Page:Strindberg the Man (1920).djvu/64

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
60
STRINDBERG THE MAN

step by step over the great rubbish-heap of the occult sciences, and finally brought about that catastrophe which precipitated him into his life's deepest Inferno.

But before Strindberg got there, he had committed another great folly. Tired of the bachelor's life he had been leading he became desirous of once more casting in his lot with that of a young woman. This time it was a girl whom he met by chance in the literary coterie of which he was an associate.

It was love at first sight that attracted them to one another. But Strindberg scarcely seemed to be acquainted with this little Frida Uhl who before long—when insanity threatened him—became his “pretty jailer”. Neither in what he said nor in what he wrote about her, can we form an estimate of the young woman.

She got him away from the wild bacchanalian nights, however. As she was a woman of the world, she did not wish to see her betrothed in the somewhat rustic wardrobes that Strindberg had brought with him from the skerries. She compelled him to buy modern clothes in Berlin.

One day artloving Berlin saw the serious man of research, August Strindberg, and the charming Fräulein Frida Uhl coming up to the National Gallery of Art on a sort of exhibition trip. Strindberg had jammed himself into the traditional apparel of an extreme Berlin dandy: Suit of a large-checkered material with large cuffs on the pantaloons, a short yellowish-gray top-coat, a loud necktie, a cane of exaggerated size and a well-polished