Lundensaren_juni19_historisktext

“A curse on the very notion of lye fish”: on a forgotten Lund eccentric from the mid-1800s

Lund has had its fair share of eternal students, and their names appear here and there like shadows from an arrack punch-flavoured past; “The Last Athenian” Otto Steiman, Sam Ask, Adolf Herrlin – the list goes on. Similarly, Lund University has had many academic eccentrics, both of the kind who made a career for themselves and the kind who never even completed a degree. In this newsletter, my colleague Fredrik Tersmeden has previously written about some of them. These eternal students and eccentrics have one thing in common, however; they were all active in the 1900s – or in a few cases during the romantic student period of the 1890s. Nevertheless, there were of course eccentrics and eternal students before the turn of the last century, and it is one of them – now forgotten but extremely famous in his time – that this article will address.

Erik August Torbjörnsson was born in Okome in Halland on 24 April 1837. His father Erik Torbjörnsson was a vice pastor and later vicar in Enslöv – also in Halland – while his mother’s name was Carolina Vilhelmina Muhl. Erik August came from a family that was respectable if not brilliant; his paternal grandfather’s father Lars Torbjörnsson had been a member of the Swedish parliament for the peasant estate and as such was a godparent for the future King Gustav IV Adolf at the latter’s christening. He was the Hat Party’s candidate in the peasant estate in the 1771-1772 parliament, but was outmanoeuvred and eventually “with great plurality for the whole parliament excluded from the estate”. Less brilliant was perhaps Erik August’s paternal uncle – who was incidentally also called Lars Torbjörnsson – who studied in Lund and was even the head of the Gothenburg student nation in 1816, but ended his days locked up in Kristianstad prison as a “fraudulent debtor”.

Lars Torbjörnsson, Erik August’s paternal great-grandfather

So the family background of the young man who enrolled at Lund University and the Gothenburg student nation on 28 May 1857 was a mixed bag. Everything looked as though it would work out well for the young Erik August, however; he was talented, well-read, well-spoken and equipped with a “respectable appearance” with “dark Gothenburg whiskers”. However, his already somewhat peculiar handwriting, as compared to that of his fellow nation members, preserved in the Gothenburg student nation register, perhaps provides a taste of what was to come.

Erik August was to study theology, and the priestly vocation was probably an obvious choice for the widely educated young man with what was described as “a flowing oratory gift” and “a pleasant demeanour”. In the circumstances, Erik August was perhaps forgiven for showing a few small eccentricities, such as the habit of wandering around the streets of Lund with a cigar in each corner of his mouth. At least that did not affect his social life, which included the future professor of theology Carl Wilhelm Skarstedt – whose witty anecdotal and ironic style Torbjörnsson would later come to apply successfully if not perfectly – and the Lundensian textile dye industrialist Carl Otto Borg. The latter apparently was so taken with the young theologian that he didn’t hesitate to grant him several major loans.

Meanwhile, Erik August’s studies were abandoned. He was a dedicated participant in student life, where his taste for public speaking was granted special scope in the student evenings at the Academic Society. On these occasions, students practised publicly defending a thesis, and Torbjörnsson was often in the speaker’s chair, defending “some thesis of a more or less baroque nature invented for the purpose”. Where the other speakers were satisfied with a glass of water, Erik August promptly demanded a tankard of “bier”, and needless to say his well-spoken manner quickly descended into a fulminating rant when he was denied.

In other words, Torbjörnsson was going astray and became, as one writer expressed it, “impossible to include in civilised company”. He completed a degree in theoretical theology in spring 1869 after 12 years of “study”, but never got further than that. His decline was excellently portrayed by Ehrenfried Neander in his memoirs:

"Oh well, Thorbjörnsson carried on like that, and carried on for a long time, and went increasingly downhill. The dignified pastorly whiskers disappeared, replaced by an unkempt full beard. The suit became shabby, the coat buttonless, held together by a girdle or sometimes a rope. Inside it, he tucked books, pamphlets and so forth of his personal property. He is well-preserved, people said rather heartlessly, “both well-upholstered and full of spirits”."

Despite his financial and social situation, Torbjörnsson held on firmly to his dignity as a student – including by continuing to wear a student’s cap. Once when he had lain down to sleep on the staircase leading up to the Academic Society (with his head on a little pillow that he used to keep inside his coat) he was thrown out by the Society’s caretaker. This got Torbjörnsson in the mood, and he is said to have bellowed “now listen here, you peasant, I am an academic citizen!” A similar story is told about a professor’s wife, who took the visiting Torbjörnsson for a beggar and tried to see him off, whereupon Erik August declared himself to be “Eric August Thorbjörnsson, a candidate for the sacred ministry, member of the Gothenburg nation, who in its coat of arms has a lion, which is doing this”, at which point he stuck out his tongue

Naturally, Erik August’s antics did not go unnoticed by the nation, one of whose main tasks at the time was to ensure that the students stayed on the straight and narrow. Next to his registration in the nation’s records, a different hand had added the word “rumorist” (approximately “practical joker” or “troublemaker”), and the nation’s inspector, theology professor Carl Olbers, is said to have had a great deal of trouble with Torbjörnsson’s behaviour. Torbjörnsson was apparently not too fond of Professor Olbers either, and when a few nation companions once pointed out to him that he was lying drunk in the gutter outside the inspector’s house he exclaimed, without any further consideration for his sorry state, “damn, move me over to the other side then!”

As so many other eternal students, Torbjörnsson’s main problem soon became money. Particularly famous is the episode in which Carl Otto Borg tried to demand repayment from Erik August of the loans mentioned above, but as the attempt took place on Tegnér square, Torbjörnsson gesticulated towards the statue of Tegnér and exclaimed: “Philistine, how dare you demand money from me in the presence of the immortal!” A tailor, who tried to demand payment of a bill, did not fare better when confronting Torbjörnsson (“Student and therefore eternal hater of all small-town Philistines both Academic and Non-academic among the citizens of the University municipality of Lund as well as of this City’s Clothes Iron wielder”), who replied to the tailor in his most learned verbiage that

"I decline from you, noble and virtuous Master of Clothes Ironing Engineering!, all kinds of teachings in Moral Philosophy, Moral Theology and everything called Moral, as I realise that all your endeavours and attempts in this direction are aimed at the same unfailing final purpose of to the fullest degree or as the Roman thinker said, im amplissima forma, which is, interpreted into Swedish, in the fullest and most consummate form, to ensure yourself, as independent property, of the epithet “Asinus ad lyram”, this is, if one clarifies it in Swedish, A dog on a double-bass.

With further regard to your threats of applying the force of the law, I await it with the same divine tranquillity as the sky-high cliff in the sea waves created by the wreck of a splintered peasant’s barge."

The Gothenburg daily newspaper, Göteborgsposten, reports on 4 May 1881 about one of Torbjörnsson’s soirées

Torbjörnsson’s main source of revenue during the time he was in Lund was from the sale of the small pamphlets he wrote and had printed himself. There were many titles and probably no definitive list exists – it is likely that many titles were also invented by others and attributed to Torbjörnsson – but among those usually mentioned are

•The cult of Venus on the streets of Lund
•The tumbling stumbling and fumbling drunkard or the humbled inn-keeper
•The impudent kitchen-maid or a curse on the very notion of lye fish
•The eternally vengeful minuetting distributive baton of justice to the ultimate dog-like delight of all the boar-pigs

It was even possible to subscribe to works he would sooner or later complete. Among these – perhaps unfinished – works, the following deserve a special mention

•The learned misers – or – the inveterate fox-like asses of miserliness and heartlessness in a perhaps abused discourse of erudition – piety – statesmanship – and finance –knitted together, if not patched together into the armour of a brave knight
•The hack – or – a heart like a hyena, like an ostrich, like a scorpion, and a head like a smelt, like a pug, like a spruce shoot – or – like a false hallmark, a misleading hourglass, a treacherous set of grocer’s scales.

Or why not...

•Shut up, know your place!

Torbjörnsson appears for the last time in the student directories 17 years after his matriculation, in 1874, after which he left to seek his fortune outside the University town. He continued to take his pamphlets with him, but now expanded his sources of revenue by holding so-called “declamatory soirées”, in which he recited various texts aloud – often impressively long – from memory, followed by a lecture chosen freely by the audience, and a “public defence of a doctoral thesis” about one of the subjects.

At the start of his lecture tour in 1874, Torbjörnsson recited three works by Esaias Tegnér; “Speech at the jubilee party in 1817”, “Svea” and “Charles XII”, but towards the end, this “Sacri Ministerii Candidatus atque Liber Studiosus, Lundensis, Gothoburgensis, that is Candidate to the Sacred Ministry and Free Student, i.e. student, of the Gothenburg County Association at the Royal Carolingian University of Lund” had increased his repertoire to nine numbers, including “Bishop Agardh’s brilliantly witty and famous speech on Woman” and “The Marseillaise interpreted by Karl Vilhelm Strandberg”. How these lectures were received by the audience we do not know, but a farmer at a cattle market in Halland is alleged to have said, after hearing Torbjörnsson speak, that

“Torbjörnsson is going to be one hell of a good priest one day!”. Surely a student of theology could not hope for a better endorsement!

One could imagine that Erik August’s saga ended there, but true to his habit Torbjörnsson’s story contains some further surprising twists. Towards the end of his life, this eternal student indeed made a complete about-turn and became a salaried speaker at a Good Templars’ lodge in Gothenburg (and, one can therefore assume, a teetotaller!). How this transformation came about one would very much like to know, but the sources are silent on this particular matter. What we do know, however, is that Torbjörnsson was not silent even at the moment of his death; he died, as student nation genealogist Carl Sjöström put it, “in the waiting room of Gothenburg train station, on a Good Templars’ excursion, on 4 March 1886”.

This article would not really be complete without a photograph of Torbjörnsson, but the author is not in possession of one unfortunately, despite diligent searching. Nonetheless, the following illustrative description can replace a photograph to some extent. If nothing else, it provides a good picture of how this wonderful eternal student, book peddler, speaker and pamphletist appeared in the 1870s:

"An old, grey, slouchy storm over a bald pate; piercing eyes, behind glinting spectacles, which hang over a bright red nose; a cynical beard, thin lips, which are in constant motion and close with a sound not unlike that of a laundry paddle; large blue-striped wool scarf, twisted twice around the neck; wearing three overcoats, of which the outermost one is of grey velvet; equally thick around the waist; with two heavy leather bags, containing brochures, academic statutes and various foodstuffs; trousers of indeterminate colour, their bottoms stuck into a pair of seven-league boots: a cudgel in the right hand."

Text: Henrik Ullstad

Archivist at Lund University archive and Philosophiae Magister atque Liber Studiosus, Lundensis, Hallandus, i.e. Master of Philosophy and Free Student, that is a student, of the Halland County association at the Royal Carolingian University of Lund.

The author wishes to extend his warmest thanks to Fredrik Tersmeden and Mikael Falk for literature searches, good discussions and scanning of archive material, and to Lukas Sjöström for kind help with proofreading.

P.S. Erik August Torbjörnsson’s name is spelt differently depending on who is writing and when. Some texts spell Erik with a C, and sometimes an H is included in the surname, while the J is sometimes replaced by an I. The author has chosen to make the spelling consistent throughout the text.