"
exclaimed
Judith, who read everything.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v04 - Bes to Bro
Did life begin so soon?
Was the mind so
fully awakened while the body was still so tiny? "How old are
you, Mistress Moppet? " he asked, when Moppet had finished her
first slice of saffron-cake.
"Four and a quarter. "
years.
Not five years old. She had lived in the world less than five
She talked of what she had thought and believed when
she was little, and she seemed to know as much about life as he
did at sixty-five.
"You are a wonderful little woman, not to be afraid of going
out visiting without your nurse. "
"Nurse! " echoed Moppet, staring at him with her big gray
eyes. "What's a nurse? "
"She doesn't know," explained Laddie: "we never had a
nurse. It's a woman like the one Julie has to take care of her,
Moppet," he explained, condescendingly, "a bonne we call her.
But we've never had a bonne," he added, with a superior air.
"Indeed? " exclaimed Sir John, "then pray who has taken care
of you, put you to bed at night, and washed and dressed you of
a morning, taken you out for walks, or wheeled you in a per-
ambulator? "
"Mother," cried the boy. "Mother does all that—except for
me. I dress myself—I take my own bath. Mother says I'm
growing quite inde-in-de-»
"Pendent! " screamed Moppet across the table. "What a silly
boy you are: you always forget the names of things. "
Moppet was getting excited. The small cheeks were flushed,
and the big eyes were getting bigger, and Moppet was inclined
to gesticulate a good deal when she talked, and to pat the table-
cloth with two little hands to give point to her speech.
"Moppet," said Mr. Danby, "the hot cakes are getting into
your head. I propose an adjournment to Bedfordshire. "
"No! no! NO! Uncle Tom. We ain't to go yet, is we? "
pleaded the child, snuggling close up to Sir John's waistcoat, with
a settled conviction that he was the higher authority. The lapse
## p. 2289 (#487) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2289
in grammar was the momentary result of excitement. In a gen-
eral way Moppet's tenses and persons were as correct as if she
had been twenty.
"I think you ought to be tired, after your long journey," said
the baronet.
"But it wasn't a long journey. We had dinner first, and in
the morning we walked on the Hoe. Isn't that a funny name
for a place? And we saw the sea, and Uncle Tom told us of
the_»
"Spanish Arcadia," interrupted Laddie, who felt it was his
turn now, "and how Drake and the other captains were playing
bowls on the Hoe, just where we were standing that very min-
ute, when the news of the Spanish ships came and they went off
to meet them; and there was a storm, and there was no fight-
ing wanted, for the storm smashed all the ships and they went
back to King Philip without any masts, and Queen Elizabeth
went on horseback to Tilbury, and that was the end of the
Arcadia. "
"For an historical synopsis I don't call that bad," said Mr.
Danby; "nevertheless, I recommend Bedfordshire if our little
friends have finished their tea. "
"I have," said Lassie, with a contented yawn.
Moppet did not want to go to bed. She had eaten less than
the other two, but she had talked more, and had slapped the
table, and had made faces, while Lassie and Laddie had been
models of good manners.
"I wish you wouldn't call it Bedfordshire," she said, shaking
her head vindictively at Mr. Danby. "It makes it worse to go
to bed when people make jokes about it! "
Mr. Danby came around to where she sat, and took her up in
his arms as if she had been a big doll instead of a small child.
"Say good-night to Sir John,” he said.
Moppet stooped her face down to the baronet's, and pursed
up her red lips in the prettiest little kiss, which was returned
quite heartily.
"Take her away, Danby: she is much too excited, and she is
the funniest little thing I ever saw. Good-night, my dears," he
said to the others, as he rose and walked toward the door. "I
hope you will spend a happy Christmas at Place. Adela, be sure
the little things are comfortable, and that Nurse Danby's instruc-
tions are obeyed. "
IV-144
## p. 2290 (#488) ###########################################
2290
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
The children laughed at this rude mention of Mr. Danby, and
went off to bed repeating the phrase "Nurse Danby" with much
chuckling and giggling.
Sir John Penlyon had just seated himself on the great oaken
settle in the chimney-corner, after somewhat languidly perform-
ing his duty as host. Moppet walked straight to him, clambered
on his knee, and nestled her head in his waistcoat, gazing up at
him with very much the same dumb devotion he had seen in
the topaz eyes of a favorite Clumber spaniel.
"Why, Moppet, are you tired of your new little friends? " he
asked kindly.
"I don't like children: they are so silly," answered Moppet,
with decision. "I like you much better. "
"Do you really, now! I wonder how much you like me. As
well as you like junket? "
"Oh, what a silly question! As if one could care for any
nice thing to eat as well as one cares for a live person. ”
"Couldn't one! I believe there are little boys in Boscastle
who are fonder of plum-pudding than of all their relations. "
"They must be horrid little boys. Laddie is greedy, but he
is not so greedy as that. I shouldn't like to live in the same
house with him if he were. "
"For fear he should turn cannibal and eat you? »
"What is a camomile, and does it really eat people? »
"Never mind, Moppet; there are none in our part of the
world," said Sir John, hastily, feeling that he had made a faux
pas, and might set Moppet dreaming of cannibals if he explained
their nature and attributes.
He had been warned by his friend Danby that Moppet was
given to dreaming at night of anything that had moved her
wonder or her fear in the day, and that she would awaken from
such dreams in a cold perspiration, with wild eyes and clinched
hands. Her sleep had been haunted by goblins, and made hid-
eous by men who had sold their shadows, and by wolves who
were hungry for little girls in red cloaks. It had been found
perilous to tell her the old familiar fairy tales which most child-
ren have been told, and from which many children have suf-
fered in the dim early years, before the restrictions of space and
climate are understood, and wolves, bears, and lions located in
their own peculiar latitudes.
## p. 2291 (#489) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2291
Sir John looked down at the little dark head which was
pressed so lovingly against his waistcoat, and at the long dark
lashes that veiled the deep-set eyes.
"And so you really like me? " said he.
"I really love you; not so much as mother, but veway, veway
much. "
"As much as Danby-as Uncle Tom? "
"Better than Uncle Tom! but please don't tell him so. It
might make him unhappy. "
"I dare say it would. Uncle Tom has a jealous disposition.
He might shut you up in a brazen tower. "
Another faux pas. Moppet would be dreaming of brazen
towers. Imagination, assisted by plum-pudding, would run read-
ily into tormenting visions.
Happily, Moppet made no remark upon the tower.
She was
thinking — thinking deeply; and presently she looked up at Sir
John with grave gray eyes and said:-
-
"I believe I love you better than Uncle Tom, because you
are a grander gentleman," she said musingly, "and because you
have this beautiful big house. It is yours, isn't it—your veway,
veway own ? »
"My very, very own. And so you like my house, Moppet?
And will you be sorry to go away? "
"Oh no, because I shall be going to mother. "
"Then you like your own home better than this big house?
"No I don't. I should be very silly if I did. Home is a
funny little house, in a funny little sloping garden on the side
of a hill. Uncle Tom says it is very healthy. There is a tiny
salon, and a tiny dining-room, and a dear little kitchen where the
bonne à tout faire lives, and four tiny bedrooms. It was a
fisherman's cottage once, and then an English lady-an old
lady-bought it, and made new rooms, and had it all made
pretty, and then she died; and then Uncle Tom happened to see
it, and took it for mother. ”
"And was my little Moppet born there? »
"No; I was born a long, long way off-up in the hills. "
"What hills? "
"The northwest provinces. It's an awful long way off-but
I can't tell you anything about it," added Moppet, with a solemn
shake of her cropped head, "for I was born before I can
remember. Laddie says we all came over the sea- - but we
―
## p. 2292 (#490) ###########################################
2292
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
mustn't talk to mother about that time, and Laddie's very stu-
pid-he may have told me all wrong. "
"And doesn't Lassie remember coming home in the ship? "
"She remembers a gentleman who gave her goodies. "
"But not the ship? "
"No, not the ship; but she thinks there must have been a
ship, for the wind blew very hard, and the gentleman went up
and down as if he was in a swing. Laddie pretends to remem-
ber all the sailors' names, but I don't think he really can. "
"And the only house you can remember is the house on the
cliff? "
"Where mother is now - yes, that's the only one, and I'm
very fond of it.
Are you fond of this house ? »
"Yes, Moppet: one is always fond of the house in which one
was born. I was born here. "
Moppet looked up at him wonderingly.
"Is that very surprising? " he asked, smiling down at her.
"It seems rather surprising you should ever have been born,”
replied Moppet, frankly: "you are so veway old. "
"Yes; but one has to begin, you see, Moppet. "
"It must have been a twemendously long time ago when you
and Uncle Tom began. "
The explosion of a cracker startled Moppet from the medi-
tative mood. It was the signal for the rifling of the Christmas
tree. The crackers-the gold and silver and sapphire and ruby
and emerald crackers were being distributed, and were explod-
ing in every direction before Moppet could run to the tree and
hold up two tiny hands, crying excitedly, "Me, me, me! "
"HOW BRIGHT SHE WAS, HOW LOVELY DID SHE SHOW»
From Mohawks'
T
O BE a fashionable beauty, with a reputation for intelligence,
nay, even for that much rarer quality, wit; to have been
born in the purple; to have been just enough talked about
to be interesting as a woman with a history; to have a fine
house in Soho Square, and a mediæval abbey in Hampshire; to
ride, dance, sing, play, and speak French and Italian better than
any other woman in society; to have the finest diamonds in
London; to be followed, flattered, serenaded, lampooned, written
## p. 2293 (#491) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2293
about and talked about, and to be on the sunward side of thirty;
surely to be and to have all these good things should fill the cup
of contentment for any of Eve's daughters.
Lady Judith Topsparkle had all these blessings, and flashed
gayety and brightness upon the world in which her lot was cast;
and yet there were those among her intimates, those who sipped
their chocolate with her of a morning before her hair was pow-
dered or her patches put on, who declared that she was not
altogether happy.
The diamonds, the spacious house in Soho Square, with its
Turkey carpets and Boule furniture, its plenitude of massive.
plate and Italian pictures, its air of regal luxury and splendor;
the abbey near Ringwood, with its tapestries, pictures, curios,
and secret passages, were burdened with a certain condition
which for Lady Judith reduced their value to a minimum.
All these good things came to her through her husband. Of
her own right she was only the genteelest pauper at the court
end of London. Her blood was of the bluest. She was a
younger daughter of one of the oldest earls; but Job himself,
after the advent of the messengers, was not poorer than that
distinguished nobleman. Lady Judith had brought Mr. Top-
sparkle nothing but her beauty, her quality, and her pride.
Love she never pretended to bring him, nor liking, nor even
respect. His father had made his fortune in trade; and the idea
of a tradesman's son was almost as repulsive to Lady Judith as
that of a blackamoor. She married him because her father made
her marry him, and in her own phraseology the matter was
not worth fighting about. " She had broken just two years be-
fore with the only man she had ever loved, had renounced him
in a fit of pique and passion on account of some scandal about a
French dancing-girl; and from that hour she had assumed an
air of recklessness: she had danced, flirted, talked, and carried
on in a manner that delighted the multitude and shocked the
prudes. Bath and Tunbridge Wells had rung with her sayings
and doings; and finally she surrendered herself, not altogether
unwillingly, to the highest bidder.
<<
She was burdened with debt, never knew what it was to have
a crown piece of ready money. At cards she had to borrow first
of one admirer and then of another. She had been able to get
plenty of credit for gowns and trinketry from a harpy class of
West End tradespeople, who speculated in Lady Judith's beauty
## p. 2294 (#492) ###########################################
2294
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
as they might have done in some hazardous but hopeful stock;
counting it almost a certainty that she would make a splendid
match and recoup them all.
Mr. Topsparkle saw her in the zenith of her audacious
charms. He met her at a masquerade at Bath, followed and
intrigued with her all the evening, and at last, alone in an alcove
with her after supper, induced her to take off her mask. Her
beauty dazzled those experienced eyes of his, and he fell madly
in love with her at first sight of that radiant loveliness: starriest
eyes of violet hue, a dainty little Greek nose, a complexion of
lilies and blush-roses, and the most perfect mouth and teeth in
Christendom. No one had ever seen anything more beautiful
than the tender curves of those classic lips, or more delicate
than their faint carmine tinge. In an epoch when almost every
woman of fashion plastered herself with bismuth and ceruse,
Lord Bramber's daughter could afford to exhibit the complexion
nature had given her, and might defy paint to match it. Lady
Judith laughed at her conquest when she was told about it by
half a dozen different admirers at the Rooms next morning.
"What, that Topsparkle man! " she exclaimed-"the traveled
Cit who has been exploring all sorts of savage places in Spain
and Italy, and writing would-be witty letters about his travels.
They say he is richer than any nabob in Hindostan. Yes, I
plagued him vastly, I believe, before I consented to unmask;
and then he pretended to be dumbfounded at my charms, for-
sooth; dazzled by this sun into which you gentlemen look with-
out flinching, like young eagles. "
"My dear Lady Judith, the man is captivated—your slave
forever. You had better put a ring in his nose and lead him
about with you, instead of that little black boy for whom you
sighed the other day, and that his Lordship denied you. He is
quite the richest man in London, three or four times a million-
aire, and he is on the point of buying Lord Ringwood's place in
Hampshirea genuine mediæval abbey, with half a mile of
cloisters and a fish-pond in the kitchen. "
"I care neither for cloisters nor kitchen. "
"Ay, but you have a weakness for diamonds," urged Mr.
Mordaunt, an old admirer, who was very much au courant as to
the fair Judith's history and habits, had lent her money when
she was losing at basset, and had diplomatized with her creditors.
for her. "Witness that cross the Jew sold you the other day. "
## p. 2295 (#493) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2295
Lady Judith reddened angrily. The same Jew dealer who
sold her the jewel had insisted upon having it back from her
when he discovered her inability to pay for it, threatening to
prosecute her for obtaining goods under false pretenses.
"Mr. Topsparkle's diamonds-they belonged to his mother-
are historical. His maternal grandfather was an Amsterdam Jew,
and the greatest diamond merchant of his time. He had mills
where the gems were ground as corn is ground in our country,
and seem to have been as plentiful as corn. Egad, Lady Judith,
how you would blaze in the Topsparkle diamonds! "
"Mr. Topsparkle must be sixty years of age! " exclaimed the
lady, with sovereign contempt.
"Nobody supposes you would marry him for his youth or his
personal attractions. Yet he is by no means a bad-looking man,
and he has had plenty of adventures in his day, I can assure
your Ladyship. Il a vécu, as our neighbors say: Topsparkle is no
simpleton. When he set out upon the grand tour nearly forty
years ago, he carried with him about as scandalous a reputation
as a gentleman of fashion could enjoy. He had been cut by all
the strait-laced people; and it is only the fact of his incalculable
wealth which has opened the doors of decent houses for him
since his return. "
"I thank you for the compliment implied in your recom-
mendation of him to me as a husband," said Lady Judith, draw-
ing herself up with that Juno-like air which made her seem half
a head taller, and which accentuated every curve of her superb
torso. "He is apparently a gentleman whom it would be a dis-
grace to know. "
“Oh, your Ladyship must be aware that a reformed rake
makes the best husband. And since Topsparkle went on the
Continent he has acquired a new reputation as a wit and a man
of letters. He wrote an Assyrian story in the Italian language,
about which the town raved a few years ago—a sort of demon
story, ever so much cleverer than Voltaire's fanciful novels.
Everybody was reading or pretending to read it. ”
"Oh, was that his?
" exclaimed Judith, who read everything.
"It was mighty clever. I begin to think better of your Top-
sparkle personage. "
Five minutes afterwards, strolling languidly amid the crowd,
with a plain cousin at her elbow for foil and duenna, Lady Judith
met Mr. Topsparkle walking with no less a person than her
father.
## p. 2296 (#494) ###########################################
2296
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
Lord Bramber enjoyed the privilege of an antique hereditary
gout, and came to Bath every season for the waters. He was a
man of imposing figure, at once tall and bulky, but he carried
his vast proportions with dignity and ease. He was said to have
been the handsomest man of his day, and had been admired even
by an age which could boast of "Hervey the Handsome," John
Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and the irresistible Henry St.
John. Basking in that broad sunshine of popularity which is the
portion of a man of high birth, graceful manners, and good looks,
Lord Bramber had squandered a handsome fortune right royally,
and now, at five-and-fifty, was as near insolvency as a gentleman
dare be. His house in Pulteney Street was a kind of haven, to
which he brought his family when London creditors began to be
implacable. He had even thoughts of emigrating to Holland or
Belgium, or to some old Roman town in the sunny South of
France, where he might live upon his wife's pin-money, which
happily was protected by stringent settlements and incorruptible
trustees.
He had married two out of three daughters well, but not brill-
iantly. Judith was the youngest of the three, and she was the
flower of the flock. She had been foolish, very foolish, about Lord
Lavendale, and a faint cloud of scandal had hung over her name
ever since her affair with that too notorious rake. Admirers she
had by the score, but since the Lavendale entanglement there
had been no serious advances from any suitor of mark.
But now Mr. Topsparkle, one of the wealthiest commoners in
Great Britain, was obviously smitten with Lady Judith's perfec-
tions, and had a keen air which seemed to mean business, Lord
Bramber thought. He had obtained an introduction to the earl
within the last half-hour, and had not concealed his admiration
for the earl's daughter. He had entreated the honor of a formal
introduction to the exquisite creature with whom he had con-
versed on sportive terms last night at the Assembly Rooms.
Lady Judith acknowledged the introduction with the air of a
queen to whom courtiers and compliments were as the gadflies
of summer. She fanned herself listlessly, and stared about her
while Mr. Topsparkle was talking.
"I vow, there is Mrs. Margetson," she exclaimed, recognizing
an acquaintance across the crowd: "I have not seen her for a
century. Heavens, how old and yellow she is looking-yellower
even than you, Mattie! " this last by way of aside to her plain
cousin.
## p. 2297 (#495) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2297
"I hope you bear me no malice for my pertinacity last night,
Lady Judith," murmured Topsparkle, insinuatingly.
'Malice, my good sir! I protest I never bear malice. To be
malicious, one's feelings must be engaged; and you would hardly
expect mine to be concerned in the mystifications of a dancing-
room. "
She looked over his head as she talked to him, still on the
watch for familiar faces among the crowd, smiling at one, bow-
ing at another. Mr. Topsparkle was savage at not being able to
engage her attention. At Venice, whence he had come lately,
all the women had courted him, hanging upon his words, adoring
him as the keenest wit of his day.
He was an attenuated and rather effeminate person, exqui-
sitely dressed and powdered, and not without a suspicion of rouge
upon his hollow cheeks or of Vandyke brown upon his delicately
penciled eyebrows. He, like Lord Bramber, presented the wreck
of manly beauty; but whereas Bramber suggested a three-master
of goodly bulk and tonnage, battered but still weather-proof and
seaworthy, Topsparkle had the air of a delicate pinnace which
time and tempest had worn to a mere phantasmal bark that the
first storm would scatter into ruin.
He had hardly the air of a gentleman, Judith thought, watch-
ing him keenly all the while she seemed to ignore his existence.
He was too fine, too highly trained for the genuine article; he
lacked that easy inborn grace of the man in whom good man-
ners are hereditary. There was nothing of the Cit about him;
but there was the exaggerated elegance, the exotic grace, of a
man who has too studiously cultivated the art of being a fine
gentleman; who has learned his manners in dubious paths, from
petites maîtresses and prime donne, rather than from statesmen
and princes.
On this, and on many a subsequent meeting, Lady Judith
was just uncivil enough to fan the flame of Vivian Topsparkle's
passion. He had begun in a somewhat philandering spirit, not
quite determined whether Lord Bramber's daughter were worthy
of him; but her hauteur made him her slave. Had she been
civil he would have given more account to those old stories
about Lavendale, and would have been inclined to draw back
before finally committing himself. But a woman who could
afford to be rude to the best match in England must needs be
above all suspicion. Had her reputation been seriously damaged
## p. 2298 (#496) ###########################################
2298
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
she would have caught at the chance of rehabilitating herself by
a rich marriage. Had she been civil to him Mr. Topsparkle
would have haggled and bargained about settlements; but his
ever-present fear of losing her made him accede to Lord Bram-
ber's exactions with a more than princely generosity, since but
few princes could afford to be so liberal. He had set his heart
upon having this woman for his wife-firstly, because she was
the handsomest and most fashionable woman in London, and
secondly, because so far as burnt-out embers can glow with new
fire, Mr. Topsparkle's battered old heart was aflame with a very
serious passion for this new deity.
So there was a grand wedding from the earl's house in Lei-
cester Fields; not a crowded assembly, for only the very élite of
the modish world were invited. The Duke, meaning his Grace
of York, honored the company with his royal presence, and there
were the great Sir Robert and a bevy of Cabinet ministers, and
Mr. Topsparkle felt that he had canceled any old half-forgotten
scandals as to his past life, and established himself in the high-
est social sphere by this alliance. As Vivian Topsparkle the
half-foreign eccentric, he was a man to be stared at and talked
about; but as the husband of Lord Bramber's daughter he had a
footing by right of alliance-in some of the noblest houses in
England. His name and reputation were hooked on to old
family trees; and those great people whose kinswoman he had
married could not afford to have him maligned or slighted. In
a word, Mr. Topsparkle felt that he had good value for his mag-
nificent settlements.
________
Was Lady Judith Topsparkle happy, with all her blessings?
She was gay; and with the polite world gayety ranks as happi-
ness, and commands the envy of the crowd. Nobody envies the
quiet matron whose domestic life flows onward with the placidity
of a sluggish stream. It is the butterfly queen of the hour
whom people admire and envy. Lady Judith, blazing in dia-
monds at a court ball, beautiful, daring, insolent, had half the
town for her slaves and courtiers. Even women flattered and
fawned upon her, delighted to be acknowledged as her ac-
quaintance, proud to be invited to her parties or to dance
attendance upon her in public assemblies.
T
## p. 2299 (#497) ###########################################
2299
GEORG BRANDES
(1842-)
BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE
HE man of letters who devotes himself chiefly or wholly to
criticism is an essentially modern type. Although the criti-
G. C. e cal art has been practiced in all literary periods, it has not
until the present century enlisted anything like the exclusive atten-
tion of writers of the highest order of attainment, but has rather
played a subordinate part beside the constructive or creative work to
the performance of which such men have given their best energies.
com-
In the case of some writers, such as Voltaire and Samuel Johnson,
we recognize the critical spirit that informs
the bulk of their work, yet are
pelled on the whole to classify them as
poets, or historians, or philosophers. Even
Coleridge, who wrote no inconsiderable
amount of the best literary criticism in
existence, is chiefly remembered as a poet;
even Lessing, one of the fountain-heads of
authoritative critical doctrine, owes to his
plays the major part of his great reputa-
tion. As for such men as Ben Jonson and
Dryden, Lamb and Shelley, Goethe and
Heine, their critical utterances, precious
and profound as they frequently are, figure
but incidentally among their writings, and
we read these men mainly for other reasons than that of learning
their opinions about other people's productions. For examples of the
man of letters considered primarily as critic, we must then look to
our own century, and we find the type best illustrated by such men
as Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Brunetière, and the subject of the present
sketch.
GEORG BRANDES
It is indeed a rather remarkable fact that the most conspicuous
figure in literary Denmark at the present time should be not a poet
or a novelist, but a critic pure and simple; for that is the title which
must be given to Georg Brandes. Not only is his attitude con-
sistently critical throughout the long series of his writings, but his
form and matter are also avowedly critical; so much so that hardly
one of his score or more of published volumes calls for classification
## p. 2300 (#498) ###########################################
GEORG BRANDES
2300
in any other than the critical category. Even when he takes us with
him upon his travels to France or Russia with the best intentions
in the world as to the avoidance of "shop,” he finds himself in the
end talking about the literature and the politics of those countries.
One of his latest books, Udenlandske Egne og Personligheder'
(Foreign Parts and Personalities) has a preface with the following
opening paragraph:—
"One gets tired of talking about books all the time. Even the man whose
business it is to express himself in black and white has eyes like other peo-
ple, and with them he perceives and observes the variegated visible world:
its landscapes, cities, plain and cultivated men, plastic art. For him too
does Nature exist; he too is moved at sight of such simple happenings as the
fall of the leaves in October; he too is stirred as he gazes upon a waterfall,
a mountain region, a sunlit glacier, a Dutch lake, and an Italian olive grove.
He too has been in Arcadia. »
Yet half the contents of the volume thus introduced must be de-
scribed as the work of the critic. Not only are the set papers upon
such men as Taine, Renan, and Maupassant deliberate critical studies,
but the sketches of travel likewise are sure to get around to the art
and literature of the countries visited.
The life of criticism, in the larger sense, comes from wide obser-
vation and a cultivation of the cosmopolitan spirit. And it must be
said of Brandes that he is a critic in this large sense, that he has
taken for his province the modern spirit in all its varied manifesta-
tions. The very title of his chief work-Main Currents in the Lit-
erature of the Nineteenth Century'-shows him to be concerned
with the broad movements of thought rather than with matters of
narrow technique or the literary activity of any one country- least
of all his own. It was peculiarly fortunate for Denmark that a critic
of this type should have arisen within her borders a quarter-century
ago. The Scandinavian countries lie so far apart from the chief
centres of European thought that they are always in danger of laps-
ing into a narrow self-sufficiency so far as intellectual ideals are con-
cerned. Danish literature has been made what it is chiefly by the
mediation of a few powerful minds who have kept it in touch with
modern progress: by Holberg, who may almost be said to have
brought humanism into Denmark; by Oehlenschläger, who made the
romantic movement as powerful an influence in Denmark as it was
in Germany; by Brandes, who, beginning his career just after the
war in which Denmark lost her provinces and became as embittered
toward Germany as France was to become a few years later, strove
to prevent the political breach from extending into the intellectual
sphere, and helped his fellow-countrymen to understand that thought
## p. 2301 (#499) ###########################################
GEORG BRANDES
2301
and progress are one and have a common aim, although nations may
be many and antagonistic. There is much significance in the fact
that the name of 'Emigrant Literature' is given to the first section
of his greatest work. He thus styles the French literature of a cen-
tury ago, the work of such writers as Chateaubriand, Senancour,
Constant, and Madame de Staël,- because it received a vivifying im-
pulse from the emigration, —from the contact, forced or voluntary,
of the French mind with the ideals of German and English civiliza-
tion. It has been the chief function of Brandes, during the whole
of his brilliant career, to supply points of contact between the intel-
lectual life of Denmark and that of the rest of Europe, to bring his
own country into the federal republic of letters.
A glance at the course of his life, and at the subjects of his
books, will serve to outline the nature of the work to which his
energies have been devoted. A Jew by race, Georg Morris Cohen
Brandes was born February 4th, 1842. He went through his aca-
demic training with brilliant success, studied law for a brief period,
and then drifted into journalism and literature. A long visit to Paris
(1866-7) gave him breadth of view and the materials for his first
books, Esthetiske Studier' (Esthetic Studies), 'Den Franske Æs-
thetik' (French Esthetics), and a volume of 'Kritiker og Portraiter'
(Criticisms and Portraits).
A later visit to foreign parts (1870-1) brought him into contact
with Taine, Renan, and Mill, all of whom influenced him profoundly.
In 1871 he began to lecture on literary subjects, chiefly in Copen-
hagen, and out of these lectures grew his 'Hovedströmninger i det
Nittende Aarhundredes Litteratur' (Main Currents in the Literature
of the Nineteenth Century), a work that in the course of about ten
years extended to six volumes, and must be considered not only the
author's capital critical achievement, but also one of the greatest
works of literary history and criticism that the nineteenth century
has produced. The division of the subject is as follows:
grant Literature'; 2. The Romantic School in Germany'; 3. 'The
Reaction in France'; 4. 'Naturalism in England'; 5. The Romantic
School in France'; 6. Young Germany. '
1. 'Emi-
In spite of the growing fame that came to him from these mas-
terly studies, Brandes felt the need of a larger audience than the
Scandinavian countries could offer him, and in 1877 changed his resi-
dence from Copenhagen to Berlin, a step to which he was in part
urged by the violent antagonism engendered at home by the radical
and uncompromising character of many of his utterances. It was not
until 1883 that he again took up residence in his own country, upon
a guarantee of four thousand kroner (about $1000) annually for ten
years, secured by some of his friends, the condition being that he
-
-:
## p. 2302 (#500) ###########################################
2302
GEORG BRANDES
should give courses of public lectures in Copenhagen during that
period.
Among the works not yet named, mention should be made of his
volumes upon Holberg, Tegnér, Kierkegaard, Ferdinand Lassalle, and
the Earl of Beaconsfield. These brilliant monographs are remarkable
for their insight into the diverse types of character with which they
deal, for their breadth of view, felicity of phrase, and originality
of treatment. There are also several collections of miscellaneous
essays, with such titles as 'Danske Digtere' (Danish Poets), 'Danske
Personligheder' (Danish Personalities), Det Moderne Gjennembruds
Mænd' (Men of the Modern Awakening), and 'Udenlandske Egne
og Personligheder' (Foreign Parts and Personalities). The latest pub-
lication of Brandes is a careful study of Shakespeare, a work of
remarkable vigor, freshness, and sympathy.
As a critic, Brandes belongs distinctly to the class of those who
speak with authority, and has little in common with the writers who
are content to explore the recesses of their own subjectivity, and re-
cord their personal impressions of literature. Criticism is for him a
matter of science, not of opinion, and he holds it subject to a defin-
ite method and body of principles. A few sentences from the second
volume of his 'Hovedströmninger' will illustrate what he conceives
that method to be:-
-
"First and foremost, I endeavor everywhere to bring literature back to
life. You will already have observed that while the older controversies in
our literature—for example, that between Heiberg and Hauch, and even the
famous controversy between Baggesen and Oehlenschläger- have been main-
tained in an exclusively literary domain and have become disputes about
literary principles alone, the controversy aroused by my lectures, not merely
by reason of the misapprehension of the opposition, but quite as much by rea-
son of the very nature of my writing, has come to touch upon a swarm of
religious, social, and moral problems. . . It follows from my conception
of the relation of literature to life that the history of literature I teach is not
a history of literature for the drawing-room. I seize hold of actual life with
all the strength I may, and show how the feelings that find their expression
in literature spring up in the human heart. Now the human heart is no
stagnant pool or idyllic woodland lake. It is an ocean with submarine vege-
tation and frightful inhabitants. The literary history and the poetry of the
drawing-room see in the life of man a salon, a decorated ball-room, the men
and the furnishings polished alike, in which no dark corners escape illumina-
tion. Let him who will, look at matters from this point of view; but it is no
affair of mine. »
The boldness and even the ruthlessness which characterize much
of the author's work were plainly foreshadowed in this outspoken in-
troduction; and he has grown more rather than less uncompromising
## p. 2303 (#501) ###########################################
GEORG BRANDES
2303
during the quarter-century that has elapsed since they were spoken.
Matthew Arnold would have applauded the envisagement of litera-
ture as "criticism of life," but would have deplored the sacrifice of
sweetness to gain increased intensity of light. Brandes came back
from contact with the European world full of enthusiasm for the
new men and the new ideas,- for Comte and Taine, for Renan and
Mill and Spencer, and wanted his recalcitrant fellow-countrymen
to accept them all at once. They were naturally taken aback by
so imperious a demand, and their opposition created the atmosphere
of controversy in which Brandes has ever since for the most part
lived-with slight effort to soften its asperities, but, it must be
added, with the ever-increasing respect of those not of his own way
of thinking. On the whole, his work has been healthful and stim-
ulating; it has stirred the sluggish to a renewed mental activity, and
has made its author himself one of the most conspicuous figures of
what he calls "det Moderne Gjennembrud »- the Modern Awakening.
Estalage
-
BJÖRNSON
From 'Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century: Translated by Professor
Rasmus B. Anderson
I
T is only necessary to bestow a single glance upon Björnson to
be convinced how admirably he is equipped by nature for
the hot strife a literary career brings with it in most lands,
and especially in the combat-loving North. Shoulders as broad
as his are not often seen, nor do we often behold so vigorous a
form, one that seems as though created to be chiseled in granite.
There is perhaps no labor that so completely excites all the
vital forces, exhausts the nerves, refines and enervates the feel-
ings, as that of literary production. There has never been the
slightest danger, however, that the exertions of Björnson's poetic
productiveness would affect his lungs as in the case of Schiller,
or his spine as in the case of Heine; there has been no cause
to fear that inimical articles in the public journals would ever
give him his death-blow, as they did Halvdan, the hero of his
drama 'Redaktören (The Editor); or that he would yield, as
so many modern poets have yielded, to the temptation of resort-
ing to pernicious stimulants or to dissipation as antidotes for the
## p. 2304 (#502) ###########################################
GEORG BRANDES
2304
overwrought or depleted state of the nervous system occasioned
by creative activity. Nothing has injured Björnson's spine; his
lungs are without blemish; a cough is unknown to him; and his
shoulders were fashioned to bear without discomposure the rude
thrusts which the world gives, and to return them.
He is per-
haps the only important writer of our day of whom this may be
said. As an author he is never nervous, not when he displays
his greatest delicacy, not even when he evinces his most marked
sensibility.
Strong as the beast of prey whose name [Björn=Bear] occurs
twice in his; muscular, without the slightest trace of corpulence,
of athletic build, he looms up majestically in my mind, with his
massive head, his firmly compressed lips, and his sharp, penetrat-
ing gaze from behind his spectacles. It would be impossible for
literary hostilities to overthrow this man, and for him there never
existed that greatest danger to authors (a danger which for a long
time menaced his great rival Henrik Ibsen), namely, that of hav-
ing his name shrouded in silence. Even as a very young author,
as a theatrical critic and political writer, he had entered the field
of literature with such an eagerness for combat that a rumbling
noise arose about him wherever he appeared. Like his own
Thorbjörn in Synnöve Solbakken,' he displayed in early youth
the combative tendency of the athlete; but like his Sigurd in
Sigurd Slembe,' he fought not merely to practice his strength,
but from genuine though often mistaken love of truth and just-
ice. At all events, he understood thoroughly who to attract
attention.
An author may possess great and rare gifts, and yet, through
lack of harmony between his own personal endowments and the
national characteristics or the degree of development of his peo-
ple, may long be prevented from attaining a brilliant success.
Many of the world's greatest minds have suffered from this
cause. Many, like Byron, Heine, and Henrik Ibsen, have left
their native land; many more who have remained at home have
felt forsaken by their compatriots. With Björnson the case is
quite different. He has never, it is true, been peacefully recog
nized by the entire Norwegian people; at first, because the form
he used was too new and unfamiliar; later, because his ideas
were of too challenging a nature for the ruling, conservative, and
highly orthodox circles of the land; even at the present time he
is pursued by the press of the Norwegian government and by
## p. 2305 (#503) ###########################################
GEORG BRANDES
2305
the leading official society with a fury which is as little choice
in its selection of means as the bitterness which pursues the
champions of thrones and altars in other countries. In spite of
all this, Björnstjerne Björnson has his people behind him and
about him as perhaps no other poet has, unless it be Victor
Hugo. When his name is mentioned it is equivalent to hoisting
the flag of Norway. In his noble qualities and in his faults, in
his genius and in his weak points, he as thoroughly bears the
stamp of Norway as Voltaire bore that of France. His boldness
and his naïveté, his open-heartedness as a man and the terseness
of his style as an artist, the highly wrought and sensitive Nor-
wegian popular sentiment, and the lively consciousness of the
one-sidedness and the intellectual needs of his fellow-countrymen
that has driven him to Scandinavianism, Pan-Teutonism, and cos-
mopolitanism-all this in its peculiar combination in him is so
markedly national that his personality may be said to offer a
résumé of the entire people.
None of his contemporaries so fully represent this people's
love of home and of freedom, its self-consciousness, rectitude,
and fresh energy.
Indeed, just now he also exemplifies on a
large scale the people's tendency to self-criticism; not that
scourging criticism which chastises with scorpions, and whose
representative in Norway is Ibsen, in Russia Turgénieff, but the
sharp bold expression of opinion begotten of love. He never
calls attention to an evil in whose improvement and cure he
does not believe, or to a vice which he despairs of seeing out-
rooted. For he has implicit faith in the good in humanity, and
possesses entire the invincible optimism of a large, genial, san-
guine nature.
As to his character, he is half chieftain, half poet. He unites
in his own person the two forms most prominent in ancient Nor-
way those of the warrior and of the scald. In his intellectual
constitution he is partly a tribune of the people, partly a lay
preacher; in other words, he combines in his public demeanor
the political and religious pathos of his Norwegian contempo-
raries, and this became far more apparent after he broke loose
from orthodoxy than it was before. Since his so-called apostasy
he has in fact been a missionary and a reformer to a greater
degree than ever.
He could have been the product of no other land than Nor-
way, and far less than other authors could he thrive in any but
IV-145
## p. 2306 (#504) ###########################################
2306
GEORG BRANDES
his native soil. In the year 1880, when the rumor spread
through the German press that Björnson, weary of continual
wrangling at home, was about to settle in Germany, he wrote to
me: "In Norway will I live, in Norway will I lash and be
lashed, in Norway will I sing and die. ”
To hold such intimate relations with one's fatherland is most
fortunate for a person who is sympathetically comprehended by
that fatherland. And this is the case with Björnson. It is a
matter dependent on conditions deeply rooted in his nature. He
who cherishes so profound an enthusiasm for the reserved, soli-
tary Michelangelo, and who feels constrained, as a matter of
course, to place him above Raphael, is himself a man of a totally
different temperament: one who is never lonely, even when
most alone (as he has been since 1873 on his gård in remote
Gausdal), but who is social to the core, or, more strictly speak-
ing, a thoroughly national character. He admires Michelangelo
because he reveres and understands the elements of greatness, of
profound earnestness, of mighty ruggedness in the human heart
and in style; but he has nothing in common with the great Flor-
entine's melancholy sense of isolation. He was born to be the
founder of a party, and was therefore early attracted to enthusi-
astic and popular party leaders, such as the Dane Grundtvig and
the Norwegian Wergeland, although wholly unlike either in his
plastic, creative power. He is a man who needs to feel himself
the centre, or rather the focus of sympathy, and insensibly he
forms a circle about him, because his own nature is the résumé
of a social union.
-
Copyrighted by T. Y. Crowell and Company, New York.
THE HISTORICAL MOVEMENT IN MODERN LITERATURE
From the Introduction to Main Currents in the Literature of the Nineteenth
Century›
W
HAT I shall portray for you is a historical movement, having
very completely the form and the character of a drama.
The six distinct literary groups that I intend to present
to you are entirely like the six acts of a great play. In the first
group, the French emigrant-literature inspired by Rousseau, the
reaction has already begun, but the reactionary currents are
everywhere blended with the revolutionary. In the second group,
## p. 2307 (#505) ###########################################
GEORG BRANDES
2307
the half-Catholic romantic school of Germany, the reaction is
growing; it goes further, and holds itself more aloof from the
contemporary movement towards freedom and progress. The
third group, finally, formed of such writers as Joseph de Maistre,
Lamennais in his orthodox period, Lamartine and Victor Hugo
under the Restoration, when they were still firm supporters of
the legitimist and clerical parties, stands for the reaction, impetu-
ous and triumphant.
Byron and his associates make up the fourth group. This
one man reverses the action of the great drama. The Greek
war of liberation breaks out, a current of fresh air sweeps over
Europe, Byron falls as a hero of the Greek cause, and his heroic
death makes a deep impression upon all the writers of the Con-
tinent. Just before the July Revolution all the great French
writers turn about, forming the fifth group, the French romantic
school, and the new liberal movement is marked by the names
of Lamennais, Hugo, Lamartine, De Musset, George Sand, and
many others.
And when the movement spreads from France
into Germany, liberal ideas triumph in that land also, and the
sixth and last group of authors I shall portray became inspired
by the ideas of the July Revolution and the War of Liberation,
seeing, like the French poets, in Byron's great shade the leader
of the movement towards freedom. The most important of these
young writers are of Jewish origin, as Heine, Börne, and later,
Auerbach.
I believe that from this great drama we may get a lesson for
our own instruction. We are now, as usual, forty years behind
the rest of Europe. In the literatures of those great countries
the revolutionary stream long ago united with its tributaries,
burst the dikes that were set to impede its course, and has been
distributed into thousands of channels. We are still endeavoring
to check it and hold it dammed up in the swamps of the reac-
tion, but we have succeeded only in checking our literature itself.
It would hardly be difficult to secure unanimous consent to
the proposition that Danish literature has at no time during the
present century found itself languishing as in our own days.
Poetical production is almost completely checked, and no problem
of a general human or social character awakens interest or evokes
any more serious discussion than that of the daily press or other
ephemeral publication. Our productivity has never been strongly
original, and we now utterly fail to appropriate the spiritual life
## p. 2308 (#506) ###########################################
2308
GEORG BRANDES
of other lands, and our spiritual deafness has brought upon us
the speechlessness of the deaf-mutes.
The proof that a literature in our days is alive is to be
found in the fact that it brings problems up for debate. Thus
George Sand brings marriage up for debate, Voltaire, Byron, and
Feuerbach religion, Proudhon property, Alexander Dumas fils
the relations of the sexes, and Émile Augier social relations in
general. For a literature to bring nothing up for debate is the
same thing as to lose all its significance. The people that pro-
duce such a literature may believe as firmly as they please that
the salvation of the world will come from it, but their expecta-
tions will be doomed to disappointment; such a people can no
more influence the development of civilization in the direction of
progress than did the fly who thought he was urging the car-
riage onward by now and then giving the four horses an insig-
nificant prick.
fully awakened while the body was still so tiny? "How old are
you, Mistress Moppet? " he asked, when Moppet had finished her
first slice of saffron-cake.
"Four and a quarter. "
years.
Not five years old. She had lived in the world less than five
She talked of what she had thought and believed when
she was little, and she seemed to know as much about life as he
did at sixty-five.
"You are a wonderful little woman, not to be afraid of going
out visiting without your nurse. "
"Nurse! " echoed Moppet, staring at him with her big gray
eyes. "What's a nurse? "
"She doesn't know," explained Laddie: "we never had a
nurse. It's a woman like the one Julie has to take care of her,
Moppet," he explained, condescendingly, "a bonne we call her.
But we've never had a bonne," he added, with a superior air.
"Indeed? " exclaimed Sir John, "then pray who has taken care
of you, put you to bed at night, and washed and dressed you of
a morning, taken you out for walks, or wheeled you in a per-
ambulator? "
"Mother," cried the boy. "Mother does all that—except for
me. I dress myself—I take my own bath. Mother says I'm
growing quite inde-in-de-»
"Pendent! " screamed Moppet across the table. "What a silly
boy you are: you always forget the names of things. "
Moppet was getting excited. The small cheeks were flushed,
and the big eyes were getting bigger, and Moppet was inclined
to gesticulate a good deal when she talked, and to pat the table-
cloth with two little hands to give point to her speech.
"Moppet," said Mr. Danby, "the hot cakes are getting into
your head. I propose an adjournment to Bedfordshire. "
"No! no! NO! Uncle Tom. We ain't to go yet, is we? "
pleaded the child, snuggling close up to Sir John's waistcoat, with
a settled conviction that he was the higher authority. The lapse
## p. 2289 (#487) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2289
in grammar was the momentary result of excitement. In a gen-
eral way Moppet's tenses and persons were as correct as if she
had been twenty.
"I think you ought to be tired, after your long journey," said
the baronet.
"But it wasn't a long journey. We had dinner first, and in
the morning we walked on the Hoe. Isn't that a funny name
for a place? And we saw the sea, and Uncle Tom told us of
the_»
"Spanish Arcadia," interrupted Laddie, who felt it was his
turn now, "and how Drake and the other captains were playing
bowls on the Hoe, just where we were standing that very min-
ute, when the news of the Spanish ships came and they went off
to meet them; and there was a storm, and there was no fight-
ing wanted, for the storm smashed all the ships and they went
back to King Philip without any masts, and Queen Elizabeth
went on horseback to Tilbury, and that was the end of the
Arcadia. "
"For an historical synopsis I don't call that bad," said Mr.
Danby; "nevertheless, I recommend Bedfordshire if our little
friends have finished their tea. "
"I have," said Lassie, with a contented yawn.
Moppet did not want to go to bed. She had eaten less than
the other two, but she had talked more, and had slapped the
table, and had made faces, while Lassie and Laddie had been
models of good manners.
"I wish you wouldn't call it Bedfordshire," she said, shaking
her head vindictively at Mr. Danby. "It makes it worse to go
to bed when people make jokes about it! "
Mr. Danby came around to where she sat, and took her up in
his arms as if she had been a big doll instead of a small child.
"Say good-night to Sir John,” he said.
Moppet stooped her face down to the baronet's, and pursed
up her red lips in the prettiest little kiss, which was returned
quite heartily.
"Take her away, Danby: she is much too excited, and she is
the funniest little thing I ever saw. Good-night, my dears," he
said to the others, as he rose and walked toward the door. "I
hope you will spend a happy Christmas at Place. Adela, be sure
the little things are comfortable, and that Nurse Danby's instruc-
tions are obeyed. "
IV-144
## p. 2290 (#488) ###########################################
2290
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
The children laughed at this rude mention of Mr. Danby, and
went off to bed repeating the phrase "Nurse Danby" with much
chuckling and giggling.
Sir John Penlyon had just seated himself on the great oaken
settle in the chimney-corner, after somewhat languidly perform-
ing his duty as host. Moppet walked straight to him, clambered
on his knee, and nestled her head in his waistcoat, gazing up at
him with very much the same dumb devotion he had seen in
the topaz eyes of a favorite Clumber spaniel.
"Why, Moppet, are you tired of your new little friends? " he
asked kindly.
"I don't like children: they are so silly," answered Moppet,
with decision. "I like you much better. "
"Do you really, now! I wonder how much you like me. As
well as you like junket? "
"Oh, what a silly question! As if one could care for any
nice thing to eat as well as one cares for a live person. ”
"Couldn't one! I believe there are little boys in Boscastle
who are fonder of plum-pudding than of all their relations. "
"They must be horrid little boys. Laddie is greedy, but he
is not so greedy as that. I shouldn't like to live in the same
house with him if he were. "
"For fear he should turn cannibal and eat you? »
"What is a camomile, and does it really eat people? »
"Never mind, Moppet; there are none in our part of the
world," said Sir John, hastily, feeling that he had made a faux
pas, and might set Moppet dreaming of cannibals if he explained
their nature and attributes.
He had been warned by his friend Danby that Moppet was
given to dreaming at night of anything that had moved her
wonder or her fear in the day, and that she would awaken from
such dreams in a cold perspiration, with wild eyes and clinched
hands. Her sleep had been haunted by goblins, and made hid-
eous by men who had sold their shadows, and by wolves who
were hungry for little girls in red cloaks. It had been found
perilous to tell her the old familiar fairy tales which most child-
ren have been told, and from which many children have suf-
fered in the dim early years, before the restrictions of space and
climate are understood, and wolves, bears, and lions located in
their own peculiar latitudes.
## p. 2291 (#489) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2291
Sir John looked down at the little dark head which was
pressed so lovingly against his waistcoat, and at the long dark
lashes that veiled the deep-set eyes.
"And so you really like me? " said he.
"I really love you; not so much as mother, but veway, veway
much. "
"As much as Danby-as Uncle Tom? "
"Better than Uncle Tom! but please don't tell him so. It
might make him unhappy. "
"I dare say it would. Uncle Tom has a jealous disposition.
He might shut you up in a brazen tower. "
Another faux pas. Moppet would be dreaming of brazen
towers. Imagination, assisted by plum-pudding, would run read-
ily into tormenting visions.
Happily, Moppet made no remark upon the tower.
She was
thinking — thinking deeply; and presently she looked up at Sir
John with grave gray eyes and said:-
-
"I believe I love you better than Uncle Tom, because you
are a grander gentleman," she said musingly, "and because you
have this beautiful big house. It is yours, isn't it—your veway,
veway own ? »
"My very, very own. And so you like my house, Moppet?
And will you be sorry to go away? "
"Oh no, because I shall be going to mother. "
"Then you like your own home better than this big house?
"No I don't. I should be very silly if I did. Home is a
funny little house, in a funny little sloping garden on the side
of a hill. Uncle Tom says it is very healthy. There is a tiny
salon, and a tiny dining-room, and a dear little kitchen where the
bonne à tout faire lives, and four tiny bedrooms. It was a
fisherman's cottage once, and then an English lady-an old
lady-bought it, and made new rooms, and had it all made
pretty, and then she died; and then Uncle Tom happened to see
it, and took it for mother. ”
"And was my little Moppet born there? »
"No; I was born a long, long way off-up in the hills. "
"What hills? "
"The northwest provinces. It's an awful long way off-but
I can't tell you anything about it," added Moppet, with a solemn
shake of her cropped head, "for I was born before I can
remember. Laddie says we all came over the sea- - but we
―
## p. 2292 (#490) ###########################################
2292
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
mustn't talk to mother about that time, and Laddie's very stu-
pid-he may have told me all wrong. "
"And doesn't Lassie remember coming home in the ship? "
"She remembers a gentleman who gave her goodies. "
"But not the ship? "
"No, not the ship; but she thinks there must have been a
ship, for the wind blew very hard, and the gentleman went up
and down as if he was in a swing. Laddie pretends to remem-
ber all the sailors' names, but I don't think he really can. "
"And the only house you can remember is the house on the
cliff? "
"Where mother is now - yes, that's the only one, and I'm
very fond of it.
Are you fond of this house ? »
"Yes, Moppet: one is always fond of the house in which one
was born. I was born here. "
Moppet looked up at him wonderingly.
"Is that very surprising? " he asked, smiling down at her.
"It seems rather surprising you should ever have been born,”
replied Moppet, frankly: "you are so veway old. "
"Yes; but one has to begin, you see, Moppet. "
"It must have been a twemendously long time ago when you
and Uncle Tom began. "
The explosion of a cracker startled Moppet from the medi-
tative mood. It was the signal for the rifling of the Christmas
tree. The crackers-the gold and silver and sapphire and ruby
and emerald crackers were being distributed, and were explod-
ing in every direction before Moppet could run to the tree and
hold up two tiny hands, crying excitedly, "Me, me, me! "
"HOW BRIGHT SHE WAS, HOW LOVELY DID SHE SHOW»
From Mohawks'
T
O BE a fashionable beauty, with a reputation for intelligence,
nay, even for that much rarer quality, wit; to have been
born in the purple; to have been just enough talked about
to be interesting as a woman with a history; to have a fine
house in Soho Square, and a mediæval abbey in Hampshire; to
ride, dance, sing, play, and speak French and Italian better than
any other woman in society; to have the finest diamonds in
London; to be followed, flattered, serenaded, lampooned, written
## p. 2293 (#491) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2293
about and talked about, and to be on the sunward side of thirty;
surely to be and to have all these good things should fill the cup
of contentment for any of Eve's daughters.
Lady Judith Topsparkle had all these blessings, and flashed
gayety and brightness upon the world in which her lot was cast;
and yet there were those among her intimates, those who sipped
their chocolate with her of a morning before her hair was pow-
dered or her patches put on, who declared that she was not
altogether happy.
The diamonds, the spacious house in Soho Square, with its
Turkey carpets and Boule furniture, its plenitude of massive.
plate and Italian pictures, its air of regal luxury and splendor;
the abbey near Ringwood, with its tapestries, pictures, curios,
and secret passages, were burdened with a certain condition
which for Lady Judith reduced their value to a minimum.
All these good things came to her through her husband. Of
her own right she was only the genteelest pauper at the court
end of London. Her blood was of the bluest. She was a
younger daughter of one of the oldest earls; but Job himself,
after the advent of the messengers, was not poorer than that
distinguished nobleman. Lady Judith had brought Mr. Top-
sparkle nothing but her beauty, her quality, and her pride.
Love she never pretended to bring him, nor liking, nor even
respect. His father had made his fortune in trade; and the idea
of a tradesman's son was almost as repulsive to Lady Judith as
that of a blackamoor. She married him because her father made
her marry him, and in her own phraseology the matter was
not worth fighting about. " She had broken just two years be-
fore with the only man she had ever loved, had renounced him
in a fit of pique and passion on account of some scandal about a
French dancing-girl; and from that hour she had assumed an
air of recklessness: she had danced, flirted, talked, and carried
on in a manner that delighted the multitude and shocked the
prudes. Bath and Tunbridge Wells had rung with her sayings
and doings; and finally she surrendered herself, not altogether
unwillingly, to the highest bidder.
<<
She was burdened with debt, never knew what it was to have
a crown piece of ready money. At cards she had to borrow first
of one admirer and then of another. She had been able to get
plenty of credit for gowns and trinketry from a harpy class of
West End tradespeople, who speculated in Lady Judith's beauty
## p. 2294 (#492) ###########################################
2294
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
as they might have done in some hazardous but hopeful stock;
counting it almost a certainty that she would make a splendid
match and recoup them all.
Mr. Topsparkle saw her in the zenith of her audacious
charms. He met her at a masquerade at Bath, followed and
intrigued with her all the evening, and at last, alone in an alcove
with her after supper, induced her to take off her mask. Her
beauty dazzled those experienced eyes of his, and he fell madly
in love with her at first sight of that radiant loveliness: starriest
eyes of violet hue, a dainty little Greek nose, a complexion of
lilies and blush-roses, and the most perfect mouth and teeth in
Christendom. No one had ever seen anything more beautiful
than the tender curves of those classic lips, or more delicate
than their faint carmine tinge. In an epoch when almost every
woman of fashion plastered herself with bismuth and ceruse,
Lord Bramber's daughter could afford to exhibit the complexion
nature had given her, and might defy paint to match it. Lady
Judith laughed at her conquest when she was told about it by
half a dozen different admirers at the Rooms next morning.
"What, that Topsparkle man! " she exclaimed-"the traveled
Cit who has been exploring all sorts of savage places in Spain
and Italy, and writing would-be witty letters about his travels.
They say he is richer than any nabob in Hindostan. Yes, I
plagued him vastly, I believe, before I consented to unmask;
and then he pretended to be dumbfounded at my charms, for-
sooth; dazzled by this sun into which you gentlemen look with-
out flinching, like young eagles. "
"My dear Lady Judith, the man is captivated—your slave
forever. You had better put a ring in his nose and lead him
about with you, instead of that little black boy for whom you
sighed the other day, and that his Lordship denied you. He is
quite the richest man in London, three or four times a million-
aire, and he is on the point of buying Lord Ringwood's place in
Hampshirea genuine mediæval abbey, with half a mile of
cloisters and a fish-pond in the kitchen. "
"I care neither for cloisters nor kitchen. "
"Ay, but you have a weakness for diamonds," urged Mr.
Mordaunt, an old admirer, who was very much au courant as to
the fair Judith's history and habits, had lent her money when
she was losing at basset, and had diplomatized with her creditors.
for her. "Witness that cross the Jew sold you the other day. "
## p. 2295 (#493) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2295
Lady Judith reddened angrily. The same Jew dealer who
sold her the jewel had insisted upon having it back from her
when he discovered her inability to pay for it, threatening to
prosecute her for obtaining goods under false pretenses.
"Mr. Topsparkle's diamonds-they belonged to his mother-
are historical. His maternal grandfather was an Amsterdam Jew,
and the greatest diamond merchant of his time. He had mills
where the gems were ground as corn is ground in our country,
and seem to have been as plentiful as corn. Egad, Lady Judith,
how you would blaze in the Topsparkle diamonds! "
"Mr. Topsparkle must be sixty years of age! " exclaimed the
lady, with sovereign contempt.
"Nobody supposes you would marry him for his youth or his
personal attractions. Yet he is by no means a bad-looking man,
and he has had plenty of adventures in his day, I can assure
your Ladyship. Il a vécu, as our neighbors say: Topsparkle is no
simpleton. When he set out upon the grand tour nearly forty
years ago, he carried with him about as scandalous a reputation
as a gentleman of fashion could enjoy. He had been cut by all
the strait-laced people; and it is only the fact of his incalculable
wealth which has opened the doors of decent houses for him
since his return. "
"I thank you for the compliment implied in your recom-
mendation of him to me as a husband," said Lady Judith, draw-
ing herself up with that Juno-like air which made her seem half
a head taller, and which accentuated every curve of her superb
torso. "He is apparently a gentleman whom it would be a dis-
grace to know. "
“Oh, your Ladyship must be aware that a reformed rake
makes the best husband. And since Topsparkle went on the
Continent he has acquired a new reputation as a wit and a man
of letters. He wrote an Assyrian story in the Italian language,
about which the town raved a few years ago—a sort of demon
story, ever so much cleverer than Voltaire's fanciful novels.
Everybody was reading or pretending to read it. ”
"Oh, was that his?
" exclaimed Judith, who read everything.
"It was mighty clever. I begin to think better of your Top-
sparkle personage. "
Five minutes afterwards, strolling languidly amid the crowd,
with a plain cousin at her elbow for foil and duenna, Lady Judith
met Mr. Topsparkle walking with no less a person than her
father.
## p. 2296 (#494) ###########################################
2296
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
Lord Bramber enjoyed the privilege of an antique hereditary
gout, and came to Bath every season for the waters. He was a
man of imposing figure, at once tall and bulky, but he carried
his vast proportions with dignity and ease. He was said to have
been the handsomest man of his day, and had been admired even
by an age which could boast of "Hervey the Handsome," John
Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and the irresistible Henry St.
John. Basking in that broad sunshine of popularity which is the
portion of a man of high birth, graceful manners, and good looks,
Lord Bramber had squandered a handsome fortune right royally,
and now, at five-and-fifty, was as near insolvency as a gentleman
dare be. His house in Pulteney Street was a kind of haven, to
which he brought his family when London creditors began to be
implacable. He had even thoughts of emigrating to Holland or
Belgium, or to some old Roman town in the sunny South of
France, where he might live upon his wife's pin-money, which
happily was protected by stringent settlements and incorruptible
trustees.
He had married two out of three daughters well, but not brill-
iantly. Judith was the youngest of the three, and she was the
flower of the flock. She had been foolish, very foolish, about Lord
Lavendale, and a faint cloud of scandal had hung over her name
ever since her affair with that too notorious rake. Admirers she
had by the score, but since the Lavendale entanglement there
had been no serious advances from any suitor of mark.
But now Mr. Topsparkle, one of the wealthiest commoners in
Great Britain, was obviously smitten with Lady Judith's perfec-
tions, and had a keen air which seemed to mean business, Lord
Bramber thought. He had obtained an introduction to the earl
within the last half-hour, and had not concealed his admiration
for the earl's daughter. He had entreated the honor of a formal
introduction to the exquisite creature with whom he had con-
versed on sportive terms last night at the Assembly Rooms.
Lady Judith acknowledged the introduction with the air of a
queen to whom courtiers and compliments were as the gadflies
of summer. She fanned herself listlessly, and stared about her
while Mr. Topsparkle was talking.
"I vow, there is Mrs. Margetson," she exclaimed, recognizing
an acquaintance across the crowd: "I have not seen her for a
century. Heavens, how old and yellow she is looking-yellower
even than you, Mattie! " this last by way of aside to her plain
cousin.
## p. 2297 (#495) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2297
"I hope you bear me no malice for my pertinacity last night,
Lady Judith," murmured Topsparkle, insinuatingly.
'Malice, my good sir! I protest I never bear malice. To be
malicious, one's feelings must be engaged; and you would hardly
expect mine to be concerned in the mystifications of a dancing-
room. "
She looked over his head as she talked to him, still on the
watch for familiar faces among the crowd, smiling at one, bow-
ing at another. Mr. Topsparkle was savage at not being able to
engage her attention. At Venice, whence he had come lately,
all the women had courted him, hanging upon his words, adoring
him as the keenest wit of his day.
He was an attenuated and rather effeminate person, exqui-
sitely dressed and powdered, and not without a suspicion of rouge
upon his hollow cheeks or of Vandyke brown upon his delicately
penciled eyebrows. He, like Lord Bramber, presented the wreck
of manly beauty; but whereas Bramber suggested a three-master
of goodly bulk and tonnage, battered but still weather-proof and
seaworthy, Topsparkle had the air of a delicate pinnace which
time and tempest had worn to a mere phantasmal bark that the
first storm would scatter into ruin.
He had hardly the air of a gentleman, Judith thought, watch-
ing him keenly all the while she seemed to ignore his existence.
He was too fine, too highly trained for the genuine article; he
lacked that easy inborn grace of the man in whom good man-
ners are hereditary. There was nothing of the Cit about him;
but there was the exaggerated elegance, the exotic grace, of a
man who has too studiously cultivated the art of being a fine
gentleman; who has learned his manners in dubious paths, from
petites maîtresses and prime donne, rather than from statesmen
and princes.
On this, and on many a subsequent meeting, Lady Judith
was just uncivil enough to fan the flame of Vivian Topsparkle's
passion. He had begun in a somewhat philandering spirit, not
quite determined whether Lord Bramber's daughter were worthy
of him; but her hauteur made him her slave. Had she been
civil he would have given more account to those old stories
about Lavendale, and would have been inclined to draw back
before finally committing himself. But a woman who could
afford to be rude to the best match in England must needs be
above all suspicion. Had her reputation been seriously damaged
## p. 2298 (#496) ###########################################
2298
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
she would have caught at the chance of rehabilitating herself by
a rich marriage. Had she been civil to him Mr. Topsparkle
would have haggled and bargained about settlements; but his
ever-present fear of losing her made him accede to Lord Bram-
ber's exactions with a more than princely generosity, since but
few princes could afford to be so liberal. He had set his heart
upon having this woman for his wife-firstly, because she was
the handsomest and most fashionable woman in London, and
secondly, because so far as burnt-out embers can glow with new
fire, Mr. Topsparkle's battered old heart was aflame with a very
serious passion for this new deity.
So there was a grand wedding from the earl's house in Lei-
cester Fields; not a crowded assembly, for only the very élite of
the modish world were invited. The Duke, meaning his Grace
of York, honored the company with his royal presence, and there
were the great Sir Robert and a bevy of Cabinet ministers, and
Mr. Topsparkle felt that he had canceled any old half-forgotten
scandals as to his past life, and established himself in the high-
est social sphere by this alliance. As Vivian Topsparkle the
half-foreign eccentric, he was a man to be stared at and talked
about; but as the husband of Lord Bramber's daughter he had a
footing by right of alliance-in some of the noblest houses in
England. His name and reputation were hooked on to old
family trees; and those great people whose kinswoman he had
married could not afford to have him maligned or slighted. In
a word, Mr. Topsparkle felt that he had good value for his mag-
nificent settlements.
________
Was Lady Judith Topsparkle happy, with all her blessings?
She was gay; and with the polite world gayety ranks as happi-
ness, and commands the envy of the crowd. Nobody envies the
quiet matron whose domestic life flows onward with the placidity
of a sluggish stream. It is the butterfly queen of the hour
whom people admire and envy. Lady Judith, blazing in dia-
monds at a court ball, beautiful, daring, insolent, had half the
town for her slaves and courtiers. Even women flattered and
fawned upon her, delighted to be acknowledged as her ac-
quaintance, proud to be invited to her parties or to dance
attendance upon her in public assemblies.
T
## p. 2299 (#497) ###########################################
2299
GEORG BRANDES
(1842-)
BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE
HE man of letters who devotes himself chiefly or wholly to
criticism is an essentially modern type. Although the criti-
G. C. e cal art has been practiced in all literary periods, it has not
until the present century enlisted anything like the exclusive atten-
tion of writers of the highest order of attainment, but has rather
played a subordinate part beside the constructive or creative work to
the performance of which such men have given their best energies.
com-
In the case of some writers, such as Voltaire and Samuel Johnson,
we recognize the critical spirit that informs
the bulk of their work, yet are
pelled on the whole to classify them as
poets, or historians, or philosophers. Even
Coleridge, who wrote no inconsiderable
amount of the best literary criticism in
existence, is chiefly remembered as a poet;
even Lessing, one of the fountain-heads of
authoritative critical doctrine, owes to his
plays the major part of his great reputa-
tion. As for such men as Ben Jonson and
Dryden, Lamb and Shelley, Goethe and
Heine, their critical utterances, precious
and profound as they frequently are, figure
but incidentally among their writings, and
we read these men mainly for other reasons than that of learning
their opinions about other people's productions. For examples of the
man of letters considered primarily as critic, we must then look to
our own century, and we find the type best illustrated by such men
as Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Brunetière, and the subject of the present
sketch.
GEORG BRANDES
It is indeed a rather remarkable fact that the most conspicuous
figure in literary Denmark at the present time should be not a poet
or a novelist, but a critic pure and simple; for that is the title which
must be given to Georg Brandes. Not only is his attitude con-
sistently critical throughout the long series of his writings, but his
form and matter are also avowedly critical; so much so that hardly
one of his score or more of published volumes calls for classification
## p. 2300 (#498) ###########################################
GEORG BRANDES
2300
in any other than the critical category. Even when he takes us with
him upon his travels to France or Russia with the best intentions
in the world as to the avoidance of "shop,” he finds himself in the
end talking about the literature and the politics of those countries.
One of his latest books, Udenlandske Egne og Personligheder'
(Foreign Parts and Personalities) has a preface with the following
opening paragraph:—
"One gets tired of talking about books all the time. Even the man whose
business it is to express himself in black and white has eyes like other peo-
ple, and with them he perceives and observes the variegated visible world:
its landscapes, cities, plain and cultivated men, plastic art. For him too
does Nature exist; he too is moved at sight of such simple happenings as the
fall of the leaves in October; he too is stirred as he gazes upon a waterfall,
a mountain region, a sunlit glacier, a Dutch lake, and an Italian olive grove.
He too has been in Arcadia. »
Yet half the contents of the volume thus introduced must be de-
scribed as the work of the critic. Not only are the set papers upon
such men as Taine, Renan, and Maupassant deliberate critical studies,
but the sketches of travel likewise are sure to get around to the art
and literature of the countries visited.
The life of criticism, in the larger sense, comes from wide obser-
vation and a cultivation of the cosmopolitan spirit. And it must be
said of Brandes that he is a critic in this large sense, that he has
taken for his province the modern spirit in all its varied manifesta-
tions. The very title of his chief work-Main Currents in the Lit-
erature of the Nineteenth Century'-shows him to be concerned
with the broad movements of thought rather than with matters of
narrow technique or the literary activity of any one country- least
of all his own. It was peculiarly fortunate for Denmark that a critic
of this type should have arisen within her borders a quarter-century
ago. The Scandinavian countries lie so far apart from the chief
centres of European thought that they are always in danger of laps-
ing into a narrow self-sufficiency so far as intellectual ideals are con-
cerned. Danish literature has been made what it is chiefly by the
mediation of a few powerful minds who have kept it in touch with
modern progress: by Holberg, who may almost be said to have
brought humanism into Denmark; by Oehlenschläger, who made the
romantic movement as powerful an influence in Denmark as it was
in Germany; by Brandes, who, beginning his career just after the
war in which Denmark lost her provinces and became as embittered
toward Germany as France was to become a few years later, strove
to prevent the political breach from extending into the intellectual
sphere, and helped his fellow-countrymen to understand that thought
## p. 2301 (#499) ###########################################
GEORG BRANDES
2301
and progress are one and have a common aim, although nations may
be many and antagonistic. There is much significance in the fact
that the name of 'Emigrant Literature' is given to the first section
of his greatest work. He thus styles the French literature of a cen-
tury ago, the work of such writers as Chateaubriand, Senancour,
Constant, and Madame de Staël,- because it received a vivifying im-
pulse from the emigration, —from the contact, forced or voluntary,
of the French mind with the ideals of German and English civiliza-
tion. It has been the chief function of Brandes, during the whole
of his brilliant career, to supply points of contact between the intel-
lectual life of Denmark and that of the rest of Europe, to bring his
own country into the federal republic of letters.
A glance at the course of his life, and at the subjects of his
books, will serve to outline the nature of the work to which his
energies have been devoted. A Jew by race, Georg Morris Cohen
Brandes was born February 4th, 1842. He went through his aca-
demic training with brilliant success, studied law for a brief period,
and then drifted into journalism and literature. A long visit to Paris
(1866-7) gave him breadth of view and the materials for his first
books, Esthetiske Studier' (Esthetic Studies), 'Den Franske Æs-
thetik' (French Esthetics), and a volume of 'Kritiker og Portraiter'
(Criticisms and Portraits).
A later visit to foreign parts (1870-1) brought him into contact
with Taine, Renan, and Mill, all of whom influenced him profoundly.
In 1871 he began to lecture on literary subjects, chiefly in Copen-
hagen, and out of these lectures grew his 'Hovedströmninger i det
Nittende Aarhundredes Litteratur' (Main Currents in the Literature
of the Nineteenth Century), a work that in the course of about ten
years extended to six volumes, and must be considered not only the
author's capital critical achievement, but also one of the greatest
works of literary history and criticism that the nineteenth century
has produced. The division of the subject is as follows:
grant Literature'; 2. The Romantic School in Germany'; 3. 'The
Reaction in France'; 4. 'Naturalism in England'; 5. The Romantic
School in France'; 6. Young Germany. '
1. 'Emi-
In spite of the growing fame that came to him from these mas-
terly studies, Brandes felt the need of a larger audience than the
Scandinavian countries could offer him, and in 1877 changed his resi-
dence from Copenhagen to Berlin, a step to which he was in part
urged by the violent antagonism engendered at home by the radical
and uncompromising character of many of his utterances. It was not
until 1883 that he again took up residence in his own country, upon
a guarantee of four thousand kroner (about $1000) annually for ten
years, secured by some of his friends, the condition being that he
-
-:
## p. 2302 (#500) ###########################################
2302
GEORG BRANDES
should give courses of public lectures in Copenhagen during that
period.
Among the works not yet named, mention should be made of his
volumes upon Holberg, Tegnér, Kierkegaard, Ferdinand Lassalle, and
the Earl of Beaconsfield. These brilliant monographs are remarkable
for their insight into the diverse types of character with which they
deal, for their breadth of view, felicity of phrase, and originality
of treatment. There are also several collections of miscellaneous
essays, with such titles as 'Danske Digtere' (Danish Poets), 'Danske
Personligheder' (Danish Personalities), Det Moderne Gjennembruds
Mænd' (Men of the Modern Awakening), and 'Udenlandske Egne
og Personligheder' (Foreign Parts and Personalities). The latest pub-
lication of Brandes is a careful study of Shakespeare, a work of
remarkable vigor, freshness, and sympathy.
As a critic, Brandes belongs distinctly to the class of those who
speak with authority, and has little in common with the writers who
are content to explore the recesses of their own subjectivity, and re-
cord their personal impressions of literature. Criticism is for him a
matter of science, not of opinion, and he holds it subject to a defin-
ite method and body of principles. A few sentences from the second
volume of his 'Hovedströmninger' will illustrate what he conceives
that method to be:-
-
"First and foremost, I endeavor everywhere to bring literature back to
life. You will already have observed that while the older controversies in
our literature—for example, that between Heiberg and Hauch, and even the
famous controversy between Baggesen and Oehlenschläger- have been main-
tained in an exclusively literary domain and have become disputes about
literary principles alone, the controversy aroused by my lectures, not merely
by reason of the misapprehension of the opposition, but quite as much by rea-
son of the very nature of my writing, has come to touch upon a swarm of
religious, social, and moral problems. . . It follows from my conception
of the relation of literature to life that the history of literature I teach is not
a history of literature for the drawing-room. I seize hold of actual life with
all the strength I may, and show how the feelings that find their expression
in literature spring up in the human heart. Now the human heart is no
stagnant pool or idyllic woodland lake. It is an ocean with submarine vege-
tation and frightful inhabitants. The literary history and the poetry of the
drawing-room see in the life of man a salon, a decorated ball-room, the men
and the furnishings polished alike, in which no dark corners escape illumina-
tion. Let him who will, look at matters from this point of view; but it is no
affair of mine. »
The boldness and even the ruthlessness which characterize much
of the author's work were plainly foreshadowed in this outspoken in-
troduction; and he has grown more rather than less uncompromising
## p. 2303 (#501) ###########################################
GEORG BRANDES
2303
during the quarter-century that has elapsed since they were spoken.
Matthew Arnold would have applauded the envisagement of litera-
ture as "criticism of life," but would have deplored the sacrifice of
sweetness to gain increased intensity of light. Brandes came back
from contact with the European world full of enthusiasm for the
new men and the new ideas,- for Comte and Taine, for Renan and
Mill and Spencer, and wanted his recalcitrant fellow-countrymen
to accept them all at once. They were naturally taken aback by
so imperious a demand, and their opposition created the atmosphere
of controversy in which Brandes has ever since for the most part
lived-with slight effort to soften its asperities, but, it must be
added, with the ever-increasing respect of those not of his own way
of thinking. On the whole, his work has been healthful and stim-
ulating; it has stirred the sluggish to a renewed mental activity, and
has made its author himself one of the most conspicuous figures of
what he calls "det Moderne Gjennembrud »- the Modern Awakening.
Estalage
-
BJÖRNSON
From 'Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century: Translated by Professor
Rasmus B. Anderson
I
T is only necessary to bestow a single glance upon Björnson to
be convinced how admirably he is equipped by nature for
the hot strife a literary career brings with it in most lands,
and especially in the combat-loving North. Shoulders as broad
as his are not often seen, nor do we often behold so vigorous a
form, one that seems as though created to be chiseled in granite.
There is perhaps no labor that so completely excites all the
vital forces, exhausts the nerves, refines and enervates the feel-
ings, as that of literary production. There has never been the
slightest danger, however, that the exertions of Björnson's poetic
productiveness would affect his lungs as in the case of Schiller,
or his spine as in the case of Heine; there has been no cause
to fear that inimical articles in the public journals would ever
give him his death-blow, as they did Halvdan, the hero of his
drama 'Redaktören (The Editor); or that he would yield, as
so many modern poets have yielded, to the temptation of resort-
ing to pernicious stimulants or to dissipation as antidotes for the
## p. 2304 (#502) ###########################################
GEORG BRANDES
2304
overwrought or depleted state of the nervous system occasioned
by creative activity. Nothing has injured Björnson's spine; his
lungs are without blemish; a cough is unknown to him; and his
shoulders were fashioned to bear without discomposure the rude
thrusts which the world gives, and to return them.
He is per-
haps the only important writer of our day of whom this may be
said. As an author he is never nervous, not when he displays
his greatest delicacy, not even when he evinces his most marked
sensibility.
Strong as the beast of prey whose name [Björn=Bear] occurs
twice in his; muscular, without the slightest trace of corpulence,
of athletic build, he looms up majestically in my mind, with his
massive head, his firmly compressed lips, and his sharp, penetrat-
ing gaze from behind his spectacles. It would be impossible for
literary hostilities to overthrow this man, and for him there never
existed that greatest danger to authors (a danger which for a long
time menaced his great rival Henrik Ibsen), namely, that of hav-
ing his name shrouded in silence. Even as a very young author,
as a theatrical critic and political writer, he had entered the field
of literature with such an eagerness for combat that a rumbling
noise arose about him wherever he appeared. Like his own
Thorbjörn in Synnöve Solbakken,' he displayed in early youth
the combative tendency of the athlete; but like his Sigurd in
Sigurd Slembe,' he fought not merely to practice his strength,
but from genuine though often mistaken love of truth and just-
ice. At all events, he understood thoroughly who to attract
attention.
An author may possess great and rare gifts, and yet, through
lack of harmony between his own personal endowments and the
national characteristics or the degree of development of his peo-
ple, may long be prevented from attaining a brilliant success.
Many of the world's greatest minds have suffered from this
cause. Many, like Byron, Heine, and Henrik Ibsen, have left
their native land; many more who have remained at home have
felt forsaken by their compatriots. With Björnson the case is
quite different. He has never, it is true, been peacefully recog
nized by the entire Norwegian people; at first, because the form
he used was too new and unfamiliar; later, because his ideas
were of too challenging a nature for the ruling, conservative, and
highly orthodox circles of the land; even at the present time he
is pursued by the press of the Norwegian government and by
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GEORG BRANDES
2305
the leading official society with a fury which is as little choice
in its selection of means as the bitterness which pursues the
champions of thrones and altars in other countries. In spite of
all this, Björnstjerne Björnson has his people behind him and
about him as perhaps no other poet has, unless it be Victor
Hugo. When his name is mentioned it is equivalent to hoisting
the flag of Norway. In his noble qualities and in his faults, in
his genius and in his weak points, he as thoroughly bears the
stamp of Norway as Voltaire bore that of France. His boldness
and his naïveté, his open-heartedness as a man and the terseness
of his style as an artist, the highly wrought and sensitive Nor-
wegian popular sentiment, and the lively consciousness of the
one-sidedness and the intellectual needs of his fellow-countrymen
that has driven him to Scandinavianism, Pan-Teutonism, and cos-
mopolitanism-all this in its peculiar combination in him is so
markedly national that his personality may be said to offer a
résumé of the entire people.
None of his contemporaries so fully represent this people's
love of home and of freedom, its self-consciousness, rectitude,
and fresh energy.
Indeed, just now he also exemplifies on a
large scale the people's tendency to self-criticism; not that
scourging criticism which chastises with scorpions, and whose
representative in Norway is Ibsen, in Russia Turgénieff, but the
sharp bold expression of opinion begotten of love. He never
calls attention to an evil in whose improvement and cure he
does not believe, or to a vice which he despairs of seeing out-
rooted. For he has implicit faith in the good in humanity, and
possesses entire the invincible optimism of a large, genial, san-
guine nature.
As to his character, he is half chieftain, half poet. He unites
in his own person the two forms most prominent in ancient Nor-
way those of the warrior and of the scald. In his intellectual
constitution he is partly a tribune of the people, partly a lay
preacher; in other words, he combines in his public demeanor
the political and religious pathos of his Norwegian contempo-
raries, and this became far more apparent after he broke loose
from orthodoxy than it was before. Since his so-called apostasy
he has in fact been a missionary and a reformer to a greater
degree than ever.
He could have been the product of no other land than Nor-
way, and far less than other authors could he thrive in any but
IV-145
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2306
GEORG BRANDES
his native soil. In the year 1880, when the rumor spread
through the German press that Björnson, weary of continual
wrangling at home, was about to settle in Germany, he wrote to
me: "In Norway will I live, in Norway will I lash and be
lashed, in Norway will I sing and die. ”
To hold such intimate relations with one's fatherland is most
fortunate for a person who is sympathetically comprehended by
that fatherland. And this is the case with Björnson. It is a
matter dependent on conditions deeply rooted in his nature. He
who cherishes so profound an enthusiasm for the reserved, soli-
tary Michelangelo, and who feels constrained, as a matter of
course, to place him above Raphael, is himself a man of a totally
different temperament: one who is never lonely, even when
most alone (as he has been since 1873 on his gård in remote
Gausdal), but who is social to the core, or, more strictly speak-
ing, a thoroughly national character. He admires Michelangelo
because he reveres and understands the elements of greatness, of
profound earnestness, of mighty ruggedness in the human heart
and in style; but he has nothing in common with the great Flor-
entine's melancholy sense of isolation. He was born to be the
founder of a party, and was therefore early attracted to enthusi-
astic and popular party leaders, such as the Dane Grundtvig and
the Norwegian Wergeland, although wholly unlike either in his
plastic, creative power. He is a man who needs to feel himself
the centre, or rather the focus of sympathy, and insensibly he
forms a circle about him, because his own nature is the résumé
of a social union.
-
Copyrighted by T. Y. Crowell and Company, New York.
THE HISTORICAL MOVEMENT IN MODERN LITERATURE
From the Introduction to Main Currents in the Literature of the Nineteenth
Century›
W
HAT I shall portray for you is a historical movement, having
very completely the form and the character of a drama.
The six distinct literary groups that I intend to present
to you are entirely like the six acts of a great play. In the first
group, the French emigrant-literature inspired by Rousseau, the
reaction has already begun, but the reactionary currents are
everywhere blended with the revolutionary. In the second group,
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GEORG BRANDES
2307
the half-Catholic romantic school of Germany, the reaction is
growing; it goes further, and holds itself more aloof from the
contemporary movement towards freedom and progress. The
third group, finally, formed of such writers as Joseph de Maistre,
Lamennais in his orthodox period, Lamartine and Victor Hugo
under the Restoration, when they were still firm supporters of
the legitimist and clerical parties, stands for the reaction, impetu-
ous and triumphant.
Byron and his associates make up the fourth group. This
one man reverses the action of the great drama. The Greek
war of liberation breaks out, a current of fresh air sweeps over
Europe, Byron falls as a hero of the Greek cause, and his heroic
death makes a deep impression upon all the writers of the Con-
tinent. Just before the July Revolution all the great French
writers turn about, forming the fifth group, the French romantic
school, and the new liberal movement is marked by the names
of Lamennais, Hugo, Lamartine, De Musset, George Sand, and
many others.
And when the movement spreads from France
into Germany, liberal ideas triumph in that land also, and the
sixth and last group of authors I shall portray became inspired
by the ideas of the July Revolution and the War of Liberation,
seeing, like the French poets, in Byron's great shade the leader
of the movement towards freedom. The most important of these
young writers are of Jewish origin, as Heine, Börne, and later,
Auerbach.
I believe that from this great drama we may get a lesson for
our own instruction. We are now, as usual, forty years behind
the rest of Europe. In the literatures of those great countries
the revolutionary stream long ago united with its tributaries,
burst the dikes that were set to impede its course, and has been
distributed into thousands of channels. We are still endeavoring
to check it and hold it dammed up in the swamps of the reac-
tion, but we have succeeded only in checking our literature itself.
It would hardly be difficult to secure unanimous consent to
the proposition that Danish literature has at no time during the
present century found itself languishing as in our own days.
Poetical production is almost completely checked, and no problem
of a general human or social character awakens interest or evokes
any more serious discussion than that of the daily press or other
ephemeral publication. Our productivity has never been strongly
original, and we now utterly fail to appropriate the spiritual life
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2308
GEORG BRANDES
of other lands, and our spiritual deafness has brought upon us
the speechlessness of the deaf-mutes.
The proof that a literature in our days is alive is to be
found in the fact that it brings problems up for debate. Thus
George Sand brings marriage up for debate, Voltaire, Byron, and
Feuerbach religion, Proudhon property, Alexander Dumas fils
the relations of the sexes, and Émile Augier social relations in
general. For a literature to bring nothing up for debate is the
same thing as to lose all its significance. The people that pro-
duce such a literature may believe as firmly as they please that
the salvation of the world will come from it, but their expecta-
tions will be doomed to disappointment; such a people can no
more influence the development of civilization in the direction of
progress than did the fly who thought he was urging the car-
riage onward by now and then giving the four horses an insig-
nificant prick.
