During those days I felt very much as might a minnow swimming to and
fro between Leviathan on the one hand and Behemoth on the other--a
minnow tremulously pleased, but ever wistful for some means of
bringing his two enormous acquaintances together. On the afternoon of
December 24th I confided to Browning my aspiration. He had never heard
of this brother poet and dramatist, whose fame indeed was at that time
still mainly Boreal; but he cried out with the greatest heartiness,
"Capital! Bring him round with you at one o'clock to-morrow for turkey
and plum-pudding!"
I betook myself straight to the Hotel Danieli, hoping against hope
that Ibsen's sole answer would not be a comminatory grunt and an
instant rupture of all future relations with myself. At first he was
indeed resolute not to go. He had never heard of this Herr Browning.
(It was one of the strengths of his strange, crustacean genius that
he never had heard of anybody.) I took it on myself to say that
Herr Browning would send his private gondola, propelled by his two
gondoliers, to conduct Herr Ibsen to the scene of the festivity. I
think it was this prospect that made him gradually unbend, for he had
already acquired that taste for pomp and circumstance which was so
notable a characteristic of his later years.
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