NOTABLE EXILES

Evening Star, Issue 22249, 29 January 1936, Page 8

NOTABLE EXILES

WHY PEOPLE LEAVE HOME Various deductions have been made from the departure from New York of the famous aviator, Charles Lindbergh, and his wife and son, Jon, for England, where it is reported they will stay indefinitely, says a writer in the Melbourne ‘ Age.’ Whatever the explanation, it is no exaggeration to say that the Lindberghs carry with them the svmpathy and goodwill of all nationals iii the tragic and barbaric kidnapping of their first-born son. More .than most events this act of voluntary expatriation focuses the mind on the many notable monarchs and men who have sought inspiration or protection in countries other than their own. Great Britain, especially, comes to mind as the country which, by its free institutions and wise and benevolent laws, has bared its broad bosom to receive harassed and troubled expatriates, to foster the talents of famous men, with Handel and Marx as antipodean examples in the creative struggle for expression and development. fji 1929 an American, himself an expatriate, wrote a provocative article in ‘ Harper’s Weekly,’ under the title * Uprooted Americans.” He expressed the view that most of his fellow-exiles lived in Europe because they loved America, an wished to preserve their love by keeping away from her! _ 1 “ Their denunciation of America as she is to-day,” said this writer, “ is fired by a vision of her as she should, and some time may be. They leave behind the America of Mabel Willebrandt and Aimee MTherson—(he does not mention gangsters)—in order to get nearer the America of Walt Whitman. They are angry because they care. They clench their fists, where an aloof foreigner would shrug his shoulders. What is an expatriate and why? . . . Being an expatriate is not a physical condition, but a state of mind. Not all Americans who live abroad are expatriates. The true expatriate is set apart from the various types of mere residents abroad, not by external criteria, but by an inner test. He knows that he is an exile. He. may have sailed from New York with his mind all made up, or he may have arrived as a student, or on an assignment or appointment, or simply as a tourist, and then drifted into staying. The crucial fact about him is he is conscious of having burned his ships.” This writer from abroad speaks of the moral freedom in the .older-newer life which quickens the mind of the American, especially if he be engaged in some form of creative work, and looks forward to the spiritual rebirth of his own country. The idea of salvation by geography which takes Americans to the Old World, just as in the past it took Europeans to America, is discussed, with the conclusion that he who believes in such salvation is not lessened in the transfer, but remains what he was. Taking the long view, and thinking internationally, the writer adds: “ I believe that apart from -his eventful measurable achievement, the expatriate who is made of the right stuff is an American asset. He makes for variety of type—a virtue in itself in a civilisation married by its tendency to stamp out variety. By exposing himself to the radiation of the elder culture 'he may absorb some of the qualities in which the younger is deficient. WASHINGTON IRVING. Washington Irving reflected the impress upon him of old England in his writing. Fifty years later Henry James felt that influence and crossed the Atlantic to the country which was most congenial to his sensitive talent, and within 20 years such a robust storyteller as Bret Harte retired to spend his remaining days in London. Irving left his native country, which was full of youthful promise, to tread in the footsteps of antiquity. “ I will visit this land of wonders,” said he, “ and see the gigantic race from which I am degenerated.” His ultimate humility and appreciative temper contrasts strongly with the mental attitude of what Bernard Shaw, on his first visit to the United States two years ago, satirised gently as the H.p.c. (100 per cent.) American. Yet the author of ‘ The Sketch Book ’ was imbued strongly with national self-conscious-ness when he wrote early in the nineteenth century: “ It has been the peculiar lot of our country to be

visited by the worst kind of English travellers. While men of philosophical spirit and cultivated minds have been sent from England to ransack the Poles, to penetrate the deserts, and to study the manners and customs of barbarous nations, with which .gho can have no permanent intercourse or profit or pleasure, it has been left to the brokendown tradesman, the scheming adventurer, the wandering mechanic (1), the Manchester and Birmingham agent to bo her oracles respecting America. From such sources she is content to receive her information respecting a country in which one of the greatest political experiments in the history of the world is now performing.” This is but a typical excerpt from an early chapter of ‘ The Sketch Book,’ in which the English traveller is belaboured. As the writer continued his travels and came under the spell of old England he sensed her greatness in its essence, and, sitting in the parlour of the Red Horse at Stratford-on-Avon, he wrote: “ To a homeless man, who has not a spot on this wide world which he can truly call his own, there is a feeling of something of independence and territorial consequence when, after a weary day’s travel, he kicks off his boots, thrusts his feet into slippers, and stretches himself before an inn fire.” Like Goethe, who, among the orange groves and vineyards, the art and architecture of old Italy, found himself “ at home in the wide world, no longer an exile,” Henrik Ibsen, dramatist and poet, whose genius makes him still a vital force, went to Italy in 1864 to preserve his inner life, and did not return to his own country (save for two brief visits) till some 25 years afterwards. Everything in Norway seemed to rob him of his courage and will; the community was too small. He wanted to live away from Norway and be by himself. But such was Ibsen that, no matter where he lived, his home environment would probably have been a prison to him. Not until 1877 did he begin to write the series of prose plays upon which his universal reputation rests. OFFERS REJECTED. ‘ His biographer, Koht, tells us that there were enough people who wished to recall him. Only three months after his departure he declined an offer of the director’s position at the Christiania Theatre, and when the offer was repeated in 1870 and 1884 he still put it aside. In 1884 he wrote; “ The point is I,could not write freely and unreservedly up there, which is the same as saying that I could not write at all.” He believed that poets_ might leave home and yet not shirk their duty towards their fatherland; that, indeed, it might be necessary for their work that they settle outside the country. The curious thing is that none who know his work could think ,of Ibsen as anything but a Norwegian poet, and this lends conviction to his belief that he saw his homo more clearly when he was far away from it. When Ibsen did return to Norway in 1891 and settled in Christiania, he was received as a national hero. A Conservative newspaper, urging Mm to remain in Norway, wrote: “As our readers know, we do not share Ibsen’s view of human life or of social conditions, but we are well able to see and admire the mighty poetic genius which the country had fostered in him, and we wish that Herr Ibsen might be able to emancipate himself from the bitter feelings that for so long a time have caused him to prefer other countries to his fatherland; for, when all is said and done, it is from the intellectual soil of his homeland that Henrik Ibsen has drawn his best power.” When ho died, after a long illness, in May, 1906, Ibsen was accorded a State funeral.