Then a
more complete decay confined him to his bed. After several days of
unconsciousness, he died very peacefully in his house on Drammensvej,
opposite the Royal Gardens of Christiania, at half-past two in the
afternoon of May 23, 1906, being in his seventy-ninth year. By a
unanimous vote of the he was awarded a public funeral, which the King of
Norway attended in person, while King Edward VII was represented there
by the British Minister. The event was regarded through out Norway as a
national ceremony of the highest solemnity and importance, and the poet
who had suffered such bitter humiliation and neglect in his youth was
carried to his grave in solemn splendor, to the sound of a people's
lamentation.
CHAPTER IX
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
During the latest years of his life, which were spent as a wealthy and
prosperous citizen of Christiania, the figure of Ibsen took forms of
legendary celebrity which were equalled by no other living man of
letters, not even by Tolstoi, and which had scarcely been surpassed,
among the dead, by Victor Hugo. When we think of the obscurity of his
youth and middle age, and of his consistent refusal to advertise himself
by any of the little vulgar arts of self-exhibition, this extreme
publicity is at first sight curious, but it can be explained.
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