We nursed him and finally took him away to the mountains, where there was snow ten feet deep, to recoup after his illness.
Our experiences were so delightful that we returned to Norway a couple of years later for the fun of the thing, and I took a number of photographs. The Lady Brilliana Harley must have been at my elbow, I think, as I only did the thing as a joke and to amuse myself at the time. I had found ski so exciting a sport, I wanted others to know about its joys. Strange to say, however, no newspaper would take my photographs of ski. “They had never heard of such a sport, they did not wish to hear of such a sport—one which would never be the slightest interest to English people,” and so on. Who would believe this, when, only fifteen years later, the windows of London sporting outfitters are filled with ski in the winter months, and great numbers of young men and women have tried Skilübling themselves? Do not our English people go out to Switzerland in thousands and tens of thousands every year for this very purpose? While, after all, Norway is preferable in winter.
When I took up my pen professionally, I pegged away, and I wrote and wrote and wrote. Other people began to be interested, so I contributed the first snow-shoe articles to the Encyclopædia of Sport, and newspapers and magazines galore.
At that time in Christiania, and later on when we returned for snow-shoeing, Society was very simple, but very interesting. Night after night at parties we met such men as Nansen, Ibsen, Björnson, Leys the poet, and Ilef Petersen the artist. There were no grand dinners, just simple little supper-parties, beer and milk being the chief beverages, with one hot dish and many delicious cold compounds. The daughter of the house, more or less, waited at table. Everything was simplicity itself, but brains and talent, wit and humour were omnipresent.
The greatest personality of all this group was undoubtedly Björnson. He was one of the finest men, both in appearance and brain, that I have ever met, and I have met many great men.
I made a few notes, remembered much more; and finally, when friends begged me to write a volume of these travels, I wrote A Winter Jaunt to Norway. It went into two or perhaps three editions, but that was only as a hors d’œuvre. It contained personal chapters upon such people as Nansen and the latter-day dramatists of Norway, Ibsen and Björnson. Ibsen had not then the cult that he immediately afterwards acquired, and it is curious now to read of the hostility which his writings provoked. Sir Edwin Saunders wrote to me:
“You have gone far to sweeten Ibsen, which is no ordinary achievement.”
Mr. W. C. Miller, the editor of the Educational Times, wrote:
“Some time I propose to try Ibsen again, when, I dare say, I shall be reviled (once more) almost as if I were advocating robbery and murder.”
One appreciates most the compliments of one’s own fellow-countrymen. But the foreigner is charming, so frank and free, so naïve. How could a young writer be otherwise than pleased to receive this letter from a Norwegian?