberg, Brevväxling mellan far och son, vol. 2, 54–55. 108. Dickson, Minnen, 99–100. 109. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 331–33. 110. Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 3. 111. Paulsson, Svensk stad, 146. 112. Vera von Kraemer, “Sällskapslivet i Stockholm under 1880- och 1890talet,” in Rösträtt för kvinnor 8, no. 6 (1919). 113. Curman, Minnen, 271–72. 114. Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 22–43; Curman, Minnen, 310–11. 115. Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 22–23, 40–41. 116. Peter Quennell, “The Salon,” in Genius in the Drawing-Room: The Literary Salon in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Peter Quenell (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980), 9. 117. Of course there were also forerunners, but with a somewhat different angle. To these belong, for example, the Dalman receptions of the 1860s; see “Hilda Dalman,” in Idun 3, no. 12 (1890): 1–2, and the Flodin receptions in the 1870s in the home of printer Louise Flodin and her husband publisher Sigfrid Flodin; see “Louise Flodin,” in Idun 3, no. 4 (1890): 1–2. 118. Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 43–49, 65–66. 119. Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 66. 120. Martin-Fugier, “The Actors,” 274; Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, 92–93. 121. Söderberg, Förvillelser, 30. 122. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 105. 123. Mann, Buddenbrooks, passim; Söderberg, Förvillelser, 30. 124. Törneblad, Goda tonen, 6, 92; Smitt, “Vårt sällskapslif,” 59. 125. Eccles. 3:1, 3:13 (New International Version).

8

The Conversation about Society Life

Society Life as Representation and Social Duty He was careful not to neglect the social side. True, he […] usually appeared at the very last minute […]. “I’m sorry, Gerda,” he would say; “I was detained”; and he would dash upstairs to don his evening clothes. But when he arrived at a dinner, a ball, or an evening company, he showed lively interest and ranked as a charming causeur. And in entertaining he and his wife were not behind the other rich houses. In kitchen and cellar everything was “tip-top.” Thomas Buddenbrook, the businessman in the Lübeck of Thomas Mann’s novel, saw society life as something of an investment. Through it, he wished to maintain and expand the social reputation of his family, but above all to increase the cultural capital he was so eager to cultivate. The ultimate proof of his learning was that he had married a cultured woman, who with her music could provide extra luster for his own parties.1 His ambition to make his social capital increase while also multiplying his economic and cultural capital demanded a busy social life. Among real German businessmen society life was no less important. The wealthy Krupp family in Berlin exemplifies those who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, invested especially much in private parties. For several years they held dinners for guests virtually every evening. The only occasion during the night or day when the family was said to be assembled without guests was at breakfast. 2 Another well-known businessman who turned representation in his large house into an art form was Alexander Basserman in Mannheim.3 At the end of the nineteenth century, being able to invite guests in a handsome manner was seen as a necessary form of representation, especially within business families. Food had come increasingly to the fore during the latter part of the nineteenth century, especially in the business world. It had become important to entertain extravagantly with many exclusive dishes and

162  The Conversation about Society Life expensive wines.4 German actress Karoline Bauer maintained in her memoirs that society life in Berlin had become increasingly pretentious as the years passed. She felt that entertainments had become magnificent functions in luxurious drawing rooms.5 Calla Curman in Stockholm had a similar opinion and she was not happy with the development. For this reason, she had programmatically introduced a simpler buffet supper at her receptions.6 Within intellectual and artistic circles people tried to go back to the simplicity that had characterized evening calls during the early nineteenth century. One expression of the ever-greater lavishness of dinner parties was that the previously popular buffet service à la française had been replaced with table service à la russe. This required numerous waiters and waitresses.7 Claës Lundin was very happy with this change. He felt that sit-down dinners were what truly separated a civilized society from an uncivilized one.8 Through the new order, the bourgeoisie in the Nordic countries displayed their fashionable urbanity and above all their wealth in a more tangible way than during the previous half of the century. The cultural elements were natural in the academic world; they occurred often in the civil service world, and sometimes also, as at the Bassermans’, in the business world. Daughters and others from the family could now, as before, help with the entertainment, but it was increasingly common to hire professional musicians. Performers of different kinds, but also authors and artists, were invited in order to signal the cultural capital of a family, and sometimes they would also perform. This also meant that performers, to an ever greater degree, became involved with the bourgeoisie.9 The goal of a more lavish society life was often taken for granted in these circles. Lundin, commenting on his contemporary times, described such a purpose in the words of a host: “It is necessary for my position.”10 In other words, this had to do with the social position of the man – and thus indirectly of his family. Reputation and social status were also dependent on a family showing that they had lived up to their social ambitions. Through lavish dinner parties in their representative homes, they could display their economic success and gain legitimacy for their claim to a leading position in society. Society life was sometimes portrayed as an inevitable social duty, both in public discussions and privately, in letters and diaries. It was an obligatory, and often both expensive and demanding, part of the lifestyle of the upper classes, both in the cities and in the countryside.11 MarieLouise Forsell belongs to those who sometimes described social life as a duty, or even as a necessity, but, she added, it was the most agreeable of necessities.12 This type of ambivalence toward an extensive social life was not uncommon. The emerging bourgeoisie depended on social relationships that created and maintained inner cohesion and signaled social status. People

The Conversation about Society Life 163 who chose not to participate in social life, for a time or permanently, took a chance. This did not simply have to do with a single individual ending up outside the social networks that offered power and influence, because the reputation and social status of one’s family could also suffer serious harm. Those who withdrew from society life were considered to have failed in their social responsibilities.13 At the end of the 1820s, bank manager Alexander Armfelt in Helsinki was thirty-five years old. At first, his wife remained in Turku, where they had lived earlier. In many letters to his wife, he told her how tired he was of society life. It was narrow-minded, conservative, and boring, he complained. He did not like the people in the world he had access to in this, to him, new city, and yet he participated in society life virtually every evening. He sighed over one game of cards following hard on the heels of the other, conversations lasting for “an eternity,” suppers being hopelessly boring, etc. Sometimes he escaped society life to go to the theatre, something that was not always looked on with approval by his circle of acquaintances.14 Theatre as an alternative to society life was to this man a legitimate way to relax from intense social interaction. In contradistinction, it would hardly have been considered comme il faut to quite simply stay at home one evening. Especially unmarried men and men who were temporarily separated from their families were expected to participate in society life almost every evening. It was their social duty. The somewhat older men who already had well-established positions in society had greater liberty to limit their social interactions, if they wished to do so. An example of this was German businessman August Thyssen, about whom it was said that he spent his evenings alone at home. This was commented on as something remarkable for a single man. However, he sometimes felt obligated to arrange functions himself, and he then spared no expense.15 By entertaining quite lavishly on occasion, he could gain a certain acceptance for otherwise only sparingly participating in social life. Swedish bishop and poet Esaias Tegnér was married, but was not comfortable with what he felt was a far too extensive social life. When he took office as a bishop in Växjö in 1827, he claimed to have consistently turned down all invitations. Nevertheless, invitations continued to pour in, and it is doubtful that he could turn them all down. After seven years he complained in a letter to his oldest son and wrote that “from here no news, because the continual and foolish merrymaking is old and now continues at its most fervent.”16 As has previously been mentioned, his criticism mainly had to do with social life happening largely at the expense of work. The main responsibility for functions in a family’s own home was normally given to the women. They were often acutely aware that their family’s position was to a large extent being assessed on the basis of the dinners, receptions, and suppers that they organized and participated

164  The Conversation about Society Life in.17 When Marie Louise Forsell, in the middle of the 1840s, had her first child, she abandoned society life for a few months. This was perceived as a long social isolation. When she returned to social interactions she wrote in her diary, “Well I really think I’m more and more becoming familiar with life, real life, that life to which most people adhere.”18 After her absence from the social life to which she was accustomed, she felt that it was society life that was “real life.” This was where her friends and acquaintances were; this was where she had to be if she wanted to avoid becoming socially isolated. For many people, the duties of society life became so deeply ingrained that they performed them even when they would have been able to do dispense with doing so. Young Frances Lewin came from a manor house outside Bexley in England. During the winter of 1830–31, she visited Stockholm, where one of her brothers worked as a teacher. On February 24, she wrote home to her sister, Harriet Grote: “Meanwhile I have worked diligently, literally worked with my social life, and I will never do it again if I can avoid it.”19 It is a little unclear why Frances felt she had to submit to this, to her, onerous duty in a city which she was only visiting for a few months. Perhaps it was a way to honor the English ambassador, who had introduced her and her brother to the Society of the city, and presumably, she also wanted to help her brother with his career in Sweden. Regardless of her reasons, this “work” with society life nevertheless yielded a kind of result. She met the man she would later marry: Nils von Koch, a lawyer, and later Chancellor of Justice.20 To many young people, especially unmarried women and men in the urban elite, the opportunity to meet a suitable person to marry was an attractive reward that made them dutifully continue to engage in society life even when it tended to be too much of a good thing.

Character-molding or Coquetry? When the purpose of society life was occasionally discussed in handbooks and weekly magazines, it was not about economic and social success. One thing that was pointed out was that amusement was the purpose of society life, but it was above all the character-molding role of society life that was foregrounded. In 1887, physician Clara Smitt wrote a series of articles on society life in the Swedish weekly magazine Idun. There she especially emphasized the importance of society life for promoting people’s learning and refinement. We cultivate our soul and our reason by reading and reflecting, but primarily through an exchange of thoughts and ideas with our friends, she maintained. For this reason, society life should be the driving force when we shape our future. 21 To her, society life was about an exchange of thoughts and ideas. It was intellectual intercourse, similar to evening calls and receptions.

The Conversation about Society Life 165 The development of society was linked to the learned individual, and it was in society life that this learning would find its nourishment. Three years later another author underlined that it was in society life and a person’s circle of acquaintances that his or her intellectual and moral development took shape. 22 If learning and good breeding at the beginning of the century were seen as a way to gain entrance to the emerging bourgeoisie, they were by the end of the century used as an argument for the future development of society being the responsibility of the bourgeoisie. In each case, it was within the framework of society life that this was done. However, there was also criticism directed at society life, and then at its format. At the beginning of the century, this criticism mainly had to do with the artificial forms of social intercourse that people felt existed in certain circles. For instance, one author mocked certain affected mannerisms, such as “this thoroughly sweet cat’s simper.”23 These were mannerisms that aped the social intercourse of the aristocracy, and there was a risk that society life would degenerate, that it would become artificial and superficial. Convention and vanity were described as other negative sides of social life. One observer in 1839, characterized society life as the “racecourse of vanity.”24 Convention governed social intercourse like “a master of a house of correction,” the author argued. Bound by etiquette it was impossible to amuse oneself in a free and easy manner. A strictly ritualized social intercourse, firmly governed by obligatory rules of etiquette, had, according to this author, made people jaded and devoid of natural joy. 25 Fredrika Bremer wrote a short story on the torments of society life, and in it, she describes suppers as a “little hell of heat and courtesy.” It is unbelievable, claimed the fictive letter writer, that so many sensible people want to get together in order to have such a tedious time. What was lacking was esprit and witty jokes.26 Nobody dared violate the far too fixed forms; the etiquette became inhibiting, according to her way of looking at things. Salon hostess Malla Silfverstolpe read this short story and commented on it with the words “witty and good,” and wrote in her diary that it was full of sentiment and truth. 27 The suppers of the capital were not always appreciated by intellectual women. In contradistinction, the society life that the witty miss Bremer appreciated was intellectual and unaffected. In a letter to her friend Frances Lewin in June 1838, she told a story of her visit to the university town of Uppsala. There she had met what she called real people, all of whom were different both psychologically and in external appearance, she commented enthusiastically. Such a cheerful and free society life she had not encountered anywhere else. “Much goodness, much benevolence we all enjoyed everywhere.”28 There she could feel respected and intellectual among professors and students.

166  The Conversation about Society Life The visit had included evening calls on Professor Erik Gustaf Geijer and his circle.29 Bremer has in another context described him as entirely natural, with the impressive words of a genius, but also utterly good and infinitely amiable.30 This description may of course be colored by the fact that Bremer in this university town found it easier to discover the type of learning she herself appreciated, but the comment also shows what she considered good society life to be like and when it was not good. Above all, it was the intellectual elite who participated in the public discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of society life. Among them, comparisons between the academic world and the business world recurred, and these comparisons went in favor of the academic world. Children’s book author Helena Nyblom described the many suppers in Uppsala during the 1860s with the words of the Ghost in Hamlet: “O horrible! O horrible! most horrible!”31 Usually, the academic world and the business world socialized separately, but during the 1860s, there was a certain amount of social interaction between these two categories, between those who lived west and east, respectively, of the Fyris river (Fyrisån) that flows through the town. East of the Fyris, in the business world neighborhood, things were at their most boring, she felt, because there were no students singing or other entertainment there.32 In this town, partially different habitus had developed in the different worlds, which were however not completely separate from each other. Not unexpectedly, Nyblom preferred the forms of social intercourse in the world to which she herself belonged. The cultural practices became distinctive among the various fractions within the bourgeoisie. As Lothar Gall has shown with respect to Germany, there could, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, be tensions between the business world on the one hand, and the academic and artistic world on the other. This was also the case in the Nordic countries.33 During the last decades of the century, coquetry was described as one of the negative sides of society life. One debater complained that the forms and ceremonies had become too formalistic, which had as a result that people who were usually nice and sensible became strict and artificial when going calling or attending evening parties. 34 A society life that should be character-molding became rather the reverse due to the demands of etiquette. The strict etiquette that had developed was not appreciated by everybody. A young girl, who together with her parents had arrived at a spa, wrote down the following thoughts in her diary on arrival: “It is said that this place is formal and coteries and etiquette. Fie!! What tedious things people are able to create in this world! For they must be bored with their so-called world and their good manners.”35 Good manners, the strict ritualization of social interactions, could be experienced as limiting.

The Conversation about Society Life 167 During the greater part of the nineteenth century, there was in Russia also criticism of the forms of society life, a criticism linked to nationalist arguments. Especially the Slavophiles argued that modern society life was characterized by vacuity. This was linked to foreign customs, “French manners,” something that was described as a false civilizing process that was in opposition to that which was genuinely Russian.36 In England, the formalization of society life was said to be even stronger, but criticism against the strict etiquette sometimes surfaced. In January 1835, an article was published in the French journal Journal des Dames et des Modes, which was also read in the Baltic Sea region, where English rules of etiquette were presented. The author commented that in England etiquette was considerably more complicated than in France. It is hard to believe that this is a “nation libre,” commented the author.37 A common feature of the criticism of society life by intellectuals was that it had become far too ritualized; its forms and ceremonies were perceived as artificial and limiting.

Notes



1. Stadin, “Iklädd borgerlighet,” 117–18. 2. Augustine, “Arriving in the Upper Class,” 71. 3. Gall, Bürgertum in Deutschland, 181–82, 344. 4. Curman, Minnen, 308; Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 22; Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 325. 5. Bauer, “Aus meinem Bühnenleben,” 54–55. 6. Curman, Minnen, 308; Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 22–23. 7. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 325; Rich, Bourgeois Consumption, 102. 8. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 325. 9. Anderson, “Ett stockholmshem vid mitten av 1800-talet,” 94; Wallenberg and Wallenberg, Brevväxling mellan far och son, vol. 2, 54–55; Linder, Sällskapslivet i Stockholm, 43–49, 65–66. 10. Lundin, Nya Stockholm, 324. 11. Hasselberg, “Den sociala ekonomin,” 100–101. 12. Forsell, Sällskapslif och hemlif, 43–44. 13. Martin-Fugier, ”The Actors,” 277. 14. Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832, 42–43, 47, 96, 98–100, 118–19, 124–28, 146. 15. Augustine, “Arriving in the Upper Class,” 71–72. 16. Tegnér, Från farfarsfars och farfars tid, 282. 17. Martin-Fugier, ”The Actors,” 277. 18. Forsell, I Stockholm, 55. 19. Koch, En familjekrönika, 66. 20. Frances Lewin von Koch was a good friend of Fredrika Bremer and of opera singer Jenny Lind. Later, in the 1840s, her brother, Edward Lewin, occasionally accompanied Lind on her tours on the continent, and during a guest appearance in England in the spring and summer of 1847. Lind stayed for a week with Frances and Edward’s sister Harriet, who was married to George Grote. Johansson, Resa med Jenny Lind, 62–74; Grandinson, ed., “Fredrika Bremer och Frances von Koch,” 290. 21. Smitt, “Vårt sällskapslif,” 59.

168  The Conversation about Society Life 22. Hagström, “Vårt umgänge.” 23. Törneblad, Goda tonen, 6. 24. Jacob Philip Tollstorp, Stockholm och dess omgifning (Stockholm: S. J. Laseron, 1839), 121. 25. Tollstorp, Stockholm och dess omgifning, 121. 26. Bremer, “A Letter about Suppers,” 281, 283. 27. Silfverstolpe, Malla Montgomery-Silfverstolpes memoarer, 142. 28. Bremer, Fredrika Bremers brev, 500; Grandinson, ed., “Fredrika Bremer och Frances von Koch,” 294. 29. Silfverstolpe, Malla Montgomery-Silfverstolpes memoarer, 217. 30. Burman, Bremer, 156. 31. Nyblom, Mina levnadsminnen, vol. 2, 27–28. The Shakespeare quote is from Hamlet, act I, scene V, line 80. 32. Nyblom, Mina levnadsminnen, vol. 2, 27–28. 33. Gall, Bürgertum in Deutschland, passim. 34. Smitt, “Vårt sällskapslif,” 59. 35. Dahlgren, Ur Ransäters familjearkiv, 14. 36. Kelly, Refinding Russia, 146–47. 37. Fouquet d’Hacette, “Angleterre: Etiquette et cérémonial,” in Journal des Dames et des Modes 38, no.1 (1835): 59–60.

9

Closing Remarks

The importance of society life for the formation of the bourgeoisie and its design of a lifestyle and a taste of its own can hardly be overestimated. All the time and effort, and the large sums of money that were invested in society life in the homes in the Baltic Sea region during the nineteenth century, show that society life was not for amusement alone. Being a form of symbolic socialization, it contributed to social interaction, and the environment where it took place contributed to creating this lifestyle. At a time of great social change and social mobility, calls and parties became a way to find one’s place in a new social landscape. Society life in the homes was an arena where the emerging bourgeoisie competed for status and power. This became an important instrument for defining and controlling the new social boundaries in the countries around the Baltic Sea. This was also where, through the encounters among like-minded people, values and norms were tested, negotiated, and honed. It was a place where the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie took shape. Calls stood out as a hub around which society life was formed. They were a central part of the lifestyle of the emerging bourgeoisie during the nineteenth century. No social interaction in the home was possible without morning calls. They were the cement that held together the emerging bourgeoisie in its different fractions. For access to this community, economic and cultural capital was required, and the ritualized forms of social intercourse ensured that everyone had the right habitus. In this way, morning calls were gatekeeper for access to the field of bourgeois culture. For more than half a century, men and women made both morning and evening calls to approximately the same degree in the emerging bourgeoisie of the Baltic Sea region. Statements in the scholarly literature that without any detailed studies have described calls as a pastime for women whose work was neither necessary in the home nor for the support of the family, must, when it comes to the Baltic Sea countries, be modified.

170  Closing Remarks Women in the emerging bourgeoisie were, in their capacity as hostesses, the central figures of morning calls. They had the main responsibility for the organization of menus, table placements, and other formalities at dinner parties, and they participated in furnishing and decorating reception rooms. Young women were expected to entertain guests with piano-playing and singing, and balls would not have been enjoyable for many people without women. This list can be made long; all this shows that women were co-creators of the bourgeois lifestyle. It is, as has been shown by previous research, difficult to draw a clear line in this part of Europe between the semi-public and the private in the same way that has been done with respect to England. The lifestyle of the bourgeoisie was shaped by both women and men, but during the first half, the nineteenth century women in the Baltic Sea region did not participate on the same terms as men. This is made clear above all in the evening calls in the intellectual fraction of the emerging bourgeoisie. During the first half of the nineteenth century, these calls, which brought to mind the literary salons of the continent, were dominated intellectually by men. At the end of the century, the educational level of women had risen considerably, and they could participate in discussions on culture and politics on more equal terms. In both cases, evening calls stood out as a forum that promoted women’s entry into public life and aided their struggle for suffrage and other civil rights. Previous research has especially emphasized two ideals that characterized the lifestyle of the bourgeoisie during the nineteenth century: a bourgeois work ethic based on industriousness and hard work, and the quiet family life of the home. This image must be modified with respect to the countries of the Baltic Sea region. It is true that the ethic of hard work and the quiet family life existed as intellectual concepts, ideals to strive for, but it would not be until the latter part of the nineteenth century that they gained a proper foothold and could be transformed into practical action. This is because they were competing with another bourgeois ideal: an active society life and a large social network as signs of success in life. In the struggle between these three ideals, it was most often society life that was prioritized at the expense of the other two ideals. It was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century when the bourgeoisie had become established and more formalized habits of social interaction had been developed, that there was a greater balance among the different ideals of the bourgeoisie. In spite of somewhat different preconditions, there was in the Baltic Sea region a lifestyle that did not differ appreciably from the models found in France and England. They were small variations on the same theme. This was because of mutual practices and personal experiences that were perceived as the special characteristics of the bourgeoisie.

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Manuals and Advice Literature Despaigne, Henri. Le Code de la mode. Paris: Chez l’auteur, 1866. Eastlake, Charles Locke. Hints on Household Taste in Furniture: Upholstery and Other Details, 4th ed. London: Longmans, Green, 1878. Fresne, Baroness de [pseud.]. Sällskapslifvets grundlagar: En handbok vid inträde och vistande i salongen. Stockholm: Sigfrid Flodins förlag, 1879. Hartley, Florence. The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness. Boston: G. W. Cottrell, [1860]. Humphry, Charlotte Eliza. Manners for Men. London: James Bowden, 1897. Höökenberg, Knut Erik Venne. Vägledning i Konsten att skicka sig så man blir välkommen gäst i finare sällskaper. Stockholm: n. pub., 1857. Lady, A [pseud.]. A Manual of Etiquette for Ladies: or True Principles of Politeness. London: T. Allman & Son, 1856. Toilettkonst för herrarne, eller Anvisning för manspersoner att kläda sig med smak. Stockholm: printed by Marquardska Boktyckeriet, 1829. [Törneblad, Bengt Johan]. Goda tonen, synnerligen den stockholmska: eller Fina verldens anständighet i sin stolta glans. Stockholm: printed by A. Gadelius, 1814. Verardi, Louis [pseud. Pierre Boitard]. Goda tonen och den samma belefvenheten: Säker vägledning i sällskapslivet och alla våra förhållanden. Stockholm: Flodins Förlag, 1859. Wenzel, Gottfrid Emanuel. Den äkta Gentlemannen eller Grundsatser och regler för god ton och sant levnadssätt i umgängeslivets särskilda förhållanden. Göteborg: Bonniers, 1845. Wenzel, Gottfried Emanuel. En Man af Werld, eller Reglor för Ett fint och behagligt lefnadssätt. Strängnäs: printed by Carl Erik Ekmarck, 1822. Wingårdh, Marius. Så går det till i umgänge och sällskapsliv, 6th ed. Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 1958.

Contemporary Articles Arfwidsson, Alvar. “Från dam-världen i Paris.” Idun 3, no. 39 (1890). d’Hacette, Fouquet. “Angleterre: Etiquette et cérémonial.” Journal des Dames et des Modes 38, no. 1 (1835). Falke, Jacob von. Excerpts from Den moderna smakens historia in “Några drag ur modets och klädedrägtens historia.” Tidskrift för hemmet 24, no. 1 (1882). Fallström, Daniel. “Dagmar Thomas.” Idun 3, no. 39 (1890).

References 175 Hagström, Klaës Alfred. “Vårt umgänge.” Idun 3, no. 4 (1890). “Hilda Dalman.” Idun 3, no. 12 (1890). “Innertrappornas anläggning och konstruktion i allmänhet.” Tidskrift för byggnadskonst och ingeniörsvetenskap 1, no. 1 (1861). Kraemer, Vera von. “Sällskapslivet i Stockholm under 1880- och 1890-talet.” Rösträtt för kvinnor 8, no. 6, (1919). L—d. “Verldsdamen.” Tidskrift för hemmet 3, no. 3 (1861). Lisseg [Aurora Lundquist]. “Hemlif.” Idun 3, no. 39 (1890). “Louise Flodin.” Idun 3, no. 4 (1890). “Modes de Vienne.” Journal des Dames et des Modes 38, no. 14 (1835). Nyblom, Helena. “Moder och smak: Några iakttagelser.” Idun 3, no. 11 (1890). Senancour, Virginie de. “Un parfait honnête homme.” Journal des Dames et des Modes 32, no. 3 (1839). Smitt, Clara. “Vårt sällskapslif V.” Idun 1, no. 9 (1888). “Våra hvardagsrum.” Idun 3, no. 8 (1890).

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Additional Sources Frenckell, Ester-Margaret. Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1812–1827: Med en historisk översikt. Helsinki: Söderström, 1943. Frenckell, Ester-Margaret. Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827–1832. Helsinki: Söderström, 1947. Geijer, Erik Gustaf. Om vår tids inre samhällsförhållanden: Historiska skrifter, edited by Thorsten Nybom. Stockholm: Tiden, 1980. Kerr, Robert. The Gentlemen’s House: or, How to Plan English Residences from the Parsonage to the Palace; with Tables and Accommodation and Cost. 3rd ed. London: John Murray, 1871. Luthmer, Ferdinand. Werkbuch des Dekorateurs: Eine Darstellung der gesamten Innendekoration und Festschmuckes in Theori und Praxis, Stuttgart and Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1898. Om dekorering och inredning af boningsrum med särskild hänsyn till tapeter och bårder. Norrköping: Norrköpings Tapetfabrik, 1889. Spofford, Harriet Prescott. Art Decoration Applied to Furniture. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1878. Tollstorp, Jacob Philip. Stockholm och dess omgifning. Stockholm: S. J. Laseron, 1839.

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Index

Åberg, Anders 37 accessories: gloves 66; lorgnette 63; outmoded fripperies 63; reticule 68–71; snuffbox 63; status and belonging 59 Anne, Martin-Fugier 5, 18–19, 104, 140–141, 156 Arndt, Ernst Moritz 27 Aunt Green, Aunt Brown, and Aunt Lavender (Beskow) 67, 67 Austen, Jane: 40; Pride and Prejudice 69

cane 63; women 3; women, creating lifestyle 3 Bremer, Fredrika 3–4, 17, 18, 27, 39–40, 49, 85, 143; liberal ideas 17; bourgeois conceitedness 53; about Geijer 82, 166; inconvenient callers 150; described greeting way 105–106, 165–166 British, etiquette books 90 Broström, Mathilda 23 Bünsow, Fredrik 40 business calls 73, 80, 90, 104

Bäckström, Hilma 43, 44, 135 Bauer, Karoline 19, 162 Biedermeier style 137 Bildungsbürgertum 3 Bourdieu, Pierre 8 bourgeoisie 2; amusements 4; breakthrough 4; culture 8–9; culture of calling 59; drawing room for receiving morning calls 111; emergence 8; first decades of nineteenth century 61; French 2; friendship and social life 8; German 2; gloves 66; Hobsbawm, Eric 2; ideals, Swedish and Finnish sources 150; inclusive and exclusive 9; introductory call 85; lifestyle, aspect 4–5; linked to kind of morality 8; masters 9–10; masters and servants 9–10; nineteenth century, first decades 6; nineteenth-century 71; paying and receiving calls 79; Pierre Bourdieu’s theories 8; respectability and professionalism 61; ritualization 9; servants 9–10; sexual morality 8; social space 3; Sweden 6; time 127; walking

calling cards 71–75, 74, 88, 90, 121, 123, 151 calls 59, 151; bread-and-butter calls 80; Cederschiöld, Gustaf’s view 79; condolence 95; dignity of hostess 106; drawing room 111; England and France, role of hostess 105; farewell 90–91; Ferdinand Tollin på visit hos mig [Ferdinand Tollin call on me], 70; formal 1; foundation for social intercourse 95–96; frequency 90; friendship 109; invitation 96; knowledge of good calling 90; linking to women 5; middle of nineteenth century, dressing of men 60; morning 102–111; morning call 80; New Year’s 91–93; night calls 80; paying and receiving 79; returning on Wilhelmina Hallwyl 121–126; rules of etiquette 96; Sweden and Finland, role of hostess 105; tea 109; thank-you-for-having-us 97; walking cane 63 Calm, Marie: dilemma with guests who overstayed 89

186  Index card games 140–141 Cederschiöld, Gustaf: meaning of calls 79; visit and call, distinguished between 79–80 celebrating Friday (hålla fredag), 143 character-molding 164–167 Charles XIV John period (1818–44), 148 city planning, ideas about 37 class habitus 8, 9, 23 clothes: colorful dress coats to discreet lounge suits 60–62; good taste 60; identity-creating function 59; men mourning dress 95; morning coat 60; non-verbal form of communication 60; walking dress 64–68; women’s mourning dress 95 condolence call 94, 95, 126 constant availability 151 conversations 107–108; brief calls 108; England rules, other guests 108 Culture Builders: A Historical Anthropology of Middle-Class Life (Frykman and Löfgren) 7 culture personalities 152 Curman, Carl: circle 154; Curman Calla, 66, 162; Nya Idun 26; receptions 152–154 Curtin, Michael 11, 96; studied etiquette books 11 dancing 28, 29, 43, 86 Davidoff, Leonore 3, 24 Davies, Mark: functional familiarity 86 demimondaines 23 dinner time: Eastern Baltic Sea region 113; ever-later 113; middle of nineteenth century 113; Northern Europe 112; The Serious Game 113 distinction 9, 25, 49, 53, 71, 81–82, 93, 123; and space 35; people of 60 Donner, Joachim 39 doxa, unspoken rules 8–9 drive 8 drop-leaf tables 137, 141 duties of society life 164 en famille 152 esthetization 40 etiquette books: call duration 88; calling cards 71; introduction

in England 81; morning calls 111–114; Nordic countries 82; Sällskapslivets grundlagar [The basic laws of society life], 20; social issues and politics 148; studied by Curtin, Michael 11 Europe: basic common rule for call 84; bourgeoisie 86; calling cards 74; changed social life 24; common time for having dinner 112, 113; dancing 28; drawing room 48; family life in nineteenth century 148; galoshes 71; golden age of walking cane 63; Hallwyl House 122, 122; Northern part and women 65; northern periphery 81, 93; paintings and drawings 137; respect to hostess 105; servants and bourgeois lifestyle 10; servants, part of bourgeois lifestyle 10; shoes 69; sleeping quarters of servants 45; Stockholm 97; Sundsvall 37 evening calls 145 evening receptions 147, 154; in Stockholm in the 1880s and 1890s 152–157 evenings: without guests 149, 151, 161 everyday drawing room 124; formal calls received by Wilhelmina Hallwyl 124 extraordinary officials 119 Falke, von Jacob: Geschichte des modernen Geschmacks [History of modern taste], 62 families in Sweden and Finland 149 family life 148 family portraits: symbolic capital 124 farewell calls 91; information providing source 91 Förvillelser [Delusions], 20 fashion journal: Journal des Dames et des Modes 95 Fashioning the Bourgeoisie 59 Filharmoniska sällskapet 153 Finland: Dieter Hein, summoned 5 fixed structure of time 156 Flygare-Carlén, Emelie 29–30 formal calls 79, 89, 90–98; knowledge of good calling 90 Forsell, Louise 28 Forsell, Marie-Louise 109, 112, 114–116, 116, 141; delightful evening of loneliness 149, 151

Index 187 family 140; locked doors 151; on social duty 162 Förvillelser (Söderberg), 20, 67 France: stearin candles 145 French bourgeoisie 2 French calls: five-minute call 89 friendship calls 109; Topelius, Zackarias, defined 89 Frykman, Jonas 7, 43, 128, 151 Fürstenberg, Carl 39 Geijer, Erik Gustaf: coatroom 136; defection 133; engaging lectures 133; evening calls 137–138; family’s evenings 135; furniture 137; home 142; home guests 135; home in Uppsala 136; Nordic countries 137; Nordic literature 138; old city farm 134; open homes and evening calls 143; social tier calls 142; swordsmanship 139; teetische 135; tête-à-tête in bedroom 137 gender-specific experiences 3 German: Bildungsbürgertum 3; Mittelstand 4; social class 6 German Bürgertum 2 good breeding (belevenhet) 23 good manners (god ton) 23 good taste 31, 41–42, 52–53; dressing 60–61, 64, 71 gossiping hour 114, 117 The Great Masculine Renunciation 61 Guerrand, Roger-Henri 43 Hall, Catherine 3 Hallwyl House 48, 122–123, 122 Hallwyl, Wilhelmina 1, 102, 121–125, 125 Hasselberg, Ylva 7–8 Hein, Dieter: summoned in Finland 5 high society 20 Hobsbawm, Eric 2, 35; used term bourgeoisie 2 holy day in 1843, 150 home: feminine drawing rooms 46–52; good taste and vulgarity 52–53; kitchen entrance 45–46; masculine dining rooms 46–52; modern bourgeois city 36–38; residence 35; semi-public rooms and private ones 42–45; social boundaries 35–36; solid, and man’s workplace 38–41

hostess: dignity, emphasized 106; England and France, role 105; guests and behavior 106; Sweden and Finland, role 105 introduction: countries around Baltic Sea 82–83; demand 81; Manners for Men 81; Nordic countries rules 82; northern periphery of Europe 81; right circles 81–83; ritualization 82; rules in England 81; society life 90 introductory call 83–88; consular system 87; educational journeys 85; England, rules 84; France, German states, and Nordic countries, rules 85; The Neighbour 84; network of contacts 86; personal contacts, lacked 88; rule in Europe 84; social status, effect 84–85; society life 90 invitation calls 96–97; hallmarks of social affiliation 96; telephone 1880s and 1890s 97 invitation cards 97 invitations: telephone call 97–98 Jewish Verbürgerlichung 7 Journal des Dames et des Modes 95 Kerosene lamps 145–146 Kocka, Jürgen: comment on female servants in German cities 10 Kocka, Jürgen 2, 10; bourgeois culture 148 La Bourgeoisie 4 La vie élégante, ou, La formation du Tout-Paris 1815–1848, 5 Larsson, Carl 1, 102, 121 lavish society life 162 Lewin, Frances 17, 164–165 liberalism 1, 6, 62, 133 lighting 140, 145–146, 150 Liljeholmen stearin factory 145 Lind, Jenny 21 literary salons: hostess orchestrated 144 Lloyd, Llewellyn 30 Löfgren, Orvar 7, 42, 128, 151 Lundin, Claës 22, 27, 42–43, 47, 152–153, 162 Luthmer, Ferdinand 35

188  Index Magdalena (Malla) MontgomerySilfverstolpe 141; literary salons 144 Malla Silfverstolpe: drawing room 145 Marie-Louise Forsell 114, 115; commented on morning plans 116; morning visits, defined 115–116 marriage calls 93–94; The Neighbours 94 Martin-Fugier, Anne 18–19; women 141; wrote about paying calls 5 masters: bourgeoisie 9–10 McDowell, Linda 35 Medevi spa in 1835: society life 3–4 men 147 Merlo Castle 40, 41 middle class: concept 1–2; divisions 2; in literature 2; perspective of gender 3; proper 2 middling sort 3–4, 17, 93 the middling sort of the world 133 middling state 4 The military world 21 Mittelstand 4 morality (moral), 8, 23, 127, 165 morning calls 80, 102–111; conversations 107–108; Daniel Pool mentioned 109; detrimental effect on work 116–117; etiquette books 111; France and England, visiting hours 112; Fruntimmersföreningen [The women’s association], 102; Kalaset hos pastorns [The party at the vicarâ’s], 107; long morning 111–114; Marie-Louise Forsell 114, 115; new time and new ideals 126–127; refined language 108; Sweden and Finland 110; Sweden and Finland, hours for calling 113; tea served in Sweden 109; tension with work 114–121; urban lifestyle 112; working hours 118–119; Wright, Magnus 102, 103 morning visits: Marie-Louise Forsell, defined 115–116 Mosse, Werner 19 music 28, 135, 138, 139–140, 153, 161 needlework 140–141, 144–145, 146 The Neighbours (Bremer), 39, 49, 68, 84, 94, 105–106

New Year’s calls 91–93; norms 93; Visiter på nyåret, 92 night calls 80 nobility 19 Nordic business world 153 Nordic countries: etiquette books 105; Jews 7 Ödman, Pelle 10, 64, 105, 106 older Swedish woman 156 Our Mutual Friend (Dickens) 47, 105 Palme receptions 154, 155 Parisian bourgeoisie 4 Pavlova, Anna 21 paying calls 1; wrote about by Martin-Fugier, Anne 5 Perrot, Philippe: Parisian bourgeoisie women and dressing 64 pianos 137, 139, 147, 150 Pierre Bourdieu’s theories: bourgeoisie 8 place and social framework 6–9 quiet family evening, longing 148–152 quiet family life 150 Ramsay, Alexandra 19, 42 receptions 156 The Red Room (Röda Rummet), 118 Riehl, Wilhelm: ecommended Mittelstand 4 Riga 5, 38, 113 Riksdag 148 ritualization 9, 71, 82, 93, 95, 111, 166 Runeberg, Johan Ludvig 43 Russia: middling state 4; Tallinn 19 Sällskapslivets grundlagar (Fresne), 20, 72 Schumann, Wieck Clara 21–22 season and society life, in world 25–31 Segalen, Martine 38 semi-mondaines 23 The Serious Game 22, 113 shoes: boots 69; galoshes 69–70; Sofrosyne 69 Simmel, George 2, 59 Sirishof 41 social gathering reminiscent 147 social issues and politics 148

Index 189 social risk 150 social space 3 society life 161, 162; character-molding 164–167; duties 164 society (societeten) 20, 22 Söderberg, Hjalmar 20, 22, 95, 113 stearin candles 145 Stjärnblom, Arvid 22 Suck, Titus 40 Sundsvall 37, 40, 41, 50 Sweden: bourgeoisie 6; compulsory guild system 6 symbolic capital 8, 139; aesthetic mind 40; call 64; family portraits 124; floral arrangements and artfully folded napkins 47; needlework 140; urbanity and knowledge 85 Tallinn (Reval) 19, 43, 69, 145 tallow candles 145 taste 40 Taylor, Lou 20 tea calls 109 tea tables 109 thank-you-for-having-us call 97 The Theory of the Leisure Class (Veblen), 62 Topelius, Zackarias 19; evening call 151; friendship calls, defined 89 Tosh, John 42; climax of family life 148, 149 Ulvros, Eva Helen 8, 147 unwanted caller 151 urbanity (världsvana), 22–23, 50, 59, 85, 108, 162 Varnhagen, Rahel 135, 144 Veblen, Thorstein 62 Villa Hügel 41 Volkov, Shulamit: Jews as bourgeoisie 7

von Bethmann, Moritz 9–10 von Moritz Bethmann: servants 9 walking cane: bourgeois man 63; during calls 63; golden age in Europe 63 walking dress: change in cut of women’s clothes 65; crinoline 65; Nordic countries 65–66; Parisian women 64; Sofrosyne 69; toilette de promenade au piède 66; women’s shoes 69 Wallenberg, André Oscar 41, 87, 104 Walpole, Dorothy 27 Wallenberg, Knut 81–82, 103, 120, 153 Wilhelmina Hallwyl: belonged 121; formal calls receiving room 124; Hamngatan 4, 122; house 122 Wilhelmy-Dollinger, Petra: salon life in Berlin 142 Winberg, Johan Ulric 147 women 147; bourgeoisie, creating lifestyle 3; demimondaines 23; linking calls 5 women’s movement: foundation 154; grandes dames 152 women’s needlework 140 world: and idea of hierarchy 17–24; season and society life 25–31; social life 24–25 The world of civil servants 21 The world of pleasure and luxury 20 World on Sundays 20 Wright, Magnus 72, 91, 94, 96, 102–107, 103, 114, 116; detrimental effect of calls on work 117–118; engaged to Sophie Sallmén 104; morning calls 102 Wurst, Karin: emphasized on amusements of everyday life 4