Recollections of My Childhood and Youth

by Georg Brandes

"I am ready to make a scene anywhere," the answer is reported to have been.

"That I can believe; but keep calm now!"

Shortly afterwards, in North and South, Goldschmidt, on the occasion of Bröchner's candidature for parliament, had written that the well-known atheist, H. Bröchner, naturally, as contributor to The Fatherland, was supported by the "Party." Now, there was nothing that annoyed Bröchner so much as when anyone called him an atheist, and tried to make him hated for that reason,--the word, it is true, had a hundred times a worse sound then than now,--he always maintaining that he and other so-called atheists were far more religious than their assailants. And although Goldschmidt's sins against Bröchner were in truth but small, although the latter, moreover--possibly unjustifiably-- had challenged him to the attack, Bröchner nevertheless imbued me with such a dislike of Goldschmidt that I could not regard him with quite unprejudiced eyes.

Goldschmidt tried to make personal advances to me during my first stay in Paris in 1866.

Besides the maternal uncle settled in France, of whom I have already spoken, I had still another uncle, my father's brother, who had gone to France as a boy, had become naturalised, and had settled in Paris. He was a little older than my father, a somewhat restless and fantastic character, whom Goldschmidt frequently met at the houses of mutual friends. He let me know through this man that he would like to make my acquaintance, gave him his address and mentioned his receiving hours. As I held back, he repeated the invitation, but in vain. Bröchner's influence was too strong. A few years later, in some dramatic articles, I had expressed myself in a somewhat satirical, offhand manner about Goldschmidt, when one day an attempt was made to bring the poet and myself into exceedingly close connection.

One Spring morning in 1869, a little man with blue spectacles came into my room and introduced himself as Goldschmidt's publisher, Bookseller Steen. He had come on a confidential errand from Goldschmidt, regarding which he begged me to observe strict silence, whatever the outcome of the matter might be.

Goldschmidt knew that, as a critic, I was not in sympathy with him, but being very difficultly placed, he appealed to my chivalry. For reasons which he did not wish to enter into, he would be obliged, that same year, to sever his connection with Denmark and settle down permanently in England. For the future he should write in English. But before he left he wished to terminate his literary activity in his native country by an edition of his collected works, or at any rate a very exhaustive selection from them. He would not and could not direct so great an undertaking himself, from another country; he only knew one man who was capable of doing so, and him he requested to undertake the matter. He had drawn up a plan of the edition, a sketch of the order in which the writings were to come out, and what the volume was to contain, and he placed it before me for approval or criticism. The edition was to be preceded by an account of Goldschmidt as an author and of his artistic development; if I would undertake to write this, I was asked to go to see Goldschmidt, in order to hear what he himself regarded as the main features and chief points of his literary career.

The draft of what the projected edition was to include made quite a little parcel of papers; besides these, Steen gave me to read the actual request to me to undertake the task, which was cautiously worded as a letter, not to me, but to Bookseller Steen, and which Steen had been expressly enjoined to bring back with him. Although I did not at all like this last-mentioned item, and although this evidence of distrust was in very conspicuous variance with the excessive and unmerited confidence that was at the same time being shown me, this same confidence impressed me greatly.

The information that Goldschmidt, undoubtedly the first prose writer in the country, was about to break off his literary activity and permanently leave Denmark, was in itself overwhelming and at once set my imagination actively at work. What could the reason be? A crime? That was out of the question. What else could there be but a love affair, and that had my entire sympathy. It was well known that Goldschmidt admired a very beautiful woman, who was watched the more jealously by her husband, because the latter had for a great number of years been paralysed. He would not allow her to go to the theatre to sit anywhere but in the mirror box [Footnote: The mirror box was a box in the first Royal Theatre, surrounded by mirrors and with a grating in front, where the stage could be seen, reflected in the mirrors, but the occupants were invisible. It was originally constructed to utilise a space whence the performance could not otherwise be seen, and was generally occupied by actresses, etc.], where she could not be seen by the public. The husband met with no sympathy from the public; he had always been a characterless and sterile writer, had published only two books, written in a diametrically opposite spirit, flatly contradicting one another. As long as he was able to go out he had dyed his red hair black. He was an insignificant man in every way, and by his first marriage with an ugly old maid had acquired the fortune which alone had enabled him to pay court to the beautiful woman he subsequently won.

It had leaked out that she was the original of the beautiful woman in The Inheritance, and that some of the letters that occur in it were really notes from Goldschmidt to her.