cessful wives of difficult men of genius. In the midst
of the spiteful gossip of Christiania she had to traverse her _via
dolorosa_, for it was part of the fun of the journalists to represent
this husband and wife as permanently alienated. That Ibsen was easy to
live with is not probable, but his wife not merely contrived to do it,
but by her watchfulness, her adroitness, and, when necessary, by her
firmness of decision, she smoothed the path for the great man whom
she adored, and who was to her a great wilful child to be cajoled and
circumvented. He was absolutely dependent on her, although he affected
amusing airs of independence; and if she absented herself, there were
soon cries in the house of "My Cat, My Cat!" the pet name by which he
called his wife. Of their domestic ways little is yet known in detail,
but everything can be imagined.

To the enigma of Ibsen's character it was believed that his private
correspondence might supply a key. His letters were collected and
arranged while he was still alive, but he was not any longer in a
mental condition which permitted him to offer any help in comment to
his editors. His son, Mr. Sigurd Ibsen, superintended the work, and two
careful bibliographers, Mr. Halvdan Koht and Mr. Julius Elias,
carried out the scheme in two volumes [Note: _Breve fra Henrik Ibsen_,
Gyldendalske Boghadel, 1904.], with the execution of which no fault can
be suggested. But the enigma remained unsolved; the sphinx spoke much,
but failed to answer the questions we had been asking. These letters,
in the first place, suffer from the fact that Ibsen was a relentless
destroyer of documents; they are all written by him; not one single
example had been preserved of the correspondence to which this is
the reply. Then Ibsen's letters, as revealers of the unseen mood, are
particularly unsatisfactory. With rare exceptions, he remains throughout
them tightly buttoned up in his long and legendary frock-coat. There is
no laughter and no tears in his letters; he is occasionally extremely
angry, and exudes drops of poison, like the captive scorpion which he
caught when he was in Italy, and loved to watch and tease. But there
is no self-abandonment, and very little emotion; the letters are
principally historical and critical, "finger-posts for commentators."
They give valuable information about the genius of his works, but they
tell almost less about his inner moral nature than do his imaginative
writings.

In h