In “Economics 1” at college I remember learning with great struggles some horrible fabrications called Jevons’ Criteria. Well, the author of that outrage, Professor Stanley Jevons himself, writes this about Tivoli in his “Essays on Social Reform”:
“The Tivoli pleasure gardens form the best possible model of popular recreation. Englishmen think of Denmark only as a very little nation. But though small in quantity Denmark shames us in quality.… But my Danish friends, when questioned on the subject [of their country’s superiority], attributed a high civilizing influence to the Thorvaldsen Museum and the Tivoli Gardens at Copenhagen. Of course our magistrates could not permit so demoralizing a spectacle as ballet-dancing in the open air, but I wish they could see Froeken Leontine and Fanny Carey dance their pas de deux. They would then learn that among a truly cultured and well-governed people dancing may be as chaste as it is a beautiful performance. Compared with our Crystal Palace or Alexandra Palace, Tivoli is a very minor affair; but civilization is not a question of magnitude, and in spite of its comparatively small size Tivoli is a model of good taste and decency, and indicates the way in which, under good regulations, all classes may be induced to mingle.”
Butlin, in quoting the same passage, says:
“It must not be supposed that Tivoli is a kind of garden ‘settlement,’ where classes mix with the conscious intention of civilizing and being civilized. We are rather inclined to suspect that Professor Jevons’ Danish friends were wily Danes who knew that civilizing influence was the right kind of bait with which to lure a social reformer within the Tivoli walls, and that the Professor, having enjoyed his evening there, as he evidently did, felt called upon to justify his enjoyment by an analysis of its civilizing influence.”
Well, Judicia, I have kept you waiting for that smörrebröd for some time while I quoted the authorities on Tivoli. When the smörrebröd finally arrives, it looks like the most vivid of patchwork quilts. It consists of various pieces of bread and butter “smeared” with all sorts of substances of all sorts of colors. There are slabs of ultramarine and ultraviolet, lake, mauve, puce, yellow ochre, carmine, buff, drab, gray-green, black, orange, scarlet, and everything else. In smörrebröd you find all the colors of the rainbow, and many others which have not yet been catalogued. These colors, when analyzed, are found to consist of all sorts of meats, fish, hard-boiled eggs, and parti-colored salads. If you have a grain of progressive originality in you, you will like smörrebröd. Smör actually means “butter,” but I am sure that our word “smear” is a lineal descendant, and I prefer to translate smörrebröd into “smeared bread.”
The Danes are famous for their dairy products and particularly for their butter. Don’t you remember in far-off Sidon in Syria we had for dinner one day, as a special treat, a little can of Danish butter? While I am on the subject of food, let me tell you of one custom Copenhagen has which New York ought to copy. The fishermen bring in their fish, alive, in great tanks inside the ship, and when they reach the city these fish are transferred, still alive, to portable tanks, and peddlers then wheel them all over the city. The customer picks out his fish and the victim is harpooned and killed and delivered on the spot. There is no doubt that the Copenhageners have fresh fish.
I have scarcely begun to tell you about this city yet, but I think I will give you a rest. When I get time to write again I shall tell you something about some of Denmark’s celebrities, such as Thorvaldsen, and Hans Christian Andersen, and Hamlet. I am afraid this last gentleman is an invention of Saxo Grammaticus and Shakespeare, but he is interesting nevertheless. Alors, au revoir.
Yours as ever,
Aylmer.