I.

The first thing that impressed me was Hamburg, and by that I mean the

European views prevalent there. At that time, doubtless mainly for

national reasons, Denmark hated Hamburg. Different Danish authors had

recently written about the town, and in as depreciatory a strain as

they could. The description of one amounted to an assertion that in

Hamburg people only talked of two things, money and women; that of

another commenced: "Of all the places I have ever seen in my life,

Hamburg is the most hideous."

The situation of the town could not be compared with that of

Copenhagen, but the Alster quarter was attractive, the architecture and

the street life not uninteresting. What decided me, however, was not

the externals of the town, but the spirit I noticed pervading the

conversation. The idea underlying things was that a young man must

first and foremost learn to keep himself well and comfortably; if he

could not do this in Hamburg, then as soon as possible he must set off

to some place across the sea, to Rio, or New York, to the Argentine, or

Cape Colony, and there make his way and earn a fortune. The sons of the

families I was invited to visit, or heard talked about, had long been

away; in the houses I went to, the head of the family had seen other

parts of the world. The contrast with Copenhagen was obvious; there the

young sons of the middle classes were a burden on their families

sometimes until they were thirty, had no enterprise, no money of their

own to dispose of, were often glued, as it were, to the one town, where

there was no promotion to look forward to and no wide prospect of any

sort.

It was a long time since I had been so much struck by anything as by an

expression that a Hamburg lady, who had been to Copenhagen and had

stayed there some time, used about the young Danish men, namely, that

they had _l'apparence chétive_. I tried to persuade her that life in

Copenhagen had only accidentally appeared so wretched to her; but I did

not convince her in the least. She demonstrated to me, by numerous

examples, to what an extent enterprise was lacking in Denmark, and I

was obliged to restrict myself to explaining that the tremendous

pressure of political pettiness and weakness had brought a general

slackness with it, without people feeling or suspecting it, and had

robbed nearly every one of daring and success. The result of the

conversation was that Denmark was shown to me in a fresh light.

A Hamburg merchant who had lived for a long time in Mexico invited me

to dinner, and at his house I had the same impression of apparent

happiness, comfort, enterprise and wide outlook, in contrast to the

cares and the narrowness at home, where only the few had travelled far

or collected material which might by comparison offer new points of

view and give one a comprehensive experience of life. My psychological

education in Danish literature, with its idolising of "thoroughness"

had imprinted on my mind that whoever thoroughly understood how to

observe a man, woman and child in a Copenhagen backyard had quite

sufficient material whence to brew a knowledge of human nature. It now

dawned upon me that comparative observation of a Mexican and a North

German family, together with their opinions and prejudices, might

nevertheless considerably advance one's knowledge of human nature,

should such comparisons constantly obtrude themselves upon one.

The same man let fall an observation which set me thinking. When the

conversation turned upon the strained relations between France and

Prussia since the battle of Königgratz, and I expressed myself

confident that, in the event of a war, France would be victorious, as

she generally was victorious everywhere, he expressed well-supported

doubts. Prussia was a comparatively young state, extremely well

organised and carefully prepared for war; antiquated routine held great

sway in the French army; the Emperor himself, the esteem in which he

was held, and his management were on the down grade. These were words

that I had never heard in Denmark. The possibility of France being

defeated in a war with Prussia was not even entertained there. This

merchant showed me an original photograph of the execution of the

Emperor Maximilian, taken on the spot a moment before the word to fire

was given, and a second taken immediately afterwards. The calm bearing

of the Emperor and the two generals compelled admiration. This was the

first time I had seen photography taken into the service of history.

In the Hamburg Zoological Gardens I was fascinated by the aquarium,

with its multitudes of aquatic animals and fish. There, for the first

time in my life, I saw an elephant, and did not tire of gazing at the

mighty beast. I was struck by the strange caprice with which the great

Being we call Nature goes to work, or, more correctly, by the contrast

between the human point of view and Nature's mode of operations. To us,

the elephant's trunk was burlesque, its walk risibly clumsy; the eagle

and the kite seemed to us, as they sat, to have a severe appearance and

a haughty glance; the apes, picking lice from one another and eating

the vermin, were, to our eyes, contemptible and ridiculous at the same

time; but Nature took everything equally seriously, neither sought nor

avoided beauty, and to her one being was not more central than another.

That must be deemed Nature's central point which is equidistant from

the lowest and from the highest being; it was not impossible, for

instance, that the _harefish_, a great, thick, odd-looking creature,

was the real centre of terrestrial existence, in the same way as our

celestial sphere has its centre, through which a line reaches the pole

of the zodiac in the constellation of the Dragon. And I smiled as I

thought of R. Nielsen and his pupils always speaking as if they stood

on the most intimate footing with the "central point" of existence, and

pouring contempt on others who, it was to be supposed, could not

approach it.

I was very unfavourably impressed in Hamburg by German drama and German

dramatic art.

At the town theatre, Hebbel's _Judith_ was being performed, with Clara

Ziegler in the leading part. At that time this lady enjoyed a

considerable reputation in Germany, and was, too, a tall,

splendid-looking female, with a powerful voice, a good mimic, and all

the rest of it, but a mere word-machine. The acting showed up the want

of taste in the piece. Holofernes weltered knee-deep in gore and

bragged incessantly; Judith fell in love with his "virility," and when

he had made her "the guardian of his slumbers" murdered him, from a

long disremembered loyalty to the God of Israel.

At the Thalia Theatre, Raupach's _The School of Life_ was being

produced, a lot of silly stuff, the theme of it, for that matter,

allied to the one dealt with later by Drachmann in _Once upon a Time_.

A Princess is hard-hearted and capricious. To punish her, the King, her

father, shuts a man into her bedroom, makes a feigned accusation

against her, and actually drives her out of the castle. She becomes a

waiting-maid, and passes through various stages of civil life. The King

of Navarra, whose suit she had haughtily rejected, disguised as a

goldsmith, marries her, then arrays himself in silks and velvets, to

tempt her to infidelity. When she refuses, he allows every possible

injustice to be heaped upon her, to try her, makes her believe that the

King, on a false accusation, has had her husband's eyes put out, and

then himself goes about with a bandage before his eyes, and lets her

beg. She believes everything and agrees to everything, until at last,

arrived at honour and glory, she learns that it has all been only

play-acting, trial, and education.

This nonsense was exactly on a par with taste in Germany at the time,

which was undeniably considerably below the level of that in France and

Denmark, and it was acted by a group of actors, some very competent, at

the chief theatre of Hamburg. Slowly though business life pulsated in

Denmark, we were superior to Germany in artistic perception.

The low stage of artistic development at which Hamburg had then arrived

could not, however, efface the impression its superiority over

Copenhagen in other respects had made upon me. Take it all together, my

few days in Hamburg were well spent.