Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845

"I had scarcely set foot in the streets of Copenhagen, when I saw Thorwaldsen coming towards me. I was sure that I was not mistaken, for no one who has ever looked upon that fine benevolent countenance, that long silver hair, clear, high forehead and gently smiling mouth – no one who has ever gazed into those divine blue orbs, wherein creative power seems so sweetly to repose, could ever forget them again. I went up and spoke to him. He remembered me immediately, shook my hand with that captivating joviality of manner which is peculiar to him, and invited me into his house. He inhabits the Charlottenburg, an old chateau on the Königsneumarkt, by crossing the inner court of which one reaches his studio. My most delightful moments in Copenhagen were passed there, looking on whilst he worked at the statues of deities and heroes – he himself more illustrious than them all. There they stand, those lifelike and immortal groups, displaying the most wonderful variety of form and attitude, and yet, strange to say, Thorwaldsen scarcely ever makes use of a model. His most recently commenced works were two gigantic allegorical figures, Samson and Æsculapius. The first was already completed, and I myself saw the bearded physiognomy of Æsculapius growing each day more distinct and perfect beneath the cunning hand of the master. The statues represent Strength and Health."

In his house, and as a private individual, Thorwaldsen is as amiable and estimable as in his studio. In the centre of one of his rooms is a four-sided sofa, which was embroidered expressly for him by the fair hands of the Copenhagen ladies. The walls are covered with pictures, some of them very good, others of a less degree of merit. They were not all bought on account of their excellence; Thorwaldsen purchased many of them to assist young artists who were living, poor and in difficulties, at Rome. Dressed in his blue linen blouse, he explained to his visitor the subjects of these pictures, without the slightest tinge of vanity in his manner or words. None of the dignities or honours that have been showered upon him, have in the slightest degree turned his head. Affable, cheerful, and even-tempered, he appears to have preserved, to his present age of sixty, much of the joyous lightheartedness of youth. With great glee he related to Mr Boas the trick he had played the architects of the church of Our Lady at Copenhagen.

"Architects are obstinate people," said he, "and one must know how to manage them. Thank God, that is a knowledge which I possess in a tolerable degree. When the church of Our Lady was built, the architect left six niches on either side of the interior, and these were to contain the twelve apostles. In vain did I represent to them that statues were meant to be looked at on all sides, and that nobody could see through a stone wall; I implored, I coaxed them, it was all in vain. Then thought I to myself, he is best served who serves himself, and thereupon I made the statues a good half-foot higher than the niches. You should have seen the length of the architects' faces when they found this out. But they could not help themselves; the infernal sentry-boxes were bricked up, and my apostles stand out upon their pedestals, as you may have seen when you visited the church."

Thorwaldsen is devotedly attached to Copenhagen, and has made a present to the city of all his works and collections, upon condition that a fitting locality should be prepared for their reception, and that the museum should bear his name. The king gave a wing of the Christiansburg for this purpose, the call for subscriptions was enthusiastically responded to, and the building is now well advanced. Its style of architecture is unostentatious, and its rows of large windows will admit a broad decided light upon the marble groups. Pending its completion, the majority of the statues and pictures are lodged in the palace.

Mr Boas appears bent upon establishing his parallel between Denmark and Italy. He traces it in the fondness of the Danes for art, poetry, and music, in their gay and joyous character, and in their dress. He even discovers an Italian punchinello figuring in a Danish puppet-show; and as it was during the month of August that he found himself in Denmark, the weather was not such as to dispel his illusions.

"It would be erroneous," he says, "to suppose that Danish costumes weaken or obliterate the idea of a southern region conveyed by this country. A Bolognese professor would not think of covering his head with the red cap of a Lazzarone, and Roman marchesas dress themselves, like Danish countesses, according to the Journal des Modes. National costumes in all countries have taken refuge in villages, and the peasants in the environs of Copenhagen have no reason to be ashamed of their garb, which is both showy and picturesque. The men wear round hats and dark-blue jackets, lined with scarlet and adorned with long glittering rows of bullet-shaped buttons. The women are very tasteful in their attire. Their dark-green gowns, with variegated borders, reach down to their heels, and the shoulder-strap of the closely fitting boddice is a band of gold lace. The chief pains are bestowed upon the head-dress, which is various in its fashion, sometimes composed of clear white stuff, with an embroidered lappet, falling down upon the neck; sometimes of a cap of many colours, heavily embroidered with gold, and having broad ribands of a red purple, which flutter over the shoulders. One meets every where with this original sort of costume; for the peasant women repair in great numbers to the festivals at the various towns, and in Copenhagen they are employed as nurses to the children of the higher classes.

"During my sojourn in the Danish capital, the weather was so obliging as in no way to interfere with my Cisalpine illusions. The sky continued a spotless dome of lapis-lazuli, out of which the sun beamed like a huge diamond; and if now and then a little cloud appeared, it was no bigger than a white dove flitting across the blue expanse. The days were hot, a bath in the lukewarm sea scarcely cooled me, and at night a soft dreamy sort of vapour spread itself over the earth. I only remember one single moment when the peculiarities of a northern climate made themselves obvious. It was in the evening, and I was returning with my friend Holst from the delightful forest-park of Friedrichsberg. The sky was one immense blue prairie, across which the moon was solitarily wandering, when suddenly the atmosphere became illuminated with a bright and fiery light; a large flaming meteor rushed through the air, and, bursting with a loud report, divided itself into a hundred dazzling balls of fire. These disappeared, and immediately afterwards a white mist seemed to rise out of the earth, and the stars shone more dimly than before. Over stream and meadow rolled the fog, in strange fantastical shapes, floating like a silver gauze among the tree-stems and foliage, till it gradually wove itself into one close and impervious veil. To such appearances as these must legends of elves and fairies owe their origin."

It is something rather new for an author to introduce into his book a criticism of another work on the same subject. This, Mr Boas, who appears to be a bold man, tolerably confident in his own capabilities and acquirements, has done, and in a very amusing, although not altogether an unobjectionable manner. He must be sanguine, however, if he expects his readers to place implicit faith in his impartiality. Under the title of "A Tour in the North," he devotes a long chapter to a bitter attack on the Countess Hahn-Hahn's book of that name. Here is its commencement: —

"A year previously to myself, Ida, Countess Hahn-Hahn, had visited Sweden, and the fruit of her journey was, as is infallible with that lady, a book. When I arrived at Stockholm, people were just reading it, and I found them highly indignant at the nonsense and misrepresentations it contains. When a German goes to Sweden he is received as a brother, with a warmth and heartiness which should make a doubly pleasing impression, if we reflect how important it is in our days to preserve a mutual confidence and good-will between nations. When meddling persons make the perfidious attempt to embitter a friendly people by scoffing and abuse, there should be an end to forbearance, and it becomes a duty to strike in with soothing words. We must show the Swedes how such scribblings are appreciated in Germany, lest they should think we take a pleasure in ridiculing what is noble and good."

And thereupon, Mr Boas does "strike in," as he calls it; but however soothing his words may prove to his ill-used Swedish friends, we have considerable doubts as to their emollient effect upon the Countess, supposing always that she condescends to read them. He hits that lady some very hard knocks, not all of them, perhaps, entirely undeserved; makes out an excellent case for the Swedes, and proves, much more satisfactorily to himself than to us, that Madame Hahn-Hahn is of a very inferior grade of bookmaking tourists.

"In the first place" he says, "I declare that her work on Sweden is no original, but a dull imitation of Gustavus Nicolai's notorious book, 'Italy, as it really is.' Like that author, the Countess labours assiduously to collect together all the darkest shades and least favourable points of the country and people she visits; exaggerates them when she finds them, and invents them when she does not. For the beauties of the country she has neither eye nor feeling; she intentionally avoids speaking of them, and her book is meant, like that of Nicolai, to operate as a warning, and scare away travellers. The good lady says this very explicitly. 'Travellers are beginning to turn their attention a good deal to the north, for the south is becoming insufficient to gratify that universal rage for rambling, with which I myself, as a true child of the century, am also infected. But the north is so little known – I, for my part, only knew it through Dahl's poetical landscapes – that one feels involuntarily disposed to deck it with the colours of the south, because the south is beautiful, and the north is said also to be so. Thus one is apt to set out with a delusion, and I think it will therefore be an act of kindness to those who may visit Sweden after me, if I say exactly how I found it.' Uncommonly good, Gustavus the second. But it would be unfair to Nicolai to assert that his book is as dull and nonsensical as that of the Countess Hahn-Hahn. He went to Italy with the idea that it never rained there, and that oranges grew on the hedges, as sloes do with us. This was childish, and one could not help laughing at it. But when his imitatress perpetually laments and complains, because on the Maeler lake, under the 59th degree of latitude, she does not find the sultry southern climate – it becomes worse than childish, and one is compelled to pity her. The Countess chanced to hit upon a cool rainy month for her visit – I am wrong, she was not a month in Scandinavia altogether – and thereupon she cries out as if she were drowning, and despises both country and people."

It is easy to understand that there can be little sympathy between the Countess Hahn-Hahn, an imaginative and somewhat capricious fine lady, with strong aristocratic and exclusive tendencies, and such a matter-of-fact person as Mr Boas, who, in spite of his sentimentality, which is a sort of national infirmity, and although he informs us in one part of his book that he is a poet, leans much more to the practical and positive than to the imaginative and dreamy, and we moreover suspect is a bit of a democrat. Having, however, taken the Countess en grippe, as the French call it, he shows her no mercy, and, it must be owned, displays some cleverness in hitting off and illustrating the weak points of her character and writings.

"Hardly," he resumes, "has the female Nicolai reached Stockholm, when she begins with her insipid comparisons. 'The golden brilliancy of Naples and the magic spell of Venice are here entirely wanting.' Is it possible? Only see what striking remarks this witty and travelled dame does make! In the next page she says: – 'Upon this very day, exactly one year since, I was in Barcelona; but here there is nothing that will bear comparison with the land of the aloe and the orange. Three years ago I was on the Lake of Como, in that fairy garden beyond the Alps! Five years ago in Vienna, amongst the rose-groves of Laxenburg;' &c. Who cares in what places the Countess has been? Surely it is enough that she has written long wearisome books about them. Every possible corner of Italy, Spain, and Switzerland is dragged laboriously in, to furnish forth comparisons; and soon, no doubt, a similar use will be made of Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. These comparisons are invariably shown to be to the disadvantage of Sweden; and although the lady is oftentimes compelled to confess to the beauty of a Swedish landscape, she never forgets to qualify the admission, by observing how much more beautiful such or such a place was. For example, she is standing one night at her window, looking out on the Maeler lake. 'I wrapped my mantilla shiveringly around me, stepped back from the window, shut it, and said with a slight sigh: In Venice the moonlight nights were very different.' Really this would be hardly credible, did any other than a countess assure us of it."

"Every thing in Sweden is disagreeable and adverse to her; roads, houses, food, people, and money; rocks, trees, rivers and flowers; but especially sun, sky, and air. She talks without ceasing of heavy clouds and pouring rains, but even this abundance of water is insufficient to mitigate the dryness of her book."

"I am always sorry," says a witty French writer, "when a woman becomes an author: I would much rather she remained a woman." Does Mr Boas, perchance, partake this implied opinion, that authorship unsexes; and is it therefore that he allows himself to deal out such hard measure to the Countess Ida? Even if we agreed with his criticisms, we should quarrel with his want of gallantry. But it is tolerably evident that if Madame Hahn-Hahn, finding herself on the shores of the Baltic, in a July that might have answered to December in the sunny climes she had so recently left, allowed her account of Swedes and Sweden to be shaded a little en noir by her own physical discomforts; it is evident, we say, that on the other hand, our present author, either more favoured by the season, or less susceptible of its influence, sins equally in the contrary extreme, and throws a rosy tint over all that he portrays. Though equally likely to induce into error, it is the pleasanter fault to those persons who merely read the tour for amusement, without proposing to follow in the footsteps of the tourist. Your complaining, grumbling travellers are bores, whether on paper or in a post-chaise; and, truth to tell, we have noticed in others of the Countess's books a disposition to look on the dark side of things. But this is not always the case, and, when she gets on congenial ground, she shines forth as a writer of a very high order. Witness her Italian tour, and her book upon Turkey and Syria, with which latter, English readers have recently been made acquainted through an admirable translation, by the accomplished author of Caleb Stukely. She has her little conceits, and her little fancies; rather an overweening pride of caste, and contempt for the plebeian multitude, and an addiction to filling too many pages of her books with small personal and egotistical details about herself, and her sensations, and what dresses she wears, and how thin she is, and so on. But with all her faults, she is unquestionably a very accomplished and clever writer. Her criticisms on subjects relating to art, and especially her original and sparkling remarks on painting and architecture, although qualified by Mr Boas as twaddle, stamp her at once as a woman of no common order. She has profound and poetical conceptions of Beauty, and at times a felicity of expression in presenting the effects of nature and art upon her own mind, that strikes and startles by its novelty and power. As a delineator of men and manners, she is remarkable for shrewdness, subtle perception, and truthfulness that cannot be mistaken. Should our readers doubt our statements, or haply Mr Boas turn up his nose at the eulogium, we would simply refer them and him to the last work that has fallen from her pen, the Letters from the Orient, and bid them open it at the page which brings them to a Bedouin encampment – a scene described with the vigour that belongs to a masculine understanding, and all the fascination which a feminine mind can bestow.

Still we are free to confess that the Countess has written perhaps rather too much for the time she has been about it, and thus laid herself open to an accusation of bookmaking, the prevailing vice of the present race of authors. The incorrigible and merciless Mr Boas does not let this pass.

"The question now remains to be asked," says he; "Why did Ida Hahn-Hahn, upon leaving a country in which she had passed a couple of weeks – a country of the language of which she confesses herself ignorant, and with which she was in every respect thoroughly displeased, deem it incumbent on her forthwith to write a thick book concerning it? The answer is this: her pretended impulse to authorship is merely feigned, otherwise she would not have troubled herself any further about such a wearisome country as Sweden. Through three hundred and fifty pages does she drag herself, grumbling as she goes; a single day must often fill a score of pages, for travelling costs money, and the honorarium is not to be despised. If I thus accuse the Countess of bookmaking, I also feel that such an accusation should be supported by abundant proof, and such proof am I ready to give."

Oh fye, Boas! How can you be so ruthless? Besides the impolicy of exposing the tricks of your trade, all this is very spiteful indeed. You would almost tempt us, were it worth while, to take up the cudgels in earnest in defence of the calumniated Countess, and to give you a crack on the pate, which, as Maga is regularly translated into German for the benefit and improvement of your countrymen, would entirely finish your career, whether as poet, tour-writer, or any thing else. But seeing that your conceits and lucubrations have afforded us one or two good laughs, and considering, moreover, that you are of the number of those small fry with which it is almost condescension for us to meddle, we will let you off, and close this notice of your book, if not with entire approbation, at least with a moderate meed of praise.