Hans Christian Andersen

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30937, 18 December 1965, Page 4

Hans Christian Andersen

The Wil* Swan. By Monica Stirling. CoUiwa. Ml pp. Bibliography an* Index. The subject of this biography. Hans Christian Andersen, was 70 when he died in 1875, and the author ends her book with a suitable epitaph: ’Today, nearly a hundred years later, his grave is never without flowers, his stories are never out of print his home in Odense is never without visitors . . . and there is never a moment when there is not somewhere in the world a child who is reading Hans Christian Andersen for the first time." As a summing up of literary achievements, and the national reverence accorded them, this appreciation could not be bettered. The reader who sees pictures in the book of this gentle, gangling giant will be moved to wonder at the mysterious appearance of freakishness with which genius can be invested.

Hans Andersen was the son of a poor cobbler, and his parents, on whom the slur of illegitimacy had fallen heavily, (his mother and her three sisters were all born out of wedlock), were married a few months before he was born. His paternal grandfather was a harmless lunatic, but well-known as such in the little town of Odense, and the cobbler, Hans's father, who cherished an obsessive admiration for Napoleon, came near to being mentally unbalanced. The boy was dogged by a lifelong terror of becoming insane, and the wild alternations between ecstasy and despair which were part of his disposition were of almost manic-depressive proportions. Threatened with apprenticeship to a trade, which was the highest prospect of financial security open to one in his class of life, he yet cherished a passionate desire to go on the stage, and when he was 14 he was reluctantly permitted by his parents to realise his pitifully small savings and seek his fortune in Copenhagen. It says a great deal for the fundamental kindness of Danish hearts that he did not simply starve in the gutter. Copenhagen in 1819 had a population of only 110,000, and most of its celebrities were acquainted with one another. Something in the young Andersen must have made a strong appeal to those who his chance introduction to an actress at the Theatre Royal brought within his sphere of approach, for having subsisted precariously for three years in odd jobs in the theatre he made the acquaintance of Jonas Collin, a distinguished civil servant. This worthy man prevailed

upon King Frederik VL whose paternalistic attitude to his subjects was in line with Danish custom, to sponsor the overgrown boy as a pupil to Slagelse Grammar School, in order that a hitherto neglected education might fit him to become “a useful citizen."

By this time Andersen had turned from his theatrical ambitions to writing, but being practically illiterate could not express his thoughts in suitable words. The misery of his life at the school under a brutal and sarcastic headmaster who made him the butt of a withering wit, all but destroyed his precarious mental balance, especially as his gratitude to Jonas Collin (who had practically adopted him as one of the family) prevented his expressing the utter despair into which he had been plunged. Some years later when the defenceless charity pupil was famous, the schoolmaster, now fallen on hard times, made belated amends and apologies, but it is significant that when near to his death, and laden with honours, Andersen's dreams were tormented by these early spiritual tortures and he was back in the classroom in which he had had to endure them. With the end of his schooling and his entry to Copenhagen University—where the Royal bounty continued to maintain him —Andersen's fortunes began to improve, and in 1830 he published his first book of poetry. This was followed by a two-year term of foreign travel, at his generous King's expense, and was to be succeeded by frequent tours abroad which were to feed his mounting genius. His literary output became immense—poems, plays, novels, and, at last, fairy tales succeeding each other in a constant flow, but it is significant that the last-named, on which his fame outside Denmark was chiefly to rest, were not regarded till many years later as of any great merit by his own people. Andersen was to love four women in his life, but because of his diffidence and naivety, and his odd appearance (he was skeleton thin and had phenomenally long arms) be could arouse in them only a sisterly affection. Jenny Lind “The Swedish Nightingale," whose upbringing had been as poverty-stricken as his own was the last of these objects of his devotion, and her marriage to Otto Goldschmidt put an end to his hopes of lavishing love on a wife and children. His scruples prevented him from seeking female association outside marriage, but though he

eschewed any sexual relations with women, the suggestion that he was a homosexual Is rendered absurd by the actions of his beloved Mend Edvard Collin who sent his young son with Andersen on a tour abroad. The book which has over nine pages of bibliography is specially interesting for the light it sheds upon the numerous celebrities of the time, many of whom became friends of the great Danish writer. He met the brothers Grimm on his first tour of Germany, and later when in England became an honoured guest in the household of Charles Dickens. Mendelssohn, Liszt (whose effect on women-admirers of his playing seems to have been akin to that of the Beatles today), Heine, David Livingston's little daughter Mary, and many others had their influence on his life and work. In his latter days he was visited by young Edmund Gosse who has left a most illuminating account of their subsequent friendship and who was with him at the time of his death. So great was his influence upon Gosse that the latter says in his autobiography “As long as human intelligence survives there will surely exist some grateful memory of Hans Andersen." It seems fitting that the poor boy from Odense should now be acclaimed a national hero, for only a very great man could have surmounted the drawbacks of heredity, the buffets of personal misfortune and the handicap of a shy, vulnerable nature encased in that long, looseknit frame.