Soren Kierkegaard

Vimmelskaftet; 235 to various tearooms and cafe ́s; and 44 to M .C .Freys,
a tobacconist on Østergade; plus various lesser sums .Surely old age was not
the only cause of the tremor in his father’s handwriting when the old man
wrote “Søren” on the cover of the little notebook which for the next year
would serve as the account book as Kierkegaard paid off his debt .Plainly,
the old man had been shaken by what anyone could see: The 1,262 rixdol-
lars that his son had squandered in town were more than the annual salary
of a university professor!
There were certainly plenty of temptations .In those days Strøget was
called “the Route,” and it was here that people went to see and be seen, to
greet friends with great hilarity while making a show of avoiding encounters
with one’s enemies .The old hostelries and eating places had been modern-
ized along the lines of foreign models .They were now calledConditorier
[Danish: “confectioneries” or “tearooms”] and bore such exotic names as
Apitz, Capozzi, Capritz, Ferrini, Lardelli, Monigatti, Pedrin, and Sechi.
One of the most successful of these immigrants was Josty, who in 1817 had
opened his Swiss tearoom at 53 Østergade, followed in 1824 by a branch
in Frederiksberg Gardens, which survives to this day .Upon entering Øster-
gade one encountered Gianelli’s tearoom, with its tall windows .Pleisch’s
tearoom was on Amagertorv with a view of Højbro .Mini’s was located on
Kongens Nytorv at the corner of Lille Kongensgade, at the site of the pres-
ent-day Cafe ́a`Porta .Mini’s was the finest cafe ́in town, “a coffeehouse for
aristocratic people, furnished in the French or Italian manner, where every
respectable or well-dressed person could get tea, coffee, cocoa, and very
fine liquors at any hour of the day.” In the evenings, if a man wanted to go
out for a game of skittles, billiards, and have a smoke, all he had to do
was to go over to Knirsch’s Hotel, at the site of the present-day Hotel
d’Angleterre.
Even though the mass of bills and receipts informs us, like so many tattle-
tales, about the behavior of young Kierkegaard, not every expenditure, of
course, leaves a paper trail .No receipts are issued at the seamiest places, and
the ever-receptive young ladies down in Peder Madsen’s Alley, which in
those days connected with “the Route,” were in no way concerned with
paperwork; their services were rendered in kind, payment was in cash, and
that was that .There were still other places one could visit if one was in an
unsavory state of mind .There were Store Brøndstræde and Lille
Brøndstræde, and there was Ulkegade, where the ladies of the night haunted
the end of the street nearest Lille Kongensgade .Sailors, naughty university
students, and matrimonially dissatisfied middle-class gentlemen visited these
shadowy districts, but even King Frederick VI was acquainted with these
amusements, and on Sunday afternoons, after arriving in an open carriage,