JONAS LIE.* Ix 1868 there appeared among the announcements of
a leading publishing house in Copenhagen a book, bearing the title of Den Fremsynte, or, "The Man with the Second Sight,—Pictures from Nordland," by Jonas Lie. This name was entirely unknown. The book was published, and proved to be a novelette, written in a style so provincial that a sort of running lexicon had been supplied by the publisher to explain the difficult Norse words. Notwithstanding this difficulty, the book had a sudden and extra- ordinary success. It was found to be so fresh and vivid, so wholly original in style and unfamiliar in local colouring, that everybody read it with enthusiasm, and three large editions were very soon sold Out. It appeared that this Jonas Lie was a man, no longer very young, who had been born in 1833 at a village on the west coast of Norway, and who for many years had been living as a lawyer in one of the most insignificant of Norse burghs, Kongsvinger, on the Swedish frontier. He had tried several branches of literature, but without success. Den Fremsynte was a very powerful little book ; it introduced one to the streets of Christiania, during a violent winter storm. A doctor, passing by a house whose front door is banging, goes up-stairs to see if anything is wrong, and finds an old student-friend of his in miserable circumstances. This friend, who is very melancholy and distracted, dies, leaving a roll of MSS., which prove to be the chapters of the book to which this later episode forms an introduction. In these we are taken up to the Arctic coast of Norway, into the neighbourhood of the Lofoden Islands, where the hero, a nervous, morbid youth, afflicted with second-sight, and the only son of an insane mother,
* Lodsen og hans Nustru (The Pilot and his Wife). AC J. Lie. Copenhagen : Hegel. 1874.
is brought up, under influences the most sinister and dreary pos- sible. The character of this youth is worked out in a manner so masterly, that the sketch has a positive psychological and physio- logical value. He falls in love with the pastor's daughter, and under his care is being cured, when, during a storm, his second- sight comes violently upon him, and he sees her drowning. Three days afterwards her body is washed on to the shore of the fjord, and he falls into a state of dejection from which he never recovers. The descriptions of the wild and unfamiliar life in the fjords, the traces of superstition still remaining among the inhabitants, the desolate and even appalling character of the scenery, all is made use of to increase the impressiveness of what is truly a very nobly-written study of human life in one of it more anomalous forms.
The next important work of Jonas Lie was a much larger novel, Tremasteren " Fremtid," "The Three-master Future ' ; or, Life in High Latitudes," an excellently studied story of seafaring life, which increased his fame and had a deserved success. In both these books was discernible a trace of the influence on the author of the exquisite style of Bjornsen, sufficiently distinct to mark that writer as Lie's predecessor and literary model. This year, however, a still longer book has appeared, in which no external influence is noticeable, a book which stamps Jonas Lie finally as a man of independent genius. It is, as its predecessors were, a story of "sorrow on the sea."
Lodsen og hams Hustru ; or, "The Pilot and his Wife," begins in the reflective manner peculiar to Lie. He loves to show you at the outset the condition into which the characters he is about to develop found themselves late in their story. Then, having imprinted a single photographic picture on the memory, he returns to the beginning, and shows by what processes they entered upon the state in which you have seen them. Finally, he tells you what followed that state also. The first chapter introduces us to a lonely hut on the little islet of Merdo, in the fjord that leads up to the town of Arendal, which lies on the south-west coast of Norway. On this rock stands the cottage of Salve Kristiansen, pilot. The dark-bearded, silent man is named in Arendal as a, wild and dangerous fellow, ready at a quarrel, somewhat given to drink, but the cleverest and boldest pilot on the whole coast. His wife is a comely, silent woman of middle-age. Over her whole appearance something of doubt and anxiety is thrown ; she has never a look of full repose ; when Salve is away anxiety for him is uppermost, in his presence, appre- hension for herself. What caused this ever-present, aching sense of doubt in her, what weighs on him and makes turbid the clear current of his life ?—this the story has to explain. The Norwegian pilot is not like the English and Dutch, who have each his de- finite district ; for him the North Sea is all open to enterprise. One day he leads a ship from the Naze safe into some Norse port, threading a multitude of dangerous rocks ; the next he has slipped across to the Scam of Jutland, the next he is on his way to Ham- burg, to lead some coasting-vessel safe round the Horn of Denmark into Christiansand Haven. Wherever he is, he is a silent, some- what melancholy man, daring almost to the point of bravado.
After this very vivid and telling picture of the family on Merdii, of which it has been impossible for us to give more than the baldest outline, the story goes back at least forty years, to a time when the dangerous coast of Norway was not, as now, illu- minated at night by a ring of powerful lighthouses. Far out at sea, at the mouth of Arendal harbour, stands now Little Tortuagen Light, built on the islet of the same name. Wild and lonely, it rises out of the ocean, washed over by the spray on stormy nights, battered by eagles and sea-fowl that meet their death in dashing against the panes of its lantern. There seems scarcely room for the lighthouse on the isle, but in reality there is more than appears, and Lie has chosen to make this island the theatre for the opening scenes of his story.
Long before the lighthouse was built, one solitary hut stood on Little Torangen, protected and nearly concealed by a hollow in the rock. Here lived a desolate old man, a shoemaker, who eked out his livelihood by rowing into the town with fish. All people knew of him was that he had had a drunken son, who had married disgracefully, and that when this son was drowned, he and his wife had gone out to the lonely island, and had taken their orphan grand-daughter, Elizabeth, to live with them. The old woman died at last, and Old Jacob lived alone with the little girl, a wild creature, with thick hair loose over her eyes and a ragged dog for ever at her heels. The child grew up with little know- ledge of other human creatures ; now and then a -boat came out to the Wand on some errand, twice she had been to see her
foster-mother in .Arendal, else she and the old man lived on their desolate island unchanged. •
At last, Salve Kristiansen, a handsome young fellow of eighteen, son of a man in Arendal, comes out to Little Torungen on some message, and a new element enters into Elizabeth's existence. Very humorously and graphically is described the first meeting between the sharp, precocious boy, who is already in immense request at all dances and route, and the awkward, ignorant girl of fourteen, too profoundly unsophisticated to be shy. At first, Salve laughs at her, but an attachment soon springs up between them, and they agree that when he comes back from his next voyage—for he is a sailor—they will be betrothed. He goes to Havre and to Liverpool, and each time he comes back he finds her grown and altered, wiser and more womanly. She is now often in the town, but always preserves her simplicity of mind.
There is a young naval officer, Carl Beck, who now comes on the scene. He is a complete contrast to Salve, and about the same age. Their characters throughout the book are in studied opposition ; one is sane, easy-going, and superficial ; the other comparatively insane, passionate, and intense. Into these two classes human nature is frequently divided by imaginative writers, —Laertes or Hamlet, Carl Beck or Salve Kristiansen. This young officer, with a party of ladies and friends, is benighted in the neighbourhood of Little Torungen, and claims Old Jacob's hos- pitality. He is struck by Elizabeth's beauty, and while his corvette is in the harbour, he comes often out to Torungen to shoot. By an instinct, Elizabeth is careful never to be much with him, unless Old Jacob is there too.
Salve meanwhile has been to Boston and Quebec, and winning golden opinions by his readiness and usefulness on board ship. After an unusually long voyage, they find themselves once more nearing the coast of Norway, when a terrific storm rises, the ship loses its bearings, and to all expectation will in a few minutes be dashed on the cruel rocks that start up everywhere along that frightful coast. Suddenly, through the darkness, Salve considers that he sees the lights of Elizabeth's room on Little Torungen. The captain, who is Carl Beck's father, gives him up the helm, and Salve, guiding his judgment by that notion, safely pilots the vessel into Arendal Harbour, finishing his long voyage with extreme &lat. It is impossible to praise too highly the art and vigour of this exciting scene. On his return, he finds Old Jacob dead, and he overhears two sailors talking about Elizabeth, whom they declare to have gone to live with young Lieutenant Beck. Salve loses all presence of mind at hearing this story, which, in fact, has its true side. Carl Beck, in the kindness of his heart, has found a home in his mother's house for Elizabeth, left homeless and helpless ; his after-thought being that he would have her educated, and in due time ask her to be his wife. Elizabeth, meanwhile, waits, sick at heart, for Salve ; but when at last he comes to see her, he is so -violent, that her pride is roused, and she answers him shortly and coldly. He goes mad with passion, drinks hard, assaults a man, and is put in irons till his ship leaves port.
The construction of the story proceeds in the most ingenious way. The mother and sisters of Carl Beck have no suspicion of their son's wishes, but he, at last, perceiving that Elizabeth's position is becoming compromising for her, generously offers to marry her at once. She wavers a day ; he does not suspect her reason, and to assure her of his rectitude, writes to inform his father that he is betrothed to Elizabeth, and tells her that he has done so. She is then forced to tell him that she loves another man, and leaves the house at once. She goes to her foster-mother, and hearing of respectable people in the town who are going to settle in Holland, she hires herself to them, and sails away.
Meanwhile, it will be remembered that Carl Beck's father is captain of Salve's ship. He has taken a dislike to Salve, and when he receives the letter of his son, he blurts the news out angrily to the young man. They are lying in the roads of Monte Video. The scenes that follow we must hurry over. Salve deserts at Rio Janeiro, falls in with wild adventures there which are very graphically described ; takes a place as common sailor on board a kind of pirate-vessel, where every man's hand is against his neighbour. He becomes the wildest and roughest of the crew, and after living the most lawless life for ten years on American waters, he grows weary of it all at last, and comes back to Arendal. He then hears that Elizabeth never married Beck at all, and after a struggle between pride and the old love, he goes over to Holland to seek for her. Then follow some charming passages, describing the life in Amsterdam, and the simple, sudden way in which the patient, faithful Elizabeth takes up the broken thread of her life. They are married, and Salve
" becomes pilot, but the wild life he has led has darkened his character, and he becomes the victim of a wild, insane jealousy. It is only after great sorrow that the past is clearly opened up to him, and the curtain falls on a peaceful end of the trouble at last.
The analysis of character in this book is of a remarkably subtle kind. The three principal persons, each noble in a certain way, but so differently constituted, are incessantly throwing one another into relief, and the little touches that adorn the web and woof of the story are exquisite beyond all praise. The 'vivacity of the plot, now laid in Norway, now in Brazil, now in New Orleans, now in Amsterdam, and the originality of treatment throughout, give the story a kind of cosmopolitan character that is new and very fascinating, while the pictures of life on board ship, sometimes startlingly realistic, and always drawn without a suspicion of that sentimentality that gives English marine romance so often an air of doubtful accuracy, are grouped with an astonish- big variety and vigour. English stories of the sea are mainly hooka for boys ; this is a book for men, in the sense that George Eliot's novels are. We hear that a London publisher proposes to present us with a version of Lodsen og lions Hustru in our own language, and if only its terse and picturesque style be rendered adequately, we can think of no book better adapted to give the jaded novel-reader a fresh sensation.
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