The longest journey of his life

Eduard Vilde’s travels abroad in 1906-1917

Eduard Vilde made his cohabitation with young and active Linda Jürman legal in the autumn of 1905 and announced it in the paper. They sympathized with the revolutionary events in Tartu and that is why both were threatened with arrests. They managed to flee at the last moment. The narrow escape meant the beginning of the longest journey in Vilde’s life.

First they went to St Petersburg and from there to Switzerland and Finland. It was in Helsinki where Vilde began to publish his political-satirical journal The Gallows. At home in Estonia the journal was banned. The next two issues were secretly published and sent to Estonia but the Finnish secret police discovered Vilde’s lodgings. With the help of sympathizers the spouses escaped again, carrying the passport of a Finn named E. Gylling. Under this name Vilde spent four years in Copenhagen and Stuttgard, hoping to get by using his skills and speed of writing. Quoting his novel A Friend – “one had to make quick and brief lines to earn meagre livelihood”.

“My alternative is quite simple – to be or not to be. Scanty bread and poor clothing, increasing age eating up energy to work…” Vilde mentioned in one of his private letters in 1906.

Life in exile in strange European cities had a ruining influence on Vilde’s spiritual health and his fear of starvation eliminated his energy to work. Vilde was also afraid that his readers would forget him.

In 1911 Vilde used all his savings to get to New York where his wife Linda Jürman edited the social-democratic newspaper The New World. Unfortunately, Vilde’s adversaries had presented the immigration administration with a false accusation and Vilde was kept imprisoned on Ellis Island. After court proceedings he was given the right to enter the country but he did not live there long, as he had only negative feelings for the “semi-barbaric country with its worship of the dollar” (E. Vilde, 1957). Vilde returned to Europe together with his spouse in the mid-1911. They settled down in Copenhagen that remained their home for six years.