SOME GREAT DANES.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1366, 17 February 1912, Page 11

SOME GREAT DANES.

J£r. Edmund Gome's book, "Two Visits to Denmark," is reviewed • in the "Manchester Guardian" by Professor C. li. Herford, wuo reproduces some nno descriptions of the great writers met by Mr. Some of the men then illustrious in the Scandinavian world (says Professor Herford) aro now well known in England. Of Ibsen and Bjornson themselves, whom he did not at this date meet, Mr. Gosse gives us some vivid glimpses at second hand-Ibsen, for instance, at Itome in 18C5, still poor, with his long black beard and coat of shabby leek-green, stalkng sullenly up and down the Scandinavian Club, not speaking a woi'd to anyone until supper-time, when ho would empty a flask of tliin red wino and slowly brighten up, not into geniality exactly, but into loquacity, and dart the scathing bolts of his sarcasm recklessly in all directions." According to Molbech, the Danisli poet, who communicated these reminiscences to the young English visitor, "things wero at their worst when Bjornson joined tho party. . . . They could not keep apart; they were like two tomcats parading and snarling and swearing at each other, yet each bored to death if the other were not present. ... I. assure you, if it amused the Norwegians, it wa-s death to us easy-going- Danes and Swedes." But Molbech, "easy-going Dane" as he might be, was also a bitter satirist, and the vignette, which Mr. Gosse merely reproduces, has caught something of his temper. Had Mr. Gosso been the eye-witness as well as the reporter we suspect that the two tomcats would have demeaned •themselves with a choicer decorum, and that there would have been fewer snarls and more purrs. His pictures of the Danish Ibsens.and Bjornsons aro, at. any rate, more finely and sympathetically touched. But "pictures" is an inept word for most of these sketches. There is more than a touch of drama—stress, crisis, suspense, triumph. The great man to bo reconnoitred is a shy recluse like Palu-dan-Muller, or an absorbed intellectual worker like Georg Brandos; there are adventures to bo undergone; but all the gods aro on the side of. tho young man, and all barriers go down before the talisman of his tempered and critical heroworship. The visit lo (ho former, whose epic "Adam Homo," a Danish "Don Juan," is too little known in England, is a charming idyll. Of more general interest is fhc visit to Brandos, who wa<? then already known to him by correspondence. "At that tunn■/1572) Brandcs had rooms high up in a house in the heart of tho city. There came to tho door, in answer to our summons, a tall, thin young man—lut was then jiist :12, and looked le.=s—gcntlo and even mild in appearance, pale, with a great thatch of hair archcd over a wide forehead. Ho looked bored at being disturbed, and bit the feather of a pen rather querulously. But as soon as LarBcn luid prawn ted me by name ho tprans trie; ienrarf, and ma Uut tjirical

Danish squeeze of tho hand. His quiet manner left him; talking very last", asking questions, and not waiting for my answers, ho led me, gratified, but more than a little bewildered, into his sanctum. I never met with anyone mote impatient than Brandes. ... He not merely did not bear fools gladly, but he was easily driven to distraction, and to tho visible stamping of feet, by those who were not, even by his own measure, fools, but merely I<vr arrowy in their mental movements (hail himself. Thus I immediately fell under his ban because I spoke Danish so slowly. . . . What was In bo done-' . . . French German? No! Most unsatisfactory! What was io bo done? .1 was now tongue-tied with embarrassment, while Brandos went pacing, infuriated, between the sofa and the door, and snapped his long, tapering fingers." It wa.« through Brandcs that Mr. Gosse made the acquaintance of tho greatest of Danish lyric poets, Holger Drachmann, the subject of one of the finest of his portraits. "I have always remcml>ETed that wonderful man as I saw him then, for the first time, advancing from the sea (the scene was near tho Brandes's country villa on tho beach) like somo invading Norseman. . . . His was a 'pardtiko spirit, beautiful and swift.' Our mortal languors, absurd capacities for fatigue, were unknown to him. He seemed to require no sleep, to shrink from no labour, to feel the fierce tide of life flow i-n him without any decurrent ebb. I have never known another who trod, as he seemed to do, the crest of tho down, with his eye fixed upon the sun, singing out loud and waving his exuberance iike a feathered , hat. His voice was resonant and cheery; he seemed to be always looking about for another morning to star to shout with; and although in his royal geniality ho stooped to the conversations of mortals, be would have been happier, ono felt, if he could have found a genuine young demigod to play with."