Jonas Lie was born in southern Norway, in 1833, and at the age of five removed with the family to Nordland. His life as an author began in 1870; but between these dates there was a period of very unusual experiences. His vivid imagination, stirred by the witchery of life in Nordland, made the prosy tasks of school seem direst punishment. He was counted a dullard and an incorrigible mischief-maker. At the age of thirteen it was his passion to become a sailor. The father, at his wits' end, compromised by sending him to a naval academy. Here he was at times thought mad by his instructors, who saw something of his semi-somnambulistic antics. Near-sightedness, however, proved an obstacle to his continuance in this path to maritime glory, which he was destined to win by a different route. After an awakening experience in a Bergen school, where an eccentric poet-pedagogue thought him a "lad of pairts," and his classmates voted him a prize liar on account of his Nordland stories, he took a short cut to the university at Heltberg's so-called Student Factory in Christiania, the head-master of which—a prodigy who has been immortalized in literature by both Björnson and Garborg—proved an inspiring and fructifying force to his groping genius. At this institution, among a motley horde of country bumpkins, shipwrecked city talent, and budding genius, he found Björnson, also preparing for the university. Both were profoundly impressed by the genius of the asthmatic head-master in his dogskin jacket, who led his young barbarians by forced marches through the Alpine passes of Latin syntax into the classic domain of Livy and Horace. We shall see that he came to Lie's rescue at a later period.
Lie entered the university in 1851, and took a degree in law in 1858. It had been a difficult task for him to decide what professional study to pursue. He thought at first that he had leanings toward theology, bought the necessary books, kept them a day, then exchanged them for law books, after having paid a brief but adequate visit to the clinical laboratory. These years at the university, when a romantic interest in everything Norwegian filled the air with mystic expectancy of great things to come in the way of a regenerated Norway, aroused Lie. Association with Björnson, Ibsen, Vinje,[3] Nordraak,[4] and a score of other gifted young men was stimulating, yet he did not become a disciple or slavish follower of any of these more vehement natures. He had his own ideas, and was boldly independent when occasion demanded it, as both King Oscar and Björnson later in life ascertained to their discomfort, each of them having tried in vain to make the "amiable" author conform to their plans and ideas. Among the many friends that Lie made in the capital city during his university days, Björnson became the most intimate. He seems from the very first to have espied the artist in Lie, and did much to help him in understanding his own strange self. It had begun to worry Lie that his friends thought him eccentric. And not only this: the mystic, superstitious, magic-loving Finn in his nature often frightened him. Hence he made great efforts to counteract his tendency to fantastic musing and to develop his paternal heritage: the rationalist and realist in himself. For this purpose the determination to study law was doubtless a wise step. But his legal studies did not suppress his literary yearnings, which found expression in verse that did not at first go beyond a circle of intimate friends. He saw no prospect of making a living with his pen, and so entered a government office—a decision hastily made under pressure of respect for his stern and practical father, who had announced a visit to the capital city. Nevertheless, he dreamed of becoming an author, and began contributing poems to the daily press. They seemed labored and heavy, and attracted no particular attention. On the other hand, he prepared some well-written articles on European politics, which indicated insight and careful thinking. These articles made such a favorable impression on Björnson that he offered to secure him the editorship of a Christiania daily. But Lie was unwilling. He had made arrangements to practise law at Kongsvinger, not far from the capital. After a year's work in the new field, he married a cousin, Thomasine Lie, to whom he had long been betrothed. Together they had planned that he was to be an author, and his hasty decision to become a lawyer was a severe shock to her. From the beginning she had faith in his literary possibilities; and it was evidently her steady hand on the rudder, throughout a long life, that guided the bark of his genius through many dangerous reefs. But for her good sense and loving loyalty, there would probably not have been a Jonas Lie in Norwegian literature. He often remarked that her name might well appear on the title-page of most of his books. In this most interesting partnership, his was the creative spirit, hers the practical guiding hand.
Lie's new home was in the heart of a rich timber district, which at that time was at the high tide of a tremendous business boom. Here he achieved immediate success as a lawyer. Moreover, through an influential friend, he became the financial agent of two banking houses in the capital. This gave him the opportunity—and he had the necessary courage—to take a hand in bold business enterprises on a large scale. He prospered; the future seemed roseate; he began to dream of such affluence as to enable him to devote himself to literature. Meanwhile he wrote verses for all manner of occasions, and even published a volume of these poems (1866). Both he and his wife had unusual social qualifications. She was a fine musician, a woman of character and much intellectual force, and a most competent housewife. In this home of culture many prominent men were entertained—first of all, Ole Bull, whom Lie adored. Mighty schemes for the glorification of Mother Norway were discussed as these two "visionaries" sat brewing their toddy. Björnson, too, was often there, and Sverdrup, the statesman.
Meanwhile clouds ominous of disaster appeared on the commercial horizon. The period 1865–68 witnessed the greatest financial panic that Norway had ever experienced. Lie had forebodings of a catastrophe, but too late to save himself. He had been lavish with his signature, and was tremendously involved. The crash meant more than life and death to him. It was a matter of honor, integrity, conscience. He lost everything, and was in debt to the extent of over $200,000. Lie, the lawyer, was ruined. He resolved to return to literature, for instinct urged him with "almost explosive force," to use his own phrase. As for his financial obligations, he made a monumental resolution, as did Walter Scott in a similar predicament, to pay every dollar through his authorship; and for years he dropped every penny that he did not absolutely need into that abyss of debt. Friends finally convinced him of the hopelessness of his purpose. With what a heavy heart Lie carried the tale of his bankruptcy to his faithful wife several of his novels testify. Financial crashes play no small part in his writings, and the pathetic force with which these situations are handled sounds a distinctly personal note.
With wife and children Lie returned to Christiania in the autumn of 1868—empty-handed. How he managed to keep his head above water by the aid of loyal friends like Björnson, Sverdrup, whose private secretary he was for a time, and old Heltberg, of the Student Factory, who came to engage him as a teacher of rhetoric and composition, is an interesting story which need not be told here. But through all his trials one determination was fixed and inflexible: he would make literature his life-work. It was not long before his thoughts reverted to his early experiences in Nordland. After several years of subjection to the stern reality of legal and commercial enterprise, the Finn was again asserting himself. His first novel, Second Sight, was the result. He read it to his wife; she thought it magnificent, but later applied the pruning-knife drastically. Then Björnson was called in. He concurred in the wife's opinion, and immediately wrote the great Copenhagen publisher, Hegel, pronouncing the novel a "sea-mew" that would fly over all the Scandinavian North, and urging hasty publication. This was in November, 1870. By Christmas the book was in the shops. In large part it purports to be the autobiography of a visionary Nordlander, who tells of his beloved home, and recounts marvellous stories of the Arctic north; but through this bead-string of episodes and descriptions there is interwoven a pathetic tale of love, love so tender, so delicate, that the words describing it seem to come tripping on tiptoe. Unpromising as the novel seems in the beginning, when one almost expects a study in the pathology of second sight, it nevertheless develops into such beauty as to make it the Romeo and Juliet of Scandinavian literature.
Every step of Jonas Lie's development from this first novel to The Family at Gilje (1883) is of interest to the student of literature. It was a period of hard study, careful, conscientious work, and high resolve to master his powers and to utilize his varied experiences for literary purposes, in order to be able to serve Mother Norway,—for one must never forget the intense patriotic ardor of all Norway's great writers, artists, and musicians. By the aid of a government stipend, Lie was enabled to visit Nordland and the western coast to promote his literary production, and soon afterward a second and larger stipend for the purpose of foreign travel made it possible for him to visit Rome, the Mecca of all Scandinavian artists and literati of the period. There he remained more than three years, a time of fruitful toil and stimulating experience. In 1872 he sent home two books relating to life on the western and northern coast, The Good Ship Future, and a collection of short stories.
Lie was not content, however, to be "the poet of Nordland," as he at once had been named. His ambition was to be more national. In the broader realms of literary activity the giant figures of Ibsen and Björnson towered. They were deep in the problems of the day. How could he become national and modern? Instinct led him on in paths that unconsciously he had already trodden. In this nation of seafarers he was the first in modern literature to discover the coast-dwellers and to portray their struggles on the sea. His first book contained a description of a storm in northern waters that makes the reader hold his breath. In the volume of short stories, which in their scenes sweep along the western coast, and in The Good Ship Future as well, there was a distinct odor of the sea. This was natural enough: he had spent his early years in Nordland and in Bergen, the centre of Norwegian shipping, and he loved the sea passionately. In his next novel, The Pilot and his Wife, he put to sea with sails hoisted to the top.
The critics apparently had not felt the sea-breezes in his first books; but in the last there blew such a lusty gale that all, both critics and public, sniffed its fresh and salty breath with keenest relish. The book was a success, which his previous novel had not quite been, and it marks the beginning of Lie's sane and natural realism as consciously applied, in its main problem, to a modern social question, making the story, in its essence, a novel of character, a psychological study of the relation of man and wife, and not primarily a novel of adventure, which assumption gave Lie the designation "novelist of the sea." The success of the book brought the author, in 1874, by vote of the Storting, a life stipend known as a "poet's salary," which recognition put him in a class with Ibsen and Björnson. The great honor seems to have had a depressing effect, for Lie now scored four failures in succession. He was back in Norway, trying to portray social phenomena of the capital city. The reviewers were most irritating and offensive, and he felt obliged temporarily to desert the field. With the novel Rutland (1881), he returned to the sea. This story surpasses The Pilot in every respect. The sea is described with the fondness of a lover. Like The Pilot, it also deals with a problem of the home, but what chiefly impressed the public in reading the book was that the seamen, that important element of the Norwegian people, had found an adequate interpreter.
His next book, Forward (Gaa Paa) (1882), was likewise a maritime novel, with panoramas in the life of the fisher folk on the western coast. At the same time it forecast the new age of industrial development, and revealed growing sympathy and increased understanding in matters of national import. The author seems to have become convinced that a novelist, too, might be able to lend a hand in paving the way for progress. In this book he had by his vivid portrayal attacked stagnation, superstition, sluggishness, and had proclaimed the new gospel of work, activity, enterprise. It had been begun during the latter part of a three years' sojourn in Germany. It was completed in Norway during the autumn of 1882, after which Lie took up his abode in Paris, where he made his home for many years.
For his next work, A Life Prisoner (1883), Lie found his theme in the slums of Christiania. The treatment was not naturalistic enough to satisfy the critics. Lie was of course not unmindful of the new literary movement, but he possessed then, as always, sufficient individual momentum to carry him through the ephemeral phases of literary fads. His novels are not barometers of the prevailing literary atmosphere. He believed in a realism of true naturalism, which has stood the test of time. In this last work he brings a waif of modern society close to the hearts of his readers, and needs no explosions of pent-up indignation, no spirit of class hatred, to make his readers understand this unfortunate product of a bad environment. In his reply to the critics, Lie spoke forcibly on the new literary method, summing up his views in these words: "The main thing is to picture life so that the reader sees, hears, feels, comprehends it; by what esthetic means this is accomplished must be the author's own affair in each individual case. But experience has shown that of all methods direct ones are often the least effective. A single deft touch may save a dozen pages of detailed description." Lie was not a student of the base; he did not even have an artistic liking for evil. There are few bad characters in his works.