With the first money I received for my books, I went in the middle of
the Summer of 1868 for a trip to Germany. I acquired some idea of
Berlin, which was then still only the capital of Prussia, and in
population corresponded to the Copenhagen of our day; I spent a few
weeks in Dresden, where I felt very much at home, delighted in the
exquisite art collection and derived no small pleasure from the
theatre, at that time an excellent one. I saw Prague for the first
time, worshipped Rubens in Munich, and, with him specially in my mind,
tried to realise how the greatest painters had regarded Life.
Switzerland added to my store of impressions with grand natural
spectacles. I saw the Alps, and a thunderstorm in the Alps, passed
starlit nights on the Swiss lakes, traced the courses of foaming
mountain streams such as the Tamina at Pfäffers, ascended the Rigi at a
silly forced march, and from the Kulm saw a procession of clouds that
gripped my fancy like the procession of the Vanir in Northern
mythology. Many years afterwards I described it in the Fourth volume of
_Main Currents_. From Interlaken I gazed on the whiteness of the
Jungfrau, but scarcely with greater emotion than once upon a time when
I had gazed at the white cliffs of Möen. On my homeward journey I saw
Heidelberg's lovely ruins, to which Charles V.'s castle, near the
Al-hambra, makes a marvellous pendant, Strassburg's grave Cathedral,
and Goethe's house at Frankfurt.
My travels were not long, but were extraordinarily instructive. I made
acquaintance with people from the most widely different countries, with
youthful frankness engaged in conversation with Germans and Frenchmen,
Englishmen and Americans, Poles and Russians, Dutchmen, Belgians and
Swiss, met them as travelling companions, and listened attentively to
what they narrated. They were, moreover, marvellously frank towards the
young man who, with the curiosity of his age, plied them with questions.
Young Dutchmen, studying music in Dresden, gave me some idea of the
ill-will felt in their country towards the Prussians, an ill-will not
unmingled with contempt. On the other hand, I was astonished, during a
half day's excursion on foot with a few Leipzig students, to learn how
strong was the feeling of the unity of Germany and of the necessity of
the supremacy of Prussia, even in the states which in the 1866 war had
been on the side of Austria. The students felt no grief over having
been defeated, the victors were Germans too; everything was all right
so long as the German Empire became one. These and similar
conversations, which finally brought me to the conclusion that the
whole of the bourgeoisie was satisfied with the dominance of Prussia,
had for result that in 1870 I did not for a moment share the opinion of
the Danes and the French, that the defeated German states would enter
into an alliance with France against Prussia.
English undergraduates told me what philosophical and historical works
were being most read in the universities of Great Britain; Bohemian
students explained to me that in the German philosophical world Kant
had quite outshone Hegel and put him in the background.
The lady members of an American family from Boston treated me quite
maternally; the wife suggested almost at once, in the railway-carriage,
that I should give her when we reached the hotel whatever linen or
clothes I had that wanted repairs; she would be very pleased to mend
them for me. The husband, who was very pious and good-natured, had all
his pockets full of little hymn-books and in his memorandum book a
quantity of newspaper cuttings of devotional verse, which he now and
then read aloud enthusiastically.
But I also met with Americans of quite a different cast. A young
student from Harvard University, who, for that matter, was not in love
with the Germans and declared that the United States could with
difficulty absorb and digest those who were settled there, surprised me
with his view that in the future Bismarck would come to be regarded as
no less a figure than Cavour. The admiration of contemporary educated
thought was then centred around Cavour, whereas Bismarck had hitherto
only encountered passionate aversion outside Germany, and even in
Germany was the object of much hatred. This student roused me into
thinking about Bismarck for myself.
Having lain down, all bathed in perspiration, during the ascent without
a guide of a mountain in Switzerland, I was accosted by a woman, who
feared I had come to some harm. I walked on up with her. She turned out
to be a young peasant woman from Normandy, who lived half-way up the
mountain. She had accompanied her husband to Switzerland, but cursed
her lot, and was always longing to be back in France. When I remarked
that it must be some consolation to live in so lovely a place, she
interrupted me with the most violent protests. A beautiful place! This!
The steep mountain, the bristly fir-trees and pine-trees, the snow on
the top and the lake deep down below--anything uglier it would be hard
to conceive. No fields, no pasture-land, no apple-trees! No indeed! If
she had to mention a country that really was beautiful, it was
Normandy. There was plenty of food for all there, you did not need to
go either up or down hill; there, thank God, it was flat. Did I think
stones beautiful, perhaps? She had not been down in the valley for five
months, and higher than her house she had never been and would never
go; no, thank you, not she! She let her husband fetch what they
required for the house; she herself sat and fretted all through the
Winter; life then was almost more than she could bear.
On one of the steamers on the Lake of Lucerne, I caught, for the first
time, a glimpse of Berthold Auerbach, who was very much admired by my
comrades in Copenhagen and by myself.
At the hotel table at Lucerne I made the acquaintance of a Dutch
captain from Batavia, an acquaintance productive of much pleasure to
me. Before the soup was brought round I had pulled out a letter I had
just received, opened it and begun to read it. A voice by my side said
in French:
"Happy man! You are reading a letter in a woman's writing!" With that
our acquaintance was made.
The captain was a man of forty, who in the course of an active life had
had many and varied experiences and met with prosperity, but was
suffering from a feeling of great void. His society was exceedingly
attractive to me, and he related to me the main events of his life; but
after one day's association only, we were obliged to part. All through
my trip I had a curious feeling of every farewell on the journey being
in all human probability a farewell for life, but had not realised it
painfully before. But when next day the brave captain, whose home was
far away in another quarter of the globe, held his hand out to say
good-bye, I was much affected. "Till we meet again" said the captain.
"And where?"
"Till we meet again all and everywhere, for we live an eternal life;
till we meet again in time and space, or outside time and space!"
I reflected sadly that I should never again see this man, who, the last
twenty-four hours had shown me, was in extraordinary sympathy and
agreement with me.
Separated from those dearest to me, the whole of the journey, for that
matter, was a sort of self-torment to me, even though a profitable one.
Like every other traveller, I had many a lonely hour, and plenty of
time to ponder over my position and vocation in life. I summed up my
impressions in the sentence: "The Powers have designated me the
champion of great ideas against great talents, unfortunately greater
than I."