FREDRIK A BREMER.* Miss BREMER is such a favourite in
England that many will take up this book with interest. We are afraid everybody will lay it down with disappointment. This is not altogether the fault of the writer, though the details actually given us are just sufficient to tantalize us, for if they were not so agreeable we should not feel so keenly the want of more. Nor is it, in spite of many clumsy phrases and an appearance of two languages having dis- agreed with each other, the fault of the translator. But it arises chiefly from the fact that Miss Bremner's sister, who observed her closely during the years of childhood, was parted from her in after life, that Miss Bremer's autobiography extends over some sixteen pages only, and that her letters tell us far too little about herself. We learn a great deal about Miss Bremer as a child, and all this is interesting in the extreme. But of the authoress, the grown woman, the observer of life and manners, the living argument for female suffrage and the rights of the sex, we have mere passing glimpses. Once or twice we are allowed to peep through the outer window of the novelist's workshop. What we see most of is a mischievous, impulsive, awkward, and vain girl, kept down by her parents and indulged by a governess, playing pranks on old and young, and setting out at the age of thirteen to walk to Stockholm, with a view of crossing to Germany in disguise and fighting against Napoleon. As a prelude to a literary life such a childhood has much to recommend it. But we cannot accept it as an equivalent for the life of Miss Bremer.
We have said that Miss Bremner's sister is to be relied upon for the years of childhood. Yet the sketch of this period is not so much a biography of Miss Bremer as an autobiography of one who lived with her. The subsequent fame of one of the children has caused the other to write these recollections ; but the demo- cratic mind of a child is not to be drilled into hero-worship. Charlotte cannot forget that Fredrika made all her sisters shut their eyes and pretend to be at the theatre, while she took advan- tage of the pretence to pillage the luncheon-table. No amount of after reputation can efface the memory of such tricks. Then, too, the children had the same parents, and were treated alike. It is almost impossible to remember that Fredrika was hardly used, without thinking that the same afflictions were accomplished in Charlotte. The narrative is all the more lifelike for these touches, but the necessary result is that instead of a famous woman, we have a girl and her sister. The traits which would be most inter- esting in a child destined to future fame would be those that another did not share, those that gave some promise, that were in some way connected with subsequent efforts. A plot upon the dishes left from luncheon, and on the fair claim of the other chil- dren to a part of the spoil, hardly answers to this definition. Nor do the statements that on the day of their grandmother's funeral the children cried a great deal and eat a great deal of confection- ary ; that the children had to be thinly dressed in winter, with bare necks and arms, although the rooms were very cold, double windows were unknown, and the panes were so thick with ice that for days together it was impossible to look out of the window. We do not say that such incidents are trivial or common-place.
Life, Letters, and Posthumous Wbrks of Fredrika Bremer. Edited by her Sister, Charlotte Bremer. Translated from the Swedish by Fredr. NIIow. London: Low, Son, and Marston.
Far from it. They make us familiar with the early days of the future novelist, and they are of interest in a social point of view as throwing a light on Swedish customs. But this is all they do, and, under the circumstances, it is not enough.
We seem to have a foretaste of the works by which Miss Bremer became known when we look at her youthful inquisitiveness. Her sister says there were days on which she put all sorts of questions, and these were called her inquiring days. At one time she had a turn for analyzing her dolls, cutting off their heads, legs, and arms to see what was inside them. This might seem rather the work of the critic than of the novelist., and it appears to have been always of the destructive order. Between the years of seven and ten, Fredrika would throw into the fire whatever she could lay her
hands upon, giving as a reason that it was so delightful to see the flames. China and glass were tested for brittleness on the stone flags before the stove, or on a load of firewood. One day Fredrika went up to her mother and tendered a penny, being all the money
she had left, as a compensation for a decanter and three glasses which she had broken. So much was never expected of that coin since the time of the old woman who bought a pig with it, and set so many men, animals, and objects in motion to help her pur- chase over the stile. In this case the offer had the effect of pacifying Fredrika's mother, who was generally severe with her children. She wanted them, says Fredrika, to be perfect, as the heroines of romances are perfect. Aud in this the mother was disappointed. Fredrika says herself, " I walked badly, sat badly, stood badly, curtsied badly," and the sister's account, though fuller, is hardly more graphic :—
" At the time when Fredrika and I were children, there did not exist the same relation between parents and children as nowadays. Severe parents belong now to the exceptions ; at that time they were generally severe, and children felt for them more fear than love and confidence. I remember still how frequently, when we heard the voices of our parents on their return home, we hastened to hide ourselves in our governess's room, or in that of our Finland nurse, old Lena. During the winters, in the first years of our residence in Stockholm, my parents used to be a great deal out in the fashionable world, and we children saw them rarely except at stated times in the day. At eight o'clock iu the morning wo were to be ready dressed, and had to come in to say, Good morning,' first to my mother, who sat in a small drawing-room taking her coffee. She looked at us with a scrutinizing glance during our walk from the door up to her chair. If we had walked badly, we had to go back again to the door to renew our promenade, curtsey, and kiss her hand. If our curtsey had been awkwardly performed, we had to make it over again. Poor little Fredrika could never walk, stand, sit, or curtsey to the satisfaction of my mother, and had many bitter and wretched moments in consequence."
Another parental requirement must have grated harshly on the daughter's mind. The mother wished her children to be igno- rant, in order that they might dwelllin an atmosphere of purity.
They were never allowed to remain in the drawing-room when visitors came, lest they should hear something unsuited to their innocent ears. We may conceive how obnoxious this would be to an inquisitive child, and one whose curiosity was to stand her in such good stead. Again, Fredrika's father had an excellent practice of reading aloud to his daughters in the evening. It is difficult to imagine anything more calculated to excite an early interest and create youthful taste. Unfortunately he read them works they did not care for in a language which they did not understand. We hear more of the severity of the parents from Charlotte than from Fredrika. But Fredrika alludes to it shortly, and complains that while " they stuffed my head full of fine precepts against vanity, they planted vanity itself in my heart."
The measures she took to correct the natural lowness of her fore- head by pulling out her hair from the roots, and to reduce the size of her nose, in which she was not equally successful, were appa- rently the chief outward signs of this weakness. We do not detect it in her letters when she had become fatuous. This is what she writes on the reception of her second work :—
" It is absurd, absurd, absurd ! I believe that some kind fairy has pronounced some hocus-pocus on me and my little book. The sensation which it creates is quite ridiculous. It is now the Ion to road it, espe- cially in the fashionable world. It is spoken of everywhere, and so is its authoress, who cannot. now any longer hope to remain anonymous. I am obliged to listen to so many tine things, that I am only astonished that they do not make me quite giddy (which, after all, they do not). Medborgaren (the newspaper) has also reviewed the work, and in a most flattering manner it speaks of the unusual talent of the authoress ; and 'the II— family,' especially; gets the most splendid encomiums. Palmblad has written to G—strum that the book meets with such a rapid sale that ho must provide a second edition thereof."
In a similar strain, she asks her sister to provide her with materials :—
" If you should happen to see any remarkable personages, any real originals, please describe them to me. I want to make use of them in my Sketches. But pray, dearest, mention this, or whatever else I write to you about my authorship, to nobody. People are in general very frightened of being described in books, and in our country an authoress is often looked upon as a regular scarecrow. If I should come to Christiansted, I wish to be known there merely as the sister of Mrs. —, which I am sure will be the best letter of introduction for me."
With the exception of these two passages, and a few of the same kind scattered throughout the letters, the book adds little or nothing to literary history. The details of Miss Bremer's own success are singularly scanty. Of criticism, of revelation, there is hardly a word. Perhaps the few lines in which the authoress speaks of one of the characters in the Neighbours are the only exception, and we confess we quote these lines more for the sake of the lesson they teach to other lady novelists than for their intrinsic value :- " You are right, dear Charlotte ! I have not been able to make Bruno fall deeply enough' with respect to deeds, for only then tree love could reveal its power and sublimity. Ah ! when the guilty to the eyes of the indifferent spectator disappears in the depths of his dark abyss, when he has forfeited everybody's sympathy and interest, and when the pure and the good turn away from him with horror, then it is that true love triumphantly feels it power, stoops down to the forsaken one, seizes hold of him, and does not rest until it has raised him out of the slough. I know that it is so, and that this picture is true. But it would have been truer and better, if I had chosen for Bruno another kind of criminality. A murder would have been more in accordance with his character ; but there is something so horrible in a murder. On the other hand, a par- ticipation to a certain degree in the slave trade may be imagined with- out the participator necessarily being a hardened villain, especially when his active share in such a trade is soon given up, which his confession seems to imply. It would, therefore, have been better if I had more clearly defined Bruno's share in the misdeed."
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