February 27, 2012 • 28 mins
Hans Christian Andersen is often considered the father of the modern fairy tale, but his life was not the quiet existence depicted in his photos. His personal life is fairly bizarre, and he is sometimes compared to his own outcast fairy tale figures.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from housetop
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
fair Downy and I'm Deblin a Chuck Rewarding, and we
have a story for you today. Now we are about
to begin, and you must attend. And when we get
(00:21):
to the end of the story, you will know more
than you do now about a very wicked hobgoblin. But
of a surprise, isn't it. Yes, But here's a twist
for you. We're actually not going to be talking about
hobgoblins and depth today, or are we, Sarah probably not
too in depth on the hobgoblins. No, we're actually going
to discuss the master of wicked creatures, snow queens, little
(00:45):
mermaids and ugly ducklings hands Christian Anderson, who is best
known as the father of the fairy tale and vying
for that spot actually with former podcast subjects The Brothers Grim.
So we're going to assume that most of you are
probably fairly familiar with some of Anderson's work. Encyclopedia Britannica
calls his fairy tales quote among the most frequently translated
(01:05):
works in all literary history, and I mean, you probably
read them in preschool, nursery schools, something like that, but
they're studied at all levels, even all the way up
to graduate school. They've been adapted into movies and plays
and songs. Some of the best known stories include The
Little Mermaid, The Red Shoes, Thumbalina, The Princess, and the
pa But in addition to his famous fairy tales, Anderson
(01:28):
wrote novels, plays, travelogs, so much material, in fact, he
was often criticized for overproducing, not something you usually here
about a writer. In Denmark, Anderson is considered a national hero,
fulfilling a fortune teller's prophecy no less. But outside of
his home country he's often a famous name with no background,
the author of the Ugly Duckling, or just that guy
(01:51):
from the Central Park statue, but nothing really more than that.
But it turns out that Anderson had a really fascinating,
often unsettling life, one with amazing professional success and intense
personal complications, to which will go into a little bit
appropriately enough, it all starts out a little bit like
a fairy tale, and we should note too, before we
(02:11):
get too much into it. We are going with the
Anglicized pronunciation of hands. Christian Anderson So He was born
April second, eighteen o five in a Densi, Denmark, and
he was the son of a shoemaker already found very
fairy tale sk who read to him from the Arabian nights.
His mother was an alcoholic washerwoman with very intense superstitions
(02:34):
that influenced Anderson a lot later in his life. Even
though he had an older half sister, she didn't live
with the family anymore, and he really grew up a solitary,
kind of strange child. He'd play with puppets for entertainment.
He had a big imagination, but didn't know too many people,
and from the start he had a lot of tragic
family baggage. One of his grandfathers had gone insane, a
(02:57):
grandmother had also been put in jail young for howing
too many illegitimate children, and after his father died at
the young age of thirty four, Anderson left school. At
some point. His mother, though, she was pretty worried about
her strange, awkward son's success and what his future would
be like, so she decided to take him to a
fortune teller. The woman read his mother's cards and Anderson's
(03:19):
coffee grounds and offered a somewhat surprising prediction, not surprising
to us now, but at the time she said, your
son will become a great man, and in honor of him,
Adenzia will one day be illuminated. So it reminded me
a little bit of former podcast subject Madame de Pompadour,
who also had a sort of surprising fortune as a
(03:40):
young girl, but pretty much on the virtue of that
prediction alone pluf Anderson's own really endless self confidence. He
left Adenisa at age fourteen for Copenhagen, and that was
a pretty big journey for this young boy. It was
a two day trip by coach and ship. He had
only third keen tollers to his name, which was not
(04:01):
very much money, no education, and no trade. So what
was he going to do When he got to Copenhagen.
He rented rooms and headed straight to the theater, where
he was really hoping he could wheedle his way into
some sort of career, an actor or a dancer, a singer. Instead, though,
he had what sounds to me like the ultimate big
(04:22):
city like little kid in a big city kind of
awkward moment. He runs into a ticket scalper outside of
the theater who hands him a ticket, Anderson, being this
naive boy, thinks that it's just a gift. You know,
He's going to get together the theater for free. When
he realized that he had actually entered into a business
transaction with this man, he flipped out, just ran away completely.
(04:45):
Didn't know what to think, but he still had a
lot of confidence and that really never went away. He
started targeting these famous singers and dancers at the theater
because he thought that they could help him find work
him up somehow. So he had often to go these
really horribly embarrassing sounding ordeals just to introduce himself. In
one case, he showed up at a dancers door and
(05:07):
was mistaken by her maid for a beggar, and then
when he was admitted anyway, he asked if he could
remove his boots and use his hat as an improvised
tambourine to demonstrate his dancing skills. She thought he was
crazy and threw him out immediately. Probably would. In another case,
he crashed the dinner party of an opera singer and
then just managed to make his way into the dining
(05:30):
room where they all were. He sang to them. He
recited poetryes. He even wept in front of them. Might
as well go all out right then as well, if
you're going to be the upstart performer. But this time
it really worked. The singer promised him lessons, other guests
put together enough money for him to study German, which
he would need to know if he was going to
study opera with this man. So he had some real gumption.
(05:53):
And I think an important thing to keep in mind
was that he was not some cute street kid. I mean,
that's probably what your imagining at this point. You might
have some sympathy for a cute little kid. He was tall,
he was lanky. He was described in most cases as
being terribly uncoordinated, almost comically uncoordinated. He had giant feet,
(06:14):
this huge nose, tiny eyes, and for these special appearances,
you know, when he was really trying to impress people,
he'd break out his best outfit, which was a communion suit.
He's fourteen years old at this point, so it's a
little bit small, and he's grown quite a bit since then. Um,
I mean, he must have been quite a sight, but
close aside. Things got even worse when his voice broke
(06:37):
only a few months into singing. Lessons. So at that
point his opera careers over and Anderson was advised to
go home and just learn a trade. In his memoirs,
he recalls considering suicide over wanting to go home. Fortunately
for him, though, there were other illustrious stains around who
were willing to give him a little bit of help.
He'd been given Latin lessons in Danish lessons, and he'd
(06:58):
get occasional work as a walk on at the Royal Theater,
and all the while he lived in the storeroom of
Madam's house at a reduced rate and costumed his little
puppets with begged scraps of cloth. So he was still
keeping up that imaginative work that he had been doing
all along. But many of his friends, poets, dramatists, he
(07:18):
was even friends with the discoverer of electromagnetism, helped him
out in various ways like this, but his greatest benefactor
ended up being Janis Colin, who was the director of
the Royal Theater. This guy obtained a stipend from the
King of Denmark to send Anderson to grammar school at
the age of seventeen. So a lot of people have
(07:40):
wondered how this boy you know, the shoemaker's son managed
such an amazing rise. And writer Yen's Jawrenson has suggested
Anderson was actually the illegitimate son of the Danish king
and that it explained how he got this um, this
convenient connection, this stipend. Even though a New Yorker article
by Anna and Jeffrey Frank calls the argument quote improbable.
(08:03):
It's just an interesting kind of another fairytale esque thing
to throw out our possibility. But either way, school was
a great opportunity for him, I mean, just naturally it's
a useful pursuit for an aspiring writer. Well, and it's
been suggested to that a lot of these people helped
him out because he was so enthusiastic about writing. But
his his writing was so bad, and he just could
(08:25):
barely write his own language. And I would imagine to
be daunting to start school when all the other kids
are ten to twelve years old. And to add to matters,
your teacher is a big bully who basically predicts quote
that you will end your days in a madhouse. Yeah,
he was not a nice guy, and consequently Anderson had
(08:45):
grammar school nightmares for the rest of his life, even
though it was certainly the uh the defining event in
his life and that it allowed him to go on
to become this great writer, it destroyed him in a
way to this, this constant fear of um, of performing
or not being able to perform in academic ways. But
(09:05):
after four years of instruction, Anderson did have enough of
an education to return to Copenhagen, start studying Latin and
Greek with a tutor, probably a more sympathetic tutor, and
enroll in the university and start composing real poetry, poetry
from somebody who who knows the language. His first hit
poem was published in a newspaper when he was twenty one,
(09:27):
and after that he started to get a little bit
of success. His first major work came out in eighteen
twenty nine. He followed up with a semi autobiographical novel,
or a few semi out of biographical novels, actually, including
o t a Danish romance from eighteen thirty six, Only
a Fiddler from eighteen thirty seven, And then there were
some popular plays, like an eighteen forty work on the
(09:48):
evils of slavery called the Mulatto, And all the while
he was traveling regularly to producing these humorous travelogs along
the way. And when you consider the danger of travel
in the first half the nineteenth century, I mean, we've
got highwaymen, bad roads. You could just stumble upon a
local uprising. It's really amazing to me that Anderson went
(10:10):
to so many places. He visited Paris and Dresden, Rome, Naples, Malta, Constantinople, Athens,
where he got to dine with the King of Greece.
It's especially surprising, though, when you consider that Anderson suffered
from a seemingly disabling list of phobias and fears. I mean,
just to name a few, he was afraid of dogs.
(10:32):
He was also afraid of fire. He'd actually carry a
rope with him for a quick escape in case one
broke out. He was also afraid of rabies. He was
afraid of being mistaken for dead while asleep and being
buried alive. That's a really creepy one. It is creepy
and um, I mean, nobody would want that to happen
to them, of course, but it is maybe a strange,
(10:54):
all consuming fear, but perhaps the worst of all for
a traveler. He was a goora phobic, and he needed
somebody to accompany him across large open areas. So we've
got all of that to deal with. But it's in
the middle of the success this travel and his growing
literary fame that Anderson decided to start writing down shorter
(11:15):
stories for children, almost as a release from the literary
scrutiny of his more serious work like the novels and
the plays and all of that. But before his first
volume was published. His first volume of short Stories or
Children's Stories, was published in eighteen thirty five. Anderson wrote
to a friend saying, quote, I have set down a
few of the fairy tales I myself used to enjoy
(11:38):
as a child, and which I believe aren't well known.
I've written them exactly as I would have told them
to a child. He told another friend, quote, I'm beginning
to write some fairy tales for children. I want to
win the next generation. You see. Most of the stories
from his first collection were retellings, but as Anderson began
writing more volumes, his own unique voice started to come
(11:58):
out more and more. While some stories had folk roots
like The Princess and the Pea, and others had literary beginnings.
For example, The Emperor's New Clothes came from a fourteenth
century Spanish story. The Retailing shared a similar style with
his original tales. He'd use spoken language and idioms. For example, um,
a type of Danish that was neither formal nor literary.
(12:20):
So you might compare this to the way Mark Twain
wrote spoken English years later. Yeah, and he'd also consider
his audience too, that he was writing for children. He'd
avoid difficult words. When he used them, he would explain
them thoroughly, and the same went for hard to understand concepts.
Elios Breddorff gave a good example of how Anderson made
(12:41):
vague expressions like the whole world more understandable to kids
by adding something that was very tangible and real. So
the example he used was in The Snow Queen, the
queen promises a child freedom, plus the whole world and
a new pair of skate. So if your kid you
can get behind that a new pair of it makes sense.
(13:01):
It's also kind of funny too for the adults who
are reading it, because that's the way kids are going
to think. He also really identified a lot with his
outcast heroines and heroes. Anderson was described by one of
his acquaintances, for example, as a long, thin fleshless, a
boneless man, wriggling and bending like a lizard with a
(13:21):
lantern jawed, cadaverous visage. So in a way he could
almost be the ugly duck Lake description for sure. And then,
maybe most famously, he didn't feel compelled to keep things
saccharine for kids. In fact, he wrote his stories for
children and adults, saying that quote, the grown up person
should be allowed to listen as well. Yeah, and really
(13:43):
the best example of this might be The Red Shoes,
they think, where the heroine of the story is punished
for her obsessive love of her fine rich she's just
the little girl too, and in consequence have to have
her feet chopped off to stop the shoes from forcing
her to dance. And things really don't end there. I mean,
that's I think usually where you think the story ends. Instead,
(14:07):
the amputated feet keep dancing independently and bar her from church,
and relief only comes when, at the end of the story,
alone at home with her wooden legs and her crutches,
the repentant girl seas an angel who comes and forgives her,
at which point her heartbirth. So I mean, that's an
(14:27):
intense story. It is I mean, it's kind of dark
and disturbing when we look at it now, But I
mean I wonder if kids process it the same way
when they take it in. You know, I think I've
read the story or had it read to me when
I was younger, and I don't remember being at all
disturbed by it. Well, I actually remember this story or
a variation of it, around the time the Kate Bush
(14:49):
album The Red Shoes came out, But it was always
a story of a trade. You know, a girl wants
to be a good dancer, so she takes these shoes.
It's not just the little girl who happens to really
love her shoes. That takes it up a notch. It
does intensify it a little bit, and it's you know,
it's tragic, and some of those stories are they have
that dark element to them, but others are actually really
(15:12):
happy and they contain beauty and goodwill and triumph and
or they're funny all in all, Anderson had a hundred
and fifty six fairy tales published during his lifetime. Other
texts were printed after his death and that raised a
total to two hundred and twelve. And he write many
of these stories really quickly. The Snow Queen, one of
his longest, was written, set, printed bound, and published in
(15:36):
only sixteen days, which I find amazing. It's amazing and
maybe a little discouraging to probably a lot of writers
out there. English translations of the Fairy Tales started popping
up about ten years after the first Danish volume. Um,
even though it's worth noting that just because you know
Anderson's stories, just because you've read a translation, I mean
(15:57):
we of course have only read translations, doesn't necessarily mean
that you know his words. And that's because a lot
of the translations are considered to be pretty bad. One
of the early English translations was based not on the
original language but on a German edition. That's never a
great way to do a translation. And then other translators
(16:17):
just would edit the stories that they saw fit. And
I mean that's one thing. These are fairy tales, they're
based on folk tales. They change, and Anderson himself did that.
But it's another if it's a volume of Hans Christian
Andersen's stories and they've been switched around. Some very true.
But Anderson shouldn't be mistaken for just the quiet fairy
(16:38):
tale author. He's often depicted as I mean, you'll see
photos of a seated Anderson surrounded by kids, like he's
some sort of father goose almost. But he was intensely
interested in fame, both in cultivating it for himself and
seeking out artists that he admired, kind of a groupie
almost in a way. He was that that drive to
do that from his teenage years, and Copenhagen only grew
(17:01):
with his success. For example, when he was still only
known within Denmark, he showed up at Victor Hugo's door,
and then later as his fame grew and he really
had more opportunities to meet some of the more famous
people in Europe. He encountered From's list Balzac, Heinrich Kaina,
who was one of the few of these people who
recognized him first, Schumann, Rossini, Richard Wagner, Duma, pir and
(17:28):
Fief and the Grimm brothers too, which I think, I mean,
I would have loved to have seen that encounter. They had,
of course already published a lot of their work a
couple decades before. So, uh, Anderson meets the Grooms and
you think they had like a dance off or something.
You know, we can imagine some sort of um like
fairy tale contest throw down other famous people. He knew
(17:51):
he had an actual friendship with Dickens, but it was
cut short when he accepted an invitation to dickens house
and then proceeded to stay for five weeks weeks. When
he finally left, Dickens put up a placard in the
room that said Hans Anderson slept in this room for
five weeks, which seemed to the family ages. And yeah,
apparently Dickens dropped him after that, and Anderson didn't really
(18:14):
know exactly what he had done wrong, you know what
had happened. Other invitations came from the Rothschilds, from Prince Albert.
I don't think he actually visited Albert and Victoria. He
did visit the Spa with the King and Queen of Denmark,
so you know he was He was circulating in these
grand grand circles. And this fame hungry and celebrity loving
(18:36):
aspect of Anderson's personality is really important and it did
last his entire life. I mean, upon his very first
success in Denmark, he said quote, I was now a
happy human being. I possessed the soul of a poet
and the heart of youth, all houses began to open
to me. I flew from circle to circle. In his
(18:56):
early thirties, when his work was gaining an international fall wayne,
he wrote to a friend, quote, my name is gradually
beginning to shine, and that is the only thing for
which I live. I covet honor and glory in the
same way as the miser covets gold. But for a
man who's flying from circle to circle. Anderson didn't have
many close relationships at all, did he? No, not really.
(19:18):
I mean Janic's colin, who we mentioned earlier, was a
true friend, and his son, Edward, became a trusted business
manager of Anderson's and then later in life too. He
made close friendships with a couple connected Jewish families from Copenhagen,
the Heinrichs and the milk yours Um. They nursed him.
(19:39):
They were his companions to the to the very end.
But he never had a serious relationship. He never owned
a house. He would rent rooms. He'd stay with friends
like Dickens. I mean that gives you a pretty good
picture of the way he would exactly. He just needed
a place to crash and decided to choose Dickens house.
But he would form the he's um. Instead of forming
(20:01):
close relationships, he'd get these intense crushes on the daughters
and the sisters of friends. And in fact, his most
famous crush was another kind of celebrity idolization. It was
Jenny Lynde, who was a famous singer of the day.
She was called the Nightingale, and he would write love letters.
He proposed to her, he proposed to other women, but
(20:22):
he's supposedly entirely avoided sex, and consequently, since nineteen o one,
scholars have really investigated Anderson's sexuality a lot and tried
to figure out, um, you know, was he even gay
since he was avoiding relationships with women beyond these over
the top sort of proposals. Um. Another thing to consider
(20:44):
he had a late life celebrity crush on the dancer
Harold Shop, but it's likely in most scholars, I think,
believed that he had no romantic relationships whatsoever. So despite
being one of the best known authors of his day,
he was also very much afraid of not being taken
seriously by fellow writers. So it gratified him immensely that
(21:04):
in his old age, writers like Thackeray, Ibsen and Longfellow
all really admired his work. On August fourth, eighteen seventy five,
he died of liver cancer in Copenhagen while still receiving
visitors to the very end, and since then his life
has been thoroughly researched. His autobiography, The fairy Tale of
My Life detailed many of the early encounters in Copenhagen,
(21:27):
and also an undiscovered memoir came out in the nineteen twenties.
He also, of course left behind a large body of literature.
Literary work. There's two hundred twelve stories we mentioned, six travelogs,
six novels, and thirty six plays. And in addition to that,
Anderson wrote about fourteen letters the day, most of which
(21:47):
are still surviving because because of all this writing this
constant output. Edward Colin accused him of quote mad deplorable productivity,
and also told him quote it is really extraordinarily selfish
of you to assume such an interest in you among people.
But maybe it's not so crazy after all. I mean,
people have taken a great interest in preserving his work
(22:11):
and details of his life. The Adensis City Museum, for example,
in the H. C. Anderson Center at the University of
Southern Denmark, have published the letters, and in the director
of the Hans Christian Anderson Center, published a day by
day timeline of his life, which I think contains some
really interesting points. It contains very detailed, as you would
(22:34):
imagine a day by daytimeline would be. But my favorite
Anderson collection is actually his paper cuttings. I didn't know
that he was such a master of paper cutting until
I started looking at pictures that the museum's website. You
can find them on the Adensist City Museum's website just
like I did. But um, they're they're kind of disturbing.
(22:56):
In some cases, they'll be beautiful hearts and bow arenas
and things that you would maybe expect from this man
who told fairy tales. And then it would it'll be
a a tower with a man hanging from it, you know,
really dark stuff that again you might expect from this
teller of fairy tales. And I think Dickens's son to Henry,
(23:17):
who mostly remembered their long term house as being kind
of a strange man, also remembered this quote beautiful accomplishment
he had. He could just whip out these paper cuts
in no time, and um, yeah, really check them out there.
They're pretty interesting, and in a way, those simple and
really beautiful, sometimes disturbing cuttings are kind of reminiscent of
(23:40):
his stories too. On Anderson's seventieth birthday, the London Daily
News wrote of his ability to create life from simple things,
and they wrote, it has been given to Hans Andersen
to fashion beings. It may almost be said of a
new kind, to breathe life into the toys of childhood
and the forms of antique superstition. The tin soldier, the
(24:00):
ugly duckling, the mermaid, the match girl are no less
real and living in their way than Othello or Mr
Pickwick or Helen of Troy. It seemed a very humble
field in which to work, this of nursery, legend and
childish fantasy. Yet the Danish poet alone, of all who
have labored in it, has succeeded in recovering and reproducing
(24:20):
the kind of imagination which constructed the old fairy tales.
I think that's a nice way to to wrap up.
And um, I mean to me, somebody like the Little
Mermaid is maybe more real than Mr Pickwick or Helen
of Troy. And I think part of that is because
these stories have become so common in other ways too.
(24:41):
I mean, when I think of the Little Mermaid, I
think of Ariel and Eric getting married with all of
the mur folk in attendance, and not in all their
little crustacean friends exactly. Yes, under the sea happiness, not
the Little Mermaid dissolving into sea foam and then having
to work for three years to get her soul. But
they're worth going back and reading, I think too, if
(25:02):
you haven't checked out one for a while, I've got
to figure out if if I have my hands on
a good translation. Now. I never realized that with an issue,
but um, yeah, I think I'll be. I'll be prousing
some Anderson's stories. Yeah, it does make me curious to
go back and check them out. So I think for
Listener Mail today we might include a few more of
our listen while things. I don't know. It seemed appropriate
(25:25):
for this fairy Tale episode podcast, So we're gonna start
off with listener Ivy, who listens to the podcast while
she walks her retired racing greyhound. And then there's Blair
in Montreal, who listens while working at a research library
at McGill University. She says, quote sometimes it's all I
can do not to rush up into the stacks and
find more information on the topic. I like the sound
(25:47):
of that one. And Kate from New York listens on
long road trips with her mother to break up the
Barry Manilow and the Carpenter music and Courtney and Santa
Monica listens while she works on animations as a film
Peter listens while making cricket bats in the UK. And
Heather from California listens while she's grading diamonds, which I love.
(26:09):
She writes quote, if you ever purchased or received a solitaire,
it likely has a report attached to it. That report
is what the appraisers used to price the diamond. And
Lisa from Sweden, I think this one might have to
top everything by default. Lisa Firm, Sweden listened while she
gave birth to her third child, specifically to the five
(26:30):
historical Hoaxes and Orson Wells episodes, which I think that
destines her child for being a hoaxter. Do you think
I think so? Well? I hope not, but that's interesting. Emma,
a psychology student from New Zealand, listens while running rats
through a May's task or running pigeons through their experiment.
Angie listens while analyzing historic and prehistoric artifacts in California. Currently,
(26:54):
she said that she's helping excavate historic privies and houses
within the financial district of downtown San Francisco. And David
listens to the podcast while making puppets. All right, well,
that's the perfect one to end on for Hans Christian Anderson.
So thank you guys for letting us know all the
interesting things you do, and if you want to write
(27:16):
into so let us know what you're up to or
to suggest other episodes. We are at History Podcast at
Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter at missed in History,
and we're on Facebook. And if you're having trouble hunting
down a good translation of Hand's Christian Anderson's works, you
might want to to be find a little solace in
(27:37):
an article that we have called books. Yeah that We'll
just tease you with that, and you can find that
by visiting our homepage at www dot how Stuff works
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Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
(28:00):
The housetop works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today
on iTunes,
Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from housetop
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
fair Downy and I'm Deblin a Chuck Rewarding, and we
have a story for you today. Now we are about
to begin, and you must attend. And when we get
(00:21):
to the end of the story, you will know more
than you do now about a very wicked hobgoblin. But
of a surprise, isn't it. Yes, But here's a twist
for you. We're actually not going to be talking about
hobgoblins and depth today, or are we, Sarah probably not
too in depth on the hobgoblins. No, we're actually going
to discuss the master of wicked creatures, snow queens, little
(00:45):
mermaids and ugly ducklings hands Christian Anderson, who is best
known as the father of the fairy tale and vying
for that spot actually with former podcast subjects The Brothers Grim.
So we're going to assume that most of you are
probably fairly familiar with some of Anderson's work. Encyclopedia Britannica
calls his fairy tales quote among the most frequently translated
(01:05):
works in all literary history, and I mean, you probably
read them in preschool, nursery schools, something like that, but
they're studied at all levels, even all the way up
to graduate school. They've been adapted into movies and plays
and songs. Some of the best known stories include The
Little Mermaid, The Red Shoes, Thumbalina, The Princess, and the
pa But in addition to his famous fairy tales, Anderson
(01:28):
wrote novels, plays, travelogs, so much material, in fact, he
was often criticized for overproducing, not something you usually here
about a writer. In Denmark, Anderson is considered a national hero,
fulfilling a fortune teller's prophecy no less. But outside of
his home country he's often a famous name with no background,
the author of the Ugly Duckling, or just that guy
(01:51):
from the Central Park statue, but nothing really more than that.
But it turns out that Anderson had a really fascinating,
often unsettling life, one with amazing professional success and intense
personal complications, to which will go into a little bit
appropriately enough, it all starts out a little bit like
a fairy tale, and we should note too, before we
(02:11):
get too much into it. We are going with the
Anglicized pronunciation of hands. Christian Anderson So He was born
April second, eighteen o five in a Densi, Denmark, and
he was the son of a shoemaker already found very
fairy tale sk who read to him from the Arabian nights.
His mother was an alcoholic washerwoman with very intense superstitions
(02:34):
that influenced Anderson a lot later in his life. Even
though he had an older half sister, she didn't live
with the family anymore, and he really grew up a solitary,
kind of strange child. He'd play with puppets for entertainment.
He had a big imagination, but didn't know too many people,
and from the start he had a lot of tragic
family baggage. One of his grandfathers had gone insane, a
(02:57):
grandmother had also been put in jail young for howing
too many illegitimate children, and after his father died at
the young age of thirty four, Anderson left school. At
some point. His mother, though, she was pretty worried about
her strange, awkward son's success and what his future would
be like, so she decided to take him to a
fortune teller. The woman read his mother's cards and Anderson's
(03:19):
coffee grounds and offered a somewhat surprising prediction, not surprising
to us now, but at the time she said, your
son will become a great man, and in honor of him,
Adenzia will one day be illuminated. So it reminded me
a little bit of former podcast subject Madame de Pompadour,
who also had a sort of surprising fortune as a
(03:40):
young girl, but pretty much on the virtue of that
prediction alone pluf Anderson's own really endless self confidence. He
left Adenisa at age fourteen for Copenhagen, and that was
a pretty big journey for this young boy. It was
a two day trip by coach and ship. He had
only third keen tollers to his name, which was not
(04:01):
very much money, no education, and no trade. So what
was he going to do When he got to Copenhagen.
He rented rooms and headed straight to the theater, where
he was really hoping he could wheedle his way into
some sort of career, an actor or a dancer, a singer. Instead, though,
he had what sounds to me like the ultimate big
(04:22):
city like little kid in a big city kind of
awkward moment. He runs into a ticket scalper outside of
the theater who hands him a ticket, Anderson, being this
naive boy, thinks that it's just a gift. You know,
He's going to get together the theater for free. When
he realized that he had actually entered into a business
transaction with this man, he flipped out, just ran away completely.
(04:45):
Didn't know what to think, but he still had a
lot of confidence and that really never went away. He
started targeting these famous singers and dancers at the theater
because he thought that they could help him find work
him up somehow. So he had often to go these
really horribly embarrassing sounding ordeals just to introduce himself. In
one case, he showed up at a dancers door and
(05:07):
was mistaken by her maid for a beggar, and then
when he was admitted anyway, he asked if he could
remove his boots and use his hat as an improvised
tambourine to demonstrate his dancing skills. She thought he was
crazy and threw him out immediately. Probably would. In another case,
he crashed the dinner party of an opera singer and
then just managed to make his way into the dining
(05:30):
room where they all were. He sang to them. He
recited poetryes. He even wept in front of them. Might
as well go all out right then as well, if
you're going to be the upstart performer. But this time
it really worked. The singer promised him lessons, other guests
put together enough money for him to study German, which
he would need to know if he was going to
study opera with this man. So he had some real gumption.
(05:53):
And I think an important thing to keep in mind
was that he was not some cute street kid. I mean,
that's probably what your imagining at this point. You might
have some sympathy for a cute little kid. He was tall,
he was lanky. He was described in most cases as
being terribly uncoordinated, almost comically uncoordinated. He had giant feet,
(06:14):
this huge nose, tiny eyes, and for these special appearances,
you know, when he was really trying to impress people,
he'd break out his best outfit, which was a communion suit.
He's fourteen years old at this point, so it's a
little bit small, and he's grown quite a bit since then. Um,
I mean, he must have been quite a sight, but
close aside. Things got even worse when his voice broke
(06:37):
only a few months into singing. Lessons. So at that
point his opera careers over and Anderson was advised to
go home and just learn a trade. In his memoirs,
he recalls considering suicide over wanting to go home. Fortunately
for him, though, there were other illustrious stains around who
were willing to give him a little bit of help.
He'd been given Latin lessons in Danish lessons, and he'd
(06:58):
get occasional work as a walk on at the Royal Theater,
and all the while he lived in the storeroom of
Madam's house at a reduced rate and costumed his little
puppets with begged scraps of cloth. So he was still
keeping up that imaginative work that he had been doing
all along. But many of his friends, poets, dramatists, he
(07:18):
was even friends with the discoverer of electromagnetism, helped him
out in various ways like this, but his greatest benefactor
ended up being Janis Colin, who was the director of
the Royal Theater. This guy obtained a stipend from the
King of Denmark to send Anderson to grammar school at
the age of seventeen. So a lot of people have
(07:40):
wondered how this boy you know, the shoemaker's son managed
such an amazing rise. And writer Yen's Jawrenson has suggested
Anderson was actually the illegitimate son of the Danish king
and that it explained how he got this um, this
convenient connection, this stipend. Even though a New Yorker article
by Anna and Jeffrey Frank calls the argument quote improbable.
(08:03):
It's just an interesting kind of another fairytale esque thing
to throw out our possibility. But either way, school was
a great opportunity for him, I mean, just naturally it's
a useful pursuit for an aspiring writer. Well, and it's
been suggested to that a lot of these people helped
him out because he was so enthusiastic about writing. But
his his writing was so bad, and he just could
(08:25):
barely write his own language. And I would imagine to
be daunting to start school when all the other kids
are ten to twelve years old. And to add to matters,
your teacher is a big bully who basically predicts quote
that you will end your days in a madhouse. Yeah,
he was not a nice guy, and consequently Anderson had
(08:45):
grammar school nightmares for the rest of his life, even
though it was certainly the uh the defining event in
his life and that it allowed him to go on
to become this great writer, it destroyed him in a
way to this, this constant fear of um, of performing
or not being able to perform in academic ways. But
(09:05):
after four years of instruction, Anderson did have enough of
an education to return to Copenhagen, start studying Latin and
Greek with a tutor, probably a more sympathetic tutor, and
enroll in the university and start composing real poetry, poetry
from somebody who who knows the language. His first hit
poem was published in a newspaper when he was twenty one,
(09:27):
and after that he started to get a little bit
of success. His first major work came out in eighteen
twenty nine. He followed up with a semi autobiographical novel,
or a few semi out of biographical novels, actually, including
o t a Danish romance from eighteen thirty six, Only
a Fiddler from eighteen thirty seven, And then there were
some popular plays, like an eighteen forty work on the
(09:48):
evils of slavery called the Mulatto, And all the while
he was traveling regularly to producing these humorous travelogs along
the way. And when you consider the danger of travel
in the first half the nineteenth century, I mean, we've
got highwaymen, bad roads. You could just stumble upon a
local uprising. It's really amazing to me that Anderson went
(10:10):
to so many places. He visited Paris and Dresden, Rome, Naples, Malta, Constantinople, Athens,
where he got to dine with the King of Greece.
It's especially surprising, though, when you consider that Anderson suffered
from a seemingly disabling list of phobias and fears. I mean,
just to name a few, he was afraid of dogs.
(10:32):
He was also afraid of fire. He'd actually carry a
rope with him for a quick escape in case one
broke out. He was also afraid of rabies. He was
afraid of being mistaken for dead while asleep and being
buried alive. That's a really creepy one. It is creepy
and um, I mean, nobody would want that to happen
to them, of course, but it is maybe a strange,
(10:54):
all consuming fear, but perhaps the worst of all for
a traveler. He was a goora phobic, and he needed
somebody to accompany him across large open areas. So we've
got all of that to deal with. But it's in
the middle of the success this travel and his growing
literary fame that Anderson decided to start writing down shorter
(11:15):
stories for children, almost as a release from the literary
scrutiny of his more serious work like the novels and
the plays and all of that. But before his first
volume was published. His first volume of short Stories or
Children's Stories, was published in eighteen thirty five. Anderson wrote
to a friend saying, quote, I have set down a
few of the fairy tales I myself used to enjoy
(11:38):
as a child, and which I believe aren't well known.
I've written them exactly as I would have told them
to a child. He told another friend, quote, I'm beginning
to write some fairy tales for children. I want to
win the next generation. You see. Most of the stories
from his first collection were retellings, but as Anderson began
writing more volumes, his own unique voice started to come
(11:58):
out more and more. While some stories had folk roots
like The Princess and the Pea, and others had literary beginnings.
For example, The Emperor's New Clothes came from a fourteenth
century Spanish story. The Retailing shared a similar style with
his original tales. He'd use spoken language and idioms. For example, um,
a type of Danish that was neither formal nor literary.
(12:20):
So you might compare this to the way Mark Twain
wrote spoken English years later. Yeah, and he'd also consider
his audience too, that he was writing for children. He'd
avoid difficult words. When he used them, he would explain
them thoroughly, and the same went for hard to understand concepts.
Elios Breddorff gave a good example of how Anderson made
(12:41):
vague expressions like the whole world more understandable to kids
by adding something that was very tangible and real. So
the example he used was in The Snow Queen, the
queen promises a child freedom, plus the whole world and
a new pair of skate. So if your kid you
can get behind that a new pair of it makes sense.
(13:01):
It's also kind of funny too for the adults who
are reading it, because that's the way kids are going
to think. He also really identified a lot with his
outcast heroines and heroes. Anderson was described by one of
his acquaintances, for example, as a long, thin fleshless, a
boneless man, wriggling and bending like a lizard with a
(13:21):
lantern jawed, cadaverous visage. So in a way he could
almost be the ugly duck Lake description for sure. And then,
maybe most famously, he didn't feel compelled to keep things
saccharine for kids. In fact, he wrote his stories for
children and adults, saying that quote, the grown up person
should be allowed to listen as well. Yeah, and really
(13:43):
the best example of this might be The Red Shoes,
they think, where the heroine of the story is punished
for her obsessive love of her fine rich she's just
the little girl too, and in consequence have to have
her feet chopped off to stop the shoes from forcing
her to dance. And things really don't end there. I mean,
that's I think usually where you think the story ends. Instead,
(14:07):
the amputated feet keep dancing independently and bar her from church,
and relief only comes when, at the end of the story,
alone at home with her wooden legs and her crutches,
the repentant girl seas an angel who comes and forgives her,
at which point her heartbirth. So I mean, that's an
(14:27):
intense story. It is I mean, it's kind of dark
and disturbing when we look at it now, But I
mean I wonder if kids process it the same way
when they take it in. You know, I think I've
read the story or had it read to me when
I was younger, and I don't remember being at all
disturbed by it. Well, I actually remember this story or
a variation of it, around the time the Kate Bush
(14:49):
album The Red Shoes came out, But it was always
a story of a trade. You know, a girl wants
to be a good dancer, so she takes these shoes.
It's not just the little girl who happens to really
love her shoes. That takes it up a notch. It
does intensify it a little bit, and it's you know,
it's tragic, and some of those stories are they have
that dark element to them, but others are actually really
(15:12):
happy and they contain beauty and goodwill and triumph and
or they're funny all in all, Anderson had a hundred
and fifty six fairy tales published during his lifetime. Other
texts were printed after his death and that raised a
total to two hundred and twelve. And he write many
of these stories really quickly. The Snow Queen, one of
his longest, was written, set, printed bound, and published in
(15:36):
only sixteen days, which I find amazing. It's amazing and
maybe a little discouraging to probably a lot of writers
out there. English translations of the Fairy Tales started popping
up about ten years after the first Danish volume. Um,
even though it's worth noting that just because you know
Anderson's stories, just because you've read a translation, I mean
(15:57):
we of course have only read translations, doesn't necessarily mean
that you know his words. And that's because a lot
of the translations are considered to be pretty bad. One
of the early English translations was based not on the
original language but on a German edition. That's never a
great way to do a translation. And then other translators
(16:17):
just would edit the stories that they saw fit. And
I mean that's one thing. These are fairy tales, they're
based on folk tales. They change, and Anderson himself did that.
But it's another if it's a volume of Hans Christian
Andersen's stories and they've been switched around. Some very true.
But Anderson shouldn't be mistaken for just the quiet fairy
(16:38):
tale author. He's often depicted as I mean, you'll see
photos of a seated Anderson surrounded by kids, like he's
some sort of father goose almost. But he was intensely
interested in fame, both in cultivating it for himself and
seeking out artists that he admired, kind of a groupie
almost in a way. He was that that drive to
do that from his teenage years, and Copenhagen only grew
(17:01):
with his success. For example, when he was still only
known within Denmark, he showed up at Victor Hugo's door,
and then later as his fame grew and he really
had more opportunities to meet some of the more famous
people in Europe. He encountered From's list Balzac, Heinrich Kaina,
who was one of the few of these people who
recognized him first, Schumann, Rossini, Richard Wagner, Duma, pir and
(17:28):
Fief and the Grimm brothers too, which I think, I mean,
I would have loved to have seen that encounter. They had,
of course already published a lot of their work a
couple decades before. So, uh, Anderson meets the Grooms and
you think they had like a dance off or something.
You know, we can imagine some sort of um like
fairy tale contest throw down other famous people. He knew
(17:51):
he had an actual friendship with Dickens, but it was
cut short when he accepted an invitation to dickens house
and then proceeded to stay for five weeks weeks. When
he finally left, Dickens put up a placard in the
room that said Hans Anderson slept in this room for
five weeks, which seemed to the family ages. And yeah,
apparently Dickens dropped him after that, and Anderson didn't really
(18:14):
know exactly what he had done wrong, you know what
had happened. Other invitations came from the Rothschilds, from Prince Albert.
I don't think he actually visited Albert and Victoria. He
did visit the Spa with the King and Queen of Denmark,
so you know he was He was circulating in these
grand grand circles. And this fame hungry and celebrity loving
(18:36):
aspect of Anderson's personality is really important and it did
last his entire life. I mean, upon his very first
success in Denmark, he said quote, I was now a
happy human being. I possessed the soul of a poet
and the heart of youth, all houses began to open
to me. I flew from circle to circle. In his
(18:56):
early thirties, when his work was gaining an international fall wayne,
he wrote to a friend, quote, my name is gradually
beginning to shine, and that is the only thing for
which I live. I covet honor and glory in the
same way as the miser covets gold. But for a
man who's flying from circle to circle. Anderson didn't have
many close relationships at all, did he? No, not really.
(19:18):
I mean Janic's colin, who we mentioned earlier, was a
true friend, and his son, Edward, became a trusted business
manager of Anderson's and then later in life too. He
made close friendships with a couple connected Jewish families from Copenhagen,
the Heinrichs and the milk yours Um. They nursed him.
(19:39):
They were his companions to the to the very end.
But he never had a serious relationship. He never owned
a house. He would rent rooms. He'd stay with friends
like Dickens. I mean that gives you a pretty good
picture of the way he would exactly. He just needed
a place to crash and decided to choose Dickens house.
But he would form the he's um. Instead of forming
(20:01):
close relationships, he'd get these intense crushes on the daughters
and the sisters of friends. And in fact, his most
famous crush was another kind of celebrity idolization. It was
Jenny Lynde, who was a famous singer of the day.
She was called the Nightingale, and he would write love letters.
He proposed to her, he proposed to other women, but
(20:22):
he's supposedly entirely avoided sex, and consequently, since nineteen o one,
scholars have really investigated Anderson's sexuality a lot and tried
to figure out, um, you know, was he even gay
since he was avoiding relationships with women beyond these over
the top sort of proposals. Um. Another thing to consider
(20:44):
he had a late life celebrity crush on the dancer
Harold Shop, but it's likely in most scholars, I think,
believed that he had no romantic relationships whatsoever. So despite
being one of the best known authors of his day,
he was also very much afraid of not being taken
seriously by fellow writers. So it gratified him immensely that
(21:04):
in his old age, writers like Thackeray, Ibsen and Longfellow
all really admired his work. On August fourth, eighteen seventy five,
he died of liver cancer in Copenhagen while still receiving
visitors to the very end, and since then his life
has been thoroughly researched. His autobiography, The fairy Tale of
My Life detailed many of the early encounters in Copenhagen,
(21:27):
and also an undiscovered memoir came out in the nineteen twenties.
He also, of course left behind a large body of literature.
Literary work. There's two hundred twelve stories we mentioned, six travelogs,
six novels, and thirty six plays. And in addition to that,
Anderson wrote about fourteen letters the day, most of which
(21:47):
are still surviving because because of all this writing this
constant output. Edward Colin accused him of quote mad deplorable productivity,
and also told him quote it is really extraordinarily selfish
of you to assume such an interest in you among people.
But maybe it's not so crazy after all. I mean,
people have taken a great interest in preserving his work
(22:11):
and details of his life. The Adensis City Museum, for example,
in the H. C. Anderson Center at the University of
Southern Denmark, have published the letters, and in the director
of the Hans Christian Anderson Center, published a day by
day timeline of his life, which I think contains some
really interesting points. It contains very detailed, as you would
(22:34):
imagine a day by daytimeline would be. But my favorite
Anderson collection is actually his paper cuttings. I didn't know
that he was such a master of paper cutting until
I started looking at pictures that the museum's website. You
can find them on the Adensist City Museum's website just
like I did. But um, they're they're kind of disturbing.
(22:56):
In some cases, they'll be beautiful hearts and bow arenas
and things that you would maybe expect from this man
who told fairy tales. And then it would it'll be
a a tower with a man hanging from it, you know,
really dark stuff that again you might expect from this
teller of fairy tales. And I think Dickens's son to Henry,
(23:17):
who mostly remembered their long term house as being kind
of a strange man, also remembered this quote beautiful accomplishment
he had. He could just whip out these paper cuts
in no time, and um, yeah, really check them out there.
They're pretty interesting, and in a way, those simple and
really beautiful, sometimes disturbing cuttings are kind of reminiscent of
(23:40):
his stories too. On Anderson's seventieth birthday, the London Daily
News wrote of his ability to create life from simple things,
and they wrote, it has been given to Hans Andersen
to fashion beings. It may almost be said of a
new kind, to breathe life into the toys of childhood
and the forms of antique superstition. The tin soldier, the
(24:00):
ugly duckling, the mermaid, the match girl are no less
real and living in their way than Othello or Mr
Pickwick or Helen of Troy. It seemed a very humble
field in which to work, this of nursery, legend and
childish fantasy. Yet the Danish poet alone, of all who
have labored in it, has succeeded in recovering and reproducing
(24:20):
the kind of imagination which constructed the old fairy tales.
I think that's a nice way to to wrap up.
And um, I mean to me, somebody like the Little
Mermaid is maybe more real than Mr Pickwick or Helen
of Troy. And I think part of that is because
these stories have become so common in other ways too.
(24:41):
I mean, when I think of the Little Mermaid, I
think of Ariel and Eric getting married with all of
the mur folk in attendance, and not in all their
little crustacean friends exactly. Yes, under the sea happiness, not
the Little Mermaid dissolving into sea foam and then having
to work for three years to get her soul. But
they're worth going back and reading, I think too, if
(25:02):
you haven't checked out one for a while, I've got
to figure out if if I have my hands on
a good translation. Now. I never realized that with an issue,
but um, yeah, I think I'll be. I'll be prousing
some Anderson's stories. Yeah, it does make me curious to
go back and check them out. So I think for
Listener Mail today we might include a few more of
our listen while things. I don't know. It seemed appropriate
(25:25):
for this fairy Tale episode podcast, So we're gonna start
off with listener Ivy, who listens to the podcast while
she walks her retired racing greyhound. And then there's Blair
in Montreal, who listens while working at a research library
at McGill University. She says, quote sometimes it's all I
can do not to rush up into the stacks and
find more information on the topic. I like the sound
(25:47):
of that one. And Kate from New York listens on
long road trips with her mother to break up the
Barry Manilow and the Carpenter music and Courtney and Santa
Monica listens while she works on animations as a film
Peter listens while making cricket bats in the UK. And
Heather from California listens while she's grading diamonds, which I love.
(26:09):
She writes quote, if you ever purchased or received a solitaire,
it likely has a report attached to it. That report
is what the appraisers used to price the diamond. And
Lisa from Sweden, I think this one might have to
top everything by default. Lisa Firm, Sweden listened while she
gave birth to her third child, specifically to the five
(26:30):
historical Hoaxes and Orson Wells episodes, which I think that
destines her child for being a hoaxter. Do you think
I think so? Well? I hope not, but that's interesting. Emma,
a psychology student from New Zealand, listens while running rats
through a May's task or running pigeons through their experiment.
Angie listens while analyzing historic and prehistoric artifacts in California. Currently,
(26:54):
she said that she's helping excavate historic privies and houses
within the financial district of downtown San Francisco. And David
listens to the podcast while making puppets. All right, well,
that's the perfect one to end on for Hans Christian Anderson.
So thank you guys for letting us know all the
interesting things you do, and if you want to write
(27:16):
into so let us know what you're up to or
to suggest other episodes. We are at History Podcast at
Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter at missed in History,
and we're on Facebook. And if you're having trouble hunting
down a good translation of Hand's Christian Anderson's works, you
might want to to be find a little solace in
(27:37):
an article that we have called books. Yeah that We'll
just tease you with that, and you can find that
by visiting our homepage at www dot how Stuff works
dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
(28:00):
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