Life of the poet

Holger Drachmann was born in Copenhagen in 1846. He grew up in a large family, and right from the start Holger was a somewhat restless person. He found it very hard to make time for homework because he would rather draw and write poetry, but he did manage to pass his school examination and threw himself wholeheartedly into undergraduate life. In 1866, he was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts, where he trained as a marine painter. That was the year he went on his first trip abroad, which brought him first to Scotland and later to Sicily. Home again, he settled on the Danish island of Bornholm as a guest of the painter Kr. Zahrtmann (1843-1917). A large number of paintings from these years testify to his great diligence on the rocky island. He also met the daughter of a Privy Counsellor Erichsen, Vilhelmine, who was the most beautiful girl on Bornholm. Drachmann and Vilhelmine moved to Copenhagen, where he made his debut as a painter at the Spring Exhibition in 1869. At the same time, he began to write art reviews, and during a stay in London in 1871, he really discovered that writing could also bring in money. He married Vilhelmine, his famous poem, English Socialists, was printed, and in 1872, his first book was published, With Charcoal and Chalk, a collection of prose essays, mainly subjects from his travels.
That was the start of an enormously wide-ranging authorship, encompassing poems and stories, art criticism and journalism, dramatic works and translations. His total production includes over 50 volumes, not counting a number of newspaper and magazine articles that have not been reprinted.
In 1872 he visited Skagen for the first time and returned there at intervals until he settled in the town in earnest in 1902.

In Skagen - this desert of our native land - there are no woods, no fields, no meadows. For miles around there is hardly a house that would betoken human activity and reward human efforts. Here there is sand, more sand, nothing but sand. And then, here there is the sky with the large floating clouds, and finally the sea, Kattegat’s shining surf on one side and the distant roar of the North Sea on the other, across the drifting sand dunes.
Holger Drachmann, Sailor Stories

Among the influx of artists who came to Skagen in the following years, Drachmann was the one who came closest to the local fishing population. It is true that they had their doubts about the peculiar painters, their manners and their parties, but in Drachmann they found a genuine interest in the people of the sea and their living conditions.
When a lifeboat man, Lars Kruse, was denied his well-deserved honour, the Silver Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog, Drachmann rushed into print and published in 1879 the indignant pamphlet,Lars Kruse - a Portrait from the Regions of Reality and Sand. Lars Kruse got his medal.
And when in 1904 the foundation stone for the harbour construction was laid, and politicians and civil servants were invited to a very grand party, who invited the fishermen to punch and dancing in the garden of his house? - Drachmann!
In 1875 came the break-up of his marriage with Vilhelmine. Drachmann was only just 30 years old, but his strong emotions and restless life had already begun to affect his health. In 1876 he settled in Munich, where he spent a lot of time with the Norwegian poet Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906). From Munich, he travelled on through Tyrol to Venice, where he wrote many of the famous youthful poems that characterize his literary break-through.
After another period of illness, he returned to Denmark, and in north Zealand started at stormy relationship with the sweetheart of his youth, Polly Culmsee. Unfortunately she had married in the meantime, but during the two to three months their affair lasted, Drachmann wrote a number of poems, many of which are among the most beautiful he composed.
Polly became pregnant and a daughter Gerda was born, but the end of the whole, sorry affair was that Drachmann married Polly’s sister Emmy. In spite of all these personal complications, Drachmann wrote diligently and the year 1877 was one of the most prolific in his literary production and puts him in an unchallenged position as Denmark’s greatest lyricist.
In 1880’s, he started writing plays, partly in an attempt to earn a larger income. The number of his children increased and Drachmann did not have great financial acumen. At the same time Drachmann became isolated in the literary milieu after a long-standing feud with brothers Edvard and Georg Brandes, who were the leading men of letters of the time.
Thanks to a helping hand from his publisher, Fr. Hegel, Drachmann and his family could take a trip abroad and get away from the problems. They went to Italy where he wrote Happiness in Arenzano, which was a complete disaster, but he also wrote the romantic comedy Once Upon a Time, which, with Lange-Müller’s music, was a tremendous success when it had its premiere in1887.
In the same year Drachmann met Amanda Nilsson - “Edith”. His relationship with the cabaret singer and the subsequent break with Emmy and the children threw him into emotional turmoil. Drachmann was a bohemian at a time when it cost a great deal to be one. He paid the price. But at the same time, his writing production made great strides and Edith’s influence can be clearly seen in the novel With Bold Strokes and the excellent collection of poems The Book of Songs. In 1890 he published Prescribed, a roman à clef, which has indiscreet portraits of several well-known comtemporaries.
Drachmann, penniless and plagued with illness, settled with Edith in Hamburg. However, he frequently visited Denmark, mostly for convalescence and then stayed near Grenaa, on Fanø and in Skagen.
Drachmann celebrated his fiftieth birthday quietly in Hamburg, but the Royal Theatre put on a celebratory performance and the whole press acclaimed him as the greatest of Denmark’s living writers.
Drachmann again had a productive period. In 1897he became very friendly with the young Norwegian cabaret singer Bokken Lasson and the relationsship with Edith broke up. A new crisis struck the ageing poet and he now travelled aroung restlessly, sometimes living in Copenhagen, sometimes in North Zealand, much of the summer in Norway and in Skagen. In the end, all his goods and chattels could fit into two small suitcases, and with these he travelled in 1898 with Bokken Lasson to America. One of those who greeted him on the quay in New York was Bokken’s sister, Soffi Drewsen, who was to become his last wife. The reading tour, which was meant to have given him an income during his stay in America, came to nothing, and his letters to his publisher asking for money became increasingly desperate.
Home again, he dauntlessly started to plan high-flying chemes. He went around the capitals of Europe and negotiated with translators and theatre directors. He was a success and was celebrated everywhere he went, but the grand gestures came to nothing.
 In 1902 he bought baker Høm’s house. close to the plantation in Skagen. The halftimbered house had been built in 1828 by Laurits Høm, who had been a school teacher. Drachmann converted it into an artist’s home with a studio, and called the house “Pax”. In the studio, he started painting with renewed ardour. He had not exhibited oil paintings since the middle of the 1870’s, but he never travelled without his sketch book, and in spite of his prolific literary production, he never completely gave up painting.
In 1903 Drachmann married Soffi Drewsen in Skagen Town Hall, and that was the beginning of a new testing time for the ageing, nervous writer. In his last years, he had frequent stays at sanatoriums in Denmark and abroad. His nerves were shattered and he had other infirmities. With regard to work, he concentrated on the play, Squire Oluf is Riding - which had its premiere on the author’s 60th birthday in the autumn of 1906. The play was a failure, and even though great efforts had been made to make the day festive, it had a touch of tragedy.
Drachmann travelled from Copenhagen to Stockholm, where great festivities had also been arranged in his honour.
Illness and disappiontments marked Drachmann’s final years. He died in Hornbæk on 14 January1908 and was later buried ind the sand dunes at Grenen in Skagen.
In 1910, Soffi Drachmann sold the house to the “Committee for Drachmann’s House in Skagen”, and in June 1911, the house was opened to the public. Almost all the fittings and furniture, oil painting and sketches are from Holger Drachmann’s time in the house.

www. drachmannshus.dk