There was one of the political figures of the time whom I often met
during these years. This was the man most beloved of the previous
generation, whose star had certainly declined since the war, but whose
name was still one to conjure with, Orla Lehmann.
I had made his acquaintance when I was little more than a boy, in a
very curious way.
In the year 1865 I had given a few lectures in C.N. David's house, on
Runeberg, whom I had glorified exceedingly, and as the David and
Lehmann houses, despite the political differences between them, were
closely related one to the other, and intimately connected, Orla
Lehmann had heard these lectures very warmly spoken of. At that time he
had just founded a People's Society as a counterpoise to the supremely
conservative Society of August, and, looking out for lecturers for it,
hit upon the twenty-three-year-old speaker as upon a possibility.
I was then living in a little cupboard of a room on the third floor in
Crystal Street, and over my room was one, in the attic, inhabited by my
seventeen-year-old brother, who had not yet matriculated.
Orla Lehmann, who had been told that the person he was seeking lived
high up, rapidly mounted the four storeys, and knocked, a little out of
breath, at the schoolboy's door. When the door opened, he walked in,
and said, still standing:
"You are Brandes? I am Lehmann." Without heeding the surprise he read
in the young fellow's face, he went on:
"I have come to ask you to give a lecture to the People's Society in
the Casino's big room."
As the addressee looked about to speak, he continued, drowning every
objection, "I know what you are going to say. That you are too young.
Youth is written in your face. But there is no question of seniority
here. I am accustomed to accomplish what I determine upon, and I shall
take no notice of objections. I know that you are able to give
lectures, you have recently given proof of it."
At last there was a minute's pause, permitting the younger one to
interpose:
"But you are making a mistake, it is not I you mean. It must be my
elder brother."
"Oh! very likely. Where does your brother live?"
"Just underneath."
A minute later there was a knock at the third-storey door beneath; it
was opened, and without even stopping to sit down, the visitor began:
"You are Brandes? I am Lehmann. You recently gave some lectures on
Runeberg. Will you kindly repeat one of them before the People's
Society in the Casino's big room?"
"Won't you sit down? I thank you for your offer. But my lecture was not
good enough to be repeated before so large a gathering. I do not know
enough about Runeberg's life, and my voice, moreover, will not carry. I
should not dare, at my age, to speak in so large a room."
"I expected you to reply that you are too young. Your youth is written
in your face. But there is no question of seniority about it. I am
accustomed to carry through anything that I have determined upon, and I
take no notice of objections. What you do not know about Runeberg's
life, you can read up in a literary history. And if you can give a
successful lecture to a private audience, you can give one in a theatre
hall. I am interested in you, I am depending on you, I take your
promise with me. Good-bye!"
This so-called promise became a regular nightmare to me, young and
absolutely untried as I was. It did not even occur to me to work up and
improve my lecture on Runeberg, for the very thought of appearing
before a large audience alarmed me and was utterly intolerable to me.
During the whole of my first stay in Paris I was so tormented by the
consent that Orla Lehmann had extorted from me, that it was a shadow
over my pleasure. I would go happy to bed and wake up in the middle of
the night with the terror of a debtor over something far off, but
surely threatening, upon me, seek in my memory for what it was that was
troubling me, and find that this far-off, threatening thing was my
promise to Lehmann. It was only after my return home that I summoned up
courage to write to him, pleading my youth and unfitness, and begging
to be released from the honourable but distasteful duty. Orla Lehmann,
in the meantime, had in all probability not bestowed a thought on the
whole matter and long since forgotten all about it.
In any case he never referred to the subject again in after years, when
we frequently met.
Among Bröchner's private pupils was a young student. Kristian Möller,
by name, who devoted himself exclusively to philosophy, and of whom
Bröchner was particularly fond. He had an unusually keen intelligence,
inclined to critical and disintegrating research. His abilities were
very promising, inasmuch as it seemed that he might be able to
establish destructive verdicts upon much that was confused, or
self-contradicting, but nevertheless respected; in other respects he
had a strangely infertile brain. He had no sudden inspirations, no
imagination. It could not be expected that he would ever bring forward
any specially new thoughts, only that he would penetrate confusion,
think out errors to the bottom, and, with the years, carry out a
process of thorough cleansing.
But before he had accomplished any independent work his lungs became
affected. It was not at once perceived how serious the affection was,
and Orla Lehmann, who, with the large-mindedness and open-handedness of
a patriot, had taken him up, as well as sundry other young men who
promised well or were merely poor, not only invited him to his weekly
dinner-parties at Frederiksberg, but sent him to Upsala, that he might
study Swedish philosophy there. Möller himself was much inclined to
study Boströmianism and write a criticism of this philosophy, which was
at that time predominant in Sweden.
He ought to have been sent South, or rather to a sanatorium; Orla
Lehmann's Scandinavian sympathies, however, determined his stay in the
North, which proved fatal to his health.
In 1868 he returned to Copenhagen, pale, with hollow cheeks, and a
stern, grave face, that of a marked man, his health thoroughly
undermined. His friends soon learnt, and doubtless he understood
himself, that his condition was hopeless. The quite extraordinary
strength of character with which he submitted, good-temperedly and
without a murmur, to his fate, had for effect that all who knew him
vied with each other in trying to lessen the bitterness of his lot and
at any rate show him how much they cared for him. As he could not go
out, and as he soon grew incapable of connected work, his room became
an afternoon and evening meeting-place for many of his comrades, who
went there to distract him with whatever they could think of to
narrate, or discuss. If you found him alone, it was rarely long before
a second and a third visitor came, and the room filled up.
Orla Lehmann, his patron, was also one of Kristian Möller's frequent
visitors. But whenever he arrived, generally late and the last, the
result was always the same. The students and graduates, who had been
sitting in the room in lively converse, were struck dumb, awed by the
presence of the great man; after the lapse of a few minutes, one would
get up and say good-bye; immediately afterwards the next would remember
that he was engaged elsewhere just at that particular time; a moment
later the third would slip noiselessly out of the room, and it would be
empty.
There was one, however, who, under such circumstances, found it simply
impossible to go. I stayed, even if I had just been thinking of taking
my leave.
Under the autocracy, Orla Lehmann had been the lyrical figure of
Politics; he had voiced the popular hopes and the beauty of the
people's will, much more than the political poets did. They wrote
poetry; his nature was living poetry. The swing of his eloquence, which
so soon grew out of date, was the very swing of youth in men's souls
then. At the time I first knew him, he had long left the period of his
greatness behind him, but he was still a handsome, well set-up man,
and, at 58 years of age, had lost nothing of his intellectual vivacity.
He had lost his teeth and spoke indistinctly, but he was fond of
telling tales and told them well, and his enemies declared that as soon
as a witty thought struck him, he took a cab and drove round from house
to house to relate it.
Passionately patriotic though Orla Lehmann was, he was very far from
falling into the then usual error of overestimating Denmark's
historical exploits and present importance. He related one day that
when he was in Paris, as a young man, speaking under an impression very
frequent among his travelled compatriots, he had, in a conversation
with Sainte-Beuve, reproached the French with knowing so shamefully
little of the Danes. The great critic, as was his habit, laid his head
a little on one side, and with roguish impertinence replied: "_Eh!
bien, faites quelque chose! on parlera de vous_." He approved of the
reply. We younger ones looked upon him as belonging to another period
and living in another plane of ideas, although, being a liberal-minded
man, he was not far removed from us. He was supposed to be a
freethinker, and it was told of him that when his old housekeeper
repeatedly, and with increasing impatience, requested him to come to
table, he would reply, in the presence of students--a rallying allusion
to the lady's Christian disposition:
"Get help from Religion, little Bech, get help from Religion!"--a
remark that in those days would be regarded as wantonly irreligious!
People felt sorry for Lehmann because his politics had so wholly
miscarried, and somewhat sore against him because he wanted to lay all
the blame on the old despotism and the unfavourable circumstances of
the time. Take him altogether, to those who were not intimately
associated with him, and did not share the strong dislike felt against
him in certain circles, he was chiefly a handsome and attractive
antiquity.
Kristian Möller died in 1869, and his death was deeply lamented. He was
one of the few comrades admired by the younger ones alike for his gifts
and his stoicism. With his death my opportunities of frequently meeting
Orla Lehmann ceased. But that the latter had not quite lost sight of
me, he proved by appearing, at the end of February, 1870, at my
examination upon my doctor's thesis at the University. As on this
occasion Lehmann arrived a little late, he was placed on a chair in
front of all the other auditors, and very imposing he looked, in a
mighty fur coat which showed off his stately figure. He listened very
attentively to everything, and several times during the discussion
showed by a short laugh that some parrying reply had amused him.
Six months afterwards he was no more.