CHAPTER IV

IN FRONT OF THE CURTAIN

(1869)

John's proposal to transfer the university from Upsala to Stockholm was destined to have consequences, and his comrades had warned him of them. When he went up early in spring in order to write the obligatory Latin essay he had sent the professor by post the three test-essays and the 15 krona fee. So he could carry out his purpose unhindered and enrolled himself.

But now in May he wished to go and pass the preliminary examination in chemistry. In order to be well prepared, he had himself tested by the assistant-professor at the technological institute. The latter did so and declared that he already knew more than was needed for the medical examination. Thus prepared, he went up to Upsala. His first visit was to a comrade, who had already passed the preliminary examination in chemistry, and knew the "tips" for it.

John began: "I can do synthesis and analysis, and have studied organic chemistry."

"That is very well, for we only need synthesis; however, it is no use for you have not studied in the professor's laboratory."

"That is true; but the course at the Institute is much better."

"No matter,--it is not his."

"We shall see," said John, "whether knowledge does not tell in any ease."

"If you are so sure, then try, but consider first what I say. You must first go to the assistant-professor and get a 'tip'."

"What do you mean?"

"For a krona he will give you an hour's polishing, and ask you all the important questions which the professor has put during the past year. Just now he is in the habit of asking whether matches can be made out of his carcase and ammonia from your old boots. But that you will learn from the assistant. Secondly, you must not go to be examined in a frock coat and white tie; least of all, dressed as well as you are now. Therefore you must borrow my riding-coat, which is green in the shoulders and red in the seams, and my top-boots, for he does not like elastic boots."

John followed his friend's instructions and went first to the assistant-professor who gave him the questions which had been last asked. In return John promised that under all circumstances he would return and tell him the questions which he himself had been asked, as a means of enlarging his catechism.

The next day John went to his friend to array himself. His trousers were drawn up so that the tops of the boots should be seen and his loose collar turned on one side, so that the skin should show between the tie and the collar. Thus equipped, he went up for his first trial.

The professor of chemistry had formerly been a fortification officer, and had received in his time a not very cordial welcome from the learned staff in Upsala. He was a soldier, not academically cultivated, and thus a kind of "Philistine." This had galled him and made him bilious. In order to efface the effect of his laymen-like exterior, he affected the airs of an over-read and blunt professor. He went about ill-dressed and behaved eccentrically. Though many hundreds besides himself had been pupils of Berzelius, he was fond of mentioning the fact; it was his trump card. Berzelius, among other things, went about in shabby trousers, therefore a hole in one's clothes was the sign of a learned chemist, and so on. Hence all these peculiarities.

John presented himself, was regarded with suspicion and bidden to come again in a week. He replied that he had come from Stockholm and was too poor to support himself for a week in the town. He managed to get permission to present himself the next day. "It would be soon over," said the old man.

The next day he sat on a seat opposite the professor. It was a sunny afternoon in May, and the old man seemed to have digested his dinner badly. He looked grim as he threw out his first question from his rocking-chair. The answers were correct at the beginning. Then the questions became more tortuous like snakes.

"If I have an estate, where I suspect the presence of saltpetre, how shall I begin to construct a saltpetre factory?"

John suggested a saltpetre analysis.

"No."

"Well, then, I don't know anything else."

There was silence and the flies buzzed,--a long and terrible silence. "Now will come the question about the boots or the matches," thought John, "and there I shall shine." He coughed by way of rousing the professor, but the silence continued. John wondered whether he had been seen through and whether the old man recognised the "examination coat."

Then came a new question which was unanswered, and then another.

"You have come too soon," said the old man, and rose up.

"Yes, but I have worked a whole year in the laboratory, and can do chemical analysis."

"Yes, you know how to make up prescriptions, but you have not digested your knowledge. In the Institute only manual dexterity is necessary, but here scientific knowledge is required."

As a matter of fact the case was exactly the reverse for the medical students in Upsala complained that they had to stand like cooks and make up mixtures and salts, without having time to look at an analysis, which last was just what a doctor ought to do while synthesis was the apothecary's work. But now the proposal made some years before whether the university had not better be transferred to Stockholm had roused a feeling in Upsala against the capital. Moreover the laboratory of the newly-built technological institute was as famous for its excellent equipment, as that of Upsala was notorious for its poor one. Here, therefore, petty prejudices were at work and John felt the unfairness of it. "I do not then get a certificate?" he asked.

"No, sir, not this year; but come again next year."

The professor was ashamed to say, "Go to my only soul-saving laboratory."

John went out furious. Here then again neither diligence nor knowledge prevailed, but only cash and cringing! Had he tried short cuts? No, on the contrary, he had been obliged to travel by painful circuitous paths, while others had gone the direct road, and the directest is the shortest.

He went to the Carolina Park, as angry as an irritated bee. He did not wish to return at once to the town, but sat down on a seat. If he could only set this devil's hole on fire! Another year? No, never! Why read so much unnecessary stuff, which would only be forgotten, and be of no practical use? And slave in order to enter this dirty profession where one had to analyse urine, pick about in vomit, poke about in all the recesses of the body? Faugh! Just as he was sitting there, a group of cheerful-looking people came by, and stood laughing outside the Carolina library. They looked up to the window's, through which long rows of books were visible, shelf after shelf. They laughed,--the men and women laughed at the books. He thought he recognised them. Yes, they were Levasseur's French actors, whom he had seen in Stockholm and who were now visiting Upsala. They laughed at the books! Lucky people who could be importers of genius and culture without books. Perhaps every soul had something to give which was not in books, but would be there some day. Yes, certainly it was so. He himself possessed stories of experience and thoughts, which could enrich anthropology, and were ready to be throw out.

Again there stole upon him the thought of entering this privileged profession, which stood outside and above petty social conventions which ignored distinctions of rank, and in which one need never be conscious of belonging to the lower classes. There one could appeal to the universal judgment, and work in full publicity instead of being hung up here in a remote dark hole, without a verdict, examination, or witnesses.

Strengthened by this new idea, he stood up, east a glance at the books above, and went down to the town resolved to go home and seek for an engagement in the Theatre Royal.

Every townsman has probably felt once in his life the wish to appear as an actor. This is probably due to the impulse of the cultivated man to magnify and make himself something, to identify himself with great and celebrated personalities. John, who was a romanticist, had also the desire to step forward and harangue the public. He believed that he could choose his proper rôle, and he knew beforehand which it would be. The fact that he, like all others, believed that he had the capacity to become an actor, sprang from the superfluity of unused force, produced by a want of sufficient physical exercise, and from the tendency to megalomania connected with mental over-exertion. He saw no difficulties in the profession itself, but expected opposition from another quarter.

To attribute his being stage-struck to hereditary tendencies would perhaps be hasty, since we have just remarked that it is an almost universal impulse. But his paternal grandfather, a Stockholm citizen, had written dramatic pieces for an amateur theatre, and a young distant relative still lived as a warning example. The latter had been an engineer, had been through a course of instruction in the Motala iron-works, and had a post on the Köping-Hult railway. He therefore had fine prospects in front of him, but suddenly threw them up, and became an actor. This step of his was an incessant trouble to his family. Up to this time the young man had become nothing but was still travelling about with an obscure theatrical company. The danger of becoming like him was the difficult point. "Yes," said John to himself, "but I shall have luck." Why? Because he believed it; and he believed it because he wished it.

Some might be inclined to derive this strong impulse on John's part from the fact that he loved to play, as a child, with a toy theatre, but that is not sufficient, as all children do the same and he had got the taste from seeing them do it. The theatre was an unreal better world which enticed one out of the tedious real one. The latter would not have seemed so tedious if his education had been more harmonious and realistic and not given him such a strong tendency to romance. Enough; his resolution was taken; and without saying anything to any one, he went to the director of the Theatrical Academy the dramaturgist of the Theatre Royal.

When he heard the sound of his own words "I want to be an actor," he shuddered. He felt as though he tore down the veil of his inborn modesty, and did violence to his own nature.

The director asked what he was doing at present.

"Studying medicine."

"And you want to give up such a career, for one that is the hardest and the worst of all?"

"Yes."

All actors called their profession the "hardest and the worst" though they had such a good time of it. That was in order to frighten away aspirants.

John asked for private lessons in order that he might make his début. The director replied that he was now going to the country for the theatrical season was at an end, but he told John to come again on the 1st of September when the theatre opened, and the board of management came again to the town. That was a definite appointment and he saw his way clear.

When he went down the street, he walked with his eyes wide open, as though he gazed into a brilliant future; victory was already his; he felt its intoxicating eating fumes, and hurried, though with unsteady steps, down the street.

He said nothing to the doctor nor to any one else. He had still three months in front of him in which to train and prepare himself, but in secret, for he was shy and timid. He was afraid of annoying his father and the doctor, afraid of the whole town knowing that he thought himself capable of being an actor, afraid of his relatives' scorn, his friends' grimaces and efforts to dissuade him. This was the fruit of his education, the fear,--"What will people say?" His imagination made the act seem like a crime. It was certainly an interference with other people's peace of mind for relations and friends feel a shock, when they see a link torn out of the social chain. He felt it himself, and had to shake off the scruples of conscience.

For his début he had chosen the rôles of Karl Moor and Wijkander's Lucidor. This was no mere chance but perfectly logical. In both of these characters he had found the expression of his inner experience, and therefore he wished to speak with their tongues. He conceived of Lucidor as a higher nature undermined and ruined by poverty. A higher nature of course! In his enthusiasm for the theatre he felt again what he had felt when he had preached, and when he had revolted against the school prayers,[1] something of the proclaimer, the prophet, and the soothsayer.

What most of all elevated his ideas of the great significance of the theatre was the perusal of Schiller's essay, "The theatre regarded as an instrument of moral education." Sentences like the following show how lofty was the goal at which Schiller aimed. "The stage is the chief channel through which the light of wisdom descends from the better, thinking portion of the populace in order to spread its beneficent light over the whole state." "In this world of art we dream ourselves away from the real one, we find ourselves again, our feelings are roused, wholesome emotions stir our slumbering nature and drive our blood in swift currents. The unhappy here forget their own sorrows in watching those of others, the happy become sober, and the self-confident, reflective. The effeminate weakling is hardened into a man, the coarse and callous here begin to feel. And then finally,--what a triumph for thee O Nature, so often trodden down and so often re-arisen,--when men of all climates and conditions, casting away all fetters of convention and fashion, set free from the iron hand of fate, fraternising in one all-embracing sympathy, dissolved into _one_ race, forget themselves and the world, and approach their heavenly origin. Each individual enjoys the delight of all, which is mirrored back to him strengthened and beautified from a hundred eyes, and his breast has only room for one aspiration,--to be a man!"

Thus wrote the young Schiller at twenty-five, and the youth of twenty subscribed it.

The theatre is certainly still a means of culture for young people and the middle class who can still feel the illusion of actors and painted canvas. For older and cultivated people it is a recreation in which the actor's art is the chief object of attention. Therefore old critics are almost invariably discontent and crabbed. They have lost their illusions and do not pass over any mistake in the acting.

Modern times have overprised the theatre, especially the actor's art in an exaggerated degree, and a re-action has followed. Actors have tried to ply their art independently of the dramatist, believing that they could stand on their own legs. Therefore particular "stars" become the objects of homage and therefore also opposition has been aroused. In Paris, where people had gone to the greatest lengths, a reaction first showed itself. The _Figaro_ called the heroes of the Théâtre-Français to order, and reminded them that they were only the author's puppets.

The decay of all the great European theatres shows that the actor's art has lost its interest. Cultivated people no more go to the theatre because their sense for reality has been developed, and their imagination which is a relic of the savage has diminished; the uncultivated lack the time, and the money to go. The future seems to belong to the variety theatre, which amuses without instructing, for it is mere play and recreation. All important writers choose another, more suitable form in which to handle important questions. Ibsen's dramas have always produced their effect in book form before they were played; and when they are played, the spectators' interest is generally concentrated on the _manner_ of their performance; consequently it is a secondary interest.

John committed the usual mistake of youth, _i.e._ of confusing the actor with the author; the actor is the mere enunciator of the sentiments for which the author who stands behind him, is responsible.

In the spring John resigned his post as tutor to the two girls, and now he had leisure during the summer to study his art in secret, and on his own responsibility. He had scoffed at books, and now the first things he sought were books. They contained the thoughts and experiences of men with whom, though most of them were dead, he could converse familiarly, without being betrayed. He had heard that in the castle there was a library which belonged to the State, and from which one could borrow books. He obtained a surety and went there. It was a solemn place with small rooms full of books where grey-haired silent old men sat and read. He got his books and went shyly and happily home.

He wished to study the matter thoroughly in all its aspects, as was his custom. In Schiller he found the assurance that the theatre was of deep significance; in Goethe he found a whole treatise on the histrionic art with directions how one should walk and stand, behave oneself, sit down, come in and go out; in Lessing's _Hamburgische Dramaturgie_ he found a whole volume of theatrical critiques filled with the closest observations. Lessing especially roused his hopes, for he went so far as to declare that the theatre had come down owing to the inferiority of the actors, and said that it would be better to employ amateurs from the cultivated classes who would play better than the drilled and often uncultured actors. He also read Raymond de St. Albin, whose often quoted observations on the actor's art are of great value.

At the same time he exercised himself practically. At the doctor's he arranged a stage when the boys were out. He practised entrances and exits; he arranged the stage for "The Robbers," dressed himself like Karl Moor, and played that part. He went to the National Museum and studied gestures of antique sculptures and gave up using his walking stick in order to accustom himself to walk freely. He did violence to his shyness, which had almost produced in him "agoraphobia," or the dread of crossing open places, and accustomed himself to walk across Karl XIII's square where great crowds used to be found. He did gymnastics every day at home, and fenced with his pupils. He gave attention to every movement of the muscles; practised walking with head erect and chest expanded, with arms hanging free and hands loosely clenched, as Goethe directs.

The chief difficulty he found was in the cultivation of his voice, for he was overheard when he declaimed in the house. Then it occurred to him to go outside the town. The only place where he could be undisturbed was the Ladugårdsgärdet. There he could look over the plain for a great distance and see whether any one was coming; there sounds died away so quickly that it cost him an effort to hear himself. This strengthened his voice.

Every day he went out there, and declaimed against heaven and earth. The town whose church tower rose opposite Ladugårdsgärdet symbolised society, while he stood out here alone with Nature. He shook his fist at the castle, the churches, and the barracks, and stormed at the troops who during their manoeuvres often came too close to him. There was something fanatical in his work and he spared himself no pains in order to make his unwilling muscles obedient.

[1] _Vide_ the _Son of a Servant_.