Recollections of My Childhood and Youth | Page 5

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.
VIII.
In the wood attic, a little room divided from the main garret by wooden
bars, in which a quantity of split firewood and more finely chopped fir
sticks, smelling fresh and dry, are piled up in obliquely arranged heaps,
a little urchin with tightly closed mouth and obstinate expression has,
for more than two hours, been bearing his punishment of being
incarcerated there.
Several times already his anxious mother has sent the housemaid to ask

whether he will beg pardon yet, and he has only shaken his head. He is
hungry; for he was brought up here immediately after school. But he
will not give in, for he is in the right. It is not his fault that the grown-
up people cannot understand him. They do not know that what he is
suffering now is nothing to what he has had to suffer. It is true that he
would not go with the nurse and his little brother into the King's
Gardens. But what do Father and Mother know of the ignominy of
hearing all day from the other schoolboys: "Oh! so you are fetched by
the nurse!" or "Here comes your nurse to fetch you!" He is
overwhelmed with shame at the thought of the other boys' scorn. She is
not his nurse, she is his brother's. He could find his way home well
enough, but how can