Old Town

“ The change from the barren, rather stern outlook from the Old Town, where the sea-wind stunted tree and thicket so that it always sloped down to nothing in the west as if some giant scythe had trimmed it so, to the beech woods with their shelter and quiet and their luxury of color and vegetation, was very alluring. ”

“ The interior of the town wears a less old-fashioned aspect than the suburbs through which we approach it; and the High Street has shops with modern plate-glass, and buildings with stuccoed fronts, exhibiting as few projections to hang a thought or sentiment upon as if an architect of to-day had planned them. And, indeed, so far as their surface goes, they are perhaps new enough to stand unabashed in an American street; but behind these renovated faces, with their monotonous lack of expression, there is probably the substance of the same old town that wore a Gothic exterior in the Middle Ages. ”

“ It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land. ”

“ To the young it was a joyous picnic; and many a time their laughter in the quiet streets, where ghosts walked in broad daylight to our sight at every turn, made us stop and listen wistfully. For in the Old Town nothing was changed. The stork stood one-legged upon the peak of the red-tiled roof, holding majestically aloof from the ways of men; and in the doorway the swallow hatched her young as of old. There was the broken pane in the transom I knew so well, to let her in, the right of way for which she paid in coin of sweetest song. ”

“ So he hit upon a contrivance, a sort of lever under the roost, which, when the hens jumped upon it, opened the hives and let the bees out. After that he could lie in bed and laugh while his husbandry went on. He was the only inventor I ever knew the Old Town to turn out, unless you count in the telegrapher who came when the wires had been strung to our coast. He was a lonesome, morose man, fond of taking long walks by himself. On one of his tramps a vagrant dog attached itself to him, and the two became friends. ”

“ Far upon the horizon there is a gleam [Pg 228] of silver: it is the sea, sleeping in a calm. The bells of the Old Town peal forth their even song. The cows come home from the meadows. In the Cloister shadows trembling hands are trimming the evening lamp, tired old feet tottering to their rest. A day is ended. Above blossoming gardens the stork looks down from its nest, wiser than the world of men: another will dawn. So that its evening be peace, what matters the rest? It is the message of the Old Town.
“It’s come.”
[Pg 229]
CHAPTER IX OUR BEAUTIFUL SUMMER ”

“ The Old Town was set in a meadow, grass to the right of it, grass to the left of it, stretching away toward the horizon until in the south and east it came up against the black moor, and toward the sunset a little way met the sands of the western sea. What sport was there for boys in such a country? ”

“ Seen from the water near the Britannia the old town is indeed charming, with the picturesquely irregular and weathered roofs of the older houses rising tier upon tier, and the grey-blue smoke of chimneys hanging like a perpetual and kindly veil softening crudities of architecture and adding pictorial charm. ”

“ The Old Town moves with deliberation, it is true. But then, the rest of us are in too much of a hurry. No one ever is, there. What is there to run after? The clock that has counted the hours since before Napoleon stirred up the dry bones of Europe still stands in its corner and ticks the seconds, the hours, the years, twice a day pointing its slow finger to the date graven on its face: 1600-1700-1800—why should one hurry? If we but wait, the years will come to us and carry us with them to our long rest. ”

“ The old town stands on a gentle rise beside the waters of the Mediterranean, a complete survival from the Middle Ages. Not grey and timeworn like our northern strongholds, but radiant in the sunshine, a mass of glittering white, crowned and girdled by gold—towers and bastions and crenellated walls. The reflection of these old-world defences in the calm waters below is almost as brilliant as the reality. ”

“ Where the cows had been pastured, suddenly [Pg 248] there was water, and the royalties turned out, eager to see the famed “storm-flood.” But the wind died down, and the cows went back to their own. Night found the Old Town in a blaze of light. In every window of every house stood lighted candles; the river was alive with boats carrying colored lanterns and joyous singers. Above it all a black cloud of bewildered rooks flew with loud squawks from the old Cloister to the Dom and back again, frightened out of their night’s rest, and thinking, no doubt, that the end of the world had come. ”

“ It leads us towards the older town, far from the noisy port hotels, into a winding labyrinth of steep, ill-paved streets, through rows of old houses, every one of which seems to have a history of its own, and whose old-fashioned windows, and wide portals opening into silent court-yards, remind one of time-worn parchment bindings round poems for ever new. ”

“ In the Old Town, where the population of a village or a fashionable square is constantly crammed into the six or seven storeys of one house, room-to-room visitation, for it is nothing else, affords a visitor in one morning a glimpse of a state of things without a parallel. ”

“ It is good to have lived, and though its days be mostly gray under northern skies, glad am I that mine were framed in the memories of the Old Town. We sought and found it together, She and I, the house in which I dreamed as a boy, in the street of the Black Friars. The window-pane was still there upon which I wrote “From here I can see Elisabeth’s garden” beyond the river, heaven knows [Pg 254] with what stylus to cut so deep. With a dozen little mouths to feed in our home, diamonds were not lying loose there. The trees have grown and shut garden and stream out of sight. ”

“ To be old is not the same thing as to be picturesque; nor because the Old Town bears a strange physiognomy, does it at all follow that the New Town shall look commonplace. Indeed, apart from antique houses, it is curious how much description would apply commonly to either. The same sudden accidents of ground, a similar dominating site above the plain, and the same superposition of one rank of society over another, are to be observed in both. ”

“ When we go from a big modern manufacturing town into an old town or village, we cannot help noticing the old buildings, the ancient churches, the old town hall, the alms-houses, and the old houses with their plastered fronts, tiled roofs, and huge chimney-stacks. ”

“ In order to form a tolerably correct idea of what our old town was at the beginning of the 15th century, we must dismiss altogether from our mind’s eye the large populous town with which we are acquainted, and picture to ourselves a village of small cottages with thatched roofs being gradually improved by the erection of houses of a better class. ”

“ This was the “Holme,”12 which in the thirteenth century had been given to the town by the King in return for its building a wall around Ribe the better to defend it. The wall was never built, though they got so far as digging a ditch, but they kept the land, and after the Reformation divided it up among themselves, to their great gain. When now the last of the hay had been cut and stacked, the Old Town went a-picnicking, bag and baggage. Those who could afford it drove out; those who couldn’t walked, or sailed, or rowed out, depending on a lift from the tide to help them back. ”

“ Year by year their number grows, since no marten can reach them on their roost. There came a time when it seemed as if something ought to be done, if they were not to practically own the town. The matter came up in council, and the debate that ensued was worthy of the best days of the Old Town. ”

“ It was the Old Town all over. Years ago the last of the clock-makers lived in Black Friars Street, in our block. One morning there was a great crash. It was their house that had fallen down. The neighbors hastened up to help, and when a way had been made through the wreck, found the old man and his wife lying calmly in bed. The beams had formed a shelter over them, and they were safe till the next cave-in. They urged them to hurry out, but the old couple refused. It was their home. They had always lived in it and, now they were old, would die in it if need be rather than seek another. ”

“ The world seems poorer, the Old Town empty, without your gentle presence. It must be that even the Sunday service in the Domkirke is unreal without those good gray heads. His voice rose long and quavering from his seat on the men’s side, always a bar behind the congregation; but he sang on undisturbed, finishing the hymn in his own good time and in his own way, which was not the way of earthly harmony ”

“ The upper is an airy town with steep streets commanding fine views, surrounded by sunken road-ways and ravines filled with chestnut trees which gash the sides of the hill with their deep gulleys. The upper town is silent, clean, solemn, surmounted by the imposing ruins of the old chateau. ”

“ The two men left the gardens and walked up towards the Old Town.
"I'm staying at The Three Lilies, a comfortable old place—nothing grand and smart like these"—Jasper waved to the great hotels on the front,—"but I wanted somewhere quiet, you see."
"The Three Lilies? Is that the little inn that faces an old castle sort of a place—just on the edge of the Old Town?"
"Yes—why?"
"Oh, nothing. I'm only wondering if you have noticed anything strange about that old place opposite."
"Well—they seem rather a queer lot. Men—mostly soldiers—come pretty often to see the man who lives there. ”

“ Fine flowers grow spontaneously, for they have neglected the gardens, expecting a change of government. The town is immediately on the bay—the most beautiful water prospect I ever saw; and from 10 o’clock in the morning until 10 at night we have the finest sea-breeze. There is something in it so exhilarating, so pure, so wholesome, it enlivens the whole system. All the houses look in ruins, old as time. Many squares of the town appear grown over with the thickest shrubs, weeping-willows, and the Pride of China: all look neglected. ”

“ People grew older in the Old Town than anywhere I know of, as if they were loath to let go of it. There seemed to be no good reason why they should die, and so they lived and lived, and some of them are living yet. The old Bishop, whom we all loved and revered, was 92 when I saw him vault with the agility of a young man over a beam some carpenters had left in his way. He was the father-in-law of Dr. Niels Finsen, whom all the world knows. Dr. Finsen’s father was Amtmand in Ribe in his day, and his picture in uniform hangs in the Town Hall. ”

“ In almost every town the contrast between the new and the old is most marked, for the occupants of the new town reside there for the winter only, and therefore court the sun; whereas the inhabitants of the old town dwell in it all the year round, and consequently endeavour to obtain all protection possible from the sun. ”

“ Who could have believed that such a custom could have survived in the days of telegraph and telephone, and in a city of, say, thirty thousand inhabitants?
The old streets and highways about the town were indescribably attractive, and beyond in the country, the shaded ways beneath large trees offered charming vistas, and shelter from the sun. ”

“ This was anciently a walled town, but of the entrance-gates only one survives, the North Bar, of the time of Edward III. It is a good specimen of brick architecture, with mouldings and niches upon the surface and battlements at the top. This is a favorite old town for the retired merchant and tradesman [Pg 279] who wish to pass the declining years of life in quiet, and it contains many ancient buildings of interest. ”

“ No better example could be found than this old town with its families who had come from well-to-do circumstances, not, as was the case with so many settlers of the new country, in order to escape trouble. ”

“ When we ventured out, we were followed by the gaze of the old town: people standing in their doorways, old women popping their heads from the chamber-windows, and stalwart men—idle on Saturday at e'en, after their week's [337] hard labor—clustering at the street-corners, merely to stare at our unpretending selves. ”

“ So, a child of the Old Town may be forgiven for calling up the Red Gods on occasion. Indeed, they had left their tracks where he who ran might read. The other day I heard how, in restoring the Bishop’s Manse, they had come upon traces of the old spiral stairway, which even in that house of peace wound to the right, as the custom was, so that the man defending it might have his right hand free, while the attacking enemy had to strike from the left. ”

“ Varde was the next town, a little way up the coast. The symbol of that justice was an iron hand over the town gate which, tradition said, warned any who might be disposed to buy up grain and food-stuffs to their own gain, that for “cornering” the means of living, in Ribe a man had his right hand cut off. Good that the hand was never nailed on Trinity Church or on the Chicago Board of Trade, else what [Pg 33] a one-handed lot of men we should have there and in Wall Street! Whether that was the real purpose of it or not, the Old Town was ruled with an iron hand indeed in those days. ”