My first newspaper articles were printed in _The Fatherland_ and the
_Illustrated Times_; the very first was a notice of Paludan-Müller's
_Fountain of Youth_, in which I had compressed matter for three or four
lectures; a commissioned article on Dante was about the next, but this
was of no value. But it was a great event to see one's name printed in
a newspaper for the first time, and my mother saw it not without
emotion.
About this time Henrik Ibsen's first books fell into my hands and
attracted my attention towards this rising poet, who, among the leading
Danish critics, encountered a reservation of appreciation that scarcely
concealed ill-will. From Norway I procured Ibsen's oldest dramas, which
had appeared there.
Frederik Algreen-Ussing asked me to contribute to a large biographical
dictionary, which he had for a long time been planning and preparing,
and which he had just concluded a contract for with the largest Danish
publishing firm of the time. A young man who hated the August
Association and all its deeds could not fail to feel scruples about
engaging in any collaboration with its founder. But Algreen-Ussing knew
how to vanquish all such scruples, inasmuch as he waived all rights of
censorship, and left it to each author to write as he liked upon his
own responsibility. And he was perfectly loyal to his promise.
Moreover, the question here was one of literature only, and not
politics.
As the Danish authors were to be dealt with in alphabetical order, the
article that had to be set about at once was an account of the only
Danish poet whose name began with _Aa_. Thus it was that Emil Aarestrup
came to be the first Danish poet of the past of whom I chanced to
write. I heard of the existence of a collection of unprinted letters
from Aarestrup to his friend Petersen, the grocer, which were of very
great advantage to my essay. A visit that I paid to the widow of the
poet, on the other hand, led to no result whatever. It was strange to
meet the lady so enthusiastically sung by Aarestrup in his young days,
as a sulky and suspicious old woman without a trace of former beauty,
who declared that she had no letters from her husband, and could not
give me any information about him. It was only a generation later that
his letters to her came into my hands.
In September, 1865, the article on Aarestrup was finished. It was
intended to be quickly followed up by others on the remaining Danish
authors in A. But it was the only one that was written, for
Algreen-Ussing's apparently so well planned undertaking was suddenly
brought to a standstill. The proprietors of the National Liberal papers
declared, as soon as they heard of the plan, that they would not on any
account agree to its being carried out by a man who took up such a
"reactionary" position in Danish politics as Ussing, and in face of
their threat to annihilate the undertaking, the publishers, who were
altogether dependent on the attitude of these papers, did not dare to
defy them. They explained to Algreen-Ussing that they felt obliged to
break their contract with him, but were willing to pay him the
compensation agreed upon beforehand for failure to carry it out. He
fought long to get his project carried through, but his efforts proving
fruitless, he refused, from pride, to accept any indemnity, and was
thus compelled to see with bitterness many years' work and an infinite
amount of trouble completely wasted. Shortly afterwards he succumbed to
an attack of illness.