It cannot be said that Björnson meets with an unquestioning recognition
in the middle classes. The influence of agitators is always most
strongly felt by those who are a little below them in the social scale,
that is perhaps the reason why Björnson has succeeded in exerting such
a great influence upon the Scandinavian peasantry and upon women.
A few years ago I was travelling on foot through Norway, aided by the
national means of locomotion, the “skyds.” It was slow work, but it
afforded me numberless opportunities of coming in contact with the
sons of the soil. On one occasion I met with a peasant on his way home
from the “saeter,” who was content to be my guide for hours together,
and he gave me some insight into his admiration for Björnson as a
political speaker; another time, while I was waiting for horses in a
“skyds station,” I examined a little book-case which was hanging over
the writing table in the superintendent’s room, and there I found an
almost complete set of Björnson’s works. And once it was the “skyds”
boy himself who asked me if I knew Björnson. All the women teachers
and book-keepers who, with knapsacks on their backs, wander across
the mountains of their native land, carry his name upon their lips
and his books in their hearts. High up at the foot of Skineggen in
Jötunheimen, in the midst of eternal snow, I asked a haggard-looking
old Valdres peasant who kept the tourist’s house there during the six
weeks of summer, which was my nearest way to Björnson, and he answered
with an approving smile addressing me in the second person singular:
“Thou knowest Björnson, thou art an intelligent young lady. Trust me
and I will tell thee all that thou wouldest know.” Whereupon he went
indoors and fetched a large map of the Norwegian mountains, which he
spread out on the short grass between us, and proceeded to point up
and down with his finger into Gudbrandsdal and from thence to the
south till he came to a spot where he stopped short, and said: “Here
is Aulestad, Björnson’s place. Every one who wishes to go there may do
so, thou also.” Then he began a long complicated account of the why
and the wherefore Björnson is beloved by the peasant, said that he was
a “homely man” who went “straight ahead”; and then he told me of the
difficulties that he and his neighbours had encountered in order to
hear him speak, and how they had gone long journeys to attend meetings
in distant places.
Far from there, in comfortable Denmark, where the peasants are short
and round but none the less zealous readers of newspapers and earnest
politicians, I met a certain self-confident Sören Sörensen in a
third-class railway coupé who bestowed on me the honouring epithet of
“intelligent young lady,” because I let him know of my acquaintance
with Björnson. Björnson’s name was a sure letter of recommendation
among the peasantry of the three Scandinavian countries. It is not very
long since he spoke in Jutland in favour of arbitration, universal
disarm-ment and public peace, and with his usual cunning, called upon
his old antagonists, the pastors, to help him in the name of their
religion in the great work of peace. His name had been sufficient to
collect around him no less than thirty thousand listeners, even in
those years of the apathy and despondency of the Danish people. What is
the cause of this immense influence?
I can explain it in two sentences. It is that in him the peasantry
recognise their own flesh and blood, and that he stimulates the middle
class.
The class distinctions of central Europe have simplified themselves
in the north. There is scarcely any social democracy and no great
industrial class, their place is occupied by the peasantry as a
political power and by the provincial middle class as the rulers in
business. Björnson himself was born a peasant, but became a bourgeois
in his early youth. In the next generation the sons of peasants who
became authors were careful to avoid the middle class. But on the
other hand there is annually a by no means inconsiderable percentage
of the peasantry who go over into the middle class because it is
more highly educated. Among these are pastors, gymnasium teachers,
doctors, lawyers, merchants--yes, and rich peasant proprietors as
well. The provincial _bourgeoisie_ of the north represents what is
perhaps the purest type of that decadence of the middle classes
which has declared itself throughout the whole of Europe; it is
totally unlike the Scandinavian peasantry, which possesses a healthy
strength, the reverse of social democracy, and embodies the power
of a rising class. The great European upheaval of 1848 barely
touched this Scandinavian _bourgeoisie_ with its narrow horizon, its
commercial self-satisfaction, its snivelling morality, its mania for
conventionalities, its love of stagnation, its small-minded, starved
nature and hypocrisy against which Ibsen, the revolutionary bourgeois,
has raised the scorpion whip, and Björnson, the peasant’s son, has
preached in his reform writings, preached against it and its middle
class views of life, though at the same time he always looked upon it
as the highest normal condition.
Ibsen took Hedda Gabler, the daughter of an officer whom he describes
with considerable humour, for the profession of commanding officer in
Norway is the favourite resource of the superfluous sons of tradesmen,
and it has of late been proved by the autumn manœuvres that the
Norwegian peasant soldier can do everything, whereas his commanding
officer can accomplish very little. Therefore Ibsen took this daughter
of the upper commercial class with her superior morals, analysed her
and proved her to be what she was--a sexless nonentity who stupidly
sells herself with utter disregard to her future offspring, and who
retains nothing of a woman’s nature beyond a weak, impotent desire.
He takes her and throws her to the dead with an æsthetic formula on
her lips--takes her and permeates her entire being with that exhausted
vitality which leads to suicidal mania. Björnson takes as his heroine
Svava, the daughter of a rich but very dissipated merchant, who falls
in love with a young man while conversing with him on old-maidish and
philanthropic topics, but throws her glove into his face in consequence
of some backstair gossip through which she discovers that instead
of living like herself, he has acted the part of Don Juan after the
example of her father. Björnson contrasts the vulgar frivolity of the
male bourgeois with the vulgar sexlessness of the superior girl, and he
extols the latter as being the only salutary system of morals.
Of course Björnson’s _Gauntlet_ was received on the bourgeois stage
with great pomp, but not so Ibsen’s _Hedda Gabler_. And while the
middle class was unanimous in regarding Ibsen with curiosity mingled
with horror, as the angel of death whose sign is on his door, it
greeted Björnson as a renowned and fashionable physician who is always
able to effect a cure so long as the illness is not positively fatal.
The Scandinavian peasant does not let his hair grow grey over
these discussions, and in general he is well disposed towards the
emancipation of women. He has long been accustomed to see women work
and earn wages like himself, for it is not at all unusual for his
sisters and aunts to provide for themselves by becoming maid-servants.
That the wife should have the right of disposal over her own dowry,
should keep a sharp eye on all gains and expenses and should put in
a word on all affairs of house and home--to that also he is well
accustomed, and the compliant son of the soil knows how to sing a
song in praise of the matriarchy of the peasant mother. Matrimonial
infidelity is to him an abomination, he does not envy the townsman
that for which he personally has little opportunity, and he despises
the attractions of the youthful life of the idle sons of the middle
class, since he seldom transgresses with any save his future wife. And
since he looks at everything from the utilitarian standpoint, it is
natural that he should give his full approval when daughters not only
cease to cost money, but are able to earn it and to lay by a store
of fine dollars. As for their remaining unmarried--well, you can’t
have your cake and eat it--they have got the money, what more do they
want? The peasant does not look upon married life in the æsthetic
manner that is common to the higher classes for whom it possesses a
certain artistic value, to him it is as much of a business as milking,
ploughing, manuring; and if the one is no longer necessary, the other
can be dispensed with too. He has none of the prudery of the townsman
who finds something offensive in a bold glance at nature, yet he too
has his pruderies, and if the townsman evinces moral and æsthetic
scruples against an open discussion or an undiluted song of love,
so likewise the peasant will not read it in print because to him it
represents the commonplace. This is how Björnson, with his doctrine
of perfection, proved to be the right man both for the middle class
and the peasantry; his lectures were acceptable chiefly because they
partook of the nature of a religious discourse or a Sunday sermon, to
which a man listens when he is wearing his best clothes, but which he
has no time to think about during the six remaining days of the week
when he is busy and has to do his work.
No sooner had I reached Gudbrandsdal than I seemed to be standing on
Björnson’s own territory. Everybody knew exactly how far it was to his
place, and the last two hours of the way I was driven by a little girl
who took me past wealthy two-storeyed farm-houses rising from the rich
pasture land, drove me round a beautiful winding road, jumped down,
opened the gate, sprang on to her seat again, and without consulting
me, drove through the entrance and up the drive, stopping at the door
of a large, low building which was Björnson’s country seat.
Outside, under the wide-spreading roof, sat his wife and daughters,
surrounded by guests who were staying in the house. The author was
writing, but he received me. He was sitting at his writing table in
a large low room--a regular peasant’s room. His feet were resting
on a polar bearskin which had been presented to him by a society of
advanced women, and a gigantic vase filled with cut roses was placed
on a pedestal beside him. He informed me that the house had been an
old farm which he had bought and fitted with all the requirements
of modern life. We partook of the midday meal in the old room
that had formerly been the servants’ hall, and where now, instead
of servant and maid, were assembled a large gathering of Danish,
Swedish and Finnish “women’s rights women.” Having dined, we drank
coffee in the drawing-room, which had been the ball-room, but was
now furnished according to Parisian taste with flowers, _chaises
longues_, cream-coloured curtains with red gauze linings, _bibelots_
and oil paintings. Presently an old lady entered; she had an aquiline
profile and yellow waving curls over her ears, she was thick-set and
broad-shouldered with a fresh red complexion and small sparkling eyes,
one could see at once that she was a feminine Björnson. “My mother,”
said he, “she is ninety years old.” And this giant’s mother, herself
a giant, spoke and greeted us in as lively and hearty a manner as a
person of sixty. When we had finished our coffee, Björnson led me
out on to the new balcony which encircled the house. He glanced over
the rising land with its luxuriant pasture. “Our people are being
corrupted,” he said. “Our press and our life are full of lies. I am
writing an article against lies, the lies with which we are being
poisoned.” He made a gesture with his arm across the distant country,
and exclaimed, “Lying must be abolished!”
I was obliged to go, as my little coachman was waiting. We retraced our
steps through the old room with its low ceiling and exquisite Parisian
furniture, and its glass cupboard filled with plate. I drove away
meditating on the strange contrast between this farm house and its
artificial fittings worthy of a town mansion, and I heard Björnson’s
pathetic voice calling to his country, “Lying must be abolished!”