Recollections of My Childhood and Youth Part 16

When we two young people got into a dispute, we gradually drew nearer to one another. Our remarks contradicted each other, but an understanding came about between our eyes. One day, as I was about to leave, she called me back from the staircase, and, very timidly, offered me an orange. The next time she blushed slightly when I came in. She frequently sent me cards of admission to the Athenee, a recently started inst.i.tution, in which lectures were given by good speakers. She began to look pleased at my coming and to express regret at the thought of my departure.

On New Year's day, as a duty gift, I had sent her a bouquet of white flowers, and the next day she had tears in her eyes as she thanked me: "I ask you to believe that I highly appreciate your attention." From that time forth she spoke more and more often of how empty it would be for her when I was gone. I was not in love with her, but was too young for her feelings, so unreservedly expressed, to leave me unaffected, and likewise young enough to imagine that she expected me before long to ask for her hand. So I soon informed her that I did not feel so warmly towards her as she did towards me, and that I was not thinking of binding myself for the present.

"Do you think me so poor an observer?" she replied, amazed. "I have never made any claims upon you, even in my thoughts. But I owe you the happiest month of my life."

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, without design. The rosy hue of her complexion made the carnation even of a beautiful woman's face look chalky or crimson by the side of hers. At the same time there was a something in the colour of her skin that made me understand better the womanish appearance of Zurbaran and Ribera, a warm glow which I had never seen in Nature before. Her heavy, bluish-black hair hung down, after the fas.h.i.+on of the day, in little curls over her forehead and fell in thick ringlets upon her shoulders. Her eyebrows were exquisitely pencilled, arched and almost met over her delicate nose, her eyes were burning and a deep brown; they conquered, and smiled; her mouth was a little too small, with white teeth that were a little too large, her bust slender and full. Her manner was distinguished, her voice rich; but most marvellous of all was her hand, such a hand as Parmeggianino might have painted, all soul, branching off into five delightful fingers.

Mentally I unhesitatingly dubbed her the most marvelous feminine creature I had ever seen, and that less on account of her loveliness than the blending of the magnificence of her bearing with the ardour, and often the frolicsomeness, of her mode of expression.

She was always vigorous and sometimes daring in her statements, cared only for the unusual, loved only "the impossible," but nevertheless carefully observed every established custom of society. To my very first remark to her, to the effect that the weakness of women was mostly only an habitual phrase; they were not weak except when they wished to be, she replied: "Young as you are, you know women very well!" In that she was quite wrong.

Besides Spanish and Portuguese, she spoke French perfectly and English not badly, sang in a melodious contralto voice, drew well for an amateur, carved alabaster vases, and had all kinds of talents. She did not care to sing ballads, only cared for grand pathos.

She was just twenty years of age, and had come into the world at Rio, where her father represented the Spanish government. The family were descended from Cervantes. As she had early been left motherless, her father had sent her over in her fifteenth year to her aunt in Paris.

This latter was married to an old monstrosity of a Spaniard, religious to the verge of insanity, who would seem to have committed some crime in his youth and now spent his whole day in the church, which was next door to his house, imploring forgiveness for his sins. He was only at home at mealtimes, when he ate an alarming amount, and he a.s.sociated only with priests. The aunt herself, however, in spite of her age, was a pleasure- seeking woman, rarely allowed her niece to stay at home and occupy herself as she liked, but dragged her everywhere about with her to parties and b.a.l.l.s. In her aunt's company she sometimes felt depressed, but alone she was cheerful and without a care. At the Pagellas' she was like a child of the house. She had the Spanish love of ceremony and magnificence, the ready repartee of the Parisian, and, like a well- brought-up girl, knew how to preserve the balance between friendliness and mirth. She was not in the least prudish, and she understood everything; but there was a certain sublimity in her manner.

While Mademoiselle Louise, the little Parisian, had been brought up in a convent, kept from all free, intelligent, mundane conversation, and all free artistic impressions, the young Spaniard, at the same age, had the education and the style of a woman of the world in her manner.

We two young frequenters of the Pagella salon, felt powerfully drawn to one another. We understood one another at once. Of course, it was only I who was fascinated. When, in an evening, I drove across Paris in the expectation of seeing her, I sometimes murmured to myself Henrik Hertz's verse:

"My beloved is like the dazzling day, Brazilia's Summer!"

My feelings, however, were much more admiration than love or desire. I did not really want to possess her. I never felt myself quite on a level with her even when she made decided advances to me. I rejoiced over her as over something perfect, and there was the rich, foreign colouring about her that there had been about the birds of paradise in my nursery.

She seldom disturbed my peace of mind, but I said to myself that if I were to go away then, I should in all probability never see her again, as her father would be taking her the next year to Brazil or Madrid, and I sometimes felt as though I should be going away from my happiness forever. She often asked me to stay with such expressions and with such an expression that I was quite bewildered. And then she monopolised my thoughts altogether, like the queenly being she was.

A Danish poet had once called the beautiful women of the South "Large, showy flowers without fragrance." Was she a large, showy flower? Forget- me-nots were certainly by no means showy, but they were none the more odorous for that.

Now that I was seeing the radiant Mathilde almost every day, my position with regard to Louise seemed to me a false one. I did not yet know how exceedingly rare an undivided feeling is, did not understand that my feelings towards Mathilde were just as incomplete as those I cherished for Louise. I looked on Mademoiselle Mathilde as on a work of art, but I came more humanly close to Mademoiselle Louise. She did not evoke my enthusiastic admiration; that was quite true, but Mademoiselle Mathilde evoked my enthusiastic admiration only. If there were a great deal of compa.s.sion mingled with my feelings for the Parisian, there was likewise a slight erotic element.

The young Frenchwoman, in her pa.s.sion, found expressions for affection and tenderness, in which she forgot all pride. She lived in a commingling, very painful for me, of happiness at my still being in Paris, and of horror at my approaching departure, which I was now about to accelerate, merely to escape from the extraordinary situation in which I found myself, and which I was too young to carry. Although Mathilde, whom I had never seen alone, was always the same, quite the great lady, perfectly self-controlled, it was the thought of saying good-bye to her that was the more painful to me. Every other day, on the other hand, Louise was trembling and ill, and I dreaded the moment of separation.

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, Leveque 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 entranced me, and I determined to read every word that I could get hold of by the same author. In the Imperial Library in Paris I read first of all _The History of English Literature_, of which I had hitherto only been acquainted with a few fragments, which had appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Taine was to me an antidote to German abstraction and German pedantry. Through him I found the way to my own inmost nature, which my Dano-German University education had covered over.

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 pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude 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 Th.o.r.esen--Rudolph Bergh-- The Sisters Spang--A Foreign Element--The Woman Subject--Orla Lehmann-- M. Goldschmidt--Public Opposition--A Letter from Bjornstjerne Bjornson-- Hard Work.

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 a.s.sailant 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 att.i.tude 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 Koniggratz 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 pa.s.sionately 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.