The life of Henrik Ibsen

Front matter

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CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

Preface

The Life of the famous Norwegian poet which is here presented to the English public was issued in Copenhagen, on his sixtieth birthday, March 20, 1888, under the 'a'Ci&^Henrik Ibsen: 1 828-1 888. Et litercert Livsbillede. It is the only existing biography of Henrik Ibsen which has any pretension to being authoritative, and it has the advantage of not merely being published with the poet's sanction, but of being enriched by a great number of notes and documents supplied by Ibsen himself.

The numerous poetical quotations from Ibsen's lyrical writings have been specially translated by Mr. Gosse for this edition, with scrupulous attention to the form and substance alike of the original.

viii PREFACE.

and in almost every instance they may be taken as reproducing the exact external appearance of the passages they imitate.

An Index and a few notes have been added for the convenience of the English reader.

Chapter I. Childhood— Early Poetical Efforts

In 1720 or thereabouts a Danish ship's-captain named Peter Ibsen came from Moen to Bergen, where he was admitted to the freedom of the city, and married the daughter of a German who had settled there. He was the great-great-grandfather of Henrik Ibsen.

Ibsen's grandfather, who was also a captain, was Henrik Petersen Ibsen. He married Wenche Dischington, the daughter of a naturalised Scotsman, and died within a year of his marriage. His widow subsequently married Provost Von der Lippe at Solum, near Skien, and this tied her branch of the Ibsen family to that town. She had one son by her first marriage, who was born after his father's death, and named after him.

Henrik Ibsen the second married the daughter of one Plesner, a merchant at Skien. Plesner and his wife were both of German descent. But this union, too, was but brief. Henrik Ibsen had chosen to follow the calling of his father and grandfather, and the vessel of which he was both owner and captain was lost with all hands on Hesnaes, near Grimstad ; the very spot where the scene of Terje Viken is laid.

Only some fragments of the wreck with the name of the ship drifted to land to tell the tale of woe. A year later the widow married a seaman named Ole Pans, by whom she had five children. Her son by her first marriage was named Knud (or Canute), and became the father of the poet.

His mother's name was Maria Cornelia Altenburg ; she was the daughter of a wealthy merchant of Skien, who, as was customary in those days, had begun life as a ship's-captain. He too was of German descent.

In each of these four generations the Danish seaman's blood had mingled with a foreign strain, German, Scotch, German, and again German. Even in these perhaps some infusion of Norwegian elements might be discovered, if the pedigrees of the mothers were investigated ; but not a drop of Norwegian blood had, by direct descent, any part in I the composition of Henrik Ibsen's temperament, 1 which nevertheless has been styled " peculiarly Norwegian."

This ancestry throws hght on his nature ; it helps to explain his isolation and his cosmopolitan spirit ■ it accounts for his being able to detach himself so completely from his native land, and spend more than twenty years in voluntary exile.

It also suggests the source of certain deeperlying characteristics. The puritanism and idealism of the Scotch, which have played so important a part in the history of their country and set their mark on its philosophy, irresistibly recur to our minds when we study the man whose demands on Man are as inexorable as only those of an idealist can be, while his view of life is as gloomy as that of any puritan. The German element — German proclivity to speculative fancies — German delight in pure abstractions, and instinctive preference for strictly logical and systematic thought — are these not to be seen in Henrik Ibsen's individuality, and have they not had their influence on the development of the faculties of his soul ?

And if we inquire yet further from whom he derived his intellectual peculiarities, we find that we must refer them to women, whose influence has evidently been preponderant. His grandmother must have been a highly-educated woman, by the standard of her day. She took an eager interest in all the niovements of her time. Her character was stern and grave, and she seems to have been sincerely pious, which then, in the circle she moved in, was by no means common. It is recorded by the children of her second marriage that, with rare exceptions, she was conspicuous for a reserve and taciturnity which made it difficult to approach her.

His mother's, too, was one of those reserved natures which find it hard to be communicative. This reticence in later years developed into shyness, which all her children inherited in a greater or less degree. Ibsen's sister describes her, in a letter to the Norwegian author of this book in the following terms : ^ — " She was a silent, amiable woman, the soul of the house as regarded both her husband and her children. She always sacrificed herself. Bitterness and fault - finding were unknown to her."

The temperament of the men of the family was of a brighter hue. The grandfather seems to have been a clear-headed man, with many eager interests. He had a pleasant humour, and we are told that he was always devising sports and pastimes. The poet's father had inherited both his mother's severity and his father's liveliness. They combined in him in a keen wit. He was by nature pleasure-loving and sociable, with a fine understanding and everready wit, which made him loved, though also feared, by his family and neighbours, for his jests were not always of the gentlest ; he could be very biting and unsparing in his utterances about those who had in any way aroused his displeasure. It was evidently from him that the son inherited the germ of the peculiar talent which led him to write

1 This shyness would seem to have come into the family from the Pans connection. Old Mrs. Altenburg, Ibsen's maternal grandmother, was sister of Ole Paus, his paternal grandmother's second husband ; and the children of that marriage were equally reserved.

Kcerlighedens Komedie (The Comedy of Love) and De Unges Forbund (The Young Men's League).

Under these conditions of ancestral tendencies, Henrik Ibsen was born at Skien, on the 20th of March 1828, the eldest child of his parents.

Skien was then, as it is still, a homely little town of wooden houses, containing scarcely 3000 inhabitants. But small as it was, it was the scene of much busy life and a not unimportant centre of trade ; and Knud Ibsen, conducting an extensive and varied business, lived in the heart of the town.

Referring to his earliest impressions, Ibsen has written the following notes and has placed them at the author's disposal : —

"When the streets of my native town of Skien were named — or perhaps only re-named — some years since, the authorities did me the honour of calling one after me. So at least I learned from the newspapers, and I have heard it since from travellers. By their description this street leads from the market-place down to the Muddring^ or harbour. But if this information is correct, I do not know why that street was chosen to bear my name, for neither was I born there nor did I ever live there.

" I was, indeed, born in a house on the market-place, 'Stockmanns Gaard,' as it was then called. It stood exactly opposite the front of the church, | with its high flight of steps and conspicuous tower.

' Probably derived from mudre, to dredge — the harbour being dredged on shallow shores.

To the right of the church stood the town pillory, and to the left the town-hall, with the prison and the lock-up for mad persons. The fourth side of the market-square was occupied by the High School and the Lower School. The church stood apart in the middle.

"This then was the first view of the world on which my eyes rested. All buildings — nothing green, no open country landscape. But in this quadrangle of stone and wood the air was filled all day with the noise of two cascades, the Langefos and the Klosterfos, and the sound of many waters ; and above the roar of all these cataracts came a piercing voice, like the screaming, weeping, and sighing of a wailing woman. This proceeded from hundreds of sawmills, which were worked by the falls. When, at a later day, I read of the guillotine, I could not help thinking of these sawmills.

"The church was beyond question the finest building in the town. When, at the end of the last century, the whole place was burnt down on Christmas Eve, through the carelessness of a maidservant, the old church too was destroyed. The girl, of course, was executed. But the town, which was rebuilt with straight wide streets down the hollows and up the slopes to which they clung, gained on the occasion a new church, which the inhabitants declared, with commendable pride, should be built of yellow Dutch brick, and designed by an architect from Copenhagen, exactly like the church at Kongsberg.^ I did not at that time duly value this distinction, but what always attracted my attention was a burly, clumsy, white angel, which, on week days, floated in the air under the arched roof with a bowl in its hand, but on Sundays, when there was a child to be christened, softly descended earthwards.

" Even more perhaps than the white angel in the church, the black poodle of the tower engaged my fancy. From the tower the watchman used to proclaim the hour at night. This poodle had fiery red eyes, but he was rarely visible. Indeed, so far as I know, he was never seen but once. It was one New Year's morning, at the very moment when the watchman shouted ' One ' through the opening in the front of the tower. The black poodle came up the turret-stair behind him, stood still, and did no more than look at him with his fiery eyes ; but the watchman fell out of the tower window down into the market-place, where the devout, who had gone to usher in the New Year's morning by listening to a sermon, saw him lying dead. From that night the watchman never calls ' One ' from the church tower at Skien. This incident of the watchman and the poodle had happened long before my time, and I have since heard that similar events had been known of old in many Norwegian churches.

1 Kongsberg, a town a few miles southward of Christiania, has a large stone church of the eighteenth century. The church at Skien was restored in 1777.

"But that particular opening in the tower was noteworthy to me while I was yet but a child, from my having there received the first conscious and permanent impression on my mind. My nurse one day took me up the tower and allowed me to sit on the ledge outside, holding me firmly from behind, ot course, in her faithful arms. I perfectly recollect how amazed I was at looking down on the tops of the hats of the people below. I looked into our own rooms, seeing the window-frames and curtains, and my mother sitting at one of the windows ; indeed, I could see over the roof into the yard, where our brown horse stood hitched up to the stable-door and whisking his tail. A bright tin pail was hanging against the door. Then suddenly there was a great hurry and bustle and signalling from our house, and the nurse hastily snatched me in and hastened down with me. I remember nothing more ; but I was often told afterwards that my mother had caught sight of me up in the tower-window, and, with a loud shriek, had fainted away, as people used to do in those days ; and that when presently I was taken back to her, she cried, and kissed and fondled me. As a boy, I never went across the market-square without looking up at the tower-window. I always felt as though the opening and the churchpoodle, were some special concern of mine.

" I have only one single recollection more of those early years of my life. Among other gifts from my godfathers, I had a large silver coin, on which a man's head was stamped. The man had a high forehead, a large aquiHne nose, and a projecting under-hp ; his throat was bare, which always struck me as very strange. My nurse told me that the man on the coin was 'King Frederick Rex.' One day I took it into my head to play with this coin on the floor, with the disastrous result that it slipped into a crack. My parents, I believe, thought this an omen of evil, as the coin had been a christening-gift. The planks were taken up ; but, in spite of much careful seeking and groping, ' King Frederick Rex ' never came to light again. It was a long time before I ceased to regard myself as a great criminal, and whenever I saw the town constable, Peter Tysker, come out of the town-hall towards our house, I ran off as fast as I could into the nursery and hid under the bed.

" We did not live long in the house on the market-place. My father bought a larger house, into which we moved when I was about four years old. This new home was a corner house, a little higher up the town, at the foot of the Hundervad Bakke,'^ so named after an old doctor who spoke German ; his dignified wife used to ride out in what was then called a glass coach, which in winter was used as a sleigh. There were a great many large rooms in our house, below and above, and here my parents led a very social life. But we boys lived but little within doors. The market-square, where the two public schools were, was the natural meeting-place and playground

^ Bakke means hill.

for all the lads of the town. The High School was then under the direction of Rector Orn, a very distinguished and amiable old man; the head-master of the Lower School was Iver Flasrud, the beadle, a fine old man too, who was at the same time in great request as haircutter and barber. Many a fierce battle was fought by the boys of these two schools under the walls of the church ; but I, as belonging to neither, was generally a looker-on. Besides, I was not pugnacious in my childhood.

" I found a far greater attraction in the pillory of which I have spoken, and in the town-hall, with all its mysterious and sinister appliances. The pillory was a post, painted reddish-brown, and about the height of a man's stature. There was a large round knob at the top, which had been black. At the time I speak of, it looked like a benevolent and inviting face somewhat askew. In front of the post hung an iron chain to which an open hoop was attached ; the two halves of this hoop always looked to me like two arms which were ready and eager to clutch me by the throat. The pillory had not, however, been used for many years, but I remember it perfectly, still standing at the time when I lived at Skien. Whether it still exists I do not know.

"And then there was the town-hall. Like the church, it had a high flight of steps. Under it were the prison-cells with barred windows looking out on the market-place. Behind those bars I have seen many pale and gloomy faces. One room, quite

EARLY POETICAL EFFORTS. ii

underneath, in the cellars, was called the madman's cell; and incredible as it now seems to me, it was actually used, I believe, at that time to confine mad people in. That room, Hke the others, had barred windows, but inside the bars the whole of the small opening was filled in with a strong iron plate, pierced with small round holes and looking like a collander. It was related of this den that it had been the prison of a certain well-known criminal, named Brendeis, who had been branded; and I believe, too, that an escaped serf, who was afterwards recaptured, had been shut up there, and then flogged on the Mountain Market (Li-torvet); I remember hearing of this poor wretch from eye-witnesses, that when he was led to the place of punishment he went dancing, but that he had to be taken back to prison in a cart.

" Skien, in my young days, was an exceedingly lively and sociable town, quite unlike what it subsequently became. Several highly cultivated and wealthy families of consequence lived in the town itself or on their estates in the neighbourhood. Most of these families were more or less closely related, and dances, dinners, and music-parties followed each other, winter and summer, in almost unbroken succession. Many travellers also passed through the town, and as there were as yet no regular inns, they lodged with friends or connections. We almost always had guests in our large roomy house, especially at Christmas and Fair-time, when the house was full, and we kept an open table from morning till night. The Fair at Skien was held in February, and it was a very happy time for us boys; we began to save up our money six months beforehand, to be able to see the jugglers, and ropedancers, and horse-riders, and to buy ginger-bread down in the booths. Whether this Fair was an important one from a commercial point of view I know not ; it survives in my memory only as a great popular hohday which lasted for about a week.

"The 17th of Mayi was not at that time kept with any special festivities at Skien. A few young people would go out to shoot at a mark with popguns on the Bleaching Hill (Blegebakken), or to burn ' witches ; ' ^ but that was about all. I suspect that this reserve on the part of our usually jovial town arose chiefly from its respeci for the feelings of a man whom we all held in great awe, whose ancestral home lay close to Skien, and whom, for many reasons, no one cared to offend.

" But St. John's Eve made up for it. There were no public observances, but the boys and young men assembled in five or six or more parties, each concerned in collecting fuel for its own bonfire. So early as Whitsuntide we would begin to haunt the shipyards and stores to beg tar-barrels. A peculiar custom had existed from time immemorial. Any-

1 This day, now universally kept as a holiday, is the anniversary of the ratification of the Norwegian Constitution. 3 A sort of squib made of straw and gunpowder.

thing we could not get by fair means we stole, without either the owner or the police ever thinking of proceeding against the felony. Thus by degrees each set had collected a whole heap of empty tar-barrels. We enjoyed the same recognised right over old stranded boat-hulks. If we were so lucky as to succeed in dragging one away and hiding our booty, we had won the right of possession, or at any rate no one disputed it. Then on St. John's Eve the hulk was carried in triumph through the streets to the place where our bonfire was stacked. In it a fiddler was perched. I have often seen such a procession, and once took part in one."

What Ibsen relates in this passage is enough to give us an idea of what the influences of his childhood must have been : gloom and melancholy had the larger share. The solemnity of the church, the horrors of the prison, the threat of the pillory, the terrors of the madhouse, combined to make an impression which might well cast a shadow over his youthful light-heartedness and infuse a precocious gravity, even though the festivities of Fair-time and Midsummer Eve were their antidote.

The good people of Skien have from time immemorial enjoyed a reputation for piety. The religious tendencies which lead to sectarianism have long flourished there on a grateful soil. Early in the last century the town was known as a hotbed of pietism, and in Ibsen's youth, Lammers, the famous preacher, laboured there, and started the movement which has since become known by his name.

From Skien, as its focus, it spread over the country, introducing a ferment into spiritual circles. The movement was naturally strongest in Skien itself, and Ibsen came into the closest contact with it, since several of his nearest relations caught the afQatus. Recollections and revivals of that time of religious excitement supplied some portion of the materials for Brand.

Another work of Ibsen's, De Unges Forbund (The Young Men's League), has also, and not without reason, been supposed to have had its origin in his reminiscences of his native town.

Skien had its "aristocracy" of officials and the wealthy old families of the town and neighbourhood ; the rest were " plebeians." Between these castes there was as insurmountable a barrier as between the noble and citizen classes of a small German town in former ages. No degree of wealth or energy would qualify a man to pass it ; every one who rose from the ranks was regarded as a parvenu like the landowner Monsen in the " Young Men's League," however firmly his position was established; but, on the other hand, it was easy enough to be excluded from the select circle, if the state of his fortunes should no longer justify any one in figuring in it.

The Ibsen household belonged to the "aristocracy," both by position and connection, and in Ibsen's earliest years was a centre of the social life of the town. Ibsen was a man who, by his wit and by other social gifts, gathered people about him, and besides this he was a free-handed host, who loved to keep open house on a large and very liberal scale.

But when Henrik Ibsen was eight years old this easy-going life came to a sudden close. His father became insolvent ; and the only possession left to the family when his various creditors were satisfied was a small, neglected, and decayed estate, Venstob, not far from the town. Here they took refuge from misfortune, and the life they led there was one ot poverty and retirement, in strong contrast to their former brilliant position. If the family had not before been aware of the wide social gulf which existed in the little town, they now, in the day of disaster, were made to feel it keenly. Their new status had no doubt cast a dark shadow over the little household, and next to the parents, Henrik Ibsen, as the eldest son, felt it most. He suddenly found himself an outcast, and at an early age had gone through the experience to which he gave expression in one of his earliest poems, written in 1850: —

Either an invited guest To life's feast thou enterest, Or as a beholder only,

While along the street thou farest, Shivering in the wind and lonely,

Through the blazing window starest.

It is quite certain that while still very young he attracted observation by his singular gravity. He did not play like other children. When his four younger brothers and sisters were romping together out of doors, he would withdraw into a little room by the kitchen-entrance, and bolt himself in to protect himself against the heedless incursions of the others. Here he would sit, not merely in the summer, but in the winter, through the severest cold. " He was never a pleasant companion to us," his sister writes in the letter before quoted, " and we always did our utmost to disturb him by throwing stones or snowballs at the wall or the door. We wanted him to play with us, and when he could no longer endure our teasing, he would rush out and drive us away. However, he was unskilled in all athletic exercises, and violence was not in him ; nothing ever came of it. When he had chased us far enough, he went back into his room again."

What did he do there ? Chiefly he sat absorbed in sundry old volumes, of which he had obtained possession. In that little room he acquired that familiarity with old books of which Hedvig speaks in the third act of Vildanden (The Wild Duck), and the words he puts into her mouth may very well be a reminiscence of his own childhood.

" And do you read those books ? " Gregers asks.

" Oh, yes ; all those I can. But most of them are in English, and I do not know English. Still I can look at the prints. Here is a heavy, big book called 'Harryson's History of London.' It must be quite a hundred years old, and it is full of pictures. The frontispiece is Death, with an hour-glass, and a young lady. I think that dreadful ; but there are a great many more, of churches, and castles, and streets, and large ships sailing on the sea."

And when he was not busy with his books he studied magic ! " Often on a Sunday evening he obtained leave to perform as a conjuror in one of the sitting-rooms " (the letter goes on to say), " and the neighbours were invited to be spectators. I can see him now in his round jacket, standing behind a huge chest, which was brought in and dusted for the occasion ; and he would work wonders which to the amazed beholders appeared quite magical. No one, of course, knew that Henrik's younger brother sat in the chest, having been well paid beforehand for doing so. Otherwise he threatened to make a noise, and this was the most horrible thing that could happen from Henrik's point of view, so he always promised everything the boy asked for."

He also .worked diligently with pencil and brush. He painted a great number of figures on cardboard in gaudy costumes, and afterwards cut them out and fixed them to little blocks of wood so that they would stand. He then composed them into various groups, some as if in conversation, others in attitudes to convey the idea that some important event was going forward. These were the first indications of stage-craft in the future dramatist.

The only out-of-doors amusement that he cared for was building. To this he sometimes devoted himself. " I remember," his sister writes, " among other things a fortress, to my childish apprehension quite a work of art, which cost him and his younger brother long and severe labour. But the fortress was not to stand long; when it was finished, he took it by storm, and levelled it with the ground." He had probably read of some historical event which he was thus trying to realise.

He was sent to a public school at Skien conducted by two theological postulants. All he learnt was the regular round of tasks and a little Latin. He took particular interest in the lessons on religion, and would sit for hours looking up the passages in the Bible to which references were given.

[Mr. J. B. Halvorsen in his article on Ibsen ^ has given a few most welcome details of Ibsen's schoollife, which may be inserted here into Mr. Jaeger's narrative : —

" Henrik Ibsen was placed at a small school, where he showed the greatest interest in history and religion. His master remembers him as a quiet boy, with strange eyes and an uncommon talent for drawing, but with nothing else remarkable about his appearance or tastes. A schoolfellow, however, remembers him better, and speaks of a fine head,

1 Norsk Forfatierleksikon, Parts aa and 23, 1889.

a good intellect, a rather quick, irritable, and vehement temper, a sharp tongue, a satirical humour, but at the same time a friendly and companionable nature, as his distinguishing characteristics. He had a head above most people. He would read history, and more especially that of classical antiquity, with the greatest interest, and showed remarkable depth of apprehension. I remember too," the same writer had said in 1875, "how one day the whole class sat in perfect silence while Ibsen read us a composition of his own, in which he related a dream to this effect : —

"We were wandering on the high lands, when the darkness of night surprised us, bringing us to exhaustion and despair. Like Jacob of old, we lay down to sleep with our heads pillowed on stones. My companions soon fell asleep, but I could not. At last fatigue was too much for me, and in a dream I saw an angel standing over me who said, ' Rise up and follow me.' 'Whither wilt thou lead me in this darkness ? ' I asked. ' Come,' he said, ' I will show you a sight — human life in its reality and truth.' At this I followed him, full of dread, and we went down endless steps, till' the rocks had piled themselves in huge vaults overhead, and before us lay a vast burial-ground, full of horrible tokens and symbols of mortality and change — a world of corpses, all fallen under the stroke of death; pale, faded, and extinguished splendour. Everywhere there was a dim gleam of hght, Hke that reflected on a churchyard from the church-walls and whitened crosses over the graves, while the bleached skeletons, which filled the dark void in endless ranks, stood in a brighter light, shed by themselves as it were. A cold horror came over me at the sight as I stood by the angel's side. ' Here you see — all is vanity.' Then there was a murmur, like the first low roll of a coming storm — a sigh breaking from a thousand breasts ; and it rose to a howling blast, so that the dead were moved, and stretched forth their arms to me. And I woke with a scream, wet with the cold dews of night." Certainly a remarkable style for a lad not yet fifteen — for at that age Ibsen left school — and doubly noteworthy because, in this strange romance of the child, we may detect a tone which harmonises wonderfully with the fundamental key of the man's later poetry.