In August, 1863, on a walking tour through North Sjaelland, Julius
Lange introduced me to his other celebrated uncle, Frederik
Paludan-Müller, whose Summer residence was at Fredensborg. In
appearance he was of a very different type from his brother Caspar. The
distinguishing mark of the one was power, of the other, nobility. For
Frederik Paludan-Müller as a poet I cherished the profoundest
admiration. He belonged to the really great figures of Danish
literature, and his works had so fed and formed my inmost nature that I
should scarcely be the same had I not read them. It was unalloyed
happiness to have access to his house and be allowed to enjoy his
company. It was a distinction to be one of the few he vouchsafed to
take notice of and one of the fewer still in whose future he interested
himself. Do the young men of Denmark to-day, I wonder, admire creative
intellects as they were admired by some few of us then? It is in so far
hardly possible, since there is not at the present time any Northern
artist with such a hall-mark of refined delicacy as Frederik
Paludan-Müller possessed.
The young people who came to his house might have wished him a younger,
handsomer wife, and thought his choice, Mistress Charite, as, curiously
enough, she was called, not quite worthy of the poet. Unjustly so,
since he himself was perfectly satisfied with her, and was apparently
wholly absorbed by a union which had had its share in isolating him
from the world. His wife was even more theologically inclined than
himself, and appeared anonymously--without anyone having a suspicion of
the fact--as a religious authoress. Still, she was exceedingly kind to
anyone, regardless of their private opinions, who had found favour in
the poet's eyes.
The dry little old lady was the only one of her sex with whom
Paludan-Müller was intimate. He regarded all other women, however young
and beautiful, as mere works of art. But his delight in them was
charming in him, just because of its freedom from sense. One evening
that he was giving a little banquet in honour of a Swedish lady
painter, named Ribbing, a woman of rare beauty, he asked her to stand
by the side of the bust of the Venus of Milo, that the resemblance,
which really existed between them, might be apparent. His innocent,
enthusiastic delight in the likeness was most winning.