The staff of the British Legation consisted of a First Secretary, Sir Alan Johnstone, and a Chancery servant: a Dane called Ole, who was a charming, simple person like a character in Hans Andersen, vaguely intoxicated sometimes, paternal, easily upset, and endlessly obliging.
Sir Alan Johnstone had a little house in the country, and there I often used to spend Sunday, and there I made the acquaintance of Count Benckendorff. The first time I met him we had a violent argument about the Dreyfus case. He was a firm believer in Dreyfus’ innocence and so was I, but that did not prevent us arguing as though we held diametrically opposite opinions.
In the middle of August, Edmund Gosse paid a visit to Denmark and I went to him meet at Munkebjerg, which entailed a long cross-country journey over many canals and in trains that were borne on steamers. Munkebjerg was a lovely place on the top of a high hill with little woods reaching down to the water. There, for the first time, I experienced the long, green, luminous twilights of the north. Edmund Gosse was inspired by the surroundings to write a book called Hypolympia, which he afterwards dedicated to me. He imagined that the gods of Greece arrived at Munkebjerg immediately after their exile, and on that theme he wove a fantasy.
One of the most important duties at Copenhagen was to go to the railway station to meet the various royalties who used to visit the King of Denmark, and another one was to receive English Royalties at the door of the English church when they attended divine service on Sundays. We used often to see the King of Denmark out riding, and although I think he was then eighty years old, he looked on horseback, so extraordinarily young was his figure, like a man of thirty.
I learnt Danish fairly quickly and soon I could follow the plays at the Kongelige Theatre and at other theatres. The Kongelige Theatre was a State-supported institution with an ancient tradition and an excellent troupe of actors and dancers. They performed opera: Gluck, Mozart, and Wagner; ballets; the classic Danish comedies of Holberg; Molière; Shakespeare; modern comedies and the dramas of Ibsen, Tolstoy, and Holger Drachman. The Shakespeare productions were particularly interesting and far more remarkable than any I ever saw in Berlin. They made use of the Apron Stage; on a small back-cloth at the back of the stage changed with the changing scene; the back-cloth was framed in a Gothic arch, which was supported by pillars raised on low steps. A curtain could be lowered across this arch, and the actors could proceed with the play in front of this curtain, without necessitating the lowering of the larger curtain. This small scene was extremely effective. It was just enough to give the eye the keynote of the play; and in the historical plays of Shakespeare, in Richard III. for instance, it was ideal. I saw Richard III., King Lear, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; the latter was a beautiful and gay production; the actor who played Bottom had a rich vein of humour and a large exuberant personality, and the fairy dances were beautifully organised and executed. Of the modern drama I saw Tolstoy’s Powers of Darkness, which made a shattering effect, Ibsen’s Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler, and Holger Drachman’s Gurre, and some comedies by Otto Benzon.
The performance of the Doll’s House with Fru Hennings’ Nora was unforgettable. I have seen many Noras; Eleonora Duse and Réjane and Agnes Sorma in Berlin; but Fru Hennings played the part as if it had been written for her; she was Nora; she made the whole play more than natural, she made it inevitable. “Quelle navrante ironie! quel désenchantement à fond!” said Jules Lemaître, writing about Duse’s performance of Magda. In Fru Hennings’ interpretation of Nora, the irony was indeed harrowing, and the disenchantment complete; but irony, disillusion, weariness, disgust were all merged into a wonderful harmony, as the realities of life gradually dawned on the little singing-bird, and the doll changed into a woman. She made the transformation, which whenever I had seen the play before seemed so difficult to believe in, of the Nora of the first act into the Nora of the last act seem the most natural thing in the world. Then Fru Hennings had the advantage of being a Dane and of speaking the words of the play in the language in which they had been written. She had a musical rippling voice and a plaintive grace of gesture. Holger Drachman’s drama Gurre was a terrible and intensely dramatic poetic drama, with a love duet of impassioned lyricism and melody, and an almost unbearable scene, in which the Queen has her rival scalded to death in a steam-bath. Hedda Gabler I confess to not being able to endure when I saw it; it was beautifully acted; too well acted; there seemed to be no difference between what was going on on the stage and in the audience. I had a sudden uprush of satiety with Norwegian drama: with Ibsen, with problem plays, with Denmark, with the North; and I remember going out of the theatre after the second act, in revolt and disgust, and not being able to stand any more of it. But that was an accidental impression arising from a surfeit of such things, and from an overdose of Scandinavian gloom and Norwegian complexity; a short course of musical comedies would have soon enabled one to appreciate the drama of Ibsen once more; as it was, I heard it after a year and a half’s stay at Copenhagen, and at that moment I had had just a drop too much of that kind of thing.
I also saw When we dead awaken when it was first produced, and this again had no effect on me, save one of vague and teasing perplexity.
The music at Copenhagen was as interesting as the drama. Mozart’s operas were admirably given at the Kongelige Theatre. I remember a fine performance of Don Giovanni, the Nozze di Figaro, and Gluck’s Orpheo, concerts where Beethoven’s Symphonies were played, and a recital of Paderewski where he played Liszt’s arrangement of the Erlkönig. When he came to the end of it, the impression was that he himself had experienced that ride in the night; that he had battled with the Erl King for the life of the child, and that it was he and not the child who was dead.
As soon as I could speak Danish, I made several friends among the Danes. I sometimes spent the evening at Dr. George Brandes’ house, and more often at that of Otto Benzon, the playwright, who was extremely kind to me. The intelligentsia of Copenhagen were highly cultivated; they were well-to-do and had fine collections of modern pictures. The meals were long and were often followed by a still longer supper. The days were short in winter at Copenhagen; the sun appeared to set at two; the wind blew in every direction at once down the Bred Gade. Copenhagen in winter had depressing elements.
I had, in the meantime, made great friends with the Benckendorffs at the Russian Legation.