Chapter 3

When I was a little boy I did not, of course, trouble much about my appearance. I did not remember that my portrait had been drawn several times. But when I was nine years old, Aunt Sarah--at that time everybody was either uncle or aunt--determined that we brothers should have our portraits taken in daguerreotype for Father's birthday. The event made a profound impression, because I had to stand perfectly still while the picture was being taken, and because the daguerreotypist, a German, whose name was Schätzig, rolled his _r_s and hissed his _s_s. The whole affair was a great secret, which was not to be betrayed. The present was to be a surprise, and I was compelled to promise perfect silence. I kept my promise for one day. But next day, at the dinner-table, I accidentally burst out: "Now! quite shtill! _as the man said_." "What man?" "Ah! that was the secret!"

The visit to Schätzig in itself I had reason to remember a long time. Some one or another had said that I had a slender neck, and that it was pretty. Just as we were going in, my aunt said: "You will catch cold inside," and in spite of my protests tied a little silk handkerchief round my neck. That handkerchief spoilt all my pleasure in being immortalised. And it is round my neck on the old picture to this day.

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 rocking-horse, arrayed in all this splendour, wild dreams of military greatness filled the soul, dreams which grew wilder and more ambitious from year to year until between the age of 8 and 9 they received a fresh and unwholesome stimulus from Ingemann's novels. [Footnote: B.S. Ingemann (1789-1862), a Danish writer celebrated chiefly as the author of many historical novels, now only read by very young children.]

On horseback, at the head of a chosen band, fighting like the lost against unnumbered odds! Rock goes the rocking-horse, violently up and down. The enemy wavers, he begins to give way. The rocking-horse is pulled up. A sign with the Hirschfänger to the herd of common troops. The enemy is beaten and flies, the next thing is to pursue him. The rocking-horse is set once more in furious motion. Complete victory. Procession into the capital; shouts of jubilation and wreaths of flowers, for the victor and his men.

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 and two, white bread on brown bread, a mixture which, was uncommonly nice. The box would take exactly so many. Then it was put in the school-bag with the books. And with bag on back you went to school, always the same way. But those were days when the journey was much impeded. Every minute you met boys who called you names and tried to hit the little one, and you had to fight at every street corner you turned. And those were days when, even in the school itself, despite the humanity of the age (not since attained to), terms of abuse, buffets and choice insults were one's daily bread, and I can see myself now, as I sprang up one day in a fight with a much bigger boy and bit him in the neck, till a master was obliged to get me away from him, and the other had to have his neck bathed under the pump.

I admired in others the strength that I lacked myself. There was in the class one big, stout, squarely built, inexpressibly good-natured boy, for whom no one was a match in fighting. He was from Lolland, and his name was Ludvig; he was not particularly bright, but robust and as strong as a giant. Then one day there arrived at the school a West Indian of the name of Muddie, dark of hue, with curly hair, as strong and slim as a savage, and with all the finesse and feints which he had at his command, irresistible, whether wrestling or when fighting with his fists. He beat all the strongest boys in the school. Only Ludvig and he had not challenged each other. But the boys were very anxious to see a bout between the two, and a wrestling match between them was arranged for a free quarter of an hour. For the boys, who were all judges, it was a fine sight to see two such fighters wrestle, especially when the Lollander flung himself down on the other and the West Indian struggled vainly, writhing like a very snake to twist himself out of his grasp.

One day two new boys came to school, two brothers; the elder, Adam, was small and sallow, extraordinarily withered, looking like a cripple, without, however, being one; the somewhat younger brother, Sofus, was splendidly made and amazed us in the very first lesson in which the new arrivals took part--a gymnastic class--by his unusual agility in swarming and walking up the sloping bar. He seemed to be as strong as he was dexterous, and in a little boy with a reverence for those who were strong, he naturally aroused positive enthusiasm. This was even augmented next day, when a big, malicious boy, who had scoffed at Adam for being puny, was, in a trice, so well thrashed by Sofus that he lost both his breath and his courage.

Sofus, the new arrival, and I, who had achieved fighting exploits from the rocking-horse only, were henceforth, for some time, inseparable friends. It was one of the usual friendships between little boys, in which the one admires and the other allows himself to be worshipped. The admirer in this case could only feed his feelings by presenting the other with the most cherished thing he possessed. This most cherished thing happened to be some figures cut out in gold paper, from France, representing every possible object and personage, from ships with masts and sails, to knights and ladies. I had collected them for a long time and preserved them, piece by piece, by gumming them into a book which was the pride of my existence. I gave the book, without the slightest hesitation, to Sofus, who accepted it without caring for it in the least.

And then by reason of the exaggerated admiration of which he was the object, Sofus, who hitherto had been so straightforward, began to grow capricious. It was a settled rule that he and I went home from school together. But one day a difficulty cropped up; Sofus had promised Valdemar, a horrid boy, who cheated at lessons, to go home with him. And next day something else prevented him. But when, suddenly having learnt to know all the pangs of neglect and despised affection, I met him the third day, after having waited vainly for him, crossing Our Lady's Square with Valdemar, in my anger I seized my quondam friend roughly by the arm, my face distorted with rage, and burst out: "You are a rascal!" then rushed off, and never addressed him again. It was a very ill-advised thing to do, in fact, the very most foolish thing I could have done. But I was too passionate to behave sensibly. Valdemar spread the account of my conduct all through the class, and next day, in our quarter of an hour's playtime, I heard on every side from the laughing boys: "You are a rascal! You are a rascal!"

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 in the arts of sight nor hearing did I ever prove myself more than mediocre. I never attained, either in drawing or piano-playing, to more than a soulless accuracy. And I hardly showed much greater aptitude when, on bright Sunday mornings, which invited not at all to the delights of dancing, with many another tiny lad and lass I was marshalled up to dance in the dancing saloon of Mr. Hoppe, the royal dancer, and learnt to take up the first to the fifth positions and swing the girls round in the polka mazurka. I became an ardent, but never a specially good, dancer.

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 shuttlecocks, games which grown-up people liked playing, too; and there were carriages which went round and round by clockwork, and a tumbler who turned somersaults backwards down a flight of steps as soon as he was placed on the top step. Those were things that the people in France could do.

The world was widening out more and more. Relations often came over from Göteborg. They spoke Swedish, but if you paid great attention you could understand quite well what they said. They spoke the language of _Frithiof's Saga_, but pronounced it differently from Mr. Voltelen. And there came a young French count whose relations my father's brother had known; he had come as a sailor on a French man-o'-war, and he came and stayed to dinner and sang the Marseillaise. It was from him that I heard the song for the first time. He was only fifteen, and very good-looking, and dressed like an ordinary sailor, although he was a count.

And then there were my two uncles, Uncle Jacob and Uncle Julius--my mother's brother Jacob and my father's brother Julius, who had both become Frenchmen long ago and lived in Paris. Uncle Jacob often came for a few weeks or more at a time. He was small and broad-shouldered and good-looking. Everybody was fond of Uncle Jacob; all the ladies wanted to be asked to the house when Uncle Jacob came. He had a wife and four children in Paris. But I had pieced together from the conversation of the grown-up people that Aunt Victorine was his wife and yet not his wife. Grandmother would have nothing to do with her. And Uncle Jacob had gone all the way to the Pope in Rome and asked for her to remain his wife. But the Pope had said No. Why? Because Aunt Victorine had had another husband before, who had been cruel to her and beaten her, and the man came sometimes, when Uncle was away, and took her furniture away from her. It was incomprehensible that he should be allowed to, and that the Pope would do nothing to prevent it, for after all she was a Catholic.

Uncle Jacob had a peculiar expression about his mouth when he smiled. There was a certain charm about everything he said and did, but his smile was sad. He had acted thoughtlessly, they said, and was not happy. One morning, while he was visiting Father and Mother and was lying asleep in the big room, there was a great commotion in the house; a messenger was sent for the doctor and the word _morphia_ was spoken. He was ill, but was very soon well again. When he asked his sister next day: "What has become of my case of pistols?" she replied with a grave face: "I have taken it and I shall keep it."

I had not thought as a boy that I should ever see Uncle Jacob's wife and children. And yet it so happened that I did. Many years afterwards, when I was a young man and went to Paris, after my uncle's death, I sought out Victorine and her children. I wished to bring her personally the monthly allowance that her relatives used to send her from Denmark. I found her prematurely old, humbled by poverty, worn out by privation. How was it possible that she should be so badly off? Did she not receive the help that was sent from Copenhagen every month to uncle's best friend, M. Fontane, in the Rue Vivienne? Alas, no! M. Fontane gave her a little assistance once in a while, and at other times sent her and her children away with hard words.

It turned out that M. Fontane had swindled her, and had himself kept the money that had been sent for years to the widow of his best friend. He was a tall, handsome man, with a large business. No one would have believed that a scoundrel could have looked as he did. He was eventually compelled to make the money good. And when the cousin from Denmark rang after that at his French relatives' door, he was immediately hung round, like a Christmas tree, with little boys and one small girl, who jumped up and wound their arms round his neck, and would not let him go.

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--My First Glimpse of Beauty--The Head Master--Religion--My Standing in School--Self-esteem--An Instinct for Literature--Private Reading--Heine's _Buch der Lieder_--A Broken Friendship.

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 his arm. I never saw Mr. Lafontaine, much less his marvellous feat of strength, but when I went down the stairs I used to stare hard at the door behind which these wonderful doings went on.

In the basement lived Niels, manservant to the family, who, besides his domestic occupations, found time to develop a talent for business. In all secrecy he carried on a commerce, very considerable under the circumstances, in common watches and in mead, two kinds of wares that in sooth had no connection with each other. The watches had no particular attraction for a little boy, but the mead, which was kept in jars, on a shelf, appealed to me doubly. It was the beverage the old Northmen had loved so much that the dead drank it in Valhalla. It was astonishing that it could still be had. How nice it must be! I was allowed to taste it and it surpassed all my expectations. Sweeter than sugar! More delicious than anything else on earth that I had tasted! But if you drank more than a very small glass of it, you felt sick.

And I profoundly admired the dead warriors for having been able to toss off mead from large drinking-horns and eat fat pork with it. What a choice! And they never had stomach-ache!

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 from the customers. The assistants were pleasant, dignified gentlemen, of fine appearance and behaviour, friendly without wounding condescension.

Between my fifth and sixth years some alterations were done at the shop, which was consequently closed to me for a long time. When it was once more accessible I stood amazed at the change. A long, glass-covered gallery had been added, in which the wares lay stored on new shelves. The extension of the premises was by no means inconsiderable, and simultaneously an extension had been made in the staff. Among the new arrivals was an apprentice named Gerhard, who was as tall as a grown man, but must have been very young, for he talked to me, a six-year-old child, like a companion. He was very nice-looking, and knew it. "You don't want harness when you have good hips," he would say, pointing to his mightily projecting loins. This remark made a great impression upon me, because it was the first time I had heard anyone praise his own appearance. I knew that one ought not to praise one's self and that self-praise was no recommendation. So I was astonished to find that self-praise in Gerhard's mouth was not objectionable; in fact, it actually suited him. Gerhard often talked of what a pleasure it was to go out in the evenings and enjoy one's self--what the devil did it matter what old people said?--and listen to women singing--amusements which his hearer could not manage to picture very clearly to himself.

It soon began to be said that Gerhard was not turning out well. The manner in which he procured the money for his pleasures resulted, as I learnt long afterwards, in his sudden dismissal. But he had made some slight impression on my boyish fancy--given me a vague idea of a heedless life of enjoyment, and of youthful defiance.

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 zenith of his strength, vigour, and apparently of his glory.

The glory vanished, because from the start he had worked his way up without capital. The Hamburg firm that financed the business lent money at too high a rate of interest and on too hard conditions for it to continue to support two families.

But when later on my grandfather had his time at his own disposal, he took up the intellectual interests which in his working years he had had to repress. In his old age, for instance, he taught himself Italian, and his visitors would find him, with Tasso's _Gerusalemme liberata_ in front of him, looking out in a dictionary every word that presented any difficulty to him, and of such there were many.

The old man was an ardent Buonapartist, and, strangely enough, an even more ardent admirer of the Third Napoleon than of the First, because he regarded him as shrewder, and was convinced that he would bequeath the Empire to his son. But he and I came into collision on this point from the time I was fourteen years of age. For I was of course a Republican, and detested Napoleon III. for his breach of the Constitution, and used to write secretly in impossible French, and in a still more impossible metre (which was intended to represent hexameters and pentameters) verses against the tyrant. An ode to the French language began:

"Ah! quelle langue magnifique, si belle, si riche, si sonore, Langue qu'un despote cruel met aux liens et aux fers!"

On the subject of Napoleon III. grandfather and grandson could not possibly agree. But this was the only subject on which we ever had any dispute.

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 had sat daily at the same table as these great, much-admired men, and he often told how he had clapped his hands till they almost bled at Oehlenschläger's plays, in the years when, by reason of Baggesen's attack, opinions about them at the theatre were divided.

My great-grandfather, the father of my mother's stepmother, who wore high boots with a little tassel in front, belonged to an even older generation. He used to say: "If I could only live to see a Danish man-o'-war close with an English ship and sink it, I should be happy; the English are the most disgraceful pack of robbers in the world." He was so old that he had still a vivid recollection of the battle in the roadstead and of the bombardment of Copenhagen.

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 kindly man, the arithmetic master, who made me feel at my ease. I noticed at once that when the master asked a boy anything which another knew, this other had a right to publish his knowledge by holding up a finger--a right of which I myself made an excessive use in the first lessons, until I perceived the sense of not trying, in season and out of season, to attract attention to my knowledge or superiority, and kept my hands on the table in front of me.

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 was allowed to drive the brown horses, that is to say, to hold the reins, and I was in high glee. Where Farum was, I did not know and did not care, but it was a new world. Until now I, who was a town child, had seen nothing of the country except my nurse's house and land at Glostrup,--but what lay in front of me was a village, a schoolhouse, a large farm, in short an adventure in grand style.

I had my shirts and blouses and stockings in a portmanteau, and amongst them a magnificent garment, never yet worn, a blue cloth jacket, and a white waistcoat belonging to it, with gold buttons, which my mother had given me permission to wear on Sundays. For days, I always wore blouses, so the jacket implied a great step forward. I was eager to wear it, and regretted profoundly that it was still only Monday.

Half-way there, the peasant pulled up. He explained to me that he could not very well drive me any farther, so must put me down; he was not going to Farum himself at all. But a peat cart was coming along the road yonder, the driver of which was going to Farum, and he transferred me, poor defenceless child as I was, to the other conveyance. He had had my money; I had nothing to give the second man, and sadly I exchanged the quick trot of the brown horses for the walking pace of the jades in the peat-cart.

My first experience of man's perfidy.