than the German, applied. Strindberg's nervous temperament would
not tolerate a quiet and peaceful honeymoon; quite soon the couple
departed to Gravesend via Hamburg. Strindberg was too restless to
stay there and moved on to London. There he left his wife to try to
negotiate for the production of his plays, and journeyed alone to
Sellin, on the island of Ruegen, after having first been compelled
to stop in Hamburg owing to lack of money. Strindberg stayed on
Ruegen during the month of July, and then left for the home of his
parents-in-law at Mondsee, near Salzburg in Austria, where he was
to meet his wife. But when she was delayed a few days on the
journey from London, Strindberg impatiently departed for Berlin,
where Frida Uhl followed shortly after. About the same time an
action was brought for the suppression of the German version of _Le
Plaidoyer d'un Fou_ as being immoral. This book gives an
undisguised, intensely personal picture of Strindberg's first
marriage, and was intended by him for publication only after his
death as a defence against accusations directed against him for
his behaviour towards Siri von Essen. Strindberg was acquitted
after a time, but before that his easily fired imagination had
given him a thorough shake-up, which could only hasten the crisis
which seemed to be approaching. After a trip to Bruenn, where
Strindberg wrote his scientific work _Antibarbarus_, the couple
arrived in November at the home of Frida Uhl's grandparents in the
little village of Dornach, by the Upper Danube; here the wanderings
of 1893 at last came to an end. For a few months comparative peace
reigned in the artists' little home, but the birth of a daughter,
Kerstin, in May, brought this tranquillity to a sudden end.
Strindberg, who had lived in a state of nervous depression since
the 1880's, felt himself put on one side by the child, and felt ill
at ease in an environment of, as he put it in the autobiographical