In an autobiographical letter to the Danish critic Peter Hansen, written from Dresden in 1870, Ibsen says: “_Lady Inger of Östråt_ is the result of a love-affair—hastily entered into and violently broken off—to which several of my minor poems may also be attributed, such as _Wild-flowers and Pot-plants_, _A Bird-Song_, &c.” The heroine of this love-affair can now be identified as a lady named Henrikke Holst, who seems to have preserved through a long life the fresh, bright spirit, the overflowing joyousness, which attracted Ibsen when she was only in her seventeenth year. Their relation was of the most innocent. It went no further than a few surreptitious rambles in the romantic surroundings of Bergen, usually with a somewhat older girl to play propriety, and with a bag of sugar-plums to fill up pauses in the conversation. The “violent” ending seems to have come when the young lady’s father discovered the secret of these excursions, and doubtless placed her under more careful control. What there was in this episode to suggest, or in any way influence, _Lady Inger_, I cannot understand. Nevertheless the identification seems quite certain. The affair had a charming little sequel. During the days of their love’s young dream, Ibsen treated the “wild-flower” with a sort of shy and distant chivalry at which the wood-gods must have smiled. He avoided even touching her hand, and always addressed her by the “De” (you) of formal politeness. But when they met again after many years, he a famous poet and she a middle-aged matron, he instinctively adopted the “Du” (thou) of affectionate intimacy, and she responded in kind. He asked her whether she had recognised herself in any of his works, and she replied: “I really don’t know, unless it be in the parson’s wife in _Love’s Comedy_, with her eight children and her perpetual knitting.” “Ibsen protested,” says Herr Paulsen, in whose _Samliv med Ibsen_ a full account of the episode may be read. It is interesting to note that the lady did not recognise herself in Eline Gyldenlöve, any more than we can. It must have been less than a year after the production of _Lady Inger_ that Ibsen made the acquaintance of the lady who was to be his wife. Susanna Dåe Thoresen was a daughter (by his second marriage) of Provost[6] Thoresen, of Bergen, whose third wife, Magdalene Krag, afterwards became an authoress of some celebrity. It is recorded that Ibsen’s first visit to the Thoresen household took place on January 7, 1856,[7] and that on that occasion, speaking to Susanna Thoresen, he was suddenly moved to say to her: “You are now Elina, but in time you will become Lady Inger.” Twenty years later, at Christmas 1876, he gave his wife a copy of the German translation of _Lady Inger_, with the following inscription on the fly-leaf: