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.