Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth - free ebook by Georg Brandes

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Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth

Georg Brandes

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177 chapters

AUTHOR OF "WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE," ETC.

AUTHOR OF "WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE," ETC.

DISCOVERING THE WORLD First Impressions--Going to Bed--My Name--Fresh Elements--School--The King--Town and Country--The King's Gardens--The Friendly World--Inimical Forces--The World Widens--The Theatre--Progress--Warlike Instincts-- School Adventures--Polite Accomplishments--My Relations BOYHOOD'S YEARS Our House--Its Inmates--My Paternal Grandfather--My Maternal Grandfather --School and Home--Farum--My Instructors--A Foretaste of Life--Contempt for the Masters--My Mother--The Mystery of Life--

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RECOLLECTIONS OF MY CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

RECOLLECTIONS OF MY CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

First Impressions--Going to Bed--My Name--Fresh Elements--School--The King--Town and Country--The King's Gardens--The Friendly World--Inimical Forces--The World Widens--The Theatre--Progress--Warlike Instincts-- School Adventures--Polite Accomplishments--My Relations....

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I.

I.

He was little and looked at the world from below. All that happened, went on over his head. Everyone looked down to him. But the big people possessed the enviable power of lifting him to their own height or above it. It might so happen that suddenly, without preamble, as he lay on the floor, rummaging and playing about and thinking of nothing at all, his father or a visitor would exclaim: "Would you like to see the fowls of Kjöge?" And with the same he would feel two large hands placed over his

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II.

II.

The trying moment of the day was when he had to go to bed. His parents were extraordinarily prejudiced about bedtime, just when he was enjoying himself most. When visitors had arrived and conversation was well started--none the less interesting to him because he understood scarcely half of what was said--it was: "Now, to bed!" But there were happy moments after he was in bed, too. When Mother came in and said prayers with him, and he lay there safely fenced in by the tall trellis-work, each bar

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III.

III.

I was always hearing that I was pale and thin and small. That was the impression I made on everyone. Nearly thirty years afterwards an observant person remarked to me: "The peculiarity about your face is its intense paleness." Consequently I looked darker than I was; my brown hair was called black. Pale and thin, with thick brown hair, difficult hair. That was what the hairdresser said--Mr. [Footnote: Danish Herre .] Alibert, who called Father Erré: "Good-morning, Erré," "Good-bye, Erré." And al

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IV.

IV.

The world, meanwhile, was so new, and still such an unknown country. About that time I was making the discovery of fresh elements. I was not afraid of what I did not like. To overcome dislike of a thing often satisfied one's feeling of honour. "Are you afraid of the water?" asked my brisk uncle from Fünen one day. I did not know exactly what there was to be afraid of, but answered unhesitatingly: "No." I was five years old; it was Summer, consequently rainy and windy. I undressed in the bathing

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V.

V.

I was too delicate to be sent to school at five years old, like other boys. My doctor uncle said it was not to be thought of. Since, however, I could not grow up altogether in ignorance, it was decided that I should have a tutor of my own. So a tutor was engaged who quickly won my unreserved affection and made me very happy. The tutor came every morning and taught me all I had to learn. He was a tutor whom one could ask about anything under the sun and he would always know. First, there was the

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VI.

VI.

Some flashes of terrestrial majesty and magnificence shone on my modest existence. Next after God came the King. As I was walking along the street one day with my father, he exclaimed: "There is the King!" I looked at the open carriage, but saw nothing noticeable there, so fixed my attention upon the coachman, dressed in red, and the footman's plumed hat. "The King wasn't there!" "Yes, indeed he was--he was in the carriage." "Was that the King? He didn't look at all remarkable--he had no crown o

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VII.

VII.

I was a town child, it is true, but that did not prevent me enjoying open-air life, with plants and animals. The country was not so far from town then as it is now. My paternal grandfather had a country-house a little way beyond the North gate, with fine trees and an orchard; it was the property of an old man who went about in high Wellington boots and had a regular collection of wax apples and pears--such a marvellous imitation that the first time you saw them you couldn't help taking a bite ou

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VIII.

VIII.

In the wood attic, a little room divided from the main garret by wooden bars, in which a quantity of split firewood and more finely chopped fir sticks, smelling fresh and dry, are piled up in obliquely arranged heaps, a little urchin with tightly closed mouth and obstinate expression has, for more than two hours, been bearing his punishment of being incarcerated there. Several times already his anxious mother has sent the housemaid to ask whether he will beg pardon yet, and he has only shaken hi

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IX.

IX.

On the whole, the world was friendly. It chiefly depended on whether one were good or not. If not, Karoline was especially prone to complain and Father and Mother were transformed into angry powers. Father was, of course, a much more serious power than Mother, a more distant, more hard-handed power. Neither of them, in an ordinary way, inspired any terror. They were in the main protecting powers. The terrifying power at this first stage was supplied by the bogey-man. He came rushing suddenly out

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X.

X.

About this time it dawned upon me in a measure what birth and death were. Birth was something that came quite unexpectedly, and afterwards there was one child more in the house. One day, when I was sitting on the sofa between Grandmamma and Grandpapa at their dining-table in Klareboderne, having dinner with a fairly large company, the door at the back of the room just opposite to me opened. My father stood in the doorway, and, without a good-morning, said: "You have got a little brother"--and th

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XI.

XI.

There were other inimical forces, too, besides the police and the Enemy, more uncanny and less palpable forces. When I dragged behind the nursemaid who held my younger brother by the hand, sometimes I heard a shout behind me, and if I turned round would see a grinning boy, making faces and shaking his fist at me. For a long time I took no particular notice, but as time went on I heard the shout oftener and asked the maid what it meant. "Oh, nothing!" she replied. But on my repeatedly asking she

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XII.

XII.

Other inimical forces in the world cropped up by degrees. When you had been put to bed early the maids often sat down at the nursery table, and talked in an undertone until far on into the evening. And then they would tell stories that were enough to make your hair stand on end. They talked of ghosts that went about dressed in white, quite noiselessly, or rattling their chains through the rooms of houses, appeared to people lying in bed, frightened guilty persons; of figures that stepped out of

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XIII.

XIII.

The world was widening out. It was not only home and the houses of my different grandparents, and the clan of my uncles, aunts, and cousins; it grew larger. I realized this at the homecoming of the troops. They came home twice. The impression they produced the first time was certainly a great, though not a deep one. It was purely external, and indistinctly merged together: garlands on the houses and across the streets, the dense throng of people, the flower-decked soldiers, marching in step to t

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XIV.

XIV.

I knew that the theatre (where I had never been) was the place where Mother and Father enjoyed themselves most. They often talked of it, and were most delighted if the actors had "acted well," words which conveyed no meaning to me. Children were not at that time debarred from the Royal Theatre, and I had no more ardent wish than to get inside. I was still a very small child when one day they took me with them in the carriage in which Father and Mother and Aunt were driving to the theatre. I had

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XV.

XV.

The war imbued my tin soldiers with quite a new interest. It was impossible to have boxes enough of them. You could set them out in companies and battalions; they opened their ranks to attack, stormed, were wounded, and fell. Sometimes they lay down fatigued and slept on the field of battle. But a new box that came one day made the old ones lose all value for me. For the soldiers in the new box were proper soldiers, with chests and backs, round to the touch, heavy to hold. In comparison with the

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XVI.

XVI.

The tin soldiers had called all my warlike instincts into being. After the rocking-horse, more and more military appurtenances followed. A shining helmet to buckle firmly under the chin, in which one looked quite imposing; a cuirass of real metal like the Horseguards', and a short rapier in a leather scabbard, which went by the foreign name of Hirschfänger, and was a very awe-inspiring weapon in the eyes of one's small brothers, when they were mercilessly massacred with it. Sitting on the rockin

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XVII.

XVII.

Just about this time, when in imagination I was so great a warrior, I had good use in real life for more strength, as I was no longer taken to school by the nurse, but instead had myself to protect my brother, two years my junior. The start from home was pleasant enough. Lunch boxes of tin with the Danish greeting after meals in gold letters upon them, stood open on the table. Mother, at one end of the table, spread each child six pieces of bread and butter, which were then placed together, two

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XVIII.

XVIII.

The world was widening out. The instruction I received grew more varied. There were a great many lessons out of school. From my drawing mistress, a pleasant girl, who could draw Fingal in a helmet in charcoal, I learnt to see how things looked in comparison with one another, how they hid one another and revealed themselves, in perspective; from my music mistress, my kind aunt, to recognise the notes and keys, and to play, first short pieces, then sonatas, alone, then as duets. But alas! Neither

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XIX.

XIX.

The world was widening out. Father brought from Paris a marvellous game, called Fortuna, with bells over pockets in the wood, and balls which were pushed with cues. Father had travelled from Paris with it five days and six nights. It was inexpressibly fascinating; no one else in Copenhagen had a game like it. And next year, when Father came home from Paris again, he brought a large, flat, polished box, in which there were a dozen different games, French games with balls, and battledores and shut

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I.

I.

The house belonged to my father's father, and had been in his possession some twenty years. My parents lived on the second floor. It was situated in the busy part of the town, right in the heart of Copenhagen. On the first floor lived a West Indian gentleman who spoke Danish with a foreign accent; sometimes there came to see him a Danish man of French descent, Mr. Lafontaine, who, it was said, was so strong that he could take two rifles and bayonets and hold them out horizontally without bending

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II.

II.

On the ground floor was the shop, which occupied the entire breadth and nearly the entire depth of the house, a silk and cloth business, large, according to the ideas of the time, which was managed by my father and grandfather together until my eleventh year, when Father began to deal wholesale on his own account. It was nice in the shop, because when you went down the assistants would take you round the waist and lift you over to the other side of the semi-circular counter which divided them fr

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III.

III.

On the landing which led from the shop to the stockroom behind, my grandfather took up his position. He looked very handsome up there, with his curly white hair. Thence, like a general, he looked down on everything--on the customers, the assistants, the apprentices, both before and behind him. If some specially esteemed lady customer came into the shop, he hurriedly left his exalted position to give advice. If the shopman's explanations failed to satisfy her, he put things right. He was at the z

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IV.

IV.

My maternal grandfather was quite different, entirely devoid of impetuosity, even-tempered, amiable, very handsome. He too had worked his way up from straightened circumstances; in fact, it was only when he was getting on for twenty that he had taught himself to read and write, well-informed though he was at the time I write of. He had once been apprentice to the widow of Möller the dyer, when Oehlenschläger and the Oersteds used to dine at the house. After the patriarchal fashion of the day, he

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V.

V.

School and Home were two different worlds, and it often struck me that I led a double life. Six hours a day I lived under school discipline in active intercourse with people none of whom were known to those at home, and the other hours of the twenty-four I spent at home, or with relatives of the people at home, none of whom were known to anybody at school. On Oct. 1st, 1849, I was taken to school, led in through the sober- looking doorway, and up into a classroom, where I was received by a kindl

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VI.

VI.

Suddenly, with surprising vividness, a little incident of my childhood rises up before me. I was ten years old. I had been ill in the Winter and my parents had boarded me out in the country for the Summer holidays; all the love of adventure in me surged up. At the Straw Market a fat, greasy, grinning peasant promised to take me in his cart as far as the little town of Farum, where I was to stay with the schoolmaster. He charged two dalers, and got them. Any sum, of course, was the same to me. I

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VII.

VII.

For nearly ten years I went to one and the same school. I came to know the way there and back, to and from the three different places, all near together, where my parents lived during the time, as I knew no other. In that part of the town, all about the Round Tower, I knew, not only every house, but every archway, every door, every window, every Paving-stone. It all gradually imprinted itself so deeply upon me that in after years, when gazing on foreign sights and foreign towns, even after I had

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VIII.

VIII.

The instruction at school was out of date, inasmuch as, in every branch, it lacked intelligibility. The masters were also necessarily, in some instances, anything but perfect, even when not lacking in knowledge of their subject. Nevertheless, the instruction as a whole, especially when one bears in mind how cheap it was, must be termed good, careful and comprehensive; as a rule it was given conscientiously. When as a grown up man I have cast my thoughts back, what has surprised me most is the va

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IX.

IX.

School is a foretaste of life. A boy in a large Copenhagen school would become acquainted, as it were in miniature, with Society in its entirety and with every description of human character. I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness. In our quarter of an hour's playtime it was easy to see how cowardice and meanness met with their reward in the boy commonwealth. There was a Jewish bo

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X.

X.

The reverence with which the boys, as youngsters, had looked up to the masters, disappeared with striking rapidity. The few teachers in whose lessons you could do what you liked were despised. The masters who knew how to make themselves respected, only in exceptional cases inspired affection. The love of mockery soon broke out. Children had not been at school long before the only opinion they allowed scope to was that the masters were the natural enemies of the boys. There was war between them,

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XI.

XI.

The French master knew how to command respect; there was never a sound during his lessons. He was altogether absorbed in his subject, was absolutely and wholly a Frenchman; he did not even talk Danish with the same accentuation as others, and he had the impetuous French disposition of which the boys had heard. If a boy made a mess of his pronunciation, he would bawl, from the depths of his full brown beard, which he was fond of stroking: "You speak French comme un paysan d'Amac ." When he swore,

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XII.

XII.

Among the delights of Summer were picnics to the woods. There would be several during the course of the season. When the weather seemed to inspire confidence, a few phaetons would be engaged for the family and their relations and friends, and some Sunday morning the seat of each carriage would be packed full of good things. We took tablecloth and serviettes with us, bread, butter, eggs and salmon, sausages, cold meat and coffee, as well as a few bottles of wine. Then we drove to some keeper's ho

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XIII.

XIII.

My mind, like that of all other children, had been exercised by the great problem of the mystery of our coming into the world. I was no longer satisfied with the explanation that children were brought by the stork, or with that other, advanced with greater seriousness, that they drifted up in boxes, which were taken up out of Peblinge Lake. As a child I tormented my mother with questions as to how you could tell whom every box was for. That the boxes were numbered, did not make things much clear

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XIV.

XIV.

I hardly ever met little girls except at children's balls, and in my early childhood I did not think further of any of them. But when I was twelve years old I caught my first strong glimpse of one of the fundamental forces of existence, whose votary I was destined to be for life--namely, Beauty. It was revealed to me for the first time in the person of a slender, light-footed little girl, whose name and personality secretly haunted my brain for many a year. One of my uncles was living that Summe

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XV.

XV.

The person upon whom the schoolboys' attention centred was, of course, the Headmaster. To the very young ones, the Headmaster was merely powerful and paternal, up above everything. As soon as the critical instinct awoke, its utterances were specially directed, by the evil- disposed, at him, petty and malicious as they were, and were echoed slavishly by the rest. As the Head was a powerful, stout, handsome, distinguished-looking man with a certain stamp of joviality and innocent good-living about

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XVI.

XVI.

Neither he nor any of the other masters reproduced the atmosphere of the classical antiquity round which all the instruction of the Latin side centred. The master who taught Greek the last few years did so, not only with sternness, but with a distaste, in fact, a positive hatred for his class, which was simply disgusting. The Head, who had the gift of oratory, communicated to us some idea of the beauty of Latin poetry, but the rest of the instruction in the dead languages was purely grammatical,

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XVII.

XVII.

Nothing was ever said at home about any religious creed. Neither of my parents was in any way associated with the Jewish religion, and neither of them ever went to the Synagogue. As in my maternal grandmother's house all the Jewish laws about eating and drinking were observed, and they had different plates and dishes for meat and butter and a special service for Easter, orthodox Judaism, to me, seemed to be a collection of old, whimsical, superstitious prejudices, which specially applied to food

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XVIII.

XVIII.

I had for several years been top of my class, when a boy was put in who was quite three years older than I, and with whom it was impossible for me to compete, so much greater were the newcomer's knowledge and maturity. It very soon became a settled thing for the new boy always to be top, and I invariably No. 2. However, this was not in the least vexatious to me; I was too much wrapped up in Sebastian for that. The admiration which as a child I had felt for boys who distinguished themselves by mu

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XIX.

XIX.

This self-esteem, in its immaturity, was of a twofold character. It was not primarily a belief that I was endowed with unusual abilities, but a childish belief that I was one set apart, with whom, for mysterious reasons, everything must succeed. The belief in a personal God had gradually faded away from me, and there were times when, with the conviction of boyhood, I termed myself an atheist to my friend; my attitude towards the Greek gods had never been anything more than a personification of t

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XX.

XX.

The first element whence the imaginary figure which I fancied I recognized again in Lermontof had its rise was doubtless to be found in the relations between my older friend and myself (in the reversal of our rôles, and my consequent new feeling of superiority over him). The essential point, however, was not the comparatively accidental shape in which I fancied I recognised myself, but that what was at that time termed reflection had awaked in me, introspection, self- consciousness, which after

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XXI.

XXI.

Thus violently absorbing though the mental condition here suggested was, it was not permanent. It was childish and child-like by virtue of my years; the riper expressions which I here make use of to describe it always seem on the verge of distorting its character. My faith in my lucky star barely persisted a few years unassailed. My childish idea had been very much strengthened when, at fifteen years of age, in the first part of my finishing examination, I received Distinction in all my subjects

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XXII.

XXII.

In those boyhood's years, however, I revelled in ideas of greatness to come which had not so far received a shock. And I was in no doubt as to the domain in which when grown up I should distinguish myself. All my instincts drew me towards Literature. The Danish compositions which were set at school absorbed all my thoughts from week to week; I took the greatest pains with them, weighed the questions from as many sides as I could and endeavoured to give good form and style to my compositions. Unc

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XXIII.

XXIII.

Together with a practical training in the use of the language, the Danish lessons afforded a presentment of the history of our national literature, given intelligently and in a very instructive manner by a master named Driebein, who, though undoubtedly one of the many Heibergians of the time, did not in any way deviate from what might be termed the orthodoxy of literary history. Protestantism carried it against Roman Catholicism, the young Oehlenschläger against Baggesen, Romanticism against Rat

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XXIV.

XXIV.

The years of approaching maturity were still distant, however, and my inner life was personal, not real, so that an element of fermentation was cast into my mind when a copy of Heine's Buch der Lieder was one day lent to me. What took my fancy in it was, firstly, the combination of enthusiasm and wit, then its terse, pithy form, and after that the parts describing how the poet and his lady love, unable to overcome the shyness which binds their tongues, involuntarily play hide and seek with one a

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XXV.

XXV.

Of all this life of artistic desire and seeking, of external impressions, welcomed with all the freshness and impulsiveness of a boy's mind, but most of self-study and self-discovery, the elder of the two comrades was a most attentive spectator, more than a spectator. He made use of expressions and said things which rose to my head and made me conceited. Sebastian would make such a remark as: "It is not for your abilities that I appreciate you, it is for your enthusiasm. All other people I know

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I.

I.

My second schoolboy fancy dated from my last few months at school. It was a natural enough outcome of the attraction towards the other sex which, never yet encouraged, was lurking in my mind; but it was not otherwise remarkable for its naturalness. It had its origin partly in my love of adventure, partly in my propensity for trying my powers, but, as love, was without root, inasmuch as it was rooted neither in my heart nor in my senses. The object of it was again a girl from another country. Her

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II.

II.

A school-friend who was keenly interested in astronomy and had directed my nightly contemplations of the heavens, drew me, just about this time, a very good map of the stars, by the help of which I found those stars I knew and extended my knowledge further. The same school-friend sometimes took me to the Observatory, to see old Professor d'Arrest--a refined and sapient man--and there, for the first time, I saw the stellar heavens through a telescope. I had learnt astronomy at school, but had lac

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III.

III.

At school, I had known a score of boys of my own age, and naturally found few amongst them who could be anything to me. Among the advantages that the freedom of student life afforded was that of coming in contact all at once with hundreds of similarly educated young men of one's own age. Young men made each other's acquaintance at lectures and banquets, were drawn to one another, or felt themselves repulsed, and elective affinity or accident associated them in pairs or groups for a longer or sho

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IV.

IV.

The theory, the intimation of which roused Vilsing to such a degree, bore in its form witness to such immaturity that it could only have made an impression on a youth whose immaturity, in spite of his age, was greater still. To present it with any degree of clearness is scarcely possible; it was not sufficiently clear in itself for that. But this was about what it amounted to: The introspection and energetic self-absorption to which I had given myself up during my last few years at school became

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V.

V.

The "daemonic" was also responsible for the mingled attraction that was exerted over me at this point by a young foreign student, and for the intercourse which ensued between us. Kappers was born somewhere in the West Indies, was the son of a well-to-do German manufacturer, and had been brought up in a North German town. His father, for what reason I do not know, wished him to study at Copenhagen University, and there take his law examination. There was coloured blood in his veins, though much d

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VI.

VI.

My first experiences of academic friendship made me smile in after years when I looked back on them. But my circle of acquaintances had gradually grown so large that it was only natural new friendships should grow out of it. One of the members of Kappers' "literary and scientific" society, and the one whom the West Indian had genuinely cared most for, was a young fellow whose father was very much respected, and to whom attention was called for that reason; he was short, a little heavy on his fee

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VII.

VII.

I had hitherto been only mildly interested in politics. I had, of course, as a boy, attentively followed the course of the Crimean war, which my French uncle, on one of his visits, had called the fight for civilisation against barbarism, although it was a fight for Turkey! now, as a student, I followed with keen interest the Italian campaign and the revolt against the Austrian Dukes and the Neapolitan Bourbons. But the internal policy of Denmark had little attraction for me. As soon as I entered

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VIII.

VIII.

The old men, who advocated the greatest caution in dealing with the impossible demands of the German Federation, and were profoundly distrustful as to the help that might be expected from Europe, were vituperated in the press. As Whole-State Men , they were regarded as unpatriotic, and as so-called Reactionaries , accused of being enemies to freedom. When I was introduced into the house of one of these politically ill-famed leaders, in spite of my ignorance, I knew enough of politics, as of othe

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IX.

IX.

Young David had once asked me to read Ovid's Elegiacs with him, and this was the beginning of our closer acquaintance. In town, in the Winter, we two younger ones were only rarely with the rest of the family, but in Summer it was different. The Minister had built a house at Rungsted, on a piece of land belonging to his brother, who was a farmer and the owner of Rungstedgaard, Rungstedlund and Folehavegaard, a shrewd and practical man. To this villa, which was in a beautiful situation, overlookin

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X.

X.

In November, 1859, at exactly the same time as Kappers' "literary and scientific" society was started, a fellow-student named Grönbeck, from Falster, who knew the family of Caspar Paludan-Müller, the historian, proposed my joining another little society of young students, of whom Grönbeck thought very highly on account of their altogether unusual knowledge of books and men. In the old Students' Union in Boldhusgade, the only meeting-place at that time for students, which was always regarded in a

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XI.

XI.

Among my Danish excursions was one to Slesvig in July, 1860. The Copenhagen students had been asked to attend a festival to be held at Angel at the end of July for the strengthening of the sparse Danish element in that German-minded region. There were not many who wished to go, but several of those who did had beautiful voices, and sang feelingly the national songs with which it was hoped the hearts of the Angel people, and especially of the ladies, might be touched. Several gentlemen still livi

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XII.

XII.

I was not given to looking at life in a rosy light. My nature, one uninterrupted endeavour, was too tense for that. Although I occasionally felt the spontaneous enjoyments of breathing the fresh air, seeing the sun shine, and listening to the whistling of the wind, and always delighted in the fact that I was in the heyday of my youth, there was yet a considerable element of melancholy in my temperament, and I was so loth to abandon myself to any illusion that when I looked into my own heart and

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XIII.

XIII.

Meanwhile I had completed my eighteenth year and had to make my choice of a profession. But what was I fitted for? My parents, and those other of my relations whose opinions I valued, wished me to take up the law; they thought that I might make a good barrister; but I myself held back, and during my first year of study did not attend a single law lecture. In July, 1860, after I had passed my philosophical examination (with Distinction in every subject), the question became urgent. Whether I was

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XIV.

XIV.

About the same time as my legal studies were thus beginning, I planned out a study of Philosophy and Aesthetics on a large scale as well. My day was systematically filled up from early morning till late at night, and there was time for everything, for ancient and modern languages, for law lessons with the coach, for the lectures in philosophy which Professors H. Bröchner and R. Nielsen were holding for more advanced students, and for independent reading of a literary, scientific and historic des

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XV.

XV.

I had an even deeper perception of my initiation when I went back from Hegel to Spinoza and, filled with awe and enthusiasm, read the Ethica for the first time. Here I stood at the source of modern pantheistic Philosophy. Here Philosophy was even more distinctly Religion, since it took Religion's place. Though the method applied was very artificial, purely mathematical, at least Philosophy had here the attraction of a more original type of mind, the effect being much the same as that produced by

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XVI.

XVI.

Still, while I was in this way making a purely mental endeavour to penetrate into as many intellectual domains as I could, and to become master of one subject after another, I was very far from being at peace with regard to my intellectual acquisitions, or from feeling myself in incontestable possession of them. While I was satisfying my desire for insight or knowledge and, by glimpses, felt my supremest happiness in the delight of comprehension, an ever more violent struggle was going on in my

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XVII.

XVII.

This frame of mind, however, was crossed by another. The religious transformation in my mind could not remain clear and unmuddied, placed as I was in a society furrowed through and through by different religious currents, issued as I was from the European races that for thousands of years had been ploughed by religious ideas. All the atavism, all the spectral repetition of the thoughts and ideas of the past that can lie dormant in the mind of the individual, leaped to the reinforcement of the ha

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XVIII.

XVIII.

What I dreaded most was that if I reached a recognition of the truth, a lack of courage would prevent me decisively making it my own. Courage was needed, as much to undertake the burdens entailed by being a Christian as to undertake those entailed by being a Pantheist. When thinking of Christianity, I drew a sharp distinction between the cowardice that shrunk from renunciation and the doubt that placed under discussion the very question as to whether renunciation were duty. And it was clear to m

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XIX.

XIX.

With Pantheism likewise I was on my guard against its being lack of courage, rather than a conviction of its untruth, which held me back from embracing it. I thought it a true postulate that everything seemed permeated and sustained by a Reason that had not human aims in front of it and did not work by human means, a Divine Reason. Nature could only be understood from its highest forms; the Ideal, which revealed itself to the world of men at their highest development, was present, in possibility

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XX.

XX.

But in spite of it all, it was a hard saying, that in the pantheistic view of life the absorption of the individual into the great whole took the place of the continued personal existence which was desired by the ego . But what frightened me even more was that the divine All was not to be moved or diverted by prayer. But pray I had to. From my earliest childhood I had been accustomed, in anxiety or necessity, to turn my thoughts towards a Higher Power, first forming my needs and wishes into word

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I.

I.

Among my many good comrades, there was one, Julius Lange, with whom comradeship had developed into friendship, and this friendship again assumed a passionate character. We were the two, who, of them all, were most exactly suited to one another, completed one another. Fundamentally different though we were, we could always teach each other something. We grew indispensable to one another; for years there seldom a day went by that we did not meet. The association with his junior cannot possibly hav

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II.

II.

I had for a long time pursued my non-juridic studies as well as I could without the assistance of a teacher. But I had felt the want of one. And when a newly appointed docent at the University, Professor H. Bröchner, offered instruction in the study of Philosophy to any who cared to present themselves at his house at certain hours, I had felt strongly tempted to take advantage of his offer. I hesitated for some time, for I was unwilling to give up the least portion of my precious freedom; I enjo

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III.

III.

I had not been studying Jurisprudence much more than a year before it began to weigh very heavily upon me. The mere sight of the long rows of Schou's Ordinances , which filled the whole of the back of my writing-table, were a daily source of vexation. I often felt that I should not be happy until the Ordinances were swept from my table. And the lectures were always so dreary that they positively made me think of suicide--and I so thirsty of life!--as a final means of escape from the torment of t

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IV.

IV.

I continued to be physically far from strong. Mentally, I worked indefatigably. The means of deciding the study question that, after long reflection, seemed to me most expedient, was this: I would compete for one of the University prizes, either the aesthetic or the philosophical, and then, if I won the gold medal, my parents and others would see that if I broke with the Law it was not from idleness, but because I really had talents in another direction. As early as 1860 I had cast longing eyes

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V.

V.

The anonymous recipient of the honourable mention nevertheless determined to call upon his judges, make their acquaintance, and let them know who he was. I went first to Hauch, who resided at that time at Frederiksberg Castle, in light and lofty rooms. Hauch appeared exaggeratedly obliging, the old man of seventy and over paying me, young man as I was, one compliment after the other. The treatise was "extraordinarily good," they had been very sorry not to give me the prize; but I was not to bear

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VI.

VI.

The Meeting of Scandinavian students at Copenhagen in June, 1862, taught me what it meant to be a Scandinavian. Like all the other undergraduates, I was Scandinavian at heart, and the arrangements of the Meeting were well calculated to stir the emotions of youth. Although, an insignificant Danish student, I did not take part in the expedition to North Zealand specially arranged for our guests, consequently neither was present at the luncheon given by Frederik VII to the students at Fredensborg (

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VII.

VII.

A month after the Students' Meeting, at the invitation of my friend Jens Paludan-Müller, I spent a few weeks at his home at Nykjöbing, in the island of Falster, where his father, Caspar Paludan-Müller, the historian, was at the time head master of the Grammar-school. Those were rich and beautiful weeks, which I always remembered later with gratitude. The stern old father with his leonine head and huge eyebrows impressed one by his earnestness and perspicacity, somewhat shut off from the world as

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VIII.

VIII.

In August, 1863, on a walking tour through North Sjaelland, Julius Lange introduced me to his other celebrated uncle, Frederik Paludan-Müller, whose Summer residence was at Fredensborg. In appearance he was of a very different type from his brother Caspar. The distinguishing mark of the one was power, of the other, nobility. For Frederik Paludan-Müller as a poet I cherished the profoundest admiration. He belonged to the really great figures of Danish literature, and his works had so fed and form

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IX.

IX.

Two other celebrated personages whom I met for the first time a little later were Björnstjerne Björnson and Magdalene Thoresen. I became acquainted with Björnstjerne Björnson at the Nutzhorns, their son, Ditlev, being a passionate admirer of his. His King Sverre of 1861 had been a disappointment, but Sigurd Slembe of the following year was new and great poetry, and fascinated young people's minds. Björnson, socially, as in literature, was a strong figure, self- confident, loud-voiced, outspoken,

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X.

X.

It was likewise through Frederik Nutzhorn that I, when a young beginner in the difficult art of life, became acquainted with Madame Magdalene Thoresen. Our first conversation took place in the open air one Summer day, at the Klampenborg bathing establishment. Although Magdalene Thoresen was at that time at least forty-six years old, her warm, brownish complexion could well stand inspection in the strongest light. Her head, with its heavy dark hair, was Southern in its beauty, her mouth as fresh

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XI.

XI.

I continued my legal studies with patient persistence, and gradually, after having made myself master of Civil Proceedings, I worked my way through the whole of the juridic system, Roman Law excluded. But the industry devoted to this was purely mechanical. I pursued my other studies, on the contrary, with delight, even tried to produce something myself, and during the last months of 1862 elaborated a very long paper on Romeo and Juliet , chiefly concerning itself with the fundamental problems of

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XII.

XII.

On the morning of November 15th, 1863, Julius Lange and I went together to offer our congratulations to Frederik Nutzhorn, whose birthday it was. His sisters received me with their usual cheerfulness, but their father, the old doctor, remarked as I entered: "You come with grave thoughts in your mind, too," for the general uneasiness occasioned by Frederik VII's state of health was reflected in my face. There was good reason for anxiety concerning all the future events of which an unfavourable tu

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XIII.

XIII.

On the 18th of November, the fever in the town was at its height. From early in the morning the space in front of the Castle was crowded with people. Orla Lehmann, a Minister at the time, came out of the Castle, made his way through the crowd, and shouted again and again, first to one side, then to the other: "He has signed! He has signed!" He did not say: "The King." The people now endured seven weeks of uninterrupted change and kaleidoscopic alteration of the political situation. Relations wit

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XIV.

XIV.

Shortly before, I had paid my first visit to Professor Rasmus Nielsen. He was exceedingly agreeable, recognised me, whom perhaps he remembered examining, and accorded me a whole hour's conversation. He was, as always, alert and fiery, not in the least blasé, but with a slight suggestion of charlatanism about him. His conversation was as lively and disconnected as his lectures; there was a charm in the clear glance of his green eyes, a look of genius about his face. He talked for a long time abou

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XV.

XV.

I thought about this time of nothing but my desire to become a competent soldier of my country. There was nothing I wanted more, but I felt physically very weak. When the first news of the battles of Midsunde and Bustrup arrived, I was very strongly inclined to follow Julius Lange to the Reserve Officers' School. When tidings came of the abandonment of the Danevirke my enthusiasm cooled; it was as though I foresaw how little prospect of success there was. Still, I was less melancholy than Lange

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XVI.

XVI.

Meanwhile, the examination was taking its course. As real curiosities, I here reproduce the questions set me. The three to be replied to in writing were: 1. To what extent can poetry be called the ideal History? 2. In what manner may the philosophical ideas of Spinoza and Fichte lead to a want of appreciation of the idea of beauty? 3. In what relation does the comic stand to its limitations and its various contrasts? The three questions which were to be replied to in lectures before the Universi

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XVII.

XVII.

The unusually favourable result of this examination attracted the attention of academical and other circles towards me. The mark admissus cum praecipua laude had only very rarely been given before. Hauch expressed his satisfaction at home in no measured terms. His wife stopped my grandfather in the street and informed him that his grandson was the cleverest and best-read young man that her husband had come across during his University experience. When I went to the old poet after the examination

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XVIII.

XVIII.

A few days later, on May both, a month's armistice was proclaimed, which was generally construed as a preliminary to peace, if this could be attained under possible conditions. It was said, and soon confirmed, that at the Conference of London, Denmark had been offered North Slesvig. Most unfortunately, Denmark refused the offer. On June 26th, the war broke out again; two days later Alsen was lost. When the young men were called up to the officers' board for conscription, "being too slight of bui

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XIX.

XIX.

Meanwhile, I pursued my studies with ardour and enjoyment, read a very great deal of belles-lettres , and continued to work at German philosophy, inasmuch as I now, though without special profit, plunged into a study of Trendelenburg. My thoughts were very much more stimulated by Gabriel Sibbern, on account of his consistent scepticism. It was just about this time that I made his acquaintance. Old before his time, bald at forty, tormented with gout, although he had always lived a most abstemious

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XX.

XX.

I had lived so little with Nature. The Spring of 1865, the first Spring I had spent in the country--although quite near to Copenhagen--meant to me rich impressions of nature that I never forgot, a long chain of the most exquisite Spring memories. I understood as I had never done before the inborn affection felt by every human being for the virgin, the fresh, the untouched, the not quite full-blown, just as it is about to pass over into its maturity. It was in the latter half of May. I was lookin

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XXI.

XXI.

In the month of July I started on a walking tour through Jutland, with the scenery of which province I had not hitherto been acquainted; travelled also occasionally by the old stage-coaches, found myself at Skanderborg, which, for me, was surrounded by the halo of mediaeval romance; wandered to Silkeborg, entering into conversation with no end of people, peasants, peasant boys, and pretty little peasant girls, whose speech was not always easy to understand. I studied their Juttish, and laughed h

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XXII.

XXII.

My first newspaper articles were printed in The Fatherland and the Illustrated Times ; the very first was a notice of Paludan- Müller's Fountain of Youth , in which I had compressed matter for three or four lectures; a commissioned article on Dante was about the next, but this was of no value. But it was a great event to see one's name printed in a newspaper for the first time, and my mother saw it not without emotion. About this time Henrik Ibsen's first books fell into my hands and attracted m

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XXIII.

XXIII.

A young man who plunged into philosophical study at the beginning of the sixties in Denmark, and was specially engrossed by the boundary relations between Philosophy and Religion, could not but come to the conclusion that philosophical life would never flourish in Danish soil until a great intellectual battle had been set on foot, in the course of which conflicting opinions which had never yet been advanced in express terms should be made manifest and wrestle with one another, until it became cl

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XXIV.

XXIV.

In the beginning of the year 1866 Ludvig David died suddenly in Rome, of typhoid fever. His sorrowing parents founded in memory of him an exhibition for law-students which bears and perpetuates his name. The first executors of the fund were, in addition to his most intimate friend, two young lawyers named Emil Petersen and Emil Bruun, who had both been friends of his. The latter, who has not previously been mentioned in these pages, was a strikingly handsome and clever young man, remarkable for

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XXV.

XXV.

His death left a great void in his home. His old father said to me one day: "Strange how one ends as one begins! I have written no verses since my early youth, and now I have written a poem on my grief for Ludvig. I will read it to you." There was an Art and Industrial Exhibition in Stockholm, that Summer, which C.N. David was anxious to see. As he did not care to go alone, he took me in his son's place. It was my first journey to a foreign capital, and as such both enjoyable and profitable. I n

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I.

I.

I had wished for years to see Paris, the city that roused my most devout feelings. As a youth I had felt a kind of reverent awe for the French Revolution, which represented to me the beginning of human conditions for all those who were not of the favoured among men,--and Paris was the city of the Revolution. Moreover, it was the city of Napoleon, the only ruler since Caesar who had seriously fascinated me, though my feelings for him changed so much that now admiration, now aversion, got the uppe

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II.

II.

Before I could start, I had to finish the pamphlet which, with Sibbern's help, I had written against Nielsen's adjustment of the split between Protestant orthodoxy and the scientific view of the universe, and which I had called Dualism in our Modern Philosophy . I was not troubled with any misgivings as to how I should get the book published. As long ago as 1864 a polite, smiling, kindly man, who introduced himself to me as Frederik Hegel, the bookseller, had knocked at the door of my little roo

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III.

III.

On one of the first days of November, I journeyed, in a tremendous storm, to Lübeck, the characteristic buildings of which (the Church of Mary, the Exchange, the Town-hall), together with the remains of the old fortifications, aroused my keen interest. In this Hanse town, with its strongly individual stamp, I found myself carried back three hundred years. I was amazed at the slave-like dress of the workmen, the pointed hats of the girls, and the wood pavements, which were new to me. I travelled

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IV.

IV.

The tiring night-journey, with its full four hours' wait at Liège, was all pure enjoyment to me, and in a mood of mild ecstasy, at last, at half-past ten on the morning of November 11th 1866, I made my entry into Paris, and was received cordially by the proprietors of a modest but clean little hotel which is still standing, No. 20 Rue Notre Dame des Victoires, by the proprietors, two simple Lorrainers, François and Müller, to whom Gabriel Sibbern, who was staying there, had announced my arrival.

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V.

V.

A capable journalist named Grégoire, a sickly, prematurely aged, limping fellow, with alert wits, an Alsatian, who knew Danish and regularly read Bille's Daily Paper , had in many ways taken me up almost from the first day of my sojourn on French soil. This man recommended me, on my expressing a wish to meet with a competent teacher, to take instruction in the language from a young girl, a friend of his sister, who was an orphan and lived with her aunt. She was of good family, the daughter of a

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VI.

VI.

This was about the state of affairs between Mademoiselle Louise and me, when one evening, at Pagella's, where there were Southerners of various races present, I was introduced to a young lady, Mademoiselle Mathilde M., who at first sight made a powerful impression upon me. She was a young Spanish Brazilian, tall of stature, a proud and dazzling racial beauty. The contours of her head were so impeccably perfect that one scarcely understood how Nature could have made such a being inadvertently, wi

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VII.

VII.

I had not left off my daily work in Paris, but had read industriously at the Imperial Library. I had also attended many lectures, some occasionally, others regularly, such as those of Janet, Caro, Lévêque and Taine. Of all contemporary French writers, I was fondest of Taine. I had begun studying this historian and thinker in Copenhagen. The first book of his that I read was The French Philosophers of the Nineteenth Century , in a copy that had been lent to me by Gabriel Sibbern. The book entranc

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I.

I.

After my return from France to Denmark, in 1867, my thoughts were taken up once more by the feud that had broken out in Danish literature between Science and so-called Revelation (in the language of the time, Faith and Knowledge). More and more had by degrees entered the lists, and I, who centred my greatest intellectual interest in the battle, took part in it with a dual front, against the orthodox theologians, and more especially against R. Nielsen, the assailant of the theologians, whom I reg

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II.

II.

This manifested itself first in a fresh need for physical exercise. During the first two years after the decision of 1864, while things were leading up to war between Prussia and Austria, and while the young blood of Denmark imagined that their country would be drawn into this war, I had taken part, as a member of the Academic Shooting Society, in drill and shooting practice. After the battle of Königgratz these occupations lost much of their attraction. I was now going in for an exercise that w

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III.

III.

My temperament expressed itself in a profusion of youthful longings, as well as in my love of athletics. During my University studies, in my real budding manhood, I had voluntarily cut myself away from the usual erotic diversions of youth. Precocious though I was in purely intellectual development, I was very backward in erotic experience. In that respect I was many years younger than my age. On my return, my Paris experiences at first exercised me greatly. Between the young French lady and myse

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IV.

IV.

These Danish girls were likely to appeal to a young man just returned from travels abroad, during which his emotions had been doubly stirred, for the first time, by feminine affection and by enthusiasm for a woman. They influenced me the more strongly because they were Danish, and because I, who loved everything Danish, from the language to the monuments, had, since the war, felt something lacking in everyone, man or woman, who was foreign to Denmark. But in the midst of all these visitations of

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V.

V.

I could not at once feel it a relief that my fancies had all been dissipated into thin air. Physically I was much broken down, but, with my natural elasticity, quickly recovered. Yet in my relations towards the other sex I was torn as I had never been before. My soul, or more exactly, that part of my psychical life bordering on the other sex, was like a deep, unploughed field, waiting for seed. It was not much more than a month before the field was sown. Amongst my Danish acquaintances there was

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VI.

VI.

About this time it so happened that another woman began to engage my thoughts, but in an altogether different manner. Circumstances resulted in my being taken into the secret of unhappy and disturbing domestic relations in a well-to-do house to which I was frequently invited, and where to all outward seeming all the necessary conditions of domestic happiness were present. The master of the house had in his younger days been a very handsome man, lazy, not clever, and of an exceedingly passionate

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VII.

VII.

From this time forth I began to ponder quite as much over Life as over Art, and to submit to criticism the conditions of existence in the same way as I had formerly done with Faith and Law. In matters concerning Life, as in things concerning Art, I was not a predetermined Radical. There was a great deal of piety in my nature and I was of a collecting, retentive disposition. Only gradually, and step by step, was I led by my impressions, the incidents I encountered, and my development, to break wi

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VIII.

VIII.

Hitherto, when I had appeared before the reading public, it had only been as the author of shorter or longer contributions to the philosophical discussion of the relations between Science and Faith; when these had been accepted by a daily paper it had been as its heaviest ballast. I had never yet written anything that the ordinary reader could follow with pleasure, and I had likewise been obliged to make use of a large number of abstruse philosophical words. The proprietors of the Illustrated Ti

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IX.

IX.

With the first money I received for my books, I went in the middle of the Summer of 1868 for a trip to Germany. I acquired some idea of Berlin, which was then still only the capital of Prussia, and in population corresponded to the Copenhagen of our day; I spent a few weeks in Dresden, where I felt very much at home, delighted in the exquisite art collection and derived no small pleasure from the theatre, at that time an excellent one. I saw Prague for the first time, worshipped Rubens in Munich

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X.

X.

There was only one distinguished person outside my circle of acquaintance to whom I wished to bring my first descriptive book, as a mark of homage, Johanne Louise Heiberg, the actress. I had admired her on the stage, even if not to the same extent as Michael Wiehe; but to me she was the representative of the great time that would soon sink into the grave. In addition, I ventured to hope that she, being a friend of Frederik Paludan-Müller, Magdalene Thoresen and others who wished me well, would b

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XI.

XI.

Magdalene Thoresen was spending that year in Copenhagen, and our connection, which had been kept up by correspondence, brought with it a lively mutual interchange of thoughts and impressions. Our natures, it is true, were as much unlike as it was possible for them to be; but Magdalene Thoresen's wealth of moods and the overflowing warmth of her heart, the vivacity of her disposition, the tenderness that filled her soul, and the incessant artistic exertion, which her exhausted body could not stan

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XII.

XII.

There were not many of the upper middle class houses in Copenhagen at that time, the hospitality of which a young man with intellectual interests derived any advantage from accepting. One of these houses, which was opened to me, and with which I was henceforward associated, was that of Chief Physician Rudolph Bergh. His was the home of intellectual freedom. The master of the house was not only a prominent scientist and savant, but, at a time when all kinds of prejudices ruled unassailed, a man w

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XIII.

XIII.

The house of the sisters Spang was a pleasant one to go to; they were two unmarried ladies who kept an excellent girls' school, at which Julius Lange taught drawing. Benny Spang, not a beautiful, but a brilliant girl, with exceptional brains, daughter of the well-known Pastor Spang, a friend of Sören Kierkegaard, adopted a tone of good- fellowship towards me that completely won my affection. She was cheerful, witty, sincere and considerate. Not long after we became acquainted she married a somew

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XIV.

XIV.

Just about this time a foreign element entered the circle of Copenhagen students to which I belonged. One day there came into my room a youth with a nut-brown face, short and compactly built, who after only a few weeks' stay in Copenhagen could speak Danish quite tolerably. He was a young Armenian, who had seen a great deal of the world and was of very mixed race. His father had married, at Ispahan, a lady of Dutch-German origin. Up to his seventh year he had lived in Batavia. When the family af

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XV.

XV.

Knowing this Armenian made me realise how restricted my own learning was, and what a very general field of knowledge I had chosen. I wrote my newspaper articles and my essays, and I worked at my doctor's thesis on French Aesthetics, which cost me no little pains; it was my first attempt to construct a consecutive book, and it was only by a vigorous effort that I completed it at the end of 1869. But I had then been casting over in my mind for some years thoughts to which I never was able to give

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XVI.

XVI.

There was one of the political figures of the time whom I often met during these years. This was the man most beloved of the previous generation, whose star had certainly declined since the war, but whose name was still one to conjure with, Orla Lehmann. I had made his acquaintance when I was little more than a boy, in a very curious way. In the year 1865 I had given a few lectures in C.N. David's house, on Runeberg, whom I had glorified exceedingly, and as the David and Lehmann houses, despite

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XVII.

XVII.

During those years I came into very curious relations with another celebrity of the time. This was M. Goldschmidt, the author, whose great talent I had considerable difficulty in properly appreciating, so repelled was I by his uncertain and calculating personality. I saw Goldschmidt for the first time, when I was a young man, at a large ball at a club in Copenhagen. A man who had emigrated to England as a poor boy returned to Copenhagen in the sixties at the age of fifty, after having acquired a

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XVIII.

XVIII.

In my public capacity about this time, I had many against me and no one wholly for me, except my old protector Bröchner, who, for one thing, was very ill, and for another, by reason of his ponderous language, was unknown to the reading world at large. Among my personal friends there was not one who shared my fundamental views; if they were fond of me, it was in spite of my views. That in itself was a sufficient reason why I could not expect them, in the intellectual feud in which I was still eng

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XIX.

XIX.

Not long after this departure, and immediately after the publication of my long article on Goldschmidt, I received one day, to my surprise, a letter of eight closely written pages from Björnstjerne Björnson, dated April 15th, 1869. What had called it forth was my remark, in that article, that Björnson, like Goldschmidt, sometimes, when talent failed, pretended to have attained the highest, pretended that obscurity was the equivalent of profundity. When writing this, I was thinking of the obscure

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I.

I.

The first thing that impressed me was Hamburg, and by that I mean the European views prevalent there. At that time, doubtless mainly for national reasons, Denmark hated Hamburg. Different Danish authors had recently written about the town, and in as depreciatory a strain as they could. The description of one amounted to an assertion that in Hamburg people only talked of two things, money and women; that of another commenced: "Of all the places I have ever seen in my life, Hamburg is the most hid

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II.

II.

And then I set foot once more in the country which I regarded as my second fatherland, and the overflowing happiness of once more feeling French ground under my feet returned undiminished and unchanged. I had had all my letters sent to Mlle. Louise's address, so fetched them shortly after my arrival and saw the girl again. Her family invited me to dinner several times during the very first week, and I was associated with French men and women immediately upon my arrival. They were well-brought-up

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III.

III.

A few days after my arrival, I called upon Taine and was cordially received. He presented me with one of his books and promised me his great work, De l'Intelligence , which was to come out in a few days, conversed with me for an hour, and invited me to tea the following evening. He had been married since I had last been at his house, and his wife, a young, clear-skinned lady with black plaits, brown eyes and an extremely graceful figure, was as fresh as a rose, and talked with the outspoken free

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IV.

IV.

Through Taine, I very soon made the acquaintance of Renan, whose personality impressed me very much, grand and free of mind as he was, without a trace of the unctuousness that one occasionally meets in his books, yet superior to the verge of paradox. He was very inaccessible, and obstinately refused to see people. But if he were expecting you, he would spare you several hours of his valuable time. His house was furnished with exceeding simplicity. On one wall of his study hung two Chinese water-

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V.

V.

A source of very much pleasure to me was my acquaintance with the old author and Collège de France Professor, Philarète Chasles. Grégoire introduced me to him and I gradually became at home, as it were, in his house, was always a welcome visitor, and was constantly invited there. In his old age he was not a man to be taken very seriously, being diffusive, vague and vain. But there was no one else so communicative, few so entertaining, and for the space of fifty years he had known everybody who h

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VI.

VI.

I had not let a single day elapse before I took my seat again in the Théâtre Français , to which I had free admission for an indefinite period. The first time I arrived, the doorkeeper at the theatre merely called the sub-officials together; they looked at me, noted my appearance, and for the future I might take my seat wherever I liked, when the man at the entrance had called out his Entrée . They were anything but particular, and in the middle of the Summer, after a visit of a month to London,

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VII.

VII.

I tried, while I was in Paris, to understand something of the development of French literature since the beginning of the century, to arrange it in stages, and note the order of their succession; I wanted, at the same time, to form for myself a similar general view of Danish literature, and institute parallels between the two, being convinced beforehand that the spirit of the age must be approximately the same in two European countries that were, so to speak, intellectually allied. This was my f

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IX.

IX.

As, during my first stay in Paris, I had frequently visited Madame Victorine, the widow of my deceased uncle, and her children, very cordial relations had since existed between us, especially after my uncle's faithless friend had been compelled to disgorge the sums sent from Denmark for her support, which he had so high-handedly kept back. There were only faint traces left of the great beauty that had once been hers; life had dealt hardly with her. She was good and tender-hearted, an affectionat

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X.

X.

In a students' hotel near the Odéon, where a few Scandinavians lived, I became acquainted with two or three young lawyers and more young abbés and priests. If you went in when the company were at table in the dining room, the place rang again with their noisy altercations. The advocates discussed politics, literature and religion with such ardour that the air positively crackled. They were apparently practising to speak one day at the Bar or in the Chamber. It was from surroundings such as these

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XI.

XI.

The society of the Italian friends of my first visit gave me much pleasure. My first call at the Pagellas' was a blank; at the next, I was received like a son of the house and heaped with reproaches for not having left my address; they had tried to find me at my former hotel, and endeavoured in vain to learn where I was staying from Scandinavians whom they knew by name; now I was to spend all the time I could with them, as I used to do in the old days. They were delighted to see me again, and wh

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XII.

XII.

A young American named Olcott, who visited Chasles and occasionally looked me up, brought with him a breath from the universities of the great North American Republic. A young German, Dr. Goldschmidt, a distinguished Sanscrit scholar, a man of more means than I, who had a pretty flat with a view over the Place du Châtelet, and dined at good restaurants, came, as it were, athwart the many impressions I had received of Romance nature and Romance intellectual life, with his violent German national

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XIII.

XIII.

Of course I witnessed all that was accessible to me of Parisian public life. I fairly often found my way, as I had done in 1866, to the Palais de Justice to hear the great advocates plead. The man I enjoyed listening to most was Jules Favre, whose name was soon to be on every one's lips. The younger generation admired in him the high-principled and steadfast opponent of the Empire in the Chamber, and he was regarded as well-nigh the most eloquent man in France. As an advocate, he was incomparabl

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XIV.

XIV.

A very instructive resort, even for a layman, was the Record Office, for there one could run through the whole history of France in the most entertaining manner with the help of the manuscripts placed on view, from the most ancient papyrus rolls to the days of parchment and paper. You saw the documents of the Feudal Lords' and Priests' Conspiracies under the Merovingians and the Capets, the decree of divorce between Philip Augustus and Ingeborg, and letters from the most notable personages of th

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XV.

XV.

At that time the eyes of the Danes were fixed upon France in hope and expectation that their national resuscitation would come from that quarter, and they made no distinction between France and the Empire. Although the shortest visit to Paris was sufficient to convince a foreigner not only that the personal popularity of the Emperor was long since at an end, but that the whole government was despised, in Denmark people did not, and would not, know it. In the Danish paper with the widest circulat

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XVI.

XVI.

On July 5th I saw John Stuart Mill for the first time. He had arrived in Paris the night before, passing through from Avignon, and paid a visit to me, unannounced, in my room in the Rue Mazarine; he stayed two hours and won my affections completely. I was a little ashamed to receive so great a man in so poor a place, but more proud of his thinking it worth his while to make my acquaintance. None of the French savants had ever had an opportunity of conversing with him; a few days before, Renan ha

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XVII.

XVII.

My French acquaintances all said the same thing, when I told them I wanted to go over to England: "What on earth do you want there?" Though only a few hours' journey from England, they had never felt the least curiosity to see the country. "And London! It was said to be a very dull city; it was certainly not worth putting one's self out to go there." Or else it was: "If you are going to London, be careful! London is full of thieves and rascals; look well to your pockets!" Only a few days later,

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XVIII.

XVIII.

As often as I could, I took the train to Blackheath to visit John Stuart Mill. He was good and great, and I felt myself exceedingly attracted by his greatness. There were fundamental features of his thought and mode of feeling that coincided with inclinations of my own; for instance, the Utilitarian theory, as founded by Bentham and his father and developed by him. I had written in 1868: "What we crave is no longer to flee from society and reality with our thoughts and desires. On the contrary,

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XIX.

XIX.

Some weeks passed in seeing the most important public buildings in London, revelling in the treasures of her museums and collections, and in making excursions to places in the neighbourhood and to Oxford. I was absorbed by St. Paul's, saw it from end to end, and from top to bottom, stood in the crypt, where Sir Christopher Wren lies buried,-- Si monumentum requiris, circumspice --mentally compared Wellington's burial-place here with that of Napoleon on the other side of the Channel, then went up

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XX.

XX.

The house in London where I was happiest was Antonio Gallenga's. A letter from the Hauchs was my introduction there, and I was received and taken up by them as if they had known me and liked me for years. Antonio Gallenga, then a man of seventy, who nevertheless gave one an impression of youthfulness, had a most eventful life behind him. He had been born at Parma, was flung into prison at the age of twenty as a conspirator under Mazzini, was banished from Piedmont, spent some time at Malta, in t

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XXI.

XXI.

Don Juan Prim, Count of Reus, Marques de los Castillejos, would now be forgotten outside Spain were it not that Régnault's splendid equestrian picture of him, as he is receiving the homage of the people (on a fiery steed, reminding one of Velasquez), keeps his memory green in everyone who visits the Gallery of the Louvre. At that time his name was on every tongue. The victorious general and revolutionary of many years' standing had since 1869 been Prime Minister of Spain, and had eagerly endeavo

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XXII.

XXII.

The Paris I saw again was changed. Even on my way from Calais I heard, to my astonishment, the hitherto strictly forbidden Marseillaise hummed and muttered. In Paris, people went arm in arm about the streets singing, and the Marseillaise was heard everywhere. The voices were generally harsh, and it was painful to hear the song that had become sacred through having been silenced so long, profaned in this wise, in the bawling and shouting of half-drunken men at night. But the following days, as we

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XXIII.

XXIII.

One could hardly praise the attitude of the French papers between the declaration of war and the first battles. Their boasting and exultation over what they were going to do was barely decent, they could talk of nothing but the victories they were registering beforehand, and, first and last, the entry into Berlin. The insignificant encounter at Saarbrücken was termed everywhere the première victoire! The caricatures in the shop-windows likewise betrayed terrible arrogance. One was painfully remi

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XXIV.

XXIV.

Those were Summer days, and in spite of the political and martial excitement, the peaceful woods and parks in the environs of Paris were tempting. From the Quartier Latin many a couple secretly found their way to the forests of St. Germain, or the lovely wood at Chantilly. In the morning one bought a roast fowl and a bottle of wine, then spent the greater part of the day under the beautiful oak-trees, and sat down to one's meal in the pleasant green shade. Now and again one of the young women wo

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XXV.

XXV.

The news of the battle of Weissenburg on August 4th was a trouble, but this chiefly manifested itself in profound astonishment. What? They had suffered a defeat? But one did not begin to be victorious at once; victory would soon follow now. And, indeed, next morning, the news of a victory ran like lightning about the town. It had been so confidently expected that people quite neglected to make enquiries as to how and to what extent it was authenticated. There was bunting everywhere; all the hors

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XXVI.

XXVI.

Anyone whose way led him daily past the fortifications could see, however technically ignorant he might be, that they were exceedingly insignificant. Constantly, too, one heard quoted Trochu's words: "I don't delude myself into supposing that I can stop the Prussians with the matchsticks that are being planted on the ramparts." Strangely enough, Paris shut herself in with such a wall of masonry that in driving through it in the Bois de Boulogne, there was barely room for a carriage with two hors

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XXVII.

XXVII.

After my return to Paris, I had taken lessons from an excellent language teacher, Mademoiselle Guémain, an old maid who had for many years taught French to Scandinavians, and for whom I wrote descriptions and remarks on what I saw, to acquire practise in written expression. She had known most of the principal Northerners who had visited Paris during the last twenty years, had taught Magdalene Thoresen, amongst others, when this latter as a young woman had stayed in Paris. She was an excellent cr

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XXVIII.

XXVIII.

The temper prevailing among my Italian friends was very different. The Italians, as their way was, were just like children, laughed at the whole thing, were glad that the Prussians were "drubbing" the French, to whom, as good patriots, they wished every misfortune possible. The French had behaved like tyrants in Italy; now they were being paid out. Besides which, the Prussians would not come to Paris. But if they did come, they would be nice to them, and invite them to dinner, like friends. Some

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XXIX.

XXIX.

In the meantime, defeats and humiliations were beginning to confuse the good sense of the French, and to lead their instincts astray. The crowd could not conceive that such things could come about naturally. The Prussians could not possibly have won by honourable means, but must have been spying in France for years. Why else were so many Germans settled in Paris! The French were paying now, not for their faults, but for their virtues, the good faith, the hospitality, the innocent welcome they ha

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XXX.

XXX.

Foreigners were requested to leave Paris, so that, in the event of a siege, the city might have no unnecessary mouths to feed. Simultaneously, in Trochu's proclamation, it was announced that the enemy might be outside the walls in three days. Under such circumstances, the town was no longer a place for anyone who did not wish to be shut up in it. One night at the end of August, I travelled from Paris to Geneva. At the departure station the thousands of German workmen who had been expelled from P

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XXXI.

XXXI.

There was Geneva, between the Alps, divided by the southern extremity of Lake Leman, which was spanned by many handsome bridges. In the centre, a little isle, with Rousseau's statue. A little beyond, the Rhone rushed frothing and foaming out of the lake. From my window I could see in the distance the dazzling snow peak of Mont Blanc. After Paris, Geneva looked like a provincial town. The cafés were like servants' quarters or corners of cafés. There were no people in the streets, where the sand b

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XXXII.

XXXII.

I went for excursions into Savoy, ascended La Grande Salève on donkey- back, and from the top looked down at the full length of the Leman. I drove to the valley of Chamounix, sixty-eight miles, in a diligence and four; about every other hour we had relays of horses and a new driver. Whenever possible, we went at a rattling galop. Half-way I heard the first Italian. It was only the word quattro ; but it filled me with delight. Above the high, wooded mountains, the bare rock projected out of the e

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XXXIII.

XXXIII.

Lake Leman fascinated me. All the scenery round looked fairy-like to me, a dream land, in which mighty mountains cast their blue-black shadows down on the turquoise water, beneath a brilliant, sparkling sunshine that saturated the air with its colouring. My impressions of Lausanne, Chillon, Vevey, Montreux, were recorded in the first of my lectures at the University the following year. The instruments of torture at Chillon, barbaric and fearsome as they were, made me think of the still worse mur

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XXXIV.

XXXIV.

In Geneva, the news reached me that--in spite of a promise Hall, as Minister, had given to Hauch, when the latter asked for it for me--I was to receive no allowance from the Educational Department. To a repetition of the request, Hall had replied: "I have made so many promises and half-promises, that it has been impossible to remember or to keep them." This disappointment hit me rather hard; I had in all only about £50 left, and could not remain away more than nine weeks longer without getting i

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XXXV.

XXXV.

With abominable slowness, and very late, "on account of the war," the train crawled from Geneva, southwards. Among the travellers was a rhetorical Italian master-mason, from Lyons, an old Garibaldist, the great event of whose life was that Garibaldi had once taken lunch alone with him at Varese. He preserved in his home as a relic the glass from which the general had drunk. He was talkative, and ready to help everyone; he gave us all food and drink from his provisions. Other travellers told that

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XXXVI.

XXXVI.

An overwhelming impression was produced upon me by the monuments of Turin, the River Po, and the lovely glee-singing in the streets. For the first time, I saw colonnades, with heavy curtains to the street, serve as pavements, with balconies above them. Officers in uniforms gleaming with gold, ladies with handkerchiefs over their heads instead of hats, the mild warmth, the brown eyes, brought it home to me at every step that I was in a new country. I hurried up to Costanza Blanchetti. Madame la c

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XXXVII.

XXXVII.

On my journey from Turin to Milan, I had the mighty Mont Rosa, with its powerful snow mass, and the St. Bernard, over which Buonaparte led his tattered troops, before my eyes. We went across maize fields, through thickets, over the battlefield of Magenta. From reading Beyle, I had pictured Milan as a beautiful town, full of free delight in life. Only to see it would be happiness. And it was,--the cupola gallery, the dome, from the roof of which, immediately after my arrival, I looked out over th

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XXXVIII.

XXXVIII.

A violent affection for Correggio, and a longing to see his works where they are to be found in greatest number, sent me to Parma. I reached the town at night; no gas, no omnibus from any hotel. An out- porter trotted with my portmanteau on his back through wide, pitch-dark, deserted, colonnaded streets, past huge palaces, until, after half an hour's rapid walk, we arrived at the hotel. The day before my arrival dall'Ongaro had unveiled the beautiful and beautifully situated statue of Correggio

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XXXIX.

XXXIX.

After this came rich days in Florence. Everything was a delight to me there, from the granite paving of the streets, to palaces, churches, galleries, and parks. I stood in reverence before the Medici monuments in Michael Angelo's sanctuary. The people attracted me less; the women seemed to me to have no type at all, compared with the lovely faces and forms at Milan and Parma. The fleas attracted me least of all. Dall 'Ongaro received every Sunday evening quite an international company, and conve

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XL.

XL.

Vines twine round the fruit-trees; black pigs and their families make their appearance in tribes; the lake of Thrasymene, near which Hannibal defeated the Romans, spreads itself out before us. The train is going from Florence to Rome. Towards mid-day a girl enters the carriage, apparently English or North American, with brown eyes and brown hair, that curls naturally about her head; she has her guitar-case in her hand, and flings it up into the net. Her parents follow her. As there is room in th

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XLI.

XLI.

Vinnie Ream was by no means a Scott heroine, however, but a genuine American, and doubly remarkable to me as being the first specimen of a young woman from the United States with whom I became acquainted. Even after I had seen a good deal of her work, I could not feel wholly attracted by her talent, which sometimes expressed itself rather in a pictorial than a plastic form, and had a fondness for emotional effects. But she was a true artist, and a true woman, and I have never, in any woman, enco

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XLII.

XLII.

Vinnie Ream's opinion of me was that I was the most impolitic man that she had ever known. She meant, by that, that I was always falling out with people (for instance, I had at once offended the Danes in Rome by some sharp words about the wretched Danish papers), and in general made fewer friends and more enemies all the time. She herself won the affection of everyone she wished, and made everyone ready to spring to do her bidding. She pointed out to me how politic she had had to be over her art

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XLIII.

XLIII.

It was a real trouble to me that the Pope, in his exasperation over the conquest of Rome--in order to make the accomplished revolution recoil also on the heads of the foreigners whom he perhaps suspected of sympathy with the new order of things--had closed the Vatican and all its collections. Rome was to me first and foremost Michael Angelo's Sistine Chapel, Raphael's Stanzas and Loggias, and now all this magnificent array, which I had travelled so far to see, was closed to me by an old man's ba

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XLIV.

XLIV.

There were a great many Scandinavians in Rome; they foregathered at the various eating-houses and on a Saturday evening at the Scandinavian Club. Some of them were painters, sculptors and architects, with their ladies, there were some literary and scientific men and every description of tourists on longer or shorter visits to the Eternal City. I held myself aloof from them. Most of them had their good qualities, but they could not stand the test of any association which brought them into too clo

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XLV.

XLV.

Towards the middle of November the Pope opened the Vatican. But in face of the enormous conflux of people, it was not easy to get a permesso from the consul, and that could not be dispensed with. I had just made use of one for the Vatican sculpture collection, one day, when I felt very unwell. I ascribed my sensations at first to the insufferable weather of that month, alternately sirocco and cold sleet, or both at once; then I was seized with a dread of the climate, of Rome, of all these strang

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XLVI.

XLVI.

While I was still too weak to write, I received a letter from Henrik Ibsen (dated December 20, 1870), which impressed me greatly. Henrik Ibsen and I had been on friendly terms with one another since April, 1866, but it was only about this time that our intimacy began to emit sparks, an intimacy which was destined to have a very widening influence upon me, and which is perhaps not without traces on the stages of his poetical progress. Ibsen thought I had already recovered, and wrote to me as to a

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XLVII.

XLVII.

Among the Danes, and there were not many of them, who frequently came to see me at the hospital, I must mention the kind and tactful musician Niels Ravnkilde, whom I had known when I was a child. He had been living in Rome now for some twenty years. He was gentle and quiet, good- looking, short of stature, modest and unpretending, too weak of character not to be friends with everyone, but equipped with a natural dignity. When a young music master in Copenhagen, he had fallen in love with a young

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XLVIII.

XLVIII.

It was only this one day, however, that happiness and the sun shone upon me. On the morrow pains in my right leg, in which there was a vein swollen, made me feel very unwell. So ignorant was the doctor that he declared this to be of no importance, and gave me a little ointment with which to rub my leg. But I grew worse from day to day, and after a very short time my leg was like a lump of lead. I was stretched once more for some months on a sick-bed, and this weakened me the more since very hero

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XLIX.

XLIX.

I came under an even greater debt of gratitude than to Saredo, to the good-natured people in whose house I lay ill. I was as splendidly looked after as if I had made it a specified condition that I should be nursed in case of illness. My landlady, Maria, especially, was the most careful nurse, and the best creature in the world, although she had the physiognomy of a regular Italian criminal, when her face was in repose. The moment she spoke, however, her features beamed with maternal benevolence

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FILOMENA

FILOMENA

Italian Landladies--The Carnival--The Moccoli Feast--Filomena's Views Filomena sings lustily from early morning till late at night, and her name suits her. The Greek Philomela has acquired this popular form, and in use is often shortened to Filomé. The other day I made her a present of a bag of English biscuits. Her face beamed as I have never besides seen anything beam but the face of my cafetière --he is a boy of twelve--when now and again he gets a few soldi for bringing me my coffee or tea.

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(Continued)

(Continued)

Reflections on the Future of Denmark--Conversations with Giuseppe Saredo--Frascati--Native Beauty--New Susceptibilities--Georges Noufflard's Influence--The Sistine Chapel and Michael Angelo--Raphael's Loggias--A Radiant Spring....

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I.

I.

Saredo said to me one day: "I am not going to flatter you--I have no interest in doing so; but I am going to give you a piece of advice, which you ought to think over. Stay in Italy, settle down here, and you will reach a far higher position than you can possibly attain in your own country. The intellectual education you possess is exceedingly rare in Italy; what I can say, without exaggeration, is that in this country it is so extraordinary that it might be termed an active force. Within two ye

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II.

II.

During the months of February and March, my conversations with Giuseppe Saredo had been all I lived for. We discussed all the questions which one or both of us had at heart, from the causes of the expansion of Christianity, to the method of proportionate representation which Saredo knew, and correctly traced back to Andrae. When I complained that, by reason of our different nationality, we could hardly have any recollections in common, and by reason of our different languages, could never cite a

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III.

III.

Then the moment arrived when all abstract reflections were thrust aside once more by convalescence. I was well again, after having been shut up for over four months. I still felt the traces of the mercury poisoning, but I was no longer tied to my bed, and weak though I was, I could walk. And on the very first day,--it was March 25th--armed with a borrowed stick (I possessed none, having never used a stick before), and equipped with a little camp-stool, I took the train to Frascati, where there w

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IV.

IV.

From this time forth I had a strange experience. I saw beauty everywhere. If I sat at the window of a café on the Corso on a Sunday morning, as the ladies were going to Mass, it seemed to me that all the beauty on earth was going past. A mother and her three daughters went by, a mere grocer's wife from the Corso, but the mother carried herself like a duchess, had a foot so small that it could have lain in the hollow of my hand, and the youngest of the three daughters was so absolutely lovely tha

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V.

V.

I made the acquaintance that evening of a young and exceedingly engaging Frenchman, who was to become my intimate friend and my travelling companion. He attracted me from the first by his refined, reserved, and yet cordial manner. Although only thirty-five years of age, Georges Noufflard had travelled and seen surprisingly much. He was now in Italy for the second time, knew France and Germany, had travelled through Mexico and the United States, had visited Syria, Egypt, Tunis, and Algiers to the

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VI.

VI.

One morning, the Consul's man-servant brought me a permesso for the Collection of Sculpture in the Vatican for the same day, and a future permesso for the Loggias, Stanzas, and the Sistine Chapel. I laid the last in my pocket-book. It was the key of Paradise. I had waited for it so long that I said to myself almost superstitiously: "I wonder whether anything will prevent again?" The anniversary of the day I had left Copenhagen the year before, I drove to the Vatican, went at one o'clock mid-day

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VII.

VII.

I knew Raphael's Loggias from copies in l'École des Beaux Arts in Paris. But I was curious to see how they would appear after this, and so, although there was only three-quarters of an hour left of the time allotted to me on my permesso , I went up to look at them. My first impression, as I glanced down the corridor and perceived these small ceiling pictures, barely two feet across, was: "Good gracious! This will be a sorry enjoyment after Michael Angelo!" I looked at the first painting, God cre

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VIII.

VIII.

Noufflard's best friend in Rome was a young lieutenant of the Bersaglieri named Ottavio Cerrotti, with whom we were much together. Although a Roman, he had entered the Italian army very young, and had consequently been, as it were, banished. Now, through the breach at Porta Pia, he had come back. He was twenty-four years of age, and the naïvest Don Juan one could possibly meet. He was beloved by the beautiful wife of his captain, and Noufflard, who frequented their house, one day surprised the t

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IX.

IX.

I felt as though this April, this radiant Spring, were the most glorious time in my life, I was assimilating fresh impressions of Art and Nature every hour; the conversations I was enjoying with my Italian and French friends set me day by day pondering over new thoughts; I saw myself restored to life, and a better life. At the beginning of April, moreover, some girls from the North made their triumphal entry into the Scandinavian Club. Without being specially beautiful or remarkable, they absolu

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X.

X.

One afternoon a large party of us had taken our meal at an inn on the lake of Nemi. The evening was more than earthly. The calm, still, mountain lake, the old, filled-up crater, on the top of the mountain, had a fairy-like effect. I dropped down behind a boulder and lay for a long time alone, lost in ecstasy, out of sight of the others. All at once I saw a blue veil fluttering in the breeze quite near me. It was the young Danish girl, who had sat down with me. The red light of the evening, Nemi

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