Once there was a story that wanted to be told and sent out in the world.
This was very natural, inasmuch as it knew that it was already as good
as finished. Many, through remarkable deeds and strange events, had
helped create it; others had added their straws in it by again and again
relating these things. What it lacked was merely a matter of being
joined together, so that it could travel comfortably through the
country. As yet it was only a confused jumble of stories--a big,
formless cloud of adventures rushing hither and thither like a swarm of
stray bees on a summer's day, not knowing where they will find some one
who can gather them into a hive.
The story that wanted to be told had sprung up in Vermland, and you may
be sure that it circled over many mills and manors, over many parsonages
and many homes of military officers, in the beautiful province, peering
through the windows and begging to be cared for. But it was forced to
make many futile attempts, for everywhere it was turned away. Anything
else was hardly to be expected. People had many things of much more
importance to think of.
Finally the story came to an old place called Mårbacka. It was a little
homestead, with low buildings overshadowed by giant trees. At one time
it had been a parsonage, and it was as if this had set a certain stamp
upon the place which it could not lose. They seemed to have a greater
love for books and reading there than elsewhere, and a certain air of
restfulness and peace always pervaded it. There rushing with duties and
bickering with servants were never met with, nor was hatred or
dissension given house room, either. One who happened to be a guest
there was not allowed to take life too seriously, but had to feel that
his first duty was to be light-hearted and believe that for one and all
who lived on this estate our Lord managed everything for the best.
As I think of the matter now, I apprehend that the story of which I am
speaking must have lingered thereabouts a great many years during its
vain longing to be told. It seems to me as though it must have enwrapped
the place, as a mist shrouds a mountain summit, now and then letting one
of the adventures of which it consisted rain down upon it.
They came in the form of strange ghost stories about the superintendent
of the foundries, who always had black bulls hitched to his wagon when
he drove home at night from a revel. And in his home the Evil One
himself used to sit in the rocker and rock while the wife sat at the
piano and played. They came as true stories from the neighboring
homestead, where crows had persecuted the mistress until she didn't dare
venture outside the door; from the Captain's house, where they were so
poor that everything had to be borrowed; from the little cottage down by
the church, where there lived a lot of young and old girls who had all
fallen in love with the handsome organ builder.
Sometimes the dear adventures came to the homestead in an even more
tangible form. Aged and poverty-stricken army officers would drive up to
the doorstep behind rickety old horses and in rickety carryalls. They
would stop and visit for weeks, and in the evenings, when the toddy had
put courage into them, they would talk of the time when they had danced
in stockingless shoes, so that their feet would look small, of how they
had curled their hair and dyed their mustaches. One of them told how he
had tried to take a pretty young girl back to her sweetheart and how he
had been hunted by wolves on the way; another had been at the Christmas
feast where an angered guest had flung all the hazel-hens at the wall
because some one had made him believe they were crows; a third had seen
the old gentleman who used to sit at a plain board table and play
Beethoven.
But the story could reveal its presence in still another way. In the
attic hung the portrait of a lady with powdered hair, and when any one
walked past it he was reminded that it was a portrait of the beautiful
daughter of the Count, who had loved her brother's young tutor, and had
called to see him once when she was an old gray-haired lady and he an
old married man. In the lumber room were heaped up bundles of documents
containing deeds of purchase and leases signed by the great lady, who
once ruled over seven foundries which had been willed to her by her
lover. If one entered the church, one saw in a dusty little cabinet
under the pulpit the chest filled with infidel manuscripts, which was
not to be opened until the beginning of the new century. And not very
far from the church is the river, at the bottom of which rests a pile of
sacred images that were not allowed to remain in the pulpit and chancel
they once had ornamented.
It must have been because so many legends and traditions hovered around
the farm that one of the children growing up there longed to become a
narrator. It was not one of the boys. They were not at home very much,
for they were away at their schools almost the whole year; so the story
did not get much of a hold upon them. But it was one of the girls--one
who was delicate and could not romp and play like other children, but
found her greatest enjoyment in reading and hearing stories about all
the great and wonderful things which had happened in the world.
However, at the start it was not the girl's intention to write about the
stories and legends surrounding her. She hadn't the remotest idea that a
book could be made of these adventures, which she had so often heard
related that to her they seemed the most commonplace things in the
world. When she tried to write, she chose material from her books, and
with fresh courage she strung together stories of the Sultans in
"Thousand and One Nights," Walter Scott's heroes, and Snorre Sturleson's
"Kings of Romance."
Surely it is needless to state that what she wrote was the least
original and the crudest that has ever been put upon paper. But this
very naturally she herself did not see. She went about at home on the
quiet farm, filling every scrap of paper she could lay her hands on
with verse and prose, with plays and romances. When she wasn't writing,
she sat and waited for success. And success was to consist in this: Some
stranger who was very learned and influential, through some rare freak
of fortune, was to come and discover what she had written and find it
worth printing. After that, all the rest would come of itself.
Meanwhile nothing of the sort happened. And when the girl had passed her
twentieth year, she began to grow impatient. She wondered why success
did not come her way. Perhaps she lacked knowledge. She probably needed
to see a little more of the world than the homestead in Vermland. And
seeing that it would be a long time before she could earn her livelihood
as an author, it was necessary for her to learn something--find some
work in life--that she might have bread while she waited for herself. Or
maybe it was simply this--that the story had lost patience with her.
Perhaps it thought thus: "Since this blind person does not see that
which lies nearest her eyes, let her be forced to go away. Let her tramp
upon gray stone streets; let her live in cramped city rooms with no
other outlook than gray stone walls; let her live among people who hide
everything that is unusual in them and who appear to be all alike. It
may perchance teach her to see that which is waiting outside the gate of
her home--all that lives and moves between the stretch of blue hills
which she has every day before her eyes."
And so, one autumn, when she was two-and-twenty, she travelled up to
Stockholm to begin preparing herself for the vocation of teacher.
The girl soon became absorbed in her work. She wrote no more, but went
in for studies and lectures. It actually looked as though the story
would lose her altogether.
Then something extraordinary happened. This same autumn, after she had
been living a couple of months amidst gray streets and house walls, she
was walking one day up Malmskillnad Street with a bundle of books under
her arm. She had just come from a lecture on the history of literature.
The lecture must have been about Bellman and Runeberg, because she was
thinking of them and of the characters that live in their verses. She
said to herself that Runeberg's jolly warriors and Bellman's
happy-go-lucky roisterers were the very best material a writer could
have to work with. And suddenly this thought flashed upon her: Vermland,
the world in which you have been living, is not less remarkable than
that of Fredman or Fänrik Stål. If you can only learn how to handle it,
you will find that your material is quite as good as theirs.
This is how it happened that she caught her first glimpse of the story.
And the instant she saw it, the ground under her seemed to sway. The
whole long Malmskillnad Street from Hamn Street Hill to the fire-house
rose toward the skies and sank again--rose and sank. She stood still a
long while, until the street had settled itself. She gazed with
astonishment at the passers-by, who walked calmly along, apparently
oblivious to the miracle that had taken place.
At that moment the girl determined that she would write the story of
Vermland's Cavaliers, and never for an instant did she relinquish the
thought of it; but many and long years elapsed before the determination
was carried out.
In the first place she had entered upon a new field of labor, and she
lacked the time needful for the carrying out of a great literary work.
In the second place she had failed utterly in her first attempts to
write the story.
During these years many things were constantly happening which helped
mould it. One morning, on a school holiday, she was sitting at the
breakfast-table with her father, and the two of them talked of old
times. Then he began telling of an acquaintance of his youth, whom he
described as the most fascinating of men. This man brought joy and cheer
with him wherever he went. He could sing; he composed music; he
improvised verse. If he struck up a dance, it was not alone the young
folk who danced, but old men and old women, high and low. If he made a
speech, one had to laugh or cry, whichever he wished. If he drank
himself full, he could play and talk better than when he was sober, and
when he fell in love with a woman, it was impossible for her to resist
him. If he did foolish things, one forgave him; if he was sad at times,
one wanted to do anything and everything to see him glad again. But any
great success in life he had never had, despite his wealth of talents.
He had lived mostly at the foundries in Vermland as private tutor.
Finally he was ordained as a minister. This was the highest that he had
attained.
After this conversation she could see the hero of her story better than
heretofore, and with this a little life and action came into it. One
fine day a name was given to the hero and he was called Gösta Berling.
Whence he got the name she never knew. It was as if he had named
himself.
Another time, she came home to spend the Christmas holidays. One
evening the whole family went off to a Christmas party a good distance
from home in a terrible blizzard. It turned out to be a longer drive
than one would have thought. The horse ploughed his way ahead at a
walking pace. For several hours she sat there in the sleigh in the
blinding snowstorm and thought of the story. When they arrived finally,
she had thought out her first chapter. It was the one about the
Christmas night at the smithy.
What a chapter! It was her first and for many years her only one. It was
first written in verse, for the original plan was that it should be a
romance cycle, like "Fänrik Stål's Sagas." But by degrees this was
changed, and for a time the idea was that it should be written as drama.
Then the Christmas night was worked over to go in as the first act. But
this attempt did not succeed, either; at last she decided to write the
story as a novel. Then the chapter was written in prose. It grew
enormously long, covering forty written pages. The last time it was
rewritten it took up only nine.
After a few more years came a second chapter. It was the story of the
Ball at Borg and of the wolves that hunted Gösta Berling and Anna
Stjernhök.
In the beginning this chapter was not written with the thought that it
could come into the story, but as a sort of chance composition to be
read at a small social gathering. The reading, however, was postponed,
and the novelette was sent to _Dagny_. After a time the story was
returned as unavailable for the magazine. It was in reality not
available anywhere. As yet it was altogether lacking in artistic
smoothness.
Meanwhile the author wondered to what purpose this unluckily born
novelette could be turned. Should she put it into the story? To be sure,
it was an adventure by itself--and ended. It would look odd among the
rest, which were better connected. Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad
idea, she thought then, if all the chapters of the story were like this
one--almost finished adventures? This would be difficult to carry out,
but it might possibly be done. There would doubtless be gaps in the
continuity here and there, but that should give to the book great
strength and variety.
Now two important matters were settled: The story was to be a novel, and
each chapter should be complete in itself. But nothing much had been
gained hereby. She who had been fired with the idea of writing the story
of Vermland's Cavaliers when she was two-and-twenty, at this stage was
nearing the thirties and had not been able to write more than two
chapters. Where had the years gone? She had been graduated from the
Teachers' College and for several years past had been a teacher at
Landskrona. She had become interested in much and had been occupied with
many things, but the story was just as unwritten. A mass of material had
certainly been collected, but why was it so hard for her to write it
down? Why did the inspiration never come to her? Why did the pen glide
so slowly over the paper? She certainly had her dark moments at that
time! She began to think that she never would finish her novel. She was
that servant who buried his talent in the ground and never tried to use
it.
As a matter of fact, all this occurred during the eighties, when stern
Realism was at its height. She admired the great masters of that time,
never thinking that one could use any other style in writing than the
one they employed. For her own part, she liked the Romanticists better,
but Romanticism was dead, and she was hardly the one to think of
reviving its form and expression! Although her brain was filled to
overflowing with stories of ghosts and mad love, of wondrously beautiful
women and adventure-loving cavaliers, she tried to write about it in
calm, realistic prose. She was not very clear-visioned. Another would
have seen that the impossible was impossible.
Once she wrote a couple of chapters in another style. One was a scene
from Svartsjö churchyard; the other was about the old philosopher, Uncle
Eberhard, and his infidel manuscripts. She scribbled them mostly in fun,
with many ohs and ahs in the prose, which made it almost rhythmical. She
perceived that in this vein she could write. There was inspiration in
this--she could feel it. But when the two short chapters were finished,
she laid them aside. They were only written in fun. One could not write
a whole book in that vein.
But now the story had been waiting long enough. It thought, no doubt, as
it did at the time when it sent her out in the world: "Again I must send
this blinded person a great longing which will open her eyes."
The longing came over her in this manner: The homestead where she had
grown up was sold. She journeyed to the home of her childhood to see it
once again before strangers should occupy it.
The evening before she left there, perhaps nevermore to see the dear old
place, she concluded in all meekness and humility to write the book in
her own way and according to her own poor abilities. It was not going to
be any great masterwork, as she had hoped. It might be a book at which
people would laugh, but anyway she would write it--write it for herself,
to save for herself what she could still save of the home--the dear old
stories, the sweet peace of the care-free days, and the beautiful
landscape with the long lakes and the many-hued blue hills.
But for her, who had hoped that she might yet learn to write a book
people would care to read, it seemed as though she had relinquished the
very thing in life she had been most eager to win. It was the hardest
sacrifice she had made thus far.
A few weeks later, she was again at her home in Landskrona, seated at
her writing-desk. She began writing--she didn't know exactly what it was
to be--but she was not going to be afraid of the strong words, the
exclamations, the interrogations, nor would she be afraid to give
herself with all her childishness and all her dreams! After she had come
to this decision, the pen began to move almost by itself. This made her
quite delirious. She was carried away with enthusiasm. Ah, this was
writing! Unfamiliar thoughts and things, or, rather, things she never
had surmised were stored away in her brain, crowded down upon the paper.
The pages were filled with a haste of which she had never dreamed. What
had hitherto required months--no, years--to work out, was now
accomplished in a couple of hours. That evening she wrote the story of
the young countess' tramp over the ice on River Löven, and the flood at
Ekeby.
The following afternoon she wrote the scene in which the gouty ensign,
Rutger von Örneclou, tries to raise himself in bed to dance the Cachuca,
and the evening of the next day appeared the story of the old _Mamsell_
who went off to visit the parsimonious Broby clergyman.
Now she knew for certain that in this style she could write the book;
but she was just as certain that no one would have the patience to read
it through.
However, not many chapters let themselves be written like this--in one
breath. Most of them required long and arduous labor, and there were
only little snatches of time in the afternoons which she could devote to
authorship. When she had been writing about half a year, reckoning from
the day when she had gone in for romanticism with a vengeance, about a
dozen chapters were written. At this rate the book would be finished in
three or four years.
It was in the spring of this year, 1890, that _Idun_ invited prize
competitors to send in short novelettes of about one hundred printed
pages. This was an outlet for a story that wanted to be told and sent
into the world. It must have been the story itself that prompted her
sister to suggest to her that she make use of this opportunity. Here, at
last, was a way of finding out if her story was so hopelessly bad! If it
received the prize, much would be gained; if it didn't, she simply stood
in exactly the same position as before.
She had nothing against the idea, but she had so little faith in herself
that she couldn't come to any conclusion.
Finally, just eight days before the time for submitting manuscripts had
expired, she decided to take from the novel five chapters which were
sufficiently well connected to pass for a novelette, and chance it with
these. But the chapters were far from ready. Three of them were loosely
written, but of the remaining two there was barely an outline. Then the
whole thing must be legibly copied, of course. To add to this, she was
not at home just then, but was visiting her sister and brother-in-law,
who still lived in Vermland. And one who has come to visit with dear
friends for a short time cannot spend the days at a writing-desk. She
wrote therefore at night, sitting up the whole week until four in the
mornings.
Finally there were only twenty-four hours of the precious time left, and
there were still twenty pages to be written.
On this the last day they were invited out. The whole family were going
on a little journey to be gone for the night. Naturally, she had to
accompany the rest. When the party was over and the guests dispersed,
she sat up all night writing in the strange place.
At times she felt very queer. The place where she was visiting was the
very estate on which the wicked Sintram had lived. Fate, in a singular
way, had brought her there on the very night when she must write about
him who sat in the rocker and rocked.
Now and then she looked up from her work and listened in the direction
of the drawing-room for the possible sound of a pair of rockers in
motion. But nothing was heard. When the clock struck six the next
morning, the five chapters were finished.
Along in the forenoon they travelled home on a little freight steamer.
There her sister did up the parcel, sealed it with sealing-wax, which
had been brought from home for this purpose, wrote the address, and sent
off the novelette.
This happened on one of the last days in July. Toward the end of August
_Idun_ contained a notice to the effect that something over twenty
manuscripts had been received by the editors, but that one or two among
them were so confusedly written they could not be counted in.
Then she gave up waiting for results. She knew, of course, which
novelette was so confusedly written that it could not be counted in.
One afternoon in November she received a curious telegram. It contained
simply the words "Hearty Congratulations," and was signed by three of
her college classmates.
For her it was a terribly long wait until dinner-time of the following
day, when the Stockholm papers were distributed. When the paper was in
her hands, she had to search long without finding anything. Finally, on
the last page she found a little notice in fine print which told that
the prize had been awarded to her.
To another it might not have meant so much, perhaps, but for her it
meant that she could devote herself to the calling which all her life
she had longed to follow.
There is but little to add to this: The story that wanted to be told and
sent out in the world was now fairly near its destination. Now it was to
be written, at least, even though it might take a few years more before
it was finished.
She who was writing it had gone up to Stockholm around Christmas time,
after she had received the prize.
The editor of _Idun_ volunteered to print the book as soon as it was
finished.
If she could ever find time to write it!
The evening before she was to return to Landskrona, she spent with her
loyal friend, Baroness Adlersparre[1], to whom she read a few chapters
aloud.
[Footnote 1: Baroness Adlersparre--pen name, Esselde--was a noted
Swedish writer, publisher, and philanthropist, and a contemporary of
Fredrika Bremer.]
"Esselde" listened, as only she could listen, and she became interested.
After the reading she sat silently and pondered. "How long will it be
before all of it is ready?" she asked finally.
"Three or four years."
Then they parted.
The next morning, two hours before she was to leave Stockholm, a message
came from Esselde bidding her come to her before the departure.
The old Baroness was in her most positive and determined mood. "Now you
must take a leave of absence for a year and finish the book. I shall
procure the money."
Fifteen minutes later the girl was on her way to the Principal of the
Teachers' College to ask her assistance in securing a substitute.
At one o'clock she was happily seated in the railway carriage. But now
she was going no farther than Sörmland, where she had good friends who
lived in a charming villa.
And so they--Otto Gumaelius and his wife--gave her the freedom of their
home--freedom to work, and peace, and the best of care for nearly a
year, until the book was finished.
Now, at last, she could write from morning till night. It was the
happiest time of her life.
But when the story was finished at the close of the summer, it looked
queer. It was wild and disordered, and the connecting threads were so
loose that all the parts seemed bent upon following their old
inclination to wander off, each in its own way.
It never became what it should have been. Its misfortune was that it
had been compelled to wait so long to be told. If it was not properly
disciplined and restrained, it was mostly because the author was so
overjoyed in the thought that at last she had been privileged to write
it.
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