goblet, five inches in diameter, and fifteen high, out of which he and
his set of boon companions fell to drinking one day on wagers to see
who could drink the most, and scratched their names on the glass as
they drank, each man his mark and record, little thinking that the
glass would outlive them three centuries and more, as it has; and is
likely now, unless Rosenborg burns down, to last the world out.
The thing I would rather own, of all this Frederick's possessions,
would be one--I would be quite content with one--of the plates which
Germany sent to him as a present. They are red in the middle, with
gold escutcheons enamelled on them; the borders are of plain clear
amber, rimmed with silver,--one big circle of amber! The piece from
which it was cut was big enough to have made the whole plate, if they
had chosen, but it was more beautiful to set it simply as a rim.
Nothing could be dreamed of more beautiful in the way of a plate than
this.
I told you in my last letter what a stamp Christian IV. had left on
the capital of his kingdom. I fancy, without knowing anything about
it, that he must have been one of the greatest kings Denmark ever had;
at any rate, he built well, planned well for poor people, worked with
a free hand for art and science, fought like a tiger, and loved--well,
he loved like a king, I suppose; for he had concubines from every
country in Europe, and no end of illegitimate princes and princesses
whom he brought up, maintained, and educated in the most royal
fashion. He lived many years in this Rosenborg; and when he found he
must die, was brought back here, and died in a little room we should
think small to-day for a man to lie mortally ill in; but he lived only
one week after he was brought back, and it was in winter-time, so the
open fireplace ventilated the room.
The upper half of the walls is covered with dark green moire silk,
with gold flowers on it; the lower half is covered with paintings,
many portraits among them; and in places of honor among the portraits,
the king's favorite dogs, Wild-brat and Tyrk.
Here are his silver compasses and his ship hand-lantern; the silver
scales in which he weighed out his gold and silver; a little hand
printing-press, dusty and worn, with the brass stamp with his monogram
on it,--his occupation in rainy days of leisure. Here, also, are the
tokens of his idle moments,--a silver goblet made out of money won by
him from four courtiers, who had all betted with him, on one 6th of
February, which would be first drunk before Easter. These were the
things that I cared most for,--more than for the splendors, of which
there were closets full, glass cases full, tables full: goblets of
lapis lazuli, jasper, agate, and crystal, gold and silver; lamps of
crystal; cabinets of ebony; orders and rings and bracelets and seals
and note-books and clocks and weapons, all of the costliest and most
beautiful workmanship; rubies and diamonds and pearls, set and sewed
wherever they could be; a medicine spoon, with gold for its handle and
a hollowed sapphire for its bowl, for instance,--the sapphire nearly
one inch across. One might swallow even allopathic medicine out of
such a spoon as that: and I dare say that it was when she was very
ill, and had a lot of nasty doses to take, that Madame Kirstin--one of
the left-handed wives--got from the sympathizing king this dainty
little gift. "C" and "K" are wrought into a monogram on the handle,
which is three inches long, of embossed gold. Another sapphire, clear
as a drop of ocean water with sunlight piercing it, and one inch
square, is in the same case with the medicine spoon. A chalice, with
wafer-box, paten, and cup, all of the finest gold, engraved,
enamelled, and set thick with precious stones, has a gold death's-head
and cross-bones on the stem of the chalice; and the eyes of the
death's-head are two great rose diamonds, which gleam out frightfully.
Another gold chalice has on its under side a twisted network of
Arabesque, with sixty-six enamelled rosettes, all openwork on it.
In the room called Christian's workroom is a set of caparisons for a
horse,--saddle, saddle-cloth, housing, and holsters, all of black
velvet, sewn thick, even solid, with pearls and gold, rubies,
sapphires, and rose diamonds. The sight of them flashing in sunlight
on a horse's back must have been dazzling. These were a wedding
present from King Christian to his son.
In this room also are several suits of Christian's clothes,--jerkin,
trousers, and mantle, in the fashion of that day, dashing enough, even
when made of common stuffs; but these are of cloth of gold, silver
moire, black Brabant lace, trimmed in the most lavish way with gold
and silver laces, and embroidered with pearls and gold. There is a
suit of dirty and blood-stained linen hanging in one of the locked
cabinets which does him more credit than these. It is the suit he wore
at the great naval battle where he lost his eye. A shell exploding on
the deck, a fragment of it flew into his face and instantly destroyed
his right eye. His men thought all was lost; but he, seizing his
handkerchief, clapped it into the bleeding socket, and fought on. One
reads of such heroic deeds as this with only a vague thrill of wonder
and admiration; but to see and touch the very garments the hero wore
is another thing. This old blood-stained velvet jerkin is worth more
to the Danish people than all the scores of bejewelled robes in the
Rosenborg; and I think there are literally scores of them.
Next to Christian IV. came Frederick III.; and in his reign the rococo
style ruled everything. Three rooms in the Rosenborg are devoted to
the relics of this king's reign; and a great deal of hideous
magnificence they hold, it must be confessed,--cabinets and tables
and candlesticks and ceilings and walls, which are as jarring to the
eye as the Chinese gong is to the ear, and appear to be just about as
civilized. But the rococo had not yet spoiled everything. The jewelled
cups and boxes and spoons and miniatures are as beautiful as ever; a
set of glass spoons with handles of gold and of agate and of crystal;
the gold knives and forks that Frederick III. and his queen used to
travel with. In those days when you were asked to tea you carried your
own implements; ivory cups, gold goblets, and goblets of crystal, a
goblet made out of one solid topaz, and a great tankard made of
amber,--these are a few of the little necessaries of every-day life to
Frederick's court. His motto was "Dominus providebit;" it is on half
of his splendid possessions,--on his mosaic tables and his jewelled
canes and pomade boxes; everywhere it looms up, in unwitting but
delicious satire on the habit Frederick had of providing for himself,
and most lavishly too, all sorts of superfluities, which the Lord
never would think of providing for any human being!--such, for
instance, as a jewel box of silver, with fifteen splendidly cut
crystals let into the sides, so that one can look through into the box
and see on the bottom a fine bit of embossed work, the picture of the
Judgment of Paris. Around these crystals sixty-two large garnets are
set, and these again are surrounded by wreaths of flowers and leaves
in embossed work, set thick with more diamonds than could be counted.
A very pretty thing in its way, to stand on a dressing-table and hold
the kind of rings worn at this time by the kind of persons who reigned
in Denmark! Another pretty little thing he had,--not so useful as the
jewel-box, but in far more perfect taste,--was a crystal goblet, in
shape of a shell, resting on the back of a bending Cupid. Eight
beautiful heads are cut on the sides of this cup, and there is
standing on its curling base a winged boy. Its translucent shades and
shadows are beautiful beyond words. It is said to be the most
beautiful specimen in the world of work in pure crystal. The topaz
goblet and the amber tankard, however, would outrival it in most eyes.
I longed to see the topaz cup held up to the sun, filled with pale
wine. I believe you could _hear_ it shine! The third of the rooms
devoted to Frederick and his reign is called the Marble Chamber, and
is a superb icy place; floor and walls all marble. In cabinets in this
room are some of Frederick's clothes,--every-day clothes, such as dark
brown cloth, ornamented down every seam with gold and silver lace; and
a dress of his queen's, the only dress of a woman which has come down
from that age. It is one solid mass of embroidery in gold and gay
colors on silk, stiff as old tapestry; loops of faded pink ribbon down
the front, and a long jabot of old point lace all the way down the
front. There are also a sword and sword-belt, and a gun bearing the
initials of this lady. The gun has a medallion of ivory let in at the
butt end, with her initials, "S. A.," and her motto, "In God is my
hope." There is something uncommonly droll in these mottoes of faith
in God's providing, inscribed on so many articles of luxury by people
who must have certainly spent a good part of their time in providing
for themselves.
In the last part of the seventeenth century things in Denmark were
more and more stamped by the French influence. Christian V., who
succeeded to Frederick III., had spent some time in the court of Louis
XIV., and wanted to make his own court as much like it as possible. So
we find, in the rooms devoted to Christian V.'s reign, tapestries and
cabinets which might all have come from France. One of the saloons is
hung with superb tapestry, all with a red ground; and the tables and
mirrors and chairs are all gilded and carved in the last degree of
fantastic decoration. This red room used to be Christian's
dining-room; and the plate-warmers still stand before the
fireplace,--two feet high, round, solid silver, every inch engraved.
Caskets of amber, of ivory; drinking-horns,--one-third horn and
two-thirds embossed silver,--bowls and globes of wrought silver,
hunting-cups of solid silver made to fit into deer's antlers and with
coral knobs for handles; closets full of fowling-pieces, pistols,
silver-sheathed hunting-knives, falcon hoods set with real pearls and
embroidered in gold,--orders of all sorts known to Denmark; elephants
and St. Georges in silver and crystal and cameo; gold jugs, gold
beakers, bowls of green jade, with twisted snakes for handles and
dragons' heads at bottom; goblets of solid crystal, of countless
shapes and sizes,--one in shape of a flying-fish borne by two
dolphins; onyx and jasper and agate and porcelain, made into no end of
shapes and uses;--these are a few of the things which "God provided"
for this Danish king and queen. One of these rooms is hung with
tapestries of lilac silk and gold moire, embroidered with gold and
silver threads and colors. These were provided by Frederick himself,
who brought them from Italy.
But you don't care a fig who brought the things, or when they were
brought; and perhaps you don't care very much about the things anyhow.
I dare say they do not sound half as superb as they were; but I must
tell you of a few more. What do you think of a room with walls,
ceiling, and a large space in the centre of the floor all of plate
glass, the rest of the floor being of exquisite mosaic in wood; and of
a coat of crimson velvet embroidered thick with silver thread, to be
worn with a pale blue waistcoat, also embroidered stiff with silver
thread; and of cups cut out of rubies; and a great bowl of obsidian
set with rubies and garnets; and of topazes big enough to cut heads on
in fine relief? There are hundreds and hundreds more of things I have
not mentioned, and hundreds of things I did not see even, in the rooms
I walked through; and there were seventeen rooms more into which I did
not even go. If I had, I should have seen twelve superb tapestries, 12
feet in height, by 10 to 20 feet broad, each giving a picture of a
battle, and all strictly historical; the Royal Font, of solid embossed
silver, inside which is placed at every christening another dish of
gold; one whole room full of the costliest and rarest porcelain from
all parts of the world,--here is the splendid and famous "Flora
Danica" service. I saw at a porcelain shop a reproduction of this
service, every article bearing some Danish flower most exquisitely
painted. A great platter heaped full of wild roses was as lovely as a
day in June. Here also are the Danish Regalia, kept in a room hung
with Oriental carpets, and with a floor of black and white marble. "In
the middle of the floor a pyramid arises behind clear thick plate
glass, from the flat sides of which, covered with red velvet, the rays
of gold and precious stones flash upon us, whilst the summit is
adorned by a magnificent and costly crown." This sentence is from the
catalogue written by my friend the noble Dane, and is a very
favorable specimen of his English. Bless him, how I do wish I had gone
back to that museum! At this distance of time it seems incomprehensible
to me that I did not. But that day I felt as if one more look at the
simple door of a museum would make a maniac of me. So this is all I
can tell you about the famous Rosenborg. And with the others I will
not bore you much, for I have made this so long; only I must tell you
that in the Ethnographic, which is in some respects, I suppose, the
most valuable of them all, having five rooms full of _Prehistoric_
antiquities from the stone, bronze, and early iron ages in every part
of the world, and twenty or thirty rooms more full of characteristic
things,--dresses, implements, ornaments, weapons, of the uncultivated
savage or semi-savage races, also of the Chinese, Persians, Arabians,
Turks, East Indians, etc.;--in this museum I found a most important
place assigned to the North American Indian; and Dr. Steinhauer, the
director of the museum, a man whose ethnographical studies and
researches have made him known to all antiquarians in the world was
full of interest in them, and appreciation of their noble qualities,
of their skill and taste in decoration, and still more of the
important links between them and the old civilizations. Here were
portraits of all the most distinguished of our Indian chiefs; a whole
corridor filled with glass cases full of their robes, implements,
weapons, decorations; several life-size figures in full war-dress: and
their trappings were by no means put to shame, in point of design and
color, by the handsomest trappings in Rosenborg; in fact, they were
far more wonderful, being wrought by an uncivilized race, living in
wildernesses, with only rude paints, porcupine quills, and glass beads
to work with. My eyes filled with tears, I confess, to find at last in
little Denmark one spot in the world where there will be kept a
complete pictorial record of the race of men that we have done our
best to wipe out from the face of the earth,--where historical justice
will be done to them in the far future, as a race of splendid
possibilities, and attainments marvellous, considering the time in
which they were made. Here was a superb life-size figure of a
Blackfeet warrior on his horse; the saddle, trappings, etc., are
exactly the same in shape and style as an old Arab saddle used
hundreds of years ago. On the warrior's breast is a round disk of
lines radiating from a centre, in gay colors, of straw and beads, of a
device identical with a rich Moorish ornament; the same device Dr.
Steinhauer pointed out to me on a medicine-bag of the Blackfeet tribe.
Here was a figure of a chief of the Sacs and Foxes, in full array; by
his side the portrait of his father, with the totem of the tribe
tattooed on his breast. With enthusiasm Dr. Steinhauer pointed out to
me how in one generation the progress had been so great that on the
robe of the son was set in a fine and skilful embroidery the same
totem which the father had rudely tattooed on his breast. Here were
specimens of the handiwork of every tribe,--of their dresses, of their
weapons; those of each tribe carefully assorted by themselves. Dr.
Steinhauer knew more, I venture to say, about the different tribes,
their race affinities and connections, than any man in America knows
to-day. When I told him a little about the scorn and hatred which are
felt in America towards the Indians, the indifference with which their
fate is regarded by the masses of the people, and the cruel injustice
of our government towards them, he listened to me with undisguised
astonishment, and repeated again and again and again, "It is
inexplicable; I cannot understand."
You can imagine what a thrilling pleasure all this was to me. But it
was marred by the keenest sense of shame of my country, that it should
have been left for Denmark alone to keep a place in historical
archives for a fair showing and true appreciation of the "wards of the
United States Government."
I might fill another letter with accounts of the "Collection of
Northern Antiquities;" but don't be frightened: I won't, only to tell
you that it is far the largest and most complete in Europe. And you
may see there a specimen of everything that has been made, wrought,
and worn in the way of stone, bronze, iron, or gold and silver, in the
north countries, from the rude stone chisel with which the prehistoric
man pried open his oyster and clam shells at picnics on the shore, and
went away and left his shells and "openers" in a careless pile behind
him, so that we could dig them all up together some thousands of
years later, down to the superb gold bracelets worn by the
strong-armed women who queened it in Norway ten centuries ago. It is a
great thing for us that those old fellows had such a way of flinging
their ornaments into lakes as offerings to gods, and burying them by
the wheelbarrow-full in graves. It wasn't a safe thing to do, even as
long ago as that, however; for there are traces in many of these
burial-mounds of their having been opened and robbed at some period
far back. In one of the rooms of this museum are several huge oak
coffins, with the mummied or half-petrified bodies lying in them, just
as they were buried sixteen hundred years ago. The coffins were made
of whole trunks of trees, hollowed out so as to make a sort of trough
with a lid; and in this the body was laid, with all its usual garments
on. There is an indescribable and uncanny fascination in the sight of
one of these old mummies,--the eyeless sockets, the painful cheekbone,
the tight-drawn forehead; they look so human and unhuman at once, so
awfully dead and yet somehow so suggestive of having been alive, that
it stimulates a far greater curiosity to know what they did and
thought and felt, than it is possible to feel about neighbors to-day.
I never see half a dozen of these mummies together without wishing
they would sit up and take up the thread of their gossip where they
left it off,--so different from the feeling one has about live
gossips, and so utterly unreasonable too; for gossip is gossip all the
same, and nothing but an abomination in any age, whether that of
Pharaoh or Ulysses Grant. If I did not feel a dreadful misgiving that
you had had enough museum already, and would be bored by more, I
really would like to tell you about a few more of these things: a
necklace, found in a peat bog by a poor devil who had begged leave to
cut a bit of turf there to burn, and to be sure he found eleven
beautiful gold things of one sort and another. The necklace is very
heavy to lift. I asked permission to take it in my hands. I laid it
around my neck, and it would have hurt to wear it ten minutes. It was
a great snake coil of solid gold, the body half as big as my wrist! If
Queen Thyra wore it, she must have been a giantess, or else have had a
wadded "chest protector" underneath her necklaces. She and her
husband, King Gorm, were buried in two enormous mounds in Jutland,
some fourteen hundred years ago. The mounds were so high that they
nearly overtopped the little village church; and yet, at some time or
other, robbers had burrowed into them, and carried off a lot of
things, so that when the mounds were scientifically excavated, few
relics were found. Stealing from that sort of grave seems to make the
modern methods of body-snatching quite insignificant. Even A. T.
Stewart's body would have been safe if it had been in a mound as high
as the church steeple.
Now I must tell you a little more about Harriet. She leaves me
to-morrow, and I shall grieve at parting with the garrulous old soul.
Niobe, I call her in my own mind; for she melts into tears at the
least emotion. I am afraid nobody has ever been very good to her; for
the smallest kindness touches her to the quick, and she cannot refrain
from perpetually breaking out into expressions of fondness for me, and
gratitude, which are sometimes tiresome. The explanation of her good
English is that her parents were English, though she was born in
Copenhagen, has lived there all her life, and married a Dane when she
was quite young. He was a tradesman, and they lived in comparative
comfort, though, as she said, "we never could lay up a penny, because
we always sent the children to the best schools; and for ten children,
ma'am, it does take a heap of schooling!"
Of the ten children, six are still living; and Harriet, at sixty-four,
has thirty-six grandchildren. When she first came to me she looked ten
years older than she does now. Good food, freedom from care, and her
enjoyment of her journey have almost worked miracles on her face.
Every morning she has come out looking better than she did the night
before. I see that she must have been a very handsome woman in her
day,--delicate features, and a soft dark brown eye, with very great
native refinement and gentleness of manner. Poor soul! her hardest
days are before her, I fear; for the daughter with whom she lives, and
for whom she works night and day, is the wife of that worthless
fellow, our commissionnaire. He is a drunkard, and not much more than
four fifths "witted." Harriet is pew-opener at the English church, and
gets a little money from that; the clergyman is very kind to her, and
she has the promise of a place at last in a sort of "Old Lady's Home"
in Copenhagen. This is her outlook! I must send you the verses she
presented to me yesterday. I had left her alone for the greater part
of the forenoon, and she took to her pen for company. That was the way
Katrina used to amuse herself when I left her alone. I always found
her sitting with her elbows on the table, a pile of scribbled sheets
in front of her, her hair pushed off her forehead, and a general
expression of fine frenzy about her. Katrina's English did not compare
with Harriet's at all; that is, it was not so good. I liked it far
better. It was one perpetual fund of amusement to me; but I think
Katrina had more nearly a vein of genius about her, and she was not
sentimental; whereas Harriet is a sentimentalist of the first
water,--no, of the "seventy thousandth"!
PARIS, September 19.