the money, or ordered new garments if we had credit; and I believe it is a practice more generally prevalent even in England than gentlefolks are apt to imagine.
We dined with the Herr at noon, and at one o’clock were at liberty for the day. I have seen a Danish harvest-home on a Sunday afternoon in the pretty village of Altona; watching its merry mummers as they passed by the old church-yard wall, where Klopstock lies buried. I have attended a funeral as a real mourner, followed by the mourning professionals in the theatrical trappings with which the custom of Hamburg usually adorns them. If we bent our steps, as we sometimes did, through the Altona gate to Hamburger Berg, we came upon a scene of hubbub and animation which was something between Clare Market on Saturday night, and High Street, Greenwich, at fair time. Stalls, booths, and baskets lined the way; flowers, fruit, and pastry disputed possession of the side-paths with sugar-plums, sticks and tobacco-pipes; and, although Franconi’s Circus was not open yet, it gave every promise of being so; and the air already rang with voices of showmen, and the clangour of instruments. In the Summer there were gay boats on the Alster, and nautical holiday-makers were busy with oar and sail; while, in the Winter months, if the ice held well, there was no end of skating and sledging; and then we had a pleasant winter-garden near the Tivoli, with orange-trees in tubs, the mould so covered over as to form extemporary tables, and the green leaves and pale fruit shining above our heads. At the upper end was a conservatory of choice plants, which was more particularly appropriated to the ladies and children. The café pavilions on the Alster steamed odoriferously; punch and hot coffee were in the ascendant; and there were more cigars smoked in an afternoon on the Jungfern Stieg (the Maiden’s Walk) than would have stored the cases of a London suburban tobacconist.
These may, perhaps, be reckoned mere idlings, but there were occasionally official doings on the Sunday, which might have been national, if Hamburg had been a nation, and which no doubt were eminently popular. Two such, I remember; one a grand review of the Bürger Militär; the other the public confirmation of the apprentices and others, and the conscription of the youth of the city. The former was a trying affair. Some twelve thousand citizen-soldiers had to turn out, fully rigged and equipped, by early dawn, ready for any amount of drill and evolution. Many were the stories—more witty than generous—of the whereabout of their uniforms
and accoutrements; as to their being deposited in Lombardian hands, or wholly used up since the last grand field-day some three years before. Such furbishing as there was of brass ornaments and metal-buttons; such an oiling and sand-papering of brown muskets, and such a rearrangement of blue tunics which, after all, did not match in colour, length, nor appointments! Fortunately our warriors did not burn powder; and there was enough of military ardour among them to carry them through the fatigue of the day. It required a great deal; for, like other military bodies of a late day, the commissariat department totally broke down, and citizens were kept hungering and thirsting upon the blank, dusty plain, within half-a-mile of stored-up abundance. The confirmation of the apprentices and the conscription of the young men was a more serious matter. It took place in the great square, where a stage and pavilion were erected; all the authority of the senate, and the services of the church were united to render it solemn and impressive. It was a source of deep interest to many of my own acquaintances, more especially to the young cooper who worked underground at our house, and who, just released from his apprenticeship, had the good or ill fortune to be drawn for the next year’s levy.
There was one institution, not precisely of Hamburg, but at the very doors of it, which exercised considerable influence upon its habits and morals, and that of no beneficial kind. This was the Danish State Lottery, the office of which was at Altona, where the prizes were periodically drawn upon Sunday. The Hamburgers were supposed to receive certain pecuniary advantages from this lottery in the shape of benefits bestowed upon the Waisenkinder of the town, who, like our own blue-coat boys of the old time, were the drawers of the numbers; but the advantages were very questionable, seeing that the bulk of speculators were the Hamburgers themselves, and the great prizes of the undertaking went to swell the Danish Royal Treasury. Portions of shares could be purchased for as low a sum as fourpence, and the Hamburg Senate, in self-defence, and with a great show of propriety, prohibited the traffic of them among servants and apprentices: which prohibition passed, of course, for next to nothing, seeing that the temptation was very strong, and the injunction very weak. It was a curious sight to witness the crowd upon the occasion of a public drawing in the quaint old square of Altona; a pebble-dotted space with a dark box in the centre, not unlike the basement of a gallows. On this stood the
wheel, bright in colours and gold, and by its side two orphan boys in school-costume, who officiated at the ceremony. One boy turned the wheel, the other drew the numbers, and called them aloud as he held them before the spectators; while the blast of a trumpet heralded the announcement. What feverish anxiety, what restless cupidity might be fostering among that crowd no man could calculate, and certainly, to my mind, there was no worse thing done on the Sunday in all Hamburg than this exhibition of legalised gambling.
Of course the theatres were open, and we of the working people were not unfrequent visitors there. But let us thoroughly understand the nature of a German theatrical entertainment. There is rarely more than one piece, and the whole performance is usually included in the period of two hours—from seven till nine. The parterre, or pit, is a mere promenade or standing place, in which the few seats are let at a higher price than the rest of the space. The whole of the arrangements are conducted with the utmost decorum: so much so, that they would probably disappoint some people who look upon the shouting, drovers’ whistling, and “hooroar” and hissing of some of our theatres as part of the legitimate drama. On the Christmas day, when I had the option of getting gloriously fuddled with a select party of English friends, or of entertaining myself in some less orthodox way, I preferred to witness the opera of “Norma” at the Stadt Theatre, and think I was the better for the choice. “Hamlet” was the source of another Sunday evening’s gratification (an anniversary play of the Hamburgers, and intensely popular with the Danes), although with unpardonable barbarity the German censors entirely blotted out the gravediggers, and never buried the hapless, “sweet Ophelia.” In the gallery of the Imperial Opera House at Vienna, liveried servants hand sweetmeats, ices, and coffee about between the acts; and although the Hamburger theatricals have not yet reached this stage of refinement, there is much in the shape of social convenience in their arrangement, which even we might copy.
Sometimes, we workmen spent a pleasant hour or two in the concert-rooms, of which there were several admirably conducted; or pored hours long over the papers, chiefly literary, in the Alster Halle; sipping our coffee, and listening in the pauses of our reading to the band of choice musicians, who played occasionally through the evening. Sometimes we dived into snug cellars, where they sold good beer, or mixed odoriferous punch; and here again music
would come, though in a more questionable shape, her attendant priestesses being the wandering harp-players, who sang sentimental ditties to the twanging of their instruments. Other places there were, some in the city, and some outside the walls, where an abominable medley of waltz, smoke, wine, and lotto made up the evening’s entertainment. The larger of these establishments had some pretensions to gentility, seeing that they did not allow gentlemen to dance with their hats on; but whatever other claims they set up to the respect of the community may be briefly set down as worth very little. It will not unnaturally follow that where there is much liberty there will be some licence, and with respect to Hamburg, it is in her dance-houses that this excess is to be found. But where is the wonder? The Hamburger authorities in this, and some other cases, set up a sort of excise officer, and grant permits for this frivolity, and that vice, at a regular scale of charges.
In spite of these half-incentives and whole encouragements to laxity of behaviour, what is the general character of the Hamburger population? I venture to call them provident, temperate, and industrious. Let it be remembered that we speak of a mercantile port, in some parts a little like Wapping, and into and out of which there is a perpetual ebb and flow of seamen of all nations, full of boisterous humour, of strong life, and wilful in their recent escape from ship restraint. The worst of the dance-houses are situated near the water’s edge, and are almost wholly frequented by sailors; while the other resorts which are open to the charge of licentiousness, have also a strong proportion of maritime frequenters, and the rest is mostly made up of the wandering workmen of Germany, to many of whom Hamburg is a culminating point, and who are, as it were, out on leave. But, after all, these cancer spots are few indeed, when compared with the great proportion of the means of amusement thrown open, or, rather never closed to the people. Wander on the Sunday when and where you will; in theatre, concert-room, or coffee-house; in public garden or beer-cellar; you will find them joyous indeed, sometimes loud in song or conversation, and taking generally a sort of pride in a dash of rudeness, calling it independence, but you will never find them sottish; nowhere cumbering the footway with their prostrate carcases; nowhere reeling zigzag, blear-eyed and stupid, to a miserable home.