Skien. Ibsen afterwards stated that those who had taken most advantage
of his parents' hospitality in their prosperous days were precisely
those who now most markedly turned a cold shoulder on them. It is likely
enough that this may have been the case, but one sees how inevitably
Ibsen would, in after years, be convinced that it was. He believed
himself to have been, personally, much mortified and humiliated in
childhood by the change in the family status. Already, by all accounts,
he had begun to live a life of moral isolation. His excellent sister
long afterwards described him as an unsociable child, never a pleasant
companion, and out of sympathy with all the rest of the family.

We recollect, in _The Wild Duck_, the garret which was the domain of
Hedvig and of that symbolic bird. At Venstoeb, the infant Ibsen possessed
a like retreat, a little room near the back entrance, which was sacred
to him and into the fastness of which he was accustomed to bolt himself.
Here were some dreary old books, among others Harrison's folio _History
of the City of London_, as well as a paint-box, an hour-glass, an
extinct eight-day clock, properties which were faithfully introduced,
half a century later, into _The Wild Duck_. His sister says that the
only outdoor amusement he cared for as a boy was building, and she
describes the prolonged construction of a castle, in the spirit of _The
Master-Builder_.

Very soon he began to go to school, but to neither of the public
institutions in the town. He attended what is described as a "small
middle-class school," kept by a man called Johan Hansen, who was the
only person connected with his childhood, except his sister, for whom
the poet retained in after life any agreeable sentiment. "Johan Hansen,"
he says, "had a mild, amiable temper, like that of a child," and when he
died, in 1865, Ibsen mourned him. The sexton at Skien, who helped in the