In the summer of 1900, I went on leave to London for a few weeks and attempted to pass an examination in International Law after a few weeks’ preparation. I went up for the examination, and I don’t think I was able to answer a single question; my crammer told me I had not the legal mind. At the end of the summer, I was told that the Foreign Office wanted me to go to Copenhagen, and at the beginning of August I started for Denmark as Third Secretary to Her Majesty’s Legation.
CHAPTER XI
COPENHAGEN
I arrived at Copenhagen in August. I went there direct from Paris and crossed whatever intervening seas lie between Denmark and Germany via Hamburg and Kiel. I had been given an ointment made of tar by a French hair specialist to check my rapidly increasing baldness, and I applied it before I went to bed in my cabin, which contained three other berths. When the other passengers, who had intended to share my cabin, put their heads into it, they were appalled by the smell of tar, and thought that they had been given berths in the sail-room by the steward. They complained loudly, and refused to sleep there, so I had the cabin to myself.
I stayed at the Hôtel d’Angleterre, and on the morning of my arrival presented myself to the Minister, Sir Edward Goschen. He was alone at the Legation. I took rooms in a street not far from the Legation, and settled down to the quiet routine of Legation life in a small capital.
Copenhagen in August seemed unusually quiet. The sentries outside the Amalienborg Palace looked like big wooden dolls in their blue uniforms, white trousers, white belts, and bearskins.
I immediately began to have Danish lessons from the British Vice-Consul, who was a Dane, and we soon began to read Hans Andersen in Danish. The diplomatic world in Copenhagen was a little world by itself. It consisted of the Russian Minister, Count Benckendorff, who, when I arrived, was there by himself; the Austrian Minister, Count Wildenbruch, who lived at the Hôtel d’Angleterre, and never went out and rarely saw anybody; the French Minister, M. Jusserand, one of the most erudite of English scholars besides being one of the most charming of Frenchmen; and the German Minister, M. Schön, who had a passion for dressing up in fancy dress; the Norwegian Minister, M. de Knagenhjelm; and the Italian Minister.
The diplomatic world mixed little with the Danes. I once heard a Dane say to another Dane: “Do you receive diplomats?” in the same tone of surprise as would have been appropriate had the question been: “Do you receive police-spies?”
I think the theatres were shut when I arrived, and the only amusements were to go out sailing which I used to do often with Sir Edward, who had a yacht, and in the evenings to have dinner at the Tivoli music-hall, which was an out-of-door park full of side-shows and was pleasantly illuminated.