I was a town child, it is true, but that did not prevent me enjoying
open-air life, with plants and animals. The country was not so far from
town then as it is now. My paternal grandfather had a country-house a
little way beyond the North gate, with fine trees and an orchard; it
was the property of an old man who went about in high Wellington boots
and had a regular collection of wax apples and pears--such a marvellous
imitation that the first time you saw them you couldn't help taking a
bite out of one. Driving out to the country-house in the Summer, the
carriage would begin to lumber and rumble as soon as you passed through
the North gate, and when you came back you had to be careful to come in
before the gate was closed.
We lived in the country ourselves, for that matter, out in the western
suburb, near the Black Horse (as later during the cholera Summer), or
along the old King's Road, where there were beautiful large gardens. In
one such a huge garden I stood one Summer day by my mother's side in
front of a large oblong bed with many kinds of flowers. "This bed shall
be yours," said Mother, and happy was I. I was to rake the paths round
it myself and tend and water the plants in it. I was particularly
interested to notice that a fresh set of flowers came out for every
season of the year. When the asters and dahlias sprang into bloom the
Summer was over. Still the garden was not the real country. The real
country was at Inger's, my dear old nurse's. She was called my nurse
because she had looked after me when I was small. But she had not fed
me, my mother had done that.
Inger lived in a house with fields round it near High Taastrup. There
was no railway there then, and you drove out with a pair of horses. It
was only later that the wonderful railway was laid as far as Roskilde.
So it was an unparalleled event for the children, to go by train to
Valby and back. Their father took them. Many people thought that it was
too dangerous. But the children cared little for the danger. And it
went off all right and they returned alive.
Inger had a husband whose name was Peer. He was nice, but had not much
to say. Inger talked far more and looked after everything. They had a
baby boy named Niels, but he was in the cradle and did not count.
Everything at Inger and Peer's house was different from the town. There
was a curious smell in the rooms, with their chests of drawers and
benches, not exactly disagreeable, but unforgettable. They had much
larger dishes of curds and porridge than you saw in Copenhagen. They
did not put the porridge or the curds on plates. Inger and Peer and
their little visitor sat round the milk bowl or the porridge dish and
put their spoons straight into it. But the guest had a spoon to
himself. They did not drink out of separate glasses, but he had a glass
to himself.
It was jolly in the country. A cow and little pigs to play with and
milk warm from the cow. Inger used to churn, and there was buttermilk
to drink. It was great fun for a little Copenhagen boy to roll about in
the hay and lie on the hay-waggons when they were driven home. And
every time I came home from a visit to Inger Mother would laugh at me
the moment I opened my mouth, for, quite unconsciously, I talked just
like Inger and the other peasants.