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Updated: May 8, 2025
So the family moved into a little house on an alley, half a mile away from the shipyard it was an awful long way to carry chips. The second calamity that came into the life of little Bertel was when he was eight years old. He and several companions were playing about the King's Market, where there was an equestrian statue of Charles the Twelfth.
One night the tide came up in a very unexpected manner and carried the chips away, for the sea is so very hungry that it is always sending the tide in to shore after things. This was the first great cross that came to Bertel. He had a few others afterwards, but he never forgot the night of anguish and the feeling of guilt that followed the losing of the shavings and chips.
I knew him, and thought of the Vatican, and of the group of the Nile, and the old marble gods. I thought of the simple little room where little Bertel sat in his night-shirt by the spinning wheel. The wheel of time has turned, and new gods have come forth from the stone. From the boats there arose a shout: 'Hurrah, hurrah for Bertel Thorwaldsen!"
Thora sat and looked out of one of them, at the ditch of the highway, at the smith's hill where primroses blossomed in spring, at Bertel Nielsen's huge elderberry bushes, at the mill and the miller's geese, and the hill of Dalum where not many years ago she and William slid down on sleighs, at the Dalum meadows, at the long, unnatural shadows of the horses that rushed over the gravel-heaps, over the turf-pits and rye-field.
That was the day he reached Rome. Antonio Canova, the sculptor, was then at the height of his popularity. Thorwaldsen's first success was the model for a statue of Jason, which was highly praised by Canova, and Bertel received the commission to execute it in marble from Thomas Hope, a wealthy English art patron. From this time forth, Thorwaldsen's success was assured.
Small men are provincial, mediocre men are cosmopolitan, but the great souls are Universal. Two islands, one city and the open sea claim the honor of being the birthplace of Bertel Thorwaldsen. The date of his birth ranges, according to the authorities, from Seventeen Hundred Seventy to Seventeen Hundred Seventy-three take your choice.
"How could a poor man, with a family to support, and provisions so high, spare his boy from work! Aye, wasn't he teaching the lad a trade himself, as it was?" But the shipowner fumbled his fob, and insisted, and to test the boy he had him work with his designers. And he compromised with the father by having Bertel sent to the Academy half a day at a time.
While, judging by the comparative behaviour of dog and man, the balance was decidedly in favour of Jupiter. After Bertel had carefully removed the splintered glass from the earth, so that I could take account of my damaged stock, about half seemed to be redeemable; but even those poor seedlings looked like soldiers after battle, a limb gone here and an eye missing there.
I knew him, and thought of the Vatican, and of the group of the Nile, and the old marble gods. I thought of the simple little room where little Bertel sat in his night-shirt by the spinning wheel. The wheel of time has turned, and new gods have come forth from the stone. From the boats there arose a shout: 'Hurrah, hurrah for Bertel Thorwaldsen!"
Some weeks after, another high tide came sweeping in, and lapped and sniffed and sighed around the canal-boat as if it were trying to tug it loose and carry the old craft and all the family out to sea. Little Bertel hoped the tide would fetch it, for it would be kind o' nice to get clear out away from everybody and everything where there were no chips to pick up.
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