Only a Fiddler. A Danish Romance

BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. New York. Hurd and Houghton.

IT seems to us that this romance is not only much better than that of Herr Andersen, which we noticed two months ago, but an improvement even upon “The Improvisatore, ” which we were then inclined to think the best of the author’s works. “ Only a Fiddler ” is almost as good as “The Improvisatore,” in respect to the charm of the different characters and the setting of the story, while the plot is far more connected and interesting than that of “O. T.,” in which the succession of events retarded quite as often as hastened the dénouement. There is more vitality of general purpose, more certainty of design, in the details of this than in either of the other romances. The author speaks scornfully of realism in fiction, but he is a pre-Raphaelite in some things ; and he is apt to spend so much time upon the beautiful rendering of particulars in his pictures, as to lose his control over the whole effect ; but here everything promotes this. That there is much novelty in the types presented we believe we cannot say; and we do not know that it is granted to more than two or three very great poets to create more than two or three characters, which are thereafter obliged to produce the desirable variety in the different fictions by changes of attitude and expression. Herr Andersen’s hero, as far as we have made his acquaintance, is likely in each of the author’s works to be an unworldly-minded, innocent-hearted youth, placed at odds with mankind by a blot upon his birth, or by the possession of genius,—which is, perhaps, the worst sort of illegitimacy. After a gloomy or weirdly pathetic childhood, this hero falls in love with the most unattainable young lady he can set eyes on, and lives for her, and loses her to her great advantage, and wins somebody he had no notion of getting ; or, as in the case of the fiddler, dies of his broken hope. The maiden in his case is more than commonly hard-hearted, or no-hearted : she is the beautiful daughter of a Jewess and a Norwegian noble, with whom the Jewess had played her noble Danish lover false. In their childhood, this little Naomi and Christian (the fiddler) meet, and he never ceases to love her through all the changes of fortune that lift her so far above him, when the Danish count takes her and rears her as his own daughter. She grows up a brilliant, lovely, wicked girl, who attracts all that is bad from her surroundings. She has a strong brain and a strong will, and submits them both to a handsome, ignorant savage of a gypsy circus-rider, with whom she elopes and with whom she wanders about Europe in a man’s dress. But finally she marries a French marquis, and is left in perfect prosperity and unhappiness; while poor Christian, the musician, having failed to win the fame on which he had set his heart, greatly for her sake, dies in poverty and loneliness.

This is the outline of a work which is full of the most charming lights, the most melancholy shadows, the most pathetic blending of both. In Christian’s father the sadness and the humor meet with delightful result: he is so filled with the memory of his youthful travels in southern countries, that he is forever sighing for them, and at last to see them once more he leaves wife and child, and enlists in a southward-marching army. He is reported killed ; but he has been taken prisoner to Russia, which is far more unlike Italy than Denmark even, and when he returns home and finds his wife married a second time, he sets his face towards Rome, where he ends as a lay-brother in a Capuchin convent.

The darkest figure in the book is Christian’s godfather, who is conjecturally Naomi’s father, and who, with all good and beautiful impulses, has been forced by evil passions in his youth to the commission of two dreadful crimes. In very strong contrast to him is the benevolent shipmaster, Peter Vieck, who does not torment Christian by telling him of the possibilities of his genius under efficient protection, as the Count does, but places him where he can study his art with the best musician the shipmaster knows. This is Mr. Knepus of Odense, who with his admirable lady thus appears to the reader: — “It was in the last days of April when Christian, with his little bundle under his arm, and the letter of introduction from Peter Vieck in his hand, stood upon two stone steps and knocked with the iron knocker upon the ever-closed door.

“ A thin lady, with fluttering and somewhat dirty cap-ribbons, opened the door. That was Mrs. Knepus.

“ ' You are, probably, Mr. Peter Vieck’s foster-son ? ’ said she, welcoming him, pressed his hand, and conducted him amid a torrent of words through the long passage, which was not very cleanly swept, but which yet was strewn with fresh sand. Two old gravestones, which, on the breaking up of the church of the Grey Brothers, had been purchased together with several monumental tablets, ornamented the naked walls, and one did not rightly know whether here one was in a chapel or in a dwelling-house.

“‘We lead a very quiet life here,’ said the lady ; ‘ the shooting-club and the king’s birthday are the only two festivals in which Knepus takes any part. He amuses himself, as you will see, in his own way.’

“With this the man himself made his appearance. He wore a dirty, yellow nightcap on his bald, pointed head, and a somewhat narrow overcoat, which did the duty of a sleeping-coat, for it was bound round the waist with a leathern belt. A pair of drawers completed the whole costume of the shrivelled legs.”

. . . . . “ The walls of one room were pasted over with caricatures, and round about hung all kinds of instruments. Upon a shelf playthings were hung; but the child for which these were intended, Mr. Knepus himself, lay in bed. Upon a table before him steamed a spirit-lamp, with a little punchbowl. The child, from time to time, took a draught and looked through a perspectiveglass. The servant changed the pictures when Mr. Knepus nodded with his head, and his wife read aloud to him in one of the German classics. These Mr. Knepus called his ' childish hours,’ and he had them every evening. As soon as he sunk his head weariedly upon the pillow, and returned no answer to the question of his wife, ' Art thou sleeping, my little lamb ? ’ she and the servant glided softly out of the room, and were their own masters.

“ Thus also now lay Mr. Knepus in his bed, and as the company this evening was so numerous, he proposed a game at forfeits, in which he in bed, and the rest out of it, could take part ; and which, according to his opinion, must be uncommonly amusing. Christian was sentenced to give Mrs. Knepus a kiss under the great carpet, which her husband threw over her. The good Christian closed his eyes and commended himself to God. At length he received a glass of punch, and in the end went to his room in the most cheerful state of mind. The greater part of the room was occupied as a great repository, in which were arranged the collected works of Wieland, Schulzen’s ' Handbook of Medicine,’ and the remainder entirely musical works. An ancient gravestone, that had its origin also in the now disappeared convent of the Grey Brothers, stood with all its saintly images at the foot of his somewhat short bedstead, composed of an old arm-chair and a kneading-trough. Behind the gravestone hung a smoked salmon and several pounds of candles ; just beside stood a butter-cask : two chairs and a table completed the whole of his chamber furniture.

“ ‘ Now I have arranged everything quite conveniently,’ said Mrs. Knepus, as she conducted the young inmate to his chamber.

' In the table-draw you can keep your clean linen ; and here, under your bed, is a knapsack in which you can put your dirty things ; because order must rule in everything. Mr. Knepus goes, to be sure, always below to the pump to wash himself; but a young man like you shall have everything as it ought to be. Here you have a beer-bottle until water ; you can, perhaps, pour the water over your hands out of the window when you wash yourself: when opportunity occurs we will buy a wash-basin.”

The whole study of this amusingly slipshod household is in the best vein of the author, whose humor certainly gains from the despised spirit of realism in which he paints the Knepuses. One more glimpse of the picture we must give, advising the reader, however, that the characters so fully presented are not important ones in the story. One night when Christian had returned home late, —

“ He suddenly heard a scraping sound at the window ; at any other time he would have paid no attention to it, but now ! He covered himself in bed and looked toward the window ; the head of a human being was moving before it. He now recognized the voice ; it was that of Mrs. Knepus. I must steal,’ said the lady, as she boldly swung herself into our hero’s chamber, who presented himself to her in that selfsame nightly costume in which Gil Blas and other heroes have stood.

“ The servant-maid could not manage to make the quantity of butter which Mrs. Knepus allowed for weekly consumption hold out, and this the mistress said was only owing to her wastefulness ; and that she might prove the truth of this, she laid a wager of three marks with the girl that she would make the allotted portion of butter last out the week. But, in order that the lady might not go and eke out the quantity from that which was in the store-room, which, as we know, was Christian’s bedroom, the servant was to keep the key when he was gone to bed. The lady, however, found herself short in her calculation ; but for all that she would not lose her wager, because upon that depended three marks and her reputation. From this cause she vaulted, at this hour of night, through the window into the little garret, — to steal from herself.

“ ‘ I am in a horrible situation,’ said she ; ‘ if anybody saw me getting through the window in this way, what would they say ? But I do it on account of my honor, and “ to the pure all things are pure! ” ’

“And the lady helped herself to the butter.”

We do not know that any personage of the story is infirmly done, and the persons are of sufficient number to have excused some inefficiency of characterization. As is usual with Andersen’s romances, this is told in what affects one as a series of episodes, though every chapter as a whole contributes to the progress of the story. Of the passages which are to be chiefly admired in and for themselves, none is more touching and remarkable than that which presents the tragedy of Steffen-Margaret,—of the poor wretch who would have turned from her life of sin, and could only do so through death’s door. Let us make haste to secure our author against a supposition that his story deals much with such characters. In the vast range of his romance, this one appears naturally with the rest, and is neither invited nor repelled. It is, in fact, an air of freedom in the movements of the persons which is one of the greatest charms of the book : they come and go ; perhaps we see them but once; they are never strictly accounted for; the changes wrought in them by time are only incidentally noted._ It will be easily believed that this romance abounds in happy descriptions, and that it is full of Denmark as well as humanity ; a book by Andersen could not be otherwise. The only thing to say against it is that it is too sad for so gloomy a world as we are obliged actually to live in.

The translation is more vulnerable ; it is mainly good, but the foreign order is too often retained, and occasionally the translator seems to forget that he ought to be writing English.