Henrik Ibsen | Page 3

town pillory was at the
right of and the mad-house, the lock-up and other amiable urban
institutions to the left; in front was Latin school and the grammar
school, while the church occupied the middle of the square. Over this
stern prospect the tourist can no longer sentimentalize, for the whole of
this part of Skien was burned down in 1886, to the poet's unbridled
satisfaction. "The inhabitants of Skien," he said with grim humor,
"were quite unworthy to possess my birthplace."
He declared that the harsh elements of landscape, mentioned above,
were those which earliest captivated his infant attention, and he added
that the square space, with the church in the midst of it, was filled all
day long with the dull and droning sound of many waterfalls, while
from dawn to dusk this drone of waters was constantly cut through by a
sound that was like the sharp screaming and moaning of women. This
was caused by hundreds of saws at work beside the waterfalls, taking
advantage of that force. "Afterwards, when I read about the guillotine, I
always thought of those saws," said the poet, whose earliest flight of
fancy seems to have been this association of womanhood with the
shriek of the sawmill.
In 1888, just before his sixtieth birthday, Ibsen wrote out for Henrik
Jaeger certain autobiographical recollections of his childhood. It is
from these that the striking phrase about the scream of the saws is taken,
and that is perhaps the most telling of these infant memories, many of
which are slight and naive. It is interesting, however, to find that his
earliest impressions of life at home were of an optimistic character.
"Skien," he says, "in my young days, was an exceedingly lively and
sociable place, quite unlike what it afterwards became. Several highly
cultivated and wealthy families lived in the town itself or close by on
their estates. Most of these families were more or less closely related,

and dances, dinners and music parties followed each other, winter and
summer, in almost unbroken sequence. Many travellers, too, passed
through the town, and, as there were as yet no regular inns, they lodged
with friends or connections. We almost always had guests in our large,
roomy house, especially at Christmas and Fair-time, when the house
was full, and we kept open table from morning till night." The mind
reverts to the majestic old wooden mansions which play so prominent a
part in Thomas Krag's novels, or to the house of Mrs. Solness' parents,
the burning down of which started the Master-Builder's fortunes. Most
of these grand old timber houses in Norway have indeed, by this time,
been so burned down.
We may speculate on what the effect of this genial open-handedness
might have been, had it lasted, on the genius of the poet. But fortune
had harsher views of what befitted the training of so acrid a nature.
When Ibsen was eight years of age, his father's business was found to
be in such disorder that everything had to be sold to meet his creditors.
The only piece of property left when this process had been gone
through was a little broken-down farmhouse called Venstöb, in the
outskirts of Skien. Ibsen afterwards stated that those who had taken
most advantage of his parents' hospitality in their prosperous days were
precisely those who now most markedly turned a cold shoulder on
them. It is likely enough that this may have been the case, but one sees
how inevitably Ibsen would, in after years, be convinced that it was. He
believed himself to have been, personally, much mortified and
humiliated in childhood by the change in the family status. Already, by
all accounts, he had begun to live a life of moral isolation. His excellent
sister long afterwards described him as an unsociable child, never a
pleasant companion, and out of sympathy with all the rest of the family.
We recollect, in The Wild Duck, the garret which was the domain of
Hedvig and of that symbolic bird. At Venstöb, the infant Ibsen
possessed a like retreat, a little room near the back entrance, which was
sacred to him and into the fastness of which he was accustomed to bolt
himself. Here were some dreary old books, among others Harrison's
folio History of the City of London, as well as a paint-box, an
hour-glass, an extinct eight-day clock, properties which were faithfully

introduced, half a century later, into The Wild Duck. His sister says that
the only outdoor amusement he cared for as a boy was building, and
she describes the prolonged construction of a castle, in the spirit of The
Master-Builder.
Very soon he began to go to school, but to neither of the public
institutions in the town. He attended what is described as a