The Death of Willy Andersson Grebst

Gustavi Cathedral

“Sweden’s most pregnant personality”

21 May 2011 was a frustrating day for me. I was in Gothenburg trying to buy Willy Andersson Grebst titles but none were to be found. It was getting close to 5 pm and I was thinking of calling it quits for the day. Then I remembered that I was in Sweden, not sub-tropical Australia: there were still hours of sunlight left. I knew from one of Bengt Öhnander’s books that Willy Grebst was buried at the city’s eastern cemetery, Östra begravningplatsen. Why not make my way out there and have a look?

Willy's mausoleum

So that’s what I did. I took a tram to Redbergsplatsen, walked into the large park, Östra kyrkogården, and found my way to the cemetery. It was huge with gravestones by the thousands. I wandered around aimlessly hoping to stumble upon the Grebst family graves. But luck wasn’t with me. I began to feel despondent. Then I noticed a Redstart flitting about in a tree. It flew off and I followed it. The thought occurred to me that the bird understood my quest and was leading me to Willy Grebst’s grave. Then cold hard reason intervened. “You must be going mad,” I thought to myself. I ignored the Redstart and wandered off in another direction. After a while, I came upon a Swedish Church sign that gave a telephone number if you wanted help finding graves. I jotted the number down and headed back to the tramstop.

Arthur Seaton's Family Grave

Two days later, I was back at Östra begravningplatsen after having spoken on the telephone to a very helpful lady at the Swedish Church. She told me that Willy Grebst had a mausoleum that had been paid for by his brother. It was on a hill at site 425 entering from Nobelplatsen. Armed with this information, I entered the cemetery from Nobelplatsen and wandered up the hill to eventually arrive at the mausoleum. What I found particularly irritating was the realisation that the Redstart had been leading me in the right direction two days prior. If only I had followed that wretched bird, I would have found my target so much earlier!

Willy Andersson Grebst’s mausoleum could not be described as grand. Whilst located in an expensive part of the cemetery, it is dwarfed by the mausoleums of Gothenburg’s mega-rich families like the Seatons with their columns and elaborate Sphinx statues. Willy’s mausoleum is polished grey granite with an elegant curved top sitting close to the lawn. A bench seat is placed nearby.

As I sat there taking in the scene before me, it was touching to realise that on that very spot in 1920 fourteen-year-old Lars Olof Grebst – Hans Erikson – would have stood with his father and mother mourning the loss of his beloved uncle. Mixed with the sadness was the excitement of knowing that his uncle had bequeathed all his wealth to him and that, on attaining his majority, he would be a millionaire. What a bright future lay before him! Or did it?

The funeral service had been conducted in the Gustavi Cathedral, a classical styled church, the third to be built on that site dedicated in 1633 to the city’s founder, King Gustavus Adolphus. To my mind, the Gustavi Cathedral is not the most picturesque of Gothenburg’s cathedrals. It lacks the character of the Haga and Vasa Cathedrals and even that of Christ Church beside Stora Hamn Kanalen. But its association with the city’s royal founder gives it pre-eminence over its rivals. And on the day of Willy Grebst’s funeral, it was overflowing with mourners.

For a taste of the atmosphere on that day and its aftermath, I offer my own poor translation of Barthold Lundén’s farewell to Willy Grebst published in Vidi on Wednesday, 22 September 1920:

Willy Grebst dead!

I write these three short and yet so heavy words!

I speak them!

I hear them spoken!

But I still cannot comprehend them!

Cemetery chapel

That he who only a few short weeks ago was in the middle of man’s lifetime, that he now should have turned his back on life, that Death’s doorways have closed him in forever, no, the whole of my being rises up against the thought!

It can’t be so …

And yet it is so!

It was Monday the twenty-fifth of August last year. At ten o’clock Willy Grebst rang me as he always usually did. “Listen,” he said, “I have had a stroke. The whole of my right side is paralysed. Please come down to me as soon as possible.” I, who knew Willy Grebst’s habit of jesting, did not take the message altogether seriously. “Have you got cholera and bubonic plague too?” I shot back.

“Yes, who knows,” he jested back, “but please come immediately.”

Ten minutes later, I was down at the Palace Hotel where he then lived. I met the doctor in the hall. He appeared grimly serious. “Cerebral haemorrhage,” he said, “It’s a matter of life and death.”

But up in his bed Willy Grebst lay, alert and awake and as energetic as always and he joked. “I will experience everything,” he laughed, “one day a millionaire, the next destitute, one day a world traveler, the next a Gothenburg homebody. Why shouldn’t I also then experience a little stroke to see what it feels like. But we don’t have time with this thing now. We have to work. Sit yourself down and write as I dictate …” And Willy Grebst began to dictate his articles, clearly, sharply and lucidly as if nothing had happened.

But Willy Grebst would not slip away so easily. Death had taken its first step in him and held it fast. Another cerebral haemorrhage occurred that almost left him without speech. The next day it was clear that his life hung in the balance. It was chronic nephritis, probably resulting from Spanish Sickness, that was the reason for the cerebral haemorrhage. The struggle became difficult. But gradually it appeared that his powerful physique, unstoppable energy and intensive will to live would win victories. After several months’ complete rest, Willy Grebst began to write and work. Many times he was so weak that he could barely speak. But it didn’t stop him. He dictated to me. Dictated several of his, in my opinion, most brilliant articles, poems and serialized stories. If anyone has ever done it, Willy Grebst provided during these months proof of the spirit’s victory over the body.

Then spring arrived and with it Willy Grebst received new energy. He moved out to Hindås and gradually he nearly became the Willy Grebst of old, bubbling with life and energy. He began to believe in a complete recovery. And when we, his friends, saw him so, we also began to wonder if the doctor was wrong in his diagnosis and hoped that he could have many, many years left to live. But we would soon receive a piercing reminder that this was but an appearance, that Death had not released its grip but only played with its certain prey.

It was Midsummer Eve, when all nature was in its brightest beauty. Then Death’s cold, dark shadow fell over Willy Grebst’s path and took a new, harder grip on his situation. A new congestion in the brain cast him back in the sickbed. And from this blow he never really recovered. An accidental fall happened and now his condition became even more serious. He left his “Summer Idyll”, his dear little grey cottage right in the middle of the deepest Hindås forest and went to Marstrand in the hope that the change of air would do him good. For a short while, he did so well here that he firmly believed that he had been cured of his illness. But the reaction came even more strongly. Harder and harder became Death’s grip on its quarry, more serious the symptoms grew. Certainly, the outsider did not notice this so clearly. Because with such phenomena force of will lifted Willy Grebst up when he met his dear and intimate friends. And his productivity was not much affected. His glistening intelligence, quickness at repartee, deep emotions and iron-hard energy the illness had no luck in overpowering. But we, only we, who were most near to him saw how he suffered and fought. His heart began to falter. Night after night he agonized, sleepless, tortured by asthma’s painful nightmare. “It will soon be over for me,” Willy Grebst said to me one morning after a particularly difficult night. “I think we should start to write my obituary for Vidi. I don’t really have confidence that you will write it as I would want. And Dagspressen will naturally want to keep me silenced even after my death! But I will nonetheless leave it to your discretion,” he added with his usual unique beautiful slightly ironic grin.

From Marstrand, Willy Grebst flew back to Hindås looking for some relief. But in vain! Every day that went by, his condition worsened. Now he wanted to return to his hometown. He did not want to die away from it. Thursday the twenty-sixth of August, he went back to town. After a short walk with me, he went up to the Clinic where he had a room and immediately put himself to bed to await death! Even so, for more than a week, he worked every day, exactly as normal and with the same living interest in everything, even the most minor. Sunday the fifth of September, however, was the complete end of his power. His diseased kidneys stopped working completely. Only while using his absolute last willpower and sometimes vainly trying to hunt away a confused state of mind, he dictated to me an article of ten lines with an apology to Vidi’s readers that on account of his illness they would have to wait for the conclusion of his tale “A Story from Tahiti.” It was now plain that the end could not be far off. However, now and then, he regained his senses and consciousness from his confused fantasy state. Thursday the sixteenth at 5.15 in the afternoon, he slept quietly and silently without pain, the death struggle over.

Willy Grebst, one of our town’s – yes, one of our country’s – most pregnant and fascinating personalities has gone away. He was above all else a true Swede. He put the honour of his fatherland above all else and during the Great War when this was violated time and again he swelled with indignation. Then he could no longer stick to his idea of avoiding politics in Vidi’s columns. He then wrote so that it flashed and echoed around the world. But Willy Grebst was also a Gothenburger. He loved his hometown. Loved and criticized! Many times he declined the most flattering invitations to go to Stockholm where a man of his capacity would naturally have a longer, greater and better work career. With energy and force of will verging on the unbelievable, Willy Grebst combined a soft gentle temperament and a deep emotion such that in outlook and disposition he never became anything but a big, big child his whole life through.

He could not bear any need or sorrow. He would have to intervene. His big warm heart drew him to all who needed help. When they did not themselves have access, he never turned in vain to better-situated friends and acquaintances. Countless are those who he with advice from his rich experience could help out of worries and difficulties. There was nothing Willy Grebst hated more than lies and hypocrisy. Against this he fought with a ruthlessness that was never surpassed. Because of this, he naturally made many enemies. But it didn’t worry him. He only laughed at it. He loved strife. It was the spice of his life. One never met him in more radiant humour than when he became exposed to a strident attack. One then understood the deep meaning in and gravity with which he chose his motto: Alone is Strong!

Willy Grebst was never a man of meditation and deliberation. He was a child of the moment. An idea – and he immediately got to work. This was his weakness, but it was also his strength. Because of this, he was always and in everything that he did and wrote, completely and fully – himself. Willy Grebst had a dazzling style, glistening, original. He could say with a few lines what others needed a few columns for. He always hit the nail on the head so that it sang. From this came his light, spiritual, elegant humor and rare formal talent. It was due not least to this that he won his popularity as an author. Another exceptional characteristic of Willy Grebst was his flexible, pliant intelligence and his phenomenal mind and eye for small details in life and their greater meaning. During his diverse life, he had – not least during his many year-long journeys to far off lands – developed and sharpened his powers of observation to veritable virtuosity. And to everything this added a fantasy so irrepressibly rich, so confessional, so full and bold that he carried everyone irresistibly away with it.

Here also lay the key to his unparalleled productivity and the speed with which he worked. Not less than twenty plus books by his hand testify to this. Fourteen days, three weeks – he never needed longer to write a big thick book.

Willy Grebst debuted as a writer in 1900 with a little collection of poems that aroused a big and legitimate attention to the warm, lyrical emotions that were imbued in them and for the certain compact form in which the small poems were presented. Another collection of poems followed in 1903 that cemented his name as a true lyricist. Home from his wide journeys around the world, Willy Grebst published in 1908 Savage Life, a collection of fresh novellas. Following this promptly was the much spoken of portrait of the times, Grängesberg, and the realistically depicted story of Messinas undergång.  In 1909, he published a poetry collection, Red Nights, which not least through his original form attracted much attention and contradiction, even though the critics could not deny that it was the work of a true bard. During the later years, Willy Grebst wrote his masterful travel writings, Happy Days, Japan, On the Ocean, In Korea and A Honeymoon in Tierra del fuego and Fatal Voyage, the little fairytale, Josse’s Adventure, his two farm books, A Year on my farm, and The Adventurous Year and The Girl in the Tower.  During the final years, he published Dreams and Fantasies, the realistic portrait of the times, Bread, and the delightful little story, My Little Princess. In a few weeks, the following of his works will be published: Adventures and stories I och II and Exotic and Erotic I and II.

Willy Grebst always regarded his beloved Vidi as his real life’s work. It was his soul’s proud progeny, it was himself. Vidi was Willy Grebst and Willy Grebst was Vidi. In Vidi, he gave of himself fully and utterly. He lived for it and his final thought before he closed his eyes for his final sleep was about it. To evaluate Willy Grebst’s life’s work, I am not the man. I stand too close to him and Vidi to be able to do it with any claim to objectivity. Though I will let Vidi’s readers do this, I can yet certify that never has anyone’s life’s work come from a more flaming enthusiasm and a more honourable desire for the greater, truer, right, noble, good.

Willy Grebst is dead. He left behind an empty room that no-one can fill. None can understand and know this deeper than me who now for seven years got to be his intimate confidante, his friend and co-worker. This year, I was fortunate to get to be so near to him, I will always count it as my most meaningful, inner-richest, and happiest. But what is the meaning of all this, that just one such person as Willy Grebst, who so loved life with every fibre of his body, with every thought in his soul, and who yet was human, had so much to live for and work to advantage and contentment, should be wrested away just as he stood in the high summer of his life. I wonder … And when I wonder, a little poem of Willy Grebst’s comes to mind. It is called “The Wonder” and goes:

My eye became dazzled by the sunshine

My memory became burned by the embers

Now sinks towards the afternoon sun

My life to an early death.

My striving became bound fast to the earth

My will, fragile

And Destiny seems to bed with uncommon haste

My lonely silent grave.

My thought became blocked from coming out

It grew damaged and crippled

I wonder – when is everything finished

My thought arises anew.

Barthold Lundén

Apropos.

“Vidi will die with me,” Willy Grebst always said a few years ago. “I don’t want it to be like Figaros after Jorgen’s sorry fate.” At the time, I never contemplated the possibility of the situation like now with the coming of Willy Grebst’s departure. That he with his solid health should not outlive me, I never even considered. I completely agreed with his view that Vidi which was Willy Grebst should also die with Willy Grebst. What man foretells, Fate arranges. Willy Grebst had his stroke and during four, five months time, I was consequently compelled to write Vidi all by myself. I did my best and without bragging can bet that I did it to Willy Grebst’s complete satisfaction. He told me this not once but many times. One afternoon in February, I went to Willy Grebst. “Listen,” he said thoughtfully, “I know very well that I don’t have long to live. I am lying thinking about my Vidi. I have always thought and said and written that Vidi would die with me and I also know that my wishes in this regard were respected. But now I am beginning to think otherwise. It would do harm if Vidi were to die. Vidi has a huge mission to fulfill in the community. It is my steadfast conviction. Now, having seen how you cared for Vidi during my illness, I realize that Vidi under your leadership can fulfill its mission, even after I am gone. Your manner in handling the Landgren affair and other things has convinced me that I can safely leave Vidi to you. Will you promise me you will continue after I am dead? And will you promise me to keep Vidi exactly as I wanted it, as you have done during my illness?”

It was with great hesitation that I gave my friend this promise. I knew as I undertook this thing that it would be enormously difficult to fulfill. “I promise,” I therefore said, “that I will do my absolute best and, if possible, even more. The good work will at least not waste away.”

“I am pleased,” Willy Grebst answered, “now sit down and write as I dictate. I want to write my will concerning Vidi.” And so Willy Grebst dictated the following will: It is my express wish that my newspaper Vidi shall after my death be edited according to the same principles that I myself used. Vidi shall not owe a debt to any party. Vidi shall not either through friendship, family ties or pecuniary interests permit its columns to be used for an interest that is not consistent with the newspaper’s complete freedom. So long as Barthold Lundén is the responsible publisher of Vidi, he will manage the newspaper’s editorial affairs with the same ruthlessness and possible fairness that he knows that I myself would try to strive for. The announcement with which I began my work in Vidi’s first edition in 1913 will hereafter as up to now be the only guiding principles for the newspaper’s continuing care.

Gothenburg the 13 February 1920.

Thereafter, Willy Grebst signed his will with a firm hand and his signature was witnessed. Now Willy Grebst is dead and I have fulfilled the first part of my promise to him and taken over his Vidi. How will I succeed to fulfill the other part of my promise, to manage Vidi in the same way as Willy Grebst, that will rest with the future. I don’t want to give any great promises. I know more than better what a greatly difficult task awaits me and what responsibility I have taken upon my shoulders. To take up Willy Grebst’s mantle … yes my dear readers, judge for yourselves the task and responsibility. But I promised so much, however, that to not have the courage to sing out the truth when it is needed is not found in Vidi. And no doubt lies and hypocrisy and routine will find in me an enemy the likes of Willy Grebst. I am not afraid. And Willy Grebst’s proud motto: Alone is Strong, I take to be my own. On this note, I hope that I will be able to continue fulfilling Vidi’s mission as Willy Grebst knew and loved it.

“A Story from Tahiti”

Willy Grebst never got to finish his full-page article “A Story from Tahiti”. This grieved him deeply during the last days of his life. “I must finish the story,” he said more than once to me, “I will see if I can’t …” And I sat with him at the writing table and he began dictating … But it didn’t happen. Delirium took hold of his thoughts and pushed them a long way from the subject. “No, I can’t,” he said with a deep gasp, “Come back in the morning if you will. Perhaps I will feel a bit stronger …”

Willy Grebst had experienced his happiest days on “The Islands of Song” and he never became more enthusiastic, more fluent than when he began to talk about them. He never tired of it. He could carry on for hour after hour. More than once during his final year he thought seriously about leaving his work here and dying in Tahiti. I understand therefore how down he must have felt at not being able to finish his final story from Tahiti that he had written and Vidi’s readers followed with great interest. Unfortunately, I naturally cannot finish it. All Willy Grebst told me about the end of the story was that he left the Nature Man the most practical evidence that little Maara was not for him. And Maara, who during the week had been Nature Man’s girlfriend, had tired of him and went gladly with Willy Grebst back to Papeete as if nothing had happened worth talking about. Salott was easily comforted in her inexpressible grief over losing such a generous friend as Geheri was with a gaudy multi-coloured silk shawl from Choo Chong. And so finished the little story merrily. Yes, that’s all I know. And nothing more can be told for my readers. Willy Grebst’s final tale from Tahiti is and will always be – unfinished.

Willy Grebst’s Obituary

A story of the love of friends and the hatred of enemies.

Countless many have shared Vidi’s loss with Willy Grebst’s merciless early passing. What I lost personally no outsider can probably grasp and I also have difficulty in expressing it. But I have not only lost. In some respects I have also gained. If nothing else than a rich fund of increased knowledge of people. Never before in my life have I seen my fellow beings expose their true characters, their innermost, so much as in the final days of WG illness and at his passing. I have had experiences that I could never even have dreamed of. I have got to see the good and evil in people. I have got to see meanness, small-mindedness, hate, malicious pleasure … a dirty torrent of filth, lowness and cowardice that swelled up from the murky depths. But I have also got to see so much more of light, warmth of heart, deep empathy and sorrow, love and tenderness. And all this even from many people who stood in such relationship to WG that I would have found it quite understandable if they had received news of his death with a certain reservation or frostiness. I would wish that Vidi’s space was so large but I could only reproduce for my readers a small part of the hundreds of letters and telegrams in verse and prose which from all parts of our country from near and far flooded me during these days. They are so full of overflowing hearts that I could not read them without the deepest emotions. But a few of these letters I can reproduce.

Thoughts at WG’s death.

Were I a great painter, I would paint the spring’s light green and shy white windflowers, the sun and life saturated summer’s most dazzling red roses, autumn’s golden beauty and winter’s soft snow …

Were I a great poet, I would celebrate what I learned to say

God how your world is beautiful, how your heaven is glorious, I bow my head to you, I thank you for everything.

The second letter said “It feels so strange. Can this really be true that little Great WG has passed? I have just read this in good old Vidi, the only of Gothenburg’s newspapers that in all weathers is truly pleasant, spiritual, fearless and comprehensive. I saw there that WG’s health markedly deteriorated but yet with some hope of recovery. When I read this in Vidi, I saw in Stockholm’s Aftonblad that WG the same day left the mortal world.
…

But I have also received other letters. Naturally anonymous. Letters so base, so mean that I can’t think of them without being gripped by nausea and loathing. The baseness and the low relentless hatred downright sneered from every line. But how instructive could it be for Vidi’s readers to get a few parts of these letters, I don’t want to dirty WG and my newspaper’s pages by quoting them. Interesting and even probably enlightening has it also been to see our bourgeois Gothenburg newspapers’ handling of WG’s death. “You will get to see that the daily press even after my death will try to hush me up,” WG said to me more than once in his usual humorous way. He was partly vindicated. With a laconic hidden notice of 3 short lines Handelstidningen [“Business News”] and Göteborgsskränet [“The Gothenburg Howl” – Willy Grebst’s abusive nickname for Göteborgs Posten] reported the death that produced such deep sympathy and attention in the whole of Sweden and even far beyond our country’s borders.