Part 26

Shortly after my arrival in Paris, therefore, I had written to Taine and begged for an interview. By a singular piece of ill-luck his reply to me was lost, and it was only at the very end of my stay that I received a second invitation to go to him. Although this one conversation could not be of any vast importance to me, it was nevertheless the first personal link between me and the man who was and remained my greatly loved master and deliverer, even though I mistrusted his essential teachings. I was afraid that I had created a bad impression, as I had wasted the time raising objections; but Taine knew human nature well enough to perceive the personality behind the clumsy form and the admiration behind the criticism. In reality, I was filled with passionate gratitude towards Taine, and this feeling remained unaltered until his latest hour.

During this my first stay in Paris I added the impression of Taine's personality to the wealth of impressions that I took back with me from Paris to Copenhagen.

EARLY MANHOOD

Feud in Danish Literature--Riding--Youthful Longings--On the Rack--My First Living Erotic Reality--An Impression of the Miseries of Modern Coercive Marriage--Researches on the Comic--Dramatic Criticism--A Trip to Germany--Johanne Louise Heiberg--Magdalene Thoresen--Rudolph Bergh--The Sisters Spang--A Foreign Element--The Woman Subject--Orla Lehmann--M. Goldschmidt--Public Opposition--A Letter from Björnstjerne Björnson--Hard Work.

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 regarded as no less theologically inclined than his opponents.

I thereby myself became the object of a series of violent attacks from various quarters. These did not have any appreciable effect on my spirits, but they forced me for years into a somewhat irritating attitude of self-defence. Still I was now arrived at that period of my youth when philosophy and art were unable to keep temperament in check.

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 was new to me and which I had long wished to become proficient in. This was riding.

Up to that time I had never been able to afford to ride. But just then a captain of the dragoons offered to teach me for a very low fee, and in the Queen's Riding-School I was initiated during the Spring months into the elementary stages of the art, in order that in Summer I might be able to ride out. These riding-lessons were the keenest possible delight to me. I, who so seldom felt happy, and still more seldom jubilant, was positively exultant as I rode out in the morning along the Strand Road. Even if I had had an almost sleepless night I felt fresh on horseback.

It was no pleasure to me to ride the same horse often, if I knew its disposition. I liked to change as often as possible, and preferred rather difficult horses to mares too well broken in. I felt the arrogant pride of youth seethe in my veins as I galloped briskly along.

I was still far from an accomplished horseman when an examination of my finances warned me that I must give up my riding lessons.

When I informed my instructor that I could no longer allow myself the pleasure of his lessons, and in reply to his "Why?" had mentioned the reason, the captain answered that it would be very easy to settle that matter: he had a sister, an elderly maiden lady, who was passionately fond of literature and literary history. Lessons in that subject could to our mutual satisfaction balance the riding lessons, which could thus go on indefinitely. It is unnecessary to say how welcome the proposition was to me. It was such a relief!

The captain was a pleasant, good-natured man, quite uneducated in literary matters, who confidingly communicated his bachelor experiences to his pupil. These were summed up in the reflection that when womenkind fall in love, they dread neither fire nor water; the captain himself, who yet, in his own opinion, only looked well on horseback, had once had an affair with a married lady who bombarded him with letters, and who, in her ardour, began writing one day without noticing that her husband, who was standing behind her chair, was looking over her shoulder. Since then the captain had not felt the need of women, so to speak, preferred to be without them, and found his greatest pleasure in his horses and his skill as an equestrian.

The sister was a maiden lady of forty, by no means devoid of intellectual ability, with talent for observation and an appreciation of good books, but whose development had been altogether neglected. She now cherished an ambition to write. She wrote in secret little tales that were not really stupid but had not the slightest pretensions to style or literary talent. She was very plain and exceedingly stout, which produced a comical effect, especially as she was inclined to exaggeration both of speech and gesture.

There was a disproportion between the ages of the master and the pupil; in my eyes she was quite an old person, in her eyes, being her intellectual equal, I was likewise her equal in age. In the natural order of things she felt more personal sympathy for me than I for her. Consequently, I involuntarily put a dash of teasing into my instruction, and occasionally made fun of her sentimentality, and when the large lady, half angry, half distressed, rose to seize hold of me and give me a shaking, I would run round the table, pursued by her, or shoot out a chair between her and myself,--which indubitably did not add to the dignity of our lessons.

There was no question of thorough or connected instruction. What the lady wanted more particularly was that I should go through her literary attempts and correct them, but corrections could not transform them into art. And so it came about that after no very long time I gave up these arduous lessons, although obliged to give up my precious riding lessons at the same time.

Consequently I never became a really expert rider, although during the next few years I had a ride now and then. But after a severe attack of phlebitis following upon typhoid fever, in 1870-71, I was compelled to give up all the physical exercises that I loved best.

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 myself an active correspondence had sprung up, while the young Spaniard's radiant figure continued to retain the same place in my thoughts.

Then my surroundings claimed their rights, and it was not without emotion that I realised how charming the girls at home were. For I was only then entering upon the Cherubino stage of my existence, when the sight of feminine grace or beauty immediately transports a youth into a mild state of love intoxication.

It was incredible how rich the world was in bewitching creatures, and the world of Copenhagen especially. If you walked down Crown Princess Street, at a window on the ground floor you saw a dark girl with a Grecian-shaped head and two brown eyes, exquisitely set, beneath a high and noble forehead. She united the chaste purity of Pallas Athene with a stern, attractive grace.

If you went out towards the north side of the town, there was a house there on the first floor of which you were very welcome, where a handsome and well-bred couple once a week received young men for the sake of the lady's young niece. The master of the house was a lean and silent man, who always looked handsome, and was always dignified; he had honourably filled an exalted official post. His wife had been very attractive in her youth, had grown white while still quite young, and was now a handsome woman with snow-white curls clustering round her fresh-coloured face. To me she bore, as it were, an invisible mark upon her forehead, for when quite a young girl she had been loved by a great man. She was sincerely kind and genuinely pleasant, but the advantage of knowing her was not great; for that she was too restless a hostess. When it was her At Home she never remained long enough with one group of talkers properly to understand what was being discussed. After about a minute she hurried off to the opposite corner of the drawing-room, said a few words there, and then passed on to look after the tea.

It was neither to see her nor her husband that many of the young people congregated at the house. It was for the sake of the eighteen-year-old fairy maiden, her niece, whose face was one to haunt a man's dreams. It was not from her features that the witchery emanated, although in shape her face was a faultless oval, her narrow forehead high and well-shaped, her chin powerful. Neither was it from the personality one obtained a glimpse of through her features. The girl's character and mental quality seemed much the same as that of other girls; she was generally silent, or communicative about trifles, and displayed no other coquetry than the very innocent delight in pleasing which Nature itself would demand.

But all the same there was a fascination about her, as about a fairy maiden. There was a yellow shimmer about her light hair; azure flames flashed from her blue eyes. These flames drew a magic circle about her, and the dozen young men who had strayed inside the circle flocked round her aunt the evening in the week that the family were "at home" and sat there, vying with each other for a glance from those wondrous eyes, hating each other with all their hearts, and suffering from the ridiculousness of yet meeting like brothers, week after week, as guests in the same house. The young girl's male relatives, who had outgrown their enthusiasm for her, declared that her character was not good and reliable--poor child! had she to be all that, too? Others who did not ask so much were content to enjoy the sound of her voice.

She was not a Copenhagen girl, only spent a few Winters in the town, then disappeared again.