Copenhagen

“ We pass up the Sound viewing the luxuriant cool green beech-woods of Denmark, and the pretty fishing villages lying in the foreground. Villas with charming gardens—their tiny rickety landing-stages, bathing sheds, and tethered boats, adding fascination to the homely scene—seem to welcome us to this land of fairy tales and the home of Hans Andersen.
The many towers and pinnacles of Copenhagen, with the golden dome of the Marble Church, flash a welcome as we steam into the magnificent harbour of this singularly well-favoured city. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Although Copenhagen is by no means a commercial city—scarcely more so than Stockholm—its streets are gay, brilliant and bustling, and have an air of life and joyousness which contrasts strikingly with the gravity of the latter capital. ”

“ So, at the age of fourteen, with thirty shillings in his pocket, and his idea of becoming famous by going through a deal of adversity, he comes to Copenhagen—the Paris, the more than the Paris of Denmark, for, in respect to all that a great town collects or fosters, Copenhagen is literally Denmark. There never was a stranger history than this of young Andersen's. It is more like a dream than a life; it is like one of his own tales for children, where the rigid laws of probability are dispensed with in favour of a quite free and rapid invention. ”

“ 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? ”

“ When I again sit in Copenhagen, when the rain patters and the winter approaches with cold and a joyless sky, I shall still see before me Funen with its green woods, flowers, and sunshine; it will appear to me that it must still be so there, and that the garland and bouquet are only withered because they are with me in the winter cold.”
“In Copenhagen we shall meet again!” said Sophie.
“And I shall see you again with the swallows!” said Louise, “when my flowers spring up again, when we have again warm summer days! ”

“ A few miserable tourists were in fact drinking cold, bad tea on a windy terrace overlooking a distant horizon, far beyond which lay Copenhagen. We swallowed the tea, the driver swallowed beer, and we started hack. We had no overcoats, and the Baltic evening was cold. Trams overtook us flying at a tremendous pace into Copenhagen, and we were behind a lame horse. In the dusk we reached once more the desirable city, whose women never seemed more fair to us than they did then. This adventure taught us that the yachtsman must be prepared for any adventure, even the wildest. ”

“ Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark, and the capital of Copenhagen is Thorvaldsen’s Museum. Copenhagen has other and many attractions, but this museum is the crown and glory of Denmark. Art has her victories, and those of war are not so enduring in their glory as the fruits of genius and peace. Here in this ancient and beautiful city, in 1770,—a hundred years, save one, ago,—was born Albert Thorvaldsen, the son of an Iceland ship-carpenter. Poor, obscure, and friendless, but inspired with the genius of his future art, the boy made his own way to Rome. ”

“ So we made the best of the best we could do,—breakfasted, slept, lunched, and at two o'clock were ready to begin to see Copenhagen. At first we were disappointed, as in Christiania, by its modern look. It is a dreadful pity that old cities will burn down and be rebuilt, and that all cities must have such a monotony of repetitions of blocks of houses. By the end of another century there won't be an old city left anywhere in the world. There are acres of blocks of houses in Copenhagen to-day that might have been built anywhere else, and fit in anywhere else just as well as here. ”

“ The contrast with Copenhagen was obvious; there the young sons of the middle classes were a burden on their families sometimes until they were thirty, had no enterprise, no money of their own to dispose of, were often glued, as it were, to the one town, where there was no promotion to look forward to and no wide prospect of any sort.
It was a long time since I had been so much struck by anything as by an expression that a Hamburg lady, who had been to Copenhagen and had stayed there some time, used about the young Danish men, namely, that they had l'apparence chétive. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has an atmosphere of its own, an atmosphere of friendliness and gaiety, particularly appreciated by English people, who in "Merry Copenhagen" always feel themselves at home.
The approach to this fine city from the North by the Cattegat is very charming. Sailing through the Sound, you come upon this "Athens of the North" at its most impressive point, where the narrow stretch of water which divides Sweden and Denmark lies like a silvery blue ribbon between the two countries, joining the Cattegat to the Baltic Sea. ”

“ Copenhagen is a flat-lying city; it has no hills in it, while there are many canals and watery lanes which wind through it and lead to the sea, or as the Danes would say the Sund (Sound) ,—that narrow strait which links the Baltic to the Kattegat, where Denmark and Sweden appear once to have split apart.
The buildings are generally of brick, sometimes of stone, never of wood; they are large and substantial, often four and five stories high, with gabled roofs, sharp and steep, covered with tiles. ”

“ There is but little rotten in the state of Denmark to-day. Though fallen from possessing the widest empire of the north to the limits of a mere province, she yet thrills with vigorous life, an object lesson on many points that no land can afford to ignore. Copenhagen is not really very unlike a large German town, though the Danes are not pleased to be told so, and it lacks the numerous uniforms and those minute and detailed regulations for the welfare and good order of the population that so characterise the Fatherland itself. ”

“ We were now half way between Elsineur [Pg 61] and Copenhagen, and rising above a cape of level land on our starboard bow, the high buildings and steeples of Copenhagen could be distinguished. I formed, from this view, a grand idea of the Northern Capital, and, had I not done so, I might have been less disappointed, beautiful though the city is, when I found myself the following day walking through its streets. But the same event happens to man's works as to man himself. ”

“ But happily this unquiet atmosphere does not seem to penetrate individuals. The Copenhagener does not desire to be for ever talking about his hustling town.
While so much that is of the old world still survives in Copenhagen, it is on the whole an intensely modern town, rather dominated by its stretches of asphalt and trolley-trams and ever growing lines of flats. A really magnificent feature, by the chief square next the Tivoli Park, emblematic of the soaring ambition of the place, is the new Raadhus or City Hall. ”

“ As you doubtless know, I have cousins in Copenhagen, but I did not write to them of my intended visit because I wished to make my first acquaintance with Denmark’s capital by independent exploration; therefore, at the Central Station I took a drosky for a hotel. And at the hotel I secured a comfortable room, supplied with a generous portion of windows and furnished in blues and greens and browns blended according to Danish ideas of the artistic. My exploration of Copenhagen began with my bed-room. I wish that you could see my bed and my stove, Cynthia; they are marvels to American eyes. ”

“ What I had seen in Norway made me not quite unprepared for what I found at Copenhagen; nevertheless it was somewhat startling. The evening being fine, the whole of the broad shady walks between the west gate of the city and the palace of Fredericksberg, two miles off, were crowded with groups of people in their best clothes; not merely peasants and artisans, or even shopkeepers, but persons of superior condition, though perhaps not in such great proportion. The peasant women, with their gaudy gold-laced caps and ribbons, gave a striking character to the scene. ”

“ Copenhagen is too small to be a great, and too great to be a small city. See, there lies the fault!”
Otto felt an irresistible desire to contradict him in most things which he said about home. But the cousin parried every bold blow with a joke.
“Copenhagen must be the Paris of the North,” said he, “and that it certainly would become in fifty, or twice that number of years. The situation was far more beautiful than that of the city of the Seine. The marble church must be elevated, and become a Pantheon, adorned with the works of Thorwaldsen and other artists ”

“ In Copenhagen the social foci are more numerous, the interests more varied; each day brings a fresh topic of conversation, and one can choose one’s society. The multitude, on the contrary, has something citizenish; it obtrudes itself even from beneath the ball-dress which shows itself at court; it is seen in the rich saloon of the wholesale merchant, as well as in the house of the brandy distiller, whose possessions give to him and his two brewers the right of election. ”

“ Tivoli Park and the cafés, with many other like attractions, draw crowds of visitors, not only from every part of the small kingdom, but also from the very prosperous section of Sweden across the Sound, which was Danish till 1658, and has by no means lost its affection for the city that it knew as the capital of old.
Copenhagen is an epitome of Denmark herself, the prosperous metropolis of an extremely industrious and well-ordered community that likes to be amused. ”

“ Of course the old gentleman did not delay long in asking me why I had come to Copenhagen. That question is invariably asked you—ad nauseam, too—throughout the North of Europe. They begin at Hamburg, continue at Berlin, return to it in Denmark and Sweden, and end at St. Petersburg. If a man be not a commercial traveller, or a diplomatist, a spy, or a negotiator of forged bank-notes, these Northern people seem utterly bewildered as to his object in coming to such latitudes. ”

“ There is as great a difference between Danish and Swedish art as between Copenhagen and Stockholm. Copenhagen is a homely provincial town and life is confined to home circles. In Stockholm we find the whirl of life and all the elegance of a capital. It has been styled the Paris of the North, and its art also wears this cosmopolitan aspect. Düsseldorf, where in the ’sixties most painters studied their art, appeared to latter-day artists too provincial. ”

“ All Copenhagen was a city of wo and wailing. Everybody had sustained a loss. Mothers and fathers wept for their brave sons killed, wounded, or prisoners; sisters for their brothers; girls for their lovers; the patriot for his poor conquered country and his slaughtered countrymen. Tremendous, in our estimation, was the moral responsibility of the English ministry for 'letting slip the dogs of war' for a slight cause—nay, strictly speaking, for no valid cause whatever. ”

“ As the centuries rolled on these market hamlets expanded into a single commercial rendezvous for all the northern world. Thus Copenhagen won her name (Kopman-haven—merchant port) and grew until her commerce made her the heir to the trade and traffic of the Hanseatic League, and she was recognized as supreme mistress of the commerce of the North by London and Bremen, Brussels and Bordeaux, as well as by the merchant fleets of Venice and the Levant. ”

“ Notwithstanding Copenhagen is situated so nearly at tide level, modern engineering could easily perfect a system of drainage which would render it independent of this circumstance. The safe and spacious harbor is formed by the channel between the islands of Zeeland and Amager, where there is ample depth and room to answer the demands of a far more extended commerce than the city is ever likely to maintain. The houses are mostly of brick, some of the better class being built of Norwegian granite, while the newer portion of the town presents many examples of fine modern architecture. ”

“ To be a town of only 127,000 inhabitants, and the capital of so small a state as Denmark, Copenhagen contains a surprising number of goodly public buildings, particularly palaces; so much, indeed, is this the case, that the houses for the residence of the people appear as something subordinate, and put half out of sight. ”

“ Copenhagen is very decidedly a city of flat-dwellers.
But the interesting and really splendid fact connected with the garden is that Cousin Lars’s is only one of fifteen hundred little gardens, all of which have sprung up around Copenhagen within the past [51] ten years. The land is leased by those who work it from the commune of Copenhagen or from private individuals. Plats of as few as sixteen hundred square feet may be rented from the commune for one-half to three-fourths of an öre per square foot annually. Land owned by private individuals rents a little higher. ”