BREAKING-IN
The storm of poverty was now over. The members of the family who had held together for mutual protection could now all go their own way. But the overcrowding and unhappy circumstances of the family continued. However, death weeded them out. Black papers which had contained sweets distributed at the funeral were being continually gummed on the nursery walls. The mother constantly went about in a jacket; all the cousins and aunts had already been used up as sponsors, so that recourse had now to be made to the clerks, ships' captains, and restaurant-keepers.
In spite of all, prosperity seemed gradually to return. Since there was too little space, the family removed to one of the suburbs, and took a six-roomed house in the Norrtullsgata. At the same time John entered the Clara High School at the age of seven. It was a long way for short legs to go four times a day, but his father wished that the children should grow hardy. That was a laudable object, but so much unnecessary expenditure of muscular energy should have been compensated for by nourishing food. However, the household means did not allow of that, and the monotonous exercise of walking and carrying a heavy school-satchel provided no sufficient counterpoise to excessive brain-work. There was, consequently, a loss of moral and physical equilibrium and new struggles resulted. In winter the seven-year-old boy and his brothers are waked up at 6 A.M. in pitch darkness. He has not been thoroughly rested, but still carries the fever of sleep in his limbs. His father, mother, younger brothers and sisters, and the servants are still asleep. He washes himself in cold water, drinks a cup of barley-coffee, eats a French roll, runs over the endings of the Fourth Declension in Rabe's Grammar, repeats a piece of "Joseph sold by his brethren," and memorises the Second Article with its explanation.
Then the books are thrust in the satchel and they start. In the street it is still dark. Every other oil-lantern sways on the rope in the cold wind, and the snow lies deep, not having been yet cleared away before the houses. A little quarrel arises among the brothers about the rate they are to march. Only the bakers' carts and the police are moving. Near the Observatory the snow is so deep that their boots and trousers get wet through. In Kungsbacken Street they meet a baker and buy their breakfast, a French roll, which they usually eat on the way.
In Haymarket Street he parts from his brothers, who go to a private school. When at last he reaches the corner of Berg Street the fatal clock in the Clara Church strikes the hour. Fear lends wings to his feet, his satchel bangs against his back, his temples beat, his brain throbs. As he enters the churchyard gate he sees that the class-rooms are empty; it is too late!
In the boy's case the duty of punctuality took the form of a given promise, a force majeure, a stringent necessity from which nothing could release him. A ship-captain's bill of lading contains a clause to the effect that he binds himself to deliver the goods uninjured by such and such a date "if God wills." If God sends snow or storm, he is released from his bond. But for the boy there are no such conditions of exemption. He has neglected his duty, and will be punished: that is all.
With a slow step he enters the hall. Only the school porter is there, who laughs at him, and writes his name on the blackboard under the heading "Late." A painful hour follows, and then loud cries are heard in the lower school, and the blows of a cane fall thickly. It is the headmaster, who has made an onslaught on the late-comers or takes his exercise on them. John bursts into tears and trembles all over—not from fear of pain but from a feeling of shame to think that he should be fallen upon like an animal doomed to slaughter, or a criminal. Then the door opens. He starts up, but it is only the chamber-maid who comes in to trim the lamp.
"Good-day, John," she says. "You are too late; you are generally so punctual. How is Hanna?"
John tells her that Hanna is well, and that the snow was very deep in the Norrtullsgata.
"Good heavens! You have not come by Norrtullsgata?"
Then the headmaster opens the door and enters.
"Well, you!"
"You must not be angry with John, sir! He lives in Norrtullsgata."
"Silence, Karin!" says the headmaster, "and go.—Well," he continues: "you live in the Norrtullsgata. That is certainly a good way. But still you ought to look out for the time."
Then he turns and goes. John owed it to Karin that he escaped a flogging, and to fate that Hanna had chanced to be Karin's fellow-servant at the headmaster's. Personal influence had saved him from an injustice.
And then the school and the teaching! Has not enough been written about Latin and the cane? Perhaps! In later years he skipped all passages in books which dealt with reminiscences of school life, and avoided all books on that subject. When he grew up his worst nightmare, when he had eaten something indigestible at night or had a specially troublesome day, was to dream that he was back at school.
The relation between pupil and teacher is such, that the former gets as one-sided a view of the latter as a child of its parent. The first teacher John had looked like the ogre in the story of Tom Thumb. He flogged continually, and said he would make the boys crawl on the floor and "beat them to pulp" if they did their exercises badly.
He was not, however, really a bad fellow, and John and his school-fellows presented him with an album when he left Stockholm. Many thought well of him, and considered him a fine character. He ended as a gentleman farmer and the hero of an Ostgothland idyll.
Another was regarded as a monster of malignity. He really seemed to beat the boys because he liked it. He would commence his lesson by saying, "Bring the cane," and then try to find as many as he could who had an ill-prepared lesson. He finally committed suicide in consequence of a scathing newspaper article. Half a year before that, John, then a student, had met him in Uggelvikswald, and felt moved by his old teacher's complaints over the ingratitude of the world. A year previous he had received at Christmas time a box of stones, sent from an old pupil in Australia. But the colleagues of the stern teacher used to speak of him as a good-natured fool at whom they made jests. So many points of view, so many differing judgments! But to this day old boys of the Clara School cannot meet each other without expressing their horror and indignation at his unmercifulness, although they all acknowledge that he was an excellent teacher.
These men of the old school knew perhaps no better. They had themselves been brought up on those lines, and we, who learn to understand everything, are bound also to pardon everything.
This, however, did not prevent the first period of school life from appearing to be a preparation for hell and not for life. The teachers seemed to be there only to torment, not to punish; our school life weighed upon us like an oppressive nightmare day and night; even having learned our lessons well before we left home did not save us. Life seemed a penal institution for crimes committed before we were born, and therefore the boy always went about with a bad conscience.
But he learned some social lessons. The Clara School was a school for the children of the better classes, for the people of the district were well off. The boy wore leather breeches and greased leather boots which smelt of train-oil and blacking. Therefore, those who had velvet jackets did not like sitting near him. He also noticed that the poorly dressed boys got more floggings than the well-dressed ones, and that pretty boys were let off altogether. If he had at that time studied psychology and æsthetics, he would have understood this, but he did not then.
The examination day left a pleasant, unforgettable memory. The old dingy rooms were freshly scoured, the boys wore their best clothes, and the teachers frock-coats with white ties; the cane was put away, all punishments were suspended. It was a day of festival and jubilee, on which one could tread the floor of the torture-chambers without trembling. The change of places in each class, however, which had taken place in the morning, brought with it certain surprises, and those who had been put lower made certain comparisons and observations which did not always redound to the credit of the teacher. The school testimonials were also rather hastily drawn up, as was natural. But the holidays were at hand, and everything else was soon forgotten. At the conclusion, in the lower schoolroom, the teachers received the thanks of the Archbishop, and the pupils were reproved and warned. The presence of the parents, especially the mothers, made the chilly rooms seem warm, and a sigh involuntarily rose in the boys' hearts, "Why cannot it be always like to-day?" To some extent the sigh has been heard, and our present-day youth no longer look upon school as a penal institute, even if they do not recognise much use in the various branches of superfluous learning.
John was certainly not a shining light in the school, but neither was he a mere good-for-nothing. On account of his precocity in learning he had been allowed to enter the school before the regulation age, and therefore he was always the youngest. Although his report justified his promotion into a higher class, he was still kept a year in his present one. This was a severe pull-back in his development; his impatient spirit suffered from having to repeat old lessons for a whole year. He certainly gained much spare time, but his appetite for learning was dulled, and he felt himself neglected. At home and school alike he was the youngest, but only in years; in intelligence he was older than his school-fellows. His father seemed to have noticed his love for learning, and to have thought of letting him become a student. He heard him his lessons, for he himself had had an elementary education. But when the eight-year-old boy once came to him with a Latin exercise, and asked for help, his father was obliged to confess that he did not know Latin. The boy felt his superiority in this point, and it is not improbable that his father was conscious of it also. He removed John's elder brother, who had entered the school at the same time, abruptly from it, because the teacher one day had made the younger, as monitor, hear the elder his lessons. This was stupid on the part of the teacher, and it was wise of his father to prevent it.
His mother was proud of his learning, and boasted of it to her friends. In the family the word "student" was often heard. At the students' congress in the fifties, Stockholm was swarming with white caps.
"Think if you should wear a white cap some day," said his mother.
When the students' concerts took place, they talked about it for days at a time. Acquaintances from Upsala sometimes came to Stockholm and talked of the gay students' life there. A girl who had been in service in Upsala called John "the student."
In the midst of his terribly mysterious school life, in which the boy could discover no essential connection between Latin grammar and real life, a new mysterious factor appeared for a short time and then disappeared again. The nine-year-old daughter of the headmaster came to the French lessons. She was purposely put on the last bench, in order not to be seen, and to look round was held to be a great misdemeanour. Her presence, however, was felt in the class-room. The boy, and probably the whole class, fell in love. The lessons always went well when she was present; their ambition was spurred, and none of them wanted to be humiliated or flogged before her. She was, it is true, ugly, but well dressed. Her gentle voice vibrated among the breaking voices of the boys, and even the teacher had a smile on his severe face when he spoke to her. How beautifully her name sounded when he called it out—one Christian name among all the surnames.
John's love found expression in a silent melancholy. He never spoke to her, and would never have dared to do it. He feared and longed for her. But if anyone had asked him what he wanted from her, he could not have told them. He wanted nothing from her. A kiss? No; in his family there was no kissing. To hold her? No! Still less to possess her. Possess? What should he do with her? He felt that he had a secret. This plagued him so that he suffered under it, and his whole life was overclouded. One day at home he seized a knife and said, "I will cut my throat." His mother thought he was ill. He could not tell her. He was then about nine years old.
Perhaps if there had been as many girls as boys in the school present in all the classes, probably innocent friendships would have been formed, the electricity would have been carried off, the Madonna-worship brought within its proper limits, and wrong ideas of woman would not have followed him and his companions through life.
His father's contemplative turn of mind, his dislike of meeting people after his bankruptcy, the unfriendly verdict of public opinion regarding his originally illegal union with his wife, had induced him to retire to the Norrtullsgata. Here he had rented a house with a large garden, wide-stretching fields, with a pasture, stables, farmyard, and conservatory. He had always liked the occupations of a country life and agriculture. Before this he had possessed a piece of land outside the town, but could not look after it. Now he rented a garden for his own sake and the children's, whose education a little resembled that described in Rousseau's Emile. The house was separated from its neighbours by a long fence. The Norrtullsgata was an avenue lined with trees which as yet had no pavement, and had been but little built upon. The principal traffic consisted of peasants and milk-carts on their way to the hay market. Besides these there were also funerals moving slowly along to the "New Churchyard," sledging parties to Brunnsvik, and young people on their way to Norrbucka or Stallmastergarden.
The garden which surrounded the little one-storied house was very spacious. Long alleys with at least a hundred apple-trees and berry-bearing bushes crossed each other. Here and there were thick bowers of lilac and jasmine, and a huge aged oak still stood in a corner. There was plenty of shade and space, and enough decay to make the place romantic. East of the garden rose a gravel-hill covered with maples, beeches, and ash-trees; on the summit of it stood a temple belonging to the last century. The back of the hill had been dug away in parts in an unsuccessful attempt to take away gravel, but it had picturesque little dells filled with osier and thorn bushes. From this side neither the street nor the house was visible. From here one obtained a view over Bellevue, Cedardalsberg, and Lilljanskog. One saw only single scattered houses in the far distance, but on the other hand numberless gardens and drying-houses for tobacco.
Thus all the year round they enjoyed a country life, to which they had no objection. Now the boy could study at first-hand the beauty and secrets of plant life, and his first spring there was a period of wonderful surprises. When the freshly turned earth lay black under the apple-tree's white and pink canopy, when the tulips blazed in oriental pomp of colour, it seemed to him as he went about in the garden as if he were assisting at a solemnity more even than at the school examination, or in church, the Christmas festival itself not excepted.
But he had also plenty of hard bodily exercise. The boys were sent with ships' scrapers to clear the moss from the trees; they weeded the ground, swept the paths, watered and hoed. In the stable there was a cow with calves; the hay-loft became a swimming school where they sprang from the beams, and they rode the horses to water.
They had lively games on the hill, rolled down blocks of stone, climbed to the tops of the trees, and made expeditions. They explored the woods and bushes in the Haga Park, climbed up young trees in the ruins, caught bats, discovered edible wood-sorrel and ferns, and plundered birds' nests. Soon they laid their bows and arrows aside, discovered gunpowder, and shot little birds on the hills. They came to be somewhat uncivilised. They found school more distasteful and the streets more hateful than ever. Boys' books also helped in this process. Robinson Crusoe formed an epoch in his life; the Discovery of America, the Scalp-Hunter, and others aroused in him a sincere dislike of school-books.
During the long summer holidays their wildness increased so much that their mother could no longer control the unruly boys. As an experiment they were sent at first to the swimming school in Riddarholm, but it was so far that they wasted half the day on the road thither. Finally, their father resolved to send the three eldest to a boarding-school in the country, to spend the rest of the summer there.