I hardly ever met little girls except at children's balls, 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.
One of my uncles was living that Summer in America Road, which at that
time was quite in the country, and there was a beautiful walk thence
across the fields to a spot called _The Signal_, where you could watch
the trains go by from Copenhagen's oldest railway station, which was
not situated on the western side of the town, where the present
stations are. Near here lived a family whose youngest daughter used to
run over almost every day to my uncle's country home, to play with the
children.
She was ten years old, as brown as a gipsy, as agile as a roe, and from
her childish face, from all the brown of her hair, eyes, and skin, from
her smile and her speech, glowed, rang, and as it were, struck me, that
overwhelming and hitherto unknown force, Beauty. I was twelve, she was
ten. Our acquaintance consisted of playing touch, not even alone
together, but with other children; I can see her now rushing away from
me, her long plaits striking against her waist. But although this was
all that passed between us, we both had a feeling as of a mysterious
link connecting us. It was delightful to meet. She gave me a pink. She
cut a Queen of Hearts out of a pack of cards, and gave it to me; I
treasured it for the next five years like a sacred thing.
That was all that passed between us and more there never was, even when
at twelve years of age, at a children's ball, she confessed to me that
she had kept everything I had given her--gifts of the same order as her
own. But the impression of her beauty filled my being.
Some one had made me a present of some stuffed humming-birds, perched
on varnished twigs under a glass case. I always looked at them while I
was reading in the nursery; they stood on the bookshelves which were my
special property. These birds with their lovely, shining, gay-coloured
plumage, conveyed to me my first impression of foreign or tropical
vividness of colouring. All that I was destined to love for a long time
had something of that about it, something foreign and afar off.
The girl was Danish as far as her speech was concerned, but not really
Danish by descent, either on her father or her mother's side; her name,
too, was un-Danish. She spoke English at home and was called Mary at my
uncle's, though her parents called her by another name. All this
combined to render her more distinctive.
Once a year I met her at a children's ball; then she had a white dress
on, and was, in my eyes, essentially different from all the other
little girls. One morning, after one of these balls, when I was
fourteen, I felt in a most singular frame of mind, and with wonder and
reverence at what I was about to do, regarding myself as dominated by a
higher, incomprehensible force, I wrote the first poetry I ever
composed.
There were several strophes of this heavenly poetry. Just because I so
seldom met her, it was like a gentle earthquake in my life, when I did.
I had accustomed myself to such a worship of her name that, for me, she
hardly belonged to the world of reality at all. But when I was sixteen
and I met her again, once more at a young people's ball, the glamour
suddenly departed. Her appearance had altered and corresponded no
longer to my imaginary picture of her. When we met in the dance she
pressed my hand, which made me indignant, as though it were an immodest
thing. She was no longer a fairy. She had broad shoulders, a budding
bust, warm hands; there was youthful coquetry about her--something
that, to me, seemed like erotic experience. I soon lost sight of her.
But I retained a sentiment of gratitude towards her for what, as a
ten-year-old child, she had afforded me, this naturally supernatural
impression, my first revelation of Beauty.