O. T. A Danish Romance
By . New York: Hurd and Houghton.
IT is a great pleasure which the publishers place within common reach by printing in neat and handsome shape a uniform edition of the works of Hans Christian Andersen. Whatever else one may say of him, there is no denying that he is a man of delicate and poetical mind, and he has been so long the eminent representative of Scandinavian literature, that his complete works would be expected in any accumulation of classics. But they are not only to be expected ; they are to be welcomed, and very heartily. He is not a writer of strong imagination, and we are tempted to give his creative faculty no better name than fancy ; yet he has somehow lodged himself securely in the hearts of old and young, where he holds a place that men of much greater power could not attain. Children perhaps know him best from “The Ugly Duckling,” a subtle allegory so lovely that, whether you understand it perfectly or not, it is still exquisitely charming ; and maturer readers think of him first as the author of “ The Improvisatore,” a story that, with many faults and imperfections, is always fascinating. And judging from the other works published by Messrs. Hurd and Houghton, we think that both the children and their elders know him at his best in these. He never reaches, in any other of the “ Wonder-Stories told for Children,” so high an effect as that attained in “The Ugly Duckling ” ; his fancy is apt to run wild, and his emotionality is so abundant that he too often indulges himself in the luxury of wringing his little readers' hearts upon no just occasion whatever. (There is a tale in the “ WonderStories” of the sufferings of an ambitious little fir-tree which longed to leave its native forest, and which became a Christmas-tree, and then after its brief glory entered upon a long period of neglect and final destruction ; and this tale is so pathetically and carefully told, that it is wickedly and uselessly affecting in a world where there is possible and actual human sorrow enough to make children wretched with, if they must be tormented before their time.) The same exuberance makes the author a superficial observer, as we have already hinted in a notice of his travels in Spain and Portugal. In his romances he is better. “The Improvisatore ” is on the whole generally faithful to the spirit of Italian life; and “The Two Baronesses,” though the plot is violent and extravagant to the point of offence, has many characters and pictures of Danish life which convey their own assurance of truth.
The present novel, “ O. T,,” is not so good as the former of these, but seems to us better than the latter. The scene is entirely in Denmark ; and though the conception is theatrical, the story is wrought out with simplicity and reality. It is burdened, like the others, with overmuch episode, and the conversation is often indirect and trivial, not advancing the narrative, nor developing character. The story is that of Otto Thorstrup, a young student, whose mother had not only been betrayed by his father, but had confessed herself guilty of two robberies committed by him, and had borne his punishment. The seducer was the son of Colonel Thorstrup, an old soldier and magistrate ; and when the hapless young mother died in the workhouse, after bringing into the world a fatherless boy and girl, Colonel Thorstrup took the boy home, and reared him in ignorance of his origin. But a worthless German mountebank, who had some knowledge of this, pursued the young man with dark hints of it, and pretended to know his sister ; and so at last prevailed on Otto to release from durance a depraved and thievish girl, whom he declared to be this sister. The burden of his secret, shared by this wretch, darkens and embitters Otto’s life, which is chiefly brightened by the friendship of a young nobleman, Wilhelm, who is in love with a beautiful girl of low condition. It turns out that this is Otto’s real sister ; she dies before her marriage with Wilhelm ; and that gay and pretty sister of Wilhelm, with whom Otto is at first in love, marries a Kammerjunker, and then Otto finds that really it is another sister of Wilhelm’s, Louise, namely, that he is in love with, and they are wed. The story straggles over much detail, as we have suggested, but it is all very interesting, and parts of it are absorbing. The course of Otto’s love for Sophie is very naturally and finely traced through all the turns by which he deceives himself in regard to her feeling; and his friendship with Wilhelm, if it seems a somewhat florid affair to men of our race, is still very charming. Doubtless the most affecting and forcible chapter of all is that in which the author goes back to depict the scenes of the punishment and self-sacrifice of Otto’s poor young mother. The character of Rosalie, the old Swiss housekeeper, who will not return to her country in the ease and affluence of her old age, because all her friends, whom she can believe alive at a distance, she will find to be dead, is very nicely and feelingly portrayed, and the reader is everywhere conscious of admirable painting of local and individual life.
It is an odd fact worth noting, that an amusement in which Wilhelm and other young noblemen indulge on a certain occasion is that of masquerading in women’s clothes, as those rich and idle gentlemen of London have lately been doing, to the dismay of many real old ladies of both sexes.