Recollections of My Childhood and Youth Part 4

This was my first real experience of feminine nature.

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 been living for a long time in the same place, I had a curious feeling that, however beautiful and fascinating it all might be, or perhaps for that very reason, it was dreamland, unreality, which would one day elude me and vanish; reality was the Round Tower in Copenhagen and all that lay about it. It was ugly, and altogether unattractive, but it was reality.

That you always found again.

Similarly, though in a somewhat different sense, the wooded landscape in the neighbourhood of Copenhagen, to be exact, the view over the Hermitage Meadows down to the Sound, as it appears from the bench opposite the Slesvig Stone, the first and dearest type of landscape beauty with which I became acquainted, was endowed to me with an imprint of actuality which no other landscape since, be it never so lovely or never so imposing, has ever been able to acquire.

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The instruction at school was out of date, inasmuch as, in every branch, it lacked intelligibility.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 variety of subjects that were instilled into a boy in ten years. There certainly were teachers so lacking in understanding of the proper way to communicate knowledge that the instruction they gave was altogether wasted. For instance, I learnt geometry for four or five years without grasping the simplest elements of the science. The principles of it remained so foreign to me that I did not even recognise a right-angled triangle, if the right angle were uppermost. It so happened that the year before I had to sit for my examinations, a young University student in his first year, who had been only one cla.s.s in front of the rest of us, offered us afternoon instruction in trigonometry and spherical geometry gratis, and all who appreciated the help that was being offered to them streamed to his lessons. This young student, later Pastor Jorgen Lund, had a remarkable gift for mathematics, and gave his instruction with a lucidity, a fire, and a swing that carried his hearers with him.

I, who had never before been able to understand a word of the subject, became keenly interested in it, and before many lessons were over was very well up in it. As Jorgen Lund taught mathematics, so all the other subjects ought to have been taught. We were obliged to be content with less.

Lessons might have been a pleasure. They never were, or rather, only the Danish ones. But in childhood's years, and during the first years of boyhood they were fertilising. As a boy they hung over me like a dread compulsion; yet the compulsion was beneficial. It was only when I was almost fourteen that I began inwardly to rebel against the time which was wasted, that the stupidest and laziest of the boys might be enabled to keep up with the industrious and intelligent. There was too much consideration shown towards those who would not work or could not understand. And from the time I was sixteen, school was my despair. I had done with it all, was beyond it all, was too matured to submit to the routine of lessons; my intellectual pulses no longer beat within the limits of school. What absorbed my interest was the endeavour to become master of the Danish language in prose and verse, and musings over the mystery of existence. In school I most often threw up the sponge entirely, and laid my head on my arms that I might neither see nor hear what was going on around me.

There was another reason, besides my weariness of it all, which at this latter period made my school-going a torture to me. I was by now sufficiently schooled for my sensible mother to think it would be good for me to make, if it were but a small beginning, towards earning my own living. Or rather, she wanted me to earn enough to pay for my amus.e.m.e.nts myself. So I tried, with success, to find pupils, and gave them lessons chiefly on Sunday mornings; but in order to secure them I had called myself _Studiosus_. Now it was an ever present terror with me lest I should meet any of my pupils as I went to school in the morning, or back at midday, with my books in a strap under my arm. Not to betray myself, I used to stuff these books in the most extraordinary places, inside the breast of my coat till it bulged, and in all my pockets till they burst.

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 boy of repulsive appearance, very easy to cow, with a positively slavish disposition. Every single playtime his schoolfellows would make him stand up against a wall and jump about with his feet close together till playtime was over, while the others stood in front of him and laughed at him. He became later a highly respected Conservative journalist.

In lesson time it was easy to see that the equality under one discipline, under the hierarchy of merit, which was expressed in the boys' places on the forms, from highest to lowest, was not maintained when opposed to the very different hierarchy of Society. On the lowest form sat a boy whose gifts were exceedingly mediocre, and who was ignorant, moreover, from sheer laziness; to him were permitted things forbidden to all the others: he was the heir of a large feudal barony.

He always came late to school, and even at that rode in followed by a groom on a second horse. He wore a silk hat and, when he came into the schoolroom, did not hang it up on the peg that belonged to him, where he was afraid it might be interfered with, but in the school cupboard, in which only the master was supposed to keep his things; and the tall hat crowning so n.o.ble a head impressed the masters to such an extent that not one of them asked for it to be removed. And they acquiesced like lambs in the young lord's departure half-way through the last lesson, if the groom happened to be there with his horse to fetch him.

It seemed impossible to drive knowledge of any sort into the head of this young peer, and he was taken from school early. To what an extent he must have worked later to make up for lost time was proved by results. For he became nothing less than a Minister.

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, and every stratagem was permissible. They were fooled, misled, and plagued in every conceivable manner. Or they were feared and we flattered them.

A little boy with a natural inclination to reverence and respect and who brought both industry and good-will to his work, felt confused by all the derogatory things he was constantly hearing about the masters, and, long before he was half grown up, formed as one result of it the fixed determination that, whatever he might be when he grew up, there was one thing he would never, under any circ.u.mstances be, and that was--master in a school.

From twelve years of age upwards, contempt for the masters was the keynote of all conversation about them. The Latin master, a little, insignificant-looking man, but a very good teacher, was said to be so disgracefully enfeebled by debauchery that an active boy could throw him without the least difficulty. The Natural History master, a clever, outspoken young man, who would call out gaily: "Silence there, or you'll get a dusting on the teapot that will make the spout fly off!" sank deeply in our estimation when one of the boys told us that he spent his evenings at music-halls. One morning there spread like wildfire through the cla.s.s the report that the reason the Natural History master had not come that day was because he had got mixed up the night before in a fight outside a music-pavilion. The contempt and the ridicule that were heaped upon him in the conversation of the boys were immeasurable. When he came next morning with a black, extravasated eye, which he bathed at intervals with a rag, he was regarded by most of us as absolute sc.u.m.

The German master, a tall, good-looking man, was treated as utterly incompetent because, when he asked a question in grammar or syntax, he walked up and down with the book in front of him, and quite plainly compared the answer with the book. We boys thought that anyone could be a master, with a book in his hand. History and Geography were taught by an old man, overflowing with good-humour, loquacious, but self- confident, liked for his amiability, but despised for what was deemed unmanliness in him. The boys pulled faces at him, and imitated his expressions and mannerisms.

The Danish master, Professor H.P. Holst, was not liked. He evidently took no interest in his scholastic labours, and did not like the boys.

His coolness was returned. And yet, that which was the sole aim and object of his instruction he understood to perfection, and drilled into us well. The unfortunate part of it was that there was hardly more than one boy in the cla.s.s who enjoyed learning anything about just that particular thing. Instruction in Danish was, for Holst, instruction in the metrical art. He explained every metre and taught the boys to pick out the feet of which the verses were composed. When we made fun of him in our playtime, it was for remarks which we had invented and placed in his mouth ourselves; for instance: "Scan my immortal poem, _The Dying Gladiator_." The reason of this was simply that, in elucidation of the composition of the antique distich, he made use of his own poem of the above name, which he had included in a Danish reading-book edited by himself. As soon as he took up his position in the desk, he began:

"Hark ye the--storm of ap--plause from the--theatre's--echoing circle!

Go on, Moller!"

How could he find it in his heart, his own poem!

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 p.r.o.nunciation, 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, he swore like a true Frenchman: _"Sacrebleu-Mops-Carot-ten- Rapee!"_ [Footnote: Needless to say, this is impossible French, composed chiefly of distorted Danish words. (Trans.)] If he got angry, and he very often did, he would unhesitatingly pick up the full gla.s.s of water that always stood in front of him on the desk, and in Gallic exasperation fling it on the floor, when the gla.s.s would be smashed to atoms and the water run about, whereupon he would quietly, with his _Grand seigneur_ air, take his purse out of his pocket and lay the money for the gla.s.s on the desk.

For a time I based my ideas of the French mind and manner upon this master, although my uncle Jacob, who had lived almost all his life in Paris, was a very different sort of Frenchman. It was only later that I became acquainted with a word and an idea which it was well I did not know, as far as the master's capacity for making an impression was concerned--the word _affected_.

At last, one fine day, a little event occurred which was not without its effect on the master's prestige, and yet aroused my compa.s.sion almost as much as my surprise. The parents of one of my best friends were expecting a French business friend for the evening. As they knew themselves to be very weak in the language, they gave their son a polite note to the French master, asking him to do them the honour of spending the next evening at their house, on the occasion of this visit, which rendered conversational support desirable. The master took the note, which we two boys had handed to him, grew--superior though he usually was--rather red and embarra.s.sed, and promised a written reply. To our astonishment we learnt that this reply was to the effect that he must unfortunately decline the honour, as he had never been in France, had never heard anyone speak French, and was not proficient in the language.

Thus this tiger of a savage Frenchman suddenly cast his tiger's skin and revealed himself in his native wool.

Unfortunately, the instruction of this master left long and deep traces upon me. When I was fifteen and my French uncle began to carry on his conversations with me in French, the Parisian was appalled at my abominable errors of p.r.o.nunciation. The worst of them were weeded out in those lessons. But there were enough left to bring a smile many a time and oft to the lips of the refined young lady whom my friends procured me as a teacher on my first visit to Paris.

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, b.u.t.ter, eggs and salmon, sausages, cold meat and coffee, as well as a few bottles of wine. Then we drove to some keeper's house, where for money and fair words they scalded the tea for us, and the day's meal was seasoned with the good appet.i.te which the outdoor air gave us.

As a child I preserved an uncomfortable and instructive recollection of one of these expeditions. The next day my mother said to me: "You behaved very ridiculously yesterday, and made a laughing stock of yourself." "How?" "You went on in front of the grown-up people all the time, and sang at the top of your voice. In the first place, you ought not to go in front, and in the next place, you should not disturb other people by singing." These words made an indelible impression upon me, for I was conscious that I had not in the least intended to push myself forward or put on airs. I could only dimly recollect that I had been singing, and I had done it for my own pleasure, not to draw attention to myself.

I learnt from this experience that it was possible, without being naughty or conceited, to behave in an unpleasing manner, understood that the others, whom I had not been thinking about, had looked on me with disfavour, had thought me a nuisance and ridiculous, my mother in particular; and I was deeply humiliated at the thought.

It gradually dawned upon me that there was no one more difficult to please than my mother. No one was more chary of praise than she, and she had a horror of all sentimentality. She met me with superior intelligence, corrected me, and brought me up by means of satire. It was possible to impress my aunts, but not her. The profound dread she had of betraying her feelings or talking about them, the shrewdness that dwelt behind that forehead of hers, her consistently critical and clear- sighted nature, the mocking spirit that was so conspicuous in her, especially in her younger days, gave me, with regard to her, a conviction that had a stimulating effect on my character--namely, that not only had she a mother's affection for me, but that the two shrewd and scrutinising eyes of a very clever head were looking down upon me.

Rational as she was through and through, she met my visionary inclinations, both religious and philosophical, with unshaken common sense, and if I were sometimes tempted, by lesser people's over- estimating of my abilities, to over-estimate them myself, it was she who, with inflexible firmness, urged her conviction of the limitations of my nature. None of my weaknesses throve in my mother's neighbourhood.

This was the reason why, during the transitional years between boyhood and adolescence, the years in which a boy feels a greater need of sympathy than of criticism and of indulgence than of superiority, I looked for and found comprehension as much from a somewhat younger sister of my mother's as from the latter herself. This aunt was all heart. She had an ardent, enthusiastic brain, was full of tenderness and goodness and the keenest feeling for everything deserving of sympathy, not least for me, while she had not my mother's critical understanding.

Her judgment might be obscured by pa.s.sion; she sometimes allowed herself to be carried to imprudent extremes; she had neither Mother's equilibrium nor her satirical qualities. She was thus admirably adapted to be the confidant of a big boy whom she gave to understand that she regarded as extraordinarily gifted. When these transitional years were over, Mother resumed undisputed sway, and the relations between us remained in all essentials the same, even after I had become much her superior in knowledge and she in some things my pupil. So that it affected me very much when, many years after, my younger brother said to me somewhat sadly: "Has it struck you, too, that Mother is getting old?"

"No, not at all," I replied. "What do you think a sign of it?" "I think, G.o.d help me, that she is beginning to admire us."

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 clearer. That they were provided with addresses, sounded very strange. Who had written the addresses? I then had to be content with the a.s.surance that it was a thing that I was too small to understand; it should be explained to me when I was older.

My thoughts were not directed towards the other s.e.x. I had no little girl playfellows, and as I had no sister, knew very few. When I was eight or nine years old, it is true, there was one rough and altogether depraved boy whose talk touched upon the s.e.xual question in expressions that were coa.r.s.e and in a spirit coa.r.s.er still. I was scoffed at for not knowing how animals propagated themselves, and that human beings propagated themselves like animals.

I replied: "My parents, at any rate, never behaved in any such manner."

Then, with the effrontery of childhood, my schoolfellows went on to the most shameless revelations, not only about a morbid development of natural instincts, but actual crimes against nature and against the elementary laws of society. In other words, I was shown the most repulsive, most agitating picture of everything touching the relations of the s.e.xes and the propagation of the species.

It is probable that most boys in a big school have the great mystery of Nature sullied for them in their tender years by coa.r.s.eness and depravity. Whereas, in ancient Greek times, the mystery was holy, and with a pious mind men worshipped the Force of Nature without exaggerated prudery and without shamelessness, such conditions are impossible in a society where for a thousand years Nature herself has been depreciated by Religion, a.s.sociated with sin and the Devil, stamped as unmentionable and in preference denied, in which, for that very reason, brutality takes so much more terrible a satisfaction and revenge. As grown-up people never spoke of the forces of Nature in a pure and simple manner, it became to the children a concealed thing. Individual children, in whom the s.e.xual impulse had awakened early, were taught its nature by b.e.s.t.i.a.l dispositions, and the knowledge was interpreted by them with childish shamelessness. These children then filled the ears of their comrades with filth.

In my case, the nastiness. .h.i.t, and rebounded, without making any impression. I was only infected by the tone of the other scholars in so far as I learnt from them that it was manly to use certain ugly words.

When I was twelve years old, my mother surprised me one day, when I was standing alone on the stairs, shouting these words out. I was reproved for it, and did not do it again.

XIV.

I hardly ever met little girls except at children's b.a.l.l.s, 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.