so LIBRARY^ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO .0 m^* HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN V. /7 ANDERSEN. ^ETAT. 50 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN A BIOGRAPHY BY E, NISBET BAIN Un esprit defemme dans un caractere d, 1 enfant. AMIEL LONDON LAWRENCE AND BULLEN 16, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1895 INTRODUCTION A LIFE of Hans Christian Andersen will, I venture to think, not be unwelcome in England. He is the one foreign author whom we can never regard as an alien ; whom, from long familiarity and association, we have come to look upon as one of ourselves. His stories have been the delight of our children for three generations, and their popularity among us increases rather than diminishes as time goes on; scarcely a year passes without bringing with it a new edition or translation of the incomparable "Fairy Tales." But even if Andersen had not written a single line of a single fairy tale he would still remain a tempting subject for a- biographer. In practical life he was essentially a shrewd, observant man of the world, who saw more than most people, because he took the trouble to keep his eyes open. Half his life was spent in travelling up and down Europe ; he was more or less intimately acquainted with most of the vi INTRODUCTION leading men of letters of his day ; he had at his finger ends the literatures of half a dozen languages, and he was as much at home in the prince's palace as in the peasant's hut. Such a man can tell us a good deal, and is well worth listening to. The materials available for a life of Andersen are copious, not to say complete, as no appreciable addition thereto is to be anticipated. I will now set out the principal documents, which are, briefly, as follows : ( i ) Breve fra H. C. Ander- sen, udgivne of C. A. S. Bille of N. Bogh, 2 vols., Copenhagen, 1878. This collection contains 479 original letters of Andersen's, extending over a period of more than forty years, and filling nearly 1500 pages. (2) Breve til H. C. Andersen (same editors), Copenhagen, 1877, containing 329 letters to Andersen from literary colleagues or contem- poraries and private friends in Denmark and out of it. (3) H. C. Andersen og det Collinske Hus (" H. C. Andersen and the Collin Family "), Copen- hagen, 1882. The first 518 pages of this notable book consists of some scores of Andersen's most characteristic letters, addressed to his intimate friends the Collins, interspersed with numerous original documents relating, principally, to his literary INTRODUCTION vii career, with very valuable explanatory and illus- trative notes. It goes back as far as his student days, but breaks off somewhat abruptly at the year 1855. It is on these three documents that the ensuing narrative is mainly based. Next (4) comes Andersen's own autobiography, entitled, Mit Livs Eventyr (" The Story of My Life "), first published in 1855, a bulky volume containing, with its supple- ment, nearly 700 pages. This autobiography, which has never been translated into English, is an ampli- fication of the earlier Das Mdrchen meines Lebens, Englished anonymously in 1852, and is a docu- ment which should only be used with the utmost caution. Herr Edward Collin, Andersen's oldest and most intimate friend, has, severely but not unjustly, called it " that production of daily shifting moods," and certainly a more misleading book can scarcely be imagined. It is mainly responsible for what I have elsewhere called " The Ugly Duckling Theory of Andersen's Life," I mean that widely received but perfectly gratuitous idea of him as the constantly misunderstood and mercilessly persecuted victim of captious and malicious critics. As a matter of fact, whenever his critics are concerned, it is im- possible for Andersen to be I will not say fair and viii INTRODUCTION just, but even reasonable and coherent. At least one-third of Mit Livs Eventyr is taken up with Andersen's literary squabbles, nearly another third of it relates to matters of considerable interest to Danes, but to Danes only, while in the remainder the facts are often too obviously grouped with an eye to dramatic effect. Nevertheless, though of somewhat doubtful value as a historical document, Mit Livs Eventyr is, psychologically, of immense importance, as showing, better perhaps than anything else, the peculiar bent and bias of the author's mind. It naturally abounds, too, with entertaining anec- dotes not to be met with elsewhere, and conse- quently furnishes a goodly supply of those piquant seasoning ingredients which no biography can dis- pense with. Finally, it gives us the only detailed account we possess of Andersen's infancy and youth, in some respects the most interesting period of his life. Very important also to Andersen's biographer are his four great travel books or itineraries (5) the Skyggebilleder ("Silhouettes"), 1831, (6) EnDigter's Bazar ("A Poet's Bazaar"), 1842, (7) / Sverrig ("In Sweden"), 1852, and (8) / Spanien ("In Spain"), 1863, poetic but perfectly veracious expansions of the diaries which he so conscientiously INTRODUCTION ix kept during his principal continental tours. Many biographical data, too, are scattered up and down Andersen's novels, notably in (9) 0. T., (10) Kun en Spillemand ("Only a Fiddler"), and (n) At vcere eller ikke vcere ("To Be, or not to Be"), which a diligent student of his correspondence can detect at once, though, of course, extreme care is necessary in disengaging them from their environ- ment of fiction. Finally, I am indebted for many interesting particulars to various Danish monographs and essays. Thus in (12) J. M. Thiele's Af mit Liv's Aarboger (" From my Life's Diaries "), I find a vivid description of Andersen in his gawky hobble- dehoy days by one who knew him personally; (13) Orsted's JBreve, Samml. ii. (" Letters," 2nd collec- tion), and ( 1 4) Sibbern's Breve, edited by Mynster, supply a few literary details ; (15) Brandes' Kritiker og Portreter (" Critiques and Portraits "), contains the best critical estimate of Andersen's Tales existing or conceivable ; and it would have been quite impossible to have told the story of Andersen's last days with- out the valuable assistance of (16) Dr. Wilhelm Block's Om H. C. Andersen ("About H. C. Andersen") in Ncer og Fjern, and (17) Herr Nicholas Bogh's H. (7. Andersen's sidste Dager x INTRODUCTION (" H. C. Andersen's Last Days") in the Illustreret Tidende, I have also gleaned a few odd facts from (18) Mrs. Howitt's Autobiography, and from (19) X. Marmier's Histoire de la Litterature en Dane- marc. R. NISBET BAIN. BRITISH MUSEUM, July 1894 CONTENTS CHAP. ;i PAGE' I. ODENSE I II. THE UGLY DUCKLING AT COPENHAGEN . . .24 in. THE "TYRANT" MEISLING 51 IV. EARLY WORKS 69 v. "AGNETE" ITALY " IMPROVISATOREN " . . 102 VI. THE FIRST FAIRY TALES MORE NOVELS . . 137 VII. " THE MULATTO " AND " THE MOORISH GIRL "- ANDERSEN IN THE EAST, AND ON THE DANUBE . l8o VIII. PROGRESS OF THE FAIRY TALES DRAMATIC TRIUMPHS AND DISASTERS " THE LONG POET " A EUROPEAN CELEBRITY 22Q IX. ANDERSEN IN ENGLAND X. " AHASUERUS " WAR IN SWEDEN .... xi. ANDERSEN'S RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY "TO BE, OR NOT TO BE " THE CHOLERA .... 320 XII. THE " HISTORIER " FRESH EXCURSIONS LOSS OF FRIENDS ; 344 XIII. IN SPAIN 363 XIV. DARK DAYS AT HOME GROWING OLD . . . 385 XV. THE LAST DAYS OF "THE GOOD OLD POET" . 413 xii CONTENTS APPENDICES PAGE I. EXTRACT FROM ANDERSEN'S LETTER OF APOLOGY TO HIS RECTOR, SIMON MEISLING . . . 443 II. EXTRACTS FROM ANDERSEN'S EARLIEST PRINTED WORK : " FODREJSE TIL AMAGER ". . . 444 III. EXTRACTS FROM ANDERSEN'S FIRST FAIRY TALE : " DODNINGEN " (THE CORPSE), THE ORIGINAL OF " THE TRAVELLING COMPANION," WITH HERR BRANDES'S COMMENTS 446 IV. ANDERSEN AND HIS TRANSLATORS .... 448 453 Ki I gBlr ^M "*#m : 5SSl &$&im HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN T CHAPTER I ODENSE The city of Odense Its antiquity Grows up round St. Knud's shrine Birth of Andersen The one little room Andersen's mother Her character His father, the contemplative cobbler The Devil's marks The adventure of the dancing slippers The old grandmother The dangerous lunatic The spinning-room The mad grandfather Early pastimes The comet of 1811 The Dame's school The little Philistine Death of Andersen's father Andersen's strong dramatic bent Juvenile pieces Day dreams Andersen at 14 Attracts attention of local gentry His pride and laziness At the Ragged School His confirmation The pair of new boots His mother's neglectful indulgence Hans Christian resolves to go to Copenhagen to try his fortune on the stage Gets letter of introduction to the premiere danseuse Departure from his native place. THERE is no more venerable place in Scandinavia than the little city of Odense. Its antiquity is so remote that Odin himself is popularly believed to have been its first burgomaster, though it was the murder there, in 1086, of King Canute at. the altar of St. Alban's church, whither he had fled from his pagan pursuers, that first gave the place a name in history. Eound the shrine of the royal martyr a great mediaeval city \ 2 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN rapidly arose, and tradition tells us that at a time when Copenhagen itself was nought but a second- rate fishing-village, the wealthy citizens of Odense were wont to entertain princes with more than princely pomp, and burn cinnamon instead of wood upon their ample hearths to show their contempt for wealth. In Odense hoary traditions meet us at every step. At one point in the river, not far from the shore, is the so-called bell-hole, a fathomless depth. Tradition says that long, long ago, when St. Alban's church stood where St. Knud's church stands now, a bell flew from the tower into this hole, and now, whenever a rich burgher of Odense is about to die, the bell tolls beforehand beneath the water. The very sanctuary of St. Knud's vast church has been invaded by legends old. Let one example suffice. Visitors are shown, on a column near the altar, the effigy of a lady with folded arms and painted face. This lady is said to have danced twelve squires to death in one night, but the thir- teenth, when it came to his turn, suspecting that something was wrong, watched his opportunity and, in the middle of the dance, deftly unloosed his partner's girdle, whereupon she instantly fell down upon the floor a corpse. A city of so many hoary memories, the hearth and home of Danish legend, was a befitting birthplace for him who was to open the eyes of all good and true children to the glorious ODENSE 3 mysteries of fairyland, of which, till he came, they had only caught fitful glimpses. Here on April 2, 1805, was born Hans Christian Andersen. The early surroundings of the future Fairy King were lowly in the extreme. He first saw the light in a little room which served the whole family as workshop, kitchen and parlour ; and half of this room was taken up by the big bed on which he now lay wailing. This bed, by the way, was something of a curiosity ; Andersen's father had fashioned it out of the trestles on which the coffin of a great nobleman had once reposed. The walls of the room were covered with pictures, and in the spring time whole heaps of fresh birch branches stood behind the polished stove, and bunches of sweet herbs hung down from the crevices of the rafters. On the solitary chest of drawers stood shining cups, glasses and knick-knacks ; pots of mint were on the window- sill, and right above the little workshop, which had been rigged up close to the window, was a shelf full of books and ballads. The door itself, the panels of which were painted with rude landscapes, was as good as a picture-gallery to the child's observant eyes. When he grew a little older, it was his delight to adorn his home with flowers from the fields and lanes; but he seems to have loved it best in the evening, when he was put out of harm's way into his parent's big bed till it was time for his own little sofa 4 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN bedstead to be got ready for him the room was too tiny to hold both beds at once. There he would lie staring at the light of the candle through the calico curtains which were drawn closely all around him, listening to every sound in the room where his parents were working, and yet as much wrapped up in his own thoughts and fancies as though there was nothing else in existence. " How nice and quiet he is, the blessed child ! " he would hear his mother say at such times. A ladder led from the kitchen end of the room into a loft, and in the roof-gutter up there, between the Andersen's cottage and their neighbour's, stood a box of earth full of chives and parsley that was their whole garden, and it still blooms in the story of The Snow Queen. Of Andersen's mother, whose maiden name was Anna Maria,* we know but little, and that little is not very much to her credit. The idyllic picture given of her in the autobiography of her son, shows her not as she was but as his filial piety imagined her to be. It was only natural and right that he should be very fond of a mother who, at any rate, was never actively unkind to him; always a good son, he is absolutely reticent about the miseries of her later years. It is easy enough, however, to gather from various other sources t that she was a * Collin, p. 510; compare Bille og Bogh: Breve til Andersen, pp. 6-14. f Bille og Bogh ; Collin. ODENSE 5 poor thing at best, one of those good-natured, silly, thriftless, happy-go-lucky creatures who are quite content to live from hand to mouth, and never look to the morrow so long as they have got a decent roof over their heads, and can sit down once a week to a square meal. As a mother she was mischievously careless of her only child in his infancy, and at a later day was not ashamed to draw upon his slender purse when he himself was living upon the charity of others, nay, frequently reproaching him when his poverty could not respond liberally enough to her exacting demands. Extreme misery, however, and growing habits of intemperance had by this time quite demoralised the poor creature, and until her son was able to get her into a comfortable private alms-house, she had been driven to earn a precarious livelihood by washing bottles for an apothecary. Andersen's father was also a somewhat unsatis- factory, though a much more remarkable, character. He came of a well-to-do yeoman stock, which had been ruined by a series of misfortunes and then migrated to Odense. There his father became de- ranged, and the best thing his penniless mother could do for him was to apprentice him to a cobbler, despite his intense longing to be sent to the Latin school. Some friends had talked of clubbing together to enable him to go the way he would; but nothing 6 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN ever came of it, so the elder * Andersen settled down to cobbling with great bitterness of heart. Books now became his only solace, he was never seen to smile except when he was reading. His favourite authors seem to have been Holberg,t La Fontaine and The Arabian Nights, but Holberg he particularly admired and knew nearly all his plays by heart. It was from his father, whose character was evidently closely akin to his own, that little Hans Christian first learned to love literature. The young cobbler would read aloud to his family of an evening. His wife used to listen to him with puzzled admiration (she could never quite make him out), but not a single word was lost upon the lad, and as he grew older he and his father became close companions. The elder Andersen de- voted all his spare time to his son, made him toys and pictures, and in the summer time took him for long walks in the woods, where he himself would sit buried in thought for hours at a time while the little fellow capered about, plucked strawberries, or made garlands of wild flowers. The elder Andersen, by the way, mixed very little with his fellows, who no doubt regarded him as an oddity. He pre- ferred brooding over his books at home, and some- times startled his little circle by expressing the result of his excogitations aloud, for in his small * Old he cannot be called, for he died at 35. f The Danish Moliere, one of the world's greatest comic dramatists. ODENSE 7 way he was something of an original thinker. On one occasion he suddenly closed his Bible with the exclamation : " Christ was a man like us, although an extraordinary man." His wife was so horrified by these words that she burst into tears, while little Hans Christian, full of terror, prayed God to forgive his father such a frightful blasphemy. On another occasion he heard his father say that the only devil in existence was the devil that every one has in his own heart, and again Hans grew very anxious indeed about his father's soul, especially when, shortly afterwards, that sinner woke up one morning with three deep scratches in his arm, caused no doubt by a nail in the bed. The neighbouring gossips were of the opinion that they were the marks of Satan himself, who had been there in the night to convince the sceptic of his existence. But even if the devil did not come to the cobbler, it is pretty plain that the cobbling business itself was about this time going to the devil. What with brooding over his books, and building castles in the air, the elder Andersen seems to have forgotten that this dull earth also has its claims upon us which we neglect at our peril. At any rate the following anecdote seems to prove not only that customers at Odense had begun to fall off, but also that the cobbler's hand was losing something of its former cunning. 8 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN It was the dearest wish of Andersen's father to move into the country, and it happened at this very time that a shoemaker was wanted at one of the Funen country houses. He was to settle down in the village close by, and there have a free house, a little garden, and pasturage for a cow, and with this and regular work from the squire, he would be able to make a livelihood. A piece of silk stuff was Bent from the squire's, out of which Andersen's father was to make a specimen pair of dancing shoes, find- ing the leather himself. For the next two days the family could talk and think of nothing else, and little Hans prayed God from the bottom of his heart to fulfil his own and his parents' wishes. At last the shoes were finished. They were gazed upon with awe and admiration. The whole future of the family depended upon them, and off the cobbler went with them in his apron, leaving his wife and child behind in joyful expectation. He returned pale and angry. The squire's lady, he said, had not even tried on the shoes, but looked askance at them the moment she saw them, said that the silk was spoiled, and that the bungler could not be engaged, whereupon, full of rage, the poor cobbler had whipped out his knife, and cut the offending slippers to bits. Thus all their hopes of living comfortably in the country came to an end ; all three fell a- weeping, and Hans thought to himself that God might surely have heard him. ODENSE 9 Had his prayer been answered in the way he wanted, he might have lived and died a yokel. The best head in the family appears to have been Andersen's grandmother, the prototype of all the ideal old grandmothers whom we meet with in the fairy tales. She is described by Andersen as a cheerful, quiet, and very amiable old woman, with gentle blues eyes, and a fragile figure. She used to come nearly every day to his parents' house, chiefly, he gives us to understand, to see him, and he certainly seems to have been her darling. She was fond of talking of her mother's mother who had been a gentlewoman at Cassel, and there married a " play- actor " as she expressed it. The old woman had a little garden to look after, close to the lunatic hospital where her husband was, from which she used to bring to the Andersons' cottage, every Saturday, bunches of flowers, which it was the child's delight to put into glasses of water on the chest of drawers. Twice a year she used to burn all the refuse of this garden in a large fire-place at the hospital, and it was a prime treat for her little grandson to be with her on such occasions, when he would roll about on the big soft heaps of cabbage leaves and pea-stalks, and get better food to eat than he generally got at home. He also used to follow the idiots about the hospital grounds, and listen with mingled curiosity and terror to their io HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN talking and singing. Occasionally he would even venture into the house where the dangerous lunatics were kept, and once his curiosity led him into quite a terrible adventure. He had strayed into a corridor between the cells, and knelt down to peep through the crevice of a door ; inside he saw a naked woman on a heap of straw, her hair was hanging down over her shoulders,, and she was singing with a pretty voice. Suddenly she sprang up and rushed shriek- ing towards the door outside of which he lay. The keeper had. gone away; he was quite alone, and she banged so violently against the door that the little lid just above him, covering the aperture through which they used to thrust her meat, sprang open and she looked through it right down upon him, and stretched out one of her arms towards him. He shrieked with terror, and squeezed himself still closer to the floor, but for all that could feel the tips of her fingers touch his clothes, and was half dead with fright before he could get away. Another place he was fond of frequenting was the spinning-room at the poor house, where he became a great favourite. Here he used to astonish the old women by parading all the odd scraps of information he had picked up from his father, and would chalk up on the door a lot of rubbish which was supposed to represent the heart, lungs, liver, and the internal ODENSE ii organs of the human body generally. The old dames used to listen admiringly, and declare that he was much too clever a child to live long, which flattered him mightily. Sometimes they rewarded his chattering by telling him fairy tales. Here doubtless it was that he first made the acquaint- ance of The Tinder Box, The Travelling Companion, Soup on a Sausage Peg, and their fellows. Of his weak-witted grandfather little Hans stood in great dread. He had only spoken to the child once, and on that occasion he addressed him in the third person plural, a mode of speech the urchin was not used to.* The old man, however, had a talent. He could carve out of wood odd- looking figures, men with beasts' heads, beasts with wings, and very curious birds ; these, he would pack into a basket, and take into the country, where the farmers' wives used to entertain him, and even give him hams and vegetables in exchange for the toys which he used to bestow upon them and their children. With lads of his own age little Hans never mixed at all. Even at school, of which more anon, he took no part in their games, but remained sitting inside the school-room. At home he had plenty of toys which his father had made for him, such as * The familiar second person singular was what Andersen and his parents would naturally employ. 12 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN pictures which changed their shapes when they were pulled with a string, a mill which made the miller dance about when it was set in motion, a peep-show and comical rag dolls. But his greatest pleasure was to make dolls' clothes, or to sit in the yard close beside their solitary gooseberry-bush with his mother's apron extended between it and the wall with the help of a broomstick. This was his tent in sunshine and shower, there he would sit and watch the gooseberry leaves day by day, from the time that they were small green buds, till they broke loose in autumn as large yellow leaves. One of his earliest recollections is the comet of 1811. His mother had told him that it would smash the world to bits, or that something equally dreadful would happen. He listened intently, and accepted the prophecy as gospel truth. Out in the square in front of St. Knud's churchyard he stood with his mother and some neighbouring gossips ; looked at the terrific bah 1 of fire with its large shining tail, and listened to their talk about evil omens and the Day of Doom. Then his father joined the group. The learned cobbler was not of the same opinion as the others, and gave a proper explanation of the phenomenon, but Mrs. Andersen and the neighbours only sighed, and shook their heads. This was another proof of his heterodoxy, and again the child was terribly grieved and ODENSE 13 frightened that his father did not believe as they did. Of anything like proper schooling the lad, thanks to the foolish indulgence of his parents, got little enough. He was sent first of all to a dame's school, but it was expressly stipulated beforehand by his mother that the birch-rod, which was kept in reserve for the other scholars, should never be exercised on him. One day the school-mistress forgot this in- junction, and gave him a tap with the birch. Little Hans instantly arose, put his books and slate under his arm, inarched off home without saying a word, told his mother what had happened, and asked her to send him to another school, which she accordingly did. This other school was a boy's school kept by a Herr Carstens, but there was one little girl there, too, quite a wee thing, with whom Andersen chummed up immediately. It was this little girl's ambition to become a dairymaid at a large country house when (as she told Andersen in confidence) she had learnt enough arithmetic for the purpose. " You shall be a dairymaid at my castle when I am a gentleman," he replied jokingly, and one day he showed her something which he had drawn upon his slate which he called his castle. Then, in his fanciful way, he invented a little tale about himself, assuring her that he was of noble birth, only the fairies had changed him in his cradle. He wanted to astonish i 4 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN her as he had astonished the old women at the hospital, but, to his dismay, the prosaic little Philistine looked at him very oddly, and said to one of the boys close by : " He is mad like his grandfather !" An icy shiver of horror ran through him, and he never talked to her about such things again. For the rest Andersen, by his own confession, idled or rather dreamed away most of his time at Herr Carstens* school, to the frequent disgust of that pedagogue, whom he tried, not always successfully, to propitiate with bouquets of wild flowers. Andersen's father died in 1 8 1 6 when the lad was only eleven years old.* The poor cobbler seems never to have got over the misadventure of the dancing shoes, and enlisted shortly afterwards, partly out of admiration for Napoleon, who was one of his many heroes, and partly in the hope of returning from the wars a lieutenant. He had got no further than Holstein, however, when peace was concluded, and he returned home to die, the unwonted fatigues and privations of campaigning having very soon ruined his feeble health. His widow speedily consoled herself by marrying another young cobbler, Jtir- gensen by name,t " with lively brown eyes, and a good even temper," J and Hans Christian was left * Collin, p. iii. f Ibid. J Mit Livs Eventyr (" Story of My Life"), henceforth contracted : M. L. E. ODENSE 15 more than ever to his own devices. At first, indeed, there was some talk of sending him to a cloth factory close by, and he actually did work there for a short time ; but the rough horse-play of his fellow journey- men scared him home again, and his mother was easily persuaded to promise that he should never go there again. So he remained at home playing with his peep-shows and theatres, making dolls' clothes, and eagerly devouring all the books he could lay his hands upon. About this time a clergyman's widow, Madame Bunkeflod, and her sister, who lived in the neighbourhood, took an interest in the lad, and were very kind to him. It was the first civilised house he had ever found a home in, and he was often there the best part of the day. It was here that he read Shakespeare's works for the first time, and he tells us that, despite the wretchedness of the translation, they made a great impression upon him, "the- bloody incidents," and the ghost and witch episodes, being particularly to his taste. He was already well acquainted with the works of the great Danish dramatist Holberg, and we know that from a very early age he had felt a mysterious attraction towards the stage, which in the event was to be most mischievous to him. His friend Collin has preserved for us the titles of no less than five and twenty plays jotted down by him about this time on the last page of his father's military account book, which he 1 6 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN intended to write when he was older, and very curious some of them are.* Andersen himself informs us that he used to play Shakesperian dramas in his dolls' theatre, killing off as many of his characters as he could. His first piece, as he calls it, was a savagely sanguinary version of Pyramus and Thisbe, which ended in a perfect holocaust of ah 1 the dramatis persona, including a hermit and his son, who were introduced, seemingly, for the express purpose of making love to Thisbe. But his ambition took a still higher flight ; he wanted to write a play in which kings and princesses appeared, but the difficulty was to find language grand enough for such exalted per- sonages. He had observed indeed in Shakespeare's plays that monarchs talked very much like other men, but this did not appear to him to be quite natural, so he consulted his mother, and several other wise women about it. They, however, could not give him very much information on the subject. It was a long time, they said, since a king had been to Odense, but they thought such a potentate would be pretty sure to talk some foreign language. So little Hans Christian got a sort of lexicon containing lists of French, German, and English words with the Danish equivalents opposite, and. with its assistance put into the mouths of his royal personages such * Collin.p. iii. The spelling is, of course, very eccentric, we find, e.g., " Celia and Physke." ODENSE 17 polyglot sentences as the following: " Guten morgen, mon pbre ! har de godt sleeping ? " which perfectly satisfied his idea of the fitness of things. Young Andersen little Andersen he could no longer be called, for he was now shooting up apace into a lanky gawky lad of an almost comical ugliness young Andersen continued to dream away his time for the next few years, dressing dolls in clothes of his own sewing; practising singing in the lanes and meadows in the firm belief that his voice would make his fortune ; cramming his overwrought brain with a jumble of plays, poems and romances, and living in a fantastic morbid world of his own, which had nothing whatever in common with the world of actual solid fact around him. By the time he was fourteen the queer creature (for queer indeed every one thought him) had become the wonder or the laughing-stock of the neighbourhood. From lads of his own age and class he shrank instinctively, but he always had a wistful longing for the society of his betters socially, which reminds one of the ugly duckling's dim feeling of kinship with the lordly swans. The gamins of Odense, therefore, naturally regarded him as " stuck up," and fair sport, and chivied him unmercifully whenever they met him with derisive yells of " there goes the play-scribbler ! " while poor Andersen would fly panic-stricken homewards, hide himself in a corner, and there " weep and pray to God." Heaven 1 8 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN only knows what he must have suffered. The local gentry, on the other hand, took a half-amused, half- compassionate interest in the poor cobbler's son, who could recite whole plays from memory, and tried to write poetry before he had learnt the rudiments of grammar ; but all their well-intentioned efforts on his behalf came to nothing, for the lad, vaguely con- scious of his own genius, though its true nature and scope was quite hidden from him, had extraordinarily ambitious ideas, which must have seemed supremely absurd to his well-wishers in those days. Colonel Hoegh-Guldberg, whose whole family circle took the liveliest interest in young Andersen, tried to get him into the local Latin school through the influence of Prince Christian, afterwards Christian "VIIL, who was then residing at Odense Castle. The Prince, however, good-naturedly pooh-poohed any such idea ; but promised to look after the lad if he would adopt some honest trade, a turner's, for instance. Andersen wouldn't hear of it, and left the castle in high dudgeon. Then he was sent to the Ragged School, to learn Scripture-history, writing, and arithmetic, for though he could read Holberg and Shakespeare, he candidly confesses that he could scarcely spell a single word correctly. But his dreamy, abstracted ways, a dislike of application, due more perhaps to pride than sloth (he tells us himself that he never looked at his lessons except when on his way to and ODENSE 19 from school), naturally irritated his master, and the up- shot of it all was that he left the Ragged School pretty nearly as ignorant as when he entered it. Shortly after this happened the first great event of his life, his confirmation, which took place at St. Knud's church, the first Sunday after Easter, 1819.* The family did what it could in honour of the occasion. A tailoress was called in to metamorphose Andersen senior's old overcoat into a confirmation jacket for young Hans, and for the first time in his life he wore a pair of boots. His joy over these new boots was extra- ordinary. His only fear was that everybody might not see that they iv ere new, so he drew them right over his trousers, and walked in that guise up the aisle. The boots creaked loudly, and he inwardly rejoiced, because the whole congregation could now hear that they were new, though at the same time he had terrible qualms of conscience at the thought of forgetting his Maker at such a moment for the sake of a .pair of boots. It was this incident which suggested to him many years afterwards the story of the Red Shoes. Andersen's own family was now getting anxious about him, and beginning to think it high time that he put his hand to "something sensible." His * Collin, H. C Andersen og det Collinski Hus. p. iii. There is an interesting entry in the church register on this occasion : " He [Ander- sen] has good parts, and a good knowledge of religion ; if his applica- tion cannot be praised, his general conduct nevertheless cannot be blamed." 20 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN mother, under whose eye he was always making dolls' clothes, thought him cut out for a tailor, and certainly his skill with his needle was something extraordinary, and is even put down by his friend Collin as one of his standing accomplishments. Collin also tells us * that Andersen, to the end of his life, never travelled anywhere without thimbles, needles and thread, and that he always sewed on his own trouser buttons, and darned his own stockings. On the other hand, his grandmother, who had seen better days, and held more liberal views, would have preferred to see him in a counting-house. As, however, no agreement could be come to, nothing was done, and the youth led the same sort of desultory life as before. For this unsatisfactory state of things, which proved so mischievous to Andersen in later years, his mother is to be chiefly blamed. As already stated, she was by no means a model mother, but her chief sin against him was her neglect. She never seems to have made any serious effort to wean him from his lazy dreamy ways ; nay, instead of scolding him for scamping his lessons while at the Ragged School, she would let him " buzz away," as she called it, over his romances and comedies, and then boast that although her Hans Christian never looked into a school-book, he always managed to come up to the scratch in class. * Collin, p. 510, and ib. p. 486. Compare Bille og Bogh : Breve til Andersen^ 6-14. ODENSE 21 But now the lad determined to take his fate into his own hands he resolved to go to Copenhagen to seek his fortune. The idea appears to have first occurred to him the year before his confirmation, when a troupe of actors from the Royal Danish Theatre visited Odense, and gave a whole series of .operas and tragedies which the good folks of Odense did not soon forget. Young Andersen made friends with the bill-poster, and was allowed not only to see all the performances from behind the scenes, but also, to his intense delight, to appear on the boards as a page or shepherd ; nay, on one occasion, he took a minor part in the opera of "Cinderella." His childish enthusiasm amused and interested the players. They were kind to him, and he looked up to them "as if they were gods." Of course he at once jumped to the con- clusion that he was a born actor himself, and that the Royal Theatre at Copenhagen was the only proper goal for his Olympian strivings. He naively tells us that he also heard the actors talking of a thing called a "Ballet," which, according to them, was far superior to even a play or an opera, and they added that a certain danseuse, a Mme. Schall, was the presiding genius of this mysterious art. This was quite enough for Hans Christian. His imagination instantly pictured Madame Schall as the fairy queen whose generous protection was to help him on to fame and fortune, and full of this idea he called upon the printer 22 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN Iversen, one of the leading citizens of his little native town, who had frequently entertained the actors during their stay at Odense, and therefore, so Andersen argued, must needs know all about the great danseuse, and asked him for a letter of intro- duction to her. The old man, who now saw him for the first time, listened in the most friendly manner to his request, but dissuaded him most earnestly from venturing upon any such journey, and told him he ought to learn a trade. " But surely that would be a great sin ! " exclaimed Andersen. Iversen was so struck by the emphasis with which the lad uttered these words, that he actually did give him a letter of introduction to the great danseuse, though he himself had not the honour of that lady's acquaintance, and Andersen gleefully departed, imagining that the door of fortune now lay open before him. He had now to settle with his mother, but he did not meet with much difficulty in that quarter. She asked him, indeed, what he meant to do at Copen- hagen when he got there, and he replied that he was going to be famous like so many other remarkable men he had read about who had been born in poverty. " You go through a frightful lot of hard- ship first," he explained, "and then you become famous." His mother was duly impressed, but, in order to make assurance doubly sure, she consulted a "wise-woman " from the hospital, who, after a careful ODENSE 23 inspection of sundry coffee grouts, predicted that Hans Christian would become a great man, and that Odense would, one day, be illuminated in his honour. Andersen's mother was now quite satisfied. After shedding a few joyful tears, she packed up his little bundle for him, and arranged with the postillion of the stage coach that he should be taken at a cheap rate as an extra passenger all the way to Copenhagen, so with fifteen rix dollars* in his pocket, and endless hopes in his heart, Hans Christian departed on as mad an errand, judged from a common-sense stand- point, as ever suggested itself to a human brain. When he came to the Little Belt at Nyborg, and the ship bore him away from his native isle, he felt for the first time how utterly alone and forsaken he was, but the novelty of the scenes around him sustained his flagging spirits, and, besides, was he not hasten- ing at last to the goal of his desires ? * About i 17 s. CHAPTER II THE UGLY DUCKLING AT COPENHAGEN Arrival at Copenhagen The ticket tout The danseuse takes him for an escaped lunatic Snubbed by the Director of the Royal Theatre "Paul and Virginia" Utter destitution Befriended by Siboni and Weyse Loses his voice Makes the acquaintance of the poet Guldberg, who helps to educate and support him- Rapacity of his landlady Becomes a dancing pupil of the Royal Theatre First appearance on the boards Brutality of an actor "My first tragedy" Terrible privations An instance of Andersen's superstition Admitted into the Chorus School of the Royal Theatre The bully Brand Takes to play-writing Comical interview with Admiral Wulff Personal description of Andersen at this period A guest at the " Bakkehus" The beautiful blue coat and the playbills Fresh attempts at play- writing Jonas Collin recommends him to the King Sent to school to Slagelse. ON Monday morning, Sept. 6, 1819, Andersen entered Copenhagen, and the first thing he did when he got there was to go to the theatre. He walked round it several times, gazed up at the walls, and regarded the whole building as a home that was not yet opened to him.* A ticket tout close by, observing him, came up and offered him a ticket, and Andersen, innocently supposing in his ignorance that the man meant to make him a present of it * M. L. E. THE UGLY DUCKLING AT COPENHAGEN 25 accepted it, and thanked the fellow so effusively that he fancied this country lout was trying to make a fool of him, and flew into a violent rage, where- upon poor Andersen took to his heels in terror. The next day, arrayed in his confirmation clothes, not forgetting the boots, which he took care to ostentatiously display, and with a hat which slipped down over his ears, he set off for the house of the great danseuse, Madame Schall, to present her with his letter of recommendation. The Ballet Queen naturally looked at and listened to him with the utmost astonishment. She knew absolutely nothing either of old Iversen who had written the letter to her, or of the odd creature who had brought it, and Andersen's whole appearance and behaviour was singular, to say the least of it. He expressed the ardent desire he had to get upon the boards, and in answer to her question in what play he thought he would like to act, he replied, " Cinderella," which was one of the pieces he had seen at Odense. Then, to give her a specimen of his skill, he forthwith took off his boots, and, improvising a drum out of his big hat, proceeded to dance and sing in character. His strange elephantine gambols filled the lady with considerable alarm, and she speedily showed her strange visitor the door. Many years afterwards she told Andersen that she had taken him for an escaped lunatic, a6 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN Andersen next went to the director of the National Theatre, Chamberlain Holstein, and audaciously asked for an engagement. Holstein looked at him and said he was too thin for the theatre. " Oh ! " cried Andersen, " when once I get a permanent engagement with a salary of 100 rix dollars (11 135. 4^.) I shall get fat enough." The director then allowed him to give a specimen * of what he could do, after which he dismissed him with the solemn snub that only educated persons were engaged for the stage. t Andersen was so cast down by this rebuff that he thought the best thing he could do was to die on the spot ; but after a good cry, and a fervent prayer to his Heavenly Father, he comforted himself by buying a gallery ticket for the opera " Paul and Virginia." The parting of the lovers affected him to such a degree, that he burst into a violent fit of weeping. A couple of tradesmen's wives who sat beside him did their best to console him, and were good enough to explain that it was only a play, and therefore meant nothing at all. One of them also gave him a large piece of bread and butter, and some potted meat. Andersen, out of the fulness of his heart, immediately confided to them that he was crying, * In their official report to the King on the subject, the directors of the theatre say that the applicant had neither the proper talents nor the proper figure for the stage (Collin, viii., ix.). t M. L. E. THE UGLY DUCKLING AT COPENHAGEN 27 not on account of Paul and Virginia, but because he regarded the theatre as his Virginia, and if he were separated from her he would be as unhappy as Paul had been. The worthy tradesmen's wives were puzzled, as well they might be, and then he went on to tell them why he had come up to Copenhagen, and how lonely he was, and they gave him more bread and butter, and fruit and cakes.* The next morning, after paying his account at the little inn where he had put up for the night, he found that all his worldly possessions consisted of a single rix dollar (25. ^d.). He must now either return home by the first coasting ship that would take him for nothing, or settle down at Copenhagen to learn a trade. He chose the latter as the less humiliating alternative, for the thought of return- ing home to Odense to be laughed at, and made a fool of, was intolerable to his pride. Accordingly he apprenticed himself to a joiner the same day, but the brutal horseplay of his fellow 'prentices so shocked his girlish delicacy, that he quitted the place a few hours after he had entered it. As now he was pacing up and down the streets, bitterly conscious of his utter friendlessness and abandon- ment, he suddenly remembered that he had read in the Odense papers of an Italian named Siboni, who had been appointed director of the Royal Musical * M.L.E z8 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN Conservatoire at Copenhagen. What if this kind- hearted man would take him as a singing pupil? So to Siboni's he went. The musician happened to be having a dinner party just then, and the famous poet Baggesen, the composer Prof. Weyse, and many other celebrities were among the guests. When the maidservant opened the door, Andersen was so over- come by the feeling of his own misery, that he told her not only the errand on which he had come, but also the whole of his past life. She listened with the deepest sympathy, and going away, brought back with her the whole of the company, who re- garded the odd intruder with considerable curiosity. Siboni then took him into the room where the piano stood, and made him go through his scales, listening attentively all the time. After that Andersen recited some scenes from Holberg, and a few poems, till the feeling of his miserable situation so overcame him, that he burst into real tears, the whole company loudly applauding. A collection of seventy rix dollars* was made for him on the spot, and he was told to go next day for singing lessons to Prof. Weyse. In the joy of his heart, Andersen immedi- ately wrote a triumphant letter to his mother, in which he said that fortune t was already within his grasp. For the next nine months Andersen was supported * ^8 3-y. 4 point of calling upon him and making his acquaint- ance, with the view apparently of being advertised still further, f Marmier describes his visitor | as a tall young man, whose timid and embarrassed manners and awkward bearing might not perhaps have found favour with a "petite maitresse" but whose " caressing looks " and open honest counte- nance inspired sympathy and confidence at the first glance. They soon became very intimate, and one evening, after one of those long conversations which " expand the heart and invite confidences. " Ander- sen gave the young Frenchman a sketch of his life. * Bille og Bogh : Bre^>efra Andersen, i. p. 453. f Ibid. J Histoire de la Litte"rature en Danemarc et en Suede, Paris 1839. pp. 238-52. Marmier. 1 68 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN " But may all Europe know of it ? " asked Marmier. This, of course, was just the very thing that Ander- sen wanted, and he at once replied : " I belong to the world ! Let them all know how I think and feel. " * Marmier took him at his word, and this sketch duly appeared in the Revue du XIX Siecle, under the title of " Vie d'un poete," and was regarded as the standard authority on Andersen till the appearance of Mit Livs Eventyr in 1855. Andersen, in his correspondence, alludes to this " Vie d'un poete " again and again with childish glee. It amused him vastly to hear himself made to talk such elegant and correct French, but he peevishly protests against the conclusion which represents him as so contented, so happy 1 About this time also he received a friendly greeting through the Marquise de Bonnay from Lady Byron, who had read the " Vie d'un poete " in one of the French Reviews ; " and you know," writes Andersen to a lady friend whom he duly informs of the event, " le poete c'est moi." f And now too fortune befriended him still further by relieving him of a burden that had always weighed very heavily upon him his pecuniary diffi- culties. Despite the successes of his books, the hos- pitalities of his friends, and his own really wonderful * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, i. p. 384. t Ibid., \. p. 470. THE FIRST FAIRY TALES MORE NOVELS 169 thrift and economical ingenuities, Andersen had found it no easy matter to make both ends meet. The honoraria he received from his books were very small. From the first edition of The Improvisatore he seems to have made but ^19, and this he could only get in driblets and after repeated dunning. When, years afterwards, Andersen told Dickens this, the English novelist could scarcely believe it. "You mean ^19 the printer's sheet, I suppose ? " said he. " No," replied Andersen, " ig for the whole work." " Ah ! I see we misunder- stand each other," insisted Dickens ; "you don't mean to tell me you only got ^19 for The Improvisatore that is to say for the whole work ; you must mean 19 a sheet?" Andersen was obliged to contradict his friend, and assure him that such indeed was the lamentable fact. "Good Heavens ! " cried Dickens, " it would be perfectly incredible if I didn't have it from your own lips." " It is a fact," adds Andersen, " that my translator (Mrs. Howitt) got more than I the author did." * And yet in those days he considered himself for- tunate to get even what he did ; indeed, for many of the earlier Fairy Tales he was glad to receive part of his honorarium in books! instead of cash. He always bore these privations very bravely, being * M. L.E.,V. 211. t Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen^ i. p. 369. i;o HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN extremely reticent on money matters, even to his most intimate friends, and never complaining except so far as his poverty prevented him from taking his longed-for flying visits abroad, and on this score he could be bitter enough. " Wretched the author who is born in a small country," he exclaims. " If I were French or English, I should have no need of begging from door to door " [for travelling stipends]. "I should then be rich and independent enough to go whither I would."* " Tis a strange poetic position," he says on another occasion, f " to have one's features stuck into copper-plates, to be turned into French and German, to read one's own biography in one of the leading periodicals of France, and yet for all that to remain a poor lonely fellow without any prospects, a sort of Scandinavian Camoens in fact." He began to feel older too. Many of the little children he had nursed on his knee were now engaged or married. He was inclined to think life a weary business. He began to dread the winter more and more every year, and yearn for the summer, that Danish summer, " drawn by tortoises," that was always so slow to arrive and so quick to depart, a mere Fata Morgana, as he calls it. Oh for a whiff from the South ! That was the medicine he wanted. His friends suggested that he should apply to the King for an annual pension, * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, i. p. 337. f Ibid. i. p. 395. THE FIRST FAIRY TALES MORE NOVELS 171 and Hauck even drafted a petition for him to copy and present to his Majesty ; but the fear of disap- pointment kept him back. He liked the idea, but thought it might be carried out some better way ; and presently another of those lucky accidents, or provi- dences, as he preferred to call them, which were always happening to him, brought him at last to the goal. One day, to his great surprise, Andersen received an invitation to breakfast from Count Rantzau Breitenberg, a minister of State, and one of the most influential men in Denmark. The Count, who knew Italy well, had been so charmed with the descrip- tions of Italian life and manners in The Improvis- atore, that he determined to make the acquaintance of its author, took a fancy to him, and inquired if there was anything he could do for him. Andersen at once replied that it was his dearest wish* to go to Italy again, or, failing that, obtain an annual pension. The Count considered both requests reasonable ; promised to think the matter over, and represent the case in the proper quarter, and delighted Andersen by informing him that the attention of the Count had been attracted towards him by the biographical sketch in the Revue des Deux Mondes. Months and months passed away, and still Andersen heard not a word about his * The best account of this is in Andersen's letter to Henrietta Hauck. Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, i. pp. 373, 374. Compare also M. L. E. 1 72 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN pension. At last he began to fear that Rantzau's promises were only the usual empty compliments of "such great folks," and meant nothing at all. He did not make due allowances for the diplomatic circuities of a Court, especially such a Court as the Danish, where pensioners were many and money was scarce. However, he jogged the memory of Rantzau in a very skilful letter, which shows that there was a strong ingredient of shrewdness mixed up with his simplicity, and he followed this up by, at last, sending in his petition to the King. He bases his claim on the impossibility of living upon the little that his writings bring him in, and lays great stress on the hardship of being obliged to write for money to the detriment of his art. His friends, Jonas Collin and H. C. Orsted, also used all their efforts on his behalf, and finally, on 26th May, 1838, a Royal resolu- tion granted him a yearly pension of 400 rix dollars (^50) less 12$ per cent, for the widows' fund and the prison tax.* This was not very much, but any- how it was a certainty, and considerably diminished his anxiety about the future. " I have now a little bread-fruit tree in my poetic garden," he wrote to Ingemann, " so that I no longer need to knock at every one's door for a bit of bread." Shortly after- wards he moved into a breezy attic in the Hotel du Nord, from whence he had a view of Holmens canal, * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, i. p. 433. THE FIRST FAIRY TALES MORE NOVELS 173 the theatre, the market-place, and could just catch a glimpse of the sea, " the dear heaving sea," above a stack of chimneys. He now aspired to be fashion- able as well as famous. He sported an expensive frock coat with a velvet collar, and a hat as big as an umbrella,* became a little more particular about the company he kept, and thought twice before accepting an invitation to dinner. His lady friends jokingly complained that he had grown so foppish, that there was no recognising the dear old Andersen who had once been so charmingly original. He could now, they said, be scarcely distinguished from a Court flunkey, or an officer in the Guards. Henrietta Hauck believed, or pretended to believe, that a secret engagement with some unknown fair one was at the bottom of the business ; but Andersen protested that he couldn't undertake to fall in love, even to oblige his friends, on less than 1000 rix dollars (^125) a year, or marry on less than 2000 (,250), and before such an im- possibility as that took place, the girl he had his eye upon would certainly be carried off by some one else, and he would have to remain a dry old bachelor all his days. There does indeed appear to have been one young lady whom Andersen at this time "thought more than well of," and whom he describes as "pretty, clever, good, amiable, and * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, i. p. 421. 174 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN belonging to one of the best families." " But," he adds, " I have no means, and don't intend to fall in love. . . . Heaven be praised, she treats me like an elderly gentleman whom she has known all her life." 1 * The truth seems to be that, although Andersen was very fond of the society of ladies, and, as a rule, got on with them much better than he did with men, his attachments never meant anything serious. He was an enemy of all dangerous emotions, and a gossip was much more to his taste than a flirtation. He was perfectly content to find half-a-dozen homes in the families of his intimate friends, instead of making a home of his own, and hSd quite a host of god-children, who loved him almost as much as their own fathers. His special favourite was his little god-daughter Minni, Edward Collin's child, whom he visited every day if only for a minute. Thus the dearest wish of Andersen's heart had been gratified at last ; he had become a celebrity. " Oh, the joy of life is in my heart," he exclaims. " Every day I feel more and more how much I am ap- preciated ! " Even former adversaries and persecutors now began to extend the hand of fellowship. During the Christmas of 1837, his old rector, Simon Meisling, stopped him in the street ; apologised for having treated him so badly at school ; admitted that he had * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, p. 391. THE FIRST FAIRY TALES MORE NOVELS 175 been mistaken, and begged him in the humblest terms to forgive him, whereat Andersen was moved to tears. On another occasion, at a dinner-party at Heiberg's, who should be his vis-a-vis but Molbech, who made himself particularly friendly and agreeable, so that by the time the repast was over they were shaking hands warmly, and on the most intimate terms imaginable. Still, this was no more than a truce, and something must also be allowed for the splendour of Heiberg's hospitality, for Andersen remarks that the guests swam in a perfect sea of costly wine ; he would never have believed it possible that a Danish poet could have had such an excellent cellar. Andersen's company, indeed, was now in great request ; he moved in the best society, and took a conspicuous part in nearly every public function. Thus on the return of Thorvaldsen to Denmark in 1838, an event celebrated as a national festival, when a splendid banquet was given in honour of the renowned sculptor at the H6tel d'Angleterre, which was thronged with poets, artists, statesmen, diplomatists, and the elite of Danish society, Andersen was chosen, as one of the representatives of Danish literature, to greet the great man, and had composed a poem which he recited on the occasion before an immense and enthusiastic audience. His joy, how- ever, was considerably damped by what he calls the " devilish " conduct of Heiberg, who said to him when 176 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN he had finished : " You were in such a hurry that nobody could follow you, and I'm sure only a very few could understand the poem ; but it doesn't signify a bit ; true poetry is not understood by the many ! " "At the moment," adds Andersen, " I positively hated him." * And here perhaps it is worth noting that, despite his awkwardness and timidity, Andersen was any- thing but shy, and never seems to have known what nervousness meant. On the contrary, he was rather pushing than otherwise, and had quite an enviable knack of ferreting out the persons most likely to be useful to him, and engaging their sympathies and assistance, and this too without any officiousness or offensiveness on his part. It would be grossly maligning him to insinuate for a moment that he had anything of the snob about him. He was never ashamed of his lowly birth ; he never ran after the rich or the noble ; he was always particularly gentle and generous to the neglected, the suffering, and the oppressed. But at the same time he loved to move in the highest circles ; he hated to be overlooked ; was very exacting in his demands upon his admirers and colleagues, and had quite a horror of being confounded with the vulgar herd. I will give an amusing instance of this refinement of vanity, if I may call it so, which shows how easily a trifle could upset * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, i. pp. 445, 446. THE FIRST FAIRY TALES MORE NOVELS 177 him. He went to the theatre one evening towards the end of November 1838, and there saw his friends Thorvaldsen, Oehlenschlager, and Ole Bull in the stalls, while he had to be content with a seat in the pit behind. He was at once aggrieved. " I am not big enough to get there yet," he wrote to Henrietta Hauck, " but 'tis sure to come. Yet it annoys me to be excluded by an iron bar from the place where are nearly all my acquaintances and society friends, while I am obliged to sit by the side of the man who trims my hair." * The fact is that Andersen, despite his wonderful successes, was still dissatisfied, dis- satisfied with everything, and most of all with himself. Even his own works did not altogether please him now. He declared that he would willingly destroy, and destroy for ever, one half of what he had hitherto published. A couple of his poems, The Improvisatore, and Only a Fiddler, a selection of the best scenes from 0. T. and a few of the Fairy Tales, was all that he cared to preserve, and he even affected to look upon his pet works, The Improvisatore and Only a Fiddler, as merely tentative essays. As for the " Fairy Tales," he con- temptuously dubs them "a mere-sleigh t-of hand with Fancy's golden apples." It is true that he conde- scended to add to them from time to time ; but it was only to keep his hand in till he had devised * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, \. p. 460. M 178 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN some masterpiece worthier of him. It was a strange blindness that thus led him to almost despise what the whole world has admired ever since, and just at this very time he was writing some of the most exquisite of these unique little masterpieces. In the summer of 1838 appeared "The Goloshes of For- tune/' and during Christmas of the same year : "The Daisy," "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," and "The Wild Swans," * which were followed at the close of 1839 by "The Garden of Eden," "The Flying Coffer," and " The Storks." The public was now getting accustomed to these stories and beginning to like them, while Orsted, Hauck, andj a few other far- seeing men had recognised their unique beauty from the first. But Andersen was not content to be the first of story-tellers. He longed to write something imposing and magnificent, before which even such lustrous stars as Oehlenschlager and Heiberg would pale their ineffectual fires. He felt, he said, that there was a hidden treasure within him which he despaired of ever raising to the surface. Thousands of ideas were blossoming in his heart, and hundreds of images were sweeping through his brain, t He thought at first of writing an epoch-making romance, with no less a person than the great Napoleon for its hero ; J but gradually his thoughts * He got the idea of this beautiful story from a folk-tale in Matthias Winther's collection of Eventyr. t Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, i. p. 422. J Ibid. p. 426. THE FIRST FAIRY TALES MORE NOVELS 179 turned towards the drama, which had always had a fatal fascination for him. What cared he for the critics ? They had prophesied that he would never make a great novelist, and he had confuted them with The Improvisatore. He now meant, he said, to show the good folks at home that he was a great dramatist also. He would compel them, yes, compel them, to acknowledge God's own gifts. CHAPTER VII "THE MULATTO" AND "THE MOORISH GIRL" ANDERSEN IN THE EAST, AND ON THE DANUBE Andersen's passion for the stage Dramatic tinkering His first original drama, " The Mulatto" His extraordinary enthusiasm about it Description of the piece Molbech's opinion of it Fury of Andersen He appeals from Molbech's verdict "The Mulatto" accepted Death of Frederick VI. Success of "The Mulatto" Andersen congratulated by Christian VIII. Causes of "The Mulatto's" success " The Moorish Girl "Criticisms of the dramatic censors Andersen's silly preface to " The Moorish Girl" Failure of "The Moorish Girl" Heiberg satirises Andersen in "A Soul after Death" Andersen on his travels again Liszt at Hamburg First experience of railway travel- ling Comical adventures on the road The brutal English- man Andersen ill at Naples Departure for Greece The Persian and the little bird " Yes, sir, verily, verily ! " Impres- sions of Athens Riding lessons Constantinople The dancing dervishes Muhammad's birthday The mists of the Euxine A dull journey down the Danube In quarantine at Orsova Ainsworth his fellow-prisoner His description of Andersen A lecture on locomotion by steam Andersen's jaundiced state of mind on his return "En Digter's Bazar" Opinions of the critics. ANDERSEN had a perfect passion for the stage. Next to writing a comedy, it was his greatest pleasure to see one acted ; the theatre was always the most likely place to find him in of an evening, and he knew as "THE MULATTO" AND "THE MOORISH GIRL" 181 much about plays and playwrights, actors and actresses as any man living. It was the ambition of his life to shine as a dramatist of the first rank, on a stage which could boast of one of the noblest reper- toires in Europe, and this ambition, though never realised, was never abandoned. No amount of snub- bing could turn him from his purpose, and he stuck to his hopeless task with a tenacity that was truly heroic. The last four years had been the busiest of his life, and yet he had found time to do a little dramatic tinkering, or, as he himself more poetically expresses it, " to rest for a while in the ascent of the mountain of art and weave a light little wreath of A.lpine flowers." * In plain English, between 1835 and the beginning of 1839 he had translated or adapted from German, French, and Italian sources no less than seven operettas, or vaudevilles,! every one of * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, i. p. 320. t (i) Jan. 1835, " Liden Kirsten " (Little Kirsten), a two-act operetta; (2) June 1836, "En Rolig Aften" (A Merry Evening), one-act vaudeville ; (3) same month, " Renzo's Bryllup " (Renzo's Wedding) ; (4) April 1836, " En rigtig Soldat " (A real Soldier), one-act operetta ; (5) Feb. 1837, "Souffleuren's Benefise" (The Prompter's Benefit), one- act vaudeville ; (6) May 1836, " En Odeland" (A Prodigal) ; (7) " Jabo de Veres," one-act dramatic freak. Molbech said of No. i that it was less insipid, but thinner and poorer than former works by the same hand ; of No. 2, that it had no dramatic or scenic interest whatever ; of No. 3, that it made him pity the Danish composer who was reduced to accept Mr. Andersen's libretto ; of No. 4, that it was written for schoolboys by a schoolboy ; and of No. 5, that it was hopelessly out of date ; No. 6 he rejected without comment ; while No, 7 he called " trivial, witless nonsense." As regards No. 7, however, this Aristar- i8a HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN which was ruthlessly massacred in turn by the cruelly unflinching Molbech in his most approved style. Andersen's feelings may be imagined. He frequently complained that he would have starved to death long ago, if the success of his career had depended upon Molbech. But what supported him through all these disappointments was the stern resolve to put the churlish censor to silence by producing a dramatic masterpiece, the grandeur of which all but the spiritually blind would be forced to recognise at the very first glance. Hitherto he had given only the fag ends of his time to the drama, now he would devote himself to it entirely. So he set to work with a will, and during the best part of 1838 could think and talk of nothing but his new work. This time he went all the way to the West Indies for an inspira- tion (the hero of the play being a mulatto from Martinique), and read a whole library of books about Africa and America to get up the proper quantity and quality of local colouring. He j ubilantly informed chus was much at fault, or Andersen must have greatly improved it, for on being re-cast and sent in again in Sept. 1839, under the title of " Den Usynlige fra Sprogo " (The Invisible at Sprogo), it was accepted, and Foersom played the principal part with such comic originality, that the whole house was in roars of laughter from be- ginning to end, and it had a run of twenty-one nights. In 1855 it formed part of the Casino's repertoire, and had a run of twenty- eight nights. L. Moller said of it, that for unity of action and general perfection, it was superior to anything Andersen ever wrote for the theatre. "THE MULATTO" AND "THE MOORISH GIRL" 183 his friends that he was now quite at home among niggers and ostriches, arid dreamt every night of slimy anacondas wriggling in the rank grass, and of transparent skies full of meteors. As the work grew beneath his hands, he became more and more enthusi- astic. It was to make as great an epoch in his life as ever The Improvisatore had done. " There is not a trace of Andersen about it," he exclaims,* " and the hero will be portrayed with a fiery energy which more than makes up for the alleged flabbiness of the heroes of my best novels." He is certain that it will be accounted his most original and perfect work. The tropical sun which burns in his breast all the time he is writing it, makes him, he says, abso- lutely insensible to the severity of the Danish winter outside his study, nay, the cold rather does him good than otherwise. His friends, especially his lady friends, to whom he read long extracts from the play as it proceeded, seem to have been equally delighted with it, and the actor Nielsen and his wife predicted for it a tremendous success. The writer of these lines frankly admits that it was with great expecta- tions that he began to read a play heralded with such a flourish of trumpets ; but he laid it down after a careful and conscientious perusal with the feeling that he had been grossly deceived. Mulatten (The Mulatto), for such was the ultimate title of this * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, i. p. 477. 1 84 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN strange production, is in fact the sort of thing which might perhaps be honourably mentioned in the reports of an Aborigines Protection Society, but certainly does not rank very high as literature. The hero, Horatio, is a mulatto of Martinique, who wins the gratitude of two white ladies, Eleonora and Cecilia, the wife and ward respectively of a planter, by saving them from a revengeful runaway slave who has suffered severely from the planter's tyranny. The ladies are surprised to find classical tastes and romantic aspirations in a young man of colour, and both of them, especially the ward, fall in love with him before they are well aware of it. The interven- tion of the planter, La Eebelliere, a demon of the Legre' type, threatens to turn an idyll into a tragedy. Horatio is shot down, and only not killed outright because La Rebelliere, partly from jealousy, partly from sheer brutality, has reserved him to be whipped to death on the morrow ; but at the very moment when the unfortunate mulatto is about to be de- livered over to his hideous fate, Cecilia, who happens to come of age on that very day, first manumits and then marries him, to the joy of all the negroes and half-breeds, and the utter confusion of the fiendish planter. Such, spun out into five acts of very commonplace rhyming verse, is the plot of "The Mulatto," without doubt one of the feeblest of Andersen's works. Even Agnete " THE MULATTO" AND " THE MOORISH GIRL" 185 which, with all its faults, contained some really fine lyrics, is far superior to it. It may seem almost incredible that an author of Andersen's great poetic gifts, should have written no less than 106 pages of verse which contain not a single line worth remem- bering, but such is the simple fact. A piece at once so poor and so pretentious, was of course fair game for a censor like Molbech, and it suffered severely from his vitriolic pleasantry. After briefly epitomis- ing the plot, he proceeds to show (not a very difficult task) that " this sketch," as he calls it, is trivial, bald, and without any real dramatic interest or true poetic life whatever. The characters he considers wrong- headed, affected, and vaguely incoherent abstractions, who talk nothing but bombast, and the plot forced and unnatural. Finally, he sees no difference be- tween this play and the crude vaudeville, " The Spaniards in Odense," that Mr. Andersen wrote five years before (indeed if he, Molbech, had to choose between two such sour apples, he would prefer a bite from the latter), and he declares that in common justice to other rejected pieces he cannot conscien- tiously advise the Directors of the Royal Theatre to accept "The Mulatto." It is not to be supposed that Andersen actually saiv Molbech's censure, but he heard of it in due course, no doubt through Jonas Collin, who was one of Molbech's co-censors, and his first emotion was not 1 86 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN so much grief, or even rage, as sheer amazement. He had such a high opinion of this new piece himself, that he could scarcely believe his ears. Molbech had dared, actually dared, to set himself up against the performance of " The Mulatto." * But Andersen did not mean to let matters rest there. He was no longer the poor-devil author of five years ago. He now had influential patrons on his side, and an admiring public behind him, so he determined to defy Molbech. " He would tread me into the dust," he wrote to Henrietta Hauck, " but I mean to live in spite of him, live when he stands like a dead name in an old folio. God is with me, and they shall bow down before me, as the sun and moon did in Joseph's dream." To his friend Edward Collin he addressed himself in a still more peremptory style. " I am not going to be trodden down by a tyrant," he exclaims. " My piece must be played. I cannot and will not put up with this injustice. My friends must either take my part or give me up." f And his friends did take his part. The play was referred to Holstein, the chief director of the Royal Theatre, whom every one regarded as a sort of High Court of Appeal in such matters, while Andersen bet the actor Nielsen a bottle of champagne that " The Mulatto " would create a furore such as no other piece had done for the last twenty years, and prove * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, i. p. 482. t Collin, p. 311. " THE MULATTO " AND "THE MOORISH GIRL" 187 the deathblow of the detested Molbech's critical reputation.* Holstein read " The Mulatto," and on the whole liked it. He agreed, indeed, with Molbech that it had no particular dramatic interest, that it very often sinned against good taste, and that its hero was a mere phrasemaker ; but, on the other hand, it seemed to him to have many interesting characters, exciting incidents, piquant situations, and novel strik- ing ideas ; he gave it as his opinion that, despite its defects, it would take with the public, and prove a paying concern and it was accordingly accepted.! It was in April 1839 that Holstein recommended "The Mulatto" to the Directorate of the Eoyal Theatre, but it was not till December of the same year that the rehearsals began. Andersen assisted at the final dress rehearsal, and was delighted at the * Apropos of " The Mulatto," Collin tells us an anecdote which shows us how obstinately Andersen could hold his own when his " spiritual children " were concerned, and how adroitly he could resort to repartee. A Danish West Indian objected, somewhat coarsely, that a love affair between a white woman and a man of colour, as described in Andersen's play, was impossible, because the mulatto had such a nasty smell. " Ah ! " said Andersen, " but I can insert this line in the proper place : Thy smell is foul, and yet I love thee still." f Holstein, moreover, was rather surprised that Andersen should have borrowed the idea of this play from a second-rate French novel, Les paves. " 'Od's death," said he to Andersen, " I cannot under- stand why it is that you, who write romances yourself, do not make a comedy out of one of your own romances. Nobody can pre- vent you from doing that." Both Molbech's and Holstein's reports are in Collin, pp. 305-9. 1 88 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN way in which the actors played their parts. It went off' brilliantly. Madame Heiberg,* in particular, who took the role of Cecilia, transported every one by her interpretation of the planter's ward. That night Andersen was absolutely feverish with excitement, and could not sleep a wink. He was haunted, besides, by the apprehension that the old King would die before the piece was fairly launched, for his Majesty had long been ailing, and the latest report was that a change for the worse might be expected at any moment. However, he was up again at dawn, although it was mid- winter, and posted at his window watching the machinists carry- ing the palm-trees, the mulatto's bed, and the booths for the slave-market scene into the theatre, until late into the day. The posters were all up, crowds of people began assembling at the doors to wait for the box-office to open, and every one was agog with expectation, for the play had now become the talk of the whole town. Then mounted estafettes dashed through the streets, the gates of the city were closed, sorrowful groups gathered at the street corners, and the melancholy tidings spread that * This beautiful and accomplished woman, whose maiden name was Johanna Louisa Psetges, did almost as much for the Danish stage as her gifted husband, who married her when she was only nineteen. Andersen himself has said of her that if she had been born in France or Germany instead of little Denmark, she would have been accounted one of the greatest actresses in Europe. " THE MULATTO " " AND THE MOORISH GIRL " 189 King Frederick VI. had died at half-past eight that morning.* For the next month Copenhagen was like a huge house of mourning, and all the theatres were closed. The old King had been so beloved that his death was looked upon as a public calamity.! In his bitter disappointment, however, Andersen forgot for the moment that Frederick VI. had been his benefactor also, and almost took it as a personal grievance that he should have died at such an inopportune moment. For the next few days he was quite sick at heart, and could take no interest in anything. But the month passed more quickly than he had anticipated, and at last, early in February, the long-deferred first night of "The Mulatto" arrived. Andersen was in his usual place in the theatre in a dreadful state of suspense, which almost grew into agony as the piece proceeded. During the first act the audience was " horribly quiet," even the best scenes failed to rouse them, and the poor author began to feel very angry. But when the fourth act was reached, " a little southern blood came into their veins," and by the time the fifth act began the temper of the house was wound up to a positively tragic pitch. J The curtain fell amidst a * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, i. pp. 518, 519. t His last words were characteristic of the man. On feeling the chill of death creeping over him he exclaimed : " It is getting cold ; we must see that the poor folks have fuel." | Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, \. 526, 527. 190 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN perfect tempest of applause. Andersen had never heard any piece clapped so enthusiastically before ; he was positively frightened. A few days later the new King, Christian VIII. , sent for him, and warmly congratulated him ; he obtained the long-coveted distinction of a place in the Court stalls alongside Oehlenschlager and Thorvaldsen ; all the papers lauded the new piece and its author to the skies, and a whole string of counts and excellencies waited upon him with their congratulations. It is true that a few of the best judges still held back. For instance, Oehlenschlager did not take quite so enthusiastic a view of the play as the more impulsive Thorvaldsen, who clapped his hands sore ; the critical Heiberg, whose opinion Andersen valued most of all, remained discreetly silent ; while Molbech never showed his face in the theatre at all ; still it was the greatest public triumph that Andersen had yet experienced, and he was proportionately grateful. On the second and third nights the theatre was so crowded that not a place was to be had for love or money, and the whole audience seemed enchanted with the play from beginning to end. Then the King again sent for Andersen, and presented him with a breast-pin set with nineteen diamonds as a souvenir of the late monarch, a token of his own royal favour, and a recognition of the young author's talents. The con- versation naturally turned upon "The Mulatto," and " THE MULATTO " AND " THE MOORISH GIRL" 191 Christian VIII. said he meant to come and see the piece himself.* He was as good as his word, for on the eleventh night he was present in the Royal box, and, in the interval between the acts, looked across to the stalls, and nodded to Andersen. As such a thing had never been known to happen before in a Danish theatre, Andersen could not conceive that the Royal greeting was meant for him till his Majesty repeated it so often, and so emphatically, that there could be no doubt about it.f " The Mulatto " had a run of twenty-one nights, an extraordinary success in those days, and therefore more than justified Holstein's prediction that it would pay. Andersen must have cleared more than the 1000 rix dollars (^125) he had originally looked for, and was able to put by something towards that tour to the East on which he had been bent ever since he returned from Italy. On the other side of the Sound " The Mulatto " also caught the popular fancy. It was speedily translated into Swedish, and received with applause at the Royal Theatre at Stockholm. When Andersen, to escape the dulness of Holy Week, skipped over into Scania in 1840,! * It is characteristic both of Andersen's vanity and his naivete that at both audiences he told the monarch, in confidence, of some petty attacks that had been made upon the play by a portion of the Press. The King, who no doubt knew his man thoroughly, condoled with him, and sent him away comforted on both occasions. f Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, i. p. 551. J The southernmost province of Sweden. i 9 2 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN the students of the University of Lund gave him. a perfect ovation, and the Rector, in a congratulatory address, aUuded to " The Mulatto " as beautifully illustrating the triumph of mind over circumstances. It may seem odd that such a very poor play should have won the public favour so easily, but "The Mulatto" owed its success partly to the exceUent acting of Madame Heiberg and the Nielsens, and partly to the just and noble sentiment underlying it viz., that true merit is independent of race and colour, which was so completely in unison with the liberal ideas of the day. Andersen, however, made the very natural mistake of supposing that the success of his play was entirely due to its own intrinsic merits, and at once set about increasing his reputation by a fresh dramatic masterpiece. At the very time when " The Mulatto " was drawing crowded houses he was already at work upon another play, entitled Maurerpigen (The Moorish Girl), which he assured his admiring and sympa- thetic lady friends would be even better than " The Mulatto." Miss Hetty Wulff declared that this was impossible. " Nay," replied Andersen, " it is better, ever so much better, or else I should despair of myself." In seven months " The Moorish Girl " was finished (" The Mulatto " had taken eighteen to write), and its author was more than satisfied with it. The idea of it, too, was entirely his own; no " THE MULATTO " AND THE " MOORISH GIRL " 193 one could reproach him, as they had done with regard to his former " original drama," with stealing it from a French novel or from anywhere else. "It is far, far above ' The Mulatto,' " he exclaims ; "and, for the first time in my life, I feel certain that I am a dramatic author."* " The Moorish Girl," it must be admitted, is not only more original, but more interesting than its predecessor. It is the story of a heroic Spanish peasant-girl, Raphaella, with whom the King of Cordova, whose life she has saved in battle, falls in love. Raphaella, however, flies from the dangers of a Court to her native mountains, where she throws herself away upon a worthless young Spanish hidalgo, Zavala, who, soon tiring of her, seeks fresh amatory distractions in the Court of the Moorish king. Adding treason to treachery, Zavala presently leads the Moors against his own native city of Cordova by secret mountain paths, but is interrupted by Raphaella and her brave peasants, and shot dead. The Moorish king, who turns out to be Raphaella 's father, is released, while her own king, who now owes his crown as well as his life to her, takes her back to his capital to be his bride. But the Princess of France, to whom he has been affianced, has already arrived there, and the Archbishop will not consent to marry the king to a mere peasant-girl (especially * Collin, p. 320. 194 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN as she has Moorish blood in her veins) at the risk of a war with France. The King of Cordova, indeed, is bent upon marrying Raphaella, and none else ; but the heroic damsel, with the connivance of the Arch- bishop, contrives to palm the princess off upon the king, in the very bridal robes that had been made for herself, and then simplifies matters by hurling herself off a rock into the abyss below. There are some fine songs in " The Moorish Girl " ; the local colouring is natural and picturesque ; a faint odour of orange-blossoms seems to hang about it from beginning to end, yet it is but a slight poetic toy, which has nothing of a drama about it save a division into acts and scenes. The dramatis personcs are mere abstractions without the least individuality ; there is not material enough in the plot to have made a couple of acts, to say nothing of five ; and the strained and violent denoument is only explicable on the hypothesis that the author was at his wit's end how to get rid of his heroine. That the piece abounds with solecisms and anachronisms goes without saying. " The Moorish Girl " was finished early in August 1840, and the same month it was sent in to the theatrical censors. Molbech declined to give any opinion whatever as to its merits. It is evident from his curt memorandum * that the recollection * Collin, pp. 321, 322. of " The Mulatto," which had succeeded in spite of his verdict, was still a sore point with him. He simply observed that there was no moral or political objection to the new play, but advised the directors of the theatre to consider very carefully beforehand whether it was likely to repay the very heavy expense (especially in the Alhambra scenes) which would have to be incurred in mounting it properly. Jonas Collin, on the other hand, predicted for " The Moorish Girl " a success equal at least to that of " The Mulatto," and therefore strongly advised its acceptance. There can be no doubt whatever that it was Collin's sympathy with and fatherly solicitude for Andersen that made him, as one of the theatrical censors, vote in favour of " The Moorish Girl " on this occasion ; but he took the precaution first of all to consult J. L. Heiberg on the matter, whose authority on all things theatrical was then regarded as absolutely infallible. That sharp-sighted critic, himself the leading dramatist of the day, shook his head doubtfully over " The Moorish Girl." He said that he had expected something much more satis- factory from the author of " The Mulatto." Did the author himself know what he was about when he wrote it ? Why had he written it at all ? What was there in it that had made him so enthusiastic about it ? What was there in it that could rivet the attention of the public, or excite its sympathy ? 196 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN Nothing, so far as he could see. The whole poetic intention of the piece seemed to him vague and unsettled. It was called a tragedy, but he could see no necessity at all in it for a tragic denouement. It bore marks of extreme haste, and both the style and versification left very much to be desired. In fine, he declared the play had not got what every good acting play ought to have a point, or if it had, the point was so cunningly concealed that the public would never find it out. Such an opinion from such a critic was an absolute sentence of death,* and Andersen felt this himself. He was infinitely chagrined that Heiberg, of all persons in the world, Heiberg, whom he had always looked up to and admired, should have turned " cold and hostile " towards him, as he expressed it, but he durst not question the verdict of such an authority. "The Moorish Girl " instantly fell at least fifty per cent, in his own estimation. The masterpiece from which he had expected the greatest joy, had now lost all worth and interest in his eyes. Then his friends, the Collins, Orsted, and Oehlenschlager, thought the best thing they could do with him was to pack him off abroad again. They saw that he was in a morbidly irritable state, which made everything at home in- tolerable and abominable to him, and they bade him in Heaven's name to be off. He did not need twice * Collin, pp. 323, 324. J. L. HEIBERG. "THE MULATTO" AND THE "MOORISH GIRL" 199 telling, but left his unhappy piece to its fate, and departed with the firm conviction that aesthetic cliques and envious cabals were bent upon compassing his ruin.* To die abroad, he said, was now his dearest wish. Before leaving Copenhagen, however, he did one of those foolish things which he always regretted so bitterly immediately afterwards. He had "The Moorish Girl" printed and wrote a preface to it, which even his friend Edward Collin is obliged to call a whining recapitulation of all his sufferings past and present. It certainly is a perfect monument of childish boastfulness, wounded vanity, and tearful expostulation.! In this preface, after alluding to his " hard childhood," to the mocking and derision that had ever been his portion at home, the malice of critics, the wickedness of those who pursued him abroad with malignant poems in unfranked letters, he proceeds to recount all his triumphs also. His romances, he says, have been translated in Sweden and Germany ; in the German papers he is regarded as one of the foremost of Danish notabilities ; his life has been sketched in various foreign languages ; he has won recognition in Germany, and no doubt his fame will have preceded him to Constantinople. Then he adds that "two kings have encouraged his * See M. L. S., p. 233, which must not, however, be taken literally. t See preface to Maurerpigen first Danish edition, in British Museum ; the book is rather a curiosity. The preface was suppressed in later editions. 200 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN talents," that he has found " upright friends among Denmark's noblest and greatest," and that while only " a few solitary individuals" are against him, the public, as a whole, is on his side. The critics were not slow to take up this silly challenge. " As now," said one of them, " as now he has summed up all his receipts and expenditure (carefully booked they are no doubt), and finds, on striking a balance, that kings, and great men, and the public are on his side, it is surely pretty plain that on the whole he has not so very much to complain of. and perhaps had no great need to travel all the way to Turkey to forget a petty slight." * Then dropping his bantering tone, the same writer proceeds to take Andersen to task for that " literary vanity " which destroys ah 1 true inspi- ration. " In Andersen's dramatic poetry," he con- cludes, " there reigns an eternal self-obscuration, for between the light of poetry and the poetising in- dividuality, the person of Andersen himself intrudes like an unbidden guest, and refracts all the rays." Bitter as it was, this was sound and salutary advice ; unfortunately, like most good advice, it was absolutely ignored by the person to whom it was addressed. Meanwhile preparations were being made for pro- ducing " The Moorish Girl," but that unlucky piece seems to have been born beneath a malignant star. Madame Heiberg, whom Andersen had counted * Collin, pp. 325-327- "THE MULATTO" AND THE " MOORISH GIRL" 201 upon to play the principal part, would not so much as look at it. Andersen became urgent, and the actress refused again so emphatically, that the author went away deeply wounded, and bitterly complained to his private friends that she had used him hardly. But Jonas Collin, and Andersen's other friends, with whom it had now become a point of honour to see the piece through during his absence, still persevered with it. No expense was spared in mounting it;^ and on December 18, 1840, while Andersen was at Rome, " The Moorish Girl " was acted in the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen for the first time. The handsome decorations and the beautiful dresses were applauded, Hartmann's music gave satisfaction, and Madame Hoist did all that could be done with the principal part, and yet the piece proved a com- plete failure. It failed to excite any interest, and the frequent interruptions of the action by the endless songs, dances, and processions, which formed part of it, were more than the public could stand. It was only acted twice and then withdrawn,t it must have cost the theatre a pretty penny. * Yet Andersen ungratefully complains in his Autobiography that the scenery was inadequate, and one of the causes of its failure. f Compare J. Collin's affectionate letter of condolence in Bille og Bogh, Breve til Andersen, pp. 1 14, 115, and Collin, p. 328 : " I need not assure you, my dear good Andersen," wrote J. Collin on this occa- sion, " how much this result has grieved us all, especially as you had promised yourself so much from this piece, and partly based the plan of your tour upon it." 202 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN Nor was this all that poor Andersen had to put up with, for he was now to receive a fresh flout, of itself indeed trifling enough, but exceedingly hard to bear because of the hand that gave it. Early in 1841 Heiberg published a volume of poems which contained some of that brilliant and accomplished writer's happiest inspirations. The principal piece in this collection was the equally witty and profound poetico-satirical comedy En Sjcel efter Ddden (A Soul after Death), the funda- mental idea of which was the assumption that existence in Hell is absolutely identical with the frivolous aimless, sort of life which the majority of well-to-do idle people actually live on this earth. The leading personage is a selfish superficial philis- tine with a tincture of modern liberalism, who, rejected alike from the Christian Heaven and the heathen Elysium, finds rest at last with the rogue Mephistopheles, who pronounces him perfectly qualified to continue his earthly existence amidst the trivialities of Hell. Mephistopheles takes his protege the round of the infernal regions, and shows him its curiosities, accompanying his explanations with a running commentary that has well been called "a perfect shower-bath of satire," on the political, dramatical, and educational follies of the day. Andersen is among the exhibits in Heiberg's Hell, not Andersen the tale-teller, indeed, "THE MULATTO" AND THE "MOORISH GIRL" 20^ (him the clear-sighted critic had been the first to recognise), but Andersen the dramatist, whose the- atrical platitudes the brilliant inventor of the Danish vaudeville naturally regarded as so many buffets on the cheek of good taste. Mephistopheles, there- fore, is made to point " the long poet " out to the soul that he is chaperoning, and after a few words of introduction thus hits him off :* " In Constantinople he means to increase His fame by achieving a fresh masterpiece. The Seraglio amidst, free from critics' vexation, He stands like a long note of interrogation, And while the chief eunuch his temples doth crown, And the tag-rag and bob-tail right humbly bow down, His " Mulatto " he reads the Harem to content, And his " Moor Girl" to those whom the Turks would torment." It will be seen that, after all, there was much more of mirth than of malice in these lines ; but Ander- sen's friends the Collins, well aware of the irritable state of mind he was in just then, were anxious, if possible, to prevent him from seeing ihisjeu d 'esprit till his return, and took all imaginable precautions accordingly. As it turned out, they would have done very much better to have sent him a copy of the book instead, for some of Andersen's lady friends, who made it their business to keep him well posted up with the gossip of the town, duly informed * Of course any translation of these witty lines must be merely tentative. Very much of the point is necessarily lost in the process. 304 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN him, without going into particulars, that Heiberg had given him a good jacketing ; that all the town was in roars of laughter over it, and that they themselves were equally indignant and annoyed at the insult thus inflicted on him during his absence. Andersen, who justly remarks that it is doubly pain- ful to be laughed at when one does not know what one is being laughed at for, at once jumped to the conclusion that something absolutely outrageous had been said about him, and what would have seemed little more than a cold douche to him if he had actually had the book in his hand, now affected him like "molten lead dropped into an open wound."* He fired up at once,t and in his first fury sat down and scribbled off a doggerel epistle against Heiberg, full of gall and venom, which the poet Hoist, who was his fellow-traveller at the time, fortunately prevented him from sending. Then he overwhelmed Heiberg with torrents of billingsgate, and turned savagely upon Hoist for taking Heiberg's part, and admiring a poem that was an attack upon himself, so that it very nearly came to a quarrel between them. However, his wrath subsided as quickly as it had arisen, and it must also be borne in mind that he was suffering at the time from a combination of neuralgia and dyspepsia which would have tried the * M. L. E., p. 240. f See Hoist's amusing letter to Edward Collin (Collin, pp. 330, 331). "THE MULATTO" AND THE " MOORISH GIRL" 205 patience of Job. Nevertheless he seems to have had an inkling throughout that Heiberg was in the right about his play after all, and certainly for Heiberg, both as a poet and a critic, he always entertained an extraordinary respect. At any rate, though he deeply resented his criticism, he could never regard him as he did the crabbed and morose Molbech. There was something about the serenely urbane and delicately trenchant Heiberg's personality, which both charmed and awed Andersen, and to the very last Heiberg's house possessed a peculiar and irresistible attraction for him that no other place ever could have.* So Andersen gradually consoled himself. The failure of " The Moorish Girl," he said, was, after all, only a single drop in the bitter cup he had to swallow. As time went on he could even be merry at his own expense. He jocosely observed, for instance, that while his sons, The Im2irovisatore, " The Mulatto," and " The Fiddler " did him credit, his daughters, on the other hand, Agnete and " The Moorish Girl," had hitherto been more of a burden than a comfort to him, which made him a bit anxious about future daughters, for he foresaw that more daughters there would certainly be. Nay, when on his return he read Heiberg's poem through for the first time, he admitted that * Heiberg, too, liked Andersen, and did the fullest justice to his genius. 206 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN there was really nothing in it to take offence at, and that if he had been an occasion of wit to so great a satirist, both Heiberg and Denmark ought to be grateful to him for it. But now let us follow Andersen on his travels. ANDERSEN, JETAT. CIRCA 35 It was in the autumn of 1840 that he quitted Copenhagen, and after a few days' stay at Count Rantzau's castle in Holstein, where he was treated in princely style, proceeded to Hamburg.* Here * By far the best account of this tour, which lasted eight months, ANDERSEN IN THE EAST 207 he saw and heard for the first time the world- renowned Liszt, whose fantastic rhapsodies greatly impressed him. There seemed to him to be some- thing demoniacal about this lean young man with the long dark hair hanging about his pale face ; but it was a suffering demoniac, who had to play his soul free at the piano. At Magdeburg, where he arrived after a wearying thirty-six hours' journey in a dusty diligence, he took a railway ticket for Dresden, though not without consider- able misgivings. Railway travelling was quite a new experience to him, and the din, bustle, and confusion of the station so overwhelmed him that he scarcely knew whether he was standing on his head or his heels. He stared at the vans and engines ("itinerant chimneys" he calls them) with stupid amazement, and when he did pluck up sufficient courage to get into his compart- ment, it was with the intimate persuasion that he would either be blown up or dashed to pieces at an early stage of the journey. The starting signal seemed to him to have much in common with " the swan-song of a pig at the moment when the butcher's knife cuts its throat ; " but his con- fidence gradually revived when he perceived that is to be found in En Digters Bazar. Compare also Bille og Bogh, Breve fro. Andersen, ii. pp. 1-46 ; Collin, pp. 329-35 ; and M. L. ., pp. 234-52. 208 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN the train glided as easily over the rails as a sledge over frozen snow, while the swift rate of progression absolutely delighted him. It was just the mode of travelling he had been longing for all his life, and he had now, he says, a capital idea of what the flight of birds of passage must be. He had some amusing experiences on the way which he takes care to record. At one place he caught sight of some planking which seemed to contract into a single stake, so rapidly did it flash past, and the next moment a man sitting beside him said : " Did you see that ? That was a boundary mark. We are now in the principality of Cothen ! " and offered him his snuff-box. Andersen bowed, tried the snuff, sneezed, and then enquired : " How long shall we be in Cothen ? " " Oh ! " replied the man, " we had already got out of it while you were sneezing ! " Andersen took to this new mode of locomotion from the first ; thought it in every way vastly superior to the old coaching journeys, and ridicules the notion that railways are likely to destroy the poetry of travel in terms which would not, I am afraid, meet with the approval of Mr. Ruskin. When they reach Leipsic, Andersen stopped to make the acquaintance of Mendelssohn, who had been so fascinated by the perusal of his Only a Fiddler that he had sent him a general invitation, and, although very busy now, received him with open ANDERSEN IN THE EAST 209 arms, and wrote him a " Lied ohne Worter " in his album. At Munich Andersen saw on a bookstall a German edition of his Improvisatore forming part of a " Miniature Library of Foreign Classics." He at once stepped into the shop, and asked for the book> whereupon the young shopman gave him the first volume of it. " But I want the whole work ? " said Andersen. " That is the whole work," replied the young man ; " there is no more of it. I ought to know, for I have read it myself." " But don't you think then that it ends a little abruptly, and that there is no denoument ? " asked Andersen. " Well, yes ! " admitted the other ; " but it is in much the same style as the French romances, you know. The author just suggests a conclusion, and leaves the reader to fill it up in his own mind." " At any rate that is not the case here," inter- rupted Andersen ; " this is only the first part that you have given me." " I tell you," cried the shopman, getting angry, " that that is ah 1 . I have read it ! " " But I wrote it ! " retorted Andersen. He reached his beloved Italy early in December, and it was all as familiar to him as if he had only been away from it a single day. All the way from Florence to Home, which he travelled by car, he aio HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN had as one of his fellow-passengers a stout, sandy- whiskered Englishman, encased in wraps up to the very eyes,* whose conduct was so intolerably boorish, that long afterwards Andersen's blood used to boil at the very thought of him, though, at first, the very coolness of the fellow's impudence was an amusing novelty. The other passengers were a pale young English priest of the Camaldulense order, who did nothing but read his hours, cross himself, and close his eyes in silent prayer from morn till night ; a young Italian priest, who was a little more sociable, and a Roman signora with a little spindle- shanked husband who dressed like an abbate. The first night they put up at a lonely inn, where they arrived wet to the skin and half frozen. They had to shiver for an unconscionable time in the bare stony guest-chamber, before a few twigs and sticks could be found to make an apology for a fire, and just as it was at last beginning to burn up, in came the Englishman with his wet clothes over his arm, which he hung up forthwith on a screen round the fire. " I want 'em to have a good steaming," he condescended to explain. As the rest of the com- pany put up with this impudence, Andersen had to put up with it too, and so the Englishman's wet clothes got all the little warmth there was. That * Andersen says of him elsewhere that he had the self-assurance of a flunkey and the bearing of a tallow-chandler. ANDERSEN IN THE EAST 211 night Andersen and the Englishman had to share the same bedroom, but the latter took care to slip away first, and when Andersen entered the room, he found this son of Albion standing on his (Andersen's) counterpane which he had spread out on the floor, and engaged in making his bolster a little higher with two of Andersen's pillows which he had coolly appropriated. " I don't like lying low ! " said the Englishman, by way of explanation. " Neither do I ! " replied Andersen, restoring the pillows to their proper place, to the infinite amaze- ment of the Englishman. The next day they stopped at Castellone to dine. Here the Englishman made such a racket, and chivied the people of the inn about so unmercifully, that every one was convinced he must be a prince in disguise at the very least, and in the fond expecta- tion of a really royal largess from him, allowed them- selves to be kicked and cursed, ran all his errands, and smiled and bowed at everything he said and did and after all he didn't give them a farthing. " For I am very dissatisfied," said he ; " I am dissatisfied with the food, the house, and the attendance with everything, in fact." And the crestfallen domestics bowed still lower, and both the priests were so impressed that as he got into the car again, they took off their hats to him. At 212 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN Assisi, where they visited the church Dei Angeli, the Englishman insisted upon having the guide all to himself, as he could not see things properly in company, and the monk who acted as his cicerone got neither money nor thanks for his pains. " These fellows have nothing else to do," said he. This was too much for the Roman Signora, who up to this time had been very friendly with him, and she reproached him for his stinginess. Henceforth a coolness sprang up between them. They no longer sang duets together, nor did she, as hereto- fore, feed him with sweet biscuits in the short intervals between his enormous meals. At Atricoli, where the " pavement seemed to have been laid while an earthquake was going on," and the inn was so luxuriantly filthy that Andersen preferred to eat his dinner in the stable, the Englishman's ever increas- ing rudeness contributed still further to make this pleasure tour a sort of penitential pilgrimage. He made a raid upon the food of another party of travellers, insulted the good-natured priest, and even began to talk uncivilly to the Signora. At Civita Castellana Andersen positively refused to share his bedroom with the brute any longer, so the priest, the Signora, and the Signora's husband made him a sort of couch on a couple of chairs, in the midst of which operation the Englishman came rushing in as red as fire, and boiling over with rage ANDERSEN IN THE EAST 213 at Andersen's refusal to keep him company. "What," he cried, "would you have me lie and be murdered in this den of thieves, all by myself? You're not a good comrade, and I won't speak another word to you all the rest of the way." " For which," says Andersen, " I thanked him from the bottom of my heart." But the climax was reached when they came to La Sterta, and the Englishman, making his way incontinently to the fireplace, began taking what he liked best from the pots and pans that were simmering there, which brought the landlady down upon him, and a battle-royal ensued. She rushed upon him with her kitchen knife, while he defended himself with a chair, till just as every- one fancied murder was about to be done, the land- lady's husband came to the rescue by catching his irate spouse round her ample waist, and lifting her bodily off her feet. She, however, took it out in abuse, while the Englishman revenged himself by eating for three and paying for one, besides grossly insulting the Signora and her husband ; whereupon the whole company put him into Coventry and would have nothing more to say to him. "Never," says Andersen, himself the soul of courtesy " never have I met a man with such a what shall I call it such an unconscious shamelessness. Everything existed only for him, every one had to give way for his convenience. He never tried to utter a com- 214 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN pliment which did not turn to rudeness in his mouth. At last, while in his society, I could not help thinking of the wicked stepmother who, after her husband's daughter had come back from the well into which she had thrown her, and gold and roses fell out of the girl's mouth whenever she talked, cast her own wicked daughter into the well, thinking it would fare the same with her ; but when she came up she was worse than ever, for at every word she uttered a frog or a lizard sprang out of her mouth. The more I saw of the Englishman, the more I heard him talk, the more certain I became that he must be a veritable brother of the stepmother's wicked daughter." At Rome Andersen had rather a miserable time of it. The weather was cold and wet, he suffered severely from toothache,* he missed Thorvaldsen and his other artist friends, and he spent his Christmas Day alone in his room, where he dined off grapes and bread and cheese, and passed the time by reading the Bible, Goethe's " Faust," and Becker's " History of the World." The news of the "Moorish Girl's" fiasco naturally depressed him still further, and when he got to Naples he was so feverish that, following the advice of a Neapolitan * It was while he was in this condition that he wrote the clever comical sketch Mine Stoyler (My Boots), which is not generally included among his tales. ANDERSEN IN THE EAST 215 doctor, he consented to be bled. " Death looked in at my door," he says, " but my time had not yet corne, so he went away again." He also had financial difficulties to worry him. He had counted upon his second play paying most of the expenses of his tour to the East, and now it was doubtful whether he would be able to proceed beyond Naples. But the King now sent him 300 specie dollars (^75) through Collin, and this, with the 200 rix dollars (^"25) he had saved from the proceeds of " The Mulatto," enabled him to continue his tour with a joyful heart, and henceforth we find both his health and his spirits improving. A stream of oblivion, he tells us, now seemed to flow between him and all his bitter morbid reminiscences, and he was ?ble to raise his head proudly and confidently once more. On the 1 5th March Andersen quitted Naples in the French steamship Leonidas for Greece, calling at Malta on the way, where he landed with a Russian officer, and, as usual, saw everything that was to be seen. He was much impressed, too, by the sight of Etna from the sea. It was like an amphitheatre for the high gods themselves. Vesuvius seemed to him a mere sand-hill in comparison. His fellow-travellers consisted, for the most part, of Spanish pilgrims, Italian priests, and various Orientals. There was nobody on board with whom he could exchange a word in Danish or German, and when he talked French he was taken 216 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN for an American. He made friends, however, with a Persian from Herat, whom he had noticed sitting on a carpet on the deck, dressed in a green caftan and a white shawl, and- amusing himself all day long by playing with his earrings and his scimitar. One day, as Andersen was passing him, the Persian caught him suddenly by the arm, laughed, nodded, and pointed at the rigging. " The long poet " looked in that direction, and saw a little bird which had dropped exhausted upon the ship. A crowd of spectators immediately gathered round it, and Andersen got quite angry when a portly Roman priest proposed that the -bird should be cooked, and eaten, because it looked so plump. " Our little winged pilgrim shall not be eaten," cried he, and, taking it under his protection, he fed it till it was strong enough to fly away again. This little incident cemented his friendship with the Persian, and they used to exchange fruit, and talk in pantomime together. On one occasion, Andersen felt that he must really say something articulate, and determined to try his Eastern comrade with the first line -of Genesis in Hebrew, in the belief (he was no philologist) that Hebrew was a sister-tongue to Persian, though, for the matter of that, he might just as well have addressed him in Danish. So, pointing to the stars, he ex- claimed : " Bererchit barah Elohim et haschamaim ANDERSEN IN THE EAST 217 viet ha arets." The Persian smiled, nodded, arid animated, no doubt, by an equally amiable desire to say something in the only European language he knew anything about, replied in English : " Yes, sir ; verily, verily." At the end of March, 1841, Andersen arrived at Athens which it had long been the desire of his heart to see, though he was considerably disillu- sioned when he did see it. It reminded him, he said, of Fairyland fallen to pieces. However he made the best of it, and soon felt perfectly at home there, even cheerfully putting up with the suffo- cating dust because it was "classic dust." He was particularly struck by the picturesque contrasts of this " sublime wilderness " as he called it. The steps of the Parthenon covered with a luxuriant growth of wild gherkins ; tortoises* crawling about in the bushes over the torsos of marble lions ; the unburied skulls of Turks and Greeks scattered among mortars and culverines from Venetian times ; the skeleton, of an ass in the middle of a devastated mosque which had been built over the ruins of the temple of Erectheus all these were sights which * Here may be mentioned an anecdote which illustrates Andersen's extraordinary fondness' for animals of all sorts. As he was driving to the marble quarries of Pentelikon, he saw a little tortoise in the road, and dismounting picked it up and took it into the carriage both to prevent it from being run over, and also to " help it on in the world a bit." 218 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN brought the tears to his eyes. His stay at Athens, which lasted a month, was an extremely pleasant one. He found many of his own countrymen in high positions there, and they went out of their way to make him comfortable. It had been arranged that he should spend his birthday (April 2) on the top of Parnassus, but a heavy fall of snow making that famous mountain inaccessible, he had to be content with a banquet in town, when the best champagne flowed in streams, and two famous Greek rhapsodists were specially hunted up to do honour to the occasion. He was also presented to the king and queen, and took riding-lessons under the personal supervision of the Austrian Consul- General Prokesch-Osten. " And I only wish you could see me on horseback, in my tall Greek hat with the long fluttering tassel," he writes to E. Collin. "The first day I was, naturally, horribly nervous, and when the beast strayed a little way out of the path I confess it freely I bellowed with all my might, but I bellow no more now." And now Andersen had the choice before him of returning to Germany, and prolonging his stay there till October, or of going on to Constantinople, and returning home thence in July. After a long and severe struggle he chose the latter alternative. A whole series of unpleasant adventures awaited him however. In the Archipelago he experienced a ANDERSEN IN THE EAST 219 violent storm for the first time in his life, when the ship "shivered like a sparrow in a whirlwind." Andersen made up his mind that he himself, and every one on board was about to die, and felt a, strange composure at the thought ; but the next morning, when he awoke, the vessel was safe and sound in Smyrna harbour, and at six o'clock on the following morning, was steaming through the Dar- danelles. The first view of Constantinople impressed him as nothing else had ever done before. The situation of the imperial city struck him as vastly superior to that of Naples, but somewhat akin to that of Stockholm, though more fantastic and pic- turesque a chaos of red. roofs, black cypresses and snow-white minarets. Here he enjoyed " eleven interesting days." His evenings were spent in the salons of the Danish Minister Baron Hiibscb, or the Greek Minister Chrystides to whom he had letters of introduction, and all day long he wandered about the bazaars with a guide who cost him five shillings a day, which he considered quite enough, though he certainly seems to have had his money's worth in sight-seeing. In a mosque at Scutari he witnessed the performances of the Dancing Dervishes, which filled him with horror and loathing. Andersen's guide, mistaking the cause of his emotion, whispered to him : " For Heaven's sake don't laugh, or they'll certainly murder us." " Laugh ! " exclaimed Ander- 220 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN sen ; " I'm nearer to crying. It is terrible, it is ghastly, and I can stand it no longer." And out he went without more ado. A more attractive sight was the procession of the Sultan and his Court to the Sophia Mosque, on Muhammad's birthday, which he was fortunate enough to witness from a coigne of vantage. The splendid caparisons of the imperial chargers in particular called to mind the wonders which the Spirit of the Lamp conjured up for Aladdin. The Sultan Abdul-Medjed, then only nineteen years old, rode a magnificent Arab steed, surrounded by a host of youths on foot, as handsome as houris, with green fans in their hands. The Padishah himself wore a green frock-coat buttoned across the breast, and had no other ornament but a large jewel, and a. bird-of-paradise feather fastened together on his red fez. He looked very pale and haggard, had a bored expression, and his black eyes were fixed steadily on the spectators, especially on the Franks. They all took off their hats to greet him, but he made not the slightest response. " Why doesn't he nod back to us ? " asked Andersen of a young Turk by his side, " he saw us take off our hats I suppose." " He saw them," replied the Turk, " you may be quite sure of that. He saw them and took particular notice of them too." And he seemed to think that the demands of courtesy had thereby been amply satisfied. ANDERSEN IN THE EAST 221 The only inconvenience which Andersen had to complain of during his pleasant stay at Stambul, was the raw coldness of the atmosphere, due to the heavy wet mists from the Black Sea. He couldn't have been worse off in Denmark itself, he says These same fogs, moreover, caused him some alarm on his departure for Kustendje, whence he was to proceed overland to Czernawoda, and there take another steamer for Vienna. As however the Black Sea had already swallowed a couple of steamers during the preceding spring, he hoped it would be satisfied with this mouthful, and let " the poet " go free. No sooner were they fairly on the Euxine, than down the mists came so thickly as to hide the coast, and compel the captain to lay to re- peatedly. The deck and rigging got as wet as if they had been at the bottom of the sea, and so chilly was the temperature that Andersen imagined himself on an expedition to Spitzbergen instead of on a pleasure trip off the Turkish coast in the month of May. But the sun came out at last, and they reached the Dobrudscha without any accident. From Kustendje Andersen proceeded by ox- waggon through a dreary wilderness to Czernawoda, the nearest steam-packet station on the Danube, where the Austrian steamer Argo was waiting to take him to Vienna. And now began a journey so dull and monotonous that he positively wished himself back 222 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN in Copenhagen. For thirty days he saw on both sides of him a coast that made him fancy he was sailing among asparagus tops, while beyond there was nothing but "flat green-cabbage scenery." The climax of this " soul- wearing " journey was a ten days' quarantine detention at Orsova, where he and his companions were locked up like criminals in damp rooms with prison fare and marshy water. In the day-time he dreamt that he was in the leaden dun- geons of Venice, while at night he seemed to be living in Hell, Heiberg's Hell. At last they all grew sick, and the doctor ordered them medicine which Andersen thought might have been excellent for Wallachian horses, but was scarcely fit for human beings with weak stomachs. Poor Ander- sen's sufferings, were, moreover, not a little accen- tuated by the perverse enthusiasm of some eccentric musical virtuosos, who would persist in playing Bul- garian flutes morning, noon and night. They always played the same tune, which was strictly confined to two, or, at the most, three notes pitched at a very high key, and he tells us that it sounded just as if some one were blowing down a tulip stalk, and treading on the tail of a cat at the same time. Still he had at least one consolation in his cap- tivity the consolation of an agreeable companion. This was William Francis Ainsworth, the cousin of the novelist, who was returning home from a ANDERSEN IN THE EAST 223 missionary journey in Kurdistan, and shared Ander- sen's room with him in quarantine. Ainsworth has left us a very interesting account of Andersen.* He describes him as a tall, pale, delicate-looking young man of prepossessing appearance, with brown hair and sharp features, a very slight slouch in his gait, and the sideling movement of an abstracted man. He found him friendly and cheerful in conversation although restless and preoccupied, but with an extreme simplicity in his manners, and a trustful- ness in others that "made it impossible not to entertain feelings of regard and interest for him at once." Ainsworth thought himself particularly fortunate in securing such a pleasant, and in every respect gentlemanly companion, while in durance vile. " I use the word gentlemanly advisedly," he adds, " for his manners were in every respect those of a person of cultivated intellect and refined feelings." At dinner time, when they generally met together for the first time every day (the morning being mostly occupied with correspondence), Andersen was always ready with some quaint conceit or comic story. At Pest they lost sight of each other, for Andersen had provided himself with letters of introduction, whereas Ainsworth was a mere bird of passage.! * Literary Gazette^ No. 1551, p. 877. t Ainsworth could not help being struck by Andersen's skill in cutting 224 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN On resuming his journey from Orsova, Andersen was pleased to observe that there was considerable improvement in the scenery. The Hungarian side was like a vast garden, where the orchards were covered with such myriads of white butterflies, that Andersen fancied the fruit trees were blooming a second time, while on the other side were the endless oak and chestnut forests of Servia, which wearied the eye at last. Unfortunately for the comfort of the passengers, the steamer now became so crowded (owing to the concourse of folks to the great fair at Pest) that there was scarcely room to move. The people almost stood upon one another. Many of them made a point of sitting down all day on benches, or on the corners of tables, so as to have a place to lie down upon at night, when the whole steamer resembled a huge family bed full of brothers and sisters, and you couldn't move a step without treading on some one's face. There was one nervous lady on board who expected that the steamer would explode every moment, and could not be made to understand the principle of locomotion by steam. At last Andersen, who rather plumed himself on his figures out of paper, and it is interesting to observe that the drawings of the Mewlewis, or turning dervishes, in his Travels and Researches in Asia Minor (vol. i. p. 149) are from cuttings by Andersen. He observes, too, that Andersen was naturally of a pious turn of mind and observed the Sabbath strictly by putting by his papers and doing no work on that day. Andersen, curiously enough, makes much the same remark about Ainsworth. ANDERSEN IN THE EAST 225 power of popular exposition, undertook to make matters clear to her. " Just suppose, Madame," said he, "that you have a pot upon the fire, and it is boiling very fiercely. Suppose again that a large lid is on the top of this pot. If this lid be screwed down tightly, the pot might burst because of the pressure of hot steam inside it. But if it be but loosely put on, it will only bob up and down, the steam will ooze out, and the pot will not burst." " But Heaven help us ! " cried Madame, " if the lid," and with these words she pointed down to the deck, "if the lid here over the steam engine bobs up and down, as you say, we shall all be pitched into the Danube ! " and she clung convulsively to the railing of the steamer. "I am sure she would have fainted," adds Andersen slily, "if only she had been quite sure the vessel would not have blown up in the mean- time." It was with a sigh of unspeakable relief that Andersen at last stepped ashore near the Prater whence he drove into Vienna, visited his old friends, made new ones, and then set off homewards via Prague and Dresden. At the table d'hote at Ham- burg he met a number of his countrymen, and while he was discoursing to them about beauteous Greece, and the gorgeous East, an old Copenhagen lady, who was sitting by his side, turned to him and said : " Now tell me, Mr. Andersen, during all your long 226 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN and numerous travels, have you seen anything so pretty as our little Denmark ? " "I should rather think so," replied Andersen, " and much prettier too." " Fie ! " exclaimed the old dame, "you are no patriot, I see ! " On his arrival at Copenhagen he was welcomed by his friends with an enthusiastic affection which, for the moment, drove away all bitter and melancholy thoughts. His whole time, for weeks to come, was taken up with paying and returning calls ; he had a special audience of the King and Queen, and at the Collins' there was quite a family fete in his honour. If he had been a son of the house he could not have been greeted more warmly. And yet the failure of " The Moorish Girl " still weighed upon his mind, and made him take a jaundiced view of things in general. Copenhagen struck him as peculiarly cold, triste and stale. He complains that there is nothing to see in it but the rain pattering perpetually against the windows, and nothing to hear but petty tittle- tattle, and spiteful critic-cackle on every side of him. " These people have no enthusiasm for anything," he cries ; " they can only grin." Even his interest in the theatre seemed to flag, and he is very sarcastic about plays and players. The new prima-donna at the Italian Opera, with whom every one else was enrap- tured, he calls a shrimp of a thing ; she reminds him of a little black coffee-can. The Royal Theatre ANDERSEN IN THE EAST 227 pleased him even less. The poet Christian Winther had dramatised the old Danish legend which Ander- sen himself subsequently expanded into the delightful story of "The Marsh-King's Daughter," and Andersen went to see it. The false sisters who treated the fair Egyptian so badly, were represented by life-size dolls which, according to Andersen, " hung together like a bundle of radishes," and when, by some blunder of the machinist, one of these dolls, in its flight through the air, suddenly faced round and regarded the audience with an idiotic stare, it looked, he says, for all the world like "a vision of Molbech going to Heaven." It was about this time too that he wrote that unworthy letter to his French friend Xavier Marmier, obviously for the purpose of advertising himself, in which he is so scandalously unjust to Heiberg and his wife.* It seems however, to have relieved him of most of his accumulated venom. He found his principal consolation in working away at his new book (largely a record of his travels), which appeared early in 1842 under the title of En Digters Bazar (An Author's Bazaar). f It contains three of the prettiest of the Tales, viz : " The Metal Pig," "The Compact of Friendship," and "A Eose from Homer's Grave," together with the humoresque <{ My Boots," which is better than all three. Orsted * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, ii. 54. t Translated fairly well into English by Beckwith in 1846. 228 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN and Oehlenschlager were delighted with it, and even those critics (the severe P. L. Moller for instance) who complained of its occasional lapses into bad syntax, were filled with admiration by its beautiful, vivid, nay, ravishing series of landscape and genre pictures, and its luxuriant, often glowing colouring. Andersen sent a copy of the book to the King of Sweden, through the poet and historian Bernhard von Beskow who was himself so charmed with it that he translated some of the best episodes into Swedish, " that others may enjoy this beautiful gift with me," although an authorised Swedish version was already in course of preparation. In Germany also it was received with enthusiasm, and we shall see when we come to speak of Andersen's visit to England, that there also the reviews greeted it with an unanimous chorus of praise.*' * When it first came out in Denmark some amusement was caused by its being dedicated piecemeal to no less than nine different distin- guished people. Some put this eccentricity down to vanity ; I think myself that it was merely effusive gratitude towards the persons so honoured. Anyhow a book with nine dedications seemed as odd a monster as a seven-headed dragon or a dog with two tails, and people laughed a good deal, and not always good-naturedly. The nine dedications vanish from subsequent editions. CHAPTER VIII PROGRESS OF THE FAIRY TALES DRAMATIC TRIUMPHS AND DISASTERS "THE LONG POET" A EUROPEAN CELEBRITY The second series of the " Fairy Tales " Their growing popularity in Denmark Third series establishes the reputation of the tales once for all Thorvaldsen's fondness for them Popularity of "The Ugly Duckling" The Billedbog uden Billeder Success of " The Tales " in Germany Andersen's new dramatic ventures, " Kongen Drommer" and " Den nye Barselstuen" Reasons why Andersen could never become a really great dramatist His infatuation in this respect Sends in two dramas anony- mously Andersen's new play, " Lykkens Blomst," rejected by Heiberg Andersen remonstrates with his censor Heiberg's amusing reply The comedy " Herr Rasmussen" and its miser- able collapse Andersen's second visit to Paris Andersen lionised Victor Hugo Heine Balzac De Vigny Alexandra Dumas Rachel The purple salon Mile. De"jazet Grisi Andersen's French Hysteric outburst Four months' tour to Germany Meets Grimm at Berlin Andersen the guest of Christian VIII. and his Consort at Wyk, in F6hr : An instance of Andersen's delicacy in money matters His triumphal progress through Germany Oldenburg King of Prussia decorates him with the Red Eagle Andersen and Jenny Lind Court at Dres- den "The Tales" all the rage Friendliness of the Duke of Weimar Affecting news Home grievances His daily bread almost too sweet for him Third visit to Italy The Sirocco-like heat Return to Denmark. MEANWHILE " the little Fairy Tales,"* as their author half contemptuously calls them, had, like * In M, L. E. Andersen insinuates that he always believed in the 230 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN invisible but indefatigably benevolent little house- elves, been stealthily but steadily building up his reputation for him. In Denmark, as I have already said, they had, at first, been somewhat coldly re- ceived, relegated to the nursery, and only just tolerated even there, in striking contrast to the enthusiasm with which they were welcomed in Germany and Sweden. It was only when the great actors and actresses of the Royal Theatre took to declaiming them at fashionable afternoon entertain" ments, that they began to come into vogue. It was felt that if Phister did not disdain to recite "The Naughty Boy" and "The Swine-herd," and if Madame Heiberg had "The Matches" written ex- pressly for her, there must be very much more in these pretty trifles than had at first been suspected. People ceased therefore to sneer at the Tales, and began reading them instead, though it was not till 1845, when the third series of the Fairy Tales came out, that they became as popular in Denmark as out of it. The second series, which went on from Christ- mas 1838 to Christmas 1842, had consisted of "The " Fairy Tales," and was much grieved at their hanging fire at first. In reality he regarded them with comparative indifference e.g., the fol- lowing contemporary extract from his correspondence, which is only one of many such : " The Vaudevilles and the children's fairy tales are the only things I have written since ' The Mulatto,' and that is as good as nothing. Consequently I have only been vegetating for the last two months." Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen^ \. 489. This was in 1839. PROGRESS OF THE FAIRY TALES 231 Daisy," "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Wild Swans," "The Garden of Eden," "The Flying Coffer," " The Storks," " Oli Lockeye," " The Bose- Elf," "The Swine-herd," and "The Buck-Wheat." Of these "The Daisy," " The Steadfast Tin Soldier," and "Oli Lockeye," are quite original, the others are adaptations of stones that Andersen himself had heard when he was a child. * This series was grace- fully dedicated to Madame Heiberg as one of the few who had always appreciated the Tales ; indeed Andersen tells us that it was her encouragement, together with H. C. Orsted's frequently- expressed delight at the humour of these charming stories, which encouraged him to proceed with them despite the disparagement of critics. t Still it must never be forgotten that, even in Denmark, all those whose opinion was worth anything at all, had always been the sworn champions of " The Tinder Box " and its companions, and, as the poet Carsten Hauch told Andersen, so long as the big men were for him, it did not matter much about the little men who would be bound to follow suit in the long run. In 1845 began a third series entitled Nye Eventyr (New Fairy Tales), the first volume of which con- tained "The Angel," "The Nightingale," "The * Except " The Flying Coffer," which is taken from the Arabian Nights. t Preface to the complete collection of the " Tales" in 1874. 232 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN Sweethearts," and "The Ugly Duckling." This volume may be said to have established the success of the Tales once for all " The Ugly Duckling " in particular became a general favourite.* " I think ' The Ugly Duckling ' one of the best of your tales, and classical of its kind," wrote Hauch, " I congratu- late you. Mind you give us some more of the same sort."t Hertz, too, the terrible "spectre" of bygone days, emphatically declared that Andersen's Eventyr were superior to the general run of the German Marchen, and even equal to Grimm's, at a time when such an expression of opinion was con- sidered by many a dangerous heresy. What Hertz liked best about them was their good humour, and their "comical, entertaining satire. "} The more romantic Ingemann on the other hand, whose own sense of humour was somewhat defective, was more attracted by the sentimental side of " those divine tales," as he called them. The great sculptor Thorvaldsen took a positively childish delight in listening to. them. " Won't you give us wee ones another tale ? " the genial giant would frequently say. Once (it * Apropos of " The Ugly Duckling," one of Andersen's German translators made a blunder over the name which had comical conse- quences, rendering the Danish "grimme" (ugly) by the German " gronne " (green), whereupon a French translator, following suit, gave the title as Le petit canard vert, no doubt imagining that verdant was the dominant colour of Danish ducks. t Bille og Bogh : Breve til Andersen, p. 667. J Ibid. p. 245. PROGRESS OF THE FAIRY TALES 233 was during the summer of 1846) while he and Andersen were staying together at Nyso, and the latter had been reading " The Sweethearts " and " The Ugly Duckling " aloud, Thorvaldsen said to him : " Come now, write us a new and comical story. I wonder if you could make one up about a darning needle ! " And that is how " The Darning Needle " came to be written. In the summer of 1846 "The Snow-Queen" and "The Fir-Tree" appeared, and the series was completed by a little volume containing " The Elfin Mound," by many considered Andersen's best original supernatural tale ; " The Red Shoes," which is really a chapter out of his own autobiography, the playfully sarcastic " Springing Bucks," " The Shepherdess and the Chimney-sweep," and " Danish Holger." This little volume was dedicated to his old opponent, now his firm friend, Henrik Hertz, "by way of thanks for the works his deep poetic soul, and his rich wit and humour have given us."* Besides these Andersen had also contributed : " The Elder Mother " to the periodical Gcea and " The Bell " to Gerson and Kaalund's Monthly Magazine. " The Bell," cer- tainly the most sublime of all the stories, is as the greatest of Danish critics has said, " the one in which the poet of nawete and nature has reached the highest point of his poetry." Here too perhaps * Appendix to complete (Danish) edition of Tales, 1874. 234 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN is the place to mention an exquisite little master- piece which, under the title of " What the Moon saw," is very often included in English editions of the Fairy Tales, though it is more of a connecting- link between them and the travel-books. I mean of course the inimitable Billedbog uden Billeder (Picture-book without Pictures), that " Iliad in a nut-shell," as an English critic has well called it, which appeared in 1840. Andersen himself was rather doubtful about it while he was writing it. " Although I dare not call it my best work," he says, "it is still something I fancy, and certainly the book that has interested me most I hope that it will work its way into popular interest." * His hope was more than realised, for none of his other works, not even excepting " The Tales," has been translated so often. It was Ander- sen's original intention to have expanded the three and thirty evenings of " The Picture Book " into one thousand and one, and it is an irreparable loss to literature that he did not carry out his inten- tion. Still he has given us some little compensation in that other very similar, faultlessly beautiful collection of poetic genre pictures and humoresques, / Sverrig (In Sweden). Andersen was always intensely grateful to Germany for her prompt and generous recognition of his genius from the first, and * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, i. 514* DRAMATIC TRIUMPHS AND DISASTERS 235 I believe that it was the swift and decisive success of the " Fairy Tales " in that country which first opened his own eyes to their superlative merit. Seven German editions of the earlier Tales appeared within nine years after their publication in Denmark, and it was in Germany too that they were first illustrated. In 1839 Vieweg published a translation of the first series of the " Tales " adorned with three steel engravings, and an elaborately engraved title page in which was Andersen's name enclosed in a wreath with representations of little Ida, the Student, the Witch, the little Mermaid, and the other chief characters grouped around. 1 * Andersen was almost beside himself for joy at this great event, and took care to describe all the pictures to his friends in full. Latterly it was always a great point with him to have his Tales illustrated, and illustrated well. From Andersen's point of view the Fairy Tales were all very well, but they did not adequately represent his genius, or anything like it. No, he would not be content till he had approved himself an even greater poet than Oehlenschlager, and an even greater dramatist than Heiberg. He had already, after four years of labour, composed the best part of a great, or rather a long, epic poem, entitled Ahasuerus, of which more anon, but it * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen^ i. 472. 236 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN was towards the stage that he continued to look most longingly, though here unfortunately there was a lion in the path, of whom Andersen was terribly afraid. This was none other than the illustrious Heiberg himself, who had superseded Molbech as chief dramatic censor, and Andersen always imagined that he had lost rather than gained by the change. Heiberg indeed was never so rough and rude with him as Molbech had been ; but on the other hand, though Molbech's taste was, generally speaking, correct, dramatic criticism was not altogether his forte, and his decisions could be and had been successfully appealed against, whereas nobody in his senses would have thought of questioning Heiberg's verdicts. Now, according to Andersen, the great censor's otherwise infallible critical faculty was vitiated by one serious defect : an utter inability to recognise anything good in any play to which his, Andersen's name, happened to be appended. How then, he argued, was a poor Heaven-born dramatist like himself to get his just due ? At last he hit upon a saving expedient. In November 1 843 he sent in his new one-act tragedy, Kongen Drommer (The King Dreams) to the theatrical censor anonymously ; in January 1845, he repeated the experiment with his one-act comedy Den nye Barselstuen (The New Lying-in Room), DRAMATIC TRIUMPHS AND DISASTERS 237 and on both occasions, just as if "the imp of the perverse" had had some hand in the matter, he was signally successful. This success did him more harm than good in the long run, because it thoroughly convinced him that professional jealousy was really, after all, the main cause of his former ill-treatment at the hands of the dramatic censors. This of course was simply nonsense. It is quite within the bounds of possibility for a clever man of letters, with a strong liking for the stage, to give dramatic shape to a happy inspiration, and yet be anything but a born dramatist. This was exactly Andersen's case, as a very little consideration will show. He had always failed hitherto as a drama- tist, and was always bound to fail, simply because he lacked those faculties of the true dramatist whereby he is able to diagnose his characters, marshal and combine his incidents, and weave both characters and incidents into a harmonious whole or plot, proceeding gradually and naturally to an inevitable denouement. In a word he lacked concentration, and psychological depth. A regular five-act drama was quite beyond his powers. It was much too complicated and elaborate for him. On the other hand he had a keen eye for the salient superficial traits of character, an intimate knowledge of stage effect, born of long experience, 238 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN while we have only to look at his fairy-tales, espe- cially the shorter ones,* to see what an original use he could make of simple situations whether comical or the reverse. Thus a one-act drama, provided it had a really good and original idea at the bottom of it, was well within his capacity, and the leading ideas of both the tragedy " The King Dreams," and the comedy, "The New Lying-in Boom" are dis- tinctly good and original. " The New Lying-in Room " caught the public favour instantly, and was acted no less than forty- seven times. Strange to say, nobody, not even Heiberg, guessed that Andersen was its author, though the peculiar humour of the piece might have given them a clue. Those friends who were in the secret, H. C. Orsted and the Collins, vowed that if the piece did succeed, Andersen would never be able to hold his tongue about it. Nevertheless, he heroic- ally resisted the temptation under the most provo- cative circumstances. Thus Privy Councillor Adler said to him, after a disparaging allusion to another play of his, LyJckeris Blomst ( The Flower of Fortune), which had proved a failure : "Now there's ' The New Lying-in Room.' It is an excellent play. If only you could write something in that style. But * The longer ones are less happily contrived. Take for instance one of the longest, "The Marsh King's Daughter." Here it is quite plain, I think, that Andersen was at his wits' end how to terminate the story. DRAMATIC TRIUMPHS AND DISASTERS 239 it is quite outside your talent. You are a lyric poet, and have not the humour that man has." Again, on the evening after the first representation, a rising young critic came rushing into Andersen's rooms with such a glowing account of the new piece, that Andersen was afraid his voice or his face might betray him, so he said at once : "I know who the author is." " Who is it ? " cried the critic. " It is yourself," replied Andersen, " I can see it by your agitation." The young man grew quite red and protested with his hand on his heart, that it was not he. "I know what I know," added Andersen smiling, and pleaded another engagement to slip away. "The King Dreams," and "The New Lying-in Room " are Andersen's best, or rather his only good plays, his other dramatic efforts scarcely deserving the name of plays at all. But he thought differ- ently, and the more or less contemptuous rejection of all his other essays in this direction, by the politely sarcastic Heiberg, was a source of the most bitter vexation to him. One play of which he was particularly enamoured was the two-act drama Lylckeris Blomst (Flower of Fortune), already alluded to, which he sent in during 1 844, apparently unconscious that it was a plagiarism from one of Heiberg's finest masterpieces " Syvsoverdag (" Seven- Sleepers' Day "). " However much it may flatter me to see my poor works taken as patterns," says 240 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN Heiberg in his report to Jonas Collin on this play, " it can surely afford me very little pleasure to see them give occasion to such utter absurdities." The play was accordingly rejected. Andersen was furious. The conduct of Heiberg seemed to him utterly inexplicable on any other hypothesis than a deliberate intention to exclude his pieces for ever from the stage. " A heavy sea has gone over my head," he cried, " and I shall not be able to hold out much longer." He stormed and raved to no purpose, and at last rushed off to Heiberg's private house to argue the matter out with the censor him- self. Heiberg received his visitor in the most friendly manner and explained, at great length, his reasons for rejecting the play, reasons so just and cogent that Andersen could not possibly confute them, so he fell back upon recrimination. He had come to have it out with Heiberg, and to wipe off all old scores, and his memory was as retentive of injuries, real or imaginary, as the memory of an elephant. " Why," he asked, " did you years ago deny me originality ? I suppose my romances at any rate are original, and you told me yourself you had never read any of them." " Yes/' replied Heiberg, " that's true enough. I have riot read them yet, but I am going to read them." "And then," pursued Andersen excitedly, "you ridiculed my 'Bazaar ' in your 'Danish Atlas/ and talked about DRAMATIC TRIUMPHS AND DISASTERS 241 my enthusiasm for the lovely Dardanelles.* Now it so happens that I never thought the Dardanelles lovely. It was the Bosphorus that charmed me so, but apparently you never noticed that, or perhaps you have not read the ' Bazaar ' either, you told me once you never read big books." " Oh, the Bospho- rus was it ? " said Heiberg with his peculiar smile, " I didn't remember, and you see other people didn't either. I suppose I wanted to have a little fling at you, that's about the long and short of it." " This confession," adds Andersen, " was so natural and so peculiar, that I couldn't help laugh- ing, and when I looked into his wise eyes, and recollected how many beautiful things he had written, I couldn't bear him any grudge or ill will."t So the fierce debate gradually meandered into a friendly conversation. Heiberg spoke up hand- * The verses Andersen complained of were these : Or you're such a fool, may be, (For, indeed, such fools there are) Who devour with ecstasy All that Andersen now tells Of the lovely Dardanelles In his Ottoman Bazaar, While oppressed with dull ennui, You heedlessly pass by The scenes that charm the eye In our own dear Sound as fair (If you'd only learn to know it) And we're spared the wailings there Of the much misconstrued poet.* t M. L. E. p. 338. 242 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN somely for " The Tales " which he had read, and they parted amicably enough, though so long as it was Andersen's delight to write dramas, and Heiberg's duty to censure them, they were bound to be more or less of belligerents. In the beginning of 1846 Andersen again tempted Fortune by sending in another comedy, Herr Rasmussen, which Heiberg disapproved of. But unfortunately the Collins liked the piece, and it was put upon the stage while Andersen was abroad. The result was simply disastrous. It did not receive a single clap, and when the curtain fell after the first Act, there was a frightful hissing. Edward Collin, who was among the audience in a feverish state of excitement, at once departed. He could stand it no longer, and felt that the piece was past praying for. During the last Act, the public freely took part in the dialogue amidst universal hilarity : never had been known such a miserable collapse. i: If," wrote Edward Collin to Andersen on this occasion, " if you see in this another proof of Danish misappreciation and perhaps animosity .... you are very much mistaken. There is certainly nobody you can better believe on this head than myself. You recollect how good I thought the piece, how comical I found it. I went to the theatre with the fullest conviction that it would succeed, and provoke roars of laughter from beginning to end. I DRAMATIC TRIUMPHS AND DISASTERS 243 went to the theatre I say and I was bored, I was embarrassed, I found it so vapid, so completely wanting in comic situations and characters, that I can assure you I never saw anything like it I am intimately persuaded that had you seen the piece yourself, you would have had the same feeling The only person I am really sorry for is father, for he will naturally have a bad time of it for forcing the piece on against the will of so many other persons."* Of course Andersen regarded the conduct of the Danish public on this occasion as an abominable outrage that cried loudly to Heaven for vengeance, but he got ample compensation for this slight rebuff in the extraordinary, not to say extravagant ovations which he received abroad during the years 1843-46. In March 1843 he visited Paris for the second time under very different conditions to those of his first visit nine years before. Then he was nobody, now he was indisputably one of the best known writers in Europe. It is true that he never was, or could be so popular in France (or, for the matter of that, in any of the Latin countries) as he was in the Ger- manic lands,! but his reputation had preceded him, * Bille og Bogh : Breve til Andersen, pp. 97, 98. Such a letter from such a man should of itself effectually dispose of Andersen's insinua- tions in his autobiography, that his career as a dramatic author was ruined by a clique. t This has been well pointed out by Dr. Brand es in his Kritiker 244 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN and during his stay at the gay capital he was lionised to his heart's content. His descriptions of the great authors who paid him compliments, and the great actresses who entertained him in their salons, are very vivid and entertaining, though in describing them he (indirectly and unconsciously of course) tells us even more about himself.* He now renewed his former acquaintance with Victor Hugo and Heinrich Heine, both of whom were very amiable, though the grand manner of " the proud poet-king," as he calls the former, a little overawed him. Hugo took him to see Les Burgraves which had just come out, but Andersen thought it rather dull, and was somewhat embarrassed how to express himself on the subject to its distinguished author. Heine on the other hand was delightful. Andersen's opinion of him had changed considerably during the last ten years. He had begun by admiring and imitating him, then he had been half ashamed of his own admiration, as if it were a species of devil-worship, and had consequently avoided him during his first visit at Paris. But now he had learned to know the world a little better, and to take men as he found them.t and on this og Portraiter. Andersen was " un peu trop enfantin " for the French. There are even fewer French, Italian and Spanish translations of his Tales than there are Hungarian and Slavonic. * For Andersen's second visit to Paris, see Collin, pp. 341-6 ; Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen^ \. pp. 65-86 ; and M. L. E. f Andersen's definitive opinion of Heine as a writer is expressed in DRAMATIC TRIUMPHS AND DISASTERS 245 occasion, too, Heine was so natural and affectionate that Andersen quite loved him, especially after he had been informed that Madame Heine absolutely doated on "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," which her husband had read to her in French. Shortly after- wards Heine introduced Andersen to his wife. He found her playing with a whole flock of children whom, as Heine comically explained, they had borrowed from a neighbour because they had none of their own, and while the author of the Lieder sat down in a side-room to write a " beautiful deeply melancholy poem ' in Andersen's album, Andersen himself helped Madame Heine to amuse the children. Amongst Andersen's new acquaintances may be mentioned Balzac, Lamartine, De Vigny and Alex- andre Dumas pere. Andersen was introduced to Balzac at a soire'e at the Countess Prasse's. His hostess, after making him sit down beside her on the sofa, with Balzac on the other side, took each of them by the hand, and exclaimed : " Lucky creature that I am ! I feel quite shamefaced to be sitting here between the two most famous men in Europe 1 " "Mais, Madame la baronne!" modestly protested a letter to Collin, in 1865, as follows : " Heine is a glittering firework : it goes out and dark night surrounds us. He is a witty babbler, impious and frivolous, and yet a true poet. His books are elfin girls in gauze and silk which swarm with vermin, so that one cannot let them move freely about the rooms of respectably dressed people." Collin, p. 1 08. 246 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN Andersen, and he was proceeding to explain his own insignificance in as good French as he could inuster on the spur of the moment, when he chanced to catch sight of Balzac's face behind her back, distorted into a satiric grin. Andersen describes the author of La Come die Humaine as a fairly well dressed man with very white projecting teeth, and a trick of half- opening his mouth. The " elegant " Alfred de Vigny he met at the same place, and that " amiable personage" quite won his heart by clambering the many stairs of the Hotel Yalois, right up to Ander- sen's little attic under the roof, with all his works under his arm, as a parting present. " I cannot tell you," writes Andersen on this occasion, " how intently he gazed at me, how hard he pressed niy hand. I am sure he is a great, a noble soul." But " the dearest of them all," the one whom he would have chosen for a comrade, was the jovial Dumas whom he generally found lying in bed, even late into the afternoon, with pen, ink and paper, writing away at his latest novel or drama. One day when Andersen caught him like this, Dumas gave him a kindly nod and said: "Sit down a bit, I am just having a visit from my Muse, she will be gone -directly." It was Dumas who introduced him to the great Rachel. He first made her acquaintance in her little room behind the scenes, where she was waiting her turn to go on the stage in the character DRAMATIC TRIUMPHS AND DISASTERS 247 of Phaedra, and he was quite surprised to find her so "young looking" and "royally noble." He also spent an afternoon in her purple salon where every- thing was rich and splendid, though perhaps "a little too arrange" Rachel "who was dressed in black, and in the highest degree gracious," made him sit down beside her, while she poured out tea, and give her an account of the Danish literature. When- ever he was at a loss for a word she encouraged him with the most delicate compliments, and at his parting visit wrote these words in his album : " L'art c'est le vrai ! J'espere que cet aphorisme ne semble pas paradoxal a un e"crivam aussi distingue que Monsieur Andersen." Dejazet he was also intro- duced to behind the scenes, but she didn't please him. He saw her in " Mile. Dejazet au Serail " which he considered simply horrible. " I cannot under- stand," he writes, " how such a vaudeville can be tolerated, still less how such a gifted nature as Mile. Dejazet can find any pleasure in exhibiting the very lowest brutishness." He heard Grisi in "Othello" and " Semiramis," and thought her a mere shadow of Malibran. He therefore went to hear her in "Norma," prepared to be critical, and came away enthusiastic ; there was a power, a grandeur, " an ocean of melody " in her wonderful voice which completely overwhelmed him. Altogether his second visit to Paris was one of his most delightful experiences. He wrote to 248 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN Collin that he was reading up for his examination in knowledge of human nature, and hoped to pass. Every one was killing him with kindness, every one thoroughly understood him. They were all so kind, so good. The difficulties of the language too had been much exaggerated, or else the linguistic stan- dard of the Collins' was much too severe. Even those of his countrymen who spoke the language better than he did, envied the agility with which he could " vault through a conversation." He had ventured to converse with Rachel, who spoke the purest French of all, for, argued he, "good French she can hear every day, but my French is at least original." And Rachel, according to Andersen, took a positive pleasure in listening to him, and declared that there was wit and soul in what he said. In short his whole sojourn there was a spiritual recrea- tion. Yet the most trivial contretemps at home was sufficient to disturb his felicity abroad, and it is rather startling in the midst of these enthusiastic effusions and joyful pseans, to suddenly come across such a harsh dissonance as the following : " The Danes are evil-minded, cold, satanic. They exactly suit their wet, mouldy-green islands. I hate and loathe my country, just as much as my country hates and bespatters me." 1 * And all because his old play Agnete, in which he himself professed to have * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, ii. p. 83. "THE LONG POET" 249 lost all interest, had failed to please the public at Copenhagen. It is only fair to add, that this was an isolated outburst of which he himself seems to have been ashamed, for he told his correspondent to destroy the letter in which it occurs. Andersen returned to Denmark in 1843, and in March 1844 he was away again for four months, this time in Germany. It is from henceforth that his intimacy with the Grand Duke of Weimar and his family begins. A comical adventure befel him at Brunswick. An enthusiastic lady admirer there said to him : " I do not honour thee, I love thee." " She was pretty, but married," adds Andersen ; " so I hardly knew what to reply ; but I kissed her hand, and then pressed the hand of her husband, so that he also might not be left out in the cold." * Still funnier was his first encounter with Grimm whose collection of fairy tales was to be the only serious rival of the Andersenian stories. Grimm was the only person of distinction in Berlin whom he did not yet know, so he called upon him though he had no letter of introduction. " Considering the importance my name has in Germany, I was persuaded," says Andersen, " that he must know of me. I came, gave in my name, and fancy he did not know me, absolutely knew nothing at all about me ; I felt * Collin, p. 365. 250 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN quite stupid when he asked me what I had written. At last I got a little angry, especially when I found out that he knew Danish. He confessed that he had never heard my name." Andersen's Berlin friends consoled him with the assurance that Grimm was at least thirty years behind the age. On Andersen's return to Denmark he received an invitation from the King and Queen to stay with them at Wyk in Fohr, one of that strange low-lying group of little Frisian islands off the south-west coast of Denmark, the peculiar scenery of which has been so vividly described by Biernatzki in " Die Hallig" and " Der braune Knabe," and less success- fully by Andersen himself in his later novel TJie Two Baronesses. Andersen was soon made to feel quite at home. He took all his meals with the royal family, and shared in all their excursions. Every evening he read to them a couple of the Fairy Tales. The King appeared to like " The Nightingale " and " The Swineherd " best, and Andersen therefore recited them several evenings running. These were " beautiful bright, poetic days which could never come again." Here also he spent the 5th of Sep- tember, which he always kept as a season of thanks- giving, for it was on that very day, twenty-five years ago, that he had come up to Copenhagen for the first time, a poor friendless lad with his little bundle in his hand. Count Rantzau, who knew what that day "THE LONG POET" 251 meant to Andersen, told the Queen all about it, and she told the King. After dinner their Majesties congratulated Andersen on having overcome so many difficulties, and late the same evening, Christian VIII. had a long conversation with him, in which he asked for further particulars of his early struggles, and said how pleased he was to hear from foreigners of the high appreciation of his Tales in Germany. The King next inquired how much he had to live upon, and when Andersen replied 200 specie dollars ($o) besides what he made^ from his works, Christian exclaimed, " and little enough too ! " Count Bantzau told Andersen afterwards that the King had meant by these words to put a wish into his mouth, so to speak, and had fully expected him to petition there and then for an increase of his pension ; but this Andersen could not find it in his heart to do. It seemed to him shabby to ask his host for more in such a blunt, downright fashion. The King waited for some time to give him a chance of speaking, and then said : " If at any time I can help you on in your literary career, you must let me know." "At present," replied Andersen, "I have nothing to ask. I can only tell your Majesty that I am very thankful and happy." In telling Collin this Andersen admits that, perhaps he behaved like a fool, but declares at the same time he would not act against his feelings. 252 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN In October 1845, Andersen again quitted Den- mark for a tour in Central and Southern Europe, and was absent nearly twelve months. With him to live was to travel. His tour through Germany on this occasion resembled a triumphal progress. Poets and philosophers flocked around him, publishers fought over him, and princes held out their hands to him. The first Court that honoured him was Oldenburg. He was presented to the Grand Duke on the day after his arrival, read " The Snow Queen," " The Tin Soldier," " The Nightingale," and " The Swineherd," in German* and went away with a costly ring on his finger. At Berlin, too, he found that the Fairy Tales were all the rage, and he himself was looked upon as a society lion, a sort of " masculine Jenny Lind," as he expresses it. The King invited him to dinner as soon as he arrived, and decorated him with the Order of the Red Eagle of the third class ; the Crown Princess gave him a blue velvet album ; he took tea at Potsdam with the King, Queen, and Humboldt ; Prince Radziwill protected him ; three painters insisted upon his sitting to them, and Min- isters haled him off to their houses, not to hear him read, but to make much of him, and to say they had spoken to him. Here also he found his friend Jenny Lind, whom he had learnt to know six years before * Andersen was prouder of this than of anything. " What does my little friend think now of my German ? " he wrote to Collin. " THE LONG POET " 253 at Copenhagen, and they spent Christmas Day together, and had a little Christmas tree all to them- selves. Froken Lind was one of the most thorough- going admirers of the " Tales," and always looked upon Andersen as a brother ; they certainly were kindred natures. As for Andersen, he was so en- thusiastic about the Swedish Nightingale, that some of his lady friends began to think whether they ought not to make haste to congratulate him. He soon undeceived them. " Jenny Lind," he writes, "is a pearl. She is not so great a singer as Malibran, but a better actress. She is the most amiable child I have ever known. In private life she seems to me an ennobled Cinderella. Don't misunderstand me. She is already engaged."* In another place he says that nobody could see her in " La Sonnambula " without going away a better man. From Berlin he proceeded to Dresden, so exhausted by social civilities, that the railway-carriage seemed to him a delightful haven of rest. At the Saxon Court he was received with equal heartiness. By special request of the King and Queen, he read to them " The Fir Tree " and " Danish Holger," and was delighted to find that the children of Prince John of Saxony knew all the Tales by heart. But it was at the Court of Weimar that his happi- * Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, ii. p. 97. 254 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN ness reached its culmination. He describes the month he stayed there as the most blissful of his existence. He was lodged in sumptuous apartments full of rococo furniture, he had a gorgeous lackey to wait upon him,* and all the ducal family treated him like " a dear, dear friend." Indeed, if his narra- tive be absolutely trustworthy, the Court of Weimar at that time must have been the most sentimental spot in Europe. We hear of the young Hereditary Grand Duke sitting with him on the same sofa, hand- in-hand, and when Andersen told him how deeply moved he was at his noble conduct, the expansive Prince pressed " the long poet " to his breast, and begged him to stay with him for ever. On another occasion, the Hereditary Grand Duke took him to the Countess Eadern's where they found Jenny Lind, and she sang a Swedish hymn so touchingly that every one was quite upset. The young duchess fell upon Jenny's neck, Jenny herself burst into tears, the Hereditary Grand Duke pressed her hand to his lips and Andersen was deeply affected. " How lovely is life ! " he exclaims. " All men are good at bottom, I trust them all, and have never been deceived in any." Nevertheless, now and again, " a little gall apple catches in the point of his pen," and he feels that he * It was here that he wore a sword, a court-dress, and a three- cornered hat for the first time. "THE LONG POET" 255 must have some slight aggravation, or his daily bread would be too sweet for him. It sometimes seems to him that he really must suffer a great deal of injus- tice at home, or else great Germany must stand very much below the intellectual level of little Denmark. He is quite angry when Jonas Collin insinuates that all this hob-nobbing with princes and potentates may unsettle him, and Edward ColhVs sensible sugges- tions that Carsten Hauch's recently published criti- cism of his (Andersen's) works at Copenhagen, should give him far more grounds of encouragement than "all these German laurel leaves," Andersen con- temptuously scouted as an empty tirade. But his greatest grievance was the necessity of obtaining his own Sovereign's permission to wear the Order of the Red Eagle conferred upon him by the King of Prussia. He could not understand this at all, and expressed himself surprised in the highest degree to find himself so dependent.* It was only with the utmost diffi- culty that Jonas Collin could make his " dear Semper Idem, otherwise H. C. Andersen," comprehend that this was a matter of etiquette to which every Dane must submit. The delicate attentions of his German friends fol- lowed him even to Rome. Goethe's widow sent him bouquets of roses all the way to the Eternal City, * He was also rather hurt that a foreign Sovereign should have decorated him before his own Sovereign. 256 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN and he had so many choice flowers in his room there, that their fragrance made him feel quite faint. It had been his original intention to proceed to Spain, but the sirocco-like heat which prevailed throughout Southern Europe during the summer of 1846, pre- vented him. During his stay at Home, he had to lie on the sofa every day from 1 1 to 4 ; lived on four or five portions of ice a day, and was seized with vertigo every time he ventured into the street before sunset. At Naples, it was even worse. The air seemed to be impregnated with the sand of Africa, and he felt like a fish cast ashore in the hot sunshine ; by the time he had reached Marseilles, he was worn down to a mere shadow. A brief stay at Vernet in the Pyrenees enabled him to resume his home- ward journey, and after just " peeping " across the Spanish frontier, and addressing the natives in their own language which they would not understand as spoken by him, he crawled painfully through France to Geneva, and after recruiting there for a while returned to Copenhagen through Germany, paying, en route, a visit on the Hereditary Grand Duke of Weimar at Ettisheim, where he was again received with open arms. Contrary to his usual custom, he seems, this time, to have quite longed to see his native land again. " I come flying home with a full heart," he writes to Collin, " a little spoiled with the homage of princes and great intellects, but dear "THE LONG POET" 257 Ingeborg * will soon put her mental bridle upon the snorting steed." And yet, in a little more than six months, the restless creature was eager to be off again. England this time was the goal of his desires, and in the following chapter we shall see what he thought of us, and what we thought of him. * E. Collin's sister, whom Andersen loved the most of them all, and who could always do most with him. CHAPTER IX ANDERSEN IN ENGLAND English translations of Andersen The critics Literary Gazette Rxaminer Athenccum Spectator Andersen's first impression of the Thames. London traffic The reception at Lord Palmer- ston's The London Season Prince Consort Lady Morgan The lady who kissed his hand His bust by Durham Meets Dickens at Lady Blessington's Delight at his reception in London Violent diatribe against his critics at home Feted to death His ignorance of English Andersen and Mrs. Howitt Cause of the misunderstanding between them Jenny Lind Andersen visits her at Brompton Taglioni Ander- sen's general impression of London In Scotland Edin- burgh Amusing incident at the Heriot Hospital The Highlands A Scotch Sabbath Visits Bentley And Dickens Andersen's second visit to England Correspondence with Dickens Stays at Gadshill Miss Burdett Coutts Avoids London Bitter moments Sympathy of Dickens Departure from England. ANDERSEN was already pretty well known in England. Mrs. Howitt had, as early as 1845, translated Only a Fiddler and The Improvisatore ; in the course of 1846 there were no less than four independent translations of the Tales, of which Mrs. Howitt's " Wonderful Stories " * is indisputably the best, and Miss Peachey's " Danish Fairy Legends " decidedly * For a critical estimate of all the English versions of the Tales, see Appendix No. 3. ANDERSEN IN ENGLAND 259 the worst, while Mr. Beckwith, in the course of the same year, produced a somewhat indifferent version of En Digters Bazar. In 1847 we find three fresh editions of the Tales, and a translation from the German of A Picture Book ivithout Pictures, while Mrs. Howitt contributed under the title of " The True Story of My Life," a version of Das Mdrchen meines Lebens* which Andersen had prefixed to the German edition of his collected works. All the English critics were charmed with the "Tales" and the "Bazaar," but rather more doubtful about the novels. The merit of being the first to introduce Andersen to the English reader belongs to William Jerdan, the editor of the then moribund Literary Gazette^ who had communicated with Andersen in 1846, sent him a copy of his paper, and courteously invited him to extend his travels to England. The " long poet " had responded in a characteristically effusive epistle, expressing his unbounded devotion to all his English friends male and female in general, and to Jerdan in particular. J * This, therefore, was the second Andersenian autobiography, " La vie d'un poete " being the first. The first part of the definitive and voluminous Mit Livs Eventyr did not appear till 1855, and has never been Englished. f Founded by Henry Colburn and William Jerdan in 1817, it was from 1820 to 1830 the leading literary Review of London, but declined rapidly in the thirties, and was superseded by the Athenaum and Spectator. \ Bille og Bogh : Breve fra Andersen, ii. pp. 156-9. 260 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN This outburst was largely due to Andersen's grati- tude for the very flattering but altogether uncritical notices of the " Bazaar " and the " Tales " which had already appeared in the Literary Gazette.* Andersen evidently regarded that periodical as the leading literary paper of the day in England, and lost no opportunity of flourishing it defiantly in the faces of adverse critics at home. But the other journals were also favourable to him. The Examiner, in its notice of Miss Peachey's version of the Tales,t de- clared that it had never met with any production " so given up to a sense of the variety of being that exists in the universe." One's consciousness as a human being, it said, ran the risk of being lost altogether in the crowd of swallows, storks, swans, mermaids, slugs, cuttle fish, ducks, and green peas (for Mr. Andersen's very vegetables have as much conversational power as his ducks and geese), all of which were always talking in character, but without the slightest confusion of ideas, whilst even his balls and peg-tops had an astonishing individuality all their own. The AthencBum warmly praised "the rich and graphic beauty " of the descriptions of Italy in The Improvisatore, pronouncing them to be as full of colour as the poems in prose and verse of Byron and Beckford, Goethe and George Sand. The * February 20, June 13, and October 10, 1846. t July 4, 1846. ANDERSEN IN ENGLAND 261 same review described " A Poet's Bazaar " as a treasury of pictures absolutely perplexing from the variety and richness of its contents, and parted from it reluctantly after expressing its enthusiasm in ten columns.* As to the Fairy Tales, the Athenaeum frankly avowed that no amount of criticism was adequate to do them justice. " Fanciful though it seem," said the reviewer, " we could defend our crotchet that the most fitting review of this volume would be a strain of elfin music such as Weber wove for his mermaids in ' Oberon,' or Liszt can whisper when in a mood of gentle improvisation. Common Cheapside paragraphs are too square and hard and ungraceful to invite gentle readers to pages so full of enchantment as these." t But the ablest of all Andersen's English reviewers, and the one that on the whole took his intellectual measure best, was the critic of the Spectator. He rightly regarded the " exquisitely beautiful " " Tales and Stories written for children " as among the Danish author's most successful efforts, and pronounced " The Ugly Duck- ling " as " unsurpassed by anything of its kind we have ever seen." Everything in " A Poet's Bazaar," too, pleased the Spectator except its quaint and inappropriate title suggesting an assortment of showy gimcracks ostentatiously displayed, whereas the * November 7 and 14, 1846. f Athetuzum, June 6, 1846. 262 HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN genius of Andersen, opines the reviewer, is above all things " cordial and kindly, winning our love rather than commanding our admiration." Towards the novels, Improvisator e, 0. T., and Only a Fiddler, on the other hand, the Spectator was less indulgent, fastening at once upon Andersen's cardinal defects as a novelist. The following opening paragraph of the review of The Improvisator e>* for instance, might have been written by Molbech himself: " H. C. Andersen is a Danish celebrity who seems to us to be rather characterised by poetical temperament than by poetical power, and to possess the superficial brilliance and fluent rhetoric that belong to the gifted improvisatore, rather than the sound judgment, deep thought, and regulated imagination which distinguish the great genius." t The reviewer goes on to observe, very pertinently, that the plan of the story is not badly construed for the exhibition of Italian character and scenery, but that the personages are altogether exotic.! The Spectator considered Only a Fiddler a far superior * Spectator ; March 15, 1845. t Note, however, that at the time when this was written the " Fairy Tales " were still unknown in England. J On the other hand, the reviewer is quite wrong in imputing the artless naiveti which runs through the story to "an affectation of sentiment and morals" borrowed from the modern French school. Andersen, when he wrote Improvisatoren, knew little French to speak of, his sentiment and sensibility is, and always was, entirely his own. ANDERSEN IN ENGLAND 263 work* to The Improvisators, and acutely recog- nised it as an idealisation of the author's individual experiences. Andersen's endeavour in the episode of Noeini and Christian to "depict the innermost feelings of children," receives its due meed of praise, while his attempt to inspire sympathy with the outcasts of society in the later parts of the story, draws forth the remark that " the philosophy of the case is beyond H. C. Andersen's cast of mind." O. T. is curtly dismissed with a few contemptuous lines, and most people will agree with the reviewer that the plot of that story is false, absurd, and melo- dramatic. On the other hand, no mention is made of its truly Dickensian humour, and its noble de- scription of Odense market-place. In concluding its review of " A Poet's Bazaar," the AthencBum reviewer had confessed to a more than ordinary curiosity as ,to the impressions which England would be likely to produce upon a pilgrim so artless yet so wise, so national and yet so enthusiastically large in his views and catholic in his sympathies as the Danish author. t As that curiosity has, so far as I am aware, never yet been gratified,! I will devote the remainder of this * Spectator, August 30, 1845. t Athen