at random. The omens were favorable, but when he presented himself for
ordination on March 6, he felt himself utterly unworthy of the position, so
after taking counsel with his father, who called the whole business mere
“weakness and hypochondria,” he turned to Grundtvig, who advised him
to withdraw fro mthe position, which—“Thank God!”—his father did not
oppose. But that was not the end of the affair. While friends and acquain-
tances were still congratulating hi mon his appoint ment, he had to seek an
audience with the king in order to obtain royal permission to submit a
request to resign the position. The king was not lenient but did let hi moff
with a moderate reprimand and gave his permission. The matter attracted
notice.“Thesedayspeopletalkofnothingelse,”burbledoneoftheRudel-
bach birdies, who furnished page upon page of gossip in their letter to
brother Andreas. Pastor Kolthoff, whose diary otherwise recorded only
events of great importance—for example, which professors had come to
hearhimpreach—notedlaconicallyinhisentryforMarch16,1833:“Kier-
kegaard asks to be permitted to resign as a preacher.”
A couple of days later, on March 18, 1833, a letter fro mNiels Andreas
finally arrived. His ship had waited in the harbor in Gothenburg for an
entire month before proceeding across the Atlantic, and he had thus had
plenty of time to reconsider his intentions and return home. Captain Gibbs
had not succeeded in finding more passengers for the trip, so in addition to
the captain himself, the first mate, six seamen, and two cabin boys, Niels
Andreas had been the only person on board when theMassasoit of Plymouth
hadsailedforBostononSeptember29,1832,fullyladenwithSwedishiron
and timber. Fifty days later, on the morning of Saturday, November 17,
1832,hehadgoneashoreinBoston.TheletterthatarrivedinCopenhagen
onMarch 18,1833, hadbeen writtenon January8, morethan twomonths
before, but it had languished long in the General Post Office in London
because the American postage, the equivalent of three pounds sterling, had
not been paid.
Nowshipletterno.6310hadfinallyreachedtheworriedmerchantKier-
kegaard, and on the upper margin of the first page he noted the date of
receipt, while Peter Christian noted it in his diary: “On this day Father
received the first letter fro mNiels in Providence.” The letter opened with
many excuses and had clearly been written out of a heavy sense of filial
obligation: “I have wanted to write you on many occasions, but I put it off
time and again because I did not have any good news to report and I was
afraid of making you worry. I realize how stupid that was, since of course
no worry could have been greaterthan that of not hearing fro m me.” After
several weeks of shuttling back and forth between Boston and New York
with his Danish letters of recommendation, which no one wanted to read,
{1813–1834} 41