{"id":28037,"date":"2020-10-27T09:40:27","date_gmt":"2020-10-27T09:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/library\/?p=28037"},"modified":"2025-01-30T16:25:29","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T16:25:29","slug":"the-music-of-the-spheres-anna-nils-and-their-new-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/library\/the-music-of-the-spheres-anna-nils-and-their-new-worlds\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Music of the Spheres’: Anna, Nils, and their new worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post was written for History Day 2020<\/a>, part of the Being Human Festival 2020: New Worlds<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Three
Three music scores<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Three seemingly ‘ordinary’ early-20th century music scores. But behind their ordinariness lies a tale of love and loss to rival even the most dramatic Victorian fiction. I found the scores in our collection over a period of time, firstly through cataloguing, then actively looking to see if there were any others. What is special about them is that they belonged Anna Charlier, later Anna Hawtrey after her marriage. But who was she?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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\"Anna
Anna Albertina Constantia Charlier, 1871-1949<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Anna was born in Sweden on 25th July 1871. During her long life she moved from Sweden to America, and then to England, where she died in 1949. She wanted to become a concert pianist, but in the end her life was dominated by her relationship with Nils Strindberg, a trainee engineer\/photographer who became an explorer.\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Anna
Anna and Nils<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Anna<\/a> met Nils in 1896, while she was working as a governess in Stockholm, among other things giving piano lessons to 12 girls \u2013 Nils was a tutor for one of the families she worked for.\u200b Nils is reported to have been shrewd, friendly, polite and well-mannered, and was becoming one of Sweden\u2019s most famous men due to his involvement in Salomon August Andree\u2019s <\/a>planned balloon expedition<\/a> to the North Pole. He was also the cousin of August Strindberg<\/a>, one of Sweden\u2019s most famous writers at the time.\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Group
\u2018The four participants in the failed Andr\u00e9e-balloon expedition summer 1897\u2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

There was a team of four men involved in the planning of the flight of the Eagle: the reserve Vilhelm Swedenborg<\/a>, Nils Strindberg<\/a>, Knut Fr\u00e6nkel<\/a>, (aged 27) and their leader, Andr\u00e9e<\/a> (see image above).\u200b Nils was working as a teaching assistant at the Technical University in Stockholm, where he had achieved high marks in maths, chemistry and astronomy<\/a>. He was also a keen and talented photographer, so Andr\u00e9e  employed him on the expedition as second-in-command and the official photographer. \u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u200bThe balloon set off from Svalbard<\/a> (650 miles from the Pole) on 11th July 1897, when Nils was 23 years old. According to onlookers, he cried when he left Anna.\u200b Anna moved in with her future father in law, and moved to a new teaching post in V\u00e4dd\u00f6<\/a>.\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The men never returned, and there was no news of them for another 33 years, when their bodies were finally discovered in 1930.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Two<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Following Nils\u2019s disappearance, Anna continued to work as a piano teacher, but seems to have had Parkinson\u2019s disease<\/a> or similar (see handwriting above). She kept in touch with Nils\u2019s relatives in Stockholm. 13 years later, she married an English French teacher, Gilbert Hawtrey<\/a>, and moved to her own ‘new world’, the United States. She later moved with Gilbert to England, where she lived until her death in 1949.  \u200bIt looks like the music scores moved with her, as they contain both her maiden and married names. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cAnna\u2019s husband\u2026was a wonderful human being who tried in all possible ways to help his sorrow-ridden wife to forget. But it was all in vain. Anna could not forget\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ulla Strindberg, Nils’s sister, who visited Anna in Torquay in 1947.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

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\"A
The crashed balloon – taken by Nils Strindberg in July 1897.\u200b<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Alongside the men’s bodies, diaries and letters were found. These detailed some of what had happened to them, but the cause of their deaths remained a mystery until fairly recently.\u200b Bea\u00a0Uusma\u00a0<\/a>has written about her obsession with his mystery in her book, The Expedition<\/a><\/em>. She believes that Strindberg, at least, was killed by a polar bear.\u200b \u200bAccording to the diaries, the balloon\u2019s steering lines came unscrewed, ice weighed down the balloon, and the men were forced to make an emergency landing after only three days. This picture above, taken by Strindberg, shows the crashed balloon with\u00a0Knut\u00a0Fr\u00e6nkel<\/a>\u00a0 and Andr\u00e9e\u00a0standing beside it. Between 4th\u00a0August and September 9th, when Andr\u00e9e\u00a0stopped making diary entries, the ice had carried them approximately 80 miles south-southeast, when they had been trying to travel the same distance southwest.\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"A
Letter from Nils for Anna’s birthday, 25th July 1897<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Among the remains are a locket containing a lock of Anna\u2019s hair that Nils wore round his neck, as well as letters (in shorthand) that he wrote to Anna. \u201cThese tend to reflect his insistence on believing that he would return to her, which is perhaps what sustained him\u201d, says Alec Wilkinson<\/a> in his New Yorker<\/em> article about the expedition<\/a>.  On Nils\u2019s birthday, Andr\u00e9e  gave him letters that Anna and his family had written before the expedition left \u2013 \u201cIt was a real pleasure to see how glad he was\u201d, Andr\u00e9e recorded in his diary entry for that day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was national mourning in Sweden when the remains of Andr\u00e9e, Strindberg and Fraenkel were returned to their homeland. Anna had returned to England by this time, but she left a wreath next to the men\u2019s grave \u201cTo Nils, from Anna\u201d. \u200bNils\u2019s brother, Tore, sent Anna the letters Nils had written to her.\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna died aged 78, and is buried in Torquay in Devon. At her request, her heart was cut from her body and cremated separately. The ashes were put in a silver box, which was sent to Tore Strindberg by Gilbert Hawtrey, and buried with Nils\u2019s remains (by his brothers) in the Northern Cemetery in Stockholm on 4th September 1949, what would have been Nils\u2019s 75th birthday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAshes from near the heart of <\/em>\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna Albertina Constance <\/em>Hawtrey<\/em> (n\u00e9e Charlier)<\/em>\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be placed near the grave of Nils Strindberg<\/em>\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To whom she was engaged in 1897<\/em>\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– And may the Great Conductor allow them both to share in the Music of the Spheres\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m still trying to find out how the music scores came to be in our library. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who might be able to shed light on this mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Image credits<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n