How We Lived In Copenhagen, 1859
“How We Lived In Copenhagen” from A Residence in Jutland, the Danish Isles and Copenhagen by Horace Marryat, 1860.
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“How We Lived In Copenhagen” from A Residence in Jutland, the Danish Isles and Copenhagen by Horace Marryat, 1860.
January, 1859. — My choice of Copenhagen as a winter residence arose chiefly from its geographical position; it appeared a convenient pied à terre for one anxious in the ensuing spring to visit Jutland and the islands of the Belt, with a prospect of Sweden and Norway in the distant horizon of events. Stockholm is unapproachable after the winter sets in, so, without further debate, we made up our minds on the subject. I had always imagined that strangers visited and wintered at Copenhagen as they do in Frankfort, Dresden, and other European capitals; great, therefore, was our surprise when informed that such an event had never yet occurred within the memory of man.
The corps diplomatique looked upon us as demented, while the Danes themselves were all wonder and amazement at the extravagance of our idea. On our arrival we descended at the Hotel Royal, and there we remained comfortably housed for the space of five weeks, and on most reasonable terms. My old friend Madam (I forget her name), who kept the hotel some twenty years since, had lately been gathered to her fathers, rather an advantage than otherwise, for in an inn new proprietors infuse new blood, new improvements, and new paint into the establishment, and the public are gainers thereby.
We were soon deep in the horrors of house-hunting: here, as in Paris, people inhabit flats, which said flats are only let from 19th October to the "Flytte-dag" of the following April, and so on. There is no means or possibility of hiring rooms for one month or three months, as in other towns. Six months is the time allotted by law, and for six months you must take them; this term expired, the town of Copenhagen resembles the English game of post when a general post is proclaimed, and all the company in motion, one individual being left disconsolate without the wherewithal to rest himself—in which direful situation I really thought we should find ourselves at the eleventh hour; thanks, however, to the assistance of friends, we were at last comfortably located. In hiring an apartment at Copenhagen you hire the bare walls, and not always the bells of the house; some of ours flitted with the last occupant, and those we did find rang nowhere—where they could be heard at any rate.
You then arrange with the tapissier to furnish for a certain sum: you choose what you require, and have marked down in the agreement that if you want more later at any time he is to supply it; but do not fancy your miseries end here. The tapissier furnishes neither carpets, curtains, china, glass, nor batterie de cuisine; these articles you must hire or purchase, or send over from England, as best suits you. The transit from Hull by sea is next to nothing, and no difficulty is made at the Custom-house for objects already used. Do not imagine the police to have shown the delicate attention to housekeepers of arranging that servants are to be hired at the same period as houses; nothing of the kind. Servants engage themselves from November 1st; we consequently were compelled to remain from the 19th of October till that day living out and about at a restaurant anyhow, till we were tired out, and our one man and maid, whom we had brought with us, were by no means in the most amiable of tempers. At last, however, "the pig did get over the stile," and we were fairly settled at Copenhagen.
Living is decidedly not dear here in the capital; meat of the best quality varies from fivepence to sixpence per lb.; poultry and game are abundant and cheap; and an entire stag may be purchased for about 1l. English money. In the way of birds, the Danes, like the French, eat everything, and I own my feelings received a fearful shock one morning on being offered for sale, price sixpence, twenty little bullfinches tied together on a cord, and, on my indignantly refusing to purchase them, the offer was followed up by the exhibition of a bunch of silk-tails as they here call them, the Bohemian waxwing, with somewhat sober plumage and lovely little yellow tails—a bird which the English naturalists value at fifteen shillings the skin to purchase, though, I dare say, if I had made a speculation in them, they would not have paid me more than sixpence. It is a curious fact that these little birds visit Denmark but once in seven years, and never lay their eggs further south than Lapland.
Firing, wood, coal, and turf, are all reasonable enough in themselves, but the servants and the stoves combined, manage to consume an unheard-of quantity. At the commencement of the season you get in a supply which, in your delusion, you imagine is to take you through the winter; never mind what the quantity may be, it never lasts beyond Christmas. The woodhouse is sure to be in some out-of-the-way place where nobody has any command over it.
Marryat, Horace. A Residence in Jutland, the Danish Isles, and Copenhagen. John Murray, 1860.
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