At Valestrand he was free, and the impressions he received were very vivid. The atmosphere was filled with music, and in music all he felt or experienced had to be expressed. If he could not make his instrument utter his thoughts to suit him, he would, after patient trials, at last fling it away and be angry with it for many days. He would not even look at it. Then he would perhaps suddenly get up in the middle of the night, seat himself at the open window in his night–dress, and play the strangest airs and melodies. He was frequently scolded for disturbing the peace of the night, but seemed not to hear when he was in this mood. At other times he would play almost incessantly for days together, hardly eating or sleeping in the mean time.
He was a mere boy when he began to study the nature and construction of the violin. Frequently he would take it all to pieces when he was dissatisfied with it, put each part by itself, dry them in the sun, and then put them together again, more or less pleased with the result.
No place could have been better fitted than Valestrand to give a healthful impulse and development to the lads, who scaled the cliffs and mountains, swam the lakes, and sailed their boats on the fjords. They used to pride themselves on living out–of–doors as woodsmen, and would have liked to sleep as well as eat in the woods. Ole led his younger brothers in all their games and sports, except fishing and shooting. He always had an aversion to these pursuits, which could not yield him pleasure enough to compensate for the pain inflicted; and he never overcame this feeling.
With all their activity it was remarkable, the brothers have since said, that they escaped whole–limbed, and sometimes with their lives. When grandmother was questioned once by a friend as to how she could rest when the boys were with her at Valestrand, she answered: “Why, my dear, if we sent nurses after each one, what would their guardian angels have to do?” So for their summer vacation they were given their freedom. The sisters were, of course, kept more at home, but they, too, had a good time in the hay–field, and joined in some of their brothers’ frolics.
The death of a baby sister made a deep impression on Ole, and he told, in one of the last years of his life, how he had stolen into the room where the little one lay so still, but so beautiful, and alone kept watch while his heart seemed breaking. When he grieved he could seldom speak of his sorrow, and he passed through that experience alone, none of the family knowing then, or later, of the watch he had kept with the dead child.
At the age of nine years Ole played the first violin in the orchestra, when his father acted at the theatre; and it may be added that his father was one of the best amateur actors in Bergen, and knew all Holberg’s and Wessel’s dramas by heart.
From 1819 to 1822 Ole received no musical instruction whatever. He had outgrown his former teacher, Paulsen, who, to the astonishment of his friends, suddenly left Bergen. Mr. Goldschmidt says: “This act of his was variously interpreted; I prefer to explain it by an allusion to an old Danish tale of the elf king, who must vanish when a real king enters his dominions.”
In 1822 a Swedish violinist, Lundholm by name and a pupil of Baillot, settled in Bergen. From him Ole now received instruction; but a coldness soon sprang up between pupil and teacher. The latter was very strict, and insisted that no deviations from established rules should be permitted. He made the lad stand erect with his head and back against the wall while playing, and this, no doubt, gave him that repose and grace of bearing so noticeable in later years. But fortunately Mr. Lundholm did not succeed in making Ole hold his violin according to the accepted rule, as the boy would go almost frantic at times when this was attempted; and this independence of study and method developed later into an interesting episode, to be related after a slight digression.
One of his father’s assistants played the flute, and used to receive musical catalogues from Copenhagen. Ole devoured the names, and for the first time saw that of Paganini in connection with his famous twenty–four “Caprices.” One evening his father brought home two Italians, the first Ole had ever seen. He was then fourteen years of age, and their talk was a new revelation to him. They told him all they knew of Paganini, the very mention of whose name excited him. He afterwards related the story to a friend thus:—