Recollections of My Childhood and Youth

by Georg Brandes

I was now going in for an exercise that was new to me and which I had long wished to become proficient in. This was riding.

Up to that time I had never been able to afford to ride. But just then a captain of the dragoons offered to teach me for a very low fee, and in the Queen's Riding-School I was initiated during the Spring months into the elementary stages of the art, in order that in Summer I might be able to ride out. These riding-lessons were the keenest possible delight to me. I, who so seldom felt happy, and still more seldom jubilant, was positively exultant as I rode out in the morning along the Strand Road. Even if I had had an almost sleepless night I felt fresh on horseback.

It was no pleasure to me to ride the same horse often, if I knew its disposition. I liked to change as often as possible, and preferred rather difficult horses to mares too well broken in. I felt the arrogant pride of youth seethe in my veins as I galloped briskly along.

I was still far from an accomplished horseman when an examination of my finances warned me that I must give up my riding lessons.

When I informed my instructor that I could no longer allow myself the pleasure of his lessons, and in reply to his "Why?" had mentioned the reason, the captain answered that it would be very easy to settle that matter: he had a sister, an elderly maiden lady, who was passionately fond of literature and literary history. Lessons in that subject could to our mutual satisfaction balance the riding lessons, which could thus go on indefinitely. It is unnecessary to say how welcome the proposition was to me. It was such a relief!

The captain was a pleasant, good-natured man, quite uneducated in literary matters, who confidingly communicated his bachelor experiences to his pupil. These were summed up in the reflection that when womenkind fall in love, they dread neither fire nor water; the captain himself, who yet, in his own opinion, only looked well on horseback, had once had an affair with a married lady who bombarded him with letters, and who, in her ardour, began writing one day without noticing that her husband, who was standing behind her chair, was looking over her shoulder. Since then the captain had not felt the need of women, so to speak, preferred to be without them, and found his greatest pleasure in his horses and his skill as an equestrian.

The sister was a maiden lady of forty, by no means devoid of intellectual ability, with talent for observation and an appreciation of good books, but whose development had been altogether neglected. She now cherished an ambition to write. She wrote in secret little tales that were not really stupid but had not the slightest pretensions to style or literary talent. She was very plain and exceedingly stout, which produced a comical effect, especially as she was inclined to exaggeration both of speech and gesture.

There was a disproportion between the ages of the master and the pupil; in my eyes she was quite an old person, in her eyes, being her intellectual equal, I was likewise her equal in age. In the natural order of things she felt more personal sympathy for me than I for her. Consequently, I involuntarily put a dash of teasing into my instruction, and occasionally made fun of her sentimentality, and when the large lady, half angry, half distressed, rose to seize hold of me and give me a shaking, I would run round the table, pursued by her, or shoot out a chair between her and myself,--which indubitably did not add to the dignity of our lessons.

There was no question of thorough or connected instruction. What the lady wanted more particularly was that I should go through her literary attempts and correct them, but corrections could not transform them into art. And so it came about that after no very long time I gave up these arduous lessons, although obliged to give up my precious riding lessons at the same time.

Consequently I never became a really expert rider, although during the next few years I had a ride now and then. But after a severe attack of phlebitis following upon typhoid fever, in 1870-71, I was compelled to give up all the physical exercises that I loved best.