Appendix E: Biographies

Hedenschoug

Carl Robert Hedenschoug1 was Major Whistler’s draftsman in St. Petersburg. He was born in Stockholm in the Parish of St. Jacob on 6 February 1813 and baptized on 21 February.2 His mother was Hedvig Margareta Holmberg (b. 4 August 1782).3 His father, a jeweler and magistrate, was Nils Hedenschoug (b. 4 January 1776).4 Carl was the youngest of three children, the other two being Hedvig Sabina (b. 19 August 1808) and Nils Fredric (b. 6 November 1809).5

The Stockholm Taxation Records for 1820 give extensive information about the family. Under the father’s name it is noted that he drinks wine and coffee and plays cards, and under the mother’s name that she drinks coffee and uses silk in her clothing. Under the name of Carl Robert’s maternal grandmother, Hedvig Holmberg (b. 19 April 1743), living in their household at the time, it is noted that she drinks coffee and uses silk in her dresses.6 As there was a special tax on these items, their use denotes a well-to-do family. There were also four maid servants and five apprentices listed as living in the Hedenschoug household.7

After a course of study in Christian teachings, in which he received a passing grade, Hedenschoug partook of Holy Communion for the first time at the Storkyrka in Stockholm on Good Friday 1829.8

He left Stockholm in 1830. By 8 April 1841, he had moved to Finland, and by 30 June 1841 was moving from Helsingfors to Reval.9 He had arrived in St. Petersburg by 16 September 1841, the date on which the vicar of St. Catherine’s Swedish Church in that city entered his name in the parish register.10

Hedenschoug’s profession was that of “‘mechanicus’, a term which used to signify among other things a constructor of machines, railways and bridges.”11 Exactly when he became Major Whistler’s draftsman is not clear, but he was certainly in Whistler’s employ before 2 June 1844.12

On 1 September 1845, he married in St. Catherine’s Swedish Church in St. Petersburg Charlotta Wilhelmina Brask, spinster.13 According to the birth records of the church, Charlotta Wilhelmina was born on 10 September 1827 out of wedlock. Her mother was Anna Wendelin. Of her father the minister wrote: “The father, Bronze Apprentice Carl Gustav Brask, acknowledges his relationship to the child, without promising with all certainty to wed its mother, at least not until a future time.”14

Carl Robert and Charlotta Wilhelmina Hedenschoug had five children, all born in St. Petersburg: Olga Sabina (b. 5 June 1846), Emilia Charlotta (b. 15 March 1848), Hilda Maria (b. 14 May 1852), Nils Fredric (b. 14 February 1854), and Robert Waldemar (b. 25 January 1858).15

Carl Robert Hedenschoug died in St. Petersburg on 2 December 1861 of tuberculosis.16

Anna Whistler (see Images 1–5) records in her diaries not only that Hedenschoug corrected Major Whistler’s drawings of engines, but that he also had pretensions to being able to draw portraits,17 and that the resulting caricatures he produced of James and Willie for a fee were burned by their father.18

James (see Images 24–29), however, was very attached to Hedenschoug, who seemed to act partly as a tutor to him. Anna Whistler records that he gave James a writing lesson and exercised with him.19 Under his tutelage and influence, James was reading a history of Charles XII of Sweden and Peter the Great in the summer of 1844 and came to prefer the former.20

The negative traits in Hedenschoug’s character showed themselves early on. In August 1844, James wrote a note to Hedenschoug for the latter’s birthday. As Hedenschoug was born in February, he would seem to have lied about his birth date, hoping to receive a present. Anna Whistler was also taken in and responded with sympathy, recording that Hedenschoug had had “many a happy birth day” in his family’s house and “now [was] dependent on [the Whistlers] for kindness.”21

Hedenschoug had a drinking problem and in 1848 possibly stole some silver from the Whistlers.22 In any case, after the theft occurred he began to absent himself from work, and in late 1848 or early 1849 Aleksandr Osipovich Koritskii, (see Images 167–170) James’s private Russian drawing teacher, found a replacement for him.23 Hedenschoug told outrageous stories to get sympathy and money, one of which must have been recounted to James in a letter from Major Whistler (see Images 7–8, 21) in late 1848, for James responded: “How do you like the new Draftsman that Koritsky recommended? … So Hadenskough has turned out an ungrateful thief – fancy a man asking for money to bury his child that was not dead! What has become of him? Have you heard anything of him since he left? but of course he has taken to drinking again, and has ruined himself.”24

Joseph Harrison Jr. (see Image 226) also may have referred to his drinking, when he wrote to Anna Whistler during her stay in England in the summer of 1849, for she responded: “Hadenskougg I fear is but as the swine, returned to wallowing in the mire. alas! why will those who have talents throw them away!”25

More than a year after Major Whistler’s death, further evidence of stealing came to light. In sending young George Whistler a box of his father’s papers, Harrison attributed the disappointingly small number of drawings to the fact that “that scamp Heidenscoug” had stolen “many copies of drawings” that Major Whistler had prepared for himself and had sold them “for paltry sums.”26

Notes