MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
/T is recommendable, if one wishes to obtain full benefit from travel, to make experiments, not in space only, but also in time. There is a great difference between three years spent at Khiva and three hours spent, free from passport bother, at St. Malo. It is customary for those who have for long been resident in a foreign country to decry the quick visitor who jumps to conclusions ten days after his arrival. I do not share the general contempt for such impres- sionists. On the contrary, when I have m■self been stuck in a place for a year or more, I have welcomed the arrival from England of "Paget M.P." not solely because he will bring me the latest gossip from London, but also because, coming fresh upon the scene, his views on what he sees and hears are likely to be original and intuitive. The man who has lived in a place for a length of time is apt to acquire certain fixations and to view the contemporary scene with either prejudiced or apathetic eyes. The boys who blow in suddenly from London stir the dust a bit and oblige one to think again. I am not saying that the quick visitor's improvisations must always be more correct than the settled judgements of the resident: I am only saying that the latter may be no more than the settled mud of dis- illusion and that it is an excellent thing that mud should be stirred. Conversely, when I myself make some quick visit to a foreign capital I am aware that the actual excitement of displacement renders my observation more lively and my interest more acute. First impressions, in that they are spon- taneous reactions to a new environment, are often more accurate than acquired opinions. Thus the experienced traveller should sometimes pay prolonged visits to foreign countries, and sometimes visits that are short and sharp, remem- bering that each of these methods of observation and enlighten- ment is valuable in its own sort of way.
* * * * The advantage of the short visit is that you have no time to get used to novelty. If you be young in heart, the sense of wonder begins to operate from the moment that your suit- case is slumped into the taxi; it goes on operating for the next five days. Last week I paid a quick visit to Denmark. My excitement began at Liverpool Street station when I stood waiting with other passengers for the" Scandinavian" to arrive. It was cold; it was damp; it was dark; it was ugly; it was sad to reflect that British Railways, a nationalised institution, keep their passengers waiting before the lukewarm train draws in. Such was the ardour of my mood that I was depressed by none of these circumstances. It was with wonder that I observed that a Danish lady, returning home from darkest Africa, carried with her a Basuto tom-tom with a miffy little tippet of jackal skin. It was with wonder again that I noticed two Danes of middle-age, who may have been brothers, carry- ing in their arms four barometers of wood tied together by coarse string. What had drums or barometers to do with Liverpool Street on a dark Friday morning? Such incongruities cause the heart to sing hymns at heaven's gate. When our luke- warm train eventually reached Harwich I was distressed to observe that even in those still lagoons the gale whipped the small waves into foam and sent the sea-gulls scudding sideways. It was evident that the passage across the North Sea would be very rough indeed. All night long the fine ship lurched and heaved and smacked the waves; the cabins groaned and }earned; in the morning there were icicles upon the rigging and few passengers at breakfast. There was no sign, either of the four barometers, or of the Basuto drum.
* * * * It was agreeable to land at Esbjerg and to be transported across the Little Belt and the Great Belt without changing trains. The nice warm " Englaender "—companion to the luke-warm " Scandinavian " that had taken us from Liverpool Street to Harwich—just trundled on to the ferry at Nyborg and off we hummed over the waters that separate Funen from Zealand. You descend from the railway carriage in the bowels of the boat and climb a gangway which leads you to a white river-steamer complete with deck, portholes and saloons. In the dining-room a vast collation was -awaiting us, together with the newspapers from Copenhagen. It is with the utmost diffi- culty that I can read Danish and I cannot understand it when it is spoken. The Danes, realising the extreme complexity of their language, swallow half of it and only use the half that remains. But, since every porter speaks English as well as a professor of English literature, no real inconvenience results. Welcomed, comforted, fed and warmed, you reach Copenhagen in the afternoon and gaze with admiration at that elegant and sturdy city, its domes and pinnacles shining like malachite above the snow-covered roofs and the long wharfs and harbour-locks. Here, one feels, is the perfect classless State, in which the rich are few and the poor non-existent, in which modesty of demeanour conceals a splendid pride, in which politeness to foreigners is no mere formula but something utterly authentic, in which seriousness and gaiety are beauti- fully combined. How dignified it is, one feels, to be an independent country, self-contained and self-assured, to read books, paint and collect pictures, develop science, fatten pigs and cultivate the fields !
The road that leads from Copenhagen to Helsingors runs beside the Sund. When we reached the Kronborg. the great fortress-castle of Elsinore, the gale from the north west was still driving fine rain before it down from the Cattegat; the coast of Sweden and the tower of Helsingborg (from which in 1943 I had gazed across at an occupied Denmark) were blurred shapes in the scudding mist. The wild swans who, in the Hans Andersen way, glide up and down the Sund, had congregated under the breakwater, their feathers buffeted by the gusts that flung themselves against the parapet: some of the wiser or less wild swans had entered the moat of the castle, where they floated serene and indifferent, their feathers only faintly stirred from time to time by the echo of the echo of the gale outside. We walked to the outer bastion, where a Danish sentry in a steel helmet was watching through binoculars the slow passage from east to west of a Russian tanker. The drizzle was already turning to sleet; it slashed down mercilessly upon the ramparts, upon the shuddering moat, upon the roaring waves of the Sund. We descended to a casement to protect ourselves from the wind and the rain; and there, fixed into the wall of a bastion, was a monument to sweet Shakespeare. It bore in bas-relief a repro- duction of the first folio portrait and underneath it an inscription in Danish. This inscription said that the old legend of Amleth of Jutland as narrated by Saxo Grammaticus had been adapted by the English poet Shakespeare, " with the result that the name of Elsinore has become known throughout the world." The gale thundered against, the walls of the huge castle above us and screamed through its many vanes; the sleet stung. our faces and our hands. "What a small island." I thought, "was England in 1603 ! And Shakespeare must have been a very shy man ! "
It is good for the mind and body to be the guest of proud and modest people, hospitable and enlightened, who are glad to welcome the compatriots of Shakespeare. I went out to Roskilde to see the tombs of their kings. The church is of beautiful brick outside and all white within—qui luit tout rose et dort tout blanc: the royal coffins and cenotaphs stand magnificent and gaunt. Then back again across the North Sea to Parkeston Quay at Harwich; wondering why English trains should be so cold; why our station buffets should be so sloppy, and our bar-maids so severe; why nobody seems pleased to see one or anxious to help; why the Welfare State should care so little for the welfare of those who visit it. why, compared to Denmark, England should seem so lazy and cold.
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