But young Ibsen was not a
favorite even with the girls, whom he alarmed and disconcerted. One of
the young ladies of Grimstad in after years attempted to describe the
effect which the poet made upon them. They had none of them liked him,
she said, "because"--she hesitated for the word--"because he was so
_spectral_." This gives us just the flash we want; it reveals to us for
a moment the distempered youth, almost incorporeal, displayed wandering
about at twilight and in lonely places, held in common esteem to be
malevolent, and expressing by gestures rather than by words sentiments
of a nature far from complimentary or agreeable.
Thus life at Grimstad seems to have proceeded until Ibsen reached his
twenty-first year. In this quiet backwater of a seaport village the
passage of time was deliberate, and the development of hard-worked
apothecaries was slow. Ibsen's nature was not in any sense precocious,
and even if he had not languished in so lost a corner of society, it is
unlikely that he would have started prematurely in life or literature.
The actual waking up, when it came at last, seems to have been almost an
accident.
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