Ibsen and Bjoernson were how beginning to be
recognized as the two great writers of Norway, and their droll balance
as the Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat of letters was already becoming defined.
It was doubtless Bjoernson's emphatic attacks on Sweden that at this
moment made Ibsen so loving to the Swedes and so beloved. He was in such
clover at Stockholm that he might have lingered on there indefinitely,
if the Khedive had not invited him, in September, to be his guest at the
opening of the Suez Canal. This sudden incursion of an Oriental
potentate into the narrative seems startling until we recollect that
illustrious persons were invited from all countries to this ceremony.
The interesting thing is to see that Ibsen was now so fatuous as to be
naturally so selected; the only other Norwegian guest being Professor J.
D. C. Lieblein, the Egyptologist.
The poet started for Egypt, by Dresden and Paris, on September 28. _The
League of Youth_ was published on the 29th, and first performed on
October 18; Ibsen, therefore, just missed the scandal and uproar caused
by the play in Norway. In company with eighty-five other people, all
illustrious guests of the Khedive, and under the care of Mariette Bey,
Ibsen made a twenty-four days' expedition up the Nile into Nubia, and
then back to Cairo and Port Said.
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