Dear Jansson San

In the 1960s, long before J. K. Rowling showed the world how literary fame might be managed, Tove Jansson, pursued by her own creations the Moomins – white hippopotamus-shaped trolls with tails but no mouths – thought there was only one solution: to buy her own island with the proceeds and escape, if not permanently, at least for several months at a time. Who needed a postman when this was the kind of letter he brought?

We look forward to your valuable reply soonest concerning Moomin motifs on toilet paper in pastel shades.

Tove Jansson, who was born in 1914 in Helsinki and studied art in Stockholm and Paris, wrote her first Moomin book during the Second World War, when Finland was at war with the Soviet Union. Children loved the Moomins, who survive even the most drastic upheavals by always being good-humoured and tolerant, and by 1954 Jansson was drawing a Moomin comic strip for adults in an English newspaper, the Evening News (circulation 12 million). Soon her cartoon had spread to 40 other countries and 120 further publications. Now, like J. K. Rowling, she wanted to write fiction for adults, but she was being asked to design Moomin paper dolls and wallpaper, and there was no end to the letters and requests from Moomin fans.

Couldn’t we meet and chat about the old days at school? I’m Margit, the one who punched you in the stomach in the playground.

To Jansson’s relief, her youngest brother, Lars – also a gifted artist and writer – took over the cartoon and, in 1958, they founded their company, later converted into the joint-stock company Moomin Characters Ltd. Moomin novels were soon followed by picture books, a song book, several children’s plays and even a ballet performed at the Finnish National Opera, for which Jansson designed the stage sets and costumes. And, of course, all this meant more and more fan mail, by the sackful. Amazingly, it was Jansson’s practice to reply to each fan letter by hand, even though there were also sackfuls of business correspondence concerning Moomin neckties, candles, wrapping paper, porcelain plates and mugs. Moomins were not just good business, they had become a global brand.

We are fully aware that you had planned a black troll for our Moomin liquorice advertisement but for technical reasons . . .

Her private island might not have been everybody’s first choice – Klovharu, a tiny lump of rock in the storm-lashed Gulf of Finland. Atoll-shaped, it surrounds a deep lake that, in good weather, is ideal for swimming, in bad weather turns into a raging torrent. For twenty-eight years Jansson lived there every summer, her only companion the graphic artist Tuulikki Pietilä, known to the family as Tooti and the inspiration for Too-Ticky, the creative but responsible Moomin. On the island, they painted and drew together, read and wrote, only returning to their separate studios in Helsinki for the winter.

My cat died! Write at once.

Klovharu is so small they could walk round it in ten minutes. There was only one tree, a rowan, but wild pansies, chives and dog roses grew among the rocks. Their plain wooden cabin had neither running water nor electricity. They used rainwater for their coffee and driftwood for their fires and, if they needed an excursion, they went fishing. Here, at last, Jansson was able to devote herself to writing fiction for adults: four novels and six collections of short stories.

A Winter Book contains a selection of twenty of her best stories. Written between 1968 and 1998, and translated into English by three translators, this is a curious hotch-potch that somehow works, containing semi-autobiographical stories about the secrets of childhood and the obsessions of old age, stories set on land or sea, set in winter or summer. They come together because Jansson understands exactly which small events are worth writing about and how to turn them into art. Her stories are always delightfully unpredictable and, as Ali Smith explains in her excellent introduction, often ‘much less melancholy than the average Moomin tale’.

They are also full of risk and danger. Bring on the sunken boats and icebergs and obliterating sea fogs. Bring on the snow and ferocious storms – Force 9 on the Beaufort scale. Bring on the surprises that accompany them: a crate of Spanish oranges, a silver carpet of two-gallon canisters full of brandy, a mysteriously stranded squirrel which, in one especially powerful story, becomes a solitary islander’s nemesis, eventually making off at night with her boat. Jansson writes with unnerving clarity about intense yet straightforward relationships, the sort that many of us might envy. Her characters, whether young or old, are often stubbornly heroic, never truly bad, only a little excited perhaps, or lonely.

In ‘Messages’, she gathers together a selection of apparently random snippets culled from letters that may or may not be real. They suggest some of the demands a famous writer might be expected to cope with.

Hi! We’re three girls in a mad rush with our essays about you could you help us by saying in just a few words how you started writing and why and what life means to you and then a message to young people you know the kind of thing. Thanks in advance.

It’s possible, of course, that it wasn’t just fame that Jansson needed to get away from. There was another island, the Family Island, just visible across the water, on which the rest of the Jansson family encamped every summer. Tove and Lars were not the only artists in the family and not the only ones to work from home. Her other brother, Per Olav Jansson, was a photographer; her mother, Signe Hammarsten, a designer and illustrator and possibly the inspiration for the wise and gentle Moominmamma whose handbag always contains exactly what is needed for any emergency or adventure. Jansson’s father, Victor Jansson – Moominpappa? – was a well-known sculptor, a spontaneous party-giver, a man who loved sailing through the wildest thunderstorms and who was bohemian enough to keep a monkey in his studio – in other words, an Artist with a capital A.

According to her niece Sophia Jansson, who is the present creative director and chairman of the family Moomin business, Tove Jansson was also an artist with a capital A, one who needed space as well as support. And meanwhile the Moomin spin-offs just went spinning off and off – radio plays and four different television series, including a German/Polish co-production featuring puppets and a Japanese animated version. In Japan you could buy Moomin lunch boxes and chopsticks. Klovharu provided a much-needed sanctuary, and A Winter Book includes some striking photographs of the island taken by her brother, Per Olav, showing the little wooden cabin, the lichen-covered rocks, the pool. There are also portraits from the family archive of an infant Tove with Signe, both of them carefully posed and serenely confident, especially Tove, despite sporting a pudding-bowl haircut and a tidy blouse with smocking. There is one of Tove with the eponymous squirrel, another of her smiling and smoking a cigarette while buttoning herself into a heavy-duty overcoat. A plaster-splattered Victor works in his studio, plays his guitar, or kisses Poppolino (his monkey), or wears a rakish felt hat while rowing with Signe across the open sea in a tiny wooden boat. Tooti appears flying a kite, but muffled up in bobble hat and jacket and seen from the back. This may be because her relationship with Tove was a private affair or simply because, even in summer, it was freezing cold in the Gulf of Finland. Jansson lived on the island until 1991 by which time she was 77. Perhaps, even for her, a régime without a telephone and only cold outdoor dips was beginning to seem a little harsh. ‘Taking Leave’, the final story in the collection, is about two elderly women saying goodbye to their island. The narrator becomes afraid of the sea, its waves appear threatening and no longer promise adventure, and then, unforgivably, that fear comes to feel like a betrayal, and an unspoken decision is made. Fishing nets are taken in, carefully hoarded possessions given away, other items labelled and explained for the use of future occupants. ‘Don’t close the damper; it rusts and sticks’, ‘The key is by the doorpost’, and ‘Woollen stockings and socks under the boot rack’. The conclusion is far from miserable. I won’t give it away because, taken out of context, it could seem trite, and Jansson’s prose is never trite, always wise – and light and cool as the wind. She died in Helsinki in 2001 aged 86. Today, there is a Moomin museum in Tampere and two Moomin theme parks – one in Finland, the other in Japan where her Moomins have acquired not only mouths, but also American accents. I don’t suppose Jansson ever imagined that her peaceful island refuge might one day become a destination for literary tourists and fans, but it has, and they do indeed sail across to visit it. There they can see the rusty key to her wooden house still hanging on a piece of driftwood, everything exactly as she left it.

Dear Jansson san I have collected money for a long time. I will come and sit at your feet to understand. Please when can I come there?

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 40 © Linda Leatherbarrow 2013