cultural resources in henrik ibsen's early environment - Ibsen.net

C. GRIMSTAD.
I. A Memoir of Ibsen in Grimstad. Christopher Due’s Recollections of
Ibsen’s Youthful Years.
From Erindringer fra Henrik Ibsens Ungdomsaar, by Chr[istopher] Due (Copenhagen:
Græbes Bogtrykkeri, 1909).
In the 1840's Grimstad was a less impressive town in several respects than it is
now. When I arrived there one dark Autumn evening in 1845, my immediate impression
was one of humble, primitive conditions. There were no street lights at all. In many
windows there were weak lights without curtains of any kind, so that even in the so-called
Main Street one could see that families were sitting around a table where just one tallow
candle burned; this made the street seem even darker, and it was not without risk for
walkers, since the gutters lay in the middle. I mention especially the lack of street
lighting because this also gives a picture of the spiritual enlightenment among the people
then, among whom materialism wholly occupied their minds and thoughts, while higher
spiritual interests languished.
The school situation was particularly questionable. Apart from the fact that a
theological candidate was engaged at times by a single family just for their children, there
was only one lone teacher in Grimstad, namely the assistant minister of the Fjære and
Grimstad churches, Isaachsen (the father of the late actor Isaachsen). This person, an
especially virtuous and zealous man, according to his lights, also taught all the town's
probably nearly 100 children who wanted to go to school, part of them every-other-day,
that is, on one day the so-called plebeian school children attended, and on the other day
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