A Short Residence in Sweden & Memoirs of the Author of 'The Rights of Woman': AND Memoirs of the Author of 'The Rights of Woman' (Classics) by Mary Wollstonecraft & William Godwin

Author:Mary Wollstonecraft & William Godwin [Wollstonecraft, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 1987-04-30T04:00:00+00:00

Letter Eighteen

COPENHAGEN

The distance from Elsinore to Copenhagen is twenty–two miles; the road is very good, over a flat country diversified with wood, mostly beech, and decent mansions. There appeared to be a great quantity of corn land; and the soil looked much more fertile than it is in general so near the sea. The rising grounds indeed were very few; and around Copenhagen it is a perfect plain, and of course has nothing to recommend it, but cultivation, not decorations. If I say that the houses did not disgust me, I tell you all I remember of them; for I cannot recollect any pleasurable sensations they excited; or that any object, produced by nature or art, took me out of myself. The view of the city, as we drew near, was rather grand, but, without any striking feature to interest the imagination, except the trees which shade the foot–paths.

Just before I reached Copenhagen, I saw a number of tents on a wide plain, and supposed that the rage for encampments 109 had reached this city; but I soon discovered that they were the asylum of many of the poor families who had been driven out of their habitations by the late fire.110

Entering soon after, I passed amongst the dust and rubbish it had left, affrighted by viewing the extent of the devastation; for at least a quarter of the city had been destroyed. There was little in the appearance of fallen bricks and stacks of chimneys to allure the imagination into soothing melancholy reveries; nothing to attract the eye of taste, but much to afflict the benevolent heart. The depredations of time have always something in them to employ the fancy, or lead to musing on subjects which, withdrawing the mind from objects of sense, seem to give it new dignity: but here I was treading on live ashes. The sufferers were still under the pressure of the misery occasioned by this dreadful conflagration. I could not take refuge in the thought; they suffered – but they are no more! a reflection I frequently summon to calm my mind, when sympathy rises to anguish: I therefore desired the driver to hasten to the hotel recommended to me, that I might avert my eyes, and snap the train of thinking which had sent me into all the corners of the city, in search of houseless heads.

This morning I have been walking round the town, till I am weary of observing the ravages. I had often heard the Danes, even those who had seen Paris and London, speak of Copenhagen with rapture. Certainly I have seen it in a very disadvantageous light, some of the best streets having been burnt and the whole place thrown into confusion. Still the utmost that can, or could ever, I believe, have been said in its praise, might be comprised in a few words. The streets are open, and many of the houses large; but I saw nothing to rouse the idea of elegance or grandeur, if I except the circus 111 where the king and prince royal reside.

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