XXV.
His death left a great void in his home. His old father said to me one day:
"Strange how one ends as one begins! I have written no verses since my early youth, and now I have written a poem on my grief for Ludvig. I will read it to you."
There was an Art and Industrial Exhibition in Stockholm, that Summer, which C.N. David was anxious to see. As he did not care to go alone, he took me in his son's place. It was my first journey to a foreign capital, and as such both enjoyable and profitable. I no longer, it is true, had the same intense boyish impressionability as when I was in Sweden for the first time, seven years before. The most trifling thing then had been an experience. In Göteborg I had stayed with a friend of my mother's, whose twelve-year-old daughter, Bluma Alida, a wondrously charming little maiden, had jokingly been destined by the two mothers for my bride from the child's very birth. And at that time I had assimilated every impression of people or scenery with a voracious appetite which rendered these impressions ineffaceable all my life long. That Summer month, my fancy had transformed every meeting with a young girl into an adventure and fixed every landscape on my mental retina with an affection such as the landscape painter generally only feels for a place where he is specially at home. Then I had shared for a whole month Göteborg family and social life. Now I was merely travelling as a tourist, and as the companion of a highly respected old man.
I was less entranced at Stockholm by the Industrial Exhibition than by the National Museum and the Royal Theatre, where the lovely Hyasser captivated me by her beauty and the keen energy of her acting. I became exceedingly fond of Stockholm, this most beautifully situated of the Northern capitals, and saw, with reverence, the places associated with the name of Bellman. I also accompanied my old friend to Ulriksdal, where the Swedish Queen Dowager expected him in audience. More than an hour before we reached the Castle he threw away his cigar.
"I am an old courtier," he remarked. He had always been intimately associated with the Danish Royal family; for a long time the Crown Prince used to go regularly to his flat in Queen's Crossway Street, to be instructed by him in political economy. He was consequently used to Court ceremonial.
Beautiful were those Summer days, lovely the light nights in Stockholm.
One recollection from these weeks is associated with a night when the sky was overcast. I had wandered round the town, before retiring to rest, and somewhere, in a large square, slipping my hand in my pocket, and feeling it full of bits of paper, could not remember how they got there, and threw them away. When I was nearly back at the hotel it flashed upon me that it had been small Swedish notes--all the money that I had changed for my stay in Stockholm--that I had been carrying loose in my pocket and had so thoughtlessly thrown away. With a great deal of trouble, I found the square again, but of course not a sign of the riches that in unpardonable forgetfulness I had scattered to the winds. I was obliged to borrow six Rigsdaler (a sum of a little over thirteen shillings) from my old protector. That my requirements were modest is proved by the fact that this sum sufficed.
The Danish Ambassador was absent from Stockholm just at this time, and the Chargé d'Affaires at the Legation had to receive the Danish ex- Minister in his stead. He was very attentive to us, and took the travellers everywhere where C.N. David wished his arrival to be made known. He himself, however, was a most unfortunate specimen of Danish diplomacy, a man disintegrated by hideous debauchery, of coarse conversation, and disposition so brutal that he kicked little children aside with his foot when they got in front of him in the street. Abnormities of too great irregularity brought about, not long afterwards, his dismissal and his banishment to a little Danish island.
This man gave a large dinner-party in honour of the Danish ex-Minister, to which, amongst others, all the Swedish and Norwegian Ministers in Stockholm were invited. It was held at Hasselbakken, [Footnote: a favourite outdoor pleasure resort at Stockholm.] and the arrangements were magnificent. But what highly astonished me, and was in reality most out of keeping in such a circle, was the tone that the conversation at table gradually assumed, and especially the obscenity of the subjects of conversation. It was not, however, the Ministers and Diplomats present, but a Danish roué, a professor of Physics, who gave this turn to the talk. He related anecdotes that would have made a sailor blush. Neither Count Manderström, nor any of the other Ministers, neither Malmgren, nor the dignified and handsome Norwegian Minister Bretteville, seemed to be offended. Manderström's expression, however, changed very noticeably when the professor ventured to make some pointed insinuations regarding the Swedish attitude, and his personal attitude in particular, previous to the Dano-German war and during its course. He suddenly pretended not to understand, and changed the subject of conversation.
It produced an extremely painful impression upon me that not only the Danish Chargé d'Affaires, but apparently several of these fine gentlemen, had determined on the additional amusement of making me drunk. Everybody at table vied one with the other to drink my health, and they informed me that etiquette demanded I should each time empty my glass to the bottom; the contrary would be a breach of good form. As I very quickly saw through their intention, I escaped from the difficulty by asking the waiter to bring me a very small glass. By emptying this I could, without my manners being affected, hold my own against them all.
But,--almost for the first time in my life,--when the company rose from table I felt that I had been in exceedingly bad company, and a disgust for the nominally highest circles, who were so little capable of acting in accordance with the reputation they enjoyed, and the polish imputed to them, remained with me for many years to come.
[FIRST LONG SOJOURN ABROAD]
My Wish to See Paris--Dualism in our Modern Philosophy--A Journey--Impressions of Paris--Lessons in French--Mademoiselle Mathilde --Taine.