The Sheriff. They brought me strictly up to fear God, to honor the
king.
The King. And love your fellowmen. You are a State individual,
sheriff. And such are Christians nowadays. (_to the Merchant_) And
you?
The Merchant. I have not been able to go to church very much of late
because of my cough. And in the foul air. ...
The King. You go to sleep. But are you a Christian?
The. Merchant. That goes without saying.
The King. (_to the Priest._) And you are naturally one?
The Priest. By the grace of Jesus I hope that I am.
The King. That is the formula, boys, that is the accepted thing to
say. Therefore, you are a Christian community, and it is no fault of
mine if such a community will not deal seriously with what concerns
Christianity. Greet it from me, and say that it must have an eye to the
institution of monarchy.
The Priest. Christianity has nothing to do with such matters. It
searches _the inner man_.
The King. That tone! I know it--it does not search the air in which
the patient lives, but the lungs. There you have it! Nevertheless,
Christianity must have an eye to the monarchy--must pluck the lie from
it--must not follow it to its coronation in the church, as an ape
follows a peacock. I know what I felt in that situation. I had gone
through with a rehearsal the day before--ho, ho! Ask the Christianity
in this land, if it be not time to concern itself with the monarchy.
It should hardly any longer, it seems to me, let the monarchy play the
part of the seductive wanton who turns the thoughts of all citizens to
war--which is much against the message of Christianity--and to class
distinctions, to luxury, to show and vanity. The monarchy is now so
great a lie that it compels the most upright man to share in its
falsehood."
The conversation that follows is in a vein of bitterness on the one
side, and of obtuse smugness on the other; the tragic irony of the
action grows deeper and deeper, until in the end the king, completely
disheartened and despairing, goes into an adjoining room, and dies by
his own hand, to the consternation of the men from whom he has just
parted. They give utterance to a few polite phrases, charitably
accounting for the deed by the easy attribution of insanity to the
king, and the curtain falls.
It may well be imagined that "The King" made a stir in literary and
social circles, and quite noticeably fluttered the dovecotes of
conventionality and conservatism. Such plain speaking and such deadly
earnestness of conviction were indeed far removed from the idyllic
simplicity of the peasant tales and from the poetical reconstructions
of the legendary past. Eight years later, Björnson prefaced a new
edition of this work with a series of reflections upon "Intellectual
Freedom" that constitute one of the most vigorous and remarkable
examples of his serious prose. The central ideas of his political faith
are embodied in the following sentences from this preface:--
"Intellectual Freedom. Why is not attention called over and over again
to the fact that for the great peoples, who have so many compensating
interests, the free commerce of ideas is one condition of life among
many others; while for us, the small peoples, it is absolutely
indispensable. A people numerically large may attain to ways of
thought and enterprise that no political censure can reduce to a
minimum; but under narrower conditions it may easily come about that
the whole people will fall asleep. A powerful propaganda of
enlightenment under the conditions of free speech is for us of the
first and the last importance. When I wrote this piece it was my chief
aim to enlarge the bounds of free thought. I have later made the same
attempt in matters of religion and morals. When my opponents seek to
sum up my character in a few words, they are apt to say: 'He attacks
the throne and the altar.' It seems to me that I have served the
freedom of the spirit, and in the interests of that cause I now beg
leave to reply. (1) _Concerning the attack on Christianity._ It may be
worth while in a country with a state church to recall now and then the
meaning of Christianity. It is not an institution, still less a book,
and least of all it is a house or a seminary. It is the godly life
according to the precepts and example of Jesus. There may be men who
think they are attacking Christianity when they investigate the
historical origin or the morality of some dogma; I do not think so.
Honest investigation can result only in growth. Christianity, with or
without its whole apparatus of dogma, will endure in its essence for
thousands of years after us; there will always be spiritually-minded
people who will be ennobled by it, and some made great. I honor all
the noble. I have friends among the Christians, whom I love, and never
for a moment have I thought of attacking their Christianity. I have no
higher wish than to see them by its help transform certain aspects of
our society into seriousness. (2) _Concerning the attack on
monarchy._ Monarchy is, on the other hand, an institution, here the
circumstances are naturally different. I have attacked monarchy, and I
will attack it. But--and to this 'but' I call the closest attention.
Shortly before the July Revolution, when its first signs were declared,
Chateaubriand was talking with the King, who asked what it all meant.
'It is monarchy that is done with,' replied the royalist, for he was
also a seer. Certainly there have been in France both kingdom and
empire since that day. If there should be no more hereafter, they
still exist in other lands, and will endure for generations after us.
But 'done with' are they none the less; notice was given them by the
French Revolution. It does not concern them all simultaneously; it
fixes terms, different for the different kingdoms, and far removed for
the kingdoms based upon conquest. But the face of civilization is now
turned toward the republic, and every people has reached the first,
second, or third stage of the way. "If a work of the mind is born of
Norse conditions and stands before the ethical judgment seat--let it
have its full action; otherwise it will not produce its full reaction.
If the faith that gave shape to the piece is not the strongest force in
the society that gave it birth, it will evoke an opposing force of
greater strength. Thereby all will gain. But to ignore it, or seek to
crush it--that in a large society may not greatly matter, so rich are
the possibilities of other work taking its place; but in a small
society it may be equivalent to destroying the sight of its only eye."
In the clean-cut phrases and moral earnestness of this _apologia pro
vita sua_, which deserves to be reproduced at greater length, we have
the modern Björnson, no longer poet alone, but poet and prophet at
once, the champion of sincere thinking and worthy living, the Sigurd
Slembe of our own day, happier than his prototype in the consciousness
that the ambition to serve his people has not been; altogether
thwarted, and that his beneficent activity is not made sterile even by
the bitterest opposition.
Only a rapid glance may be taken at the books of the five years
following upon the publication of "The King." The story of "Magnhild,"
planned several years earlier, represents Björnson's return to fiction
after a long dramatic interlude. There are still peasants in this
story, but they are different from the figures of the early tales, and
the atmosphere of the work is modern. It turns upon the question of
the mutual duties of husband and wife, when love no longer unites them.
The solution seems to lie in separation when union has thus become
essentially immoral. "Captain Mansana" is a story of Italian life,
based, so the author assures us, on actual characters and happenings
that had come within the range of his observation during his stay
abroad. Its interest does not lie in any particular problem, but
rather in the delineation of the titular figure, a strong and impetuous
person whose character suggests that of Ferdinand Lassalle, as the
author himself points out to us in a prefatory note. "Dust" is a
pathetic little story having for its central idea what seems like a
pale reflection of the idea of Ibsen's "Ghosts," which had appeared a
few months before. It is the dust of the past that settles upon our
souls, and clogs their free action. The special application of this
thought is to the religious training of children:--
"When you teach children that the life here below is nothing to the
life above, that to be visible is nothing in comparison with being
invisible, that to be a human being is nothing in comparison with being
dead, that is not the way to teach them to view life properly, or to
love life, to gain courage, strength for work, and love of country."
In the play, "Leonarda," and again in the play, "A Glove," the author
recurs to the woman question; in the one case, his theme is the
attitude of society toward the woman of blemished reputation; in the
other, its attitude toward the man who in his relation with women has
violated the moral law. "Leonarda" is a somewhat inconclusive work,
because the issue is not clearly defined, but in "A Glove" (at least in
the acting version of the play, which differs from the book in its
ending) there is no lack of definiteness. This play inexorably demands
the enforcement of the same standard of morality for both sexes, and
declares the unchaste man to be as unfit for honorable marriage as the
unchaste woman. Upon the theme thus presented a long and violent
discussion raged; but if there be such a thing as an immutable moral
law in this matter, it must be that upon which Björnson has so squarely
and uncompromisingly planted his feet. The other remaining work of
this five-year period is the play called "The New System." The new
system in question is a system of railway management, and it is a
wasteful one. But the young engineer who demonstrates this fact has a
hard time in opening the eyes of the public. He succeeds eventually,
but not until he has encountered every sort of contemptible opposition
and hypocritical evasion of the plain truth. The social satire of the
piece is subtle and sharp; what the author really aims at is to
illustrate, by a specific example, the repressive forces that dominate
the life of a small people, and make it almost impossible for any sort
of truth to triumph over prejudice.
Since the production of "A Glove," twenty years ago, eight more plays
have come from Björnson's prolific pen. Of these by far the most
important are the two that are linked by the common title, "Beyond the
Strength." The translation of this title is hopelessly inadequate,
because the original word means much more than strength; it means
talent, faculty, capability, the sum total of a man's endowment for
some particular purpose. The two pieces bearing this name are quite
different in theme, but certain characters appear in both, and both
express the same thought,--the thought that it is vain for men to
strive after the unattainable, for in so doing they lose sight of the
actual possibilities of human life; the thought that much of the best
human energy goes to waste because it is devoted to the pursuit of
ideals that are indeed beyond the strength of man to realize. In the
first of the two plays, this superhuman ideal is religious, it is that
of the enthusiast who accepts literally the teaching that to faith all
things are possible; in the second, the ideal is social, it is that of
the reformer who is deluded to believe that one resounding deed of
terror and self-immolation for the cause of the people will suffice to
overthrow the selfish existing order, and create for the toiling masses
a new heaven upon earth. No deeper tragedies have been conceived by
Björnson than these two, the tragedy of the saintlike Pastor Sang, who
believes that the miracle of his wife's restoration to health has at
last in very truth been wrought by his fervent prayer, and finds only
that the ardor of his faith and hers has brought death instead of life
to them both,--the tragedy of his son Elias, who dies like Samson with
his foes for an equally impossible faith, and by the very violence of
his fanaticism removes the goal of socialist endeavor farther than ever
into the dim future. Björnson has written nothing more profoundly
moving than these plays, with their twofold treatment of essentially
the same theme, nor has he written anything which offers a clearer
revelation of his own rich personality, with its unfailing poetic
vision, its deep tenderness, and its boundless love for all humankind.
The play, "Geography and Love," which came between the two just
described, is an amusing piece, in the vein of light and graceful
comedy, which satirizes the man with a hobby, showing how he
unconsciously comes to neglect his wife and family through absorption
in his work. The author was, in a way, taking genial aim at himself in
this piece, a fact which his son Bjorn, who played the principal part,
did not hesitate to emphasize. "Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg," the next
play, deals with the passions engendered by political controversy, and
made much unpleasant stir in Norwegian society because certain of the
characters and situations were unmistakeably taken from real life.
After these plays came "Laboremus" and "At Storhove," both concerned
with substantially the same theme, which is that of the malign
influence exerted by an evil-minded and reckless woman upon the lives
of others. From a different point of view, we may say that the subject
of these plays is the consecration of the home. This has always been a
favorite theme with Björnson, and he has no clearer title to our
gratitude than that which he has earned by his unfailing insistence
upon the sanctity of family life, its mutual confidences, and its
common joys. Completing the list, we have "Daglannet," another
domestic drama of simple structure, and "When the New Wine Blooms," a
study of modernity as exemplified in the young woman of to-day, of the
estrangement that too often creeps into married life, and of the
stirrings that prompt men of middle age to seek to renew the joys of
youth.
During the years that have passed since the publication of "Dust,"
Björnson has produced four volumes of fiction,--his two great novels, a
third novel of less didactic mission, and a second collection of short
stories. The first of the novels, "Flags Are Flying in City and
Harbor," saw the light during the year following the publication of "A
Glove," and the teaching of that play is again enforced with
uncompromising logic in the development of the story. The work has two
other main themes, and these are heredity and education. So much
didactic matter as this is a heavy burden for any novel to carry, and a
lesser man than Björnson would have found the task a hopeless one.
That he should have succeeded even in making a fairly readable book out
of this material would have been remarkable, and it is a pronounced
artistic triumph that the book should prove of such absorbing interest.
For absorbingly interesting it is, to any reader who is willing that a
novel should provide something more than entertainment; and who is not
afraid of a work of fiction that compels him to think as he reads. The
principal character is a man descended from a line of ancestors whose
lives have been wild and lawless, and who have wallowed in almost every
form of brutality and vice. The four preceding generations of the race
are depicted for us in a series of brief but masterly
characterizations, in which every stroke tells, and we witness the
gradual weakening of the family stock. But with the generation just
preceding the main action of the novel, there has been introduced a
vigorous strain of peasant blood, and the process of regeneration has
begun. It is this process that goes on before our eyes. It does not
become a completed process, but the prospect is bright for the future,
and the flags that fly over town and harbor in the closing chapter have
a symbolical significance, for they announce a victory of spirit over
sense, not only in the cases of certain among the individual
participants in the action, but also in the case of the whole community
to which they belong. So much for the book as a study in heredity. As
an educational tract, it has the conspicuous virtue of remaining in
close touch with life while embodying the spirit of modern scientific
pedagogy. The hero of the book,--the last descendant of a race
struggling for moral and physical rehabilitation,--throws himself into
the work of education with an energy equal to that which his forbears
had turned into various perverse channels. He organizes a school, more
than half of the book, in fact, is about this school and its work,--and
seeks to introduce a system of training which shall shape the whole
character of the child, a school in which truth and clean living shall
be inculcated with thoroughness and absolute sincerity, a school which
shall be the microcosm of the world outside, or rather of what that
world ought to be. Björnson's interest in education has been
life-long; for many years it had gone astray in a sort of Grundtvigian
fog, but at the time when this book came to be written, it had worked
its way out into the clear light of reason. If the future should cease
to care for this work as a piece of literature, it will still look back
to it as to a sort of nineteenth century "Emile," and take renewed
heart from its inspiring message.
"In God's Ways," the second of the two great novels, is a work of which
it is difficult to speak in terms of measured praise. With its
delicate and vital delineations of character, its rich sympathy and
depth of tragic pathos, its plea for the sacredness of human life, and
its protest against the religious and social prejudice by which life is
so often misshapen, this book is an epitome of all the ideas and
feelings that have gone to the making of the author's personality, and
have received such manifold expression in his works. It is a simple
story, concerned mainly with four people, in no way outwardly
conspicuous, yet here united by the poet's art into a relationship from
which issue some of the deepest of social questions, and which enforces
in the most appealing terms the fundamental teaching of all the work of
his mature years. First of all, we have the boyhood of the two friends
who are afterwards to grow apart in their sympathies; the one alert of
mind, imaginative, open to every intellectual influence, also impetuous
and hot-blooded; the other shy and intellectually stolid, but good to
the very core, and moved by the strongest of altruistic impulses. In
accordance with their respective characters, the first of these youths
becomes a physician, and the other a clergyman. Then we have the
sister of the physician, who becomes the wife of the clergyman, a
noble, proud, self-centred nature, finely strung to the inmost fibre of
her being. Then we have a woman of the other sort, clinging,
abnormally sensitive, a child when the years of childhood are over, and
made the victim of a shocking child-marriage to a crippled old man. She
it is whom the physician loves, and persuades to a legal dissolution of
her immoral union. After some years, he makes her his wife, and their
happiness would be complete were it not for the social and religious
prejudice aroused. The clergyman, whom years of service in the state
church have hardened into bigotry, is officially, as it were, compelled
to condemn the friend of his boyhood, and even the sister, for a time
grown untrue to her own generous nature, shares in the estrangement.
In vain does the physician seek to shelter his wife from the chill of
her environment. She droops, pines away, and finally dies, gracious,
lovable, and even forgiving to the last. Then the death angel comes
close to the clergyman and his wife, hovering over their only child,
and at last the barrier of formalism and prejudice and religious
bigotry is swept away from their minds. Their natural sympathies, long
repressed, resume full sway, and they realize how deeply they, have
sinned toward the dead woman. The sister seeks a reconciliation with
her brother, but he repulses her, and gives her his wife's private
diary to read. In this _journal intime_ she finds the full revelation
of the gentle spirit that has been done to death, and she feels that
the very salvation of her life and soul depend upon winning her
brother's forgiveness. The closing chapter, in which the final
reconciliation occurs, is one of the most wonderful in all fiction; its
pathos is of the deepest and the most moving, and he must be callous of
soul, indeed, who can read it with dry eyes.
If we were to search the whole of Björnson's writings for the single
passage which should most completely typify his message to his
fellowmen,--not Norwegians alone, but all mankind,--the choice would
have to rest upon the words spoken from the pulpit by the clergyman of
this novel, on the Sunday following the certainty of his child's
recovery.
"To-day a man spoke from the pulpit of the church about what he had
learned.
"Namely, about what first concerns us all.
"One forgets it in his strenuous endeavor, a second in his zeal for
conflict, a third in his backward vision, a fourth in the conceit of
his own wisdom, a fifth in his daily routine, and we have all learned
it more or less ill. For should I ask you who hear me now, you would
all reply thoughtlessly, and just because I ask you from this place,
'Faith is first.'
"No, in very truth, it is not. Watch over your child, as it struggles
for breath on the outermost verge of life, or see your wife follow the
child to that outermost verge, beside herself for anxiety and
sleeplessness,--then love will teach you that _life comes first_. And
never from this day on will I seek God or God's will in any form of
words, in any sacrament, or in any book or any place, as if He were
first and foremost to be found there; no, life is first and
foremost--life as we win it from the depths of despair, in the victory
of the light, in the grace of self-devotion, in our intercourse with
living human kind. God's supreme word to us is life, our highest
worship of Him is love for the living. This lesson, self-evident as it
is, was needed by me more than by most others. This it is that in
various ways and upon many grounds I have hitherto rejected,--and of
late most of all. But never more shall words be the highest for me,
nor symbols, but the eternal revelation of life. Never more will I
freeze fast in doctrine, but let the warmth of life melt my will.
Never will I condemn men by the dogmas of old time justice, unless they
fit with our own time's gospel of love. Never, for God's sake! And
this because I believe in Him, the God of Life, and His never ending
revelation in life itself."
Here is a gospel, indeed, one that needs no church for its
promulgation, and no ceremonial for the enhancement of its
impressiveness. It is a gospel, moreover, that is based upon no
foundation of precarious logic, but finds its premises in the healthy
instincts of the natural man. It is no small thing to have thus found
the way, and to have helped others likewise to find the way, out of the
mists of superstition, through the valleys of doubt and despondency,
athwart the thickets of prejudice and bigotry with all their furtive
foemen, up to these sunlit heights of serenity.
"Mary" is less explicit in its teaching than the two great novels just
summarized, but what it misses in didacticism it more than gains in
art. The radiant creature who gives her name to the book is one of
Björnson's most exquisite figures. She is the very embodiment of
youthful womanhood, filled with the joy of life, and bringing sunshine
wherever she goes. Yet this temperament leads to her undoing, or what
would be the undoing of any woman less splendid in character. But the
strength that impels her to the misstep that comes so near to having
tragic consequences is also the strength that saves her when chastened
by suffering. In her the author "gives us the common stuff of life,"
says an English critic, "gives it us simple and direct. There is
nothing here of Ibsen's pathology. We are in the sun. Her most hideous
blunder cannot undo a woman's soul. Björnson knows that the deed is
nothing at all. It is the soul behind the deed that he sees. Not
everything that cometh out of a man defileth a man. At all events, so
it is here: triumph and joy built upon an act that--as the Philistines
would say--has defiled forever." As a triumph of sheer creation, this
figure is hardly overmatched anywhere in the author's portrait gallery
of women.
If Björnson's essential teaching may be found in a single page, as has
above been suggested, his personality evades all such summarizing. In
the present essay, he has been considered as a writer merely,--poet,
dramatist, novelist,--but the man is vastly more than that. His other
activities have been hinted at, indeed, but nothing adequate has been
said about them. The director of three theatres, the editor of three
newspapers and the contributor to many others, the promoter of schools
and patriotic organizations, the participant in many political
campaigns, the lay preacher of private and public morals, the chosen
orator of his nation for all great occasions,--these are some of the
characters in which we must view him to form anything like a complete
conception of his many-sided individuality. Take the matter of oratory
alone, and it is perhaps true that he has influenced as many people by
the living word as he has by the printed page. He has addressed
hundreds of audiences in the three Scandinavian countries and in
Finland, he has spoken to more than twenty thousand at a time, and his
winged speech has gone straight home to his hearers. All who ever
heard him will agree that his oratory was of the most persuasive and
vital impressiveness. Jaeger attempts to describe it in the following
words:--
"It is eloquence of a very distinctive type; its most characteristic
quality is its wealth of color; it finds expression for every mood,
from the lightest to the most serious, from the most vigorous to the
most delicate and tender. Now his words ring like the voice of doom,
filled with thunder and lightning, now they become soft and persuasive
with smiling mien. With a single cadence, or a play of the facial
muscles, or a slight gesture, he can portray a person, a situation, or
an object, so that it appears living in the sight of his hearers. And
what the word alone cannot do, is accomplished in the most brilliant
manner by the virtuosity of his delivery. He does not speak his words,
he presents them; they take bodily form and seem alive."
In his more intimate relationships, on the other hand, in face to face
conversation or in the home circle, the man takes on a quite different
aspect; the prophet has become the friend, the impassioned preacher has
become the genial story teller, and shares the gladsome or mirthful
mood of the hour. Such a personality as this may be analyzed; it
defies any concise synthesis. One resorts to figures of speech, and
they were abundantly resorted to by those who paid him the tribute of
their admiration and love upon the occasion of his seventieth
anniversary. Let us take an instance at random from one of these
tributes.
"The cataract that roars down to the free foaming sea. The mountain
with its snowclad peaks towering up into the immensity of the starry
heavens. The rustling of the woodland above the blossom-spangled and
smiling meadows, the steep uptowering, the widely growing, and the
joyously smiling. At once the soft melody that stirs the heart and the
strong wind that sweeps over the Northern lands."
This concourse of metaphors gives some slight idea of the way in which
Björnson's personality affected those who came into contact with it.
The description may be supplemented by a few bits of anecdote and
reminiscence. The composer Grieg contributes the following incident of
the old days in Norway:--
"It was Christmas eve of 1868 at the Björnsons in Christiania. They
lived then in the Rosenkrantzgade. My wife and I were, as far as I can
remember, the only guests. The children were very boisterous in their
glee. In the middle of the floor an immense Christmas tree was
enthroned and brightly lighted. All the servant-folk came in, and
Björnson spoke, beautifully and warmly, as he well knows how to do.
'Now you shall play a hymn, Grieg,' he said, and although I did not
quite like the notion of doing organist's work, I naturally complied
without a murmur. It was one of Grundtvig's hymns in 32--thirty-two
verses. I resigned myself to my fate with stoicism. At the beginning
I kept myself awake, but the endless repetitions had a soporific
effect. Little by little I became as stupid as a medium. When we had
at last got through with all the verses, Björnson said: 'Isn't that
fine. Now I will read it for you!' And so we got all thirty-two
verses once more. I was completely overawed."
When the poet purchased his country estate which was his home from the
late seventies to the end of his life, his coming was looked forward to
with mingled feelings by the good country folk of the neighborhood.
Kristofer Janson thus tells the story of his arrival:
"His coming was anticipated with a certain anxiety and apprehension,
for was he not a 'horrid radical'? The dean in particular thought that
he might be a menace to the safe spiritual slumber of the village. As
the dean one day was driving through the village in his carriole, just
where the road turns sharply by the bridge below Aulestad, he met
another carriole which was rapidly driving that way and in it a man
who, without respect for the clerical vehicle, shouted with all the
strength of his lungs: 'Half the road!' The dean turned aside, saying
with a sigh: 'Has Björnson come to the Gausdal at last?' "It was indeed
so, and he showed his colors at the start. The same dean and Björnson
became the best of friends afterwards, and found much sport in
interchanging genial jests whenever they met."
Frits Thaulow, the painter, thus wrote to Björnson reminding him of a
festive gathering of students:
"The manager came in and announced with a loud voice that it was past
twelve. Then you sprang up.
"'Bring champagne! Now I will speak of what comes after twelve
o'clock! of all that lies beyond the respectable hour for retiring!
For the hour when fancy awakens and fills us with longings for the
world of wonderland; then the painter sees only the dim outline in the
moonlight, then the musician hears the silence, then the poet after his
thoughtful day feels sprouting the first shoots of the next. After
twelve freedom begins. The day's tumult is stilled, and the voice
within becomes audible.'
"Thus you spoke, and 'after twelve' became a watchword with us.
"Many a spark has been kindled in your soul by the quiet evening time.
But later in life, when you become a chieftain in the battle, broad
daylight also made its demands upon you. Like the sun you shone upon
us and made the best that was in us to grow, but I shall always keep a
deep artistic affection for what comes 'after twelve.'"
Henrik Cavling tells the following story of the poet in Paris:
"It was one of Björnson's peculiarities to go out as a rule without any
money in his pocket. He neither owned a purse nor knew the French
coins. His personal expenditures were restricted to the books he
bought, and now and then a theatre ticket. One day he carne excitedly
into the sitting-room, and asked:
"'Who took my five franc piece?' It was a five franc piece that he had
got somewhere or other and had stuck in his pocket to buy a theatre
ticket with. It turned out that the maid had found it and given it to
Fru Björnson. For it seemed quite unthinkable to her that the master
should have any money to take out with him.
"This complete indifference of Björnson to small matters sometimes
proved annoying. In this connection I may tell of a little trip he
once took with Jonas Lie.
"The two poets, who did not live far apart, had long counted with
pleasure upon a trip to Père Lachaise, where they wished to visit
Alfred de Musset's grave. At last the day came, and with big soft hats
on their heads, and engaged earnestly in conversation, they drove away
through Paris.
"When they came to Père Lachaise, and wanted to enter the cemetery, the
driver stopped them and asked for his pay. Then it appeared that
neither had any money, which they smilingly explained, and asked him in
bad French to wait and drive them home again. But the two gentlemen
with the big soft hats had not inspired the driver with any marked
degree of confidence. He made a scene, and attracted a great crowd of
the boys, loafers, and well-dressed Frenchmen who always collect on
critical occasions. The end of the affair was that the poets had to
get into their cab again and drive all the long way back without having
had a glimpse of the grave. When they reached Lie's lodgings, Lie went
in to get some money, while Björnson sat in the cab as a hostage.
Nevertheless, both poets maintained that they had had a pleasant
expedition. A Norwegian question, which had accidentally come up
between them, had made them forget all about Alfred de Musset."
Finally, a story may be given that is told by Björnson himself.
"I had a pair of old boots that I wanted to give to a beggar. But just
as I was going to give them to him, I began to wonder whether Karoline
had not some use for them, since she usually gave such things to
beggars. So I took the boots in my hand, and went downstairs to ask
her, but on the way I got a little worked up because I did not quite
dare to give them to the beggar myself. And the further I went down
the steps, the more wrathful I got, until I stood over her. And then I
was so angry that I had to bluster at her as if she had done me a
grievous wrong. But she could not understand a word of what I said,
and looked at me with such amazement, that I could not keep from
bursting into laughter."
From his early years, Björnson kept in touch with the modern
intellectual movement by mingling with the people of other lands than
his own. Besides his visits to Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, he made
many lengthy sojourns in the chief continental centres of civilization,
in Munich, Rome, and Paris. The longest of his foreign journeys was
that which brought him to the United States in the winter of 1880-81,
for the purpose of addressing his fellow countrymen in the Northwest.
His home for the last thirty years and more has been his estate of
Aulestad in the Gausdal, a region of Southern Norway. Here he has been
a model farmer, and here, surrounded by his family,--wife, children,
and grandchildren,--his patriarchal presence has given dignity to the
household, and united its members in a common bond of love. Hither
have come streams of guests, friends old and new, to enjoy his generous
hospitality. There has been provision for all, both bed and board, and
the heartiest of welcomes from the host. And the stranger from abroad
has been greeted, as like as not, by the sight of his own country's
flag streaming from a staff before the house, and foreshadowing the
personal greeting that awaited him upon the threshold.
Björnson died in Paris (where he had been spending the winter, as was
his custom for many years past), April 26, 1910. He had been ill for
several months, and only an extraordinarily robust constitution enabled
him to make a partial recovery from the crisis of the preceding
February, when his death had been hourly expected. The news of his
death occasioned demonstrations of grief not only in his own country,
but also throughout the civilized world. Every honor that a nation can
bestow upon its illustrious dead was decreed him by King and Storthing;
a warship was despatched to bear his remains to Christiania, and the
pomp and circumstance of a state funeral acclaimed the sense of the
nation's loss.