In 1888, just before his sixtieth birthday, Ibsen wrote out for Henrik
Jaeger certain autobiographical recollections of his childhood. It is
from these that the striking phrase about the scream of the saws is
taken, and that is perhaps the most telling of these infant memories,
many of which are slight and naive. It is interesting, however, to find
that his earliest impressions of life at home were of an optimistic
character. "Skien," he says, "in my young days, was an exceedingly
lively and sociable place, quite unlike what it afterwards became.
Several highly cultivated and wealthy families lived in the town itself
or close by on their estates. Most of these families were more or less
closely related, and dances, dinners and music parties followed each
other, winter and summer, in almost unbroken sequence. Many travellers,
too, passed through the town, and, as there were as yet no regular inns,
they lodged with friends or connections. We almost always had guests in
our large, roomy house, especially at Christmas and Fair-time, when the
house was full, and we kept open table from morning till night." The
mind reverts to the majestic old wooden mansions which play so prominent
a part in Thomas Krag's novels, or to the house of Mrs. Solness'
parents, the burning down of which started the Master-Builder's
fortunes. Most of these grand old timber houses in Norway have indeed,
by this time, been so burned down.

We may speculate on what the effect of this genial open-handedness might
have been, had it lasted, on the genius of the poet. But fortune had
harsher views of what befitted the training of so acrid a nature. When
Ibsen was eight years of age, his father's business was found to be in
such disorder that everything had to be sold to meet his creditors. The
only piece of property left when this process had been gone through was
a little broken-down farmhouse called Venstoeb, in the outskirts of