LITMIR.BIZ

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more extraordinary conversation. It is from her that Jonas Lie has inherited the fantastic strain in his blood, the strange superstitious terrors, and the luxuriant wealth of color which he lavished upon his first novel, The Man of Second Sight. She was unusually gifted intellectually, had pronounced literary interests, and revealed some decided clairvoyant qualities.” Lie himself said of her: “There was something of a seer in her—something that reminded one of spae-women and the like.” “Imagine,” says Arne Garborg,’ in his book on Lie, “this restless blood infused into the strong, sober, practical nature of the Lies: what should come of such a mixture but that peculiar combination of reality and romanticism that we know by the name of Jonas Lie, the poet of Finnish magic and sorcery—and of plain reality.”

      In Nordland, where his maternal inheritance had its source, Lie as a boy found things fit to satisfy the cravings of such an imagination as the Finn in him possessed. In this Brobdingnagian realm he heard tales and legends of Finnish sorcery, of shipwrecks caused by fierce water-bogies (draugs), of giant trolls, and a thousand other demoniacal creatures of morbid popular fancy, until he was chilled with terror, the effects of which clung to him for life, made him as a mature man afraid of the dark, and finally cropped out in tales of weird and grotesque imagery.

      These, then, are the fundamental facts that are necessary for comprehension of the duality in Lie’s nature and authorship.

      * * * *

      Jonas Lie was born in southern Norway, in 1833, and at the age of five removed with the family to Nordland. His life as an author began in 1870; but between these dates there was a period of very unusual experiences. His vivid imagination, stirred by the witchery of life in Nordland, made the prosy tasks of school seem direst punishment. He was counted a dullard and an incorrigible mischief-maker. At the age of thirteen it was his passion to become a sailor. The father, at his wits’ end, compromised by sending him to a naval academy. Here he was at times thought mad by his instructors, who saw something of his semi-somnambulistic antics. Nearsightedness, however, proved an obstacle in this path to maritime glory, which he was destined to win by a different route. After an awakening experience in a Bergen school, where an eccentric poet-pedagogue thought him a “lad of pairts,” and his classmates voted him a prize liar on account of his Nordland stories, he took a shortcut to the university at Heltberg’s so-called Student Factory in Christiania, the head-master of which—a prodigy who has been immortalized in literature by both Björnson and Garborg—proved an inspiring and fructifying force to his groping genius. At this institution, among a motley horde of country bumpkins, shipwrecked city talent, and budding genius, he found Björnson, also preparing for the university. Both were profoundly impressed by the genius of the asthmatic head-master in his dogskin jacket, who led his young barbarians by forced marches through the Alpine passes of Latin syntax into the classic domain of Livy and Horace. We shall see that he came to Lie’s rescue at a later period.

Lie entered the university in 1851, and took a degree in law in 1858. It had been a difficult task for him to decide what professional study to pursue. He thought at first that he had leanings toward theology, bought the necessary books, kept them a day, then exchanged them for law books, after having paid a brief but adequate visit to the clinical laboratory. These years at the university, when a romantic interest in everything Norwegian filled the air with mystic expectancy of great things to come in the way of a regenerated Norway, aroused Lie. Association with Björnson, Ibsen, Vinje,1 Nordraak,2 and a score of other gifted young men was stimulating, yet he did not become a disciple or slavish follower of any of these more vehement natures. He had his own ideas, and was boldly independent when occasion demanded it, as both King Oscar and Björnson later in life ascertained to their discomfort, each of them having tried in vain to make the “amiable” author conform to their plans and ideas. Among the many friends that Lie made in the capital city during his university days, Björnson became the most intimate. He seems from the very first to have espied the artist in Lie, and did much to help him in understanding his own strange self. It had begun to worry Lie that his friends thought him eccentric. And not only this: the mystic, superstitious, magic-loving Finn in his nature often frightened him. Hence he made great efforts to counteract his tendency to fantastic musing and to develop his paternal heritage: the rationalist and realist in himself For this purpose the determination to study law was doubtless a wise step. But his legal studies did not suppress his literary yearnings, which found expression in verse that did not at first go beyond a circle of intimate friends. He saw no prospect of making a living with his pen, and so entered a government office—a decision hastily made under pressure of respect for his stern and practical father, who had announced a visit to the capital city. Nevertheless, he dreamed of becoming an author and began contributing poems to the daily press. They seemed labored and heavy, and attracted no particular attention. On the other hand, he prepared some well-written articles on European politics, which indicated insight and careful thinking. These articles made such a favorable impression on Björnson that he offered to secure him the editorship of a Christiania daily. But Lie was unwilling. He had made arrangements to practise law at Kongsvinger, not far from the capital.

      After a year’s work in the new field, he married a cousin, Thomasine Lie, to whom he had long been betrothed. Together they had planned that he was to be an author, and his hasty decision to become a lawyer was a severe shock to her. From the beginning she had faith in his literary possibilities; and it was evidently her steady hand on the rudder, throughout a long life, that guided the bark of his genius through many dangerous reefs. But for her good sense and loving loyalty, there would probably not have been a Jonas Lie in Norwegian literature. He often remarked that her name might well appear on the title-page of most of his books. In this most interesting partnership, his was the creative spirit, hers the practical guiding hand.

      Lie’s new home was in the heart of a rich timber district, which at that time was at the high tide of a tremendous business boom. Here he achieved immediate success as a lawyer. Moreover, through an influential friend, he became the financial agent of two banking houses in the capital. This gave him the opportunity—and he had the necessary courage—to take a hand in bold business enterprises on a large scale. He prospered; the future seemed roseate; he began to dream of such affluence as to enable him to devote himself to literature. Meanwhile he wrote verses for all manner of occasions, and even published a volume of these poems (1866).

      Both he and his wife had unusual social qualifications. She was a fine musician, a woman of character and much intellectual force, and a most competent housewife. In this home of culture many prominent men were entertained—first of all, Ole Bull, whom Lie adored. Mighty schemes for the glorification of Mother Norway were discussed as these two “visionaries” sat brewing their toddy. Björnson, too, was often there, and Sverdrup, the statesman.

      Meanwhile clouds ominous of disaster appeared on the commercial horizon. The period 1865–68 witnessed the greatest financial panic that Norway had ever experienced. Lie had forebodings of a catastrophe, but too late to save himself He had been lavish with his signature, and was tremendously involved. The crash meant more than life and death to him. It was a matter of honor, integrity, conscience. He lost everything, and was in debt to the extent of over $200,000. Lie, the lawyer, was ruined. He resolved to return to literature, for instinct urged him with “almost explosive force,” to use his own phrase. As for his financial obligations, he made a monumental resolution, as did Walter Scott in a similar predicament, to pay every dollar through his authorship; and for years he dropped every penny that he did not absolutely need into that abyss of debt. Friends finally convinced him of the hopelessness of his purpose. With what a heavy heart Lie carried the tale of his bankruptcy to his faithful wife several of his novels testify. Financial crashes play no small part in his writings, and the pathetic force with which these situations are handled sounds a distinctly personal note.

      With wife and children Lie returned to Christiania in the autumn of 1868—empty-handed. How he managed to keep his head above water by the aid of loyal friends like Björnson, Sverdrup, whose private secretary he was for a time, and old Heltberg, of the Student Factory, who came to engage him as a teacher of rhetoric and composition, is an interesting story which need not be told here. But through all his trials

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