The Girl from the Marsh Croft

"I am strong and well, your Reverence," said she. "I should probably have lived out my allotted seventy years. It is at least ten years that I am giving to the Holy Father."

The priest marked her zeal and reverence and offered no objections. "She is a poor woman," thought he. "She has nothing else to give."

"It is written, my daughter," he said.

When old Concenza came out from the church, it was so late that the commotion had ceased and the streets were absolutely deserted. She found herself in a remote part of the city, where the gas lamps were so far apart that they dispelled only a very little of the darkness. All the same, she walked on briskly. She felt very solemn within and was certain that she had done something which would make many people happy.

As she walked up the street, she suddenly got the impression that a live being circled above her head. In the darkness, between the tall houses, she thought she could distinguish a pair of large wings, and she even fancied she heard the sound of their beating.

"What is this?" said she. "Surely it can't be a bird! It is much too big for that." All at once she thought she saw a face which was so white that it illuminated the darkness. Then an unspeakable terror seized her. "It is the Angel of Death hovering over me," thought she. "Ah, what have I done? I have placed myself in the dreaded one's power!"

She started to run, but she could hear the rustle of the strong wings and was convinced that Death was pursuing her.

She fled with breathless haste through several streets, thinking all the while that Death was coming nearer and nearer her. She already felt his wings brushing against her shoulder.

Suddenly she heard a whizzing in the air, and something heavy and sharp struck her head. Death's two-edged sword had reached her. She sank to her knees. She knew that she must lose her life.

A few hours later, old Concenza was found on the street by two workmen. She lay there unconscious, stricken with apoplexy. The poor woman was immediately removed to a hospital, where they succeeded in bringing her to, but it was apparent that she could not live very long.

There was time, at all events, to send for her children. When, in a state of despair, they reached her sick-bed, they found her very calm and happy. She couldn't speak many words to them, but she lay and caressed their hands. "You must be happy," said she, "happy, happy!" Evidently she did not like their crying. She also bade the nurses smile and show their joy. "Cheerful and happy," said she; "now you must be cheerful and happy!" She lay there with hunger in her eyes, waiting to see a little joy in their faces.

She grew more and more impatient with her children's tears and with the solemn faces of the nurses. She began to utter things which no one could comprehend. She said that in case they were not glad she might just as well have lived. Those who heard her thought she was raving.

Suddenly the doors opened, and a young physician came into the sick-room. He was waving a newspaper and calling in a loud voice: "The Pope is better. He will live. A change has taken place in the night."

The nurses silenced him, so that he shouldn't disturb the dying woman, but Signora Concenza had already heard him.

She had also marked a spark of joy – a gleam of happiness which could not be concealed – pass through those who stood around her bed.

There she lay looking about her, with something far-seeing in her gaze. It was as though she were looking out over Rome, where the people were now thronging up and down the streets and greeting one another with the joyful news.

She raised her head as high as she could and said: "So am I – I am very happy. God has allowed me to die that he may live. I don't mind dying when I have made so many people happy."

She lay down again, and a few seconds later she was dead.

But they say in Rome that, after his recovery, the Holy Father entertained himself one day by looking through the church records of pious pledges which had been offered for his recovery.

Smilingly he read the long lists of little gifts until he came to the record where Concenza Zamponi had presented him with her remaining years of life. Instantly he became very serious and thoughtful.

He made inquiries about Concenza Zamponi and learned that she had died on the night of his recovery. He then bade them call to him her son, Dominico, and questioned him minutely as to her last moments.

"My son," said the Pope to him when he had spoken, "your mother has not saved my life, as she believed in her last hour; but I am deeply moved by her love and self-sacrifice."

He let Dominico kiss his hand, whereupon he dismissed him.

But the Romans assure you that, although the Pope would not admit that his span of years had been lengthened by the poor woman's gift, he was nevertheless certain of it. "Why else should Father Zamponi have had such a meteoric career?" asked the Romans. "He is already a bishop and it is whispered that he will soon be a Cardinal."

And in Rome they never feared after that that the Pope would die, not even when he was mortally ill. They were prepared to have him live longer than other people. His life had of course been lengthened by all the years that poor Concenza had given him.

The Story of a Story

Once there was a story that wanted to be told and sent out in the world. This was very natural, inasmuch as it knew that it was already as good as finished. Many, through remarkable deeds and strange events, had helped create it; others had added their straws in it by again and again relating these things. What it lacked was merely a matter of being joined together, so that it could travel comfortably through the country. As yet it was only a confused jumble of stories – a big, formless cloud of adventures rushing hither and thither like a swarm of stray bees on a summer's day, not knowing where they will find some one who can gather them into a hive.

The story that wanted to be told had sprung up in Vermland, and you may be sure that it circled over many mills and manors, over many parsonages and many homes of military officers, in the beautiful province, peering through the windows and begging to be cared for. But it was forced to make many futile attempts, for everywhere it was turned away. Anything else was hardly to be expected. People had many things of much more importance to think of.

Finally the story came to an old place called Mårbacka. It was a little homestead, with low buildings overshadowed by giant trees. At one time it had been a parsonage, and it was as if this had set a certain stamp upon the place which it could not lose. They seemed to have a greater love for books and reading there than elsewhere, and a certain air of restfulness and peace always pervaded it. There rushing with duties and bickering with servants were never met with, nor was hatred or dissension given house room, either. One who happened to be a guest there was not allowed to take life too seriously, but had to feel that his first duty was to be light-hearted and believe that for one and all who lived on this estate our Lord managed everything for the best.

As I think of the matter now, I apprehend that the story of which I am speaking must have lingered thereabouts a great many years during its vain longing to be told. It seems to me as though it must have enwrapped the place, as a mist shrouds a mountain summit, now and then letting one of the adventures of which it consisted rain down upon it.

They came in the form of strange ghost stories about the superintendent of the foundries, who always had black bulls hitched to his wagon when he drove home at night from a revel. And in his home the Evil One himself used to sit in the rocker and rock while the wife sat at the piano and played. They came as true stories from the neighboring homestead, where crows had persecuted the mistress until she didn't dare venture outside the door; from the Captain's house, where they were so poor that everything had to be borrowed; from the little cottage down by the church, where there lived a lot of young and old girls who had all fallen in love with the handsome organ builder.

Sometimes the dear adventures came to the homestead in an even more tangible form. Aged and poverty-stricken army officers would drive up to the doorstep behind rickety old horses and in rickety carryalls. They would stop and visit for weeks, and in the evenings, when the toddy had put courage into them, they would talk of the time when they had danced in stockingless shoes, so that their feet would look small, of how they had curled their hair and dyed their mustaches. One of them told how he had tried to take a pretty young girl back to her sweetheart and how he had been hunted by wolves on the way; another had been at the Christmas feast where an angered guest had flung all the hazel-hens at the wall because some one had made him believe they were crows; a third had seen the old gentleman who used to sit at a plain board table and play Beethoven.

But the story could reveal its presence in still another way. In the attic hung the portrait of a lady with powdered hair, and when any one walked past it he was reminded that it was a portrait of the beautiful daughter of the Count, who had loved her brother's young tutor, and had called to see him once when she was an old gray-haired lady and he an old married man. In the lumber room were heaped up bundles of documents containing deeds of purchase and leases signed by the great lady, who once ruled over seven foundries which had been willed to her by her lover. If one entered the church, one saw in a dusty little cabinet under the pulpit the chest filled with infidel manuscripts, which was not to be opened until the beginning of the new century. And not very far from the church is the river, at the bottom of which rests a pile of sacred images that were not allowed to remain in the pulpit and chancel they once had ornamented.

It must have been because so many legends and traditions hovered around the farm that one of the children growing up there longed to become a narrator. It was not one of the boys. They were not at home very much, for they were away at their schools almost the whole year; so the story did not get much of a hold upon them. But it was one of the girls – one who was delicate and could not romp and play like other children, but found her greatest enjoyment in reading and hearing stories about all the great and wonderful things which had happened in the world.

However, at the start it was not the girl's intention to write about the stories and legends surrounding her. She hadn't the remotest idea that a book could be made of these adventures, which she had so often heard related that to her they seemed the most commonplace things in the world. When she tried to write, she chose material from her books, and with fresh courage she strung together stories of the Sultans in "Thousand and One Nights," Walter Scott's heroes, and Snorre Sturleson's "Kings of Romance."

Surely it is needless to state that what she wrote was the least original and the crudest that has ever been put upon paper. But this very naturally she herself did not see. She went about at home on the quiet farm, filling every scrap of paper she could lay her hands on with verse and prose, with plays and romances. When she wasn't writing, she sat and waited for success. And success was to consist in this: Some stranger who was very learned and influential, through some rare freak of fortune, was to come and discover what she had written and find it worth printing. After that, all the rest would come of itself.

Meanwhile nothing of the sort happened. And when the girl had passed her twentieth year, she began to grow impatient. She wondered why success did not come her way. Perhaps she lacked knowledge. She probably needed to see a little more of the world than the homestead in Vermland. And seeing that it would be a long time before she could earn her livelihood as an author, it was necessary for her to learn something – find some work in life – that she might have bread while she waited for herself. Or maybe it was simply this – that the story had lost patience with her. Perhaps it thought thus: "Since this blind person does not see that which lies nearest her eyes, let her be forced to go away. Let her tramp upon gray stone streets; let her live in cramped city rooms with no other outlook than gray stone walls; let her live among people who hide everything that is unusual in them and who appear to be all alike. It may perchance teach her to see that which is waiting outside the gate of her home – all that lives and moves between the stretch of blue hills which she has every day before her eyes."

And so, one autumn, when she was two-and-twenty, she travelled up to Stockholm to begin preparing herself for the vocation of teacher.

The girl soon became absorbed in her work. She wrote no more, but went in for studies and lectures. It actually looked as though the story would lose her altogether.

Then something extraordinary happened. This same autumn, after she had been living a couple of months amidst gray streets and house walls, she was walking one day up Malmskillnad Street with a bundle of books under her arm. She had just come from a lecture on the history of literature. The lecture must have been about Bellman and Runeberg, because she was thinking of them and of the characters that live in their verses. She said to herself that Runeberg's jolly warriors and Bellman's happy-go-lucky roisterers were the very best material a writer could have to work with. And suddenly this thought flashed upon her: Vermland, the world in which you have been living, is not less remarkable than that of Fredman or Fänrik Stål. If you can only learn how to handle it, you will find that your material is quite as good as theirs.

This is how it happened that she caught her first glimpse of the story. And the instant she saw it, the ground under her seemed to sway. The whole long Malmskillnad Street from Hamn Street Hill to the fire-house rose toward the skies and sank again – rose and sank. She stood still a long while, until the street had settled itself. She gazed with astonishment at the passers-by, who walked calmly along, apparently oblivious to the miracle that had taken place.

At that moment the girl determined that she would write the story of Vermland's Cavaliers, and never for an instant did she relinquish the thought of it; but many and long years elapsed before the determination was carried out.

In the first place she had entered upon a new field of labor, and she lacked the time needful for the carrying out of a great literary work. In the second place she had failed utterly in her first attempts to write the story.

During these years many things were constantly happening which helped mould it. One morning, on a school holiday, she was sitting at the breakfast-table with her father, and the two of them talked of old times. Then he began telling of an acquaintance of his youth, whom he described as the most fascinating of men. This man brought joy and cheer with him wherever he went. He could sing; he composed music; he improvised verse. If he struck up a dance, it was not alone the young folk who danced, but old men and old women, high and low. If he made a speech, one had to laugh or cry, whichever he wished. If he drank himself full, he could play and talk better than when he was sober, and when he fell in love with a woman, it was impossible for her to resist him. If he did foolish things, one forgave him; if he was sad at times, one wanted to do anything and everything to see him glad again. But any great success in life he had never had, despite his wealth of talents. He had lived mostly at the foundries in Vermland as private tutor. Finally he was ordained as a minister. This was the highest that he had attained.

After this conversation she could see the hero of her story better than heretofore, and with this a little life and action came into it. One fine day a name was given to the hero and he was called Gösta Berling. Whence he got the name she never knew. It was as if he had named himself.

Another time, she came home to spend the Christmas holidays. One evening the whole family went off to a Christmas party a good distance from home in a terrible blizzard. It turned out to be a longer drive than one would have thought. The horse ploughed his way ahead at a walking pace. For several hours she sat there in the sleigh in the blinding snowstorm and thought of the story. When they arrived finally, she had thought out her first chapter. It was the one about the Christmas night at the smithy.

What a chapter! It was her first and for many years her only one. It was first written in verse, for the original plan was that it should be a romance cycle, like "Fänrik Stål's Sagas." But by degrees this was changed, and for a time the idea was that it should be written as drama. Then the Christmas night was worked over to go in as the first act. But this attempt did not succeed, either; at last she decided to write the story as a novel. Then the chapter was written in prose. It grew enormously long, covering forty written pages. The last time it was rewritten it took up only nine.

After a few more years came a second chapter. It was the story of the Ball at Borg and of the wolves that hunted Gösta Berling and Anna Stjernhök.

In the beginning this chapter was not written with the thought that it could come into the story, but as a sort of chance composition to be read at a small social gathering. The reading, however, was postponed, and the novelette was sent to Dagny. After a time the story was returned as unavailable for the magazine. It was in reality not available anywhere. As yet it was altogether lacking in artistic smoothness.

Meanwhile the author wondered to what purpose this unluckily born novelette could be turned. Should she put it into the story? To be sure, it was an adventure by itself – and ended. It would look odd among the rest, which were better connected. Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad idea, she thought then, if all the chapters of the story were like this one – almost finished adventures? This would be difficult to carry out, but it might possibly be done. There would doubtless be gaps in the continuity here and there, but that should give to the book great strength and variety.

Now two important matters were settled: The story was to be a novel, and each chapter should be complete in itself. But nothing much had been gained hereby. She who had been fired with the idea of writing the story of Vermland's Cavaliers when she was two-and-twenty, at this stage was nearing the thirties and had not been able to write more than two chapters. Where had the years gone? She had been graduated from the Teachers' College and for several years past had been a teacher at Landskrona. She had become interested in much and had been occupied with many things, but the story was just as unwritten. A mass of material had certainly been collected, but why was it so hard for her to write it down? Why did the inspiration never come to her? Why did the pen glide so slowly over the paper? She certainly had her dark moments at that time! She began to think that she never would finish her novel. She was that servant who buried his talent in the ground and never tried to use it.

As a matter of fact, all this occurred during the eighties, when stern Realism was at its height. She admired the great masters of that time, never thinking that one could use any other style in writing than the one they employed. For her own part, she liked the Romanticists better, but Romanticism was dead, and she was hardly the one to think of reviving its form and expression! Although her brain was filled to overflowing with stories of ghosts and mad love, of wondrously beautiful women and adventure-loving cavaliers, she tried to write about it in calm, realistic prose. She was not very clear-visioned. Another would have seen that the impossible was impossible.

Once she wrote a couple of chapters in another style. One was a scene from Svartsjö churchyard; the other was about the old philosopher, Uncle Eberhard, and his infidel manuscripts. She scribbled them mostly in fun, with many ohs and ahs in the prose, which made it almost rhythmical. She perceived that in this vein she could write. There was inspiration in this – she could feel it. But when the two short chapters were finished, she laid them aside. They were only written in fun. One could not write a whole book in that vein.

But now the story had been waiting long enough. It thought, no doubt, as it did at the time when it sent her out in the world: "Again I must send this blinded person a great longing which will open her eyes."

The longing came over her in this manner: The homestead where she had grown up was sold. She journeyed to the home of her childhood to see it once again before strangers should occupy it.

The evening before she left there, perhaps nevermore to see the dear old place, she concluded in all meekness and humility to write the book in her own way and according to her own poor abilities. It was not going to be any great masterwork, as she had hoped. It might be a book at which people would laugh, but anyway she would write it – write it for herself, to save for herself what she could still save of the home – the dear old stories, the sweet peace of the care-free days, and the beautiful landscape with the long lakes and the many-hued blue hills.

But for her, who had hoped that she might yet learn to write a book people would care to read, it seemed as though she had relinquished the very thing in life she had been most eager to win. It was the hardest sacrifice she had made thus far.

A few weeks later, she was again at her home in Landskrona, seated at her writing-desk. She began writing – she didn't know exactly what it was to be – but she was not going to be afraid of the strong words, the exclamations, the interrogations, nor would she be afraid to give herself with all her childishness and all her dreams! After she had come to this decision, the pen began to move almost by itself. This made her quite delirious. She was carried away with enthusiasm. Ah, this was writing! Unfamiliar thoughts and things, or, rather, things she never had surmised were stored away in her brain, crowded down upon the paper. The pages were filled with a haste of which she had never dreamed. What had hitherto required months – no, years – to work out, was now accomplished in a couple of hours. That evening she wrote the story of the young countess' tramp over the ice on River Löven, and the flood at Ekeby.

The following afternoon she wrote the scene in which the gouty ensign, Rutger von Örneclou, tries to raise himself in bed to dance the Cachuca, and the evening of the next day appeared the story of the old Mamsell who went off to visit the parsimonious Broby clergyman.

Now she knew for certain that in this style she could write the book; but she was just as certain that no one would have the patience to read it through.

However, not many chapters let themselves be written like this – in one breath. Most of them required long and arduous labor, and there were only little snatches of time in the afternoons which she could devote to authorship. When she had been writing about half a year, reckoning from the day when she had gone in for romanticism with a vengeance, about a dozen chapters were written. At this rate the book would be finished in three or four years.

It was in the spring of this year, 1890, that Idun invited prize competitors to send in short novelettes of about one hundred printed pages. This was an outlet for a story that wanted to be told and sent into the world. It must have been the story itself that prompted her sister to suggest to her that she make use of this opportunity. Here, at last, was a way of finding out if her story was so hopelessly bad! If it received the prize, much would be gained; if it didn't, she simply stood in exactly the same position as before.

She had nothing against the idea, but she had so little faith in herself that she couldn't come to any conclusion.

Finally, just eight days before the time for submitting manuscripts had expired, she decided to take from the novel five chapters which were sufficiently well connected to pass for a novelette, and chance it with these. But the chapters were far from ready. Three of them were loosely written, but of the remaining two there was barely an outline. Then the whole thing must be legibly copied, of course. To add to this, she was not at home just then, but was visiting her sister and brother-in-law, who still lived in Vermland. And one who has come to visit with dear friends for a short time cannot spend the days at a writing-desk. She wrote therefore at night, sitting up the whole week until four in the mornings.