[Illustration: JACKDAWS IN COUNCIL.]
The big pear tree that hung over our way to school is gone, but the
hawthorn hedge remains. When our young feet trod those toppy pavements,
the tree smoothed the thorny path to learning in a way all its own. The
late summer season when the sun shone so temptingly on the round red
pears, and the old woman over whose garden wall they grew counted her
profits at a skilling for two, fell in with our time for practising
marksmanship, just as the spring brought its marbles and September
its nutting tramps. Then if it befell that a good shot and the law
of gravitation operated simultaneously to dislodge the biggest and
juiciest pear, and it dropped in our path--surely destiny was to blame,
not we. Findings is keepings, and there is no law against picking up a
pear in the street. The stork on the Rector’s house looked on unmoved.
Being in a way responsible for us, perhaps he was resigned to the ways
of boys. Not so the old woman who counted upon our skillings. She
stormed in the doorway, much exercised in spirit, and threatened to
report us. I think she did once or twice, for we were warned not to go
under the tree when pears were falling. But there was no other way out.
And we detected, or thought we did, a twinkle in the old Rector’s eye
while he took us to task. He had been a boy himself; was yet, despite
the infirmities of years, beneath his mask of official sternness. And
we evened it up with the pear woman by loyally investing our pennies
with her when we had them.
The Latin School had always been just across from the Domkirke with
which it had come into existence, and in the old house I was born, the
teachers having lodgings under its roof at that time. But it was moved
as the tie between church and school was loosened, and it was thus
that the feud was bred with the pear woman, who had until then dwelt
in seclusion and peace. That we came honestly by our proficiency in
marksmanship I gather from the fact that, when the ecclesiastical bond
was stronger a good deal than in our day, it made its mark in the pages
of the Old Town’s history by picking the very Domkirke itself for a
target. It is on record that the churchwarden complained of the boys
snow-balling its windows. Of several hundred window-panes in the west
front only seven were then whole; but, he added, “it is no use sending
for the glazier to put them in while the snow is on the ground, for
they will as surely be smashed again.” Evidently union of pedagogue and
priest had not bred reverence in their pupils. They were the vandals
who, when the Reformation had consigned to the lumber room the fine old
crucifix that hangs once more in its rightful place since the late
restoration, amused themselves by trimming the nails of the image. But
that time they got their deserving, if the rod had been spared by man
too long. According to tradition they lost their own finger nails,
and it served them right, too. They were sad old days, when to put
reverence and common sense, with common decency, in the rag-bag was
held to be a mark of piety. Clear down into our day we heard the echo
of it. When, in the ’40’s, the Domkirke was undergoing repairs, the
stone coffin of one of the old kings was carried off, and after a long
search was discovered serving as a horse-trough in front of a public
house. “To what base uses--!” It would not have been recovered at that,
but for peremptory notice from the government that it had better turn
up without delay. There is nothing in their past record to forbid the
suspicion that the Latin schoolboys had had a hand in raping the royal
tomb.
So, if it does not fall to the lot of every man to have an alma mater
dating back to the time of the crusades (the school was founded in
1137, or very soon after), the fact of having it is not necessarily a
warrant of saintliness. It was not with us. I have recounted some of
our pranks. For them, if they went beyond the limit, there was still
the rod. That and the big book with red letters and the iron chain
riveted to it that lay in the school library were the visible survivals
of a past day. Concerning the latter there was a belief current among
the untaught that it was in fact Cyprianus, the book with which the
priest could cast a spell and bid the devil come and go as he saw fit,
but which the hand of no unlearned man might touch without instant
peril to life and soul. It was, as a matter of fact, the Bible that was
held in such regard. The chain that gave it its grewsome aspect was
testimony merely to its rarity and the cost of paper and printer’s ink
in the day that made so sure it would not get lost. All of which made
little or no impact upon the belief that the devil was firmly chained
between its pages, and that it was a good plan to give it a wide berth.
No mediæval superstition was needed to convince us of the wisdom of
that plan when it came to the rod. Its ceremonial use, so to speak,
had fallen into disuse. I mean by that the great capital occasions
when, for hopeless breach of discipline or for disgracing the school
before the world, a pupil was flogged by the janitor in the presence
of the assembled school, after a lecture by the Rector, and publicly
expelled. No such emergency arose in my day. But in a more private
and sufficiently intimate way it was still part of the curriculum.
The daily cudgelling of dull heads was supposed to have a stimulating
effect upon the intellect. It was the custom of the day, but its sun
was setting even then. Is it merely harking back to personal experience
that I sometimes think a boy is just pining for a whipping and won’t
be happy till he gets it; and that, having got it, he feels justified,
squared as it were, and ready for a new and better start? Or, is it
faith in the boy’s fundamental love of fair play that sizes up the
offence and its deserving? I will let the teacher decide. Somewhere
I have told of my first introduction to the “kids’ school,” kept by
an old “she-wolf,” and its educational equipment. I was dragged all
the way to it by an exasperated housemaid, hammering the pavement
with my heels and yelling at the top of my voice. Forbearance at home
had, it seems, ceased to be a virtue. There was none in the ogre who
received me at the door and forthwith thrust me into a barrel down in
the cellar, where it was dark, and putting on the lid, snarled through
the bung-hole that that was the way bad boys were dealt with in school.
Good boys were given kringler to eat. When from sheer fright I ceased
howling, I was set free and conducted to the yard, where there was
a sow with a litter of pigs. The sow had a slit in the ear to which
my attention was invited. It was for being lazy, and when boys were
lazy--the ogre brandished the long shears that hung at her belt--zip! I
earned a kringle that very afternoon.
The ways of the Latin School were still stamped with the old severity,
but there was some approach to present-day methods of constitutional
government. The faculty took hardened cases under advisement. Execution
of judgment was vested in the Rector, as gentle an old man as ever
unwillingly caned a boy, whose guileless soul was no match for our
practised wiles. A remorseful howl put him instantly out of action,
and he was always ready to be led sympathetically along the slippery
paths of boyish excuses; for, however much the boy’s soul may pine
for just punishment, his body will always struggle to escape it. We
had a singing-teacher, the organist of the Domkirke, whom, seeing
that he was a helpless old bachelor without proper home or boys of
his own, we accounted our lawful prey. Accordingly the candle snuffer
sputtered with powder to his mild amazement, mice haunted the piano
and struck unexpected chords at singing-school, and the blackboard
sponge performed unheard-of antics as an impromptu foot-ball while the
organist was writing our lesson on the board. It was when he happened
to turn suddenly once and caught me in the very act of aiming it at his
wig, that the worm turned. I was conducted straight upstairs to the
Rector, with _corpus delicti_ in my grasp, and left to his mercy.
Rector rose mechanically from his papers when the door closed and
opened a cupboard to afford me a private view of the stick standing
there. Then he came over to me and said sternly, pointing to the
sponge, “What is this?”
“The sponge, Herr Rektor,” I said. “It was on the floor and I kicked
it, like this--” it bounded across to the table--“and Niels, he--”
“Ah,” Rector was all interest; “Niels, he--?”
“He kicked it--so, and it landed where Hans stood.”
“Eh!” he was rubbing his hands; “and Hans?”
“Hans, he sent it--this way--to Peter; and Peter trod on it, and it
shied to Anders. And he--”
We were skipping across the room together, mapping out the journeys of
the vagrant sponge as fast as Rector’s gout allowed, when we arrived at
the turn.
“It came back to me,” I explained, “and I was just going to fire it--”
“Ha! you were just going to fire it--”
[Illustration: “HA! YOU WERE JUST GOING TO FIRE IT--”]
“When the organist turned and caught me.”
The Rector stopped rubbing his hands abruptly. We gazed at one another
soberly for a full minute. I don’t know, I think I saw the suspicion of
a wink; then:
“I think you said this was a sponge. Go then and tell the organist that
you have discovered it is not a ball. Now go.”
I went quickly. Unless my ears deceived me, I heard a chuckle behind
the door as it fell to.
Little as he relished the job of thrashing a boy, the Rector hated
meanness in him worse. It was the discovery of such a streak in me
that brought me the most thorough caning of my school life at his
hands. Hans and I, who perennially disputed the seat next to the head
of the class--when it stood in a circle--had been engaged in a combat
that was undecided when the bell summoned us to our lessons. Flushed
with the hope of victory, Hans hit upon the idea of setting the clock
ahead, that we might the sooner have it out. The clock was in our
class room, and it was easily enough done, but in his eagerness Hans
forgot prudence and set it three-quarters of an hour ahead, so that
recitations were no sooner begun than they were at an end. Whereupon
there was an investigation, and the culprit was found. This was a
matter that called for the big stick, as being at once dishonest and
foolish, and Hans was commanded to wait after school had gone home.
Now it befell that I was getting a book out of the library in the next
room when Hans’ shrieks rose high between the dull thuds of “Master
Erik.” I will not attempt to excuse my conduct; I despise it. Probably
the defeat I had so narrowly escaped rankled. I crept up to the door
and listened. Meanly rejoicing at his plight, I pressed my ear to
the key-hole to hear more, and leaned with my whole weight. I hadn’t
noticed that the door was not shut tight, and suddenly it swung open,
and I fell into the other room with my arm full of books,--fell right
at Rector’s feet and lay sprawling there.
He gave me an amazed glance, paused an instant with uplifted stick,
and comprehended. A look of stern disgust swept over his face; he
let go of Hans and, seizing me, administered to me the worse half of
the interrupted thrashing. Hans got square. I can see him yet as he
stood in his corner wiping his eyes to keep from grinning. The utterly
exasperating thing about it was the look of shocked innocence at the
disclosure of such baseness that sat upon his face. As if he--ugh!
[Illustration: THE LATIN SCHOOL TEACHERS.]
The good old Rector stands flanked by his staff in the picture, in
full dress, as beseems his dignity. My father is on his right, the only
one who wears a cap. Herr Kinch, behind the Rector, was an antiquarian
of no mean repute, and wrote the history of the Old Town,[18] making
a notable contribution to Danish annals thereby. The venerable face
that peers out beside him is that of Dr. Helms, whose interest in and
writings about the Domkirke, through a long lifetime, finally bore
fruit in the thorough restoration that has been just completed. We
boys held the candle for him sometimes when he was poking in the dark
corners for signs of the long past. Once he found what he was not
looking for. It was while he was delving in the foundations of the
Maria tower, which had been torn down a century or two before, being
unsafe. They had covered up the foundations and shut them out of sight.
But there must have been a crack somewhere, for when the good doctor
broke into the dark space, thousands of bats broke out. The air was
literally filled with the creepy things. The Old Town was at all times
full of bats, and this was evidently one of their secret hiding-places.
There were dead bats, too, by the cart load.
The other face in the doorway, that of Adjunct Koch, the same who
in after years became Dean of the Domkirke, I can never see without
thinking of the hour of my great triumph. He and Herr Trugaard were my
history teachers. History as taught in the schools of those days was
largely made up of interminable files of kings, with the years of their
reign, nothing else, to be memorized that way. This I could not do,
or would not; the result was the same,--a bad examination. But these
two had discovered something. When the Great Examen came round again,
instead of bringing up the tedious kings, they asked me to tell about
the Hundred Days of Napoleon after Elba. Napoleon had not been dead
forty years then, and there were people everywhere who had fought in
his wars. We had one in our school, an old sergeant who drilled us in
gymnastics. He had been through the campaign that ended at Waterloo,
and was never tired of telling how it froze so hard in the winter of
1814 that they cut the wine for the army rations with axes, and of the
fighting he had seen, of course. Poor fellow! He looked too long upon
the wine when it was red, and marched to his death in the river one
winter’s night singing a war-song, thinking perhaps he was at Borodino.
They found him standing dead in the mud, upright, as a man and a
soldier should, with his face to the foe who he imagined held the other
shore.
I had sat at his feet when they strayed unsteadily toward the great
past, many a time. And I needed no second invitation to enter upon the
campaign of the Hundred Days. A sudden transformation came over that
dusty class-room; for veterans sat in the Board of Censors. In five
minutes I had them sitting up, eagerly scanning the camps of the French
and the Allied Armies as I drew them. In ten they were on their feet,
striding from Ligny to Quatre Bras, to the Wavre turnpike, objecting,
applauding, disputing with me and with one another as I led them from
field to field of slaughter and finally rounded them up at Waterloo,
brought Blucher to the relief of Wellington in the nick of time, and
charged the Old Guard with a yell of “Surrender!” only to be met with
the immortal reply: “The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders.”
We sat down, a hot, excited band. There was a quiet gleam in Herr
Trugaard’s eye as he pronounced the unanimous judgment of the Board:
“ug+,” that is, A1 and to spare. It was the only “ug” I earned in my
school days. It ought to have given the pedagogues food for thought,
and perhaps it did.
The bell that once called the monks to prayers summoned us to school
at a quarter to eight, and in the long winter we sang our morning
hymn with the dawn struggling through the windows. When we trooped
home again with knapsacks strapped on our backs, it was night once
more. From eight to five was our day, with two hours for noon, the
rule in all the Old Town’s affairs. The bell regulated our lives as
it had done since hour-glasses marked the time. It rings yet at the
old hours, though the school-day is entirely changed, and Venus who
rang it has long been gathered to her fathers. But when the Great
Examen drew near, it was too slow for our guilty consciences, and the
night-watchman was bribed to wake us up. So that he should not rouse
the whole house, a string was hung out of the window, the other end of
which was tied securely to the sleeper’s toe or ankle. The watchman’s
order was to pull it till the boy responded, and he did. Perhaps he
took the chance to pay off old scores. He pulled and pulled with might
and main, until a red and swollen foot shot up to the window and behind
it an angry face yelling to let go. The boy was awake and up, and the
watchman clattered on his way, chanting his morning verse:
Ho! Watchman, our clock it has struck four!
Eternal God, all honor
In Heaven’s choir to Thee,
Thou who art watchman ever
For us on earth that be.
Now ended is our watch,
For a good night
Give God the thanks
And mind ye well the time.
Before his song died away among the old houses, we were hard at work
cramming for examination.
This service was set down to his credit when in Christmas week the
watchman came to the door to “bid New Years.” It was one of the customs
of the Old Town that came down from the earliest days, happily shorn of
some of its mediæval aspects. For then he came not alone, but the whole
body of watchmen together, a kind of reconnoissance in force, to which
the fact that the public executioner came with them lent a suggestion
which no one could afford to let go unheeded. That it really was a kind
of official blackmail is made apparent by certain ordinances passed in
the Sixteenth Century which forbade the practice and fixed a regular
schedule of charges for these public servants. The executioner was to
have one dollar for chopping off a head or hanging a man, half a dollar
for an ear, a dollar and a half for burning a witch at the stake, and
so forth. It was not much. When one reads of his using twenty-two
loads of wood for burning a single witch, it seems but poor pickings
for a hard-worked man; but then he made up for it by having his hands
full. He burned thirteen witches between the years 1572 and 1652,
and beheaded one. Of ears and such small fry no account seems to have
been kept. Besides all this he was street-cleaning commissioner[19]
and offal contractor, with the express proviso, however, that he must
not himself engage in the latter business as beneath his dignity, but
must farm it out to the town chimney-sweep. It will be seen that the
executioner was by no means a disreputable man, but a functionary of
importance who could not be allowed to go begging from door to door.
As for the watchmen, they were ordered to desist not merely from that
practice, but from monopolizing the moving business and from bossing
weddings held in the Town Hall; likewise they must do no harm to
drunken men in the street, but must help them home. One look at the
mug they drank from at council meetings and still keep at the Town Hall
gives a clew to the wherefore of this last ordinance: the councilmen
themselves might have some trouble navigating after a protracted
session.
[Illustration: THE CHIMNEY-SWEEP.]
The demand of these New Year pirates seems in the olden time to have
been for “candles,” perhaps a convenient medium of exchange. In our day
it was frankly for cash. Not only the watchman, but every one who had
during the year rendered the house any service, or might be expected
to in the year to come, knocked, said “Happy New Year,” and received a
silver mark or an “eight-skilling,” which was half a mark, as the case
might be, with the thanks of the householder. The chimney-sweep was
there, washed and cleaned for once,--on other days he made it a point
to look “like his trade,”--and the official mourner, who alternately
bade the town to weddings and funerals, or gave notice that the stork
had been around with a baby. A regular “cinch” had he, since sooner or
later every well-regulated family must employ his service. His was a
real profession, and he kept a special face for each of his functions.
When he was bidding to a funeral his gait was slow and measured, his
face grave, and his voice had a mournful droop that matched his rusty
black coat and ancient silk hat. If it was a wedding, he was cordial,
his step was light and his tile was set at a rakish angle. The man was
an artist. And so in their limited sphere were the funeral bearers,
who were among our New Year’s callers, too. They were a remnant from
the days of the executioner, farther back even, to the time of the
Black Death that killed half the people in the town. Their guild was
organized then, a sort of mutual insurance concern that made a man sure
of getting underground at all events; and, having been established,
stayed, as did everything else till it fell to pieces of itself. The
aforesaid ordinances bear witness that it took much Dutch courage to
carry the dead in the days of pestilence. There is one which forbids
giving the “bearers” a barrel of beer at each funeral as wasteful
and unseemly. The Old Town did some things after all that are worth
considering. We do with less than a barrel in our day, but even when
we do without it altogether, there is still waste enough about our
funerals that is both unseemly and unfit in a Christian land.
[Illustration: “WE SAW IT ON MOONLIGHT NIGHTS.”]
The head of the house sat in state with a plate full of silver coins
beside him on the day these callers made their rounds, and responded to
each salutation in kind; said “Thank you, same to you,” and handed the
caller his coin. He twirled his cap, spat on the silver for good luck,
put it in his pocket, scraped out, and made room for the next comer. If
it was the night-watchman, he had perhaps a word about the wind being
in the northwest, “blowing up to a storm,” or about the marten that ate
the last batch of squabs. The marten lived in the attic under the roof
beams, where it had its young in peace. It was not disturbed, though
it made an occasional raid on the hen roost or the pigeon coop; but
that was to be guarded against. To make up for it, it ate the rats that
infested the old houses, and for this service it was let alone. We saw
it sometimes on moonlight nights, a black shadow up among the pointed
gables, big as a cat, it seemed to me, and with a cat’s long tail. The
watchman knew all its haunts, being a night prowler himself, and could
tell when it was “getting too many” for the peace of the hen roost.
Then shot-guns came out, and after some still-hunting by moonlight
things were evened up again and put upon a peace basis.
As pater familias sat awaiting his New Year’s callers, he had the
advantage always of knowing who was in the offing making for his door,
and could arrange his contribution accordingly. That was because of
the universal use of window reflectors, two mirrors set at an angle
and fixed on the outside of the window. Sitting in your chair by it,
you could tell who was coming from either side, half a block away. I
often wonder why they are not more used on this side of the ocean. I
should think they would be a great convenience if one did not wish to
be “at home” for undesirable callers. Perhaps that was how the Bishop’s
wife escaped meeting the Burgomaster’s lady they used to tell of in
Copenhagen. They were not exactly friends, but their position required
them to be agreeable before the world. So they exchanged visits, and
upon one of these occasions the Burgomasterinde found the Bishop’s
Manse deserted, with evidences of hasty flight. Now the good Bishop’s
wife was not noted nearly as much for tidiness as for her sharp wit,
and the Burgomasterinde took a long chance when, seeing the mahogany
table covered with a thick layer of dust, she wrote on it “P-i-g.” But
she felt better, no doubt, and went on her way rejoicing.
Some days later the two ladies met on the street. “Oh!” said the
Burgomaster’s wife, “I called at your house last week, but you were not
in.”
“Yes, I am so sorry,” from the other, sweetly, “I found your card on
the table.”
They played the Old Town a trick once, those reflectors, that is hard
to forgive. It was when the burghers who dwelt in the Main Street
insisted upon the town removing the North Gate that obstructed their
view. They “could not see past it.” No more they could, for it fairly
blocked the way. But it was the last remnant of the old walls, which,
imperfect as they were, for they never reached around, had borne the
brunt of many an assault, and it was over this the iron hand was fixed
in the days of rigorous Ribe justice. It was a wretched fate that
sacrificed it to the whim of a lot of curious women who wanted to spy
on their neighbors. However, they got their deserts. They had forgotten
that the street turned just beyond the gate, and when it was down and
out of the way, behold! they could see no farther than before. I do not
know what they did. I know what sensible people said about it twenty
years after. But I suppose the gate would have gone anyway, so it’s no
use grieving.
[Illustration: THE NORTH GATE.]
Speaking of women’s ways, a fashion grew up three hundred years ago
of wearing their cloaks or petticoats over their heads instead of on
their shoulders, in the street and to church, where, so shrouded, they
slumbered peacefully through the sermon and, say the contemporary
accounts, even slept at the altar-rail through the communion service.
Talk about women wearing hats in church! Those cloaks became such a
nuisance to the clergy that the practice was sternly forbidden in town
council under penalty of a fine. Widows and mourners were excepted,
but the latter only for six months. There is no mention of a petticoat
revenue, so probably the practice ceased of itself.
A custom that made a deep impression on us children was the semi-annual
“offering” in the Domkirke. Part of the revenues of priest and
deacon was derived from free gifts of the people at Easter and
Christmas--free, that is, to all appearances; but custom prescribed
the exact amount of what was really a tax upon every householder. On
these Sundays, when the last hymn had been sung and the sexton’s purse
on its long pole had been poked into the farthest pew, the Dean put
on his crimson robe with the big white cross down the back that made
him look as if he were clad in the national flag, and took his place at
the altar. The organist pulled a stop that set a little bell tinkling
and started a silver star spinning in the organ loft. That was the
signal for all the men to rise, and with the Amtmand, the Rector, and
the Burgomaster leading on, they marched up to the altar and laid
their gifts there in two piles, one for the priest, the other for the
clerk, always silver, which made quite a heap before the last coin had
clinked upon it. The organist always played the hymn with the longest
and slowest metre while the procession was passing, to give it time,
I suppose, and the order of procedure was rigidly maintained. For a
boss carpenter, for instance, to have gone before a teacher in the
Latin School, even though his offerings had been twice the size of
the other’s, would not have done at all. They kept step very well to
the music, going and coming back, though I fancied their march was a
little brisker on the return, as if they were glad it was over. Odd
what impressions children get and keep. To me, looking back, it seems
the one really great religious ceremony in the Domkirke I remember,
always excepting the time the King came and one other. That was when
the Austrian soldiers, during the occupation in ’63-’64, celebrated
the birthday of their Emperor with a high mass. There had not been a
Catholic service in the cathedral since the Reformation, and there
has not been one since. Perhaps it was that, perhaps it was the whole
setting of august ceremonial and warmth and color that were foreign
there; the uniforms, the bugles, the incense, with the strange tongue
and the evident devotion of the soldiers who knelt on the marble
floor--it all left an impression on my mind and heart that has never
faded. It is rank heresy, of course, and I would never subscribe to it
in cold blood, but it did seem somehow as if the old House of God came
to its rights once more. Saints of old whose knees, bent in worship,
had hallowed those ancient stones, walked again in the vaulted aisles,
and the image of the martyred Bishop Leofdag in the wall outside seemed
to nod as with understanding as we went by. I saw the lights go out
with regret. Perhaps, unknown to myself, it had something to do with my
desire in years long after to put a couple of stained-glass windows in
the chancel that looks so white and cold. But they did not want them.
They were not in the style, they said. Perhaps they were right. But oh!
for a little warmth in our worship now and then, even at the sacrifice
of being right in the matter of style.
[Illustration: THE EMPEROR’S BIRTHDAY.]
It may be that the fact that the Emperor’s birthday came in summer,
if my memory serves me right, had something to do with it. The most
loyal friend of the Domkirke could not have sat out the services there
in winter without discomfort. There was no way of heating it, had not
been since the beginning of our century, when the “fire-pan” given to
it by a pious burgher in 1473 was taken out and sold for old iron. A
legacy went with it that was forever to keep it in coal, so that “the
poor and the church-goers” should not suffer from the cold. What
became of that, I don’t know. They did many queer things in the days
before reverence for the great past, and its memories and landmarks,
awoke with the struggle for nationality and for freedom in our own
time. Among other things they stripped some of the ancient grave-stones
of their beautiful engraved brass plates for the melting pot, when
a new bell had to be cast. And down in Holstein, where the sacred
banner that fell from heaven to the Danish knights in the Esthland
crusade and saved the battle that was all but lost, had been left by
the indifference of a later day in hostile hands, they took it at
housecleaning time and, esteeming it just a moth-eaten and tattered
rag, burned it with other rubbish in the public road.
In Ribe, for a hundred years the people put on their overcoats and
mufflers and their rubbers when they went to church and sat it out as
they could; or else they stayed at home. Even so clothed we sat and
shivered, our toes growing numb on the stone floor. When it was over,
we limped out and took a quick walk around the Castle Hill to “get up
circulation.” The walls of the Domkirke were thick, and it was past
Christmas before the winter had quite moved in; but then it stayed well
into the summer, refusing to be dislodged by spring until the roses
were in bloom. In the great restoration, of which more hereafter, it
was at last the upstart factory across the Linden Square, that had once
so piqued the conservatism of the Old Town, which, having been by that
time abandoned, gave its boiler house to be a heating plant for the
church. And so the old and the new met once again, and atonement was
made for past misconduct.
I have spoken of the square red tower which, though part of the
Domkirke, and its great and distinguishing feature seen from afar, did
yet belong under the civil government as the stronghold of the burghers
in time of trouble, typifying curiously the union of church and state,
and crumbling slowly like that in my day. It had given fair warning to
more than one generation. There was a house in Priest Street, straight
up from the tower, with the old arms of the town picked out in colors
above its door, which I never could pass without a shudder. As far as
that, tradition had it, the tower fell on Christmas morning in the year
1283, when it collapsed during early mass while the church was full of
people. Very many were killed. It was in the time after the death of
the great Valdemar when the country was torn by dissension within and
onslaught from without. An earthquake had shaken the land eleven years
before, probably contributing its share to the insecurity of the tower,
and one can imagine the “great fear that prevailed” among the people.
Again in 1594 the upper part of the tower fell, and in the rebuilding
it received the shape and height which it has kept.
The tower falcon, a fierce-eyed, solitary bird of prey, was its
rightful tenant in my day; had been, I fancy, from the beginning. He
seemed to fit in with its warlike traditions. The boys caught him in
traps, sometimes, and kept him chained about the house, but never for
long, for he was utterly untamable and his shriek was not melodious.
Furthermore, his diet of meat, preferably live mice, kept us scurrying
in a way we quickly tired of. The falcon has moved. A score of years
ago they overhauled the village church at Seem, three miles up the
river, and dislodged a family of rooks that lived there. In search
of new quarters they struck the Domkirke, liked it, and stayed. The
newcomers were great chatterers, while the falcon is a silent bird,
and moreover they brought all their relations. In disgust, I suppose,
at the racket they made, the falcon betook himself to the Plantage and
became a dweller in trees. My boy reports that he is there yet. He has
been up to see. The rooks stayed and multiplied exceedingly. At least I
supposed them to be rooks, till, last summer, I stood on the top of the
tower in Windsor Castle and was told by the caretaker that the black
birds hopping about were jackdaws. They were the very same.
Jackdaws or rooks, they took possession of the big tower and of the
little one, and they have kept it since. By day they go afield for
their food; but sundown always finds them in loud and general debate
on the stone railing of the red tower. They sit in military files
discussing the subject in hand in very human fashion: now one at a
time, and again all together, squawking at the top of their voices.
Year by year their number grows, since no marten can reach them on
their roost. There came a time when it seemed as if something ought to
be done, if they were not to practically own the town. The matter came
up in council, and the debate that ensued was worthy of the best days
of the Old Town. The consensus of opinion was that they were getting to
be a nuisance; but how to stop it was another matter.
“They are here,” said one of the city fathers, “and what are you going
to do about it?” There was no answer. Upon the question what was their
diet no one could shed any definite light; but it suggested a ray of
hope to one.
“They might,” he ventured, “be good to eat.” The city fathers
considered one another thoughtfully. They were certainly fat. If they
were to turn out a new kind of game, now! It ended, after long debate,
in a committee being appointed to take the matter under practical
advisement, with directions to report at a future meeting whether
the rooks were good eating, or, if not, how they disagreed with a
councilman’s stomach. Six months had passed when last I fished with a
member of the committee. He screwed up his mouth and shook his head
dubiously as he made a cast for a pickerel hiding in the rushes.
“They are fat, yes,” he said ruefully. “They might be good, and then
again--they might make you sick.”
Caution, says an ancient Danish proverb, is the virtue of a
burgomaster. It ought at least to be the privilege of a councilman.
A friend who, like myself, had long been in foreign parts where they
have other ways, once told me that he believed the Danes had no
business capacity, at least the Danes who stayed at home, because he
found them charging the big summer hotel a cent more for milk than
they exacted from the poor fishermen who lived on the shore; and when
he asked them why, he was told that “the hotel took so much more and
it was more trouble.” But in the first place that was true; and,
further, I think it was their inborn sense of fairness plus their
stubborn democracy that was breaking out there. The small folk were to
be protected against the wealthier neighbor. A people without business
capacity would never have thought of the expedient the Old Town hit
upon in a dispute with the local gas company, long after I had gone
away. The sidewalks are narrow, with never room for more than one, and
the nights are sometimes very dark. So, as the gas company refused to
give in and the town refused to burn gas till it did, and consequently,
all parties to the quarrel being Jutlanders, there was no telling when
the dispute would be settled, if ever, the council ordered that the
lampposts be painted white to avoid collision and suits for damages. If
that is not business sense, what is it?
No. The Old Town moves with deliberation, it is true. But then, the
rest of us are in too much of a hurry. No one ever is, there. What is
there to run after? The clock that has counted the hours since before
Napoleon stirred up the dry bones of Europe still stands in its corner
and ticks the seconds, the hours, the years, twice a day pointing its
slow finger to the date graven on its face: 1600-1700-1800--why should
one hurry? If we but wait, the years will come to us and carry us with
them to our long rest. And there will be others where we are now. The
world will move; men will live and labor and love; and the old clock
will tick in the hall, counting the hours, the days, the years. It is
the Old Town’s philosophy. If it has not made it rich, or powerful, or
great, it has made it content. Who shall say then that it is not as
good as the best?
There is one that ticks in a house I know of where eyes I loved smiled
to it and nodded to it every day in passing. In 1792 it was made in
Ribe, where famous clock-makers lived then. I tried to buy it; I
offered two hundred kroner for it, which was a small fortune to the Old
Town. But its owner shook his head. It had been in the family since
his great-great-great-grandfather, and it would stay there as long as
there were any of them left. I shook his hand. I should have been sorry
had he been willing to sell. It would have been like betraying an old
friend. They were poor, but they were loyal. It was the Old Town all
over. Years ago the last of the clock-makers lived in Black Friars
Street, in our block. One morning there was a great crash. It was their
house that had fallen down. The neighbors hastened up to help, and when
a way had been made through the wreck, found the old man and his wife
lying calmly in bed. The beams had formed a shelter over them, and they
were safe till the next cave-in. They urged them to hurry out, but the
old couple refused. It was their home. They had always lived in it and,
now they were old, would die in it if need be rather than seek another.
They were like Heine’s lovers:
Wir Beide bekümmern uns um nichts
Und bleiben ruhig liegen.
They had to take them out by force.
No need of haste. The mail-coach waited for you in the old days, once
you were registered as a passenger, till you came. It would have been
base to desert you. The train waits now till you climb aboard and
station-master and conductor have exchanged the last item of news. The
red-coated mail-carrier taps on your window with the expected letter
and a sympathetic “It’s come.” The telegraph messenger who meets you in
the street with his message goes home with you to hear the good news;
he knows it is good. The mill-wheels drone in the stream their old
drowsy lay that was old when you were born. Down by the castle garden
a worn wheel whirs and hums in the rope walk where father and son go
spinning their endless cord, side by side, as did their people before
them as far back as any one can remember. Why should one hurry? The
sun sinks low in the west. Far upon the horizon there is a gleam of
silver: it is the sea, sleeping in a calm. The bells of the Old Town
peal forth their even song. The cows come home from the meadows. In the
Cloister shadows trembling hands are trimming the evening lamp, tired
old feet tottering to their rest. A day is ended. Above blossoming
gardens the stork looks down from its nest, wiser than the world of
men: another will dawn. So that its evening be peace, what matters the
rest? It is the message of the Old Town.
[Illustration: “IT’S COME.”]