ON a terribly cold day in January, 1893, my father received a wire from Christiania, saying that my brother was dangerously ill there.

After he took his degree, Vaughan had worked with Pasteur in Paris for some time at the table next Professor Sophus Torop. They thus became friends, and when my brother wished to complete some original scientific work of his own, Professor Torop kindly offered him space in his huge laboratories at Christiania if he cared to use them. Thither he went. A cut on his hand ended in serious blood-poisoning, and a terrifying telegram suggesting amputation of the right arm was the first intimation we had of the illness.

It was afternoon. Someone must go to Norway. Norway in winter! Yes, Norway covered with snow and ice: its rivers, fjords, waterfalls, and lakes all frozen: its mountains cloaked with purest snow: its people swathed in fur.

My father was too tied by his profession to leave. My mother was not equal to so perilous a journey. My husband was away in Scotland on business, so I undertook the expedition. It was considered too wild an undertaking for me, a young woman, to do quite alone, so my people insisted that my sister, then a little girl, should accompany me.

Three hours later we started, not in the least knowing how we were ever going to get to Christiania, as the winter was particularly severe, and for months the great naval station at Kiel had been completely ice-bound. We had the most exciting time crossing from Kiel to Korsör in the first boat that had ventured through the ice for twelve weeks, and so bad did the passage finally become that we were forced to get out and walk.

Crossing an ice-floe was somewhat interesting and certainly exciting, and walking on one’s feet from Denmark to Sweden was a queer experience.

Sometimes we stumbled through slush across ice-hummocks between two and three feet thick. At other times we got into lumbersome ice-boats and were pulled by sailors with feet properly swathed for the purpose. Occasionally the boat would slide into an ice-crack, and, though the passengers remained dry, the wretched men dragging the craft suffered unexpected cold baths.

We passed encampments on the ice, with people living calmly there, from whom we learnt that various venturesome travellers, thinking they could cross the frozen belt without proper guides, had started off on foot. Then fog or mist overtook them and they lost their way, or, being fatigued, they sat down to rest and were frozen into their eternal sleep. Others slipped and lost their lives in the ice-cracks. Two or three such deaths were matters of weekly occurrence that severe winter.

We were met in Christiania at six o’clock in the morning by Dr. Nansen, who came to tell us that our brother’s hand had been saved, and though he was still seriously ill, they hoped all immediate danger was past.

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:

Mr. W. C. Miller, the editor of the Educational Times, wrote:

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?

Even as I write, the vision of Ibsen’s simple home, his plebeian wife, and the old man seated at his desk with his little dolls laid out before him, comes floating over the space of years.

A most unromantic figure, surely! though at the end of his life Ibsen formed an attachment for a young girl which was tenfold returned by her. He was, notwithstanding the rough exterior, an amorous old gentleman, fond of squeezing ladies’ hands and whispering pretty things into their ears, so I was not so surprised as some of his admirers on this side seem to have been.

He was hardly dead before a little book appeared in German, its title being Ibsen. With Unpublished Letters to a Friend, by Georg Brandes. The friend was the girl. There were twelve letters, including a set of album verses and the dedication of a photograph. The romance came about in this wise.

In the late summer of 1889 Ibsen and his family spent a holiday in the Tyrolese watering-place Gossensass, where they made the acquaintance of a young Viennese girl who was also staying there. She was eighteen years of age, the poet sixty-one; but that wide disparity did not prevent a warm friendship springing up between them, which apparently was cultivated more assiduously on her side than on his, and was eventually brought to a close, as far as overt manifestations were concerned at any rate, by his decision. On separating, the dramatist gave her a copy of his photograph, on the back of which was written:

By the following February Ibsen was already troubled in his mind over the development which the friendship was taking. He wrote:

In spite of Ibsen’s entreaties his young friend continued to send him letters, and a little present accompanied one of them at the close of 1890. He replied:

That was the end of the letter-writing. They never saw one another again after the meeting in the Tyrol, and from then the Viennese girl kept silence. Only once did she break it—on the poet’s seventieth birthday, in 1898, when she sent him a congratulatory telegram. Three days later she received from him a photograph, on the back of which was written:

So Love came tapping at the window of the old gentleman who had described Youth knocking at the door.

A Winter’s Jaunt to Norway the papers unanimously described as “lively” and “breezy,” and its proud parent began to feel as if she had discovered the home of the winds.

A few years later the solid meal followed—the notes were served up as soup, re-served as fish for the papers, and took more solid form as meat for the magazines. Memory was called upon in all kinds of ways and on all kinds of Scandinavian subjects as puddings for the Press, so these little trips for pleasure became invested capital and bore good interest. I became an authority on Northern lands, and for years was written to, or telegraphed to, or ’phoned to for copy on like subjects. I was asked to review somebody else’s Norway book; to join a Norwegian Club; to supply someone with a teacher of Norsk literature, and be interviewed for “galleries” of travellers or sportswomen. One gentleman, whom I unfortunately did not see, but of whose industry I remain an unceasing admirer, wrote an admirable four-column interview with me, entirely from his own imagination.

It always pays to master something well, and it is strange how one comes across things again and again through life. When I had been very ill in 1909, and was ordered to Woodhall Spa for a course of baths, the delightful Bath-chair man who conveyed me to the pump-room, suddenly exclaimed, “Excuse me, ma’am, but are you the Mrs. Alec Tweedie that writes?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“I wondered if you were immediately I heard your name,” he said, “because I owe you a lot, ma’am.”

“Owe me?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “seven or eight years ago there was a sale near here and a lot of books were sold. I bought a dozen old copies of Murray’s Magazine for a shilling, and a shilling meant a good deal to me in those days, but reading meant more. In them I read articles by you on Nansen, Björnson, and those Norwegian fellows, and I got so interested in Norwegian literature and the North Pole that I have read everything about them I have been able to lay my hands on ever since. The Squire has been awfully good in lending me his books on Arctic travel, and if it had not been for you I should never have begun to take an interest in such things.”

It was really quite touching. How little one knows when one takes up one’s pen what good or ill those inky scratches may do.

On the heels of A Winter’s Jaunt to Norway, written for pleasure, came Wilton, Q.C., or Life in a Highland Shooting-Box, written for gain, which The Times was kind enough to praise for its instruction as well as amusement, saying the author appeared to have a sound knowledge of all varieties of the chase. This was the outcome of those sporting articles in the Queen written when I used to follow the guns with my husband. It was followed by a booklet on Danish versus English Butter-making, reprinted from the Fortnightly Review. This subject interested me so greatly that it was most cheering to find the big “dailies” taking up with zest my lecture to our slack farmers at home. A leading article in the Daily Telegraph said, “Those of our readers who wish to learn how the thrifty, hardy, and industrious Danes have grown rich during the last quarter of a century we refer to Mrs. Alec Tweedie’s instructive exegesis.” And the Review of Reviews affirmed, “It is a discourse much needed in the present day by our agriculturists.” But I am running too far ahead. Life is often ruled by chance, and that Danish subject which brought so much kudos at the time was taken up by chance because of a stray remark at a big dinner in Copenhagen.

Apropos of the simplicity of life in Norway, it was rather amusing to note the despair and worry caused over the dress allowance of the maids-of-honour appointed to attend upon the young English Princess, who had, in 1906, but recently taken her seat upon the throne of Norway.

It was decided that a certain amount of Court etiquette must be kept up. Accordingly, a high official from the Court of St. James’s went over to Christiania to see what could be done. It is a rule that a maid-of-honour should be paid a sum sufficient to dress upon, a sum which in England amounts to £300 a year, although a maid-of-honour is no longer given a thousand pounds as a marriage portion; all she carries away is her badge, with permission to wear it as a brooch since it is no longer required as an Order.

Being anxious to make all arrangements as satisfactorily as possible the Englishman visited a well-known gentleman in the capital, who had several daughters and went much into Society. Touching the subject, he asked, “What would be a reasonable figure for a Norwegian girl to dress upon?” and explained his reason for wishing to know.

“Well,” said the likewise exalted Scandinavian official, “I have three daughters, and as they go out a good deal, and I am particular that they should always look nice, I am afraid I am a little extravagant in their allowance and give them each twenty-five pounds a year.”

“Twenty-five pounds a year!” exclaimed the Britisher, amazed.

“Well, you see,” continued the Norwegian, evidently fearing that his visitor was shocked at the magnitude of the amount, “an ordinary young lady here would dress on fifteen or seventeen pounds a year, and, of course, some people do think the allowance I give my daughters somewhat excessive.”

The Englishman, evidently more surprised, proceeded to explain that a dame-d’honneur would have to dress more expensively than an ordinary young lady; besides, there would be an occasional visit to London, or some other capital, when new clothes would be required.

So these two good, kind creatures put their heads together, and, hovering between the hundred pounds offered by the Britisher and the fifty suggested by the Norwegian, decided that seventy-five pounds a year would be ample.

Norway was amazed at the magnitude of the sum. For a young lady to have seventy-five pounds a year to put upon her back was astounding. But the young ladies soon discovered that they were expected to dress for dinner every night, a social custom unknown in their experience; and before the year had run out, they had learnt that their allowance was as little as they could clothe themselves upon as maids-in-waiting to the Queen of Norway.

It was pleasant, when I paid my last visit to Norway in 1910, to hear how popular our English Princess and her Danish husband had made themselves.

Norway is poor, but delightful.

Life on lentils and beans can be quite pleasant; but perhaps the proletariat may deny us even these luxuries.

Demos may decree that all men and women not employed on manual labour are “waste products,” and to work or to die will be demanded of them, work being to Demos a purely physical action.