Though Andersen never attained in Copenhagen an uncontested recognition of his talent, honors both from at home and abroad were showered upon him. The fame which undeniably was his commanded respect, but scarcely approval. Heiberg made merry at his obscurity in the country of his birth and his celebrity beyond its boundaries, and represented him as reading "The Mulatto" to the Sultan's wives and the "Moorish Maiden" to those who were to be strangled, kneeling in rapture, while the Grand Eunuch, crowned his head with laurels. But in spite of obloquy and ridicule, Andersen continued his triumphant progress through all the lands of the civilized world, and even beyond it. In 1875 his tale, "The Story of a Mother," was published simultaneously in fifteen languages, in honor of his seventieth birthday. A few months later (August 4th) he died at the villa Rolighed, near Copenhagen. His life was indeed as marvellous as any of his tales. A gleam of light from the wonderland in which he dwelt seems to have fallen upon his cradle and to have illuminated his whole career. It was certainly in this illumination that he himself saw it, as the opening sentence of his autobiography proves: "My life is a lovely fairy-tale, happy and full of incidents."
The softness, the sweetness, the juvenile innocence of Danish romanticism found their happiest expression in him; but also the superficiality, the lack of steel in the will, the lyrical vagueness and irresponsibility. If he did not invent a new literary form he at all events enriched and dignified an old one, and revealed in it a world of unsuspected beauty. He was great in little things, and little in great things. He had a heart of gold, a silver tongue, and the spine of a mollusk. Like a flaw in a diamond, a curious plebeian streak cut straight across his nature. With all his virtues he lacked that higher self-esteem which we call nobility.
CONTEMPORARY DANISH LITERATURE
The late Romantic authors of Denmark who lived on the traditions of Oehlenschläger's time and the æsthetical doctrines of J. L. Heiberg, have gradually been passing away; and a new generation has grown up, which, though it knows Joseph, has repudiated his doctrine. A period of stagnation followed the disappearance of the Romanticists. The Sleswick-Holstein war of 1866, and the consequent hostility to Germany, cut off the intellectual intercourse between the two countries which in the first half of the century had been lively and intimate; and as, for a while, no new ties were formed, a respectable dulness settled upon the little island kingdom. People lived for the concerns of the day, earned their bread and butter, amused themselves to the best of their ability, but troubled themselves very little about the battles of thought which were being fought upon the great arena of the world. The literary activity which now and then flared up spasmodically, like flames over a smouldering ash-heap, flickered and half-expired for want of fresh sustenance. A direfully conventional romanticist, H. F. Ewald (1821-1892), wrote voluminous modern and historical novels, the heroines of which were usually models of all the copy-book virtues, and the heroes as bloodless as their brave and loyal prototypes in "Ivanhoe" and "Waverley." Instead of individualizing his dramatis personæ this feeble successor of Ingemann and Walter Scott gave them a certificate of character, vouching for their goodness or badness, and trusting the reader to take his word for it in either case. Like many another popular novelist, he varnished them with the particular tint of excellence or depravity that might suit his purpose, stuffed their heads with bran and their bellies with sawdust, but troubled himself little about what lay beneath the epidermis. There was something naïve and juvenile in his view of life which appealed to the large mass of half-educated people; and the very absence of any subtle literary art tended further to increase his public. Many of his books, notably "The Youth of Valdemar Krone" (Valdemar Krone's Ungdomshistorie), "The Swedes at Kronborg" (Svenskerne paa Kronborg), have achieved an extraordinary success. The former deals with contemporary life, while the latter expurgates and embellishes history after the manner of Walter Scott. Two subsequent novels, "The Family Nordby" and "Johannes Falk," are, like all of Ewald's writings, pervaded by a robust optimism and a warm Danish sentiment, which in a large measure account for their popularity with the public of the circulating libraries.
A lesser share of the same kind of popularity has fallen to the lot of an author of a much higher order—Wilhelm Bergsöe (born 1835). His voluminous novel "Fra Piazza del Popolo" (1860) made a sensation in its day, and "From the Old Factory" (1869), which constructively is a maturer book, is likewise full of fascination. The description of the doings of the artistic guild in Rome, which occupies a considerable portion of the former work, is delightful, though intermingled with a deal of superfluous mysticism and romantic entanglements which were then held to be absolutely indispensable. "In the Sabine Mountains" (1871), the scene of which is laid in Genazzano during the struggle for Italian independence, is a trifle too prolix; and its effect is lessened by the old-fashioned epistolary form. Signor Carnevale, the revolutionary apothecary, is, however, a very amusing figure, and would be still better if he were not caricatured. The tendency to screw the characters up above the normal—to tune them up to concert pitch as it were—interferes seriously with the pleasure which the book otherwise might yield.
The conception of art as something wholly distinct from and above nature animates all Bergsöe's productions. The theory of fiction which R. L. Stevenson has so eloquently propounded has found an able practitioner in him. For all that, I am indebted to Bergsöe's two Italian romances for a great deal of enjoyment, the afterglow of which still warms my memory. But that was long ago. A young man is apt to enjoy in a book quite as much what he himself supplies as that which the author has deposited therein. Each word is a key which unlocks a store of imprisoned emotions. The very word Italy has a magic which imparts to it a charm even in the geography. And Bergsöe, though he works, without suspicion of its decrepitude, the ancient machinery of Italian romance, is unaffectedly eloquent and unsophistically entertaining. The historic whisperings which he catches from the names, the ruins, the facial types, and the very trees and grass of Genazzano invest his letters from that picturesque neighborhood with a certain beautiful glow of color and a dusky richness of decay. The autobiographical form imposes, to be sure, an increasing strain on the reader's credulity, as the plot thickens, and we find ourselves, half-unexpectedly, involved in a lurid tale of monks, priests, disguised revolutionists, cruel, mercenary fathers, etc., and the Danish author playing his favorite rôle of deus ex machina. Still more incredible is the part of benevolent Providence which he assigns to himself in "The Bride of Rörvig," where he saves the heroine's life by restoring to her a ring given to her lover, and thus assuring her that he is alive when she believes him dead. The autobiographical story (especially when the writer is a mere convenient supernumerary, designed, like the uncle from America in the old-fashioned melodrama, to straighten out the tangled skein), is apt to involve other difficulties than the mere embarrassment of having to distrust the author's assertion, or censure his indiscretions. The illusion is utterly spoiled by that haunting arrière pensée that this or that writer, whom you know perhaps at first or second-hand, or whose features, at all events, are familiar to you from pictures, never could or would have played the more or less heroic rôle with which he here delights to impose upon you.
Altogether the best book which Bergsöe has written is the autobiographical romance "From the Old Factory," the scene of which is laid in Denmark. This book evidently contains a great deal of genuine reminiscence, and is therefore devoid of that air of laborious contrivance and artificial intrigue which brings the foregoing novels into such unpleasant relationship with Wilkie Collins and his genre. The incidents of the hero's boyhood in the old porcelain factory, and his uncle's agitating experiments for the rediscovery of a lost process of glazing are saner and soberer and lie closer to the soil of common experience than the exploits of monks and pirates and revolutionists.
Among the notable men of the expiring Danish romanticism Meyer Aaron Goldschmidt (1819-1886) holds a leading position. A comic paper, Corsaren, which he edited (1840-1846) made a tremendous stir in its day; and its scathing wit and satire were not without influence upon current events. His two novels, En Jöde (1845), Hjemlös (1857), and a large number of clever novelettes (Ravnen, Arvingen Flyveposten, etc.), are full of psychological subtleties, and often charmingly told. Flyveposten ("The Flying Mail") was translated into English (Boston and Cambridge, 1870) but attracted no particular attention. For all that, Goldschmidt, in spite of occasional prolixity, stands the test of time remarkably well. His Jewish stories, notably Maser, Aron og Esther, and En Jöde, contain a higher order of work, though less dramatically effective, than that of Sacher-Masoch, and Emil Franzos, and the later Ghetto romancers. Goldschmidt's double nationality, as a Danish-born Jew, indicates his position and the source from which he drew his weakness and his strength. As a Jew he saw and judged the Danish character, and as a Dane he saw and judged the Jewish character with a liberality and insight of which no autochthon would have been capable. For all that his tales aroused anything but friendly feelings among his own people. They felt it to be a profanation thus to expose the secluded domestic and religious life of the children of Israel. It is to this sentiment that Dr. Brandes has given utterance in his protest against "perpetually serving up one's grandmother with sauce piquante."