There were a great many Scandinavians in Rome; they foregathered at the
various eating-houses and on a Saturday evening at the Scandinavian
Club. Some of them were painters, sculptors and architects, with their
ladies, there were some literary and scientific men and every
description of tourists on longer or shorter visits to the Eternal
City. I held myself aloof from them. Most of them had their good
qualities, but they could not stand the test of any association which
brought them into too close contact with one another, as life in a
small town does. They were divided up into camps or hives, and in every
hive ruled a lady who detested the queen bee of the next one. So it
came about that the Scandinavians lived in perpetual squabbles, could
not bear one another, slandered one another, intrigued against one
another. When men got drunk on the good Roman wine at the _osterie_,
they abused one another and very nearly came to blows. Moreover, they
frequently got drunk, for most of them lost their self-control after a
few glasses. Strangely enough, in the grand surroundings, too much of
the Northern pettiness came to the surface in them. One was continually
tempted to call out to the ladies, in Holberg's words: "Hold your
peace, you good women!" and to the men: "Go away, you rapscallions, and
make up your quarrels!"
There were splendid young fellows among the artists, but the painters,
who were in the majority, readily admitted that technically they could
learn nothing at all in Rome, where they never saw a modern painting;
they said themselves that they ought to be in Paris, but the
authorities in Christiania and Copenhagen were afraid of Paris: thence
all bad and dangerous influences proceeded, and so the painters still
journey to Rome, as their fathers did before them.