I can explain it in two sentences. It is that in him the peasantry recognise their own flesh and blood, and that he stimulates the middle class.
The class distinctions of central Europe have simplified themselves in the north. There is scarcely any social democracy and no great industrial class, their place is occupied by the peasantry as a political power and by the provincial middle class as the rulers in business. Björnson himself was born a peasant, but became a bourgeois in his early youth. In the next generation the sons of peasants who became authors were careful to avoid the middle class. But on the other hand there is annually a by no means inconsiderable percentage of the peasantry who go over into the middle class because it is more highly educated. Among these are pastors, gymnasium teachers, doctors, lawyers, merchants—yes, and rich peasant proprietors as well. The provincial bourgeoisie of the north represents what is perhaps the purest type of that decadence of the middle classes which has declared itself throughout the whole of Europe; it is totally unlike the Scandinavian peasantry, which possesses a healthy strength, the reverse of social democracy, and embodies the power of a rising class. The great European upheaval of 1848 barely touched this Scandinavian bourgeoisie with its narrow horizon, its commercial self-satisfaction, its snivelling morality, its mania for conventionalities, its love of stagnation, its small-minded, starved nature and hypocrisy against which Ibsen, the revolutionary bourgeois, has raised the scorpion whip, and Björnson, the peasant’s son, has preached in his reform writings, preached against it and its middle class views of life, though at the same time he always looked upon it as the highest normal condition.
Ibsen took Hedda Gabler, the daughter of an officer whom he describes with considerable humour, for the profession of commanding officer in Norway is the favourite resource of the superfluous sons of tradesmen, and it has of late been proved by the autumn manœuvres that the Norwegian peasant soldier can do everything, whereas his commanding officer can accomplish very little. Therefore Ibsen took this daughter of the upper commercial class with her superior morals, analysed her and proved her to be what she was—a sexless nonentity who stupidly sells herself with utter disregard to her future offspring, and who retains nothing of a woman’s nature beyond a weak, impotent desire. He takes her and throws her to the dead with an æsthetic formula on her lips—takes her and permeates her entire being with that exhausted vitality which leads to suicidal mania. Björnson takes as his heroine Svava, the daughter of a rich but very dissipated merchant, who falls in love with a young man while conversing with him on old-maidish and philanthropic topics, but throws her glove into his face in consequence of some backstair gossip through which she discovers that instead of living like herself, he has acted the part of Don Juan after the example of her father. Björnson contrasts the vulgar frivolity of the male bourgeois with the vulgar sexlessness of the superior girl, and he extols the latter as being the only salutary system of morals.
Of course Björnson’s Gauntlet was received on the bourgeois stage with great pomp, but not so Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. And while the middle class was unanimous in regarding Ibsen with curiosity mingled with horror, as the angel of death whose sign is on his door, it greeted Björnson as a renowned and fashionable physician who is always able to effect a cure so long as the illness is not positively fatal.
The Scandinavian peasant does not let his hair grow grey over these discussions, and in general he is well disposed towards the emancipation of women. He has long been accustomed to see women work and earn wages like himself, for it is not at all unusual for his sisters and aunts to provide for themselves by becoming maid-servants. That the wife should have the right of disposal over her own dowry, should keep a sharp eye on all gains and expenses and should put in a word on all affairs of house and home—to that also he is well accustomed, and the compliant son of the soil knows how to sing a song in praise of the matriarchy of the peasant mother. Matrimonial infidelity is to him an abomination, he does not envy the townsman that for which he personally has little opportunity, and he despises the attractions of the youthful life of the idle sons of the middle class, since he seldom transgresses with any save his future wife. And since he looks at everything from the utilitarian standpoint, it is natural that he should give his full approval when daughters not only cease to cost money, but are able to earn it and to lay by a store of fine dollars. As for their remaining unmarried—well, you can’t have your cake and eat it—they have got the money, what more do they want? The peasant does not look upon married life in the æsthetic manner that is common to the higher classes for whom it possesses a certain artistic value, to him it is as much of a business as milking, ploughing, manuring; and if the one is no longer necessary, the other can be dispensed with too. He has none of the prudery of the townsman who finds something offensive in a bold glance at nature, yet he too has his pruderies, and if the townsman evinces moral and æsthetic scruples against an open discussion or an undiluted song of love, so likewise the peasant will not read it in print because to him it represents the commonplace. This is how Björnson, with his doctrine of perfection, proved to be the right man both for the middle class and the peasantry; his lectures were acceptable chiefly because they partook of the nature of a religious discourse or a Sunday sermon, to which a man listens when he is wearing his best clothes, but which he has no time to think about during the six remaining days of the week when he is busy and has to do his work.
No sooner had I reached Gudbrandsdal than I seemed to be standing on Björnson’s own territory. Everybody knew exactly how far it was to his place, and the last two hours of the way I was driven by a little girl who took me past wealthy two-storeyed farm-houses rising from the rich pasture land, drove me round a beautiful winding road, jumped down, opened the gate, sprang on to her seat again, and without consulting me, drove through the entrance and up the drive, stopping at the door of a large, low building which was Björnson’s country seat.
Outside, under the wide-spreading roof, sat his wife and daughters, surrounded by guests who were staying in the house. The author was writing, but he received me. He was sitting at his writing table in a large low room—a regular peasant’s room. His feet were resting on a polar bearskin which had been presented to him by a society of advanced women, and a gigantic vase filled with cut roses was placed on a pedestal beside him. He informed me that the house had been an old farm which he had bought and fitted with all the requirements of modern life. We partook of the midday meal in the old room that had formerly been the servants’ hall, and where now, instead of servant and maid, were assembled a large gathering of Danish, Swedish and Finnish “women’s rights women.” Having dined, we drank coffee in the drawing-room, which had been the ball-room, but was now furnished according to Parisian taste with flowers, chaises longues, cream-coloured curtains with red gauze linings, bibelots and oil paintings. Presently an old lady entered; she had an aquiline profile and yellow waving curls over her ears, she was thick-set and broad-shouldered with a fresh red complexion and small sparkling eyes, one could see at once that she was a feminine Björnson. “My mother,” said he, “she is ninety years old.” And this giant’s mother, herself a giant, spoke and greeted us in as lively and hearty a manner as a person of sixty. When we had finished our coffee, Björnson led me out on to the new balcony which encircled the house. He glanced over the rising land with its luxuriant pasture. “Our people are being corrupted,” he said. “Our press and our life are full of lies. I am writing an article against lies, the lies with which we are being poisoned.” He made a gesture with his arm across the distant country, and exclaimed, “Lying must be abolished!”
I was obliged to go, as my little coachman was waiting. We retraced our steps through the old room with its low ceiling and exquisite Parisian furniture, and its glass cupboard filled with plate. I drove away meditating on the strange contrast between this farm house and its artificial fittings worthy of a town mansion, and I heard Björnson’s pathetic voice calling to his country, “Lying must be abolished!”
III
Björnson was the son of a peasant; it was only in later life that his father became a pastor, and from him Björnson has inherited a theological tendency. He is essentially a preacher and religious teacher, he is never happy unless he has something to proclaim. But as he is not one of those who enjoy self-denial, he prefers that those very contradictory truths, which he has preached during the course of years, should take the form of a manifestation of the joy of life.