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In a letter he once stated his belief that every book to be of real value must embody the struggle of one or more persons against all those things which try to keep one from existing in one's own way. That is the fundamental ethos which runs through all of Jacobsen's work. It is in Marie Grubbe, Niels Lyhne, Mogens, and the infinitely tender Mrs. Fonss.
The realization of the former has given, perhaps, a subdued tone to his canvasses; the recognition of the other has kept out of them weakness or self-pity. Under the encouragement of George Brandes his novel Marie Grubbe was begun in 1873, and published in 1876. His other novel Niels Lyhne appeared in 1880.
And perhaps it was very amusing, for, five years afterwards, when Marie had fulfilled her seventeenth year, a messenger arrived with a letter, in which Lord Gyldenlowe proposed for the hand of the noble young lady. There was a thing for you! "He is the grandest and most gallant gentleman in the whole country," said Grubbe the knight; "that is not a thing to despise."
Here stood a quaintly carved cupboard, in which rare flower-roots were kept, for my Lady Grubbe was fond of plants and cultivated trees and shrubs. Her husband preferred riding out to shoot wolves and boars; and his little daughter Marie always went with him part of the way. When she was only five years old, she would sit proudly on her horse, and look saucily round with her great black eyes.
Here were a clothes cupboard, and an arm-chair, and even a chest of drawers; and on these drawers a polished metal plate had been placed, whereon was engraved the word "Grubbe," and this was the name of the noble family that had lived in the house of old. The brass plate had been found when they were digging the foundation; and the clerk has said it had no value except in being an old relic.
They came from the town of Weile, whither they had come in a ship from Copenhagen. They stopped at Lord Grubbe's stone mansion in Aarhuus. Grubbe was not well pleased with this visit. Marie was accosted in hard words; but she had a bedroom given her, and got her beer soup of a morning; but the evil part of her father's nature was aroused against her, and she was not used to that.
"I don't care so very much about him," said Marie Grubbe; but she did not despise the grandest man of all the country, who sat by the king's side. Silver plate, and fine linen and woollen, went off to Copenhagen in a ship, while the bride made the journey by land in ten days.
They have a very interesting literature of to-day; the old battle-stories don't appeal to me quite so much as they do to Denzil." "You ought to know this fellow Jacobsen," said Quarrier, taking up the novel. "'Marie Grubbe' doesn't sound a very aesthetic title, but the book is quite in your line a wonderfully delicate bit of work." "Don't imagine, Mrs.
Madame Grubbe had not been put ashore, so she sailed away with it. But she will return, will she not? Yes, but where, and when? The clerk could tell about this too, and it was not a story which he patched together himself. He had the whole strange history out of an old authentic book, which we ourselves can take out and read.
Lady Grubbe, who now came up, parted her little daughter's hair from the child's brow, and looked at her affectionately; but Marie did not understand why. She wanted to go to the hounds, and not to her mother, who went down into the garden, to the lake where the water-lily bloomed, and the heads of bulrushes nodded amid the reeds; and she looked at all this beauty and freshness.
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