Hitherto, when I had appeared before the reading public, it had only been as the author of shorter or longer contributions to the philosophical discussion of the relations between Science and Faith; when these had been accepted by a daily paper it had been as its heaviest ballast. I had never yet written anything that the ordinary reader could follow with pleasure, and I had likewise been obliged to make use of a large number of abstruse philosophical words.
The proprietors of the Illustrated Times offered me the reviewing of the performances at the Royal Theatre in their paper, which had not hitherto printed dramatic criticisms. I accepted the offer, because it afforded me a wished-for opportunity of further shaking off the dust of the schools. I could thus have practice with my pen, and get into touch with a section of the reading public who, without caring for philosophy, nevertheless had intellectual interests; and these articles were in reality a vent for what I had at heart about this time touching matters human and artistic. They were written in a more colloquial style than anything I had written before, or than it was usual to write in Denmark at that time, and they alternated sometimes with longer essays, such as those on Andersen and Goldschmidt.
Regarded merely as dramatic criticisms, they were of little value. The Royal Theatre, the period of whose zenith was nearly at an end, I cared little for, and I was personally acquainted with next to none of the actors, only meeting, at most, Phister and Adolf Rosenkilde and of ladies, Södring in society.
I found it altogether impossible to brandish my cane over the individual actor in his individual part. But the form of it was merely a pretext. I wanted to show myself as I was, speak out about dramatic and other literature, reveal how I felt, show what I thought about all the conditions of life represented or touched upon on the stage.
My articles were read with so much interest that the editors of the Illustrated Times raised the writer's scale of remuneration to 10 Kr. a column (about 11s. 3d.), which at that time was very respectable pay. Unfortunately, however, I soon saw that even at that, if I wrote in the paper all the year round, I could not bring up my yearly income from this source to more than 320 kroner of our money, about I7l. 12s. 6d. in English money; so that, without a University bursary, I should have come badly off, and even with it was not rolling in riches.
The first collection of my articles, which I published in 1868 under the title of Studies in Aesthetics, augmented my income a little, it is true, but for that, as for the next collection, Criticisms and Portraits, I only received 20 kroner (22s. 6d.) per sheet of sixteen pages. Very careful management was necessary.
IX.
With the first money I received for my books, I went in the middle of the Summer of 1868 for a trip to Germany. I acquired some idea of Berlin, which was then still only the capital of Prussia, and in population corresponded to the Copenhagen of our day; I spent a few weeks in Dresden, where I felt very much at home, delighted in the exquisite art collection and derived no small pleasure from the theatre, at that time an excellent one. I saw Prague for the first time, worshipped Rubens in Munich, and, with him specially in my mind, tried to realise how the greatest painters had regarded Life. Switzerland added to my store of impressions with grand natural spectacles. I saw the Alps, and a thunderstorm in the Alps, passed starlit nights on the Swiss lakes, traced the courses of foaming mountain streams such as the Tamina at Pfäffers, ascended the Rigi at a silly forced march, and from the Kulm saw a procession of clouds that gripped my fancy like the procession of the Vanir in Northern mythology. Many years afterwards I described it in the Fourth volume of Main Currents. From Interlaken I gazed on the whiteness of the Jungfrau, but scarcely with greater emotion than once upon a time when I had gazed at the white cliffs of Möen. On my homeward journey I saw Heidelberg's lovely ruins, to which Charles V.'s castle, near the Al-hambra, makes a marvellous pendant, Strassburg's grave Cathedral, and Goethe's house at Frankfurt.
My travels were not long, but were extraordinarily instructive. I made acquaintance with people from the most widely different countries, with youthful frankness engaged in conversation with Germans and Frenchmen, Englishmen and Americans, Poles and Russians, Dutchmen, Belgians and Swiss, met them as travelling companions, and listened attentively to what they narrated. They were, moreover, marvellously frank towards the young man who, with the curiosity of his age, plied them with questions.
Young Dutchmen, studying music in Dresden, gave me some idea of the ill- will felt in their country towards the Prussians, an ill-will not unmingled with contempt. On the other hand, I was astonished, during a half day's excursion on foot with a few Leipzig students, to learn how strong was the feeling of the unity of Germany and of the necessity of the supremacy of Prussia, even in the states which in the 1866 war had been on the side of Austria. The students felt no grief over having been defeated, the victors were Germans too; everything was all right so long as the German Empire became one. These and similar conversations, which finally brought me to the conclusion that the whole of the bourgeoisie was satisfied with the dominance of Prussia, had for result that in 1870 I did not for a moment share the opinion of the Danes and the French, that the defeated German states would enter into an alliance with France against Prussia.