The Meeting of Scandinavian students at Copenhagen in June, 1862,
taught me what it meant to be a Scandinavian. Like all the other
undergraduates, I was Scandinavian at heart, and the arrangements of
the Meeting were well calculated to stir the emotions of youth.
Although, an insignificant Danish student, I did not take part in the
expedition to North Zealand specially arranged for our guests,
consequently neither was present at the luncheon given by Frederik VII
to the students at Fredensborg (which was interrupted by a heavy
shower), I was nevertheless deeply impressed by the Meeting.
It was a fine sight to behold the students from the three other
Scandinavian Universities come sailing across the Sound from Malmö to
Copenhagen. The Norwegians were especially striking, tall and straight,
with narrow faces under tasseled caps, like a wood of young fir trees;
the national type was so marked that at first I could hardly see any
difference between them.
For me, there were three perfect moments during the festivities. The
first was at the meeting of all the students in the Square of Our Lady,
after the arrival of the visitors, when the scholars of the
Metropolitan School, crowding the windows of the building, greeted them
with a shout of delight. There was such a freshness, such a childish
enthusiasm about it, that some of us had wet eyes. It was as though the
still distant future were acclaiming the young ones now advancing to
the assault, and promising them sympathy and conquest.
The second was when the four new flags embroidered by Danish ladies for
the students were consecrated and handed over. Clausen's speech was
full of grandeur, and addressed, not to the recipients, but to the
flags as living beings: "Thou wilt cross the Baltic to the sanctuary at
Upsala. Thou wilt cross the Cattegat to the land of rocks...." and the
address to each of the flags concluded: "Fortune and Honour attend
thee!" The evening after the consecration of the flags, there was a
special performance at the Royal Theatre for the members of the
Meeting, at which Heiberg, radiant as she always was, and saluted with
well-merited enthusiasm, played _Sophie_ in the vaudeville "_No_," with
a rosette of the Scandinavian colours at her waist. Then it was that
Paludan-Müller's prologue, recited by our idolised actor, Michael
Wiehe, caused me the third thrilling moment. Listening to the words of
the poet from a bad place in the gallery, I was hardly the only one who
felt strangely stirred, as Wiehe, letting his eyes roam round the
theatre, said:
Oh! that the young of the North might one day worthily play
Their part! Oh that each one might do his best
For the party he has chosen! That never there be lack
Of industry, fidelity, strength and talents!
And may he firm step forth, the mighty genius
(_Mayhap, known only to the secret power within him,
Seated amongst us now_), the mighty genius,
Who, as Fate hath willed it, is to play
The mighty part and do the mighty things.
Involuntarily we looked round, seeking for the one to whom the poet's
summons referred.
The general spirit of this Meeting has been called flat in comparison
with that pervading former meetings. It did not strike the younger
participants so. A breath of Scandinavianism swept over every heart;
one felt borne along on a historic stream. It seemed like a bad dream
that the peoples of the North had for so many centuries demolished and
laid waste each other, tapped one another for blood and gold, rendered
it impossible for the North to assert herself and spread her influence
in Europe.
One could feel at the Meeting, though very faintly, that the Swedes and
Norwegians took more actual pleasure in each other, and regarded
themselves as to a greater extent united than either of them looked
upon themselves as united with the Danes, who were outside the
political Union. I was perhaps the only Dane present who fancied I
detected this, but when I mentioned what I thought I observed to a
gifted young Norwegian, so far was he from contradicting me that he
merely replied: "Have you noticed that, too?"
Notwithstanding, during the whole of the Meeting, one constantly heard
expressed on every hand the conviction that if Germany were shortly to
declare war against Denmark--which no one doubted--the Swedes and
Norwegians would most decidedly not leave the Danes in the lurch. The
promise was given oftener than it was asked. Only, of course, it was
childish on the part of those present at the Meeting to regard such
promises, given by the leaders of the students, and by the students
themselves in festive mood, as binding on the nations and their
statesmen.
I did not make any intellectually inspiring acquaintances through the
Meeting, although I was host to two Upsala students; neither of them,
however, interested me. I got upon a friendly footing through mutual
intellectual interests with Carl von Bergen, later so well known as an
author, he, like myself, worshipping philosophy and hoping to
contribute to intellectual progress. Carl von Bergen was a
self-confident, ceremonious Swede, who had read a great many books. At
that time he was a new Rationalist, which seemed to promise one point
of interest in common; but he was a follower of the Boström philosophy,
and as such an ardent Theist. At this point we came into collision, my
researches and reflections constantly tending to remove me farther from
a belief in any God outside the world, so that after the Meeting Carl
von Bergen and I exchanged letters on Theism and Pantheism, which
assumed the width and thickness of treatises. For very many years the
Swedish essayist and I kept up a friendly, though intermittent
intercourse. Meanwhile von Bergen, whose good qualities included
neither character nor originality, inclined, as years went on, more and
more towards Conservatism, and at forty years old he had attained to a
worship of what he had detested, and a detestation of what he had
worshipped. His vanity simultaneously assumed extraordinary
proportions. In a popular Encyclopaedia, which he took over when the
letter B was to be dealt with, and, curiously enough, disposed of
shortly afterwards, _von Bergen_ was treated no less in detail than
_Buonaparte_. He did battle with some of the best men and women in
Sweden, such as Ellen Key and Knut Wicksell, who did not fail to reply
to him. When in 1889 his old friend from the Students' Meeting gave
some lectures on Goethe in Stockholm, he immediately afterwards
directed some poor opposition lectures against him, which neither
deserved nor received any reply. It had indeed become a specialty of
his to give "opposition lectures." When he died, some few years later,
what he had written was promptly forgotten.
There was another young Swedish student whom I caught a glimpse of for
the first time at the Students' Meeting, towards whom I felt more and
more attracted, and who eventually became my friend. This was the
darling of the gods, Carl Snoilsky. At a fête in Rosenborg Park,
amongst the songs was one which, with my critical scent, I made a note
of. It was by the then quite unknown young Count Snoilsky, and it was
far from possessing the rare qualities, both of pith and form, that
later distinguished his poetry; but it was a poet's handiwork, a
troubadour song to the Danish woman, meltingly sweet, and the writer of
it was a youth of aristocratic bearing, regular, handsome features, and
smooth brown hair, a regular Adonis. The following year he came again,
drawn by strong cords to Christian Winther's home, loving the old poet
like a son, as Swinburne loved Victor Hugo, sitting at Mistress Julie
Winther's feet in affectionate admiration and semi-adoration, although
she was half a century old and treated him as a mother does a favourite
child.
It was several years, however, before there was any actual friendship
between the Swedish poet and myself. He called upon me one day in my
room in Copenhagen, looking exceedingly handsome in a tight-fitting
waistcoat of blue quilted silk. In the absence of the Swedo-Norwegian
Ambassador, he was Chargé d'Affaires in Copenhagen, after, in his
capacity as diplomatic attaché, having been stationed in various parts
of the world and, amongst others, for some time in Paris. He could have
no warmer admirer of his first songs than myself, and we very
frequently spent our evenings together in Bauer's wine room--talking
over everything in Scandinavian, English, or French literature which
both of us had enthusiastically and critically read. On many points our
verdicts were agreed.
There came a pause in Snoilsky's productive activity; he was depressed.
It was generally said, although it sounded improbable, that he had had
to promise his wife's relations to give up publishing verse, they
regarding it as unfitting the dignity of a noble. In any case, he was
at that time suffering under a marriage that meant to him the
deprivation of the freedom without which it was impossible to write.
Still, he never mentioned these strictly personal matters. But one
evening that we were together, Snoilsky was so overcome by the thought
of his lack of freedom that tears suddenly began to run down his
cheeks. He was almost incapable of controlling himself again, and when
we went home together late at night, poured out a stream of melancholy,
half-despairing remarks.
A good eighteen months later we met again in Stockholm; Snoilsky was
dignified and collected. But when, a few years later, so-called public
opinion in Sweden began to rave against the poet for the passion for
his second wife which so long made him an exile from his country, I
often thought of that evening.
As years passed by, his outward bearing became more and more reserved
and a trifle stiff, but he was the same at heart, and no one who had
known him in the heyday of his youth could cease to love him.