Through Scandinavia to Moscow. Edwards William Seymour

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СКАЧАТЬ parts of nights and days we spent with friends in the lovely Tivoli gardens, where all the Copenhagen world, high and low, rich and poor alike, are wont to meet in simple and democratic assemblage, equally bent upon having a good time. “Have you seen Tivoli?” is ever almost the first question a Copenhagener will put. There we watched the famous pantomime in the little open booth beneath the stars, a sort of Punch and Judy show; there we entered the great music hall where the Royal band plays, and the crowded audiences of music-loving Danes always applaud; there we drank the Danish beer which is admitted to be the best on earth – so a Danish neighbor whispered in my ear. Tivoli is the Copenhagener’s elysium. When he is blue he gets himself to Tivoli; when he feels gay he travels to Tivoli; alone or in company he goes to Tivoli, and he goes there as often as time will permit, which is usually every night.

      A most difficult problem for Copenhagen has been that of draining and sewering the city. It lies so low, almost at the dead level of the sea, and the tides of these Baltic waters are so insignificant – ten to twelve inches only – that for many centuries Copenhagen has been a most unhealthy city, infected by cesspools, tainted by blind drains, and defiled by accumulated poisons, until its death rate was higher than that of any other city in Europe. But at last the problem is solved. Forced water and giant suction pumps wash and drain out the elaborate system of pipes, and spill the death-laden wastage at a distant point into the sea, and with this transformation Copenhagen has become a measurably healthy city.

      Perhaps it is this century-long fight with death, plague and epidemic knocking continually at her doors, which has endowed Copenhagen with so many fine hospitals and public charities for the care of the sick, – few cities in Europe are so elaborately provided. Hand in hand with the hospitals are also institutions for caring for the destitute and very poor. Denmark has never followed England’s pauper-creating system, but the beggar on the street is promptly put in jail, while the deserving poor is given a kindly and helping hand.

      One of the most charming spectacles of the city is its extensive public gardens, where the ancient defenses are converted into parks, and the moats are transformed into ponds and little lakes where swans and geese are kept, and boys sail toy boats. The landward side of the city is thus almost encircled with these pleasure grounds. One morning we were crossing one of these gardens, the lovely Oersteds Park, when I caught a pretty picture with my kodak, a little two-years-old tot learning to make her first courtesy to a little boy of four or five. She dropped and ducked and bent her little body with all the grace of a Duchess of the Court.

      Denmark is about the size of three-fifths of West Virginia, comprises fifteen thousand square miles and contains less than two millions of people, – about sixteen hundred thousand. She possesses no deposits of coal or iron, no forests of valuable timber; she has few manufactures. Her people are farmers making a pinched living off the land, raising lean crops and selling butter and cheese, or they are crowded – one-fourth of them, – into the city of Copenhagen, or they are gaining a hardy livelihood upon the sea. And yet this diminutive kingdom puts up $275,000 a year for the keeping of the King, and also provides him and his family, tax free, with palaces and castles, and estates whereon to fish and hunt and play.

      To an American mind it is amazing that a competent people will accept and suffer burdens such as these.

      In the great state of New York, with its seven millions of people, with wealth of coal and iron, with immense primeval forests, with cities whose commerce expands with a swiftness almost incredible, the Governor is paid $15,000 a year, and allowed a single mansion wherein to dwell. Massachusetts, Vermont and Michigan, and many other commonwealths, pay their Governors but $1,000 per year, without a mansion for their residence.

      The mighty Republic of the United States itself, with a continent for domain, and eighty millions of people, pays its President $50,000 per year, and gives him the use of the White House for his home.

      Therefore, do you wonder, as I stroll about this fine old city, and look into the unhopeful, wistful faces of its plainly clad, not over-rich nor over-busy people, that I begin to comprehend why Copenhagen holds the highest record for suicides of any city in the world, and why so many of her vigorous, and alert and capable, young men continually forsake their native land for the greater opportunities and freer political and industrial atmosphere of the United States?

      The Dane always gets on if you give him half a chance. He is called the “Frenchman of the North.” Graceful and supple in his manners, with a mouthful of courtesies of speech, he is naturally a social diplomat. The blunt Norwegian calls him a fop. The martial Swede sneers at his want of fight. But the Dane has always held his own, and as a financier, a diplomat and man-of-the-world able to make the best out of the situation he may be in, he still gives proof of possessing his full share of the Scandinavian brain.

      IV

      Elsinore and Kronborg – An Evening Dinner Party

Helsinoere, Dannmark, August 29, 1902.

      We left Copenhagen Friday evening, about four o’clock, from the Nordbane station. We were in plenty of time. Nobody hurries in Denmark. The train of carriages, with their side doors wide open, stood on the track ready to start. Prospective passengers and their friends moved about chatting, or saying good-bye. It was a local train to Elsinore, where it would connect with the ferry across the Sund to Helsingborg and there with the through express to Stockholm and Kristiania, a night’s ride. We would go to Elsinore, and there spend the night, and go on by daylight in the morning.

      A good many acquaintances had come down to see us off, just for the sake of friendliness. I had kissed all the rosy-cheeked Froekens and been kissed by the Frus, having dexterously escaped the embraces of the men, when there loomed large before me an immense Dane, near six feet high and proportionate in girth, brown-bearded and blue-eyed, holding an enormous bouquet in either hand, an American flag waving from the midst of each. He made straight for[Pg 31][Pg 32] me, folded me up among the flowers and kissed me joyfully on either cheek, and all before I really knew just what had taken place; then he doffed his hat, and bowing profoundly, presented first to me and then to H one of the bouquets with which he was loaded. And these bouquets were tied up with great white ribbons! Of course, we were evidently but newly wed. We suddenly became of interest to the entire company. Nor was there escape, for General C is well known and popular in Copenhagen. Others now came up and were introduced, and H and I held a levée right then and there, and of kisses and embraces I made no count.

      The ride was along the Sund, that lovely stretch of salt water, only a few miles wide, which joins the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic. It is more like the Hudson River below West Point than anything I know, except that the shores are low and more generally wooded to the water’s edge. Or, perhaps I should say that it is another and narrower Long Island Sound, as you see it a few miles out from Jamaica Bay. The busy waters were alive with a multitudinous traffic from Russia and Germany and Sweden and Denmark itself, and the fishing vessels that abound along these coasts. Here and there villas and fine country houses peeped out among the trees. The Sund is the joy of the Dane. He loves it, and the stranger who looks upon it does not forget it. One then understands why the Danish poets have sung so loudly of it.

      Our way lay through much cultivated land, market gardens sending their produce to Copenhagen, dairy farms where is made some of that famous Danish butter every Londoner prefers to buy, and which is sold all around the world. Here and there we passed a little town, always with its sharp-steepled Lutheran church and dominie’s snug manse along its side. The church, the Lutheran church in Denmark, is no trifling power. It is as bigoted and well entrenched as is the Roman hierarchy in Mexico and Spain. We should have liked to be wedded in the Vor Frue Kirke, where the dear old grandmother had been married. But it is a Lutheran church, and we were Dissenters, and without the pale. Nor could we present the necessary proof. We had no papers to show we had been duly born. Nor had we legal documents to prove that our parents were our very own. Nor could we show papers in proof that we had been christened СКАЧАТЬ