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 FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY BECKER & MAASS, BERLIN.
 
 Ellen Key 
 
 L-. 
 
 Her Life and Her Work 
 
 By 
 Louise Nystrom-HamSton 
 
 Authorised Translation from the Swedish by 
 
 A. £. B. Fries 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 Havelock Ellis 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York and London 
 
 Ube Iknicftcrbocfter press 
 1913
 
 Copyright, 19 13 
 
 BY 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 "Zbc IftnlcJierboclicr press, "flew 13orh
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 NOT a few among those who read Ellen 
 Key's books and hear of her influence 
 in the world, have desired to know more of 
 her life than has yet been placed before the 
 English reader. Such desire will be to some 
 extent satisfied by this translation of the 
 biography written by Mrs. Louise Nystrom- 
 Hamilton. It is simply, as the author herself 
 states, a record of external events such as we 
 may reasonably expect in the biography of a 
 living person, without any attempt to esti- 
 mate Ellen Key's work or even to propagan- 
 dise her doctrines. The sketch is slight, but 
 we can regard it as competent. Mrs. Nys- 
 trom-Hamilton, who was independently ac- 
 quainted with the Key family, has known 
 Ellen Key for many years, and been associated 
 with her work, for she is the wife of Dr. 
 Anton Nystrom, who founded the People's 
 Institute at Stockholm where Ellen Key lec- 
 tured for twenty years. She has also written 
 several books on the sexual life (one of them 
 
 lU
 
 iv Introduction 
 
 translated into English) which, though their 
 scientific value has been disputed, are in- 
 spired throughout by a fine humanitarian zeal. 
 ^Vhat Mrs. Nystrom-Hamilton has to tell may 
 thus be received with confidence as coming 
 out of the circle in which Ellen Key has spent 
 the greater part of her active life. If she 
 wisely refrains from any attempt at a final 
 estimate of Ellen Key, she at all events 
 assists us to form our own opinions. 
 
 Ellen Key has sometimes been called the 
 modem St. Brigitta. That famous saint of 
 the North came out of Sweden six hundred 
 years ago to write her book of Revelations and 
 to attempt the moral reformation of her age. 
 To-day, with a similar spontaneous energy, a 
 similar self -inspired vocation, Ellen Key comes 
 to us out of Sweden to preach a moral re- 
 formation of a somewhat different kind. Her 
 message has not been the outcome of historical 
 study or of sociological investigation. Not- 
 withstanding the wide and miscellaneous 
 culture which circumstance and an eagerly 
 receptive brain enabled her to acquire, her 
 temperamental activities have throughout 
 been of a rich and impulsive rather than of 
 a scientific and methodical character. Her 
 attitude has been the outcome of deep
 
 Introduction v 
 
 natural instinct, so that when in 1895, at 
 the request of the Committee of the Women's 
 Exhibition in Copenhagen, she first entered 
 the field in which she was to become so 
 famous, by delivering a lecture on the "Mis- 
 used Forces of Womanhood, " her ideas seemed 
 to herself so much matter of course, mere 
 commonplace truths which all developed 
 women must hold, that she experienced some 
 difficulty in giving expression to them. It 
 was not until protests and even attacks 
 followed the delivery and publication of this 
 lecture that she realised that here was her 
 mission and that the world had need of her 
 message. 
 
 To-day, Ellen Key stands at that point in 
 the Woman Movement where growth is most 
 vital and the conflict of opinions most acute. 
 It is quite easy to display resentment towards 
 Ellen Key, and to cast ridicule on her work; 
 the one and the other have been done even 
 by people who have themselves played a 
 highly honourable part in the Woman 
 Movement. But there can be no denying 
 that Ellen Key is intensely alive, acutely sen- 
 sitive to all the best influences of her time, 
 and throughout, in her weakness and in her 
 strength, a thorough and essential woman.
 
 vi Introduction 
 
 Her receptive intelligence has enabled her 
 woman's intuition to grasp the nature of the 
 problem with which Feminism has to grapple. 
 Here, at the spot where she stands, the nature 
 and direction of the Woman's Movement of 
 the future must be determined. That alone 
 suffices to make the study of her work in- 
 dispensable. 
 
 No doubt, Ellen Key's attitude must be 
 at first disconcerting, and not to one party 
 only in this question but also to the other. 
 There, on the one hand, has been the party 
 which insistently declared: Woman is the 
 Mother, and the Home is her sphere; by 
 going outside her sphere, by competing 
 with men, and by seeking to do ever3rthing 
 that is done by man, she becomes unfit for 
 the work that she alone can do; she degrades 
 herself and injures the race. There, on the 
 other hand, is the party which, with equal or 
 greater insistence, declares: Woman is a 
 Human Being; Justice demands that she 
 shall possess the same rights and privileges 
 as Man and be free to lead the same life as 
 Man. And between those two parties here 
 comes Ellen Key with her declaration: Yes, 
 Woman is the Mother, the future of the race 
 is in her hands, and woman is a Human
 
 Introduction vii 
 
 Being; it is because she is both that she needs 
 complete freedom for development and the 
 power to exercise all human rights, not in 
 order to imitate man, or to do any work 
 which he may be better fitted to do, but to 
 enable her to do her own work, to follow her 
 own natural impulses, and to exercise that 
 function of Motherhood, in the wider sense of 
 the word, which is not surpassed in import- 
 ance by any other in the world. 
 
 Certainly, such a declaration could not 
 fail to be disconcerting to each party. Indeed 
 it tore away the blinkers from the eyes of 
 both the two contending parties. Their op- 
 posing affirmations were united, and their 
 opposing negations were dissolved in trans- 
 parent futility. The whole question was 
 lifted on to a higher plane. The new demands 
 which every age must necessarily make were 
 upheld, not at the expense of the ancient 
 and precious traditions of the race, but by 
 showing that they were necessary in order to 
 maintain those traditions. Surely no mean 
 achievement ! 
 
 rfcu^ U^---Yl^s.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 POR a great many years, the name of Ellen 
 ■'■ Key has been a subject of discussion, not 
 only in the public press, but also within 
 family circles. Friends have become enemies 
 for the sake of that name. Why? Because 
 Ellen Key has fearlessly placed a number of 
 problems in clear light. Discussions have 
 been raised about well-nigh all important 
 human relationships as a consequence of 
 something she has said on this or that occasion, 
 speaking never at random, but as a result of 
 slow and quiet observations which have led her to 
 her own clear solutions. She did not want to 
 contribute to the prolongation of the concealed 
 enmity between different classes of society, 
 contending opinions, representatives of the 
 New and the Old. She wished rather to pro- 
 mote frankness and truth. She wanted to 
 clear the air of the noxious mists of hypocrisy 
 and pretence. She forced the battle into the 
 open, and the conflict has become so violent 
 that some have not taken time to think, but 
 
 IX
 
 X Preface 
 
 frequently have struck wildly, and in order 
 to end quickly this battle, caused by the 
 opinions she has expressed, her opponents 
 have not hesitated to attack her character. 
 
 I have waited long in the hope that some 
 other would write of her life and character, 
 but as none has appeared, I have decided, in 
 spite of grave doubts, to make public such 
 facts and memoranda as I have gathered from 
 those closely associated with her, and have 
 received, on request, from herself — concerning 
 origin and outward circumstances, — as well 
 as my own observations during our many 
 years of friendship. 
 
 "Ellen Key holds a place in our literature, 
 the importance of which ought to be clear to 
 all, undoubted and respected. We have never 
 had many intellectually receptive as well as 
 productive authors, who were able to receive 
 the multitudinous currents of ideas, transfuse 
 them with their own thoughts, colour them 
 with their own personality, and, thus trans- 
 formed, return them to their various and 
 diffuse sources. Our culture, which stands 
 high in many respects, has never possessed a 
 corresponding power of unifying life. Es- 
 pecially in the social field we have weakly 
 submitted to the cleavage between theory
 
 Preface xi 
 
 and practice, and have been prone to avoid 
 discussions, not in order to have peace for 
 better thinking but rather to let our thoughts 
 alone. Abroad it has been otherwise; but 
 our nation has lacked minds ready to listen 
 to voices from afar. Ellen Key is the great 
 exception. Within her range of interests she 
 stands out before wide circles of serious and 
 highly cultured people throughout Europe as 
 a very remarkable personality." ' 
 
 The truth of this statement I have myself 
 had occasion to observe during travels abroad. 
 The desire to hear about Ellen Key frequently 
 causes the foreigner to seek the acquaintance 
 of the Swedish tourist. 
 
 The foreign press bears continuous evidence 
 of the unusual attention everywhere produced 
 by Ellen Key. In an article, published in 
 Der Tag the 13th March, 1904, on Swedish 
 literature, Ellen Key is spoken of as one of the 
 four Swedish authors best known in Germany, 
 whose name has made our country famous in 
 these times. 
 
 That this assertion is no exaggeration is 
 made clear by the fact that The Century 
 of the Child — a book which in Sweden has 
 
 ' With the above quotation, Per Hallstrom, a Swedish critic 
 and essayist, begins his review of Life-lines, i.
 
 Xll 
 
 Preface 
 
 barely been reviewed — in Germany has been 
 issued in eight editions and is translated into 
 Danish, Dutch, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, 
 English, and French; Life-lines, i., has come 
 out in sLx editions in Germany and is being 
 translated into a number of other languages; 
 Tankebilder (Images of Thought) has also 
 been published in many editions, and in 
 several languages; from many foreign lands 
 inquiries have been made with reference to 
 future lectures ; not to mention the sympathy 
 expressed in letters from all parts of the world. 
 
 The enormous amount of matter in the 
 shape of articles about Ellen Key, which has 
 accumulated, often unread, but now placed 
 at my disposal, proves how actively she has 
 occupied people's minds for many years. But 
 while in Sweden the misunderstanding and 
 disapproval outweigh the admiration and 
 approbation, the reverse is true abroad. 
 
 Ellen Key has never made any effort to 
 procure translations, reviews, or notices, and 
 for that reason the above mentioned facts 
 are very significant, and go far toward proving 
 the old saying that no one is prophet in his 
 own land. It would not be surprising if a 
 biography of Ellen Key were considered un- 
 necessary in Sweden — inGermany it is much
 
 Preface xiii 
 
 desired — but although conscious of such a 
 possibihty I have decided to publish it in 
 Swedish for two reasons : first, because I desire 
 to give it as a preparatory study for future 
 biographers; and secondly because I have so 
 long and so indignantly listened to the per- 
 sonal slander by which flippancy and malice 
 have, to a certain extent, limited the influence 
 of Ellen Key's words. This book has become 
 a matter of conscience with me. 
 
 In the following pages I have tried to give a 
 true picture of the woman, Ellen Key, not a 
 study of her literary works. The latter are 
 only mentioned in so far as they have seemed 
 to me to throw light upon her character. 
 
 Louise Nystrom-Hamilton. 
 
 Stockholm, October, 1904.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PACE 
 
 I. — Ancestry ...... i 
 
 II. — Childhood and Early Youth . . 13 
 
 III. — Youth and the First Years in 
 
 Stockholm ..... 38 
 
 IV. — Removal of the Family to Stockholm 50 
 
 V. — Work 64 
 
 VI. — Public Activity . . . .81 
 
 VII. — The Last Years in Stockholm . 138 
 
 Supplement . . . . .158 
 
 Appendix — Quotations from Press 
 Utterances about Ellen Key on 
 her Sixtieth Birthday . .179 
 
 XV
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ellen Key .... Frontispiece 
 
 From a photograph by Becker & Maass, Berlin. 
 
 Emil Key, 1873. Father of Ellen Key . 6 
 
 Photograph by Eurenius & Quist. 
 
 Sophie Key, 1874. Mother of Ellen Key 6 
 
 Photograph by Eurenius & Quist. 
 
 The Birthplace of Ellen Key. Sundsholm 14 
 Ellen Key, 1856 ..... 30 
 
 From a silhouette. 
 
 Ellen Key, Aged 15 . . . . .30 
 Ellen Key in 1885 ..... 70 
 
 From a photograph by A. Apelgren, Stockholm. 
 
 Ellen Key 152 
 
 From a photograph by permission of Slenders 
 Forlag, Copenhagen. 
 
 Strand. The Home of Ellen Key . .166 
 Ellen Key, 1911 . . . , .174 
 
 From a photograph taken at her home, Strand. 
 
 xvn
 
 ELLEN KEY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ANCESTRY 
 
 THE significance to the individual of his 
 descent is one of the many riddles left 
 for future generations to solve. Conjectiu"es 
 and probabilities alone form the basis for the 
 hypothesis that our various qualities are 
 coupled to the cells that link the generations 
 together, and yet it is peculiarly interesting 
 to review a family-tree, however briefly, 
 where distinct characteristics, marked in mem- 
 bers of both main branches, are found again 
 in the descendant. 
 
 Ellen Key represents the latest branch of a 
 family-tree which bears names among the 
 foremost in history, and which has drawn its 
 life from the blood of many different nations. 
 
 The Key family is of Scotch-Celtic lineage. 
 Day-dreams, art, and poetry are native to the
 
 2 Ellen Key 
 
 Celtic blood. The Scotch have always shown 
 themselves brave and proud, devoted and 
 true, and spiritually alive; but also fanatical 
 and hard. 
 
 Per Hallstrom speaking of the Scotch says: 
 "This peculiarly composite and strongly in- 
 dividualised nation with its Celtic emotional- 
 ism, Anglo-Saxon power and passion, Norse 
 disposition, and Puritanic Bible -faith ... It 
 has been said of the Scotch temperament 
 that it carries more sail than the English, and 
 at the same time ploughs deeper into the 
 waters." 
 
 The M'Kay' clan is still one of the most act- 
 ive and united clans in Sutherland, the meagre 
 northern part of Scotland. The meaning of 
 the name MacKay is best interpreted by 
 "war-flame, " or "fiery" and "warlike. " The 
 coat-of-arms shows a firmly closed fist holding 
 a dagger. Under it are the words : Manu 
 Forti. 
 
 After the Thirty Years' War, many foreign 
 families, whose male descendants had served 
 under Gustavus (Adolphus) II, came to Swe- 
 den and settled there. Among these we find 
 James M'Key, who, during this war, was 
 
 ' This is the usual spelling though it varies between Kay, Cay, 
 and Key.
 
 Ancestry 3 
 
 appointed lieutenant-colonel. In the histori- 
 cal sketch entitled An Old Scotch Brigade, 
 the M'Key regiment is depicted as having 
 fought with great distinction under the Swe- 
 dish banner. 
 
 Fredrik Key, great-grandson of James 
 M'Key, district judge, and, like his fore- 
 father, owner of an estate in Smaland, married 
 the widow of Captain J. A. Nordenflycht, 
 the nephew of the poet Hedvig Charlotta 
 Nordenflycht, himself similarly gifted. Ellen 
 Key has jokingly said that "this case seems 
 to verify the assertion that a widow's children 
 by a later marriage may resemble the former 
 husband, since first in C. F. Key, my great- 
 grandfather, son of this couple, did the strong 
 aesthetic and literary interest show itself in 
 our branch of the famil3^ " But this interest 
 may also have come from another source. 
 For the widow Nordenflycht, whose maiden 
 name was Louisa Elertz (she was German and 
 came from Stralsund), was herself a talented 
 woman. 
 
 With no knowledge of any connection in the 
 sense above alluded to, Oscar Levertin, in his 
 brilliant essay on Hedvig Charlotta Norden- 
 flycht (17 1 8-1 763), Sweden's first woman 
 poet, has given Ellen Key an important
 
 4 Ellen Key 
 
 place as an author "in direct descending 
 (intellectual) line from her." The above 
 mentioned hypothesis may not be altogether 
 unreasonable, at least in cases where the 
 memory of the departed husband is kept 
 alive in the heart of the bereft wife, even 
 though she contracts a new marriage for some 
 reason or other. Be this as it may, Oscar 
 Levertin has rightly observed the similarity 
 between these two writers, which shows it- 
 self in many ways. In the essay just referred 
 to he says: " Fru N. is the portal-figure of the 
 new age in our literary history. ... She is 
 gripped by a revolution of both heart and 
 mind. . . . She had such an exalted opinion 
 of her literary profession that she even dared 
 to strike for the spiritual freedom of her 
 fellow- women and their equality with man, 
 as the first great woman's rights' champion in 
 the country. . . . She had an amazon's fear- 
 less courage and holy love of battle. Un- 
 afraid, with an honesty which knew of no 
 reserve, she fought for her opinions all her 
 life. ..." 
 
 These characterisations would fit Ellen Key 
 with slight paraphrase, unnecessary for those 
 who peruse this biography. In their private 
 lives, on the other hand, there is no further
 
 Ancestry 5 
 
 similarity except that Hedvig Charlotta Nor- 
 denflycht also "escaped school altogether," 
 and that in her childhood she showed 
 the best traits of her nature, — "burning 
 desire for knowledge, tenacity in her struggle 
 for clearness, and courage in defending her 
 convictions." 
 
 Fredrik Key's only son, Carl Fredrik Key, 
 member of the King's bodyguard, and estate- 
 owner, married to Beate Marie Sundevall, 
 was, as we have said, a literary and artistic- 
 ally gifted man, who collected an excellent 
 library containing the best literature of the 
 time. He was an enthusiastic admirer of 
 Rousseau, and gave the name of Emil to his 
 son. This Emil Key (bom 1799), lieutenant 
 in the Smaland regiment of hussars, and 
 country estate-owner, was also interested in 
 art and literature and was himself an amateur 
 artist. He married his cousin Caroline Fleet- 
 wood, of the Swedish branch of that old 
 English family, whose most noted member was 
 Cromwell's companion-in-arms, and later, son- 
 in-law.' This couple had two children, a son 
 Emil (Ellen Key's father), and a daughter 
 
 » Charles Fleetwood , Lord Deputy of Ireland during the Com- 
 monwealth, married to Bridget, Oliver Cromwell's eldest daughter. 
 — Translator's footnote.
 
 6 Ellen Key 
 
 Marie Louise, married to Baron Carl Raab of 
 Helgerum. 
 
 Through Ellen Key's mother, Sophie Posse, 
 royal and old aristocratic blood was fused into 
 the family. German emperors are among 
 the ancestors, — Karl the Great, Fredrik the 
 Second Hohenstauen, and many other princes, 
 if the table of genealogy can be trusted. 
 
 Ellen Key's forefathers have been squires 
 and statesmen, judges and warriors. None 
 of them has been a clergyman. 
 
 Another circumstance connected with her 
 origin is noteworthy. Ellen Key has grown 
 up in Southern Tjust, one of the most beauti- 
 ful parts of Smaland, where her paternal 
 family had lived for centuries. Her mother's 
 family came from Skane. And although her 
 ancestors had all belonged to the aristocracy, 
 and had enriched their stock by intermarriage 
 with families outside of their own province, 
 it is more than likely that the characteristics 
 of the national disposition in these two south- 
 em provinces have exercised a certain influence. 
 May not the indomitable will and strength 
 in Ellen Key be due in part to her Smaland 
 origin, and may not her desire for contempla- 
 tion, her tranquillity and introspection, come 
 from Skane?
 
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 Ancestry 7 
 
 C. F. E. Emil Key was born 1822 at Eds- 
 manor in Smaland. His parents married 
 early, were devoted and happy, but the 
 father died very suddenly when the son was 
 but two years old. The mother was rarely 
 beautiful. None who had seen her could 
 forget her. She contracted a second marriage 
 with Baron Adam Christian Raab, renowned 
 for his participation in political life. He had 
 seen her once while she was still married and 
 had said to himself at the time: "She, or 
 none. " A year later she was a widow, and in 
 her loneliness, and with her two young 
 children to bring up, she finally yielded to his 
 ardent suit. 
 
 Emil Key was brought up on his step father's 
 country-seat, Ryssbylund, near Bjorno, the 
 childhood home of Sophie Posse. When his 
 education was completed, he entered the civil 
 service, which he left after five years. His 
 inheritance from his father afforded him ample 
 means for travels abroad, and these journeys 
 he later described in a narrative which was one 
 of the books often read by his daughter Ellen, 
 awakening in her a longing for the wonders of 
 the great world. 
 
 Emil Key was in every respect a liberal- 
 minded man. His ideal of a citizen was
 
 8 Ellen Key 
 
 George Washington, whose name he gave one 
 of his sons. He expressed his Hberal ideas 
 in the then radical Aftonposteriy to which he was 
 an occasional contributor, in the latter part of 
 the year 1840. During his years of civil 
 service in Stockholm, he enjoyed the society of 
 men of letters, and his taste for art and litera- 
 ture became further developed. In 1848 he 
 bought Sundsholm, and later enlarged this 
 country-estate by considerable purchases of 
 adjoining land. In the many communal 
 tasks entrusted to him he found a suitable 
 field of activity for his energy. The confi- 
 dence he thereby inspired showed itself when 
 he, at the time of the adoption of the new 
 constitution, obtained a seat in the Second 
 Chamber, as representative for Tjust County, 
 a place which he kept until the Riksdag of 
 1883. He had for some time thought that a 
 new Agrarian party was necessary for the 
 solution of the important problems of land- 
 taxation, measures of defence, etc. At the 
 first Riksdag of the new Government, this 
 party was formed by Emil Key, Arvid Posse, 
 a few other noblemen, and several promi- 
 nent farmers. Through Key's influence the 
 party was led to take up wider social ques- 
 tions. He was a good speaker and a truly
 
 Ancestry 9 
 
 unprejudiced champion of the questions of 
 the day. 
 
 Emil Key was one of the trusted leaders of 
 his party, and was a permanent member of the 
 standing Financial Committee of the Riksdag. 
 Among other things, he introduced a bill for 
 a new army organisation, and defended his 
 views in print and speech with great bril- 
 liancy. But although the Second Chamber 
 concurred in his main contentions which, more- 
 over, were incorporated in a Government 
 proposal, the bill failed when it came to a 
 vote. Defeated in this, one of his most 
 cherished political plans. Key found the time 
 ripe for withdrawing from public life, where 
 he had directly and indirectly lost so much. 
 It was a great blow for Key, who, for eigh- 
 teen years, had fought for what he consid- 
 ered a question of vital import to his country. 
 Having used his money lavishly in political 
 service, he found himself obliged to accept 
 a position offered him as postmaster in Hel- 
 singborg, and the family left the old home, 
 Sundsholm. 
 
 Emil Key was stately and handsome in 
 appearance, and had the attractive and affable 
 manners that became his high culture, and 
 the credulous idealism of a poetic nature to
 
 10 Ellen Key 
 
 which are due many of the disappointments 
 which ruined his political career. 
 
 Sophie Posse had married Emil Key, known 
 as "Scandinavian,"^ contributor to Afton- 
 bladet, "Revolutionist" and Almkvist^ en- 
 thusiast, much to her noble family's chagrin. 
 But her father had settled the matter with 
 the simple words: " I married for love myself, 
 and my children shall do the same." 
 
 Sophie Key, like her husband, was broad- 
 minded in the best sense of the word. Though 
 both were aristocratic in mind and manner 
 they held democratic opinions. As an example, 
 it may be stated that Fru Key never allowed 
 anyone to call her Countess, but declined the 
 title, something quite unusual in those days. 
 Her views in regard to most questions were 
 extremely modern, even if compared with the 
 view of our own times. In politics she was a 
 Radical. She showed her interest in the 
 children and young girls of the parish by 
 founding a Home for the rearing of unpro- 
 tected girls and training them for housework. 
 Twenty women of the yeomanry cooperated 
 with her in this enthusiastic work. 
 
 ^ A believer in the common interests of the Scandinavian 
 countries instead of a narrow patriot. — Translator's footnote. 
 
 ^ Sweden's most modern writer and poet. — Translator's 
 footnote.
 
 Ancestry ii 
 
 Fru Key was always willing to promote her 
 daughter Ellen's general interests. At the 
 latter's request she several times took dis- 
 charged women-prisoners into her service. 
 Her hatred for all social injustices was deep- 
 felt and sincere. Ellen Key once told of an 
 amusing situation in their home-life. Fru 
 Key much enjoyed reading the fiery paper, 
 Fdderneslandet, which came in the mail to a 
 Republican-minded neighbour, who had christ- 
 ened his sons America and California! Hen- 
 Key was wont to make a joke of the fact that 
 his wife's views tended to coincide with those 
 of the paper. Ellen Key adds: " In our days 
 my mother would certainly have been an 
 anarchist. I generally sided with her against 
 my father, who was more moderate and did 
 not consider the murder of tyrants quite as 
 helpful to society as did we!" We here get a 
 good view of Ellen Key's passion for freedom 
 and hatred of oppression as nourished by her 
 mother's radicalism. 
 
 Fru Sophie Key was one of those rare 
 natures capable of boundless devotion, and 
 she was therefore indispensable to her hus- 
 band. Always delicate, she practised a re- 
 markable self-control, that she might not be a 
 burden to him. Never indulging herself, she
 
 12 Ellen Key 
 
 did not over-indulge her children, who learned 
 from her example to be lenient with others, but 
 strict with themselves. With an upright 
 character, a simple and unpretentious per- 
 sonality, she combined a good mind with 
 aesthetic interests. 
 
 Sincere love united the couple. Fru Sophie 
 Key died in 1 884, in the former home, Sunds- 
 holm, whither she had been brought in the 
 hope that the change would restore her health. 
 Her last words and thoughts, while in the 
 shadow of death, concerned her husband, and 
 her only request was that his letters should 
 accompany her to her final resting-place. 
 
 Emil Key mourned the loss of his wife so 
 greatly that it brought on a hemorrhage of the 
 brain, after which he endured years of suffer- 
 ing and sinking vitality until he died in 1892.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH 
 
 SUNDSHOLAI is situated in one of the most 
 beautiful districts in Southern Sweden. 
 The Lake Maren encircles the point of land on 
 which Sundsholm's corps de logis is located. 
 From this, a fine alley of unusually tall and 
 handsome pyramid-poplars leads across blos- 
 soming meadows. Near by, is a natural park 
 of oak, birch, and evergreen trees, which Emil 
 Key's love of beauty had created with very 
 simple means. The landscape varies with 
 large meadows, birch and oak, and, in the 
 background, a great pine forest, now a memory 
 only. Through the broad foliage of the aristo- 
 lochia, which covered the front porch where 
 the family usually gathered, one had a charm- 
 ing view. At midsummer, the last rays of the 
 sun could be seen through a break in the forest. 
 From a hill in the park, one had a fine view of 
 the whole Lake Maren, with all its coves and 
 points. From this height, one also saw the 
 
 13
 
 14 Ellen Key- 
 
 great forests of the district, untouched at 
 that time, and a white glimmering point, the 
 lighthouse, two miles distant, on the coast of 
 the Baltic, inspiring in the young a yearning 
 for the sea. 
 
 The interior of Sundsholm was very different 
 from ordinary Swedish homes of that day. 
 The aesthetic and literary father had arranged 
 all with exquisite taste. The black Gothic 
 silk furniture in the drawing-room had once 
 been in the possession of the celebrated act- 
 ress Emilie Hogquist, and the walls were hung 
 with valuable pictures. A precious collection 
 of engravings, and a large and excellent lib- 
 rary were rich sources from which the daughter 
 Ellen, thirsting for knowledge, could help 
 herself. The advantages of high culture were 
 here combined with simple habits and hard 
 work. 
 
 Besides her own home, there were three 
 others from which Ellen Key received impres- 
 sions in childhood and youth that set their 
 stamp on her character and mind. One was 
 the stately old mansion Bjorno, situated on 
 the Sound, two miles from Kalmar, which, 
 together with several other estates, belonged 
 to Ellen's maternal grandfather, who had 
 renovated and built them up, laying out
 
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 Childhood and Early Youth 15 
 
 many miles of new roads, modernizing every- 
 thing, and changing the old system of land 
 rentals, so hard on the tenants. 
 
 Count Posse was the largest landowner and 
 magnate of the county, a proud and stem gen- 
 tleman, but yielding as wax towards his wife, 
 Sophie Berg von Linde, and his first grand- 
 child, Ellen Key. The customs and habits of 
 olden times reigned at Bjorno, even as late 
 as 1850. After the early dinner, the family 
 would gather, about six o'clock, around the 
 tea-table (as at the beginning of the century), 
 which was lighted by dripping candles set in 
 massive silver candlesticks. 
 
 In this home the well -filled linen chests 
 held damask cloths spun by the Countess and 
 her daughters, and one of Ellen's gifts from 
 her grandmother was a little spinning-wheel, 
 but neither it nor the lace-making pillow was 
 put to use by Ellen Key. 
 
 Both in summer and winter the guests 
 were many, but the supply in the store-room 
 never gave out. This large room, of two 
 compartments, seemed to Ellen's imagination 
 a "Hanseatic Store." There was ever an 
 odour of all kinds of condiments and all sorts 
 of edible delicacies. 
 
 Count Posse loved to build, and Ellen de-
 
 i6 Ellen Key 
 
 clares that she had inherited from her grand- 
 father her passion for soHd buildings. He 
 also made his own drawings of substantial and 
 useful furniture. 
 
 He did not care for display, yet an old- 
 fashioned splendour always showed itself, not 
 the least in the black four-in-hand which was 
 always used in driving the family and their 
 guests. He worshipped his wife, and vowed 
 at eighty that he had never seen a more 
 beautiful woman. When he was absent dur- 
 ing the War of 1813, his wife sent him a heart- 
 locket of silver, containing locks of her own 
 and their firstborn's hair. The only arrange- 
 ment he made, concerning his obsequies, was 
 that this remembrance of the love of his youth 
 should accompany him to his grave, Ellen 
 Key received her earliest historic impressions 
 from the many large steel engravings of the 
 War of 1 8 13, which hung on the wails in her 
 grandfather's room, and the first historic 
 name she dreamt about was Napoleon. 
 
 The grandmother was a tall and remarkably 
 handsome woman, with a soul of "pure good- 
 ness." She taught the four- year-old Ellen to 
 read from large charts, after the method of 
 the day. The lessons were made so pleasant, 
 through the graciousness of the teacher, that
 
 Childhood and Early Youth 17 
 
 to this day happy memories are recalled by the 
 grateful pupil. One of Ellen Key's inefface- 
 able impressions is of her grandmother giving 
 her a toy after Ellen had been cross to her 
 without reason. The heart of the five-year- 
 old melted with gratitude and regret, and this 
 experience was the foundation of Ellen Key's 
 belief that children may be won by kindness 
 rather than punishment. 
 
 At Helgerum, a lovely old manor on a bay 
 of the Baltic Sea, one hour's journey from 
 Sundsholm, lived Ellen Key's only paternal 
 aunt, the spiritual and richly gifted Baroness 
 Marie-Louise Raab, nee Key. Here in the 
 magnificent rotund music-room, which rose 
 through two stories, Ellen Key would often 
 enjoy music, or listen to her aunt by the fire 
 telling of old times and people, a reminiscence 
 which she relates in her Beauty for All. In 
 the drawing-room with the painted hangings 
 she would dream of herself sharing in the 
 dramatic scenes of Racine's Esther, pictures 
 that were the delight of her early years. 
 
 In the near neighbourhood of Sundsholm, 
 and belonging to it, was Kallernas. The 
 simple, old-fashioned, red-painted house, which 
 was reached by rowing across a little sound, 
 and walking through the loveliest birch-grown
 
 i8 Ellen Key 
 
 point, was tenanted by Captain Mans Hultin, 
 his wife and children. The youngest daughter, 
 Lisa, was bom the same year as Ellen, and the 
 two girls have been friends from infancy. 
 
 At Bjorno, Ellen learned to reverence the 
 good old things and customs in an aristocratic 
 and patriarchal home, a reverence which is 
 often expressed in her writings. These in- 
 fluences of olden times were strengthened at 
 Kallemas. The lasting impressions Ellen Key 
 received from this home are countless. She 
 has written of Fru Hultin with grateful ap- 
 preciation. The rare old-fashioned atmos- 
 phere has never faded from Ellen's memory 
 and, especially the fairy-tales and harpsichord 
 music of Fru Hultin, did much to nourish 
 the child's imagination. 
 
 The old couple lived to celebrate their 
 diamond wedding, dying in 1883, the same 
 year that the Key family left Sundsholm. 
 Ellen Key ends her biographical sketch of Fru 
 Hultin with these words: "In this existence 
 of ours, where our life experiences are for 
 the most part made up of yearnings and dis- 
 appointments, it is only for those who have 
 never disappointed our trust that we always 
 yearn. These personalities, who stand out in 
 unsullied purity against the golden back-
 
 Childhood and Early Youth 19 
 
 ground of our memories, are our true bene- 
 factors." 
 
 Now that we have become acquainted with 
 the environment in which Ellen Key was born 
 and grew up, it remains for us to follow her 
 through her simple and uneventful life — as far 
 as external happenings go — ^to try to find and 
 comprehend her personality, as it shows itself 
 in her work and in her writings, and to re- 
 cognise inherited as well as acquired traits, 
 influences of education, environment, and cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 "I was born at Sundsholm, the eleventh 
 of December, 1849, the first child of young and 
 happy parents. " With these, her own words, 
 Ellen Key lets us know she is a "love-child" 
 in the most beautiful meaning of the word. 
 The significance which she attaches to this 
 fact, upheld in her view for that matter by 
 well-known scientific authorities, is expressed 
 in her Century of the Child, and doubtless her 
 warm life-faith is due in some degree to the 
 happy circumstance of her birth. 
 
 The first story I ever heard of Ellen Key 
 was that as a tiny little girl she defended her 
 one-year-younger sister who was being scolded 
 because .she lay crying in her crib. Prompted 
 by the same motherliness, which later brought
 
 20 Ellen Key 
 
 her into bitter conflict with so many bigoted 
 opponents, little Ellen put herself protectively 
 in front of the baby, saying: " She is so little, 
 she tan't help it." 
 
 In the preface to her recently published 
 book Lifslinier, she relates her own earliest 
 remembrance "of the first time she felt con- 
 scious of the joy of living." She had been 
 entrusted with the care of the little sister 
 who was unable alone to climb the hill near the 
 home, and it made her serenely happy to feel 
 the little hand in hers and the sun shining 
 on them both. 
 
 Ellen's fifth year was spent wholly at Bjorno. 
 Even at this early age she loved books. And, 
 when the older people read aloud the then 
 newly translated English novels, The Lamp- 
 lighter, Jane Eyre, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 
 etc., Ellen would creep under the table and 
 listen while they thought she was playing. 
 She always amused herself, and did not need 
 com.panions to have a good time. Her play 
 with dolls was not like other daughters of Eve 
 who prefer them stjdishly attired, and thus 
 prepare themselves to become dolls of fashion. 
 No, Ellen wanted a real baby. A pin-cushion 
 served as a head, and heavy towels were twisted 
 to form the body. Ellen's doll should be
 
 Childhood and Early Youth 21 
 
 heavy and cause her sweet toil to carry about ! 
 She took even her doll-play seriously, a play 
 which soon ended, as she came to have five 
 younger sisters and brothers who were better 
 to pet and care for than the dolls. In a photo- 
 graph of her at the age of six, this disposition 
 can be recognised. A dear little one, but 
 already then a thoughtful "little mother." 
 
 Ellen Key never became tiresome in her 
 seriousness, she had too much humour and 
 roguishness for that, which showed itself 
 early in her ready wit and funny sayings. 
 When she was only four years old, her grand- 
 father, who loved horses, put her on a pony. 
 When the pony threw her, she kept her counte- 
 nance, explaining the incident thus: ''Myg- 
 gan (as the pony was called) took down her 
 will from the damper,"' that being the place 
 where, according to prevalent custom, she 
 had been told that her own will sat. 
 
 Like other country-bred children Ellen drove 
 and rode horseback, swam and rowed, and 
 often, when the stars mirrored themselves in 
 
 ' Swedish children are generally told that they have no will of 
 their own while they are young: they must simply obey their 
 elders. They are told that their will is growing on the top of some 
 tree in the forest, or living in the damper, which, on the customary 
 fireplace is very high near the ceiling and is regulated only by the 
 elders of the household. — Translator's footnote.
 
 22 Ellen Key 
 
 the clear ice, or, better still, when the moon 
 shone, she would glide away on skates at a 
 merry pace. But stor3rtelling and books 
 came first among her earliest pleasure. 
 
 Ellen Key considers one of the fortunate 
 assets of her childhood the nurse with her 
 inexhaustible store of folk-tales, which she 
 would delightfully recount to the children 
 gathered before the fire. When Ellen was 
 eight years old she would get out of bed, and 
 listen at the door to her parents reading 
 Rydberg's Last AtheJiian, and afterwards she 
 acted the story with her paper dolls. At 
 this age, Runeberg also became dear to her. 
 She knew his Fdnrik Stal almost by heart 
 and had soon read everything he had so far 
 written. She listened eagerly to her old 
 friend, Captain Hultin's recital of his hunt- 
 ing and fishing trips with Runeberg during 
 a visit to Finland, and her first experience of 
 grief came at the tidings of Runeberg 's death. 
 She passed the day in tears, and shortly after- 
 wards she began to hold weekly "Runeberg- 
 Evenings, " in which she gathered her sisters 
 and brothers for reading. It is characteristic 
 of Ellen Key that, at ten years of age, she 
 greatly enjoyed epic poems such as Runeberg's 
 Algskyttarne and Goethe's Hermann und Doro-
 
 Childhood and Early Youth 23 
 
 thea. We have it from her own lips that when 
 she read this poem for the second time at 
 sixteen, kneeling by the window to catch the 
 last light of the day, as it grew too dark, 
 without moving from the spot she reached for 
 the candle, and, lighting it, kept on reading on 
 her knees, finishing without interruption the 
 whole poem, which expressed, as it were, her 
 own early love of the wholesome, harmonious 
 life. Her first thought of love had been 
 awakened through her reading of Tegner's 
 Axel och Maria which she carried in her pocket 
 all winter, and learned by heart at the age of 
 seven. But her own dream of Love was quite 
 idyllic. Her own home should be a country 
 estate where everything would be arranged as 
 perfectly as possible, from cellar to attic, 
 and all the tenants happy with their own 
 pretty cottages and gardens. And she would 
 have two boys and two girls, both wondrously 
 beautiful, and brought up only in love! On 
 the brown wall-paper by her bed she had 
 sketched the contours of her kingdom, a little 
 "Utopia" in which she fancied herself riding 
 about in a white dress on a white pony, — 
 symbols of the peace that would reign, — to 
 lighten taxes, found schools, promote indus- 
 tries, make all officials just, and all soldiers
 
 24 Ellen Key 
 
 gentle ! Little Ellen learned through her his- 
 toric readings to dream of the ideals which 
 early became the objects of her desires. 
 
 A realised harmony of life — this was what 
 she unconsciously enjoyed in the epic poems 
 mentioned. This harmony had already filled 
 her imagination in childhood, and all her books 
 deal more or less with this dream, which she 
 still — a child with whitening locks — dreams 
 for others with the same tender eagerness. 
 
 At other times, her love of adventure would 
 crop out, and then there would be Indian 
 games under Ellen's direction, adventures of 
 Robinson Crusoe, etc. Historic scenes would 
 be played, such as the Departure of the People 
 of Israel from Egypt, the Sacrifice of the 
 Easter-Lamb, the Citizens of Calais, parts of 
 the life of Gustavus Vasa, and others. She 
 had come across Socrates in her books of 
 history! From him, who became her ideal 
 when she was eight or ten years old, she learned 
 that the fewer his wants the nearer man 
 grows to the gods. And so this little person- 
 ality had within herself a principle which 
 justified the parental commands she must 
 obey, since the simple upbringing which, to the 
 democratic tendencies of the parents, seemed 
 best for the children, accorded with her own
 
 Childhood and Early Youth 25 
 
 stoic ideals! Not satisfied, she put additional 
 rules for herself and carried simplified living 
 farther even than her parents required. She 
 was so hardened that she was hard in her 
 youth, and it is with effort she has learned to 
 have an easy conscience in regard to the en- 
 joyment of the good things of life. 
 
 Ellen Key was brought up in extreme 
 simplicity. Until she was twelve years old 
 she ate her breakfast and suppers standing 
 with her sLsters and brothers at a table 
 where only bread and milk was served. No 
 waiting on the children was allowed. The 
 servants had been told that if the chil- 
 dren gave orders, they should be led out of 
 the kitchen with the dishrag around their 
 necks. Ellen herself tells us that she was 
 sixteen years old before she opened her lips 
 at table without being spoken to. Com- 
 plaints were considered squeamish, and no 
 phrase was heard oftener than: "He who 
 enters the game must endure the play," and 
 that teaching, Ellen Key says, laid the foun- 
 dation for the endurance with which she has 
 been able to meet the pain and attacks she 
 has suffered. Besides the desire to create 
 happiness, which is one of the fundamental 
 traits of her character — and in her youthful
 
 26 Ellen Key 
 
 fancy took the form of a little Utopia — we find 
 a growing individualism discernible already 
 in childhood and expressing itself in a love of 
 the genuine. Just as she wanted her doll to be 
 a real baby, so she wanted Christianity to 
 be real and without compromise, and love to be 
 genuine, not the dull everyday kind, not the 
 little "loves, " but the great, strong Love, that 
 could fill the whole life. Even in her little 
 daily doings she tried to realise this principle. 
 She has related that she thought that "needle- 
 work was horrid," the first time she sewed a 
 hem, and that, when she was her own master, 
 she would never busy herself with it — a vow 
 that she has faithfully kept ! But it is signifi- 
 cant that, during the years that she had to 
 assist in the home-sewing, her one comfort was 
 to do it well. Ellen's seams were famous in the 
 family for not ripping easily, and her brothers 
 always preferred her to do their sewing, be- 
 cause "she was the only woman who knew 
 how to fasten a seam. " 
 
 Music attracted her strongly from her 
 earliest years, and she would leave any game to 
 listen to it. Then, as now, she loved to hide 
 herself in some dark comer where she would be 
 undisturbed by other impressions, and could 
 let the power of the music have full sway over
 
 Childhood and Early Youth 2^ 
 
 her. She regretted bitterly her inability to 
 sing, and she also struggled in vain to make the 
 piano express her feelings. At the age of 
 twenty, she gave up her attempts at playing. 
 She also gave up drawing after some years 
 of study, for, although she was not devoid 
 of talents here, she did not consider them 
 great enough to warrant the necessary time 
 and labour. Her colour sense showed itself 
 early in her arrangement of flowers, and this 
 part of the home decorations was given her 
 to do from childhood. 
 
 She learned to dance simply through listen- 
 ing to the music, and she is said to have 
 danced well. But she had always declared 
 she would stop when she was twenty-five 
 years old, and she did. Now in her old age 
 the desire to dance has returned, and when 
 with intimate friends she sometimes takes a 
 turn in an old waltz. 
 
 When between twelve and fourteen years 
 of age Ellen became melancholy, because of 
 the lack of harmony in life, because of the 
 ugliness and injustice that reigned in the world, 
 because " God was not," and everything "went 
 wrong." Tegner's Mjeltsjukan"^ was now the 
 
 ^ Literal translation — spleen-sickness, otherwise melancholy.— 
 Translator's footnote.
 
 28 Ellen Key 
 
 poem that appealed to her as giving expression 
 to her own mood. Tegner, Runeberg, and 
 Nikander were her favourite poets during these 
 years. At that time she little dreamed that 
 she herself would write. It was under the 
 influence of Almkvist, Geijer, and Bjomson, 
 the "deeply beloved" poets of her twenty- 
 year period, that she began to think of 
 writing — sketches of peasant life — and made 
 extensive studies with this object in view. The 
 clear-sightedness of her mother, however, saved 
 her from wasting time in a direction in which 
 her talents did not lie. The mother's words, 
 that "Ellen was too introspective, too little 
 interested in, or observant of, the diversity of 
 life," were decisive for her. Ellen deeply 
 felt the truth of this, and with her eyes thus 
 opened to her limitations she came to under- 
 stand that the soul, its life, condition, and 
 growth, was even then the great question 
 for her. Therefore she began to concentrate 
 her mind on this problem. 
 
 Individualist from birth as Ellen Key had 
 been, she may not always have been easy to 
 handle and to understand. She had a mind of 
 her own. Her love for reading was so passion- 
 ate that she believes herself capable of com- 
 mitting crimes to get books. She would take
 
 Childhood and Early Youth 29 
 
 without permission books denied her, and 
 "therefore knows from experience that nothing 
 tempts a book-hungry child more than re- 
 fusals, which ought never to be made. " This 
 will power, which showed itself whenever she 
 wanted to reach a desired goal, was absent 
 in other cases. Her inability to be interested 
 and systematic in the housewifely activities, 
 which the practical and orderly mother ex- 
 pected of her, but which Ellen considered less 
 important, caused conflicts which, in child- 
 hood, laid the basis for her later views on 
 education. Her love of freedom and justice 
 caused herself, as well as those who had the 
 difficult task of guiding her, many hard mo- 
 ments. Fortunately for Ellen, her mother 
 early recognised the worth of her determined 
 character, and confident that her trust was 
 not misplaced, dared more and more to give 
 her free rein in her development. "Self- 
 realisation" was thus encouraged, and her 
 individuahsm grew more pronounced. 
 
 On the whole Ellen used her freedom well. 
 Though glad to be released from such duties as 
 antagonised her nature, she would with ease 
 perform others, which for most people were 
 more difficult. There may be recounted a 
 little nursery-episode which at first glance may
 
 30 Ellen Key 
 
 strike the reader as rather insignificant, but 
 which holds much of importance for the char- 
 acterisation of her personality. It concerns 
 her relation to her sisters and brothers. When 
 any sweetmeats were to be shared between 
 them, their supreme trust in her was shown by 
 their general cry in chorus: " Let Ellen divide, 
 then it will be just." Though quite aware 
 of the fact that Ellen had precedence over 
 them in the eyes of the parents, it at no time 
 inspired them to envy, either then or later. 
 They loved her dearly because she used her 
 position in the family to their advantage. 
 May not the assistance Ellen gave her mother 
 and the home in this way, more than outweigh 
 the help she might have given with a needle in 
 her hand had she been an ordinary, good, and 
 dutiful daughter? 
 
 Another example of the impression Ellen 
 made on her associates is related by her 
 childhood's friend, Lisa Hultin. The two 
 little girls had discovered a patch of deli- 
 cious wild strawberries. They were enjoying 
 them to their hearts' content when Lisa no- 
 ticed that Ellen gave her the largest berries 
 and wanted to know the reason for this. ' ' Be- 
 cause I know that you would have given me 
 the best if you had found them," was the
 
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 Childhood and Early Youth 31 
 
 answer. This naive credulity, which makes 
 her expect from others the same nobility 
 characteristic of herself, to believe the best 
 of people and interpret their actions in the best 
 possible light, has ever caused her many dis- 
 appointments. 
 
 To strengthen her naturally somewhat deli- 
 cate constitution Ellen spent four summers 
 on the west coast before she was eleven years 
 old. The sea made a deep impression on her. 
 There she felt she could breathe freely, she 
 wanted to live her life on the sea, and wished 
 to become a sailor! Thus, the little girl 
 dreamed, and this love of the sea has re- 
 mained with the matured woman and has 
 made her yearn to grow old near it and 
 actually die in it. 
 
 Not for nought was Don Quixote one of the 
 friends of her childhood ; he had moved her to 
 tears oftener than to laughter. 
 
 Ellen Key never went to school in the ordi- 
 nary sense, although during the year of her 
 confirmation she was a boarder in a private 
 school in Stockholm, and attended lessons in 
 special subjects for two semesters. Together 
 with her Swedish schooling she had been 
 fortunate enough to have, from the age of six, 
 a German teacher, and a native French
 
 32 Ellen Key- 
 
 teacher at fourteen, through whom she grew 
 familiar with these languages in her childhood. 
 Grammar and arithmetic were stumbling- 
 blocks to her. The mother, who was Ellen's 
 teacher in these branches during the first years, 
 was not acquainted with the newer ideas of 
 pedagogy and child psychology, and therefore 
 could not understand that a child might find 
 one subject hard and another easy. Conse- 
 quently she tried with severe means to cure 
 what she considered nothing but obstinacy — 
 a method of education which grounded Ellen's 
 abhorrence of every kind of forcible upbringing. 
 She learned her lessons at the last moment, 
 and she generally knew them well, when she 
 understood them at all. But, she, herself, 
 declares that she was quite devoid of ambition, 
 and that no prospect of praise could induce her 
 to leave an interesting book for the sake of 
 studying her lessons. And she thinks that her 
 ^^^^^ brain, with a true instinct for self-preservation, 
 forgot all that did not interest her. 
 
 Although she has later filled the gaps in her 
 knowledge, she considers herself ignorant in 
 everything, which does not, in one way or 
 ^—^ another, refer to human life — that is, history, 
 literature, and sociology. In languages the 
 correct phrases and shade of expression come
 
 Childhood and Early Youth 33 
 
 easy to her in talking and writing, but she 
 never can learn them grammatically. If, for 
 example, you speak of relative subWdinate 
 clause, or dependent clause in the Swedish 
 language, she declares that in her humble 
 opinion you are " hiimbugging, " for she has 
 never understood any difference between them, 
 and in her mind the conjunctions stand on 
 just as shaky legs as the foiu: simple rules of 
 arithmetic. In writing, her language is de- 
 termined only by her sense of style, and she 
 rewrites all her manuscripts four, five, some 
 pages even ten, twenty times, or until it 
 sounds well to her ear. Except for this 
 shortcoming in grammatical knowledge she 
 would have been even a greater literary 
 artist. 
 
 The home-life at Sundsholm was secluded, 
 and spent in serious occupations. There were 
 no neighbours except those already mentioned, 
 and young people's parties, with dances and 
 excursions, were of rare occurrence, as were 
 amusements in the ordinary sense. One gets 
 the impressions that the cultured father lived 
 chiefly for his literary and political interests, 
 and the mother with him, while the children 
 lived their own life.
 
 34 Ellen Key 
 
 However lacking the mother may have 
 been in pedagogical insight, she had a true 
 comprehension of her eldest daughter, and 
 recognised her individual turn of mind. Both 
 mother and father encouraged her intellectual 
 development. Unusual freedom was allowed 
 her early by her parents. The mother gave 
 her Camilla CoUett's Amtmannen' s dottrar 
 (The Prefect's Daughters) when she was thir- 
 teen years old. This story and other novels 
 of good English authors — particularly those 
 of Miss Muloch — made so deep an impression 
 on the young girl, that her conceptions of love 
 were formed on the same pattern of earnest- 
 ness and genuineness which she has always 
 worshipped in great and small things. She 
 grew to womanhood without being troubled 
 by such influences as often disturb adolescence. 
 Silly talk, coquetry, and foolish ideas did not 
 occupy her mind, filled as it was with dreams 
 of love of a deeper kind. Even as a child she 
 was interested in the larger human questions. 
 
 Her great-grandmother had a volume of 
 portraits from the Crimean War which inter- 
 ested the six-year-old so much that the book 
 was given her. Garibaldi inspired her enthusi- 
 asm at the age of eight and ten, as Poland's 
 struggle for freedom did at thirteen and four-
 
 Childhood and Early Youth 35 
 
 teen. Then came the Danish War, and, when 
 her father's half-brother, Hugo Raab, went out 
 as a volunteer he made a visit to Sundsholm. 
 With feelings of pride as well as sorrow the 
 family bade him farewell, following with 
 throbbing hearts the progress of the war in 
 which Raab's regiment of volunteers took an 
 honourable part. Hugo Raab, later renowned 
 as a reformer of the General Staff, early 
 taught Ellen to combine her love of peace with 
 a respect for an enlightened defence. 
 
 She always listened with breathless interest 
 to a serious conversation. Society did not 
 attract her on account of her excessive shyness, 
 and her first ball opened with tears because 
 she was made to appear in a gown slightly 
 decollete. 
 
 It was of great importance for the full de- 
 velopment of this dreaming, introspective, 
 and thoughtful girl that, through the com- 
 prehensive forethought of her mother, she 
 had her own room from the time she was 
 twelve. She was given a nest of her very own, 
 a gable room with blue walls and her own 
 furniture, a little white writing desk which had 
 been her grandfather's, a rocker presented her 
 at the age of four, and a bookcase, also a
 
 36 Ellen Key 
 
 gift of the grandfather. From her window, 
 she had a close view of the lake with its 
 islands and of meadows of oak and birch. It 
 was her great good fortune that she was al- 
 lowed to live among books and nature and, 
 awakened by the sunrise on summer mornings, 
 to lie and listen to the singing of the birds, 
 the lapping of the waves, and inhale the fra- 
 grance of the honeysuckle and linden blossoms 
 through the open window. 
 
 "You see," she once wrote, "I am born for 
 country and solitude ; they nourish me. Social 
 activity and fellow-feeling — I have acquired. " 
 Thanks to this training of herself, the imagi- 
 native and contemplative disposition, which 
 Ellen Key another time calls her temptation, 
 has not been allowed the upper hand. 
 
 She occupied this room from twelve un- 
 til forty years of age. First uninterruptedly 
 eight years — except the winter spent in Stock- 
 holm when she was confirmed — and after that 
 during the summers. How happy she felt 
 each time she arrived home from Stockholm! 
 How intensely she worked, thought, and 
 studied in this little room! 
 
 To herself may well be applied the words: 
 "The bom individualist has, even in the nur- 
 sery, instinctively chosen his books, his mode
 
 Childhood and Early Youth 37 
 
 of work. . . . One filled with a passion to be 
 wholly himself, to live in every nerve, to ex- 
 press his innermost being, may never have 
 a calm, but ever a rich existence. To him 
 life is a song, for he himself composes it dur- 
 ing the work-a-day toil, the exaltation of the 
 great moments, the years of suffering, and the 
 hours of happiness. . . . Thus he will win, 
 for himself and for others, new life-values, 
 new life -incentives." ' 
 
 ' See The Freedom of the Personality.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 YOUTH AND THE FIRST YEARS IN STOCKHOLM 
 
 WHEN Ellen Key was old enough to be 
 confirmed and was sent to Stockholm 
 for a course of instruction, she had already- 
 passed through a stage of personal religious 
 development. In regard to this, she writes as 
 follows: "I read the Bible as a 'storybook,' 
 loved Jesus, knew my Catechism worst of all, 
 listened to my father's reading of Martensen's 
 sermons on Sundays, hated God ever since at 
 ten I read of Jesus' suffering, and, after seeing 
 a man die who ought to have lived, I denied 
 Him and worshipped Nature alone. " 
 
 Having thus been led to doubt God, because 
 of the death of a young man whose wife and 
 little children were left destitute, she wanted 
 explicit proof of God's existence or non- 
 existence. She wrote in the sand: "God is 
 DEAD," thinking that if He existed, He would 
 send her a stroke of lightning or some other 
 sure sign to punish her blasphemy. In The 
 
 38
 
 Youth and First Years in Stockholm 39 
 
 Century of the Child she relates, how, after 
 having waited in vain for some sign, she 
 yet wished to give God respite, and said to 
 herself: "If the words are still here in this 
 secluded place to-morrow, then He is surely 
 dead, but if He has erased them, He lives!" 
 The following day the words were gone, but, 
 thinking she saw traces of the gardener's rake, 
 the uncertainty as to whether this or the 
 finger of God had decided the question, con- 
 tinued. It is remarkable with what earnest- 
 ness and desire for truth the ten-year-old child 
 proceeds. 
 
 This restless seeking mood continued all 
 through her early ' 'teens. ' ' During the winter 
 of 1864-65, which she spent in Stockholm 
 on account of her confirmation, she lived in 
 a religious home, where she was impressed 
 "not by religious phrases, but by a truly 
 rehgious life, " and by the harmony and great- 
 ness of spirit it revealed. Through her associ- 
 ation with Mina and Karin Ahlin, in whose 
 school she was a boarder,— especially through 
 the genial Mina — she came to realise the beauty 
 of Christianity. "And so I became a Christian, 
 and in deepest earnestness tried to live as a 
 Christian, struggling ceaselessly against the 
 demands of intellect, personality, and beauty. "
 
 40 Ellen Key 
 
 All her Sundays, Christmas and Easter holi- 
 days were spent with her aunt and uncle, 
 Count Skoldebrand, Governor of the Royal 
 Palace. As she grew famihar with the beauty 
 of the palace, her love for great architecture 
 was aroused. Her lonely wanderings in what 
 was then the Stone Museum in one of the 
 wings of the palace — before the National 
 Museum was built — nurtured her love of 
 sculpture, which had already been awakened 
 by the many Thorwaldsen works she had seen 
 in the home, where even her mother's writing 
 desk held bas-reliefs by that artist. Even at 
 the age of seven, when she made her first 
 visit to Thorwaldsen 's Museum in Copen- 
 hagen, she greatly enjoyed the works of art 
 familiar to her at home, and the gods and god- 
 desses which she recognised from her reading 
 of Greek mythology. 
 
 During the confirmation period there often 
 flitted before her mind's eye, though yet 
 vaguely, the problem which later occupied 
 her so deeply, the possibility of a harmony 
 between the Ancient and the Christian ideal. 
 
 Doctor Rothlieb, Ellen's religious instructor, 
 was the idol of the day, and most of his pupils 
 worshipped him. But neither he nor any 
 other minister or teacher could find in Ellen
 
 Youth and First Years in Stockholm 41 
 
 Key a pupil who would accept their instruction 
 as a lamp to her feet. She has never stood in 
 the personal relationship of pupil to master 
 or had confidential intercourse with any 
 living teacher, or confounded the man with 
 his message, as women often do. From the 
 dead, she has taken what she needed, and, on 
 the whole, remained free. 
 
 The Confessions of Augustine put Christian- 
 ity before her in its strictest requirements. 
 Any easy compromise with the pleasant things 
 in life was not to be thought of. It must be 
 stern and genuine Christianity. Ellen Key 
 was now a believer, though her mental con- 
 flicts were severe. She was much inclined 
 to dreaming and inactivity. She preferred to 
 bury herself in books, in peace and quiet, and 
 here, as in nature, she sought to understand 
 life and herself. The service of love among 
 the sick and poor, which Christianity urged 
 upon her, was extremely difficult for one of 
 her temperament. And yet, she told herself 
 that just this service was what Jesus expected 
 of his true disciples. And how dared she call 
 herself one, she who could not even bear to 
 look at a small wound, much less overcome 
 horror and loathing for Christ's sake? And 
 the works of art and beauty which she adored,
 
 42 Ellen Key- 
 
 were they always in harmony with Christian- 
 ity? Thus she pondered in her mind. 
 
 Her mother had planned to have Ellen 
 teach her youngest sister and a playmate of 
 the same age. Immediately upon her arrival 
 home from Stockholm, the fifteen -year-old 
 girl took up this work, fully conscious of the 
 responsibility involved. I once heard Ellen 
 Key tell of the joyful anticipation with which, 
 while yet in Stockholm, she prepared herself 
 for this task, thinking with what motherly 
 tenderness she would care for the little sister 
 who was six years her junior. From the other 
 pupil, Miss Ada Rydstrom, I have the highest 
 testimony of Ellen's pedagogical power, al- 
 ready developed at that time. "Ineradicable 
 impressions were made on the child-mind by 
 her teachings. We felt great respect for her, 
 though at the same time we much enjoyed our 
 lessons." The religious development of this 
 former pupil later took a different direction 
 from that of Ellen Key's, yet her opinion of 
 Ellen's character, her purity and nobility of 
 mind, remains unchanged. She also speaks 
 of Ellen's love of natiu*e, of her leisure mo- 
 ments spent in woods and fields. No one was 
 allowed to know the solitary places which were 
 lier chosen haunts.
 
 Youth and First Years in Stockholm 43 
 
 The Swedish reHgious lyricists, Stagnelius, 
 Atterbom, and Topelius, were at this age her 
 favourite poets. Her feeling towards Nature 
 was very romantic during this period ; Nature 
 was personified. 
 
 It is probable that she had already learned 
 the virtue of that "Stillness," of which she 
 speaks so feelingly in one of her essays, and 
 which she later so often sought for herself in 
 remote and secluded places. 
 
 When Ellen was in her seventeenth year, 
 a tragedy determined her life's philosophy. 
 Two young women, cousins of Ellen's, visit- 
 ing at Sundsholm, were drowned while bathing, 
 and Ellen herself barely escaped. Religious 
 emotions now filled her completely, and for 
 years she struggled with the problem of a 
 Christian view of life, and the philosophy, 
 which later put its stamp on all her words and 
 actions, slowly matured within her. To the 
 deep -thinking, truth-seeking Ellen, who had 
 seen her two friends snatched from life in a few 
 seconds, their spiritual state not at all what 
 Christianity required as essential to their sal- 
 vation, the question of eternal bliss and pimish- 
 ment became the vital problem in life. She 
 wrote whole packs of ' ' journals " during the fol- 
 lowing ten years, which journals reflect the
 
 44 Ellen Key 
 
 gradual progress of her development so entirely 
 without the influence of so-called heretical writ- 
 ings. She never read Victor Rydberg, for in- 
 stance, until after she had, of her own accord, 
 abandoned her belief in the Divinity of Christ. 
 Alone she sought light. For edification dur- 
 ing these years she read the Bible, Colain's 
 Meditatiojts, and the sermons of the English- 
 man Robertson, which she re-read many times. 
 The works of Renan, Parker, and Ignell were 
 in her father's library, but, not believing it 
 right to subject herself to ex-parte influence, 
 she did not read them. She never attended 
 the ' ' Lord's Supper ' ' after her first communion, 
 feeling, even at eighteen, that she could not 
 fully participate in that act. After twenty, 
 she also refused to act as sponsor at the bap- 
 tism of infants, as their christening seemed 
 to her to be blasphemy. Gradually her heart 
 became severed from Christianity, and yet, 
 up to the age of nearly forty, she still clung to 
 the thought of a personal God, and a personal 
 immortality. 
 
 It was not until more than thirty years after 
 the tragedy related, and when she had been 
 attacked for radicalism and imbelief, that 
 Ellen Key felt it to be a duty and a right to 
 herself and to others openly to confess her
 
 Youth and First Years in Stockholm 45 
 
 breach with Christianity, and to declare her 
 reasons for it. 
 
 In Ellen Key's home there was the same 
 aversion to class prejudices and class preten- 
 sions as prevailed among all Liberals preceding 
 the change in the system of representation, 
 which change principally resulted in the 
 abrogation of the nobleman's right of rule in 
 the Riksdag. Consequently their high pedi- 
 gree had no place in the children's imagination, 
 and they never heard any talk conducive to 
 family pride. Ellen once wrote: "I inherited 
 no prejudice from my father or mother, and I 
 have never heard from them anything but 
 respect for human life, for liberty, labour, and 
 progress." Ellen yet had as a child such a 
 passion for all family-history, even in the 
 meagre form of the Peerage Calendar and 
 Swedish Genealogy, that she eagerly perused 
 these and pondered the fates of the people 
 narrated therein. When, later, as a young 
 girl, — about the time that the theory of 
 evolution was beginning to prepare minds for 
 the significance of heredity, — she learned of 
 her ancestors, their romantic history filled her 
 with pride. Harald Harfager, for instance, had 
 united the many small kingdoms of Norway
 
 46 Ellen Key 
 
 for the love of Princess Gyda, who had made 
 this the condition of marrying him! That 
 Karl VIII (Knutson) had been King of Sweden 
 meant nothing to her, compared with the fact 
 that he had so deeply loved his wife that the 
 chronicle touchingly relates their happiness 
 and his grief at her death. And Leonora 
 Kristina Ulfeld had languished in prison forty 
 years because of her loyalty to her beloved 
 husband. Very proud was Ellen of her an- 
 cestor, the younger Sten Sture, and his wife, 
 Kristina Gyllenstjerna, who in her dead hus- 
 band's place had so bravely defended Stock- 
 holm's palace against the Danes. And she 
 loved the story of their granddaughter, Malin 
 Sture, and the latter's cousin, Erik Stenbock, 
 who after years of faithful love ran away 
 to become imited, defying law and custom. 
 Ebba Brahe, the beloved of Gustavus II 
 (Adolphus), is another romantic character 
 among the many that abound in Ellen Key's 
 ancestry. 
 
 And Ellen heard of weird and wonderful 
 personalities, not many generations removed 
 from herself. Her paternal great-grandmother, 
 as a widow, contracted a romantic marriage 
 with one Lautier, said to have been an Italian 
 pirate . Her maternal great-grandmother was ,
 
 Youth and First Years in Stockholm 47 
 
 in her time, the much talked of "Night- 
 Countess," who slept by day and rode out 
 with torches and four black horses by night — 
 a haughty and imperious lady! 
 
 A kinsman and foster-brother of Ellen's 
 grandfather, one Count Posse, had married 
 Princess Canino, niece of Napoleon I, also a 
 romantic love-union. 
 
 The glamour of tragic love hung over Staflo, 
 one of the grandfather's estates. There, a 
 German princess, Dorothea von Zettvitz, 
 had lived many years, a fugitive, because 
 of love, from the small German Court of the 
 eighteenth century where she had spent her 
 youth. 
 
 All these romantic associations have played 
 their part in Ellen Key's mental and emotional 
 world, which from childhood was influenced 
 by the conception of the greatness and signi- 
 ficance of love. She had then "fallen in love 
 with love, " as she once so quaintly wrote. 
 
 Ellen Key's nearest of kin, her paternal and 
 maternal grandparents as well as her own 
 parents, had all experienced love and happiness 
 m marriage. Thus we fmd her bom and bred 
 m the consciousness of great love as of the 
 highest value to life. 
 
 When she was eighteen years old, her mother 
 
 --A^V\X-
 
 48 Ellen Key- 
 
 gave her three books of Ibsen : The Comedy of 
 Love, Brand, and Peer Gynt. The choice of 
 this gift is especially characteristic of both 
 giver and receiver. Although Ibsen, in 1868, 
 was already known as a great writer, he was 
 not generally read in Sweden. But Sophie 
 Key had not allowed the many duties of a 
 large household in the country to deaden her 
 intelligence, or to stifle her broad interests 
 in literature and life. With keen insight into 
 her daughter's development, she now intro- 
 duced her to Ibsen. What effect his works 
 had on Ellen, particularly The Comedy of Love, 
 she has herself related in her Tankehilder 
 {Thought Images). Though ill at the time, 
 she unconsciously learned almost the whole 
 play by heart. Her fevered imagination was 
 filled with its characters, and her recovery was 
 retarded because the brain had no respite from 
 the sting of the sharp retorts. She says : "Ib- 
 sen's deepest pathos met me on a larger scale 
 in Brand and Peer Gynt, but . . . my innermost 
 instincts had prepared a perfect concurrence 
 with his high idealism in The Comedy of Love.'' 
 We must hold fast the picture of Ellen Key 
 at eighteen, overwhelmed with grief at the 
 disclosure of society's half-heartedness, at the 
 insincerity of all the world, in the presence
 
 Youth and First Years in Stockholm 49 
 
 of tragedy-comedy, if we are to understand 
 how, in later years, with acquired gentleness, 
 she goes so far as to contradict her own life- 
 ideal by a tolerance probably too great. 
 
 It is obvious that the blood coursing in her 
 veins, and making her heart beat more passion- 
 ately than is the common lot, she has inherited 
 from strong, vital personalities, who did not 
 trudge the dull path of commonplace existence, 
 but lived rich and unusual lives. 
 
 Thus we find that only after decades of 
 thought and study, did Ellen Key, at a mature 
 age, enter the arena to fight the marriage 
 institution, as it exists at present, "which, 
 with its proprietary rights, has converted the 
 tenderest expression of personal liberty into 
 life-imprisonment, where the highest possibil- 
 ity of life-joy is changed into a shelter for life- 
 loathing. " 
 
 But before she appeared as a writer on this 
 and similar subjects, her powers had been 
 engaged in quite other spheres.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 REMOVAL OF THE FAMILY TO STOCKHOLM 
 
 T^HE path of Ellen Key's life goes straight 
 -■• and true toward the goal which she had 
 unconsciousl}^ chosen for herself as a child. 
 The road leading to development of individual- 
 ity has been her highway. Effort and labour 
 it has cost, but she reached the goal. Curious- 
 ly enough, we find that, at the ages of twenty, 
 thirty, forty, and fifty, there were certain 
 circumstances in Ellen's life which greatly 
 helped to determine her development. Thus 
 when she reached her twentieth year she 
 moved with her parents to Stockholm for the 
 winters because of the father's participation in 
 the Riksdag. 
 
 A rich field was thus opened for the girl 
 thirsting for knowledge. She studied dili- 
 gently at the library, and attended lectures, of 
 which those by Professor Dietrichson at the 
 Academy of Art especially interested her. 
 In a gathering of women she heard Pontus 
 
 50
 
 Removal of Family to Stockholm 51 
 
 Wikner/ and later listened to Gustaf Bjork- 
 lund' on the philosophy of Bostrom/ These 
 thinkers, however, did not engross her mind 
 so much as did Spencer, Mill, Darwin, Taine, 
 Brandes, and Max Miiller. 
 
 She came in personal touch with Fru Sophie 
 Adlersparre, whose Tidskn'ft for Hemmet 
 (Home Journal) had strongly influenced her 
 since childhood, and had made her an eager 
 adherent of the movement for the liberation 
 of women; though her own position held no 
 pathos, she recognised that of others. She 
 herself had received, as a gift, the freedom 
 for which others must battle. 
 
 Fru Adlersparre, who was always glad to 
 discover and use young talent, encouraged 
 Ellen to write for her journal, and, besides 
 reports of lectures, translations, and reviews 
 of books, Ellen Key now began to contribute 
 original articles. 
 
 It is not likely that she would have come 
 before the public of her own accord, as neither 
 
 ' Pontus Wikner, Swedish philosopher.— Translator's footnote. 
 
 ' Gustaf Bjorklund, prominent in the International Peace 
 Movement and author of Death and Immortality, translated into 
 English and published by the Open Court Publishing Company. 
 — Translator's footnote. 
 
 i C. J. Bostrora, the foremost philosopher of Sweden. — Trans- 
 lator's footnote.
 
 52 Ellen Key 
 
 ambition nor initiative can be counted among 
 her traits. 
 
 For a number of years she was a student in 
 the Misses Rossander's School of Instruction 
 for Women; later becoming a teacher there 
 in geography, and where she gave her first 
 regiilar lecture on her beloved Geijer. ' Here 
 she also learned to know Anna Whitlock' and 
 Julia Kjellberg, later married to the socialist 
 von VoUmar, two friends with whom she has 
 ever since kept in close touch. 
 
 Ellen Key's love of the soil, of the childhood- 
 home, soon grew to embrace her whole native 
 land. The feeling of patriotism waxed strong 
 within her. 
 
 The day following the memorable December 
 night when, after decades of obstinate struggle, 
 the representation by Four Classes ceased, and 
 the new system of Two Houses was adop- 
 ted, Sophie Key and her daughter Ellen at- 
 tended an evening party, and heard their 
 friends on every hand deplore the outcome, 
 while they alone rejoiced. Ellen, at this time 
 not quite sixteen, was so deeply moved that, 
 
 ' A great Swedish poet. — Translator's footnote. 
 ' Now well known as a pedagogue, and also prominent in the 
 Woman Movement. — Translator's footnote.
 
 Removal of Family to Stockholm 53 
 
 on arriving home, she went out alone under the 
 starlit heaven, and made a compact with her 
 own heart that she would serve the people in 
 her own humble way, and help them to a 
 worthy use of their new privileges in the great 
 work now begun. Her patriotism from its 
 first conscious awakening was that of a demo- 
 crat. She once wrote: " There is one general 
 human feeling which I have never shared, and 
 that is royalism. I have been a republican 
 ever since I first learned that countries were 
 governed, and read about Rome and Athens. 
 The enthusiasm others have expended on 
 royalty, I have spent on heroes, on the great 
 Greeks and Romans, on our own great kings, 
 Gustavus I (Vasa) and Gustavus II (Adol- 
 phus), but never Charles XII. 
 
 We have seen the important part Ellen's 
 father played for a long course of years in 
 the political life of Sweden. By his side, the 
 romantic, dreaming girl looked into practical 
 politics as did few Swedish women of that day. 
 She shared in her father's plans, successes, 
 and struggles. Emil Key was guided in his 
 political activity by great reform ideas, and 
 progress and reform were being discussed con- 
 stantly in the Key home. Herr Key got more 
 and more in the habit of sharing his work with
 
 54 Ellen Key 
 
 his daughter, who became his private secretary, 
 sometimes writing original articles for Dagens 
 Nyheter {The Daily News). As those of her 
 father's dictation were also in her handwriting, 
 the editor took for granted that all were the 
 work of Emil Key. Style and contents seemed 
 equally good in all. This proves how thor- 
 oughly familiar Ellen had made herself with 
 the questions at issue, otherwise she could not 
 have shown such practical knowledge of affairs 
 and insight into existing political conditions. 
 
 During those early years in Stockholm, 
 when Ellen Key lived there with her parents, 
 they had an apartment in the Bondeska 
 Palatset at Rosenbad. When this old relic 
 of the aristocratic grandeur of Sweden was 
 torn down recently, the following appeared 
 in one of the papers of the capital: "This 
 house also was inhabited, during the Riksdag 
 sessions, by the old veteran of the House of 
 Knights, Adam Christian Raab, father of 
 Hugo Raab, first chief of the General Staff, 
 and step-father of Emil Key, Liberal Speaker 
 in the Riksdag. He himself was a liberal- 
 minded man, and the standard-bearers of the 
 new times often gathered in his home for 
 lively debates and hot discussions of the 
 questions of the day. Those were times
 
 Removal of Family to Stockholm 55 
 
 when the noble old walls resounded with the 
 eloquent orations for freedom which sprang 
 from the lips of August Blanche, August Sohl- 
 man and Karl Fredrik Ridderstad . . . while 
 young Ellen Key by her father's side sat 
 gazing at the contestants with large, wondering 
 eyes, in which was the prophecy of the truth- 
 teller of the future." 
 
 We have had many opportunities of witness- 
 ing the unfeigned pleasure of the old Liberals 
 at finding Ellen Key among the invited 
 guests at social functions in the eighties. 
 Then, as always in large companies, she pre- 
 ferred listening to talking, taking a lively 
 part in conversation only in small and intimate 
 circles. She has never been a brilliant per- 
 sonage in society circles. 
 
 The vow to live for the enlightenment of 
 the people, which she had made to herself 
 that December night in 1865, gradually foimd 
 its expression in work amon^ the peasants. 
 She had renewed this vow in the forest, by a 
 rock which became her altar, and without 
 further preliminaries, eager to start in at once, 
 she found the simple means of beginning by 
 taking up the work nearest at hand, that 
 of making herself useful in her immediate 
 surroundings.
 
 56 Ellen Key 
 
 At twenty, she had begun holding "Sunday- 
 school" for the young people on the estate 
 during the summers, which the family still 
 always spent at Sundsholm, and here she 
 taught history, natural science, literature, etc., 
 and loaned out books from the little "Folk- 
 library" she had herself founded by adding 
 some new volumes to her own old books. 
 From girlhood, and long before the movement 
 for the education of the masses had become the 
 fashion, Ellen Key had busied herself in such 
 work, giving of her working time as well as 
 her leisure hours. Alone, she dwelt with 
 thoughts which, when she later expressed 
 them in print, she was accused of having 
 borrowed from abroad ! 
 
 When Ellen was a few years past twenty, 
 she received an offer to begin as a teacher, 
 and later become principal of a Folk-high- 
 school for girls in Skane, in which some of 
 her father's senatorial friends were interested. 
 With this position in view, she spent the sum- 
 mer of 1874 in Denmark, studying the fore- 
 most schools of that kind, principally those of 
 Vallekilde, Testrup, and Askov. When Ellen, 
 in her own profound way, had thoroughly 
 inspected these important institutions, she 
 came to the conclusion that she was too
 
 Removal of Family to Stockholm 57 
 
 young to accept so responsible a position, 
 especially as she had not yet reached any clear 
 view as to the religious problems which filled 
 her mind. But her dream and endeavour, from 
 this time on, was to found a Folk-highschool 
 for girls in her own home county, and for 
 years she studied and laboured in prepara- 
 tion for this. She associated closely with the 
 peasants trying to get a true understanding 
 of their view of life, their customs, and habits. 
 She collected sagas, folk-tales, and proverbs, 
 embracing the opportunity at the same time 
 to collect old-fashioned articles of peasant 
 make for Arthur Hazelius,' whose new move- 
 ment for a National Folk Museum deeply 
 interested her. 
 
 Ellen's visit to the Folk-highschools in 
 Denmark was made as the result of the 
 above-mentioned offer, and also because the 
 great importance of such institutions had 
 been impressed upon her, as upon other 
 Swedes, by Bjomstjeme Bjomson in his lec- 
 tures in Stockholm, in December, 1872, and 
 January, 1873; on Grundtvig, Vergeland, the 
 Sistine Chapel, etc. Ellen had attended 
 every lecture and afterwards written them 
 
 I Founder of Skansen, the out-door Museum and National 
 Park at Stockholm. — Translator's footnote.
 
 58 Ellen Key 
 
 down from memory, as well as everything 
 Bjomson had said on occasions when she had 
 met him; and she lived in a new world of 
 inspiration. She, who always believed that 
 her mother overrated her when she had urged 
 her to "exercise her talents, " now learned that 
 Bjomson had said to the mother that Ellen 
 would be an honour to her parents, though he 
 could not tell what her life-work might be, 
 her extreme shyness making him uncertain 
 as to whether she would ever dare to use her 
 ' ' Evne ' ' (power) . What he did know, however, 
 was that she ought first of all to be a wife and 
 make some one happy, but, he added, "Women 
 with such rich inner life are seldom under- 
 stood by men, and to a woman who, at the 
 age of twenty-three, has not yet herself been 
 in love, love will some day come with tremend- 
 ous seriousness." That Bjornson believed in 
 her seemed wonderful to Ellen, and she pro- 
 mised to try not to disappoint him. He had 
 said that he would always keep in touch with 
 her. And the friendship thus begun lasted 
 through life. Notwithstanding the strong in- 
 fluence of Bjornson, who then was a Grundt- 
 vigian,' Ellen Key remained averse to Grundt- 
 
 ' Member of the religious body denominated Grundtvigians 
 after Grundtvig, the Danish hberal divine, who was pubUcly
 
 Removal of Family to Stockholm 59 
 
 vigianism. It seemed to her to illustrate the 
 untenability of any compromise between 
 Christianity and absolute Liberalism. 
 
 The following year in Stockholm, she met 
 Magdalen Thoresen.' A friendship which 
 lasted for life sprang up between them, and 
 Ellen Key often went to Copenhagen to visit 
 Magdalen, who retained her attractiveness 
 and beauty of spirit even in her old age. 
 
 Between thirty and forty, Ellen made other 
 journeys important to her development. She 
 attended the World's Fair in Vienna in 1873 
 with her father, who went abroad for the pur- 
 pose of studying Reform Schools and Children's 
 Asylums in the interest of Norregard, Kalmar, 
 an institution of similar kind, of which he was 
 executor after his father-in-law, Count Posse. 
 During these visits Ellen Key conceived a 
 hatred for all kinds of institutions for children. 
 
 In Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Venice, Florence, 
 Paris, London, and Cassel the glories of art 
 met Ellen's eyes. Her mind was well pre- 
 pared by her own readings, as well as by the 
 series of art lectures she had attended in 
 
 prosecuted in Copenhagen because of his boldly expressed 
 opinions on theological subjects. — Translator's footnote. 
 
 ' Danish- Norwegian author and stepmother to Ibsen's wife. — 
 Translator's footnote.
 
 6o Ellen Key 
 
 Stockholm, and also by her art-loving father's 
 descriptions of his travels in youth. About 
 Raphael's Sistine Madonna she says: "My 
 father's impassioned descriptions, together 
 with an old woodcut I have had from child- 
 hood, made an impersonal judgment im- 
 possible for me. The Madonna's face, the 
 deep eyes, which appear to widen within, 
 and the even more wonderful expression of 
 the child, move me profoundly each time 
 I see the picture. ..." Through the 
 Dresden Gallery, a volume of engravings, 
 she knew the names and compositions of a 
 great many other paintings, and she surprised 
 her father, when they were in Dresden, by her 
 recognition of the great art schools of which 
 she had seen examples for the first time in 
 Berlin. In Cassel, Rembrandt impressed her 
 for life. On their arrival home her father 
 declared that "her passion for art was so 
 violent that she needed a whole regiment of 
 soldiers to accompany her one after the other, 
 and that she would wear them all out. " 
 
 Visiting the same galleries many years later, 
 she was herself surprised to find how deep had 
 been her impressions from that first hasty 
 trip, which only allowed for one, or at most 
 two visits to each museum.
 
 Removal of Family to Stockholm 6i 
 
 The preparation for the study of Art, which 
 Ellen had received in childhood by association 
 with art reproductions, had made her feel pos- 
 itive of the importance of modem endeavours 
 in this direction, but she thinks that the child- 
 ren should be allowed freely to absorb art, 
 that it should be a subject for teaching only 
 in so far as the child is given answers to his 
 own questions. 
 
 Italy made the deepest impression on her. 
 For this country, she had yearned ever since >i 
 she had read, at ten years of age, Nikander's^ 
 Kung Enzio och Hesperiderna (King Enzio and 
 the Hesperides). 
 
 On account of a tendency to lung trouble, 
 she spent the summer of 1876 in Norway, 
 where she learned to love the people, as well as 
 the scenery, diu*ing a month's stay in the vicin- 
 ity of Aulestad and pedestrian tours through 
 Jotunheimen, Sogn, and Hardanger. 
 
 In 1879, she made a fourth journey abroad, 
 this time at the invitation of friends to accom- 
 pany them to Holland, London, and Paris. 
 On this trip she had the opportunity of 
 visiting her childhood friend, Lisa in her 
 happy home in Rouen, where her husband 
 held a position. 
 
 ' Swedish poet. — Translator's footnote.
 
 62 Ellen Key 
 
 Ellen Key never had to fight her way to 
 intellectual activity, a struggle quite common 
 for young women in those days, when parents 
 in the circles to which she belonged, rather 
 wished their daughters to be shielded from the 
 new ideas of education, graduation, and other 
 unwomanly attainments. We have seen that 
 Fru Key had rather encouraged Ellen to 
 exercise her talents, and she had often pro- 
 posed this or that career for her. Her mother 
 wanted her to take some examination, and 
 concentrate her power in one direction. But 
 the young daughter had remained immovable. 
 "It was Sundsholm's scenery, my books, my 
 little room, my thoughts and dreams I could 
 not bear to leave, " said Ellen once. Her feel- 
 ing for this home was her strongest emotion in 
 youth. Once, when she was eight years old, 
 and away on a visit with her mother, the 
 latter was awakened by her little daughter's 
 sobbing. She had been unable to sleep for 
 fear that Sundsholm might bum before she 
 could reach home! Her love for her child- 
 hood home increased through fear of losing it, 
 a fear which darkened her life from her six- 
 teenth year. During the winters in Stock- 
 holm she used to follow the weather-reports 
 from the home county with trembling heart.
 
 Removal of Family to Stockholm 63 
 
 If the crops threatened to fail, she was in 
 despair, as that might be the blow which 
 would deprive them of Sundsholm. She once 
 said: "To live in the country, till the soil, 
 never leave it — from the time I began to think 
 this was the determining factor in my emotional 
 life, and the modem movement back to the 
 soil is one in which my heart has always been. " 
 Among her extremely few poetic attempts 
 is a poem' about a stream which was appro- 
 priated for commercial purposes, and would 
 thus deprive coming generations of the beauty 
 which had gladdened her. The real incident 
 which inspired the poem was the draining of a 
 lake, which caused her years of regret in her 
 youth with nights of weeping and days of 
 aching sorrow. Most people found such sor- 
 row too absurd to deserve interest or sympathy, 
 but those who have begun to care for the culti- 
 vation of beauty will perceive that Ellen Key 
 was not understood, simply because she was 
 ahead of her time, as she also was when she 
 wrote down her thoughts on " Cultivation of 
 the Art of Living" twenty years before she 
 had heard others express such views. 
 
 ' Published in Tidskrift for Hemmet, 1874.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 WORK 
 
 THE words with which Ellen Key ends her 
 autobiographical data may be quoted 
 as introductory to the period of her life 
 between thirty and forty years of age. 
 
 "... In the meantime, the agricultural 
 crisis drew near, which, in our county, affected 
 my father first of all. His public life had 
 consumed all his means as well as all his 
 interest. 
 
 I realised now that the futtire for me would 
 not hold the realisation of my personal dreams 
 of a 'Folk-high school' in our parish, but that 
 my work would be wherever I best could 
 earn my livelihood." 
 
 Ellen Key has expressed herself so discreetly 
 in regard to the radical change in the life of 
 her family and herself, that it would be un- 
 seemly for a biographer to dwell upon the 
 feelings of sorrow and regret. 
 
 In the beginning of the year 1880, the sepa- 
 
 64
 
 Work 65 
 
 ration from the home took place, and Ellen 
 lived in the city, except for Christmas and 
 summer vacations. The peace and quiet of 
 country life had to be given up for the greater 
 part of the year, and the noise and confusion 
 of a great city, so unattractive to her, took 
 its place. Formerly she had only spent a part 
 of each winter in the city. 
 
 Ellen had not then heard of Ruskin and his 
 revolt, later so well known, against cities and 
 industry, but, in her romantic individualism 
 she, like him, raged against Stockholm and 
 city life in general, factories and railroads; 
 and was not at all understood in this by her 
 Stockholm friends. She never learned to feel 
 at home in Stockholm, though she lived 
 there thirty years. She never spoke of "going 
 home" when she returned there. Her sorrow 
 at leaving Sundsholm woke afresh every fall. 
 She herself says that she would very likely 
 never have done anything but remain there 
 and work for the peasants, had not the feeling 
 of duty as well as the necessity of earning her 
 livelihood and helping her family forced her 
 away. 
 
 Her vacations have always been spent in 
 the country. Resorts and boarding-houses 
 she has avoided as she would a plague. To
 
 66 Ellen Key 
 
 Sundsholm she still went after it had been 
 turned over to a corporation, though managed 
 by her brother, and even later when it came 
 to have another owner, who, however, did not 
 occupy it, she spent parts of every summer 
 there until 1889. Since later owners have 
 taken up their residence there, she has never 
 wanted to return to the old home or see it 
 again. 
 
 She had entered upon her thirty-first year 
 when the new life began in which she had to 
 make her own way in the world, without the 
 protection and assistance of the home, with 
 nothing but the opportunities she could create 
 for herself. Many and great were the diffi- 
 culties she had to overcome, yet she never 
 borrowed a penny. She often went without 
 sufficient food. New clothes were not to be 
 thought of. But no one saw her discouraged, 
 and she never felt herself humiliated. She 
 was borne up, albeit unconsciously, during 
 these decades of poverty, by the feeling that 
 she was one of those whom exterior circum- 
 stances could not degrade. 
 
 Her principal field of labour was education. 
 For several decades she devoted herself to 
 school work, from the lowest stages, without 
 feeling her powers misused. The v/ork was to
 
 Work 67 
 
 her taste, and the children found in her their 
 dearest and most enjoyable teacher. Her 
 motherliness showed her the way to their 
 hearts, and the pupils all loved her. 
 
 Anna Whitlock's now famous co-educational 
 school, one of the foremost in Stockholm, had 
 opened, a few years previous, as a small private 
 school for girls. In the autumn of 1880, 
 Ellen Key became a teacher there, and also 
 lived with Anna Whitlock until 1884, when 
 she rented a room of her own on Villa Street, 
 and later a small flat on Valhalla Road, in 
 order to be at least near the woods. 
 
 Her pupils, now mature women, speak with 
 gratitude and enthusiasm of her lessons which 
 often "reached heights of truly religious in- 
 spiration," as one expresses it. "She instilled 
 in us pure thoughts and high ideals," is the 
 testimony of another. A third has pleasingly 
 related her reminiscence of one of the lessons, 
 which, for a special reason, became a lesson in 
 personal purity. ' ' The hour was to have been 
 devoted to a French poet, but on her way to 
 school, Ellen Key had seen two of her pupils 
 of the fifth class engaged in a lively flirtation 
 with a couple of high-school boys, therefore 
 she took the opportunity to speak on a subject 
 that did not ordinarily belong to the school
 
 68 Ellen Key 
 
 programme. She spoke of the duty of the young 
 to hold themselves sacred, to keep their minds 
 pure and undefiled by the depravity which was 
 often a consequence of the superficial and 
 insipid jargon that the young people of oppo- 
 site sex indulged in. With words aglow with 
 tenderness and sincerity, she spoke of the duty 
 of the woman-to-be to consider and to concen- 
 trate herself for the high calling that awaited 
 her, ... all that which our mothers with 
 trembling hearts would have wished to have 
 said to us, had they been able, and which our 
 other teachers did not care to do, because their 
 work was to cram our brains with as much 
 book knowledge as possible in the shortest 
 possible time, this, Ellen Key gave us with all 
 the generosity of her warm heart and with the 
 full brilliancy of her eloquence. To us, chits 
 of girls of that horrid anaemic age of sweet- 
 meats and undigested knowledge, she spoke 
 in such a way that we bowed out heads in 
 thought as well as shame. And we experienced 
 at the same time a certain feeling of pride that 
 we were being treated as human beings — or as 
 if we were expected to become human beings. " 
 A fourth writes about Ellen Key as follows : 
 "She was so eager to form our minds in the 
 ' right way, that when, as once happened while
 
 Work 69 
 
 she was reading to us from Geijer's prose ^ 
 works, we were not attentive, she was beside / 
 herself. She wanted us to be sober and sensi- 
 ble, to discard superficiality, to learn to con- 
 centrate our thoughts on one subject at a 
 time. ..." 
 
 It would probably have been wiser to adopt 
 the school tone with its stricter discipline, 
 but Ellen Key could understand as little then 
 as now the necessity for school grinding, 
 warmly interested as she herself always 
 was, and consequently some thoughtless and 
 childish pupils wantonly rejected the precious 
 pearls offered. Moreover, she liked to see the 
 healthy playfulness of the young assert itself, 
 for she was, and is, a child among children. 
 And it is doubtful that the pearls could have 
 become their own valued treasures had they 
 been forced upon them instead of being re- 
 ceived by grateful hearts. During recess, she 
 was generally surrounded by the younger 
 pupils who crowded upon her screaming: 
 "Tante Ellen, Tante Ellen!" imtil she was 
 quite helpless and had to defend herself with 
 both hands. The "Tante" title was thrust 
 upon her by the school custom. Outside of 
 the school she has always been simply Ellen 
 Key to all children.
 
 70 Ellen Key- 
 
 Gradually she expanded the narrow sphere 
 of the school, and began to give courses in 
 history and literature for young women, at 
 first for a small group belonging to Jewish 
 families, among whose daughters she won 
 friends for life. Towards the close of the year 
 1 890, the pupils had increased to one hundred 
 in number, and came from all classes of so- 
 ciety, some from the highest aristocracy, mar- 
 ried as well as unmarried, many teachers, and 
 others. Her lectures dealt with such subjects 
 as The French Moralists, The Salons, Liter- 
 ary Conditions in Russia, The Italian Renais- 
 sance, America's Revolutionary War, etc. 
 
 A former member of these private courses 
 v/rites: "Through these lectures, which she 
 kept up for a number of years, Ellen Key has 
 made one of her great contributions to our 
 cultural life. ... Of the many thousand times 
 she has picked up a book to read, I doubt if 
 she once did so unpiirposely, for, with this 
 thinker more than with others, study goes 
 hand in hand with development of a personal- 
 it^'-. To one who has tried at all times to 
 follow this development, every new production 
 of hers, whether spoken or printed article, 
 appears as a firm, logically connected link in 
 her constantly broadening soul life. In small
 
 ELLEN KEY IN 1885. 
 FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY A. APELGREN, STOCKHOLM.
 
 Work 71 
 
 as in large things she scorns to occupy herself l. 
 with anything that has no bearing on her inner- 
 most nature. There is a subjectivity which 
 ties down thought, and shuts out vision. 
 It is that which shows itself in small souls 
 in their inability and unwillingness to look 
 beyond themselves. There is another sub- 
 jectivity which liberates the mind and gives a 
 seer's vision, the gift of certain great person- 
 alities. . . . This kind of subjectivity is pecul- 
 iar to the speakers and writers who have the 
 greatest power over people, a power which 
 is produced not alone by the eloquence of 
 language, full freedom of thought or lyrical 
 trend of emotion, or even when these are 
 harmoniously united, as is the case in Ellen 
 Key. It is this subjectivity burning through 
 all her words which moves one." 
 
 Still another writes: "Ellen Key presents 
 the facts of history in a manner which trans- 
 forms the often dreaded, dry study of names 
 and dates to a living and fruitful reality, which 
 takes hold of our very being." 
 
 Not until in the spring of 1899, when her 
 literary work had come to be of great import- 
 ance to her, did she give up her school work. 
 
 Since the autumn of 1883, Ellen Key has
 
 72 Ellen Key 
 
 realised, to some extent, the dream of her 
 youth, the helping in the enlightenment of the 
 laboiiring classes. In 1880, a People's Insti- 
 tute had been founded in Stockholm by Doctor 
 Anton Nystrom, who had taken the initiative, 
 and collected the means himself. Lectures 
 on scientific and historic subjects are held 
 here daily. When this Institute had been in 
 existence for a couple of years, Ellen Key 
 overcame her timidity to the extent that she 
 sought an appointment there as lecturer in 
 the history of Swedish civilisation. Her appli- 
 cation was approved, and with great trepida- 
 tion she undertook her mission. It was one of 
 Ellen Key's characteristics to avoid speaking 
 of herself, and accordingly few people knew of 
 her old longing for this field of work. But, in 
 a letter, her mother expressed great joy over 
 the fact that her daughter had at last gained 
 an opportunity to contribute to the enlighten- 
 ment of the masses, a duty which mother as 
 well as daughter considered sacred. Most un- 
 pretentiously, Ellen Key asked us to criticise 
 her lectures during the first winter. Her 
 first lecture was given at the affiliated branch 
 of the Institute, on a narrow little street in 
 Kungsholmen, and was attended by fifteen 
 listeners. But very soon she had to be trans-
 
 Work 73 
 
 ferred to the large hall of the Institute, which 
 seats four hundred and eighty people, and 
 during later years even this proved too small 
 for the many who sought admission. 
 
 The only criticism to be made of her twenty 
 years of fruitful service is that her language 
 has not always been simple enough for the 
 audiences of the People's Institute. It is 
 difficult for her to bring herself down to the 
 level of the common labourer, but as one lis- 
 tener rightly remarked: "The doors of the 
 People's Institute are open to all whose 
 education has been uncompleted, whether 
 through poverty, or the cares of earning a 
 livelihood and insufficient time for studies, 
 and these have made up the great audiences 
 which filled the hall during her lectures." 
 During later years her lectures dealt with 
 the history of literature instead of civilisation. 
 
 There are those who have followed her from 
 the very beginning. One interested attendant 
 pleasantly expressed the thoughts of many in 
 the following words : "The speaker's descrip- 
 tion of the life of past ages is always coloured 
 by richness of feeling, not by pathetic de- 
 clamations, coquettish epigrams, or decorative 
 phraseology. Neither does she throw weights 
 stamped with prejudice onto the balance
 
 74 Ellen Key- 
 
 scales. Her delivery is ever marked by plastic 
 moderation. Earnest research, earnestly ren- 
 dered, fills full the measure within the limits 
 of the lectures. One soon finds that it is her 
 deep, human interest which has brought her 
 to study history. This interest is correlated 
 with her finely expressed indignation against 
 all kinds of injustice and oppression." 
 
 What Ellen Key has meant to her audiences 
 was best made evident w^hen she resigned her 
 chair in the People's Institute. She made her 
 farewell in a touching last address which 
 ended with the following words: "Not great 
 learning and many-sided knowledge have I 
 been able to give you. I aimed at something 
 else. My endeavour has been, through litera- 
 ture, to teach you of life, to help you to live 
 more richl}'-, and to listen better to the voices 
 of life in song and story." The audience 
 was strangely moved by what she said, and 
 also by the strong emotion which drove the 
 blood from her face as she stood, framed b}'- 
 flowers, with downward gaze and subdued 
 voice, solemnly and tenderly bidding her 
 loved people farewell. 
 
 A labourer now came forward and with a few 
 appropriate words unveiled a portrait of Ellen 
 Key, done in pastel by the artist Hanna Pauli,
 
 Work 75 
 
 and presented to the Institute by members of 
 the audience. The founder of the Institute, 
 Dr. Nystrom, then expressed the deep-felt 
 gratitude of the Board and the Pubhc to 
 Froken Ellen Key, who for a period of twenty 
 years had been an honour to the People's 
 Institute. 
 
 That her comprehensive and graphic por- 
 trayal of the phases of civilisation under dis- 
 cussion never even suggested a divergence 
 from a high conception of the significance of 
 morality, has been certified by those who at- 
 tended her private as well as her public 
 lectures, in spite of the insinuations to the 
 contrary that have been noised abroad. She 
 has always warned against submission to 
 authoritative dogma. She has ever empha- 
 sised individual responsibility regarding the 
 thoughts and events of past ages just as 
 much as towards the fluctuating ideas and 
 occurrences of our own day. 
 
 The gatherings called "Tolftema"' may 
 
 ' In this, her one and only "organisation, " Ellen Key has been 
 consistently true to her hatred of all formality. The meetings of 
 "Tolftema" have taken place regularly for more than twenty 
 years, without any red tape, club, board, or statutes, but under 
 absolute self-government, to the satisfaction of all concerned. 
 
 Ellen Key had before taken part in a similar movement, the 
 Dressmakers' Society, where she used to entertain the members 
 once a week with tall:s, recitations, etc., and here, as well as
 
 76 Ellen Key 
 
 also be classed as educational work. It is 
 a voluntary gathering without statutes, an 
 agreement between women of the well-to-do 
 class to invite workingwomen to their homes, 
 and through pleasant and helpful association 
 with them to diminish the distance between 
 the classes. Ellen Key had once heard a 
 young working-girl, say: "It is not your 
 better food and finer clothes we mostly envy, 
 but it is the many intellectual enjoyments 
 which are so much more within your reach 
 than ours. " This gave her the idea. On the 
 1st of March, 1892, she commenced to arrange 
 these socials with the assistance of some friends. 
 A number of ladies, twelve in each group, took 
 turns in inviting to their homes young women 
 employed in some manual labour, to become 
 acquainted with them and thus bridge the gap 
 between the different grades of society. The 
 journalist Rene writes about these social 
 gatherings: "Ellen Key also loves to spread 
 joy. Each and every one who knows anything 
 at all about her life knows that though her 
 days are crowded with serious work, study, 
 and research she yet gives many hours to 
 
 through her lectures at the People's Institute, she came in touch 
 with workingwomen. B ut " Tolfterna " were founded on the idea 
 of mutual exchange, and that constituted their novelty.
 
 Work n 
 
 brighten the existence of those who live in 
 darkness. . . . Never have I been so drawn to 
 Ellen Key as I was when I saw her in the midst 
 of that group of pure willed young women, few 
 of whom would have been awakened to higher 
 interests without her. " The pleasant friendly 
 tone which exists at the "Tolfterna" gather- 
 ings, without condescension on one hand or 
 humility on the other, is a very splendid thing 
 and holds much of significance. 
 
 We have a good description of Ellen Key, 
 dating from this period, by Hellen Lindgren, 
 lately deceased, an essayist of unusual sensi- 
 tiveness : "In Ellen Key there are two people, 
 one personal, the other quite impersonal; 
 one extremely sensitive, the other dryly 
 sensible, almost m.atter of fact; one hot and 
 passionate, the other absolutely self -controlled. 
 This characteristic contradiction may also 
 be observed in her gently modulated voice, 
 and her very energetic mode of expression. 
 The smooth, mmlike hair, and the generally 
 dark, plain dress give the impression of one 
 who wishes to efface herself, while, on the 
 other hand, there is something almost despotic 
 in her unwillingness to yield in a discussion. . . . 
 From her earliest youth she has been interested 
 in nature just as much as in books. With her
 
 78 Ellen Key 
 
 inquisitive mind and eagerness to acquire 
 knowledge, she soon became acquainted with 
 the different currents of thoughts and ideas 
 of her day, and in the solitude of coimtry life 
 the young girl steadily pursued, quite by 
 herself, an intellectual education which made 
 her mentally mature and spiritually whole and 
 harmonious, while at the same time she never 
 thought of culture as something finished either 
 for herself or for others. . . . This quietly 
 self-acquired development made her unfavour- 
 ably disposed toward the cramming system of 
 modem school education, where the mental 
 food is accepted from the teacher instead of the 
 pupil being obliged to overcome his own diffi- 
 culties and to crack the nuts of knowledge with 
 his own teeth. Her sym_pathy with natural- 
 ness, and her antipathy for all ceremoniousness 
 were acquired by her life in the country. In- 
 haling woodland air and philosophy in the 
 same breath, growing intimate with horses 
 and cows, and at the same time becoming 
 familiar with Shakespeare, Spencer, and Mill, 
 she developed deep insight into the life of 
 man and nature and civilisation at large." 
 
 In the summer of 1 890, Ellen Key made a trip 
 to Paris and E.ouen, again to visit her child-
 
 Work 79 
 
 hood friend, and to Bavaria, where she stayed 
 with her friends, Herr and Frau von Vollmar. 
 She tramped through Oberbayem and attended 
 the Passion-play in Oberammergau. In Verk 
 och Mdnniskor^ she has given so vivid a 
 description of the Bavarian highlands that 
 one is carried along, seeming to see it all in 
 reality. Her portrayal of the people and of 
 the scenery reveals a master's touch, and with 
 the wide-awake vision and historical sensitive- 
 ness of one interested in every phase of human 
 progress she observes the connection between 
 the remarkable plays and the national dis- 
 position. All that her eye has seen and her 
 fine ear heard, she has wished to share with 
 us. Each time Ellen Key has had the good 
 fortune to travel abroad in the greater coun- 
 tries of culture, she has, on her arrival home, 
 in one way or another divided with us the 
 treasures she has gathered. Through living 
 descriptions of places and personalities she 
 has furthered instruction and given pleasure, 
 hence we have joyfully anticipated each new 
 work of her pen. Her portrayals of the Passion- 
 play at Oberammergau belong to the very best 
 of the many she has given us. She begins 
 with a genial interpretation of the meaning 
 
 » "Men and Works."
 
 8o Ellen Key 
 
 of the cross as a symbol of nobly borne sorrow, 
 and then sums up the impressions of the Play- 
 thus : "The Past as well as the Present conveys 
 to us the assurance that the highest in every 
 age is submerged uncomprehended by the 
 majority. The life-renewing truth is always 
 trampled under foot by the established order 
 ... It is not by the cross that men have 
 learned to live; but by the cross they have 
 learned to suffer — and as long as living means 
 SUFFERING for the majority, crosses are likely 
 to remain on heights and in valleys." 
 
 Various motives have led our steps to Ober- 
 ammergau; love of travel, curiosity, and the 
 desire, on the part of literary tourists, for 
 something new wherewith to fill some columns 
 in the papers. On the one hand cold feelings 
 and pretty words, on the other hand the need 
 of the devout childish soul for strength and 
 solace in the struggle and want of earthly 
 life. Between these two extremes we have 
 Ellen Key's view of the scenes presented. 
 From the Campanile of liberal thought she 
 sounds her bells. They summon us to wor- 
 ship before the crucifixion of the innocent, to 
 abhorrence before the victory of unrighteous- 
 ness. In religious ecstasy she kneels before 
 the mystery of sacrifice.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PUBLIC ACTIVITY 
 
 BESIDES the very confining and regular 
 work at the school, and her private and 
 public lecture courses, Ellen Key has been 
 greatly in demand as a speaker before various 
 Women's Societies, Student Fraternities, Tem- 
 perance Leagues and Labour, Unions in Stock- 
 holm, Gothembourg, Christiania, Copenhagen, 
 Helsingfors, as well as smaller towns in Sweden. 
 Even as early as 1880, in Stockholm, we find 
 her giving addresses on different subjects. 
 Without pecuniary reward, she generously 
 lavished her energy to further enlightenment, 
 to collect means for treasuries, for agitation, 
 for this or that pvirpose. She has especially 
 laboured for workingmen, women, and child- 
 ren. When engaged to speak in other cities 
 she has always given one or more free lectures. 
 This is much more remarkable since she is a 
 popular speaker and fills to the last seat every 
 hall in which she speaks. Her ' ' self-realisation ' ' 
 has been to give to others what they other-
 
 82 Ellen Key 
 
 wise would have lacked, to awaken slumbering 
 talents, to make life richer for those who labour 
 and sacrifice, to give them holiday-moments. 
 She has seldom spoken on political questions, 
 or discussed married women's legal position. 
 Generally her subject has been some great 
 personality, art, or literature or other cultural 
 themes. 
 
 We have spoken before of Ellen Key's shy 
 and reserved nature and her lack of self- 
 confidence. Her family was greatly surprised 
 at Ellen's psychological turn when, in. spite 
 of this shyness, she finally learned to speak 
 in public. Now, her name has long resounded 
 throughout our country and neighbouring 
 lands, as well as farther abroad, by reason of 
 her power as a public speaker. Once, many 
 years ago, when she had forgotten her manu- 
 script, and was forced to speak without it, 
 she found she could do better thus, and since 
 then she generally jots down only the principal 
 points, finding the right words easily at the 
 time of speaking. Under the circumstance 
 it is but natural that a too hasty expression 
 may find utterance, but this happens, however, 
 very seldom. Her extempore speaking in- 
 stead of reading makes her lectures very vivid 
 and magnetic.
 
 Public Activity 83 
 
 It has been rumoured that she has studied 
 expression and oratory, but such has not been 
 the case. She is, as Oscar Levertin once wrote, 
 "a bom orator." When she enters a lecture 
 room there is something of the priestess about 
 her, and by the time she has reached her 
 place on the platform, such absolute silence 
 reigns that one would think oneself alone, did 
 not the sight of the crowded hall convince 
 one that the silence is but an expression of 
 the great respect with which the lecturer is 
 greeted. Her first words are uttered so low 
 that one hears them with a slight effort, but 
 the silence in the room sharpens the hearing, 
 and without raising her voice, her words 
 reach the farthest corners. By the rich con- 
 tent and brilliant delivery of her lectures she 
 keeps her audience spell-bound, even when 
 the discourse lasts for a couple of hours. 
 Again to quote Oscar Levertin: "What we 
 love in Ellen Key is her pure, noble will, and 
 her shining courage, the fresh and impulsive 
 frankness of her personality, the all-embracing 
 tenderness of her nature which lends her words 
 the fruitful, joyous fulness of the summer. " 
 
 This is especially true in regard to her effect 
 on an audience. The same writer counts her 
 one of those "whom nature has created after
 
 84 Ellen Key- 
 
 its own image, with a fertile chaos of thoughts, 
 moods, and inspirations. They awaken and 
 warm us, they fascinate by the multiplicity 
 of view-points, by the fire and glow of tempera- 
 ment and the enthusiastic manner of expres- 
 sion. Nothing is easier than to point out 
 inconsistencies, exaggerations, and contradic- 
 tions in such natures, but, at the same time, 
 nothing is more vain than to imagine with such 
 criticism to have soimded the depths of their 
 spirit. . . . Cold-blooded criticism cannot efface 
 the living impression of the burning sincerity 
 of their intentions or the music of their words. 
 
 As her lectures have generally been pub- 
 lished in book form_, their contents will be 
 treated in the chapter that deals with her 
 authorship. They have usually been con- 
 sidered at length in the press. Enthusiastic 
 praise and bitter abuse have crossed swords 
 about her ever since 1889, and thus it is likely 
 to be, as long as she appears before the public. 
 
 In some people's imagination Ellen Key is 
 pictured as worldly and ambitious, eager for 
 activity, desirous of a following. Nothing 
 could be farther from the truth. The de- 
 velopment of her feeling of duty, the broaden- 
 ing out of sympathy for her fellow-men, for 
 their needs and sufferings, are the results of
 
 Public Activity 85 
 
 her having learned to overcome her inborn 
 disposition whose deepest indination was to 
 sink back into her own world of nature, books, 
 feelings, and dreams, — an inclination which 
 she has called her "temptation." 
 
 One of her intimate friends once said: 
 "Ellen Key could never have broken away 
 from romanticism by intellectual or aesthetic 
 processes. Only the ethical power in her nature 
 could liberate her." This remark is deeply 
 true. 
 
 In the fall of 1884, when Ellen returned to 
 Stockholm to take up her work at the school 
 and Institute, her mother had recently passed 
 away, and she was very sad. At her mother's 
 death-bed, she had tested her own position 
 in regard to a belief in immortality. In 
 speaking to a friend she said: "I felt there, 
 that it would not be so hard to die without 
 hope of immortality, — to live without it is 
 harder." 
 
 There now followed some years of deep 
 personal experiences, new joys, and bitter 
 sorrows. For years, her life seemed so value- 
 less to her that she was tempted to do away 
 with herself, but this personal crisis had 
 decisive consequences in that it strengthened
 
 86 Ellen Key 
 
 her resolve to live in service for others, and 
 thus forget her own fate. Indignation over 
 what she felt to be unrighteousness braced 
 her, turned her away from herself, and brought 
 her into the battle in public life. Up to that 
 time, Ellen Key had commanded unqualified 
 admiration and popularity among young and 
 old on all sides. Moderate and considerate, 
 she had provoked no one. Her activities 
 had so far been confined to the calmer edu- 
 cational work. But from the winter of 1889 
 Ellen Key entered upon a new era in her life. 
 Development and liberation of the personal- 
 ity is the goal toward which she aims all her 
 efforts. Her lectures and writings in general 
 have always virtually had this object in view. 
 She calls attention to the interaction that 
 takes place between man's ascent to an ever 
 higher development, and his liberation from 
 prejudices based on law-paragraphs. The 
 greater the demands man puts on himself, 
 the less need has society for dealing with him 
 by prohibitions and punishments, and the 
 fewer these become, the sooner will arise the 
 ethnical and intellectual harbinger of civili- 
 sation, the individual. With burning zeal 
 Ellen Key preaches her gospel, counselling 
 each and every one to consider the right and
 
 Public Activity ^7 
 
 significance of the personality in all human 
 relations. 
 
 She proclaims the rights of the child, of 
 parents, of man and woman, of superiors and 
 inferiors. Aye, no one is forgotten. She 
 speaks to all, and for all, yet most warmly 
 for the oppressed to whatever class he may 
 belong. She knows that the personaHty may 
 be oppressed in the home as in the state, in 
 the narrower sphere of the family as well as 
 in the broader sphere of society. 
 
 The theory of evolution had found its way 
 to the north, and, in the eighties, there were a 
 number of able young apostles in our country 
 who zealously preached its doctrines. In 
 optimistic carelessness they threw away much 
 that was of value. It is true that much of the 
 old was tainted, and had poisoned the air. 
 Wishing to purif}' the atmosphere, they were 
 not chary when it came to discarding or keep- 
 ing what, in their opinion, was obsolete. 
 Older conceptions of morality, as, for instance 
 the dogmas of the State church, were assailed, 
 and the battle waxed hot. When the young 
 voices would not be silenced, and the reac- 
 tionary representatives found the time ripe 
 for chastising the "daredevils" who, for the
 
 88 Ellen Key 
 
 last decade, from platform and press, had 
 rashly attacked "the good old order," had 
 dared to disturb the "established status" 
 and proposed radical social transformations, 
 an old legal statute, with imprisonment for 
 blasphemy against God, was invoked. For 
 months the prison gates were closed upon a 
 number of Swedish citizens who had been 
 found guilty of this offence. The persecution 
 of advocates of the new ideas became general 
 on the part of those who were in authority. 
 Scholarships were withdrawn from young 
 students at academies on account of their 
 "heretical" views. And many other things 
 happened, both within family circles and in 
 the community, which made it evident that 
 the reactionaries ruled. 
 
 A long time had passed since the statute 
 dealing with "blasphemy against God" had 
 been applied. In the year 1850, so little pro- 
 gress had been made in the revision of laws that 
 a prosecutor demanded that F. Th. Borg, the 
 "criminal," the great champion of liberty 
 and truth, be sentenced according to Act I, 
 Sec. I, Criminal Code, with capital punish- 
 ment for blasphemy against God. He was 
 finally acquitted. That Borg later was twice 
 elected a member of the First Chamber, though
 
 Public Activity S9 
 
 his views never changed, is a fact which might 
 have taught us something had we been in- 
 clined to learn. 
 
 In 1884, August Strindberg had been in- 
 dicted for offending against the same law. But 
 when the jury acquitted him it was thought 
 that the antiquated statute could not be 
 applied in our day. But in the year 1889, it 
 was not enough that those indicted were 
 found guilty by the jury but, what was worse, 
 many, of whom one had the right to expect 
 more enlightened views, approved the verdict. 
 Here and there a voice uttered feeble protests, 
 through the medium of the daily press, express- 
 ing amazement and indignation, but on the 
 whole the silence which reigned was as great 
 outside as inside the prison walls. 
 
 "At this time of political dearth and in- 
 difference," to quote Elna Tenow in her 
 sketch of Ellen Key, "where friend no longer 
 knew friend, and science extended a brotherly 
 hand to superstition — when the banners of 
 freedom of thought and speech drooped, a 
 calm and controlled voice pierced the oppres- 
 sive silence." 
 
 It was Emil Key's daughter who with digni- 
 fied courage and humane justice appeared 
 before the Swedish people. Equipped with
 
 90 Ellen Key 
 
 political and historical knowledge, she warned 
 against the base tyranny that manifested 
 itself in the brutal arrest of four young men 
 because they, in the excitement of battle, had 
 not considered the form, while similar views 
 had been expressed with impunity by others 
 who had better understood how to clothe 
 them in scientific and philosophic language. 
 
 Called to speak before the Liberal Woman's 
 League in Gothenburg, she gave an address on 
 "How Reactions Arise," which was repeated 
 subsequently in Stockholm. And at the in- 
 vitation of the Student Society "Verdandi," 
 she introduced a discussion at a public meet- 
 ing in Upsala the same year on the ' ' Freedom 
 of the Press and Free Speech." The dis- 
 course was soon afterwards issued as a 
 brochure. 
 
 She reiterated in modern language Talis 
 Qualis" woe over those "who purposely wound 
 the lung in the broad breast of the public," 
 the lung being for her, as for him, free speech. 
 
 She turned to the legal statutes and showed 
 them to be in conflict with the law of progress. 
 She cried aloud that it is in direct opposition 
 to the civilisation of our day that spiritual 
 
 » The nom de plume of C. W. A. Strandberg, a Swedish writer 
 and poet. — Translator's footnote.
 
 Public Activity 91 
 
 battles be fought with other than spiritual 
 weapons. She did not defend the manner in 
 which the condemned had proclaimed their 
 views; she severely censured all classes of 
 society. And, though her sympathy, on this 
 as on all occasions, was with youth, she bade 
 them reaHse that the advance party, which they 
 represented, must learn to choose weapons 
 and rightly use them or shoulder the seri- 
 ous responsibility for causing reactions to 
 arise. "Our own faults and mistakes are in 
 the long run the only dangerous enemies to 
 our cause. " 
 
 Sharp attacks were made on Ellen Key 
 through the press. Many who had hitherto 
 been on her side now turned from her. But no- 
 thing disturbed her assurance of having acted 
 right. Now first did we become acquainted 
 with her strong personality, her passion for 
 justice which since childhood had inspired her 
 with an obdurate courage to defend, and from 
 this time on made itself more and more felt. 
 
 Ellen Key's words resounded through the 
 whole land. Her brave stand for the cause 
 of justice gave her a prominent place among 
 persons holding similar views, but lacking her 
 courage, and perhaps also her knowledge and 
 genius.
 
 92 Ellen Key 
 
 By hard work for her own economic inde- 
 pendence and to help her family, she resisted 
 her natural disposition for contemplation and 
 solitude. Having so far conquered that she 
 was able to express her thoughts, she was 
 moved by pity for the suffering of others to 
 become their interpreter. Her decidedly 
 ethical personality threw off the fetters that 
 were a hindrance on the road which seemed to 
 her the only right one. Her action in de- 
 fending those who were on trial for blasphemy 
 caused her to be proposed as candidate for the 
 Folk-Riksdag. But, thinking herself imsuited 
 for practical politics, she refused to accept the 
 candidacy. With a well-nigh imperturbable 
 consistency she has resolutely held herself 
 aloof from public discussions and congresses, 
 heedless of the numberless opportunities thus 
 offered her for expressing her opinions. Only 
 when forced by a deep inner conviction has 
 she come forward, alone, and independent of 
 parties. 
 
 We have mentioned that Ellen Key, urged 
 by Fru Adlersparre, first began to write 
 original articles, under the signature E-N, in 
 Tidskrift for H emmet, where they at once 
 attracted attention. Her first article dealt
 
 Public Activity 93 
 
 with Camilla Collett, and was published in 1874. 
 Then followed literary and critical reviews and 
 biographical studies of English women writers, 
 all treated from the point of view of the highest 
 idealism, especially as touching upon love and 
 marriage. 
 
 Shortly after the publication of her first 
 book, How Reactions Arise, in 1889, another 
 book appeared. The unfortunate Ernst Ahl- 
 gren' had recently ended her life, and, bound 
 to her by the ties of friendship and sympathy, 
 Ellen Key wrote her monograph, the sad story 
 of one who "meets death on every path," the 
 desire for life having been quenched by thoughts 
 of death, unsatisfied life-needs annihilating 
 the struggling, yearning, highl}'- gifted woman 
 and author. 
 
 Shortly afterward Ellen Key suffered other 
 grievous losses. Two friends intimately asso- 
 ciated with her since 1880, when her circle 
 gradually had become that of the literary and 
 artistic Vdnstern,' were stricken by death in 
 their best years, — Sonja Kowalewsk}^ who died 
 in 1 89 1, and Anne Charlotte LcfQer, Duchessa 
 di Cajanello in 1892. On New Year's Eve 
 
 ' Nom de plume of Victoria Benedictsson, a Swedish writer. 
 — Translator's footnote. 
 
 ' Left, the Liberals, as against the Right, the Conservatives. 
 — Treinslator's footnote.
 
 94 Ellen Key 
 
 of the same year, she had been present at her 
 father's death in her married sister's home in 
 Visb3^ where he had been cared for ever since 
 his illness enforced his leave of absence from 
 Helsingborg. Crossing the sea, one night, in 
 a snow-storm, she brought her father's remains 
 to the grave of her mother in Vestervik's 
 cemetery, the only plot of earth in the beloved 
 home parish to which she henceforth had 
 proprietary rights. 
 
 With such deep personal experiences of the 
 presence of death, causes for sober reflection 
 have not been lacking in Ellen Key's life. 
 The actual passing away of her father was 
 perhaps not so bitter a blow, since the paraly- 
 tic stroke some years previously had left him 
 mentally incapacitated. But the loss of her 
 two friends shook her profoundly. Through 
 them, Stockholm had been touched as it were 
 by a fresh breeze from the great world, and 
 this had been especially exhilarating to Ellen 
 Key. At this early date, she had as yet had 
 little opportunity for studying places and 
 conditions abroad such as later offered during 
 her prolonged visits to foreign lands when, as 
 a famous author and admired personality, 
 she was the honoured guest in private homes, 
 such as rarely open their doors to foreigners.
 
 Public Activity 95 
 
 The death of Sonja Kowalewsky, who, in 
 later years, after Anne Charlotte Leffler had 
 left Stockholm, had attached herself to Ellen 
 Key with tenderer intimacy, was felt severely 
 by the latter. Together with a friend she 
 had nursed Sonja Kowalewsky during her 
 last illness, and immediately upon her demise 
 she wrote her obituary which, though short, 
 was rich in content and caused us in the 
 north to realise what she had been. 
 
 Of Sonja Kowalewsky 's life-work we were, 
 of course, not ignorant. What science and 
 literature lost through her death was well 
 known, and the daily press, national and 
 foreign, informed us thereof. But those who 
 considered womanly qualities of prime im.- 
 portance now learned also that the world 
 had lost a true woman, one who "though she 
 was the most celebrated woman-scientist of 
 the century, and perhaps of all time, counted 
 neither science, literature, nor fame as the 
 central thing in life. For her, the heart was 
 the fountain of life. " 
 
 This character sketch was later completed 
 by a fuller mention and genial comprehension 
 of Sonja Kowalewsky's remarkable and com- 
 plex personality and strange life in the bio- 
 graphy of Anne Charlotte Leffler which Ellen
 
 96 Ellen Key 
 
 Key wrote upon her death, and where, in 
 loving memory of these two friends, she gives 
 a keen interpretation of their different temper- 
 aments, and throws new light upon their 
 characters.' In the fates of these women, 
 Ellen Key saw fresh proof of her oft-expressed 
 contention that for the womanly woman the 
 heart-life is the central thing. 
 
 The book, Anne Charlotte Leffler, Duchessa 
 di Cajanello, Some Biographical Notes, contains, 
 in spite of its modest title, a masterly char- 
 acterisation of her personality, and the reader 
 is also introduced to Sweden's literary world 
 of 1 880. The book was translated into Danish, 
 German, and Russian, and judged by the fore- 
 most critics as an exemplar}^ biography. In 
 this work we get a good insight into the author's 
 own personality, and we may well agree with 
 a re\'iewer that "with her ingrained unsel- 
 fishness which never denies itself, she simply 
 and unaffectedly avoids introducing herself to 
 the reader though she makes the third, and 
 not the least prominent, in this trio of friend- 
 ship and genius." George Brandes gives 
 
 ' The sketch of Sonja Kowalewsky as well as the biographies 
 of Victoria Benedictsson (Ernst Ahlgren) and Anne Charlotte 
 LeflBer have been published in one volume in Germany under the 
 title of Drei Frauenschicksak,
 
 Public Activity 97 
 
 Ellen Key a unique place as woman psycholo- 
 gist and critic. ' Quoting her pertinent phrase 
 that Anne Charlotte was the bread and Sonja 
 the wine at their spiritual banquets, he 
 remarks that "in Ellen Key's nature neither 
 bread nor wine is lacking." 
 
 A longer dissertation by Eva Fryxell in 
 Svensk Tidskrift (Swedish periodical), in 1893, 
 in which the deceased writers were attacked 
 from the standpoint of Christian idealism, 
 gave rise to a rather remarkable controversy. 
 In her biography of Anne Charlotte Leffler, 
 Ellen Key had stated that the three authors, 
 Ernst Ahlgren, Sonja Kowalewsky, and Anne 
 Charlotte Leffler, and other contemporaries 
 gradually withdrew their sympathies from the 
 aims of the woman emancipation movement. 
 The one-sidedness which Ellen Key had al- 
 
 ' Not all critics thought thus. In Dagny, the woman suffrage 
 organ, there appeared a crushing review where nothing was 
 found creditable. The total impression was summed up as fol- 
 lows: "Miss Key's book boasts the stamp of frankness, but we 
 are struck by its lack of veracity and loyalty." The book was 
 simultaneously reviewed in the Danish periodical, Kvinden og 
 Samfundet (Woman and Community), where an especially 
 laudatory article by Magdalena Thoreson ended with the following 
 words: "Wherever the woman movement makes its righteous 
 progress in the north, honour and gratitude should be shown Ellen 
 Key for her noble work." Thus differently was the same book 
 judged by woman suffrage journals on each side of the Sound. 
 
 7
 
 98 Ellen Key 
 
 ways deplored in the equal-rights women she 
 here assailed anew in her own name, as well 
 as in behalf of her deceased friends. What 
 was more natural than that some one from the 
 opposite camp should turn to combat the 
 opinions she expressed which also dealt with 
 such dangerous subjects as love, marriage, and 
 religion ? Under the heading ' ' Women-Author 
 Types of the Naturalistic Trend in the 
 Eighties," Eva Fryxell had attacked the three 
 representatives of the thoughts and views of 
 large groups of highly intelligent people, espe- 
 cially for their conception of true womanliness, 
 family life, and woman's position in the home. 
 And in several issues of the same periodical 
 Ellen Key and her friends were charged with 
 harbouring immoral tendencies. 
 
 Ellen Key was not slow to reply. From 
 their opposite camps the conflicting theories 
 of life, Christianity on the one hand, evolu- 
 tion on the other, strove against each other. 
 Ellen Key's final remarks in this controversy 
 may be found in somewhat revised form 
 in Tankehilder I {Images of Thought) (see 
 "Self- Assertion" and "Self -Renunciation"). 
 Already in her early youth Ellen Key had 
 found the Christian ideal irreconcilable with 
 life. Little by little she fought her way to
 
 Public Activity 99 
 
 the philosophy of life which has since been 
 her own. With clear logic and dignified lan- 
 guage she states her position in regard to the 
 Christian doctrine, and the reasons which led 
 her to a point of view in which every depart- 
 ment of human life may be arranged under 
 the laws of evolution. The seriousness of the 
 struggle during the "decade of hard-won de- 
 velopment," of which she speaks in her preface 
 to Tanked ilder, is here made clear to us. 
 
 Ellen Key may be said to be an interpreter 
 of the thoughts and experiences of a great 
 many, especially of those who have wanted to 
 take Christianity seriously, who, like her, have 
 fought the battle of faith, and made fearful 
 by a tender conscience, have sought in vain to 
 hold intelligence in obedience to faith. And 
 these can appreciate the worth of the clear, 
 simple, and, at the same time, sublime argu- 
 ment by which Ellen Key demonstrates the 
 impossibihty of a complete following of Jesus 
 for society at large as well as for the individual, 
 unless "compromise blunt the sword-point 
 which Jesus thrust, sharp and naked, at every 
 conscience." Those who remain sincere be- 
 lievers, comfort themselves in this bitter 
 struggle with the thought that this impossibil- 
 ity belongs to the imperfection of earthly life.
 
 loo Ellen Key 
 
 Those who call themselves Christians construe 
 the Bible as best they can to prove their 
 superficial Christianity to be real. 
 
 Ellen Key observes how Christianity's line 
 of defence varies from age to age. "Less is 
 now said of the God-Man, the atonement for 
 the sin of the world. Instead we hear much 
 of the personification of the ideal of Love. 
 On our relation to him depends, not our 
 eternal bliss — eternal woe is one of those 
 'imperishable truths' now antiquated — but 
 our part in the religious and ethical force which 
 alone is able to transform the heart and deliver 
 it from sin and especially selfishness." With 
 relentless logic, she proceeds to set forth the 
 manifold contradictions between the life we 
 live and the dictates of Christianity, which 
 daily cause twinges of conscience, unless it 
 becomes a matter of dull habit to take these 
 contradictions for granted. She gives a his- 
 toric resume of the development of religion 
 and puts Protestantism in its proper historic 
 place. ''Christianity as a religion reached its 
 old age in the Reformation. . . . Protestantism 
 ushered in the vacillating system of bargaining 
 with the Christian ideals, which shows its 
 influence on all departments of life, family, 
 state, art, literature, science which one has
 
 Public Activity loi 
 
 wanted half freed from Christianity and half 
 sanctified by it. . . . The sovereign right of the 
 individual conscience to decide in matters of 
 faith and morality has continued. It has 
 done its part in shaping our whole democratic 
 century, politically as well as religiously. 
 Its inner tendency a thinker has pertinently 
 expressed as pantheistic, as a striving to break 
 down the boundaries first between man and 
 nature, and finally between man and God. 
 And this belief in the oneness of man and 
 nature, the obedience to law in all that happens 
 is Monism." 
 
 After bravely and solemnly explaining why 
 she could no longer bear the name of Christian 
 and that the Christian faith with her had given 
 place to Monism, we understand that, when 
 we read her words, we must proceed on the 
 assumption that it is from the point of view 
 of this philosophy that Ellen Key judges 
 events, builds up propositions, proves asser- 
 tions, and founds hopes. It was from Spinoza 
 and Goethe that she had her Monism. At 
 that time, she had not read a page of Haeckel 
 by whom Monism was discussed ten years 
 later. In Lifelines, ii., she has further 
 expounded her faith. 
 
 Ellen Key's individualistic morale of happi-
 
 102 Ellen Key 
 
 ness has given rise to both amazement and 
 indignation. Egotism, they say, would there- 
 by gain an unworthy dominion of altruism. 
 But how does Ellen Key define individualism.? 
 Let us turn for example to her own words in 
 the Freedom of the Personality. "No individ- 
 ualist persuades himself that he lives for any- 
 body's sake but his own, or for any other 
 object than to develop and ennoble all the 
 resources of his being. But the more fully he 
 attains his self-realisation, the more strongly 
 does he feel the complexity within; he is as 
 sensitive to the weal and woe of others as he 
 is to his own." 
 
 Similarly, she speaks of the morale of happi- 
 ness as against the morale of duty. When the 
 young ask: "What shall we do to become 
 useful?" she cries to them: "Be seekers of 
 happiness! . . . With the very highest de- 
 mands upon happiness!" Then she tells 
 them what she means by the seeking of happi- 
 ness: "Development of all the powers of soul 
 and body, avoiding such amusements and 
 indulgences, competitions, and pastimes as 
 tend spiritually or physically to degrade, 
 vulgarise, or corrupt." 
 
 Here, it is plainly evident that only the 
 grossest misunderstanding or purposely falsi-
 
 Public Activity 103 
 
 fied citations can transform the gospel of 
 happiness, preached by the full-blooded al- 
 truist, Ellen Key, into a doctrine of self-in- 
 dulgence, and only by leaving out the second 
 half of the truth which she emphasises. Well 
 may one deplore the vague fancies concern- 
 ing these words which so often have caused 
 the fruitful conflict of principles to degenerate 
 into a sterile battle of words. 
 
 New moral doctrines arise, time and again, 
 and have always done so. The most recent, 
 now being developed, is the individualistic, and 
 is a much needed complement to the altruistic 
 moral teaching, which bases its message on 
 the theory of science in which all phases of 
 human existence are treated as an evolution 
 of the positive and last stage in the life of 
 humanity. Rightly to be an altruist one 
 must without doubt also be an individualist. 
 
 In the summer of 1894, she again visited 
 her friends, the Von Vollmars in Bavaria, 
 walking on foot through Tyrol. Ellen Key 
 is not fond of the ''puffing locomotives" by 
 means of which one rushes through places; 
 she prefers the stage-coach, "that uncom- 
 fortable and fascinating means of observing 
 a country's peculiar features," but she likes 
 better still to wander on foot when that is
 
 104 Ellen Key 
 
 possible. She visited museums and exhibi- 
 tions in Munich, Dresden, Numberg, and Wei- 
 mar, and returned home by way of Berlin. 
 After this journey, she gave in the Nordisk Revy 
 {Northern Review), "Snapshots of European 
 Art," a hasty but clear and constructive review 
 of the development of modem art. A second 
 reminiscence deals with her visit to Goethe's 
 Gartenhaus and the Goethehaus in Weimar, 
 which she describes in her book. Men and 
 Works. A third result of this trip, was the 
 little brochure Individualism and Socialism, 
 which Ellen Key wrote, after having exchanged 
 thoughts with George von VoUmar, during her 
 last visit to his home in Bavaria, and after he 
 had finally convinced her that individualism 
 and socialism m.ay be combined, something 
 she had long doubted, and, therefore, stood 
 hesitating before the socialism to which she 
 was otherwise drawn. In 1898, she again 
 visited these friends when on a tour to the 
 great cities of Germany and Italy. 
 
 The above mentioned articles, Ellen Key 
 considered as but temporary expressions of her 
 experiences, and not until years later did she 
 become an author in earnest. 
 
 The strong feeling of blood relationship has
 
 Public Activity 105 
 
 never left Ellen Key. "Our different ex- 
 periences and opinions cannot break these 
 ties," she once wrote. When she no longer 
 had Sundsholm to go to, she often spent her 
 vacations with her sister Ada, between whom 
 and herself the tenderest affection exists, in 
 spite of their dissimilar views of life. During 
 these visits to Visby, she learned to know and 
 love Gotland, making excursions on foot 
 through various parts of the island. Since 
 her sister's family moved to Karlstad Ellen 
 has often spent her Christmas holidays there. 
 Of Ellen's brothers and sisters, three are 
 living: one brother, the agriculturist Mac 
 Key who has two children — a, son Ivar and 
 a daughter Ellen; the sister Ada, nearest to 
 her own age, and married to Director Petterson, 
 has no children; but her youngest sister, and 
 first pupil, Kedda, married to Architect Yngve 
 Rasmussen in Gothenburg, has five children. 
 In these seven nieces and nephews Ellen Key 
 finds compensation for being without children 
 of her own. Since her removal from Stock- 
 holm in the spring of 1893, Ellen has spent 
 the time between her travels abroad partly 
 with her friends, the Gibson family, at Jon- 
 sered, and partly with her brother then living 
 at Oby farm in old Varend County. During
 
 io6 Ellen Key 
 
 the summer of 1895, Ellen Key's brother and 
 his wife entrusted their children to her care 
 during their absence. Now she actually ex- 
 perienced how impossible it is to combine the 
 duties of home with other work, an opinion 
 she had earlier expressed but now found prac- 
 tically proven. Her thoughts on this question, 
 strengthened by the summer's experiences, 
 she expressed in a lecture entitled " Miss- 
 brukad Kvinnokraft," ("Woman's Energies 
 Misdirected ") . The lecture was received with 
 great acclaim in Copenhagen, but aroused 
 much resentment in Stockholm and Gothen- 
 burg, when given there later. She was severely 
 criticised by the suffragists, who went so far 
 as to make offensive insinuations as to her 
 character. Among other imputations flung 
 in her face, she was told that by prating of 
 sex, love, and marriage she had shown herself 
 to be an immoral and dangerous person. This 
 judgment is repeated even to this day. In 
 regard to the tone which certain of the critics 
 allowed themselves, we may well agree with 
 the Finnish reviewer who could not help 
 thinking that it would have caused amazement 
 in other countries. Abroad, one has long been 
 accustomed to have women deal with these 
 subjects, but in Sweden one was shocked that
 
 Public Activity 107 
 
 an "unmarried woman" handled the delicate 
 questions which in "sanctified silence" ought 
 to be hidden from profane glances. If we 
 could have put Doctor, instead of Miss, before 
 her name, probably the impression would 
 have been another. 
 
 For those who have thought at all about 
 their life, especially as sex-beings, numberless 
 questions must have arisen for married and 
 unmarried alike. We ought to be glad that 
 there are women, even without a scholastic 
 degree, who have courage to communicate 
 what life has taught them, and certainly not 
 all physicians, sociologists, and philosophers 
 have penetrated the depths of these problems 
 as have some lay women. As regards Ellen 
 Key, she has touched on these intimate and 
 delicate subjects as only a master in the art of 
 language could do. 
 
 A very prominent man, speaking of her, 
 said: "What most surprises me is that those 
 who reproach Ellen Key for immoral tenden- 
 cies are the very ones who, through their own 
 interpretation, impute vilencss and indecency 
 to her utterances, which otherwise plainly 
 show a complete inexperience of the sensual 
 and vulgar phases of life. Those who will 
 not understand her ought not to read her."
 
 io8 Ellen Key 
 
 When Ellen Key chose as a motto for her 
 "Missbnikad Kvinnokraft," "Woman's His- 
 tory is Love," it must have been her belief that 
 at the least the women would not attempt to 
 dispute her, and that the little book would 
 be all that was necessary on this subject, on 
 which she would have preferred to keep silent 
 and where she imagined she would be readily 
 understood. Instead, there ensued a battle 
 which found its vent in a mass of articles, 
 and fifteen pamphlets, in which women as- 
 sailed Ellen Key for her false doctrines. All 
 these writings proved that Ellen Key had hit 
 vulnerable points in the equal-rights women's 
 system. The little book was sharply criti- 
 cised from suffrage quarters also in neighbour- 
 ing countries; though hailed with sympathy 
 and admiration from all other sides: They 
 spoke of "desertion" and in their excitement 
 overlooked what she had spoken and written 
 before in the same line. 
 
 The fanatical sectarianism, which unfor- 
 tvmately adheres to many woman's rights 
 champions, brings in its train, as always 
 where such spirit reigns, a prejudiced pre- 
 sentation of an opponent's opinion. "Ellen 
 Key has become unfaithful to the ideas of her 
 youth, ' ' they said. One of their best advocates
 
 Public Activity 109 
 
 had given herself over to the enemy.' Yet 
 all who have followed Ellen Key's writings 
 and public utterances ought to know that she 
 has always put woman's heart-life first, while, 
 at the same time, she has urged complete 
 freedom for her; that always, even in her so- 
 called reaction, she has spoken only of self- 
 limitation; and that she has never been 
 opposed to woman suffrage, but only to the 
 suffragists' method of twisting it to fresh 
 oppression of individual v/omen and of woman's 
 own nature. Ellen once said: "All that I 
 wanted, I still want." And we have proof 
 of this. In 1875, Nya Dagligt Allenhanda 
 printed an article by Ellen Key under the 
 caption: Robinson's Maria Cult of Protestant- 
 ism, where line for line she sketches that con- 
 ception of woman's destiny, which had been 
 hers from youth, and which has deepened and 
 strengthened with years. 
 
 Ellen Key has taken very little part in the 
 woman suffrage work, and this little only 
 while she was a member of the Board of Direct- 
 ors in the Society for Married Women's 
 Property Rights. During this time, she wrote 
 
 ' Alexandra Gripenberg in her great book, Reform Work in 
 Bettering Woman's Position, repeats this false conception, and 
 represents Ellen Key as a type of the erotic naturalism.
 
 no Ellen Key 
 
 for their journals, and gave lectures in Fin- 
 land, which were published later, in the interest 
 of the Society. After a few years, she resigned 
 from this Society, the only organisation in 
 which she has ever worked, feeling that "So- 
 cieties are the burying grounds of ideas . " But 
 the position of the married woman remained for 
 her the item of chief importance in the work of 
 the liberation of woman. And her Lifelines 
 makes evident that this is still the case. Yet 
 from the suffrage camp came charges that she 
 opposed woman's newly won right to partici- 
 pate in all kinds of labour. When they as- 
 serted that she admonished women to return 
 to the old degrading condition of sitting 
 caged in the quiet world of home, awaiting a 
 husband, she made the following rejoinder: 
 "Such an opinion cannot well be harboured 
 by any thinking person in an age when the 
 struggle for existence has reached a point 
 where the majority of women must choose 
 between work of any kind or starvation. 
 Least of all can it be the opinion of one who 
 believes in a future where no member of 
 society can withdraw from the duty of work. 
 Without work, woman can win an all-around, 
 intellectual and ethical development no better 
 than man, and woman needs work more than
 
 Public Activity m 
 
 work needs woman. The woman incapable 
 of work always falls into degrading depend- 
 ence in one form or another, sometimes the 
 most degrading of all — marriage as a means 
 of support. The woman disinclined to work 
 fills the vacancy in her life with a cult of 
 dilettanteism, nonsense, and adventures of 
 which the most dangerous is marriage for 
 pastime. Hence it is not woman's work that 
 I deplore. But I think the emphasis ought to 
 be laid on the kind of work. I pity the women 
 who have no choice, but who are forced by 
 want to accept the first best work offered 
 . . . but I attack those women who in peace 
 and quiet may choose their life vocation, and 
 who yet do not give a thought to so choosing, 
 that the womanly in their nature may find 
 expression in their work. Nature corrects y 
 abuses of liberty, but slowly and seriously." ' 
 
 What Ellen Key really has said and what 
 she means is that since emancipation is now 
 as good as accomplished for unmarried women, 
 let us use it rightly in accordance with woman's 
 nature. 
 
 The essential difference that exists between 
 man and woman cannot be obliterated. The 
 agitators for women's emancipation go too far 
 when they speak of absolute equality between
 
 112 Ellen Key 
 
 man and woman, because Nature prevents such, 
 equality even when woman violates her laws/ 
 
 As the most absurd misunderstandings came 
 to light, and the onsets had to be answered, 
 Ellen Key plunged deeper and deeper into the 
 study of existing conditions, as well as of old 
 and new literature on the subject. She had 
 long observed how the "comedy of love" was 
 being performed on the stage of real life, 
 how ignorance and hypocrisy indiscriminately 
 played a positive r6Ie even in highly cultured 
 homes. She saw the need of pointing out, 
 from a social, historical, and psychological 
 point of view, the wrong direction to which 
 the woman-emancipation tended, and thus she 
 encountered all those interwoven questions: 
 sex-love, marriage, education. She treats 
 these subjects directly in Thought- Images, The 
 Century of the Child, Lifelines, and, indirectly, 
 in Men and Works. 
 
 True to her individual disposition, she met 
 these personal attacks with great patience. 
 But, with the passing of the years, she has 
 seen so much of suffering and unhappiness, as 
 
 ' In her later book, The Woman Movement, Ellen Key has cleared 
 away some of the misunderstandings caused by " Missbrukad 
 Kvinnokraft," ''Kvinnopsykologi och Kvinlig Logik." {Woman's 
 Energies Misdirected, Woman Pyschology and Woman Logic.)
 
 Public Activity 113 
 
 a consequence of falsely dealing with these 
 questions, that her courage and her feeHng of 
 justice have been expressed in a more and 
 more uncompromising teaching of the individ- 
 ual's right to decide his own life, and arrange 
 it according to his own need, provided, how- 
 ever, that life-enlargement is won thereby, 
 which, in Ellen Key's interpretation, means Ua>X ^ 
 an upward ascending development. •'^ 
 
 However changing and diverging her utter- c^=»-<>-^^ 
 ances may seem, they are only variations in •rL-^'- 
 different keys of the same theme, and, to a 
 listening ear, they will blend into a harmonious -— ^-O^-^-^ 
 final chord. 
 
 Many have been the causes which have led ^ 
 
 Ellen Key into a more and more profound 
 consideration of these and similar problems. 
 In the foregoing chapters on Youth, it has 
 been shown that she was bred in the conscious- 
 ness of great love as the highest factor in life. 
 Through the literature she perused, her eyes 
 were early opened to the sacredness of true 
 marriage. Thus the heart soil was prepared 
 early, and, later in life in her own experiences 
 was sown the seed which grew into tall cy- 
 presses. Because only such have grown on her 
 own path, she has expended all her strength in 
 teaching others how to care for their roses.
 
 114 Ellen Key 
 
 A Swedish periodical contained the following 
 true resume of Ellen Key's thoughts in regard 
 to the questions mentioned : ' ' Ellen Key is not 
 one of those who dispose of a life question in a 
 week or a couple of years. For decades she 
 revolves it in her mind, before expressing an 
 opinion. What she desires, what direction of 
 the Woman Emancipation she considers ideal, 
 is made plainly evident by her utterances. 
 The sacredness of individuality is the life 
 principle on which must be built the ideal 
 society about which she never will cease to 
 dream. Not through the equality of all, but 
 through the equal opportunities of all, shall 
 the common brotherhood be established. This 
 equalisation requires freedom to develop one's 
 innermost being. That this is not similar in 
 all, Nature herself indicates." 
 
 The more perfect all members of society 
 become as individuals, the more need will 
 they have of each other, the stronger will be 
 the fraternisation, and the nearer shall we 
 advance to the great goal of the ideal society: 
 the greatest possible happiness to the greatest 
 possible number. Ellen Key considers the 
 home the foundation of society. In place of 
 education en masse, which only tends to simi- 
 larity instead of to equality, the home ought
 
 Public Activity 115 
 
 to include the school during the child's earliest 
 years, and, through knowledge of his aptitude, 
 he could be led from promiscuous reading to 
 special studies. The greater significance a 
 home holds as an educating factor, the more 
 may be gained in individuality, provided that 
 the children in that home are considered and 
 treated as beings with new individual values 
 to unfold, not to be moulded. 
 
 In order to have something to give, however, 
 the homes must draw upon the great cultural 
 values which society at large produces. This 
 production on a big scale is man's special 
 mission, according to his peculiar nature. 
 Man's work tends outward, and produces the 
 life values which society at large has to live 
 on; thus he is a direct supporter of society. 
 Woman supports society indirectly, through 
 her inward-tending activity, as the life prin- 
 ciple of the home, and this is especially due 
 to her motherliness, which, to Ellen Key, is 
 identical with her womanliness. Psychologi- 
 cally and physically, the cultivation of the 
 well-being and of the happiness of the family 
 requires all of woman's energies. Personal 
 love is her nature. First in and by love does 
 she create life values on a larger scale. By 
 her greater inborn morality, love attains the
 
 ii6 Ellen Key 
 
 joyous harmony between the physical and 
 spiritual needs. Her mission is to hold the 
 balance between the extreme poles of physical 
 desires and asceticism. And through her posi- 
 tive chastity — not negative purity — spiritu- 
 ality is kept alive in the marriage relation. Her 
 mother nature has not the physical strength 
 that man has, and this influences her mental- 
 ity, which thereby lacks the larger creative 
 power. If she is a happy wife and mother, she 
 must be a secular genius worthily to fill all 
 the duties of the home and, at the same time, 
 attend to outside activities. Whether mother 
 or not, she is called by her very nature to dis- 
 perse her forces among the little details so im- 
 portant for the home, which, though smaller 
 links in the world chain, would cause life to 
 collapse if they were broken away. 
 
 In the marriage relation, Ellen Key de- 
 mands full mutual freedom, equality, and love 
 as its only ground. Her desire in the many 
 recurring articles has been to give to the pre- 
 sent age a fresh point of view, and a new 
 appraisal of love. 
 
 ^ She believes in himianity's development 
 according to natural law, through its own 
 powers to achieve the earthly harmony which 
 is its goal. Not only does she lay bare the
 
 Public Activity 117 
 
 faults, the present conception and its conse- 
 quences, but she also knows that right through 
 these progress must go. She analyses the 
 many and varied reasons for happiness and 
 unhappiness. In telling illustrations, she 
 points out what it is that holds the mamage 
 intact, and what sunders it. Woman is told 
 that it largely depends on herself if the sun of 
 happiness becomes hidden by storm clouds. 
 She analyses and synthesises. Much may be 
 learned from her debates on love and marriage, 
 originated as they are in deep feeling and 
 keen intelligence. But, in reading all these 
 treatises, though instructive, elevating, and 
 overflowing with beauty of thought and expres- 
 sion, one is not entirely free from a certain fear 
 that by this weighing and balancing of good 
 and evil forces, of happiness and unhappiness, 
 of cause and effect, a sharper light than may 
 be wholesome has fallen on the relationship of 
 husband and wife. It is, for example, not 
 unusual that hearers of popular addresses on 
 diseases, when they have felt the smallest 
 symptom of the malady described, have 
 fainted from fear that this very malady was 
 corroding their own organs. Likewise, it may 
 happen that one who has felt a slight tem- 
 porary discomfort in the region of the heart.
 
 ii8 Ellen Key 
 
 probably caused by his own carelessness, by 
 reading of all these symptoms of sickness in 
 the marriage relation may imagine himself 
 vsuffering from some incurable matrimonial ill, 
 and, in weak despair, give up all hope. Ellen 
 Key does not seem to have considered how 
 great a part the eagerness of outsiders to dis- 
 cover bad symptoms in the life of married 
 couples may play. It is not alone the great 
 "Galeotto" but also the best intentioned 
 "soul physicians" who, with their home-cures 
 or operative interventions, may sever as well 
 as unite. 
 
 Ellen Key has great power of fascination. 
 She fills our imagination with visions of 
 radiant happiness. But she also frightens by 
 vivid descriptions of how faults on both sides 
 have killed even the tenderest love. In this 
 way there is apt to arise too much introspec- 
 tion. Most marriages would in general profit 
 more if "husband and wife learned to under- 
 stand that love, like friendship, is a question of 
 forgiveness, and that it consists of a mutual 
 sacrifice of selfish desires, " as Hellen Lindgren 
 beautifully expresses it. Artists of life are 
 rare, and few have advanced so far that they 
 do not stand in need of forgiveness. Ellen 
 Key herself says: "Those who believe in a
 
 Public Activity 119 
 
 humanity perfected through love, must learn 
 to count in thousands of years, not in cent- 
 uries, much less in decades." 
 
 Before this perfection takes place, however, 
 much may be changed for the better this very 
 day. And the many astute observations and 
 helpful suggestions that abound in Ellen Key's 
 works may conspire to save those who under- 
 stand and who desire to be saved! 
 
 There is one point in Ellen Key's ethics 
 where she is guilty of a dangerous incon- 
 sistency. It is in the matter of the freedom 
 of the will (see Thought- 1 mages). "Here it 
 is," she says, "that Vauvenargues develops the 
 deterministic individualism which, though not 
 unassailable from the point of view of logical 
 consistency, is nevertheless assailable from the 
 standpoint of one's experience." The great- 
 est philosophers have encountered the same 
 difficulty so this is no reason for finding fault 
 with Ellen Key. 
 
 But to what purpose does she quote Vau- 
 venargues, who has reached the same con- 
 clusion as Spinoza, when he says: "We 
 believe ourselves free because we do not know 
 the motives which force us to act. We are 
 not masters of our actions because we are not 
 masters of our natures," when she proceeds
 
 I20 Ellen Key 
 
 to interpret Vauvenargues' line of thought 
 to mean that just because our will is deter- 
 mined by our natiire, that is, primarily by our 
 desires, instincts, and passions, it is principally 
 this domain we ought to investigate and culti- 
 vate? Our actions are dependent on our 
 impulses, on the motives which are strongest. 
 Hence the goal of our education and self- 
 development ought to be to seek the impulses, 
 cultivate the habits, enhance the feelings, and 
 associate with the thoughts which later may 
 become strong influential motives for our 
 actions. When all this — seeking, cultivation, 
 enhancement, and association — becomes the 
 result of education and self-cultivation which 
 is consciously directed with the intention of 
 governing our desires, instincts, and passions, 
 then are they not acts of will vv^hich we our- 
 selves determine? Is it possible to gain a 
 philosophy of life by depending upon a theory 
 that lacks logical consistency? When this 
 lack of freedom of the will is urged as the 
 reason why fidelity in love should not be 
 promised, since love may cease independently 
 of one's will, and accordingly the conscien- 
 tious hesitate to give their vows, we shrink 
 from the consequences. 
 
 But, if we read on we find that Ellen Key
 
 Public Activity 121 
 
 herself contradicts her earlier expressed opin- 
 ion, and declares that "the intrinsic worth of 
 the personalit}^ depends largely on whether 
 fidelity is a life-value. One who desires fidel- 
 ity, marshals his impulses, gathers his forces 
 "around the essential, guards them from chang- 
 ing winds. Hence the will to he faithful is 
 incorporated with one's own integrity, one's 
 inner coherence, one's attitude and dignity of 
 soul. " Here Ellen Key obviously refers to our 
 will, which, judging from this last utterance, 
 evidently does not entirely lack in freedom. 
 
 Hoffding scores a strong point in his Ethics 
 when he says: 
 
 "One of the prevailing fallacies is that the 
 will has nothing to do with thought and feel- 
 ing. . . . Under normal and natural con- 
 ditions, the will evolves and confirms what 
 thought has embraced, and what feeling has en- 
 compassed. The will must be present first and 
 last, only thus can it be of assistance in the 
 fatal moment. The two individuals are not 
 subjected to blind fate. The matter is largely 
 of their own choosing and depends upon 
 whether they take life as a whole seriously or 
 not. Marriage, like all unions, requires self- 
 control and effort to endure." 
 
 In Life-Lines, ii., Ellen Key has dealt more
 
 122 Ellen Key 
 
 at length with the nurture of the soul of 
 which she had already given many stimulat- 
 ing suggestions in Life-Lines, i. Yet it seems 
 that the point referred to above constitutes 
 one of the gravest inconsistencies to be laid 
 at her door. 
 
 Life-Lines aroused a more violent contro- 
 versy than any of her other works. We are 
 not blind to its faults. Still it has not altered 
 our opinion of the vital nerve in Ellen Key's 
 writings. It must be evident to every one who 
 cares to acknowledge it, that she steadfastly 
 holds to her ideal view of the relation between 
 man and woman, and the life-line she draws 
 is perfectly logical, from her own evolutionary 
 starting-point. But she has hurt her book 
 by giving place with seeming understanding 
 to certain obnoxious anomalies which are 
 foreign to her own idealism, both that of her 
 nature and of her views; and therein lies the 
 danger. Because if on the one hand the book 
 helps to make the strong stronger, on the other 
 hand it doubtless may make the weak weaker. 
 
 Life-Lines, ii., contained Ellen Key's philo- 
 sophy of life as a whole. Already in her essay 
 on Rilke in Ord ocli Bild,' we had caught a 
 
 ' The foremost Swedish literary magazine, Word and Picture. 
 — Translator's footnote.
 
 Public Activity 123 
 
 glimpse of the same. The life-will of the new- 
 beings is here explained. "Full and warm it 
 embraces all the richness of life, great and 
 gentle, it bows to necessity ; fresh and courage- 
 ous, it looks toward the future."^ 
 
 Though tempted to give more space to this 
 subject, we must turn to other questions 
 treated by Ellen Key. First by learning to 
 know her many-sidedness do we get the true 
 picture of her. Most of the chapters in 
 Thought- Images, The Century of the Child, 
 and Men have previously been the subject of 
 lectures and essays printed in various mag- 
 azines. The date is purposely given in order 
 to repudiate the oft-repeated charges of the 
 great impressionability of Ellen Key. It has 
 been said that she has been influenced by the 
 author last read. Efforts have been made to 
 make her "harmless" by thus lessening the 
 impression of her keen insight into the needs 
 of the age. But those who have followed her 
 development have observed how gradually this 
 has unfolded. With an inner consistency, she 
 has gone her own way, and allowed nothing to 
 turn her aside. She has always avoided giving 
 
 ' Her latest book, Men and Works, makes additional contri- 
 butions toward a better understanding of her life-faith, which is 
 therein illustrated with living examples.
 
 124 Ellen Key 
 
 her oath of allegiance, has ever hated dogmas, 
 and has wanted life in its entirety. Those 
 who are easily impressed, generally acquire 
 opinions quickly, and change them just as 
 quickly. Ellen Key, on the contrary, is 
 extremely conservative in her emotional life, 
 and has but tardily completed the process 
 of development which her own life and 
 experiences, as well as outward circumstances 
 and environment, have induced. 
 
 Previously to the books mentioned above, 
 Ellen Key had published three smaller works 
 on social and political questions, the most 
 important of which is Individualism and 
 Socialism.'- She had long thought on social- 
 ism, and wished to see its theories justified, 
 although her strongly individualistic nature 
 was rather repelled than attracted by it. The 
 indignation inherited from her mother, at all 
 social injustices, and the insight, gained at 
 her father's side, of how wrongly a liberal 
 movement often is judged from the outside, 
 prepared her to understand socialism. Her 
 warm interest in its teaching was not aroused, 
 however, until there began to be heard the 
 
 ^ Individualism and Socialism was published in book-form in 
 1895, but had earlier been the subject of a lecture in Christiania 
 and Upsala.
 
 Public Activity 125 
 
 voices of those trying to solve the great social 
 problem, the mutual interfusion of Individ- 
 ualism- and Socialism. 
 
 In a review of this book of Ellen Key's, 
 Professor Gustaf Steffen said: "So far as I 
 know there has not been written, either in 
 English, German, or French, any compre- 
 hensive popular treatise which, with such 
 fearless independence, such straightforward- 
 ness in argument, inspiring confidence, such 
 epigrammatically pointed language, poetic and 
 polished form, has wrestled with the newest 
 of all questions, viz., how to find the higher 
 unity which harmonises the individualistic 
 and socialistic tendencies of our age. . . . An 
 exhaustive contrast study of Nietzsche's and 
 Tolstoy's ideas is one of the most alluring 
 undertakings that our day has to offer an 
 essayist Hke Ellen Key, with her sure in- 
 stinct for the inner unity of nature's organic 
 contrasts." 
 
 The final pages in the last chapter are an 
 exhortation to the youth of other countries to 
 follow the example which England then af- 
 forded. Seeing youth influenced by the spirit of 
 reaction, she tried to inspire in them hopes for 
 the future and desire for action, with words 
 like these: "The noble age of youth is capable
 
 126 Ellen Key 
 
 of feeling compassion simultaneously with 
 a strong individual consciousness of power. 
 And there are some who, in this respect, 
 remain ever young, ever ready for moments 
 of inspiration, moments when a great deed, a 
 great truth, a great beauty, or a great happi- 
 ness fills the being, moments when the tears 
 well up, arms stretch to embrace the universe, 
 and thoughts traverse it. At such moments 
 we are most intensely conscious of our own 
 personality, at the same time we feel merged 
 in complete sympathy and oneness with all of 
 life. A great life — to give continuity in action 
 to such inspired moments ! ' ' Fortunate indeed 
 the youth who receives such admonition. 
 
 When the labourers in Norrland and Halland 
 were fighting for union rights, Ellen Key was 
 ready at once to give her work and strength 
 to serve the aim which they desired to win, 
 and did win. In Karlstad, Upsala, and Stock- 
 holm during the Christmas and Easter holi- 
 days, she gave four lectures, afterwards edited 
 and published in one volume, entitled : Svensk 
 och Storsvensk Patriotism (Swedish and Greater 
 Swedish Patriotism). 
 
 This brochure consists of three chapters 
 without separate headings. All three aim 
 toward the same goal — freedom from oppres-
 
 Public Activity 127 
 
 sion. In the first chapter, Ellen Key turns 
 against the "world power which enslaves the 
 spirit, the whole social-economic system under 
 which wills are being bowed. " 
 
 Proceeding from great ideal view-points, 
 she gives us glimpses of the demoralising 
 influences which power exercises in various 
 departments of life. In hasty review there 
 pass before our eyes, pictures of capitalism 
 with sword drawn in defence of its economic 
 interests; of Germany trampling the Danish 
 nationality in Sonderjylland ; of Russia de- 
 stroying the Finnish Constitution; of France 
 performing the Dreyfus drama. 
 
 We grow justly indignant with it all. But, 
 she asks, have we nothing to vex us nearer 
 home? And she proceeds to draw a strong 
 contrast between the deep indignation which 
 we feel at outrages against liberty occurring 
 abroad, and the apathetic unconcern with 
 which we tolerate iniquities in our own coun- 
 try. She deplores the fact that apathy and 
 egotism to a great extent fill the place with 
 young and old which ideal enthusiasm ought 
 to hold, and that one may find the youth 
 shrugging their shoulders and saying: "What 
 is the use?" when they ought to be up in arms 
 against prejudice and injustice.
 
 128 Ellen Key 
 
 The warning Ellen Key here directed to 
 youth had a decidedly quickening influence 
 on many of the young men who heard her 
 lecture in Upsala, or who read her brochure. 
 Some expressed themselves afterwards as so 
 impressed by her words that sleep had fled 
 that night. Thanks to the enthusiasm of 
 these young students, the brochure was widely 
 spread, and it may be said without exaggera- 
 tion that this address set its stamp on that 
 generation of youth whom it reached. 
 
 The second chapter deals with the rights of 
 Unionism. Clear-sighted and just as Ellen 
 Key is, she takes the part neither of employer 
 nor of employee. In regard to this polemical 
 subject she desires legal contracts on both sides 
 and arbitration established by law. Union 
 rights must be recognised as absolute and 
 inviolable. Now, as always, she takes the 
 side of the oppressed, consequently in this 
 conflict she takes the part of the labourers 
 who were denied the right to organise. 
 
 She pleads for liberty as against despotism 
 and finally says: "We talk of needing fortifica- 
 tions against possibly dangerous neighbours, 
 but the fortification we especially have need 
 of is a flaming hatred of oppression of any 
 kind, a passionate energy of freedom, with-
 
 Public Activity 129 
 
 out which other fortifications are of little 
 avail. ' ' 
 
 In the third chapter, she brings her country- 
 men face to face with the Norwegian question, 
 in regard to which she considers the Swedish 
 feeling of liberty and justice even more unde- 
 fined and vague than it is with reference to the 
 question of union rights. 
 
 Long preparation, confirmed principles, and 
 thorough knowledge of the subject, preceded 
 Ellen Key's utterances, now, as always. 
 Through her friendship with Bjomson she 
 learned early in life to understand the import 
 of the question from the Norwegian point of 
 view. And, during the many years that she 
 was actively interested in Swedish politics 
 with her father, she learned to differentiate 
 Swedish and Greater Swedish patriotism. 
 
 Among the notes she made during Bj6m- 
 son's visit to Stockholm in 1873, there is the 
 following referring to Norway and Sweden: 
 "In our conscious assurance of being the 
 greater, older, and more illustrious people, we 
 are unable to feel genuine sjmipathy with 
 Norway, now that it wants to go its own way 
 and try its own strength, before perfectly 
 amalgamating with us, as we would like. 
 The two countries are like two brothers, of
 
 I30 Ellen Key 
 
 whom the elder, whose prestige is recognised 
 and whose power is manifest, proposes to the 
 younger, who has neither the one nor the 
 other, that they combine their land, share 
 everything, — equal rights and equal duties, 
 — and receives the pertinent answer: 'No, 
 thanks! That means that you would be 
 master, for you are more able to benefit me 
 than I you! And none would believe me 
 capable of anything, and I would never learn 
 to depend on myself even when I might do 
 so with profit. No! Leave me alone. Let me 
 fare badly, if need be, just so that I attain 
 my own stature. Maybe when I am a grown 
 man, we may unite, for then our forces would 
 be equal, and we may pull evenly, something 
 we cannot do now.' 
 
 ' ' Laws which are not forms for a content be- 
 come irritating bonds, and the true content — 
 love between nations — cannot be created 
 thereby. Therefore, let love alone, and it 
 will slowly grow in peace by itself. A day 
 will come when the two peoples will clasp hands 
 to form an indissoluble union with legal bond. 
 But before that day we shall have to mingle 
 blood and tears, have mutual memories and 
 mutual joys. And if that time does not 
 come in the way we Swedes want, or find to
 
 Public Activity 131 
 
 our liking, if we instead come to have three 
 republics in the north — which is what Bjom- 
 stjeme Bjornson wants — ^well, no matter, if 
 only the hearts be one. ..." 
 
 Few things better illustrate to what degree 
 the ideas for which Ellen Key logically and 
 consistently contended in mature age had 
 already germinated in her mind in youth. 
 The fundamental thought found in these notes 
 recurs in her dealing with this question, as in 
 all questions which she discusses: "Laws 
 which are not form for a content ought not 
 to exist. A union, whether between nations 
 or individuals, which does not rest upon a 
 solid foundation, that of mutual happiness, 
 should be dissolved." 
 
 In those days of preparation, when many 
 Swedes insisted that a union saved by war 
 was preferable to a union dissolved, when 
 brother-war was advised as a national duty, 
 Ellen Key proclaimed her opinion that each 
 and all would be in their full right to denounce 
 such patriotism as a crime, not alone against 
 Norway, but also against the noble past of 
 our own nation, against the present generation 
 as well as the future. 
 
 She was harshly judged from many sides for 
 her lack of patriotism, for hostile talk, and this
 
 132 Ellen Key 
 
 because, with true national feeling, she had 
 counselled the Swedish people to act like 
 Swedes, that is — ^justly, intelligently, nobly, 
 and sanely. While she may have over- 
 estimated the Norwegian national spirit, that 
 only shows the natural one-sidedness of that 
 righteousness which forces one to close the 
 eyes to the weakness of the person one believes 
 oppressed. Ellen Key, as she herself sa5''s, is 
 no Norway fanatic. She does not absolve 
 Norway from all blame in the Union conflict. 
 She concedes that the Norwegian politicians 
 have occupied themselves too much with 
 party politics instead of principles, with 
 side issues instead of the main cause. But she 
 also points out what had been accomplished 
 in Norway during the nineties alone, in the 
 line of political, judicial, religious, and social 
 justice, and remarks that nearly all of these 
 reforms had been repeatedly proposed during 
 these years in our Swedish Riksdag, but had 
 been tiuned down; and she adds: "Since 
 from my point of view the expression of justice 
 and humanity in legislation is the most deeply 
 effective work of civilisation, I consider it 
 proven that in regard to this kind of culture 
 Norway shows itself an able, active 3^outh, 
 tied to one temporarily crippled." However
 
 Public Activity I33 
 
 much one bewailed and lamented such "treach- 
 ery toward her fatherland," there are few at 
 present who can deny that she was right in 
 her comparison, at the time and place she 
 applied it. ' 
 
 In this connection may be mentioned another 
 action in a certain sense political. Ellen Key 
 was the first Swede who, following the changed 
 conditions in Finland in the fall of 1899, went 
 there and gave a series of lectures,^ in the 
 crowded assembly hall of the University, and 
 thus manifested the willingness of the Swedes 
 to keep up the spiritual intercourse between 
 the two peoples. She chose the French 
 Salons as her subject, so as to get a chance in 
 her last discourse, which dealt with Madame de 
 Stael, to express indirectly the thoughts and 
 emotions stirring the minds of the audience. 
 
 The lively sympathies Ellen Key aroused 
 in Finland, and of which the papers bore 
 witness, in spite of their constraint, found 
 their final expression in the farewell festival 
 which was arranged in her honour, members 
 
 ' At the time of the disruption of the Union in 1905, Ellen Key 
 came before the public with a discourse in favour of peace at 
 Heden in Gothembourg, and in the autumn she gave the ad- 
 dress which was later published under the title: The Future of 
 Scandinaviantsm. 
 
 ' Later published in At~nrr.m.
 
 134 Ellen Key 
 
 of the scientific, artistic, and literary world 
 taking part. Ellen Key had remained in 
 Helsingf ors over the 1 1 th of December, want- 
 ing to avoid any celebration of her fiftieth 
 birthday, never thinking that any one in 
 Helsingfors knew the significance of that day. 
 But in this she was mistaken. The farewell 
 banquet became a birthday festival, at which 
 Professor V. Soderhjelm and Helena Vester- 
 mark eloquently expressed the sympathies 
 already aroused by Ellen Key's writings and 
 which were now greatly strengthened by her 
 visit.' 
 
 In the spring of 1900, Ellen Key went 
 abroad, spending four months in London, 
 England, and Scotland, then going on to 
 Brittany and Paris at the time of the great 
 world exposition, continuing on to Italy, 
 making a long stay in Rome, and shorter 
 visits to Naples and Sicily, and returning 
 home in June, 1901, by way of Vienna, Dres- 
 den, and Berlin. The columns of Vienna's 
 foremost newspapers showed by their de- 
 
 ' Her impressions of this visit are described in a publication 
 entitled: In Finland and Russia. She has also published her 
 Thoughts on Peace, The Peace Movement and Culture (Fram's Pub. 
 Co.), and Addresses to the Youth of Sweden, all touching more or 
 less on the same sphere of ideas as the above-mentioned booklets.
 
 Public Activity 135 
 
 scriptions the great attention paid Ellen Key. 
 From the many speeches made in honour 
 of Ellen Key we may quote the following 
 significant phrase: "You have sown words, 
 and you shall harvest people. We love you. '" 
 
 Ever since Ellen Key wrote her first obitu- 
 ary of Ernst Ahlgren, she has often had the 
 grievous occasion of writing about departed 
 friends. She has done this in such a way 
 that one can well understand Hellen Lind- 
 gren, who once said of Ellen Key's obituaries 
 that one almost wished to die to have her 
 write about one. Karl August Tavaststjema, 
 K. af Geijerstam,^ and Hellen Lindgren be- 
 long to those of whom Ellen Key has written 
 after death. 
 
 The space does not allow further mention 
 of these or other of her shorter or longer 
 biographical and literary essays, first pub- 
 lished in different periodicals, and of which 
 later those on C. J. L. Almqvist, The Brown- 
 ings, Goethe, Rahel Varnhagen, Malvida von 
 Meysenbug, and Bjornson (a greeting on his 
 seventieth birthday), published in book form, 
 are best known. There is so much less need 
 
 ' Her lecture in Vienna was delivered in German, and the sub- 
 ject was the life-work of the late Arthur Hazelius. 
 ' Swedish writers. — Translator's footnote.
 
 136 Ellen Key 
 
 to speak of these, as the value of no part 
 of Ellen Key's authorship is less disputed. 
 The same may be said of her tracts in the 
 Verdandi series and certain short essays, such 
 as ''Courage," "Stillness," etc., which first 
 came out in Christmas magazines.' 
 
 It has been said that Ellen Key's writings 
 suffer from a lack of logic and order. The 
 reason for this is that when she proceeds to 
 form her thoughts into words the artist in her 
 compels her hand to draw the mists of poetry 
 across the contours and thus they become 
 somewhat less distinct. Moreover, the wealth 
 of colour in her style dazzles the eyes of those 
 who consider precise etching the greater art. 
 
 Although concurring in the main in the 
 above general criticism in regard to Ellen 
 Key's want of consistency, we want, on the 
 other hand, to endorse Per Hallstrom's counsel 
 to readers of Ellen Key's works: "When 
 stumbling over a sentence that seems absurd 
 in its categorical formulation, do not cry: 
 'Alas!' Simply make a mental note of it, 
 and read on. Sooner or later you are almost 
 certain to find — though possibly in quite 
 
 ' Another little work, The Education of the People, uniform with 
 the pamphlets Culture and Beauty for All, Ellen Key gave to the 
 Good Templar Order to help them in their educational movement.
 
 Public Activity i37 
 
 another connection — the complementary con- 
 tradiction and restriction made by herself and 
 often much better, juster, and broader than the 
 reader in the heat of the moment could have 
 made it. "
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE LAST YEARS IN STOCKHOLM 
 
 AN episode in Ellen Key's life, which ought 
 to have a place in her biography, is her 
 speech at the Ibsen Festival, and the resiilting 
 storm, which found its outlet partly in a pro- 
 test signed by two hundred and eighty-one 
 Swedish women, printed by request in all 
 the Stockholm papers, and partly in the 
 conflicting opinions expressed by the various 
 newspapers throughout the country. Two 
 hundred and fifty persons attended the Ibsen 
 banquet, and enthusiastically applauded Ellen 
 Key's address to the guest of honour. Ellen 
 Key had been out of town at the time of 
 Ibsen's visit to Stockholm, but was appealed 
 to by telegram, and begged to return to "voice 
 the feelings of the Swedish women. " Having 
 previously paid personal homage to Ibsen, in 
 an address of greeting on his seventieth birth- 
 day, and also in her lectures in Stockholm 
 before the Federated Highschools' Society and 
 
 138
 
 The Last Years in Stockholm 139 
 
 New Idun, having expressed her conception 
 of Ibsen and women, she had good reason to 
 suppose that her ideas were known. Conse- 
 quently, she abandoned what she has called 
 "her good habit of speaking for herself 
 alone, " although she had even then caused 
 fierce opposition, it was naturally much 
 worse now; for vSwedish women felt them- 
 selves called upon to protest against a speech 
 which proclaimed to the world, at home and 
 abroad, that they had entered upon a new 
 epoch, had received a new religion, new ideals, 
 and that their old ideals of morality now be- 
 longed to the "land whose sun had set. " One 
 can hardly blame these two hundred and 
 eighty women, who spoke only for themselves^ 
 as they too were "Swedish women!" 
 
 During that spring, while so many minds 
 were afire, exaggerations were made by those 
 who defended, as well as by those who at- 
 tacked. The best contribution is to be found 
 in Svenska Dagbladet of 18 May, 1898. In this 
 article, all interested in the question are 
 advised to consider what the now generally 
 respected Henrik Ibsen, who became classical, 
 even before his death, had to say in regard to 
 the "liberation of the personality," and this 
 advice is especially directed to the protesting
 
 140 Ellen Key- 
 
 ladies, a majority of whom, without doubt, 
 would be found to be Ibsen admirers, but who 
 misconstrue his ideas when expressed through 
 Ellen Key. 
 
 Our memory may be refreshed by a recapit- 
 ulation of what Ibsen has said in Brand, in 
 The Doll's House, Ghosts, in poetry, letters, and 
 addresses, and we shall then find how close 
 Ellen Key's line of thought kept to his. 
 
 The consequences of her Ibsen speech must 
 have proved to Ellen Key that she was right 
 in her instinct to avoid as much as possible 
 all public tasks. Her antipathy to club work 
 of every kind has been as strong as it has been 
 consistent. Except in the Society for Married 
 Women's Property Rights, Ellen Key has been 
 active only in Tolftema and in New Idun. 
 The purpose of this latter society was discussed 
 and accepted by a small group of ladies, of 
 whom Ellen Key was one. There had long 
 existed in Stockholm a men's society called 
 Idun, and, in 1885 these ladies decided to form 
 a women's society after the same pattern; 
 the object being to offer opportunity for stim- 
 ulating social intercourse and exchange of 
 ideas. The members of New Idun are re- 
 cruited from the women artists and brain- 
 workers of Stockholm, and the object of the
 
 The Last Years in Stockholm 141 
 
 Society is to see to it that notables visiting 
 Stockholm are brought into contact with the 
 intellectual world of the capital. Ellen Key- 
 proposed Dr. Ellen Fries as the first president 
 and was induced to take the vice-presidency 
 herself ; but when Ellen Fries sent in her resig- 
 nation on account of illness, the Society urged 
 Ellen Key to become president, and this office 
 she held for many years. One of the members, 
 writing about her in this capacity, says: 
 "Ellen Key possesses all the qualities which 
 grace a chairman — perfect delivery, dignity, 
 and humour combined, in bom eagerness to 
 bring souls together, impartiality in the most 
 chivalrous manner, broad culture, warm in- 
 terest in everything, a genius for arrangement 
 without being practical in the ordinary sense, 
 and finally a great ability quickly to make a 
 position clear and to decide upon a course. " 
 
 In addition to the annoying persecution, 
 which ensued after the controversy on the 
 woman question, it may be mentioned that 
 intrigues played their part in New Idun in 
 an endeavour to rem.ove Ellen Key from the 
 presidency which she had filled so well. But 
 as this Society had a number of high-minded 
 and upright women among its members, this 
 plot failed entirely, and Ellen Key was retained
 
 142 Ellen Key 
 
 in the chair until the fall of 1900, when, going 
 abroad to remain a year, she sent in her resig- 
 nation, to which she has since adhered in spite 
 of re-election. Before she left Stockholm, a 
 pretty festival was arranged by members of 
 New Idun, and the Society expressed in vari- 
 ous ways what Ellen Key had been to them. 
 Nothing but her interest in the new literature 
 induced her to accept the membership offered 
 her in Albert Bonnier's Stipendum fund, 
 formed in 1901, and from which she withdrew 
 at fifty-five years of age, according to its 
 statutes. 
 
 After Ellen Key's last lecture at the People's 
 Institute, in 1903, which was also the last 
 evening of her life in Stockholm, and which 
 happened to be the 30th of April— Walpurgis 
 Eve — a great number of friends gathered in 
 the ballroom of the Hotel Rydberg to take 
 farewell of her. A solemn as well as festive 
 spirit animated those present. Genial ad- 
 dresses were made in her honour, and she was 
 thanked for the Walpurgis fires of stimulating 
 ideas which she had kindled in our minds. 
 The following words are quoted from her 
 utterances on this occasion : 
 
 " . . . It is not from cowardice or weariness 
 that I retire from this field of action. To all
 
 The Last Years in Stockholm 143 
 
 of us, and especially is this true of me, there 
 comes a time in life when we desire to make a 
 halt, to gather ourselves together, and ponder 
 past experiences. Moreover, I am country- 
 bom, and the country calls me. 
 
 "It has been said here to-night that I have 
 sown seeds and kindled fires. I am deeply 
 conscious that the seeds might have been 
 more fully ripe, and that the fires might 
 have shone clearer, and been less dimmed 
 by smoke. 
 
 ' * I have taken part in the life-fate of so many 
 and have had to give out so much of myself 
 in small coin, that I now feel I must allow 
 myself solitude, in order to be more to the 
 few, and be able to give more to the man3^" 
 
 That Ellen Key left Stockholm and the life 
 which would have held fascination for most 
 people — being surrounded by admiring and 
 grateful listeners and a steadily increasing 
 circle of friends — was not the result, as some 
 supposed, of being wearied by the simultane- 
 ously increasing slander and misunderstanding. 
 It was the result rather of her feeling that she 
 was unable to give to all these friends all that 
 they expected, and also of the great demand 
 for free lectures and private advice. 
 
 Ellen Key does not belong to those who drop
 
 144 Ellen Key 
 
 old friends for new; any misunderstanding 
 with a friend causes her anguish, and while 
 the bitterest attacks are not likely to give 
 her a sleepless night, the fear of having 
 wounded some one's sensibility may do so. 
 For such a nature, each new relationship is an 
 exercise that calls upon the very forces of the 
 soul, and, when it is known, besides, that Ellen 
 Key personally answers all inquiries, never 
 avoids doing any one a service, but on the 
 contrary even takes pains to invent them, 
 devoting time and strength thereto, it may 
 readilv be understood how overworked she 
 must have been during the last years in 
 Stockholm. 
 
 Moreover, it is characteristic of her to be 
 moved passionately by the fate of others, and 
 to grieve over their wrongs. In her nature are 
 combined the traits of both father and mother, 
 forming an individuality dissimilar to either. 
 She herself says that this combination is so 
 perfect that she has one far-sighted and one 
 near-sighted eye, gifts from each parent! 
 From persons who have known both, we learn 
 that Ellen inherits her strong emotions from 
 her mother, also the exceeding modesty which 
 always makes her as grateful for the simplest 
 kindness and as unable to make demands as
 
 The Last Years in Stockholm 145 
 
 when she was a Httle girl at Sundsholm . And 
 from her father, we know her to have inherited, 
 a sunny, kindly disposition and the ability to 
 be just and noble in combat. Both parents 
 were hot-tempered, and this disposition has 
 descended in full strength to Ellen Key; her 
 quick perception makes her very impatient 
 with the slowness of others. It is true that she 
 has such self-control that few persons know 
 of this fault, but she herself declares that she 
 at least "several times a year sees red, and 
 feels murder!" Her strong hatred of all 
 injustice makes it hard for her to endure 
 wrongs toward herself, although she is mag- 
 nanimously forgiving. And she does not find 
 it difficult to make kind replies to sharp oppo- 
 nents of her views, if such opponents otherwise 
 hold her respect. In private life she never 
 makes propaganda of her opinions, — nay, she 
 considers it a duty not to disturb any faith 
 by which a person really lives. The sparkling 
 wit which sometimes flashes forth never be- 
 guiles her into joking over serious subjects, 
 not even in the jolliest conversation. 
 
 In connection with this characterisation 
 of Ellen Key's personal life, which we have 
 endeavoured to give here, we cannot refrain 
 from some expression of the bitter pain which 
 
 10
 
 146 Ellen Key 
 
 all her friends feel that her dutiful life 
 among us has been the subject of the most 
 shameful slander on the part of those who 
 believed thereby to deaden the influence of 
 her words. 
 
 Ever since 1889, she has been subject to 
 public attacks, vile slander, and abuse, inde- 
 cent anonymous letters, brazen lies about her 
 private life, and insinuations uttered by "cul- 
 tured" ladies in private gatherings. Though 
 all this has been extremely painful to her 
 womanly sensitiveness, she has persisted with 
 her work, though grown so shy of people that, 
 during the last years in Stockholm, she never 
 showed herself in public except when on the 
 lecture platform. One of the many preposter- 
 ous lies spread about her, which went the 
 round even of the Stockholm clergy, and was 
 related as a "fact," was that she had a grown 
 daughter. How did such a story originate? 
 In this wise: A young girl who did not want 
 to trouble Ellen Key with calls, but who was 
 an eager listener at her lectures, used to write 
 her inquiries touching on matters of intimate 
 importance. And she took the liberty of 
 calHng Ellen Key "little mother," feeling a 
 spiritual daughterly relation to her. Ellen 
 Key left the letter lying open, and some one
 
 The Last Years in Stockholm 147 
 
 who glanced at it then officiously spread the 
 gossip.' 
 
 Of like character, or still more unreasonable, 
 are all other stories about Ellen Key, or about 
 persons with whose erotic life she is supposed 
 to have interfered. 
 
 Ellen Key's naivete is so great that a child 
 may fool her with some simple ruse time and 
 again in succession, and this credulity, this 
 lack of suspicion, light-hearted good humour, 
 in other words, this simplicity which so endears 
 her to her friends — though at the same time 
 causing them much apprehension for her — is 
 incomprehensible to her enemies. They have 
 not even blushed to direct indecent questions 
 to her in public about her private life, an 
 impudence which they have excused by saying 
 that there could be nothing insulting in the 
 presumption that "Miss Key lived as she 
 preached." People forget that a woman of 
 Ellen Key's age has good reason to believe 
 herself able to speak on these subjects as one 
 personally outside of them, and also that a 
 woman with Ellen Key's public courage ought 
 to be able to believe herself protected from the 
 
 ' The gossip related in Svarla Fanor (Black Banners), by August 
 Strindberg, is one example among the many of the slanderous tales 
 which have appeared in print about Ellen Key.
 
 148 Ellen Key 
 
 suspicion of not having openly shouldered the 
 consequences of her private actions. When 
 Ellen Ke}^ stands as a single woman before 
 the world, it means that she is single in fact. 
 
 I have never belonged to Ellen Key's inti- 
 mate circle; my more conservative nature 
 has even kept me on the outskirts, and I have 
 often felt trepidation at her uncompromising 
 desire for freedom, and the bold language con- 
 cerning debatable principles into which she is 
 sometimes beguiled by her ardent tempera- 
 ment. Yet we have long been friends. 
 Midsummer-Eve, of 1876, Ellen Key arrived 
 at my country home, eagerly expected, as I 
 had heard her much spoken of. She made 
 only a short visit, but she produced an impres- 
 sion for life. What first attracted me was 
 the noble simplicity of her nature. Her con- 
 versation was engrossing, and she had a rare 
 ability of choosing suitable subjects for each 
 member of our large household, where, as is 
 often the case in the country, even outsiders 
 were present at meals, generally as quiet 
 listeners only. But Ellen Key, with her fine 
 amiability, knew how to make all feel at their 
 ease. One subject led to another and the 
 atmosphere was one of good feeling and 
 pleasure. A great void was felt when she left,
 
 The Last Years in Stockholm 149 
 
 and that is the common experience in the 
 circles she leaves, because she always searches 
 out the best in people. That is the secret of > 
 the delight one feels in her nearness. 
 
 During all the years which have passed 
 since then, I have always found her the same, 
 and I have been near enough to observe her 
 personal life, which is very simple. It has 
 often touched me deeply to notice how hard 
 worked and lonely she seemed, when she has 
 stopped for a moment's visit — rich and unfor- 
 gettable for me — on her way to the People's 
 Institute, or from luncheon at the house- 
 keeping school. This home lover, this hostess, 
 — so attractive at the little parties she some- 
 times gave where many charming women 
 gathered, a curious mingling of aristocratic 
 relatives with her democratic friends, — would 
 go in all weathers to get her meals in the sim- 
 plest possible way; and that too, in spite of 
 her fine, cultivated taste, and her appreciation 
 of "pure Rhine wine poured in a Venetian 
 glass." And of her own accord, she chose 
 this extremely plain living, for she might 
 have arranged her mode of life, in later years 
 at least, more in keeping with her person. 
 But then she would not have been able, by 
 free lectures and other direct help, to have
 
 150 Ellen Key 
 
 made so many people happy, nor perhaps 
 have looked forward in old age to an independ- 
 ence indispensable for her. And her "art of 
 living" has always been to choose and strive 
 for the values in life most essential to herself. 
 Ellen Key has during middle age gained a 
 health and strength which her delicate con- 
 stitution in youth did not promise. The 
 wholesome regular life which she has led has 
 done much to produce this happy result. She 
 has had simple habits in food and drink, and 
 has led a healthy out-of-door life, although 
 athletics, as practised in the cities, have never 
 attracted her. She is still a good walker and 
 swimmer, and, however precious time may 
 have been to her, she has abstained from night 
 work. Strictly dutiful in her work, her habit 
 has been to retire early, and rise early, and, 
 immediately after her bath, to take a long 
 tramp in the woods. One of her nearest 
 friends — ^who has told me much of what I am 
 here relating of Ellen Key's characteristics — 
 used sometimes to call for her on these walks. 
 One morning she said, as she entered her room: 
 "Have you time to go out to-day? you have 
 your lecture on the 'Century of the Child' 
 this evening." Ellen Key answered calmly, 
 "Why, certainly, that lecture I have been
 
 The Last Years in Stockholm 151 
 
 preparing in my mind since I was four years 
 old." When they reached the woods, Ellen 
 Key was in the midst of an interesting talk 
 which held her friend's attention so that she 
 did not notice that she was about to step on 
 a flower. Ellen Key suddenly held her back, 
 exclaiming: "Don't you see the flower? It 
 is also a Hfe!" To be considerate of all lives, 
 even that of a poor unnoticed little flower, is 
 characteristic of her. 
 
 I remember the many times she has refused 
 to come to evening parties, especially during 
 her years of teaching. The answer used to be : 
 "No, thank you. I can't be up at night for 
 I must be up early, and prepare to fulfil my 
 duties. A tired teacher is good for nothing. " 
 She was seldom seen at the theatres, and only 
 music, especially symphony concerts, tempted 
 her. During the thirty 3^ears she lived in 
 Stockholm, she has hardly been seen more than 
 ten times at public social gatherings, or cafe 
 parties, so distasteful was this life to her. 
 
 One of her simple habits was to travel third 
 class, even on night journeys. The cigarette- 
 smoking, which many consider unbecoming to 
 women, she has never indulged in; her mother 
 did not like to see women smoke ; she respected 
 her mother's feeling. Of wine, she tastes only
 
 152 Ellen Key 
 
 the lighter kinds, and this seldom and spar- 
 ingly. Thus, the image of Ellen Key as an 
 apostle of self-indulgence is as imlike her as 
 possible. On the contrary, her many friends 
 see in her a remarkably controlled person, and 
 in regard to all the pleasures of life extremely 
 abstemious. Ellen Key has been wont to say 
 that nothing is better for a rich man's children 
 than to be brought up as poor, for wealth 
 may disappear, as happened in her own case, 
 but hardihood, wherewith to meet all vicis- 
 situdes in life, remains. 
 
 In the different little homes she has had in 
 Stockholm, 1884, 16 Villa Street, from the 
 autumn of 1892, 15 Valhalla Road, and from 
 the autumn of 1895, 49 Valhalla Road she 
 had arranged things very pleasantly. Though 
 having to walk up and down four flights of 
 stairs man}^ times a day, jT'et when she had 
 reached her haven and closed the door, she 
 felt happy and at peace and enjoyed concen- 
 trating on her work surrounded by her own 
 familiar things. In her home, which consisted 
 principally of a large living and work room 
 combined, one learned to know her and what 
 she means, perhaps better than by her books. 
 "Beauty for All" is, for instance, not easy to 
 comprehend, but one who visited Ellen Key
 
 ELLEN KEY. 
 PHOTOr.RAPH BY PERMISSION OF SLENDERS FORLAG, COPENHAGEN.
 
 The Last Years in Stockholm 153 
 
 would understand the words of Ehrensvard 
 which she quotes in that essay: " It is almost 
 incredible how beautiful a thing becomes when 
 we see a reason for it." Her bedroom was 
 furnished with her grandfather's writing-desk, 
 and the old and worn toilet table which had 
 belonged to her grandmother; her father's 
 sofa served as her bed, and, on the opposite 
 wall, hung her mother's portrait, and photo- 
 graphs of her dead friends, and of Sundsholm, 
 Bjorno, and Kallernas. In the larger room, 
 stood her own writing-table with the Eros bust 
 from the Vatican, and comfortable pieces of 
 furniture, almost all from the old home, among 
 them a little chair and sofa, which had been 
 her own since she was four years old, book- 
 shelves, paintings and sketches done by her 
 friends, some of them our foremost artists. 
 Over her resting place hung a large photo- 
 graph of Bocklin's Island of Death, also a re- 
 lief medallion of her father, the handsome 
 features in life size, and around it a great 
 laurel wreath which had been given to her. 
 And then books everywhere, lying at hand on 
 all tables, and during the whole winter, flowers 
 often given her at the lectures at the People's 
 Institute where they had been brought by 
 unknown friends, and whence they had been
 
 154 Ellen Key 
 
 carried to Ellen Key's home by devoted 
 listeners. 
 
 On week-days her door was closed, but for 
 some hours on Sundays she would see every one 
 who wished to speak with her/ usually on 
 some important errand of their own, or about 
 some cause they held in common. The hostess 
 tried to satisfy all without forcing herself on 
 any one. To see to it that people who might 
 enjoy each other would meet, has, for years, 
 been one of the things that made her happy, 
 and many bonds of friendship have been 
 formed in Sweden and in Europe, with Ellen 
 Key as mediator. 
 
 Seeing Ellen Key in her lonely home it was 
 impossible to ward off the thought of how 
 meaningless hfe is; for however much one may 
 be comforted in thinking that this very lone- 
 liness has caused her to be so much to so many, 
 one cannot help but wonder what can have 
 caused her to remain alone. A woman who 
 has not had an opportunity to marry is a rare 
 phenomenon. And when a woman like Ellen 
 Key has remained single, only a low mind can 
 interpret her emphasis of the importance of 
 love and motherhood as an expression of an 
 
 ' Ellen Key has never had a telephone in her home, not even in 
 her present and permanent home, Strand.
 
 The Last Years in Stockholm 155 
 
 old maid's desire for marriage! Those who 
 care to understand, feel that Ellen Key speaks 
 as one who does not consider herself or her own 
 fate although doomed by fate to be among 
 those who "sit alone by solitary fires." And 
 her strength lies in not having lost the feeling 
 for the great values of life, with all her 
 heart she desires for others what she has not 
 herself. Whatever the cause of Ellen Key's 
 singleness may have been, one cannot but 
 wonder at the amazing manner in which her 
 views of the happiness of love as the highest 
 life value have been interpreted, interpreta- 
 tions by w^hich she would have deemed her own 
 life valueless. Many know how rich Ellen 
 Key has made her lonely life, and it has indeed 
 not been easy for her to believe that she could 
 be misinterpreted to such an extent as that 
 she would have all women return to the kitchen 
 hearth and the nursery, while she herself was 
 engaged in large public activities. It has been 
 all the harder for her to understand this, as 
 the consistency between her words and her 
 actions is one of the strong traits in her charac- 
 ter, and if she had wanted to turn women back 
 to private life she herself would have been the 
 first to return thither. 
 
 Ellen Key has never taken part in public 
 
 .^
 
 156 Ellen Key 
 
 charity, the value of which she doubts, but 
 many little acts point to her strong social 
 feeling, acts which "charitable" folk would 
 do well to imitate. For instance, she has 
 never sent New Year cards since she heard of 
 a postman who was prostrated one New Year's 
 day! Neither has she, since her first visits 
 to a circus, a horse-race, vaudeville, and comic 
 opera when she formed her own opinion of 
 them, ever again sought like amusements, 
 finding them valueless. Many similar traits 
 could be related of her. And with all this 
 she possesses the calmest courage to follow 
 her own convictions and to brave all storms 
 when driven into them by her own inner 
 necessity. It is worthy of mention that she 
 was found among the speakers^ at Ladugards- 
 gardet,^ one first of May, to the horror of all 
 her friends, except such as were socialists. 
 L Ellen Key is never led by anything but her 
 own innermost intuition, and, for her, defiance 
 for its own sake is as foreign as the love of 
 battle for the sake of battle. And when, in 
 1903, she left the community where she had 
 withstood so many onslaughts, it was neither 
 faint-heartedness nor discouragement which 
 
 ' In behalf of a normal workday for women. 
 
 * A large open field on the outskirts of Stockholm. 
 
 C-'-
 
 The Last Years in Stockholm 157 
 
 drove her away. It was, as already noted, her 
 deep yearning for the country, a yearning 
 which had been present during all the years in 
 Stockholm. This longing did not, however, 
 attain its original goal — the home of her child- 
 hood — as she exr 'ned in an interview. 
 When the question s put to her as to where 
 she wished to live, she answered : " My parental 
 home, Sundsholm, where I was bom and where 
 I spent the happy years of my childhood, is 
 now in the hands of strangers. Never again 
 may I return there. But thither I yearn with 
 my whole heart, though in vain. How happy 
 I should be if I could procure that bit of soil, 
 if it were vouchsafed me to enter Sundsholm 
 as its owner, to be allowed to arrange and 
 direct and work there, to see the trees blossom 
 and the grass grow in the place where my soul 
 and all my being have their roots, and to sleep 
 in the little gable room where I dreamt the 
 dreams of my childhood." From her child- 
 hood home and her paradise, the little gable 
 room at Sundsholm, Ellen Key was driven out 
 into the bustling world to assist in the building 
 of new homes for new people. Her youth and 
 her dream life she carries with her, and where- 
 ever she has her home youth and visions will 
 accompany her as long as she lives.
 
 SUPPLEMENT 
 
 EIGHT years have passed since my bio- 
 graphy of Ellen Key first appeared. 
 Now that this revised edition is to be published 
 in an English translation, there is so much 
 more to be said that I feel the necessity of 
 adding a supplement. 
 
 The name of Ellen Key has increasingly won 
 a recognised and elevated place among con- 
 temporary thinkers. In all Europe, and gradu- 
 ally in America, she has come to be of great 
 importance for the highest development of 
 humanity. 
 
 In her own country appreciation has been 
 slow. "With the strength and swiftness of a 
 storm-wind, her reputation spread over Eu- 
 rope," as some one has said, but in Sweden we 
 could not, would not understand. One of 
 our most prominent critics' gives so good an 
 explanation of this that I wish to quote him: 
 "Sweden is not yet ripe for an authorship 
 of her kind. As a general thing we avoid 
 
 ' The young philosopher, Dr. John Landquist. 
 
 158
 
 Supplement i59 
 
 discussion of moral and psychological phe- 
 nomena. Our culture has been divided into 
 two opposing camps ; on the one side the ortho- 
 dox religions, on the other the purely aesthetic, 
 which was supposed to precede the radical 
 culture party. . . . With us it is considered 
 greatest to romance over the fate and conflict 
 of the soul; but to study the life of the soul, 
 without accessory of myth and outward events, 
 to compare, to seek a norm, to stumise, and to 
 shape that perfection, the craving for which 
 lies at the very root of every struggle, to write 
 about the universal and the ideal — this has 
 been considered an occupation of lower grade, 
 and of less importance." In other countries 
 it has not been so. Theoretical and moral 
 interest in the potent forces in human life are 
 more developed, freer from prejudice, and 
 more desirous of truth. Consequently she 
 has been hailed with enthusiasm in the greater 
 civilised countries, and her books have been 
 published in ten Eiu-opean languages, some in 
 fifteen editions, others in seven and eight. 
 
 When the first volumes of her monumental 
 work, Life-Lines, came out, she left Sweden for 
 some years, contemplating a permanent stay 
 abroad. She made long stops in Germany, 
 Austria, Hungary, Holland, Belgium, Switzer-
 
 i6o Ellen Key 
 
 land, France, and Italy. The summer of 1894 
 she spent, in solitude, in a little peasant cot- 
 tage in Varmland, in the neighbourhood where 
 Erik Gustaf Geijer' was bom, while she finished 
 Life-Lines, iii. In 1895, she went on a many 
 months' lecture tour in Germany, and she 
 created such enthusiasm wherever she went 
 that the houses were always crowded when 
 she ascended the platform. 
 
 Love and yearning for her motherland 
 brought her back to Sweden, to the joy of all 
 who appreciate her; and their number has 
 steadily increased. One begins to understand 
 that Ellen Key's teaching of Freedom is 
 fundamentally a teaching of loyalty to all that 
 is genuine in all relations of life, and her teach- 
 ing of purity is beginning to be appreciated 
 more and more by the younger generation. 
 Her greatest victory is, that pure-minded 
 young men have made their own her demands 
 of true marriage. One of the prettiest proofs 
 of this is, that she has been immortaHsed 
 through a styhstic portrait in oils by Einar 
 Nielson, a Danish artist. He represents her 
 as a seeress, somewhat of a sibyl, a high 
 priestess of life, and has made this inscription 
 on his work : Havde jeg kunnet give Din A ands 
 
 ' Swedish poet.
 
 Supplement i6i 
 
 renhed! (Would I could have expressed the 
 purity of thy spirit!) The original was pre- 
 sented, by admirers of Ellen Key's life-work, 
 to the National Museum, where it has a 
 prominent place. 
 
 In several sympathetic reviews oi Life -Lines, 
 ii, our younger philosophers put Ellen Key 
 on a high pedestal. They estimate her as 
 Sweden's greatest woman since Saint Birgit. 
 Among those who rendered her homage on 
 her sixtieth birthday, we find many young 
 enthusiasts, some of them our most prominent 
 men authors. In an essay on Ellen Key, one 
 young critic writes: "The theory of evolu- 
 tion has become religion in the soul of Ellen 
 Key; it has deepened to religious thought — 
 the growth of the soul, considered as a step 
 in the world development, — that is the aim 
 of her teaching." 
 
 There are many more I should like to quote, 
 if space allowed. Ellen Key's sixtieth birth- 
 day was a jubilee. Tribute was paid to her 
 by great men and women at home and abroad. 
 The entire press, with the exception of the 
 pietistic papers, united in singing the praises 
 of Ellen Key's pure and noble personality. 
 Grateful and admiring words rained upon her, 
 as blessed manna in the desert. Thinking that 
 II
 
 1 62 Ellen Key 
 
 it might interest her American friends, I have 
 given in an appendix some of the utterances 
 that appeared in the press on that occasion. 
 
 Philosophical opponents also joined the 
 host of those who honoured the remarkable 
 woman, who even in America, has been called 
 the greatest living woman. The best and 
 most lasting tribute she received from her 
 publisher, and personal friend, Karl Otto Bon- 
 nier, owner of the Albert Bonnier Publishing 
 Co., when, on her sixtieth birthday, he pub- 
 lished the essay, Ellen Key, by John Landquist. 
 This little book should be read by all who 
 wish to understand Ellen Key. Here we 
 are treated to an estimate of Ellen Key, the 
 woman and author, which, in my opinion, is 
 the right one, showing deep understanding, 
 and making clear the secret of her successes, 
 as well as of her failures. The extraordinary 
 phenomenon of her individuality, the cultural 
 milieu in which she moved, the epoch in which 
 she produced her work, all receive their right 
 interpretation. But, it may be said of this 
 book what the author says of Ellen Key's 
 work, which I have already quoted: "We 
 in Sweden are not yet ripe," — we do not care, 
 consequently we are not able to understand. 
 
 It is to be hoped that John Landquist 's
 
 Supplement 163 
 
 analysis of Ellen Key and her work will be 
 translated into the languages in which she 
 is discussed. 
 
 Ellen Key's open letter of thanks which the 
 press printed, I quote in full: "For the first 
 time in sixty years I ask the press to give place 
 to a personal communication, as I am unable 
 to thank privately all those who have cast 
 sunshine over the entrance to the autumn 
 of my life-work. 
 
 "Perhaps I should have expressed my thanks 
 by publishing those greetings in which many 
 have united. But I hope no one will interpret 
 this omission as wanting in gratitude. 
 
 "When I went away about the nth of 
 December, to seek perfect solitude, it was to 
 gather quietude for my memories, and for 
 self-examination. When you stand at the 
 milestone that tells you with certainty that 
 the greater road length lies behind you, then, 
 if ever, you need to hold a day of reckoning 
 with yourself. If you have heretofore re- 
 proached Life for having robbed you of so 
 much, of what you loved most, for having 
 denied you so much of what you most desired 
 — on such a day it is only self-accusations that 
 you hear, reproaches for your failures toward 
 people and for your neglect toward life itself.
 
 i64 Ellen Key 
 
 "With these feelings I rettimed from the 
 solitude of the forest and was met with a 
 flood of sun and light. "What could I do but 
 bow my head in humility, and invoke Life 
 for more and greater power, the better to 
 deserve all this kindness. 
 
 "In the hope that this prayer may be 
 granted, I extend to all my sincere thanks. 
 
 "Ellen Key. 
 
 "JoNSERED, Dec. 1 6, 1909." 
 
 Her own deep spirit breathes in it. It shows 
 that the pearls in her diadem have not been 
 dimmed by exaltation, nor their purity soiled 
 by slanderers and false interpreters — for they 
 are real. 
 
 In the foregoing biography I have pointed 
 to the milestones on the road which EUen Key 
 has travelled. They showed how determining 
 circumstances entered in at the ages of twenty, 
 thirty, forty, and fifty in her life. She has 
 since arrived at her sixtieth year, and then, 
 also, did she experience something of great 
 moment to her. She had long wished for a 
 home of her own, but had been unable to find 
 an appropriate site, but on her sixtieth birth- 
 day the State granted her a place in the 
 Government park reservation, on the Omberg
 
 Supplement 165 
 
 Mountain slope, on the shore of Lake Wet tern, 
 near Alvastra Cloister. It is one of the love- 
 liest tracts of land in Sweden, and is described 
 by a renowned journalist, in the following 
 enthusiastic words : "The most wonderful thing 
 about it is the view — which might well have 
 been that much dreamed and simg-of outlook 
 from Mignon's castle by Lago Maggiore. 
 There is the broad water mirror framed by 
 trees; elm, oak, and beech encompass the 
 home." A poetic and charming description, 
 giving us a good picture of the spot where our 
 great Ellen Key has built her nest. Let me 
 also give some idea of the interior of the home, 
 and the purpose for its future. These citations 
 are from different newspapers: "Through 
 the centre of the house runs, in Italian style, 
 a hallway with red brick floor. It is finished 
 in white, with bright red doors. The same 
 red and green wreaths which decorate her 
 books are used for the frieze. On one wall 
 hangs a large framed map of Sweden with the 
 super-scription in blue and yellow letters 
 Var forntids land, var framtids land (The land 
 of our fathers, the land of our future). On 
 the opposite wall hangs a similar map of 
 Wettem and surroundings, with the super- 
 scription Ddr livets hav oss gett en strand (Where
 
 i66 Ellen Key 
 
 life's sea has given us a strand).' And, over 
 the door, leading out to the front, glows in red 
 letters Goethe's reversal of the Roman death 
 motto Memento vivere, (Remember to live). 
 
 Everything at Strand, from the greatest to 
 the smallest, speaks of love, — thinking, acting, 
 watchful love. All that nattire has given has 
 been taken advantage of in the most careful 
 and loving way, has been preserved and per- 
 fected; all that has been made with human 
 hands shows the inspiration of a never-failing 
 sense of fitness. For this reason, it is pure 
 edification to wander around, within, and with- 
 out Ellen Key's home. One is everywhere 
 struck by the many Httle marvels of ingenuity, 
 and touched by the tender devotion which has 
 not allowed a plant to be uprooted, nor a twig 
 cut off, without due consideration. The fur- 
 nishing of the house has been carefully planned 
 in every detail, and gives many proofs of great 
 ingenuity. One woiild like to have whole 
 classes of housewives and young girls sent 
 there, to be awakened to the high vocation 
 of home-making. They would undoubtedly 
 return better people, particularly if Ellen her- 
 self had preached to them the gospel of the 
 home. In the home of her later years is found 
 
 • From Runeberg's Vart land.
 
 STRAND. THE HOME OF ELLEN KEY.
 
 Supplement 167 
 
 all that she has been able to save from the 
 home of her childhood. In her bedroom, we 
 find her little toy furniture; her mother's 
 rather small and old-fashioned writing-desk 
 is now used by the famous author; and, on 
 the wall, hangs a simple little bookshelf, her 
 first acquisition above her last, a map of Strand 
 and its surroundings. The view from her 
 window she has tried to have as like as possible 
 to that of the little gable room of her girlhood, 
 so she has planted two birches by the two 
 springs, and a mass of ferns from her beloved 
 Sundsholm. 
 
 One who has such a strong home feeling 
 certainly deserves a good and beautiful home, 
 and thousands of Ellen Key's friends rejoice 
 with her that she has, at last, gained this, and 
 on Swedish soil. 
 
 There is one subject which especially oc- 
 cupies Ellen Key's thoughts these days. And 
 that is Strand's future. For, when she built 
 herself a home, she did not do so principally 
 for herself, as such a thing would simply be 
 impossible for her. When Ellen Key built 
 her home, and when she so intensely enjoys 
 arranging every detail as beautifully and 
 practically as possible, it is because, in her 
 vision, she is building it for others. Strand
 
 1 68 Ellen Key 
 
 will one day be a refuge for tired, worn-out 
 women of the labouring class. Women of the 
 factories and city streets may here, for some 
 weeks, enjoy sun and woods and lake, a good 
 and beautiful home, happiness, cleanliness, and 
 comfort. Only four may live there at a time, 
 no more, since Strand is to be a home, not an 
 institution. In each of the two smaller rooms, 
 facing west, a working woman shall sleep, and 
 the large east room shall be shared by two. 
 Here they may listen to the lapping of Wet- 
 tern's waves; they will wander through the 
 great light beech woods, both in the spring, when 
 the anemones lie like blue and white islands 
 under the bare branches, and, in the autumn, 
 when the beech leaves have made a thick 
 brown carpet over the many curving paths. 
 They will sun themselves in the flower -wreathed 
 loggia, and silently Hsten to the murmur of the 
 springs on warm summer days. 
 
 The home will be open between May and 
 October. The housekeeper is to have Novem- 
 ber and December as a vacation. And, during 
 the first four months of the year, young women 
 who want to occupy themselves with studies 
 and literary pursuits in peace and quiet, will 
 be received at Strand as boarders for a small 
 charge — enough to pay expenses.
 
 Supplement 169 
 
 Thus, Ellen Key plans and dreams of the 
 future of Strand. In her mind's eye, she sees 
 the white house filled with guests from the 
 world of tenements and noisy factories, and, 
 with them, she enjoys the blue Wettem, the 
 sun, the air, the light, and the luxuriant green. 
 And thus she is able to enjoy herself, the pre- 
 sent in the thought of the future, her own 
 future at Strand, and Strand's future when 
 she is no more. 
 
 In the beginning of 1900, Ellen Key moved 
 away from Stockholm, after having given up 
 her work as teacher and lecturer. For years 
 she travelled in Germany, France, Italy, years 
 so long and many that we at home feared that 
 she meant to desert the land of her fathers for 
 good. Those who knew Ellen Key, however, 
 knew that she would retiun, sooner or later, 
 because, when it came to making a home, she 
 would always remember that the home where 
 she had been bom stood on Swedish soil, that 
 one of the blue lakes of Sweden gleamed 
 between the Swedish elms and oaks which 
 surrounded her beloved Simdsholm. For this 
 reason, if for no other, Ellen Key had to find 
 in Sweden the shore which would be her port. 
 And she did retiun; and when she came back 
 she was renowned in Europe and America.
 
 170 Ellen Key 
 
 This did not impress her much, but one good 
 result came from her renown — the many 
 readers of her books had made it possible for 
 her to realise her dream of a home in the 
 country. It is for this reason that the green 
 oak-leaf wreath with the red ribbons which 
 decorate her books is painted in the frieze 
 in her hall. It is the books that have built 
 the house, she says. 
 
 In the preface to my biographical sketch 
 of Ellen Key, I said that my intention was 
 simply to give a true picture of the woman, 
 Ellen Key, not a study of her literary works, 
 and that these had been mentioned only in so 
 far as they served to interpret the personality 
 of the author. Since then John Landquist's 
 essay on Ellen Key has complemented my 
 sketch, as I have already said. But as Ellen 
 Key's spiritual development has proceeded in 
 the same direction as my own, my personal 
 experiences make me feel that I stand nearer 
 to her, in certain ways, than John Landquist. 
 
 I wish to add a few words of warm gratitude 
 because she has given us the history of her 
 religion of life, and has communicated to us 
 the sources of her spiritual life. To be able 
 to assimilate the spiritual food offered in Ellen 
 Key's Life-LineSy one needs calmness and the
 
 Supplement 171 
 
 concentration of all the forces of the soul, per- 
 severing watchfulness, and quiet patience. 
 And the moment will come, when the horizon 
 clears, and every thought and every word 
 will stand illumined by the pure Hght which 
 shines from out of the mist which had hidden 
 the true understanding of her meaning. In 
 such a moment, the soul feels itself able to 
 rise above the woes of this world. Spiritual 
 health exhilarates one's being. In such a 
 moment one feels that "joy is perfection." 
 
 In Life- Lines, ii., I have found the rich- 
 est treasures. The work, as a whole, con- 
 tains the many and varied lessons which are 
 necessary for a variety of souls. May these 
 lessons be received in the spirit in which they 
 are given by Ellen Key, in the enthusiasm 
 of love as an enhancer of life and happiness. 
 These have helped to bring me through the 
 heavy gates which I thought had closed the 
 road to life forever. And, therefore, I wish 
 to bear witness to the strengthening and 
 fortifying power of The Religion of Life. 
 
 Volumes ii. and iii. of Life- Lines appeared 
 in 1905 and 1906, after my biography had been 
 published. 
 
 After the preface to volume ii., Ellen Key 
 wrote a postscript of great importance. It
 
 172 Ellen Key 
 
 contains a communication to her readers which 
 explains her object in preluding this monu- 
 mental work — called classical by some au- 
 thors — with the Course of Development of 
 Sexual Morality. Lije-Lines, i., as well as ii. 
 and iii., consists of two voltunes each. When 
 the first part appeared, with nine chapters 
 devoted to the different phases of sex-life, of 
 legal and illegal unions, with the headings: 
 " The Evolution of Love ; " " Love's Freedom ; " 
 "Love's Selection," etc., the author became 
 the object of dangerous misunderstanding. 
 Her gospel of love was interpreted as an ex- 
 pression of so passionate an appreciation of 
 erotic life that it could be considered her 
 religion. And this, in spite of the fact that 
 she had to her credit a large literary output, 
 barely a twentieth part of which dealt with 
 erotic problems, as she herself declares. 
 
 Now the truth of the matter is that Life- 
 Lines, ii. as well as iii. had already been 
 sketched before i., but the latter was published 
 first because the relation which creates the race 
 must be the First Article in the Religion of Life. 
 
 It is to be deplored that the second and third 
 volimies were not at once translated into the 
 languages in which the first volume had become 
 known. In John Landquist's essay on Ellen
 
 Supplement 173 
 
 Key (page 58, and following) there is a good 
 resume of the different volumes of Life-Lines. 
 Ellen Key concentrates the subject-matter in 
 the three volumes in this manner: in the pre- 
 face to the third volume, Part I, the First 
 Article of the Religion of Life deals with the 
 primary cause and power of production, with 
 the Will that creates life and struggles for 
 existence. The Second Article of the Religion 
 of Life, vol. ii., deals with living and growing 
 together, with the Will that liberates and 
 unites life. The Third Article of the Religion 
 of Life, vol. iii., deals with the manifold com- 
 plexities and the feeling of power, with life's 
 Will enlarging the soul and creating beauty. 
 The synthesis in the Religion of Life contains, 
 in a word, Evolutionism, Solidarity, and 
 Individualism. And, in order still further 
 to elucidate the inner mieaning of the moral 
 law of the Religion of Life, she says: ''The 
 forces which are set in motion by the race-life, 
 community-life, and the personal soul-life, 
 ought to be used so that they may enhance 
 life and happiness in general and for the 
 individual, whether the latter's love, work, and 
 faith cause his life to radiate joy or sorrow. " 
 
 Since Ellen Key's monumental work, Life- 
 Lines, appeared, she has v/ritten many smaller
 
 174 H---' '-^^'7 
 
 but very significant books: The L^e ofRahd 
 
 Varnhagen in 1908, which was published in 
 German by the Haberland Publishing Co. in 
 Leipzig, and then in Swedish, and which had 
 to be issued here in a second edition within a 
 fortnight. John Landquist, in his brilliant 
 review, points to German Romanticism as the 
 spiritual home of Ellen Key, and says : '"None 
 of our modem writers is so satiated by the 
 culture which blossoms around Goethe as is 
 Ellen Key." In Rahel Varnhagen, Ellen Key 
 makes us acquainted with this unique woman, 
 and the milieu in which she hves. This 
 Jewish banker's daughter, who gathered in her 
 salon all that Berlin boasted of genius and 
 culture, is the subject of Ellen Key's "s}tq- 
 pathetic and H\ing biography." Space does 
 not allow more than passing mention of the 
 books she has sent forth since Life-Lines. 
 
 In Jime 1909, the Kvin?iordrelsen appeared 
 in German, in the series Die Gesellschaft 
 published by Martin Buber. According to 
 the publisher's desire she had to confine her- 
 self to the new soul conditions, transitions, 
 and interactions, which the Ki'innordrelsen 
 had produced. 
 
 In The Forum, October, 191 1, I read with 
 pleasure a most excellent essay by Hanna
 
 ELLEN KEY, 1911. 
 
 FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AT HER HOME, STRAND.
 
 Supplement 175 
 
 Astrup Larsen, Ellen Key, an Apostle of Life, 
 giving a good account of this book which she 
 calls the Woman Movement, though it had not 
 yet been translated into English. 
 
 It is a remarkable book, a veritable treasure 
 house for those who are interested in knowing 
 the trend of this movement and its influence. 
 As the author always has stood outside the 
 struggle, she is able to give an objective report 
 of its course. In a masterly and dispassionate 
 manner, she sums up her own observations, 
 and gives some illustrating examples of the 
 views and opinions which she has held ever 
 since youth. (For details, see ante, pages 
 106 to 113.) 
 
 Another splendid work from Ellen Key's 
 diligent pen, like everything else she has 
 written, bearing witness of deep insight, rich 
 historic material, and love of the subject, is 
 Folkhildningsarbetet, Sdrskilt med hdnsyn till 
 Skonhets sinnets odling (The Work for the 
 Education of the People, especially with Refer- 
 ence to the Cultivation of the Sense of Beauty). 
 
 Werk och Mdnniskor (Men and Works) is 
 a great book in which Ellen Key has gathered 
 together essays and sketches which had pre- 
 viously appeared in national and foreign 
 periodicals. There is much to learn and much
 
 176 Ellen Key 
 
 to enjoy. In the literary essays, she shows 
 proof of delicate and poignant skill in the art 
 of characterisation; among her reminiscences 
 from the South, she gives a glorious descrip- 
 tion of Saint Francis of Assisi ; in her essay on 
 Rainer Maria Rilke, she gives a profound 
 interpretation of the life consciousness of the 
 new type of beings, and perhaps the most 
 interesting chapters are those dealing with 
 Maeterlinck and Verhaeren in which she gives 
 us a glimpse of their intimate life as only a 
 personal friend is able to do. 
 
 Tal till Sveriges Ungdom (Addresses to 
 Swedish Youth) consists of a number of 
 lectures which she has given during later years 
 at different meetings, and before clubs. Well- 
 considered and clear-sighted counsel, she offers 
 the young in the struggle against all dangerous 
 forces which life puts in their way. Even this 
 is a valuable educational work. 
 
 Very much more might be added, but my 
 supplement would be all too long. What is 
 most important has been said. 
 
 Ellen Key's literary productiveness con- 
 tinues. If I am not mistaken, she has begun 
 a biography of her father, which is likely to be 
 of great value. During the glorious summer 
 season, she breathes the air of the beautiful
 
 Suppjement 177 
 
 country which surrounds her at her Strand. 
 In the meantime, she gathers fresh strength 
 for new winter work, indefatigable in her 
 endeavour to enlighten, guide, and make 
 happy. 
 
 la
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 QUOTATIONS FROM PRESS UTTERANCES ABOUT 
 ELLEN KEY ON HER SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY 
 
 THE well-known Danish critic, George Brandes, 
 writes: "... Ellen Key has influenced women 
 as no one else. . . . She has known her sex. Women 
 have felt themselves understood by her. . . . She 
 has widened their views, overcome their prejudices, 
 liberated their thoughts, awakened their courage to 
 Hve. She has given women self-confidence. She has 
 instilled hope. . . . Ellen Key is a purity enthusiast. 
 Though caring little for the external forms of moral- 
 ity, she yet lives and breathes the highest and purest 
 moral atmosphere. . . . She is and remains a brave 
 and noble priestess of high personal culture." 
 
 Eugen Diederichs of Jena, one of Germany's fore- 
 most publishers, writes: " . . .1 think of Ellen Key as 
 a worthy counterpart of our Excellence Hackel, an 
 Excellence Number 2, just as warm-hearted, and with 
 the same artistic nature, just as derided, as great an 
 optimist and liberator by her faith in the good of 
 human beings. ... Is not her demand for the evolu- 
 tion of the soul the same as the principle of culture in 
 Humboldt's mind? . . . One fragrant warm May day, 
 
 179
 
 i8o Ellen Key 
 
 just as the sun was setting, Ellen Key preached to us 
 in Jena a real Sermon on the Mount. She stood on 
 the hill and we gathered at her feet, first the youth, 
 even to the peasants in neighbouring villages who had 
 come to sing folk songs in honour of Ellen Key. . . . 
 She spoke of the old spirits of Jena, of Schiller and 
 Goethe. It was an unforgettable occasion. . . . Ellen 
 Key with her great v/arm heart remains forever young. 
 And, therefore, we feel that she belongs to us in Jena." 
 
 The gifted Belgian nature philosopher and drama- 
 tist, Maeterlinck, writes: "I unite my voice with all 
 those of the civilised world who, to-day, hail the good, 
 the noble, the heroic Ellen Key, — the great liberator 
 who, in our children, will find more enlightened, more 
 enthusiastic and trusty followers." 
 
 The French novelist, Paul Margueritte, sends the 
 following message: "I have the deepest admiration 
 for Ellen Key's works and the greatest respect for her 
 person. vShc embodies one of the finest types of 
 thinking and courageous humanity which makes 
 marks in the history of ideas. I fervently unite with 
 all those who bring her homage. " 
 
 Ada Negri, the poor Italian school-teacher who is 
 one of her country's loveliest poets, writes: "Ellen 
 Key, radiant creature of purity and beauty! ... I 
 think of her as a liberator of woman's soul. " 
 
 Gabriele Reuter, German author, whose novels deal 
 with problems similar to those treated by Ellen Key, 
 writes: " In Ellen Key has arisen one of those priestly
 
 Appendix i8i 
 
 women who, of old, were honoured as Sibyls or Norns. 
 In them were always found a deeper and purer know- 
 ledge of the needs and desires of the soul than in 
 priests, kings, and warriors, ... As to these holy, wise 
 women of the ancient world, so those seeking help 
 and counsel to-day may turn to Ellen Key. They 
 will always find her ready and willing to share the 
 flame of ideals whose caretaker she is called by the 
 spirit to be." 
 
 Professor G. F. Steffen is one of Sweden's foremost 
 national economists and a profound student of social 
 conditions. He writes of Ellen Key: "It has never 
 been difficult for me to understand and appreciate 
 Ellen Key's Hfe-work as the highest form of ethical 
 striving. The logic we principally must demand of 
 an ethical pioneer is not that of the cognitive faculty, 
 but the logic of the will and the emotions. His first 
 and last mission is, not intellectually to mirror what 
 surrounds one, but from within oneself to create a new 
 reality, the value of which consists in that it promotes 
 the evolution of life. With the exception of Krapot- 
 kin, I have never known an ethical logician so strong 
 in intuition, so pure in soul as Ellen Key. And, 
 just as my love of Krapotkin is undisturbed by my 
 objections to his scientific methods, my warm respect 
 for Ellen Key is not the least diminished by my 
 discernment of the weak points in her intellectual 
 logic. Neither am I intimidated by her audacity, 
 her good will to brave moral dangers in trying to 
 attain a higher moral reality. All creating activity 
 necessarily brings us into dangers ... at the same time 
 that it saves us from the danger of petrification. Life is
 
 i82 Ellen Key- 
 
 but a choice between the danger of falling into a deeper 
 and deeper sleep or the danger of awakening to a 
 clearer and clearer consciousness. In Ellen Key's 
 sovil there is a priceless wealth of the courage which 
 leads us onward to meet nobler life dangers. The 
 weak in spirit may have to be on their guard against 
 her. But, with Ellen Key, I do not believe it is moral 
 to regulate life by considering the desire to remain 
 undisturbed of those that are decayed and petrified." 
 
 Vitalis Norstrom, professor of philosophy, one of 
 Sweden's most profound thinkers, and the most im- 
 portant and worthy opponent of Ellen Key's philo- 
 sophy, offers her the following tribute: "I have never 
 doubted Ellen Key's sincerity of heart, her rich mind 
 and her genius. Her personality radiates too much 
 warmth and her pen sheds a too strong brilliancy 
 to leave room for such doubt. Her great influence 
 would also be inexplicable otherwise. In the de- 
 partment of popular philosophy she holds a high place 
 of honour. But there is one thing Ellen Key has 
 never understood: to kneel before the celestial figure 
 of TRUTH without any side thoughts. The logical 
 passion of truth-seeking she does not know. The joys 
 and woes of pure thinking were never hers. It is with 
 the HEART she fights and with the heart she suffers. 
 But now I am, more than formerly, inclined to believe 
 that she has in no wise fought and suffered in vain. 
 When purging Time has passed over her works, there 
 will remain that which will place Ellen Key among the 
 signs foreboding the new day, the day which she her- 
 self had divined and dreamt, but which will be far 
 better than her own prophetic vision."
 
 Appendix 183 
 
 Professor Verner S6derhielm, Finland's foremost 
 historian of literature, expresses his opinion of Ellen 
 Key as follows: "When I think of Ellen Key the 
 living woman arises before my mind's eye rather 
 than her works, the speaking rather than the writing 
 Ellen Key. And when I read her writings I always 
 seem to hear the sound of her voice with its inimitably 
 tender inflection; and because her writings carry the 
 impress of extempore discourse they have all its im- 
 pulsive enthusiasm, the strong emphasis, the per- 
 suasiveness, the lack of small consideration of possible 
 critical objections. And now when I am to pay 
 tribute to Ellen Key on a day when the thoughts of 
 the sixty years she has lived give us occasion to think 
 over and sum up her work and her person, she stands 
 for me principally as an awakener, a teacher, an 
 inspirer, and any effort to analyse her ideas or her 
 style of presentation of her works seems at this 
 moment farther from me than ever. 
 
 "Ellen Key possesses certain qualities, rare in con- 
 temporary times, which seem to me to constitute her 
 best characteristics and her greatest strength. While 
 other spiritual labourers isolate themselves or suspi- 
 ciously avoid people she is greatly attracted to them, 
 she has a trust in human beings and a wealth of love 
 for them which on the other hand makes it possible 
 for her to draw and unite them like the fire on the 
 hearth. . . . While in others the sensibility to criticism 
 and polemics is developed to an abnormal degree, she 
 goes forward with a courage, a frankness, and a com- 
 municativeness which radiate the joy of her own 
 enthusiasm. While others so often doubt and hesi- 
 tate she has a blind faith in the power of the indi-
 
 1 84 Ellen Key 
 
 vidual and of society to attain the happy life of which 
 she dreams. 
 
 " While others grow bitter towards life, she loves it, 
 she sees, enjoys, and learns of everything everywhere 
 (I have observed it in many places and climes, from 
 the northern winter to Sicily's spring . . .) with a 
 physical and spiritual buoyancy which is absolutely 
 amazing. With such qualities one can remove mount- 
 ains and break roads through jungles and darkness." 
 
 From the many well-known Swedish writers and 
 artists who paid Ellen Key honour we will quote 
 certain excerpts. 
 
 "... Ellen Key is the born citizen of the world. Her 
 whole broad, full-blooded, all-embracing, living and 
 thoroughly cultivated nature with its phenomenal 
 recepti^dty and compassion claims the Universe for 
 her own country, as a field of action for her boundless 
 tenderness. She represents ' Samhalls moderlighet ' 
 (a phrase invented by her, meaning vSocial Motherli- 
 ness) in its highest potency, in its broadest and most 
 beautiful sense." — Rickard Berg. 
 
 "Ellen Key is dangerous, say the good citizens. 
 Aye, and happily so. Dangerous to those who can- 
 not understand and follow her ideal. From the 
 fresh fountain of her pure soul there have streamed 
 regenerating thoughts, feelings, ideas, and visions in 
 marvellous womanly luxuriance. And when weak 
 mortals have become intoxicated by the draught she 
 has offered them, good citizens have cried: 'For 
 God's sake, stop up the spring, drain the ground, do 
 anything that will end this — drive the woman out of 
 the country ! '
 
 Appendix 185 
 
 "But Ellen Key has not let her living soul run dry, 
 and nothing has been able to check the streams of 
 tenderness from her over-flowing heart. This is her 
 greatness. May we thank her!" — Poul Bjerre. 
 
 "... The greatest quality in Ellen Key is her good- 
 ness, a goodness which allows us to forget her great- 
 ness, but which itself can never be forgotten. The 
 warmth which radiates from a truly good person 
 Ellen Key has and gives in richest measures. And 
 she does not save it merely for great occasions, when 
 she lets it stream forth and inspire listening crowds. 
 She gives of her best to the little children gathered for 
 a fairy tale around her evening fire, or to a group 
 of working women to whom she gives a few hours' 
 recreation. ... In her striving toward great goals 
 she never forgets to use the small opportunities of 
 bringing help or joy to a fellow-man." Emilie Broome. 
 
 "The remarkable thing about Ellen Key is that 
 even critics can this day be present with good con- 
 science among those who hail her. 
 
 ' ' The wreath offered by the critic is perhaps not the 
 poorest when he says: 'If you, according to my con- 
 ception, have seen wrongly, you have primarily done 
 so because you have not perceived the rarity of your 
 own character. You have judged the earth by your 
 own rich, good soil where no evil thrives and often 
 you have gone on the rocks and in the sand, and 
 gathered sunshine and warm breezes. Your path 
 has not been easy and you have never shunned trouble. 
 The sun has often been hidden and the winds have 
 been cold and bitter. But you have met it all bravely
 
 i86 Ellen Key 
 
 and if courage and faith could help; you would have 
 accomphshed all. But they do not suffice for every- 
 thing. The human soil is heavy to prepare, the fire 
 must bum, and the iron plough long yet before spring 
 will come, and even then it can hardly be yours. But 
 for yourself there is eternal spring. That is much, 
 that is great! And as nothing great is in vain, we 
 bow gladly to you not only in respect, but in grati- 
 tude.'" — Per Hallstrom. 
 
 "Ellen Key's ideals are not mine. But I love her 
 
 personality, and few are the persons in whose presence 
 I have felt such a life-giving harmony in all existence, 
 and very rare are those who with such loving under- 
 standing and compassionate mind can receive all 
 that one gives out, as Ellen Key does. The broadly 
 and tenderly human in her nature seems to me the 
 greatest and most significant of her characteristics." 
 
 Helena Nyblom. 
 
 "... Ellen Key is an artist nature, . . . not only 
 in creating artistic expressions, but in a far deeper 
 sense. She is one who divines and sees as a living 
 reality that which lies beyond the horizon, and she has 
 the power to make this a reality also for others who 
 yearn. And she has the artist's ecstasy for life. She 
 has travelled her road of life with her Master Life's 
 genius at her side, and meekly and exaltedly listened 
 to his words. Well may she say with the words of 
 the apostle: 'Was not my heart burning in me when 
 he spoke to me on the way?' Life has given her joy 
 and woe, hot battles and great peace." 
 
 Odal Ottelin.
 
 Appendix 187 
 
 "How glorious it would be to have lived a long 
 life and still love humanity as tenderly as does Ellen 
 Key!" — Hanna Pauli. 
 
 "... The words that give the key to Ellen Key's 
 personality are: idealism and love for humanity. 
 These traits are so strong in her that no bitter ex- 
 perience has been able to disturb or diminish them. 
 She looks away from the faults and weaknesses of the 
 individual, she appreciates the best in each person- 
 ality, she looks at one as one might have been, or may 
 become if the noblest tendencies under favourable cir- 
 cumstances are allowed highest development. To 
 understand, to beautify, and to admire is as natural 
 for Ellen Key as to breathe. Her overestimation of 
 human nature, her bright faith in its swift perfect- 
 ibility, her conviction that what she calls the 'com- 
 mon virtues,' such as integrity, trustworthiness, 
 conscientiousness, are just as natural to the majority 
 as they are to her, form the basis of her mistakes and 
 of others' misunderstanding of her actual meaning." 
 
 Anna Whitlock. 
 
 "A woman with so marvellous a sensitiveness to all 
 that is young and growing and spring-Hke cannot but 
 be a bright power in her land. Fighting and inspiring 
 others to fight, notwithstanding all the gentleness of 
 her being, she stands in our culture as a dreamer in 
 armour." — Anders Osterling.
 
 Motherliness and Education 
 for Motherhood 
 
 By Ellen Key 
 
 The author considers certain problems connected with woman's 
 most important mission. She calls the attention of an age that is 
 the victim of divergent interests to the ancient claim of the child 
 upon the mother, a claim that represents the most elemental of 
 altruistic bonds. Ellen Key points out that motherhood and the 
 division of labor between the sexes, taking people in the aggregate, 
 is a natural one. An interesting suggestion toward the solution of 
 certain social problems is made in the form of a proposed sub- 
 sidizing of motherhood. 
 
 Ellen Key 
 
 Her Life and Her Work. A Critical Study 
 
 By Louise Nystrom-Hamilton 
 
 Tramslated by Anna E. B. Fries 
 12°. With Portrait. $1.50 net. By mail, $1.6^ 
 
 The name of Ellen Key has for years been a target for attacks of 
 various kinds. Her critics, not content with decrying and distort- 
 ing the message that she had to give to the world, have even 
 attacked her personal character; and as the majority of these had 
 no direct knowledge in the matter, strange rumors and fancies 
 have been spread abroad about her life . The readers of her books 
 who are now to be counted throughout the world by the hundreds 
 of thousands, who desire to know the truth about this much dis- 
 cussed Swedish author, will be interested in this critical study by 
 Louise Hamilton. The author is one who has been intimate with 
 Ellen Key since her youth. She is herself the wife of the founder 
 of the People's Hospital in Stockholm, where for over twenty years 
 Ellen Key taught and lectured. 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York London
 
 By ELLEN KEY 
 
 The Century of the Child 
 
 Cr. 8°. With Frontispiece. Net $1.50. By mail, 
 
 $1.65 
 
 CONTENTS: The Right of the Child to Choose His 
 Parents, The Unborn Race and Woman's Work, Education, 
 Homelessness, Soul Murder in the Schools, The School of 
 the Future, Religious Instruction, Child Labor and the 
 Crhnes of Children. This book has gone through more 
 than twenty German Editions and has been published in 
 several European countries. 
 
 "A powerful book."— A^. F. Times. 
 
 "A profound and analytical discussion by a great Scandinavian 
 teacher, of the reasons why modern education does not better 
 educate." — N. Y. Christian Herald. 
 
 The Education of the Child 
 
 Reprinted from the Authorized American Edition of 
 The Century of the Child. With Introductory Note by 
 EDWARD BOK. 
 
 Cr. <S°. Net 75 cents. By mail, 85 cents 
 
 " Nothing finer on the wise education of the child has ever been 
 brought into print. To me this chapter is a perfect classic; it points 
 the way straight for every parent, and it should find a place in every 
 home in America where there is a chUd."— EDWARD BOK, Editor 
 of the Ladies' Home Journal. 
 
 "This book, by one of the most thoughtful students of child life 
 among current writers, is one that will prove invaluable to parents 
 who desire to develop in their children that strength of character, 
 self-control and personality that alone makes for a well-rounded use- 
 ful and happy ]ite."— Baltimore Sun. 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York London
 
 By ELLEN KEY 
 
 Love and Marriage 
 
 Cr. 8°. Net $1.50. By wail, $1.65 
 
 " One of the profoundest and most important pronouncements of 
 the woman's movement thr.t has yet found expression. . . . Intensely- 
 modern in her attitude, Miss Key has found a place for all the 
 conflicting philosophies of the day, has taken what is good from each, 
 has affected the compromise, which is always the road to advance- 
 ment, between individualism and socialism, realism and idealism, 
 morality and the new thought. She is more than a metaphysical 
 philosopher. She is a seer, a prophet. She brings to her aid 
 psychology, history, science, and then something more — inspiration 
 and hope." — Boston Transcript. 
 
 The Woman Movement 
 
 Translated by Mamah Bouton Borthwick, A.M. 
 With an Introduction by Havelock Ellis 
 
 12°. Net $1.50. By mail, $1.65 
 
 This is not a history of the woman's movement, but a statement 
 of what Ellen Key considers to be the new phase it is now entering 
 on, a phase in which the claim to exert the rights and functions of 
 men is less important than the claims of woman's rights as tho 
 mother and educator of the coming generation. 
 
 Rahel Varnhagen 
 
 A Portrait 
 
 Translated by Arthur E. Chater 
 With an Introduction by Havelock Ellis 
 
 12°. With Portraits. Net $1.50. By mail, $1.65 
 
 A biography from original sources of one who has been described 
 as among the first and greatest of modern women. The book is a 
 portrait sketch of Rahel Varnhagen, and her characteristics, as_ " a 
 prophecy of the woman of the future," are illustrated by copious 
 extracts from her correspondence. 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York London
 
 "The most complete and compact study that 
 Has yet been mede of tH© evolvition of -wroman's 
 rigHts"— A^. r. Evening Globe. 
 
 A Short History 
 of Women's Rights 
 
 From tKe days of Augusta to tHe 
 Present Time 
 
 With Special Reference to England and the United States 
 
 By Eugene A. HecKer 
 
 Mast«r in tHe Roxbury Latin ScHool, AvitHor of 
 "THe TeacHin^ of Latin in Secondary ScHooJs " 
 
 Crown 8vo. $l.50 net. {By mail, $i.6S) 
 
 Mr. Hecker, an authoritative scholar, has set him- 
 self the task of telling the story of women's progress, and 
 has done it with much painstaking aud thoroughness, 
 and with a manifestation of a high order of talent for 
 discriminating as to materials and presenting them 
 convincingl}' and interestingly. . . . One feels the 
 studiousness of the author in every page. The matter 
 presented is not only carefully arranged, but it is in a 
 manner digested too; and thus the work becomes 
 literature in a true sense, and not an unenlightened 
 assembly of details and facts from the pages of the past. 
 
 St. Louis Times. 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New YorK London
 
 i 
 
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