Last week I wrote about Amelie Ahlberg who drew a picture of Haddon Hall. I speculated that her older sister, Charlotte, might also have given Cecilia a drawing for her memory album.
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In Cecilia’s album, there is a pencil drawing of a house. The painting is signed Charlotte and is dated 30 January 1844. Charlotte was a very common name in the 1840s and it is of course possible that the drawing was made by some other girl named Charlotte. However, because both drawings, Amelie’s and the one signed Charlotte, are excellent, I believe this one was in fact made by Charlotte Ahlberg.
Again, Google Lens nailed it and I should probably have recognized it anyway. This is Haga Palace outside Stockholm. It is now the home of the Swedish crown princess and her family. But which rendering of Haga Palace did Charlotte copy?
I search the Swedish Royal Library for images of this palace and can hardly believe my luck. There is a digitized copy of a lithograph from 1835 and when I crop it, I am stunned. Charlotte was a great artist!
Left: Lithograph of Haga Palace, 1835. Right: Charlotte’s drawing, 1844.
Charlotte Henriette Bothilda was the oldest child of Dr. Johan Daniel Ahlberg and his wife, Louise Henriette Moll. She was born in Stockholm on September 20, 1828. She was confirmed in St Klara parish in 1845 and inducted into the Order of the Innocence in January 1846. Being inducted into the two secret orders, the Innocence and the Amaranth, was the introduction to high society. Augusta attended her first Innocence Ball in January 1844, a year before Charlotte.
Another important step was to have one’s portrait painted. To have a drawing made by Maria Röhl was also popular, and in 1852, the three oldest daughters – Charlotte, Emelie, and Eugenie – visited Maria Röhl.
Charlotte and Oskar married in 1857. Oskar had an illustrious career. He became the minister of national defense (Swedish: Statsråd och chef för landtförsvarsdepartementet). They had two daughters, Agnes Charlotta Henrietta (b. 1860) and Dagmar Elisabet (b. 1868).
A friend of Charlotte, Ebba Ramsay , describes their friendship in her autobiography “Om flyddatider: ur en gammal dagbok“. The book (in pdf format and in Swedish) can be downloaded for free at the following link from the Swedish National Library (Kungliga Biblioteket, KB). (Charlotte is mentioned at several places in the book – the first, very endearing description is on page 23.)
Finally, I found several photographs of Charlotte later in life. Her outfits are really stunning.
Haddon Hall. Drawing by Amelie Ahlberg (Tottie), 1844.
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Amelie Ahlberg made a drawing for Cecilia. I have now learned that these pencil drawings were not original creations but copies of prints. Drawing was a subject in Edgren’s school and copying prints might have been part of the curriculum.
I uploaded Amelie’s painting in Google Lens and it was an instant hit. The original print of Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, England, was drawn and engraved by Jandes Baylin Allen (1803-1876). The print was published in The Ladies’ Cabinet of Fashion, Music and Romance, Volume V, 1841.
Amelie’s drawing is a fantastic copy of the original. One has to really scrutinize the drawing and the print to find differences (such as Amelie forgetting to draw the birds in the sky). Amelie must have been interested in art at an early age and maybe encouraged to draw. She has a Wikipedia page where she is described as a Swedish drawing artist.
Amelie Ahlberg’s Family
Amalia Lovisa Augusta (Amelie) Ahlberg was born on June 29, 1830. Her father was Johan Daniel Ahlberg, a physician at the royal court (Swedish: kunglig livmedicus) and also the chief medical officer (förste stadsläkare) in Stockholm. Amelie’s mother was Louise Henriette Moll. They had 6 children:
Charlotta Henrietta Bothilda (b. 1828)
Amalia Lovisa Augusta (b. 1830)
Johan Georg Theodor (b. 1832)
Emma Eugenia Matilda (b. 1833)
Adelaide Theresia Paulina (b. 1837)
Henriette Elisabet Pauline Christina (b.1851 – long after her older siblings)
Louise Henriette Ahlberg (in 1838) with her three oldest daughters (in 1852): Charlotte (Lotten), Amelie, and Eugenie. Drawings by Maria Röhl.
In 1845, the family lived at Stora Vattugränd 13 (they were the owners of the house), right across the street from Edgren’s school. One can therefore speculate that at least the 2 oldest girls, Charlotta and Amelie, attended Edgren’s school with Cecilia. And if they did, did Amelie’s sister Charlotta also provide a greeting for Cecilia?
There is a drawing, similar to Amelie’s, that is signed: Charlotte. It might likely be drawn by Charlotte Ahlberg (so she will get her own blog post).
In 1854, Amelie married Henry Rumsey Tottie, a wholesale merchant who was born in London. His father was also a merchant besides being the Swedish Consul General in London. Amelie and Henry settled in Stockholm and raised 5 sons.
The fact that Amelie has a Wikipedia page and is a documented artist means that she continued to draw throughout her life. The drawing she made for Cecilia when she was 14 years old is, therefore, a real treasure. I wonder if any other drawings by her have survived.
Lovisa (or Louise) Edgren (born Dethmar) was a beloved teacher. Unfortunately, there is not a single portrait of her. When the family Edgren’s private school for girls closed in 1844, the students kept in touch with each other and with their former teacher through letters, reminiscing about this wonderful time in their lives.
Lotten Westman’s letter to Augusta, Stockholm, 18 December 1845.
“Lucky Augusta who gets letters from Mrs. Edgren! Greet her a thousand times from me. Tell her that I still worship her as warmly as when I said goodbye to her for the last time, and when I start talking about them, it is always an inexhaustible topic and at those times, I forget both time and place and it takes me back to the happy times when I was educated by them; when a smile and a friendly word by Mrs. Edgren sent me to the seventh heaven. Tell her all this, and say that if in the future, whether I get ever so happy or unhappy, I will never forget them. Oh, when I just think of them, I get overly joyous.”
Lovisa Dethmar was born in 1802 at Reckenburg, an estate close to Anholt in southwestern Germany close to the Dutch border. Her father, Friedrich Wilhelm Dethmar, born in 1773, was the pastor in Anholt and a writer. Lovisa had at least two sisters, Eugenia, born in 1806, and Adelheid Clementine Therese, born in 1809. One sister moved to England.
When Lovisa was young, she was sent to Dresden to study. She was already a great artist and good at playing the harp. During her studies, she got interested in the works of the Swedish poet Atterbom and decided to visit Sweden. It is fascinating that a pastor’s daughter, in the early 1800s, was sent away to study so far from home. Dresden was famous for its architecture and art treasures and maybe she was sent to Dresden to study art? Or did she study literature? The fact that she traveled to Sweden because of an interest in poetry shows signs of independence and determination. Maybe it was these personality traits that made her such an engaging and loved teacher.
This is how I image Lovisa Dethmar in Dresden. Kerstin and I saw the painting there during our Augusta journey through Europe. The painting “Woman on the Balcony was painted in 1824 by Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869)
It was in Sweden she met her future husband, Johan Fredrik Edgren. He was an educated man and also a pastor. They were married in Anholt in 1838 and then settled in Stockholm. Lovisa’s sister, Eugenia, decided to join them and the same year, the family opened their private school for girls in Stockholm.
The school closed in June of 1844 when Pastor Edgren was appointed pastor at Morup’s parish on the Swedish west coast. As the girls in the school bade farewell to each other and the Edgren family, Cecilia got many cards for her memory album. But from some correspondence between Augusta and Lotten Westman, we believe that Cecilia actually stayed with the Edgren family in Morup after the school closed in Stockholm.
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Lovisa Edgren wrote her greeting to Cecilia in her native German. The owner of Cecilia’s Memory Album kindly provided me with a translation of the German text to Swedish. The English translation is my own.
In Swedish: “Endast det rika sinnet älskar, endast det fattiga begär.” (Schiller)
In English: “None but the wealthy minds love; poor minds desire alone.”
(The quote is from Friedrich Schiller’s Liebe und Begierde:
Recht gesagt, Schlosser! Man liebt, was man hat, man begehrt, was man nicht hat; Denn nur das reiche Gemüt liebt, nur das arme begehrt.
In Swedish: “Dig, min Cecilia, blev ett så rikt sinne givet, även oss har det glädjat att leva tillsammans med Dig. Förhoppningsfullt var den korta tiden även för Dig ej förgäves ödslad. Detta önskar längtansfullt,
Din trogna väninna L. Edgren”
In English: “You, my Cecilia, were given such a rich mind, we too have been delighted to have you with us. Hopefully, the short time was not wasted in vain even for You. This wishes longingly,
Your faithful friend L. Edgren”
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Lovisa Edgren’s 38-year-old sister, Eugenia Dethmar, also wrote to Cecilia.
In Swedish: “Dig ledsagar genom det vilda livet ett nådigt öde; Ett rent hjärta gav dig naturen, O! giv det så rent tillbaka!
Giv att världen möter dig så vänligt som du möter den, giv att hon dig gör vad du gör henne, så kan du bara bli lycklig.
Detta önskar dig din väninna E. Dethmar.”
In English: “A merciful destiny shepherds you through the turbulent life; Nature gave you a pure heart, Oh! give it back so pure!
May the world treat you as kindly as you treat it, may it do to you what you do to it, then you can only be happy.
In Cecilias’s memory album, there is a lovely drawing of a steamboat named Le Vivant, moored to a pier and with a line of people waiting to board. There is also a small island in the drawing with tall poplars and a sculpture. The island is connected by a walking bridge to the opposite side of the river. On that side, there is a prominent, 5-story building. The painting is annotated with “Genève” in the lower-left corner, “L’Île de Rousseau” under the drawing, and “Auror” in the lower right corner. I assume Auror (or Aurore) was the name of Cecilia’s friend who gave her the drawing.
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Île Rousseau and Hotel des Bergues
Île Rousseau is a small island in the Rhone River at the center of Geneva. It was named after Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the famous Swiss philosopher and writer. In 1834, a bridge was built across the river with a connection to the island. The bridge – Pont des Bergues – was named after the magnificent hotel at the end of the bridge, Hotel des Bergues (the large 5-story building in the drawing and nowadays the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues).
It is easy to find old paintings of Île Rousseau online but most seem to be later renderings of the island. Some paintings feature buildings on both sides of Hotel des Bergues. These would have been painted after 1850. Other paintings feature two bridges. The second bridge, Pont du Mont-Blanc, was built in 1862.
Aurore’s drawing depicts Geneva between 1834 and 1850. I initially pictured Aurore sitting on a bench in Geneva on some journey through Europe with her parents. On her lap is a loose-leaf sketchbook and she is busy sketching the tranquil view with her small graphite pencil.
More googling, and I find an almost identical image!
Besides being a much more detailed print, the main difference between Aurore’s drawing and this print is the steamboat. This one is much larger and ornate.
I just realize that Aurore, of course, did not make her drawing en plein air but most likely made it in school, learning to draw by copying a print. I am sure that in some illustrated magazine, or some book belonging to her teacher, there is an image of the steamboat “Le Vivant” moored in Geneva. I just haven’t found it yet.
There is one more print of Hotel des Bergues and Île Rousseau. This one shows both bridges and new buildings to the right of Hotel des Bergues. This one would have been made after 1862.
Lithographs by Louis-Julien (Jean) Jacottet (1806-1880)
Lastly, I found a beautiful lithograph by Jacottet with credits also given to Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Bayot (1810-1866). The view is from Hotel des Bergues with Île Rousseau to the left and the bridge (Pont des Bergues) to the right. Based on the dresses of the pedestrians (it looks like the women are not wearing crinolines, but rather layers of petticoats), I would guess that this lithograph was made in the late 1840s or early 1850s.
The following images are cropped (close-ups of parts of the print).
I pick a random page out of Cecilia’s memory album.
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This one has a handwritten poem with the word Kärleks (Love’s) emphasized in larger letters. The page is signed with what I interpret as S. F. En. I am not sure about theS, but what else could it be? I wreck my brain; are there any friends of Cecilia and Augusta whose last name is En (it is a proper Swedish last name) or starts with En? I check the lists of confirmation friends, school friends, members of the secret orders – the Innocence and the Amaranth – that Augusta belonged to. I find nothing.
I then take another approach. I check to see if the poem might have been written by someone else and published. It takes some playing around with Google, like changing the preferred language and searching on various parts of the poem. It works and I find the source!
Literal translation:
Oh how I would want to be (for wishing is allowed)
The flower, lush and lovely which sits there on the turf
How I would face the sun and happily open my purple mouth
To imbibe power, light, and warmth out of God’s Well of Love
The poem appeared in a book Lyriska toner (Lyrical Tones) by Wilhelmina and was published in 1843, the year before Cecilia received the handwritten page for her album. The title of the poem is En ung flickas önskningar (The Wishes of a Young Woman) and what was copied was the first of the poem’s five stanzas.
There is an introduction in the book, written by the pastor in Clara parish (1825-1831), Frans Michael Franzén. Besides being a pastor, Franzén was also a famous poet. I can see why Franzén was moved by Wilhelmina’s poems. He wrote similar poems that also ended up in girls’ memory albums. And even the bishop in Stockholm, Johan Olof Wallin, wrote poems that were likewise copied.
At the time, women writers often wrote under a pseudonym, and Wilhelmina simply published under her first name. Later, when she became a rather famous author and translator, she used her real name, Wilhelmina Stålberg.
That is when it hit me. The handwriting of the poem in Cecilia’s album looked like that of an older person. It was definitely not written by someone of Cecilia’s age, someone who had perfected their cursives, dipping the quill in the inkwell and making beautiful letters. If this was a poem that was known by pastors, could S. F. En belong to the clergy?
The answer was staring me in the face! En could mean that the last name started with E and ended withn, not starting with En. Cecilia and Augusta attended Edgren’s school, founded and operated by Pastor Johan Fredrik Edgren and his German-born wife, Lovisa Carolina Wilhelmina Dethmar. And the initials were J. F. and not S.F. Pastor J. F. Edgren had written the poem for Cecilia before she was leaving Stockholm in June of 1844.
Pastor Edgren later became important in Augusta’s life. He officiated the wedding between Augusta and Adolf Nordwall in Morup’s parsonage. I wonder if she also got a poem or if he recited any during the wedding ceremony.
In Cecilia’s memory album, there is an image of a few small violets or pansies. Today, on Valentine’s Day, it would make a perfect card.
Memory Page #7925
Below the image of the pansies is a handwritten message in French:
Mes pensées sont à vous Et Vous suivront partout
(My thoughts are with you And will follow you everywhere)
The image illustrates the poem, as the name of the flower (Pansy) is derived from the French name, Pensée, which means “thought”.
The friend who gave Cecilia this card didn’t want to sign her name but only gave a clue: J…e
The most common name in the 1840s that started with J and ended with e was Josefine. But other rather common names with French spelling were Jaquette and Julie.
A likely candidate is Jaquette Rütterskjöld. Her sister Augusta also wrote a short poem in French and gave to Cecilia. Jaquette was also Cecilia’s friend. They both attended Edgren’s school.
But of course, only Cecilia would have known who wrote the endearing text.
More about Jaquette’s family can be found at the following links:
Cecilia was only 18 years old when she died from measles. Two years earlier, she had lived and studied in Stockholm. Like so many girls her age, she owned a memory album, filled with greetings from her family and friends. When she left Stockholm in the summer of 1844, to return home to Vågsäter, many of her friends wrote poems or made drawings for her to put in her album.
In Cecilia’s memory album, there are 30 loose-leaf pages with greetings – some are signed by first and last name, others by first name only, a few are signed by initials, and finally, some are not signed at all.
Memory Page #7917
The first poem I will share is one that is not signed.
Fast lifvet jag ej gaf åt dig Du likväl finna skall hos mig Så väl i glädje som i smärta En Moders kärleksfulla hjerta.
Translating poetry is difficult. However, the essence of the poem is as follows:
Although I did not bring you to this world I still want you to know That in joy, as well as in pain You will find a Mother’s loving heart
Cecilia would of course know who wrote the poem so there would be no reason for the card to be signed.
Cecilia’s Stepmother
When Cecilia was 2 years old, her mother died in childbirth. Three years later, Cecilia’s father re-married 24-year-old Emma Wilhelmina Iggeström. Cecilia was thus raised by a stepmother “with a mother’s loving heart”.
In addition to not being signed, the card is also not dated. One can always speculate that Cecilia received the beautiful memory album from her stepmother and that this was her first memory card.
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Cecilia Koch was born on February 14, 1828, to Michael Koch (1792-1869) and his first wife, Johanna Amalia Fröding (1801-1830). Cecilia’s mother died in childbirth in 1830, leaving her husband with 2-year-old Cecilia, a 1-year-old son, and a newborn baby. As was common practice, Cecilia’s father remarried. He and his second wife, Emma Wilhelmina Iggeström (1809-1891), had 4 daughters and a son. The children Koch (those who survived to adulthood) had interesting lives and married well.
Cecilia Koch was one of Augusta’s dearest friends during her time in Stockholm. She was most likely Augusta’s classmate in Edgren’s school and they were also in the same confirmation class. After I wrote about Cecilia last fall, I received an exciting email from her brother’s great-grandson who had stumbled upon my blog entry. He had a treasure that had belonged to Cecilia that he was willing to share.
I love when I get comments or emails from relatives of those I write about. But this email also opened the door to a whole new area of research.
In Cecilia’s family archive, there is a small, red, velvet-clad, cardboard box. The lid is decorated with gilded leaf scrolls and the text “ALBUM”. The box, which has belonged to Cecilia, contains loose leaves with poems and artwork, all signed in one way or another.
Cecilia Koch’s Album (minnesalbum, minnesbok)
I was now given access to pictures of these pages and to my excitement, as I scrolled through the images, I recognized one name after the other. The pages contained greetings from Cecilia’s family members and friends and many of those were also Augusta’s friends.
Did all girls have these types of boxes or albums in the 1840s? Could these records be used to discover constellations of friends?
Last year, I wrote about Augusta’s confirmation friends. This spring, I will write about the girls who provided poems and drawing for Cecilia’s album. I have identified 15 so far. For the rest, I only have clues.
Memory Books, Poetry Books, Autograph Albums…
There are many names for these types of books or albums. And there are numerous scholarly articles and books written about them. One book that really stands out is Lev lycklig, glöm ej mig! Minnesböckernas historia (Live Happily, Forget me Not! History of the Memory Books ) by Carola Ekrem. The title implies the purpose of these albums: wishing the friend a happy life and making sure you are not forgotten.
The Swedish folklorist Bengt af Klintberg has studied Swedish memory albums and found that those written between 1810 – 1850 mostly belonged to girls in the upper social classes. These girls either studied with a governess or attended private schools for girls. They learned foreign languages (French, German, and sometimes English) at an early age and could, therefore, write poetry in those languages. They also learned how to draw or paint in watercolors – which is evident in the memory albums. And sometimes they would include a lock of their hair in the albums.
During the latter half of the 1800s, memory albums became popular among girls in all social classes.
The Little Town on the Prairie
Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote The Little House on the Prairie series of books, actually described what was called an Autograph Album, in the book The Little Town on the Prairie:
In Laura’s package was a beautiful small book, too. It was thin, and wider than it was tall. On its red cover, embossed in gold, where the words:
Autograph Album
The pages, of different soft colors, were blank. Carrie had another exactly like it, except that the cover of hers was blue and gold.
“I found that autograph albums are all the fashion nowadays,” said Ma. “All the most fashionable girls in Vinton have them.”
“What are they, exactly?” Laura asked.
“You ask a friend to write a verse on one of the blank pages and sign her name to it,” Ma explained. “If she has an autograph album, you do the same for her, and you keep the albums to remember each other by.”
Sources:
Ekrem, C. Lev lycklig, glöm ej mig. Minnesböckernas historia. Atlantis 2002.
When I first found Augusta’s confirmation record in St Jacob’s parish, I realized that the pastor had ranked the girls based on their fathers’ status (title, name, and profession). In all other parishes in Stockholm, the pupils were listed alphabetically (St Clara’s parish) or simply in the order they entered the confirmation class.
The pastor in St Jacob’s parish in 1844 was Abraham Zakarias Pettersson. Ebba Ramsey (born Karström) describes Pastor Petterson in her autobiography. She was listed as number 11 in the confirmation class the following year, 1845.
We went at this time to St. Jacob, where Dr. Abraham Zakarias Pettersson was then pastor. This winter was unforgettable for me because almost all my close friends would be confirmed at the same time but in different parishes. Dr. Pettersson had an unusual ability to talk to young people. He didn’t dryly keep to the text, and his explanations were profound. As my foundation in Christianity was good, I often had to answer for the others.
(Source: Ebba Ramsey. Om flydda tider: ur en gammal dagbok. Jönköping 1905)
Pastor Pettersson
Augusta was ranked as number 10 of the 92 girls in 1844. It made me curious. Who were the top 20 girls in the class? What were their family backgrounds and what happened to them later in life?
What this small microhistory study highlighted was the challenges that even women from wealthy or well-connected families faced:
Being born out of wedlock
Having a child out of wedlock
Becoming an orphan (cholera epidemics)
Legally, not being entitled to managing your own affairs, not even the wealth you brought into the marriage
Having a guardian
Becoming a widow and having to forgo any inheritance so as to not be responsible for your husband’s debts
Dying early from infectious diseases (for which there are now vaccines and treatments)
Divorcing
Below is the list of the 20 girls. For the girls who got married, I have included the husband’s family name in parenthesis. Click on the hyperlinks to read more about each girl.
Lotten came from Växjö where her father, a Count, was the provincial governor. She never married and was endearingly known for an expensive teacup she owned.
Hilda’s father was a Supreme Court justice. He died in the cholera epidemic of 1834. Hilda never married and received a pension because of her nobility.
Oscara’s father was a justice of the Supreme Administrative Court (Regeringsråd). She married a merchant, lived by Kungsträdgården in Stockholm, and had her portrait painted.
Letty’s father was the director of the Royal Theatre. She married a merchant in Gävle who went bankrupt. They then moved to Stockholm and raised 4 kids.
Elisabeth belonged to a wealthy merchant family. She was beautiful and favored at the balls. She and her husband purchased Stjernsund Castle from the royal family where they raised 5 sons.
Emma’s father had founded an institute for gymnastics and was a professor. She married a nobleman who owned a glassworks in Piteå in northern Sweden. She became a widow at 26 and raised their only daughter.
Georgina’s father was an aristocrat who, after retiring as an officer, bought a farm outside Stockholm. Georgina got pregnant and then married the 13-year-older man. She had 3 surviving children before dying at age 29, presumably from TB.
Augusta was our great-great-grandmother. She married Adolf Nordvall, a doctor of philosophy- They had one daughter. Augusta died from TB at the age of 28.
Selma’s father was a wholesale merchant. Selma married her cousin who later became a justice of the Swedish Supreme Court. They lived at Hamngatan close to Blanch’s Café.
Augusta’s father owned some ironworks, but he also squandered his wife’s inheritance. Eventually, Augusta’s parents separated and Augusta and her siblings were taken care of by their mother and her sister, Netta Dimander. Augusta never married.
Augusta’s father was a wealthy brewer. There is a beautiful portrait in oil of Augusta playing the piano. She married and had 6 daughters, the youngest became a famous pianist and started a music institute in Stockholm
Sophia Augusta’s father was considered to be the best bassoonist ever in Sweden and he became the director of the military corps of music. Sophia Augusta’s mother was the daughter of Sweden’s most famous clarinet player and composer, Bernhard Crusell. Sophia Augusta died from gastric fever at age 19.
Johanna’s father was a wholesale merchant. She married a young German wholesale merchant and had 4 children. When her husband died at age 34, she continued the business.
Therese’s father was a wholesale merchant. Theresa had 8 siblings and they lived in the Old Town. Her mother died in the cholera epidemic of 1834. Therese was a governess in the Malmborg family at Lilla Wåxnäs by Karlstad between 1844 and 1847. She moved back to Stockholm but left no traces of the rest of her life.
Sofi’s was an orphan but her father had been a pastor, first in St Jacob’s church in Stockholm, and then in Brunskog in western Sweden. She married Herrman Osbeck, an entrepreneur who started a “railyard service”. When he died, she took over the business and had the title “Manager of City Porters”
Emma’s father was Norwegian and served as the Royal Secretary for Norwegian affairs in Stockholm. Emma married and 3 children. She then divorced her husband. She died from pneumonia at the age of 35.
Hedda’s father was a counsel at the Department of Commerce. Hedda was born out of wedlock and in secrecy. Her mother was her father’s maid and Hedda was raised somewhere else until she was 6 years old. Hedda married and had one son.
In Virginia’s birth certificate, her parents were listed as “not reported”. The reason was that her mother was Sophie Daguin, a famous ballerina at the Royal Theatre. Virginia never married but supported herself as a foreign language teacher.
Confirmation. Oil painting by Hildegard Norberg (1844-1917). Nordiska Museet.
For each parish in Sweden, there is a library of church records – births, baptisms, confirmations, etc. Early on, I found that one of the best places to find Augusta’s friends in Stockholm was to look at the records of confirmations and first communions. Some parishes listed them alphabetically but in St Jacob’s parish, Pastor Petterson listed them first by gender and then by his perception of their importance – based on their family names and their fathers’ professions. Augusta was listed as number 10 out of the 92 girls.
A little over a year ago, I decided to find out more about the first 20 girls on the list. I have now written about 19 of the girls and I will finish my series with the top-ranked girl: Eva Charlotta (Lotten) Mörner af Morlanda.
Eva Charlotta (Lotten) Mörner af Morlanda
Lotten Mörner was born on August 17, 1827, in Växjö, a small but important provincial town. Both her parents were from noble families. Her father, Count Carl Mörner, was the provincial governor and her mother was a baroness: Constantina Charlotta Ottiliana Wrede af Elimä. Lotten was the couple’s second child; the firstborn son had died in infancy. She also had a 3-year-old younger brother, Stellan Fabian.
Searching for Lotten Mörner
Lotten probably grew up in Växjö but was sent to Stockholm to be introduced to society. She might have lived with relatives in Stockholm. Some family members had positions within the Royal Palace. Lotten’s father had been the queen’s chamberlain before he became governor and his cousin, Charlotta Eleonora Ebba Erika Emerentia Mörner, was one of the queen’s maids of honor.
But what happened to Lotten after her confirmation?
I usually start by searching for an obituary. Sometimes an obituary will tell me details about the woman’s life and her family. Lotten’s obituary was long and informative. The first major event in her life was the untimely death of her mother in 1855. Now, Lotten had to take on the role of hostess in the governor’s residence. She continued to take care of the household even after her father retired. When he died in 1870, Lotten returned to Stockholm and lived in an apartment at Norra Smedjegatan 34. That is where the shopping center Gallerian is now located.
Then I search for images of Lotten. The House of Nobility in Stockholm has a searchable archive of portraits and I find some of Lotten. All the pictures show her in profile. The accompanying text to one of the portraits states “Lotten Mörner (with the cup)”.
Interestingly, I find a very similar picture of Lotten Mörner in someone’s old portrait album online. She is wearing the same paisley shawl and bonnet but the dress and her parasol are different!
Lotten Mörner This one is also from the House of Nobility’s archive.
Then I find a picture of her in a museum. It is annotated with the text “Lotten Mörner (with the eye)”.
What does it mean – “with the cup” and “with the eye”?
I search on different combinations of words and within different domain names and suddenly I find something: A biography written in 1937 by another nobleman, Adam Lewenhaupt. He writes about his youth and how his mother’s friend would visit them in the summer:
“Another of mom’s childhood friends, who was born the same year and for once was someone who was not our relative, was Miss Lotten Mörner. She visited us every summer. The most distinctive thing about her was a most peculiar abnormality in one of her eyes. The upper eyelid severely drooped against her cheek. Mr. d ’Otrante always referred to her as “the Miss with the cutlet on the eye”. When she turned her eye, the “cutlet” trembled and jumped up and down. A modern surgeon would probably have been able to correct it. But at that time, it was out of the question.
Others referred to her merely as “the Miss with the cup” as she was the owner of a precious Sèvres piece with Marie Antoinette’s portrait. It was later bequeathed to the Nationalmuseum (Sweden’s National Museum of Fine Arts and Design).
Financially well-off, she liked to have small soirees in her apartment at Norra Smedjegatan in Stockholm, near the Catholic Church, which the Queen Dowager used to attend, and some small hotels, which others visited.
She was always happy to be invited, but if she had a small pimple or some other blemish, she would not show herself in public. On the other hand, she didn’t care about her abnormal eye.
She was the most indecisive person imaginable. Once, at the moment of departure from Sjöholm, she was asked jokingly if she did not regret leaving and if she might want to stay a few more days. “Yes, I think so,” she answered and got up to step out of the carriage. But Eriksson, the coachman, cracked his whip and the horses set off at full speed. The old woman fell back into her seat and the equipage disappeared down the lane.
By the way, she was benevolent in both word and deed. I got an idea to register all the “good Lotten” and “sweet Lotten” I heard in conversations. But when my mother thought that the courtesy required the same word in response, it became too much for me to record and I got tired of it.”
Lotten Mörner (picture included in Adam Lewenhaupt’s biography)
The other Miss Lotten Mörner
I mentioned that Lotten Mörner’s father’s cousin was the queen’s maid of honor. She was born in 1816 and thus 11 years older than our Lotten. The problem is, or was, that she was also referred to as Miss Lotten Mörner (until she married August Wachtmeister in 1852). So during several years in their youth, the two girls with the same name were both on the social scene in Stockholm.
One of our Augusta’s acquaintances, Erik af Edholm, wrote about Miss Lotten Mörner in his diary. But which one? In February of 1847, there was a masquerade ball and many young nobles were practicing a quadrille. He listed the girls and their partners and one of the girls was Miss Lotten Mörner. And there are other mentions of Miss Lotten Mörner in Erik’s diary. I would bet that all refer to the older Lotten.
The Swedish singer, Jenny Lind, also mentions Miss Lotten Mörner in her biography but it is also most likely the older Lotten.
This brings me to our Lotten’s nicknames. How would anyone know which Miss Lotten Mörner someone was referring to? Just as it is confusing now, it would have been confusing then. Maybe that is how our Lotten got the nickname “Miss Lotten Mörner – with the cup”? The other Miss Lotten Mörner actually had a title – the queen’s maid of honor (Swedish: Hovfröken).
Later in life
So in 1870, at the age of 43, Lotten had returned to Stockholm and lived at Norra Smedjegatan 34 where she hosted small soirees for her friends. She died in 1879 after a long battle with breast cancer. She was only 52 years old. The good and sweet Lotten, as she was so often called in conversations, had included many charities and a girls’ school in her will. And of course, she bequeathed her beautiful cup (and additional pieces of Sèvres porcelain) to the National Museum of Art.
