Many writers like to follow a daily routine, but the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen was outstanding for his punctilious precision. Every day, in his later years, he would begin writing at 9am with his watch on his desk. As the hands reached 11.30 he would put down his pen, even if he was in the middle of a sentence, and set out on a walk to the Grand Café on Karl Johans Gate, between the Royal Palace and the parliament building in the centre of Oslo.
On arrival he would sit down at his regular spot, perpetually reserved for him, drink a tankard of Spatenbräu beer accompanied by a shot of aquavit and eat an open sandwich. While he sipped his drinks he read the newspapers, always – according to his friend the writer John Paulsen – beginning at the top of the first page with the title and the price, and continuing until he reached the bottom of the last page.
Evidently, Ibsen (1828-1906) was a man who liked things to be orderly. So, until recently, had he returned to life he would have been gratified to find the Grand Café much as he had known it around the turn of the century. The chandeliers, dark polished wood, elegant décor in the vaguely 18th-century manner, the tables and the windows looking out onto the passing crowds outside – all remained. Now, however, he might be rather disappointed. In September last year, after 140 years in business, the Oslo institution closed its doors for refurbishment, and its aesthetic future isn’t yet clear. What is certain, however, is that the large mural on one wall, painted in 1928 and showing the habitués of the place in its prime, Ibsen just walking in, will remain untouched.
In its heyday, the Grand was one of the most northerly examples of a European phenomenon: the café as a social and artistic centre. Indeed, Ibsen’s lunching and quaffing habits were formed during a period of self-imposed exile from his native land. Depressed and frustrated by life in Norway, he left in 1864, spending the following 27 years in Germany and Italy. His favoured beer was the brand he had previously drunk at the Café Maximilian in Munich. Erik Edvardsen, director of Oslo’s Ibsen Museum, notes that the Spatenbräu had to be imported to the Grand specially for him.
In London, Oscar Wilde, James McNeill Whistler and Augustus John were to be found at the Café Royal. In Vienna, the Café Central was where you would see intellectuals such as the witty journalist Karl Kraus. And in Oslo – then known as Kristiania – it was the Grand Café. Opened on 14 August 1874, it formed part of the Grand Hotel, a majestic building in the Louis XVI Revival style, with a few Scandinavian touches. Both were founded by Julius Fritzner, a Norwegian hotelier and restaurateur. The café interiors had a Belle Epoque quality, and, as time went on, they became a sort of living museum piece.
The playwright was not the only individual who made the place part of his life; in fact, because of his long years abroad he was somewhat of a latecomer. Soon after it opened in 1874, the Grand had become the headquarters for a group of fin-de-siècle rebels. Their leader, Hans Henrik Jaeger, created a – sensation in 1885 with a novel entitled Fra Kristiania-Bohêmen (From the Kristiania Bohemians’), containing a fictionalised account of his own sex life. It was banned by the Norwegian government as soon as it was published. August Strindberg considered it ‘colossal’; Ibsen thought it a book written by a pig for pigs. This scandal was satisfactory to the author; although he was prosecuted by the authorities, it also made him famous.
Jaeger, who occupied a corner table at the Grand, was 30 at the time. A younger friend of his, the painter Edvard Munch (1863-1914), described the mood of those days. Looking back, he remembered that a ‘strange light illuminated all those nighttime meetings’ at which the little band of bohemians mouthed ‘defiant words, heedless of restraint or consequence.’ At the centre, he added, would be Jaeger, ‘whose logic was sharp as a scythe and cold as an icy blast’.
Munch would have whisky and soda with Jaeger, but he drank absinthe with another older bohemian, the painter Christian Krohg (whose son Per later painted the mural in the café). Sometimes, Munch recalled: ‘We used to have drinks before breakfast just to sober up.’ Elsewhere he wrote: ‘I’ve been sitting at the Grand Café and I’ve barely been able to think and I’ve felt as if I was going mad’. Nonetheless, Munch would eat there if he could, if only to avoid going home, as his father strongly disapproved of his louche habits. Unable to pay for the meals, he would exchange food for canvases – or at least try to do so. Allegedly he once offered a version of The Sick Child in exchange for 100 steak dinners (the offer was turned down). However, Munch’s biographer, Sue Prideaux, records that ‘a favourite waiter at the Grand built up quite a collection’.
It was Munch’s long record of difficulty with bills that led to an awkward exchange with Ibsen. The artist was staying at the Grand Hotel in 1897, having impulsively checked in to escape his uncomfortable studio. He held a meeting in the café with his lithographic printers at which plenty of alcoholic refreshment was consumed; when the time came to pay Munch asked to have it put on the bill for his room, but the waiter refused.
At this point, or so the story goes, Munch gestured at Ibsen – indicating that the playwright might be able to vouch for his credit. Ibsen, misunderstanding the signal, was unsympathetic. Walking over, he placed a coin on the table, adding, to Munch’s mortification: ‘You should do as I do, I always pay!’
This was not, however – as is sometimes claimed – the end of their relationship. There was clearly a gulf between the disorder of Munch’s existence and the obsessive orderliness of Ibsen’s. And though they weren’t ever to see each other again, the two men held great respect for one another. Munch, for his part, was obsessed with Ibsen’s dramas, identifying closely with some of the characters. Many of his paintings were inspired by works such as John Gabriel Borkman, Ibsen’s second-to-last play. A year after their run-in, Munch made a portrait of the great writer sitting in his invariable spot beside the window at the Grand Café Oslo. Ibsen, meanwhile, saw a connection between the violent attacks his own plays had suffered and the firestorm of criticism that had greeted Munch’s exhibition in 1895. ‘It will be with you as it was with me,’ he predicted. ‘The more enemies you have, the more friends you will have.’ As it turned out, he was quite correct.
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Grand Café Oslo, Karl Johans gt. 31, 0159 Oslo, Norway. Details: grandcafeoslo.no
A version of this appeared in the July 2016 issue of The World of Interiors. Learn about our subscription offers
