One day John played with his friend's pince-nez and broke the spring. His friend was vexed. John promised to have it repaired, and took the pince-nez home. It weighed upon his mind, for he did not know whence he should get the money in order to have it mended. Then he determined to mend it himself. He took out the screws, bored holes in an old clock-spring, but did not succeed. His friend jogged his memory; John was in despair. His father would never pay for it. His friend said, "I will have it repaired, and you must pay." The repair cost fifty öre. On Monday John handed over twelve coppers, and promised to pay the rest the following Monday. His friend smelt a rat. "That is your breakfast-money," he said; "do you get only twelve coppers a week?" John blushed and begged him to take the money. The next Monday he handed over the remainder. His friend resisted, but he pressed it on him.
The two continued together as school-fellows till they went to the university at Upsala and afterwards. John's friend had a cheerful temperament and took the world as it came. He did not argue much with John, but always made him laugh. In contrast to his dreary home, John found the school a cheerful refuge from domestic tyranny. But this caused him to lead a double life, which was bound to produce moral dislocation.
[1] Famous Swedish poet.
[2] In a later work, Legends (1898), Strindberg says: "When I wrote that youthful confession (The Son of a Servant) the liberal tendency of that period seems to have induced me to use too bright colours, with the pardonable object of freeing from fear young men who have fallen into precocious sin."
[3] The Swedish Parliament.
[VII]
FIRST LOVE
If the character of a man is the stereotyped rôle which he plays in the comedy of social life, John at this time had no character, i.e., he was quite sincere. He sought, but found nothing, and could not remain in any fixed groove. His coarse nature, which flung off all fetters that were imposed upon it, could not adapt itself; and his brain, which was a revolutionary's from birth, could not work automatically. He was a mirror which threw back all the rays which struck it, a compendium of various experiences, of changing impressions, and full of contradictory elements. He possessed a will which worked by fits and starts and with fanatical energy; but he really did not will anything deeply; he was a fatalist, and believed in destiny; he was sanguine, and hoped all things. Hard as ice at home, he was sometimes sensitive to the point of sentimentality; he would give his last shirt to a poor man, and could weep at the sight of injustice. He was a pietist, and as sincere an one as is possible for anyone who tries to adopt an old-world point of view. His home-life, where everything threatened his intellectual and personal liberty, compelled him to be this. In the school he was a cheerful worldling, not at all sentimental, and easy to get on with. Here he felt he was being educated for society and possessed rights. At home he was like an edible vegetable, cultivated for the use of the family, and had no rights.
He was also a pietist from spiritual pride, as all pietists are. Beskow, the repentant lieutenant, had come home from his pilgrimage to the grave of Christ. His Journal was read at home by John's step-mother, who inclined to pietism. Beskow made pietism gentlemanly, and brought it into fashion, and a considerable portion of the lower classes followed this fashion. Pietism was then what spiritualism is now—a presumably higher knowledge of hidden things. It was therefore eagerly taken up by all women and uncultivated people, and finally found acceptance at Court.