Recollections of My Childhood and Youth Part 20

"But you are making a mistake, it is not I you mean. It must be my elder brother."

"Oh! very likely. Where does your brother live?"

"Just underneath."

A minute later there was a knock at the third-storey door beneath; it was opened, and without even stopping to sit down, the visitor began:

"You are Brandes? I am Lehmann. You recently gave some lectures on Runeberg. Will you kindly repeat one of them before the People's Society in the Casino's big room?"

"Won't you sit down? I thank you for your offer. But my lecture was not good enough to be repeated before so large a gathering. I do not know enough about Runeberg's life, and my voice, moreover, will not carry. I should not dare, at my age, to speak in so large a room."

"I expected you to reply that you are too young. Your youth is written in your face. But there is no question of seniority about it. I am accustomed to carry through anything that I have determined upon, and I take no notice of objections. What you do not know about Runeberg's life, you can read up in a literary history. And if you can give a successful lecture to a private audience, you can give one in a theatre hall. I am interested in you, I am depending on you, I take your promise with me. Good-bye!"

This so-called promise became a regular nightmare to me, young and absolutely untried as I was. It did not even occur to me to work up and improve my lecture on Runeberg, for the very thought of appearing before a large audience alarmed me and was utterly intolerable to me. During the whole of my first stay in Paris I was so tormented by the consent that Orla Lehmann had extorted from me, that it was a shadow over my pleasure. I would go happy to bed and wake up in the middle of the night with the terror of a debtor over something far off, but surely threatening, upon me, seek in my memory for what it was that was troubling me, and find that this far-off, threatening thing was my promise to Lehmann. It was only after my return home that I summoned up courage to write to him, pleading my youth and unfitness, and begging to be released from the honourable but distasteful duty. Orla Lehmann, in the meantime, had in all probability not bestowed a thought on the whole matter and long since forgotten all about it.

In any case he never referred to the subject again in after years, when we frequently met.

Among Brochner's private pupils was a young student. Kristian Moller, by name, who devoted himself exclusively to philosophy, and of whom Brochner was particularly fond. He had an unusually keen intelligence, inclined to critical and disintegrating research. His abilities were very promising, inasmuch as it seemed that he might be able to establish destructive verdicts upon much that was confused, or self- contradicting, but nevertheless respected; in other respects he had a strangely infertile brain. He had no sudden inspirations, no imagination. It could not be expected that he would ever bring forward any specially new thoughts, only that he would penetrate confusion, think out errors to the bottom, and, with the years, carry out a process of thorough cleansing.

But before he had accomplished any independent work his lungs became affected. It was not at once perceived how serious the affection was, and Orla Lehmann, who, with the large-mindedness and open-handedness of a patriot, had taken him up, as well as sundry other young men who promised well or were merely poor, not only invited him to his weekly dinner-parties at Frederiksberg, but sent him to Upsala, that he might study Swedish philosophy there. Moller himself was much inclined to study Bostromianism and write a criticism of this philosophy, which was at that time predominant in Sweden.

He ought to have been sent South, or rather to a sanatorium; Orla Lehmann's Scandinavian sympathies, however, determined his stay in the North, which proved fatal to his health.

In 1868 he returned to Copenhagen, pale, with hollow cheeks, and a stern, grave face, that of a marked man, his health thoroughly undermined. His friends soon learnt, and doubtless he understood himself, that his condition was hopeless. The quite extraordinary strength of character with which he submitted, good-temperedly and without a murmur, to his fate, had for effect that all who knew him vied with each other in trying to lessen the bitterness of his lot and at any rate show him how much they cared for him. As he could not go out, and as he soon grew incapable of connected work, his room became an afternoon and evening meeting-place for many of his comrades, who went there to distract him with whatever they could think of to narrate, or discuss. If you found him alone, it was rarely long before a second and a third visitor came, and the room filled up.

Orla Lehmann, his patron, was also one of Kristian Moller's frequent visitors. But whenever he arrived, generally late and the last, the result was always the same. The students and graduates, who had been sitting in the room in lively converse, were struck dumb, awed by the presence of the great man; after the lapse of a few minutes, one would get up and say good-bye; immediately afterwards the next would remember that he was engaged elsewhere just at that particular time; a moment later the third would slip noiselessly out of the room, and it would be empty.

There was one, however, who, under such circ.u.mstances, found it simply impossible to go. I stayed, even if I had just been thinking of taking my leave.

Under the autocracy, Orla Lehmann had been the lyrical figure of Politics; he had voiced the popular hopes and the beauty of the people's will, much more than the political poets did. They wrote poetry; his nature was living poetry. The swing of his eloquence, which so soon grew out of date, was the very swing of youth in men's souls then. At the time I first knew him, he had long left the period of his greatness behind him, but he was still a handsome, well set-up man, and, at 58 years of age, had lost nothing of his intellectual vivacity. He had lost his teeth and spoke indistinctly, but he was fond of telling tales and told them well, and his enemies declared that as soon as a witty thought struck him, he took a cab and drove round from house to house to relate it.

Pa.s.sionately patriotic though Orla Lehmann was, he was very far from falling into the then usual error of overestimating Denmark's historical exploits and present importance. He related one day that when he was in Paris, as a young man, speaking under an impression very frequent among his travelled compatriots, he had, in a conversation with Sainte-Beuve, reproached the French with knowing so shamefully little of the Danes.

The great critic, as was his habit, laid his head a little on one side, and with roguish impertinence replied: "_Eh! bien, faites quelque chose! on parlera de vous_." He approved of the reply. We younger ones looked upon him as belonging to another period and living in another plane of ideas, although, being a liberal-minded man, he was not far removed from us. He was supposed to be a freethinker, and it was told of him that when his old housekeeper repeatedly, and with increasing impatience, requested him to come to table, he would reply, in the presence of students--a rallying allusion to the lady's Christian disposition:

"Get help from Religion, little Bech, get help from Religion!"--a remark that in those days would be regarded as wantonly irreligious!

People felt sorry for Lehmann because his politics had so wholly miscarried, and somewhat sore against him because he wanted to lay all the blame on the old despotism and the unfavourable circ.u.mstances of the time. Take him altogether, to those who were not intimately a.s.sociated with him, and did not share the strong dislike felt against him in certain circles, he was chiefly a handsome and attractive antiquity.

Kristian Moller died in 1869, and his death was deeply lamented. He was one of the few comrades admired by the younger ones alike for his gifts and his stoicism. With his death my opportunities of frequently meeting Orla Lehmann ceased. But that the latter had not quite lost sight of me, he proved by appearing, at the end of February, 1870, at my examination upon my doctor's thesis at the University. As on this occasion Lehmann arrived a little late, he was placed on a chair in front of all the other auditors, and very imposing he looked, in a mighty fur coat which showed off his stately figure. He listened very attentively to everything, and several times during the discussion showed by a short laugh that some parrying reply had amused him.

Six months afterwards he was no more.

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 considerable fortune. He was uneducated, kind, impeccably honourable, and was anxious to secure acquaintances and a.s.sociates for his adopted daughter, a delicate young girl, who was strange to Copenhagen. With this object in view, he invited a large number of young people to a ball in the rooms of the King's Club, provided good music and luxurious refreshments. This man was a cousin of Goldschmidt's, and as he himself was unable to make more of a speech than a short welcome to table, he begged "his cousin, the poet," to be his spokesman on this occasion.

One would have thought that so polished a writer, such a master of language, as Goldschmidt, would be able, with the greatest ease, to make an after-dinner speech, especially when he had had plenty of time to prepare himself; but the gift of speaking is, as everyone knows, a gift in itself. And a more unfortunate speaker than Goldschmidt could not be.

He had not even the art of compelling silence while he spoke.

That evening he began rather tactlessly by telling the company that their host, who was a rich man, had earned his money in a strictly honourable manner; it was always a good thing to know "that one had clear ground to dance upon"; then he dwelt on the Jewish origin of the giver of the feast, and, starting from the a.s.sumption that the greater number of the invited guests were young Jews and Jewesses, he formulated his toast in praise of "the Jewish woman, who lights the Sabbath candles." The young Jewesses called out all at once: "The Danish woman I The Danish woman! We are Danish!" They were irritated at the dead Romanticism into which Goldschmidt was trying to push them back. They lighted no Sabbath candles! they did not feel themselves Jewish either by religion or nationality. The day of Antisemitism had not arrived.

Consequently there was still no Zionist Movement. They had also often felt vexed at the descriptions that Goldschmidt in his novels frequently gave of modern Jews, whose manners and mode of expression he screwed back fifty years.

These cries, which really had nothing offensive about them, made Goldschmidt lose his temper to such an extent that he shouted, in great exasperation: "Will you keep silence while I speak! What manners are these! I will teach you to keep silence!" and so forth,--which evoked a storm of laughter. He continued for some time to rebuke their exuberant mirth in severe terms, but was so unsuccessful that he broke off his speech and, very much out of humour, sat down.

Not long afterwards, perhaps in the year 1865, I came into contact with Goldschmidt once only, when walking one evening with Magdalene Th.o.r.esen.

On meeting this lady, whom he knew, he turned round, walking with her as far as her house on the sh.o.r.es of the Lakes, after which his way led towards the town, as did mine. As long as Mrs. Th.o.r.esen was present, he naturally addressed his conversation to her and expressed himself, as his habit was, without much ceremony. For instance, he said: "I don't as a rule care for women writers, not even for those we have; but I will concede that, of all the ladies who write, you are the freshest." When Mrs. Th.o.r.esen brought the conversation round to her favourite subject, love, he said, banteringly: "My heart is like the flags of the Zouave Regiments, so pierced with holes that it is almost impossible to tell what the material originally looked like."

On the whole, he was animated and polite, but his glance was somewhat stinging.

Goldschmidt had greater difficulty in hitting on the right manner to adopt towards a much younger man. He used expressions which showed that he was standing on his dignity, and was all the time conscious of his own superiority. "People have spoken about you to me," he said, "and I know you by name." The word here rendered _people_ had a strangely foreign sound, as though translated, or affected.

"Have you read Taine's History of English Literature?" he asked.

"No, I don't know it."

"Ah, perhaps you are one of those who regard it as superfluous to learn about anything foreign. We have enough of our own, is it not so? It is a very widespread opinion, but it is a mistake."

"You judge too hastily; that is not my opinion."

"Oh,--ah. Yes. Good-bye."

And our ways parted.

I did not like Goldschmidt. He had dared to profane the great Soren Kierkegaard, had pilloried him for the benefit of a second-rate public.

I disliked him on Kierkegaard's account. But I disliked him much more actively on my master, Professor Brochner's account.

Brochner had an intense contempt for Goldschmidt; intellectually he thought him of no weight, as a man he thought him conceited, and consequently ridiculous. He had not the slightest perception of the literary artist in him. The valuable and unusual qualities of his descriptive talent he overlooked. But the ignorance Goldschmidt had sometimes shown about philosophy, and the incapacity he had displayed with regard to art, his change of political opinion, his sentimentality as a wit, all the weaknesses that one Danish critic had mercilessly dragged into the light, had inspired Brochner with the strongest aversion to Goldschmidt. Add to this the personal collisions between the two men. At some public meeting Brochner had gazed at Goldschmidt with such an ironic smile that the latter had pa.s.sionately called him to account.

"Don't make a scene now!" replied Brochner.

"I am ready to make a scene anywhere," the answer is reported to have been.

"That I can believe; but keep calm now!"

Shortly afterwards, in _North and South_, Goldschmidt, on the occasion of Brochner's candidature for parliament, had written that the well-known atheist, H. Brochner, naturally, as contributor to _The Fatherland_, was supported by the "Party." Now, there was nothing that annoyed Brochner so much as when anyone called him an atheist, and tried to make him hated for that reason,--the word, it is true, had a hundred times a worse sound then than now,--he always maintaining that he and other so-called atheists were far more religious than their a.s.sailants. And although Goldschmidt's sins against Brochner were in truth but small, although the latter, moreover--possibly unjustifiably-- had challenged him to the attack, Brochner nevertheless imbued me with such a dislike of Goldschmidt that I could not regard him with quite unprejudiced eyes.

Goldschmidt tried to make personal advances to me during my first stay in Paris in 1866.

Besides the maternal uncle settled in France, of whom I have already spoken, I had still another uncle, my father's brother, who had gone to France as a boy, had become naturalised, and had settled in Paris. He was a little older than my father, a somewhat restless and fantastic character, whom Goldschmidt frequently met at the houses of mutual friends. He let me know through this man that he would like to make my acquaintance, gave him his address and mentioned his receiving hours. As I held back, he repeated the invitation, but in vain. Brochner's influence was too strong. A few years later, in some dramatic articles, I had expressed myself in a somewhat satirical, offhand manner about Goldschmidt, when one day an attempt was made to bring the poet and myself into exceedingly close connection.

One Spring morning in 1869, a little man with blue spectacles came into my room and introduced himself as Goldschmidt's publisher, Bookseller Steen. He had come on a confidential errand from Goldschmidt, regarding which he begged me to observe strict silence, whatever the outcome of the matter might be.

Goldschmidt knew that, as a critic, I was not in sympathy with him, but being very difficultly placed, he appealed to my chivalry. For reasons which he did not wish to enter into, he would be obliged, that same year, to sever his connection with Denmark and settle down permanently in England. For the future he should write in English. But before he left he wished to terminate his literary activity in his native country by an edition of his collected works, or at any rate a very exhaustive selection from them. He would not and could not direct so great an undertaking himself, from another country; he only knew one man who was capable of doing so, and him he requested to undertake the matter. He had drawn up a plan of the edition, a sketch of the order in which the writings were to come out, and what the volume was to contain, and he placed it before me for approval or criticism. The edition was to be preceded by an account of Goldschmidt as an author and of his artistic development; if I would undertake to write this, I was asked to go to see Goldschmidt, in order to hear what he himself regarded as the main features and chief points of his literary career.