III.
In conversation with Paludan-Müller, little was learned concerning his life. He never made any communications regarding it to the public, nor was it his wont to speak in private of his personal experiences. He was by no means a good narrator. He discussed every great problem with interest; but facts, as such, occupied his mind in but a trifling degree. His mode of speech was argumentative, not figurative; the poetic element manifested itself in brilliant flashes, but scarcely ever in a picturesque expression. In a critical, or even violently exciting situation, I have never seen Paludan-Müller. I do not even know whether his external life ever presented momentous critical situations. The external lives of the Danish writers of his day were as a rule empty. They were educated in one school of learning or another, passed several years at the University of Copenhagen in vain endeavors to acquire some professional science, published their first poetry, undertook an extended journey abroad, and had awarded to them some official position, or a poet's stipend. To the lot of some of them was added a long and obstinate struggle for recognition. But even this dramatic element was lacking in the life of Paludan-Müller. He took part in no intellectual campaign. True, he was for a time not estimated according to his deserts, but he was never wholly misunderstood. His life seems, therefore, to have had as few sharp angles as that of most of our modern men of talent.
He was born in 1809 at a parsonage in Fünen, became a student in 1828, passed a mediocre examination in jurisprudence in 1835, married in 1838, and during the years 1838-40 travelled through Middle and Southern Europe. In 1851 he was made a knight of the order of Danebrog, and in 1854 received a professor's title. Moreover, in his mature manhood, he was a poet and a recluse.
What he was as a youth, we must conjecture from his works. From what I have heard, I imagine him to have been greatly fêted in social circles, the decided lion of aristocratic houses of Fünen; it has been told to me that he possessed such humor and so decided a faculty for impromptu invention, that he would sometimes create on the spur of the moment an entire little drama, and play it entirely alone, running from one side of his improvised stage to the other, in order to reply to his own speeches. I remember, too, having heard that in his younger days he had experienced a deep heart-grief, a young girl whom he loved having been snatched from him by death. Very early, at all events, the chain of bitter experiences, without which he could not have written the first part of "Adam Homo" in his thirty-first year, subdued his original love of life, and when still young, he retired from the world, withdrawing entirely from public, almost entirely from social life, and devoting himself exclusively to his home, his art, and his theological and philosophic studies. His marriage was childless, so that even in his household life there was nothing to fix his gaze on the world without. The more completely he severed the cords that had bound him to his surroundings, the more self-controlled and contemplative he became. Through accidental remarks alone, through words that he dropped in the course of conversation, without dreaming what an impression they must make upon a young man, did I gain a clear idea of the nature of the results at which he had arrived in the course of his life-experience and knowledge of human nature. These results were not of an optimistic nature.
Never shall I forget the day when I carried to him a pamphlet, my first published work. "I thank you," said he. "It will give me great pleasure to read the book. How soon do you want it back?" "I beg of you to keep it." "You want to present the book to me. Oh, innocence! He gives his own books to people. Do you carry it to others as well? What? To your friends and near acquaintances? Well, believe me, you will not long continue such a course. This is something authors only do when they are very young." At that time such a speech excited me to very much the same opposition as the cold, cruel irony of "Adam Homo"; later I learned to understand better the freedom from illusion and the caution from which it sprang. To-day Paludan-Müller's reserve appears only natural to me.
The sharp suspicion he sometimes manifested was rather touching than insulting, for Paludan-Müller was not suspicious on his own account, but rather for the sake of those who enjoyed his favor. He always feared that the wicked world, especially dangerous womankind, would lure his favorites to destruction, and warnings on his part were never lacking. Among his precepts may be found some of those half-worldly, half-Christian admixtures of well-calculated egotism and conventional morality, which are so full of good sense, and yet are listened to so unwillingly by young people. One day in the year 1867, for instance, he exclaimed: "What is that you are saying? Some Italian ladies whom you visited frequently at Paris have invited you to stay at their house during the Exposition? You should not think of such a thing!" "And why not? I can assure you these ladies are not only thoroughly irreproachable in character, but are people of the highest culture." "That makes no difference, no difference whatever, nor did I say anything to the contrary; I only remarked that it would be wiser to have nothing to do with these Italian women. Use your time and your talents for whole relations; that is what we should do. It is wisest to sow where we can ourselves reap the harvest; a young man would do better to employ his time for the benefit of his mother, his sister, his wife, in other words, in whole relations; everything else is lost time." He said this with great earnestness, and in a peculiarly domineering way, as though he were resolved not to listen to any objections that might be offered. It made me a little angry at the time, because the innocent invitation of these foreign ladies was by no means cause sufficient for such an outburst; but when I think of it now, this mistrust only seems to me one of the spiritual conditions from which "Adam Homo" proceeded.
It was but comparatively seldom, however, that this negative side of his character came to light. I have preserved a far stronger impression of the loving and thoughtful care for others manifested by Paludan-Müller, of the princely refinement of his nature. His bearing to his wife, who was ten years older than himself, was the perfection of chivalry, and a similar chivalrous demeanor marked his intercourse with the many ladies, by no means endowed with personal attractions, who visited at his home. To the admiration and flatteries of beautiful women, he was absolutely unsusceptible. I remember one case, when an exceedingly handsome lady, who had succeeded in getting a seat next to him at a social gathering, overwhelmed him with honestly meant thanks, not unmingled with a critic's appreciation, for "Adam Homo." She utterly failed to win the favor of Paludan-Müller. What he said to me afterwards was, "She has, no doubt, in her not very long life, wrought a considerable amount of mischief." On the other hand, he treated with peculiar warmth ladies who were in humble and reduced circumstances. There was in his family an old unmarried aunt, who was well advanced in the sixties, and who, although a good-hearted, excellent person, was most unattractive in personal appearance. Paludan-Müller became the self-appointed knight of this old lady; he always paid her the choicest attention, and he who scarcely ever invited any one to dine with him always celebrated her birthday each summer with a little dinner party, and each time proposed a toast for her in the most hearty words.