It was late in the evening when the third train of the day whisked us into Copenhagen, where I took up my abode at a quiet hotel near the ramparts.
What a strange place this is. Works of art, and museums superior to anything in Europe, and streets, for the most part very paltry, and infamously paved. Traveller, be on your guard. The trottoirs of granite slab, worn slippery by the perambulating hobnails of those children of Amak, are very treacherous, and if you are supplanted, you will slide into a gutter nearly a foot deep, full of black sludge.
These people are a Dutch colony planted by King Christian II. in the neighbouring island of Amak.
The original female costume, which they still retain, consists of little black coalscuttle Quaker bonnets, very large dark-blue or white aprons, which almost hide their sober-coloured stuff gowns with their red and yellow edgings. Their ruddy faces, at the bottom of the said scuttles, look like hot cinders got there by mistake. Altogether they are a most neat, dapper, and cleanly-looking set of bodies. The men have also their peculiar costume. These people are the purveyors of vegetables for Copenhagen. Yon lady, standing in a little one-horse shay, full of flower-pots and bouquets, is another specimen of the clan, but seemingly one of the upper-crust section. Locomotive shops appear to be the fashion. Near the Church of our Lady are a lot of butchers’ carts drawn up, with meat for sale. They come from the environs of the city. Much life is concentred round the bridge near the palace. In the canal are several little stumpy sailing boats at anchor, crammed full of pots and crockery. These are from Bornholm and Jutland. Near them are some vessels with awnings: these are depôts of cheeses and butter from Sleswig and Holstein.
Look at yon row of women with that amphibious white head-dress spotted brown. In front it looks like a bonnet; behind, it terminates in a kerchief. You are reminded by the mixture of another mongrel, but picturesque article of dress, worn by the Welsh peasant-women, the pais a gwn bach. How they are gabbling to those ladies and housekeeper-looking women, and sparring linguistically about something in the basket. Greek contending with Trojan for the dead body of Achilles.
Their whole stock in trade consists of specimens of “hornfish,” an animal like a sand eel, with long spiky snout, and of a silvery whiteness. They are about two feet long, and twenty skillings the pair. These women are from Helsingör, which is the whereabouts of the said fish. They come from thence every day, if the wind serves; and if it does not, I fancy they manage to come all the same.
Look at these men, too, in the street, sawing and splitting away for dear life, a lot of beech logs at that door. Fuel, I find, is very dear, from seventeen to twenty dollars the fathom.
Alas! for the poor dogs, victims of that terrible fear of hydrophobia which seems to infect continental nations more than England; they are running about with capacious wire muzzles, projecting some inches beyond the smeller, which renders them, it is true, incapable of biting, but also of exchanging those amiable blandishments and courtesies with their kind, so becoming and so natural to them, and forming one of the great solaces of canine existence.
Yonder is Thorwaldsen’s museum, with its yellow ochre walls, and frescoes outside representing the conveyance of his works from Italy hither. But that is shut up to-day, and besides, everybody has read an account of this museum of sculpture. An Englishman is surprised to learn that the sculptor’s body rests, at his own request, under some ivy-covered mould in the quad inside. But the ground, if not consecrated episcopally, is so by the atmosphere of genius around.
Let us just pop into this large building opposite. There is something to be seen here, perhaps, that will give us an insight into Copenhagen life.