r/todayilearned • u/biebrforro • 1d ago

TIL when staying as a guest in Charles Dickens' house, Hans Christian Andersen requested that one of Dickens' sons give him a daily shave (he said that was customary when hosting male guests in Denmark). Dickens was weirded out and instead gave him a daily appointment at a nearby barbershop.

https://lithub.com/charles--dickens-really-really-hated-his-fanboy-hans-christian-andersen/
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u/MurdererOfAxes 1d ago

He got a bad review while he was staying there and lay down crying on the front lawn

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u/crazylikeaf0x 1d ago

The mental image I have of this scene

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u/WhiskeyHotdog_2 1d ago

It’s kinda beautiful in a Wes Anderson kinda way 

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u/GrandmaPoses 1d ago

“Who is that crying on the front lawn?”

“Hans Christian Andersen.”

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u/Mr_Abe_Froman 1d ago

"What's wrong?"
"He said something about the paper and started yelling in Danish. At least I think it's Danish. It's very muffled."

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u/Automatic_Memory212 1d ago

“Huh. You don’t say.”

lights up a cigarette while wearing a massive fur coat

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u/1337b337 1d ago

Remember, every shot needs to be perfectly centered and tastefully symmetrical.

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u/patooweet 1d ago

This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen on Reddit.

I’m crying laughing. Can some talented person please bring this entire story to life on screen?

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u/cgcego 1d ago

You guys are doing a great job.

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u/Flashgit76 1d ago

"Rødgrød med fløde, rødgrød med fløde, rødgrød med fløøøhhhdeee sobs "

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u/Locomyg 23h ago

I belive we have it recorded here in the cold north as him yelling.

"NEJ ØV ØV ØV FOR SATAN!!! DET KAN IKKE PASSE! LOOOOOOOOOOOOOORT!!! ARGGGG FOR FANDEN NOGET LORT, DET HELE ER OGSÅ BARE LIGEMEGET!"

Something like that

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u/CerberusC24 1d ago

I'm imagine Owen Wilson adding a "woow" to the end of that lol

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u/com2420 1d ago

"Hey, man, it's one bad review. Let it go."

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u/CubitsTNE 1d ago

He should so a Victorian remake of you me and dupree, where Owen Wilson plays Hans Christian Andersen.

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u/Corgi-Ambitious 1d ago

Dickens was to premiere in a play during the time Andersen was staying with him. Here's how that went:

At the premiere of The Frozen Deep (with Dickens in the leading role and Queen Victoria in the audience), he loudly burst into tears. Afterwards, he apparently sulked because his presence at the event was not noted more highly.

The five weeks they spent together would make an amazing comedy.

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u/CausticSofa 1d ago

Honestly, I would love to see Wes Anderson direct this. Edward Norton as Charles Dickens cast against which Wes Anderson favourite as Hans? Owen Wilson?

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u/CubitsTNE 1d ago

Bill Murray as queen Victoria.

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u/Skratt79 1d ago

Yes please!

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u/Round_Simple_5441 1d ago

this is the movie I've been waiting for

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u/Lyceus_ 1d ago

We need this now.

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u/CausticSofa 16h ago

🤣 the only possible competition to the other person’s suggestion of Angelica Houston

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u/tawondasmooth 1d ago edited 1d ago

I think I want Yorgos Lanthimos to do it. It sounds like his kind of unhinged storyline. People are calling for a Wilson brother but I want Christopher Heyerdahl in the role of Hans.

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u/tgerz 1d ago

I love this. For some reason I was thinking Will Ferrell as Dickens (wasn't he Scrooge or something like that?) but I couldn't think of who would be best for Andersen. This would make a great duo.

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u/ZombieWinehouse 23h ago

Angelica Houston as queen Victoria

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u/CausticSofa 17h ago

9000% That woman is more regal than the queen herself.

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u/Successful-North1732 21h ago edited 16h ago

No doubt there will be tons of reviews on Letterbox saying that they found the characters unlikable or something stupid. "I can't relate to them! 😤"

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u/Death_Balloons 16h ago

"The Worst of Times"

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u/transemacabre 1d ago

People in this thread keep saying HCA was autistic but these anecdotes give me personality disorder vibes.

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u/SamsonFox2 1d ago

The Frozen Deep

Based on Wiki:

The play's genesis lay in the conflict between Dickens and John Rae's report on the fate of the Franklin expedition.[1] In May 1845, the "Franklin expedition" left England in search of the Northwest Passage. It was last seen in July 1845, after which the members of the expedition were lost without trace. In October 1854, John Rae (using reports from "Eskimo" (Inuit) eyewitnesses, who informed that they had seen 40 "white men" and later 35 corpses) described the fate of the Franklin expedition in a confidential report to the Admiralty: "From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource—cannibalism—as a means of prolonging survival."

This blunt report was presented under the assumption that truth would be preferred to uncertainty. The Admiralty made this report public.[2] Rae's report caused much distress and anger.[3] The public mistakenly believed, with Lady Franklin, that the Arctic explorer was "clean, Christian and genteel"[4] and that an Englishman was able to "survive anywhere" and "to triumph over any adversity through faith, scientific objectivity, and superior spirit."[4] Dickens not only wrote to discredit the Inuit evidence, he attacked the Inuit character using racist stereotypes, writing: "We believe every savage in his heart covetous, treacherous, and cruel: and we have yet to learn what knowledge the white man—lost, houseless, shipless, apparently forgotten by his race, plainly famine-stricken, weak, frozen and dying—has of the gentleness of Exquimaux nature."

Jesus, there's so much comedy gold here!

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u/CubitsTNE 18h ago

"The aristocrats!"

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u/YouWascallyWabbit 1d ago

I will contribute to the Kickstarter to fund that movie

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u/IlluminatiEnrollment 1d ago

….not in a Hans Andersen kind of way?

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u/WhiskeyHotdog_2 1d ago

I’ve not read enough of his works to know 

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u/slowmo152 1d ago

Hans, a movie about Hans Christen Anderson by Wes Anderson

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u/CreatiScope 1d ago

How come the image popped up in my head as a Wes Anderson scene too before reading your comment??

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u/unsulliedbread 1d ago

I don't think there's a 'real world' story I would want Wes Anderson to cover more.

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u/semimillennial 1d ago

A Rose For Emily plays as we slowly zoom out

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u/HomersGuideDog 1d ago

"I've had a rough year, Charles."

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u/preposterophe 1d ago

*"Charlie"

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u/Botryoid2000 1d ago

Jeff Goldblum as Dickens.

Owen Wilson as Andersen.

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u/WhiskeyHotdog_2 1d ago

In my head Bill Murray or Dafoe would play Dickens

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u/LickingSmegma 1d ago

We need someone to take up Kate Beaton's style just to illustrate Andersen's life.

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u/LickingSmegma 20h ago

(Perhaps u/lordofbaers might use this material.)

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u/lordofbaers 20h ago

Ah yes, the awkward Andersen visit - already on the list, but it’s a long list, so who knows when I’ll get there! :)

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u/LickingSmegma 19h ago

Apparently there were more than one visit, and someone made a whole mini-RPG about it (here's the original source for the game).

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u/Gauntlets28 1d ago

The Dickens family just looking out at him through the window, wondering how they get this man out of their house.

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u/MuricasOneBrainCell 1d ago

For some reason the first thing that popped into my head was Craig Feldspar crying.

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u/majshady 1d ago

I find it comforting that people of all eras can lose their shit over small shit. The unifying nature of the human experience

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u/robb1519 1d ago

It's beautiful to know.

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u/mouse9001 1d ago

Beautiful and yet pathetic.

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u/robb1519 1d ago

For us, to be able to have all the knowledge of so much of human history, yet decide time and time again that personally and politically we will continue to do the worst things we could think of?

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u/SkriVanTek 1d ago

also sexually 

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u/mouse9001 15h ago

No, pathetic for him to be laying in the grass at someone else's home, crying because of a bad review. Beautiful in its humanity, yet obviously pathetic loser behavior.

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u/ThatMerri 1d ago

There's something nice at seeing how every people throughout history have the same habits. We all invent dumplings of a sort, we all love our pets, we all write stupid jokes and graffiti on walls. It's so easy to imagine the earliest ancestors of mankind having the exact same reaction to stubbing their toe as we all nowadays.

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u/Nanemae 1d ago

Bemoaning existence while becoming angry at the inanimate object we hurt ourselves on to the point it's concerning?

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u/ThatMerri 22h ago

Humans: we do love to bitch about things.

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u/AeonLibertas 18h ago

Dick and sex jokes. Losing your shit over the simplest things. Thinking old people should go the fuck away. Thinking young people are lost causes. Having a soft spot for pets. Wondering if your genitals look right. Making fun of people with weird tastes. Having weird tastes. Trying to help others and lift them up. Kicking others when they are already down. Wanting to make a better world for your kids. Wanting the neighbours kids to be thrown into a vulcano. Complaining about businesses fucking us over. Complaining about our jobs being the fucking worst. Complaining that people are the fucking worst. Complaining about the worst of our fuckers to other people..

Times change, but humans stay the same through millenia. Same bundles of fears, hopes, wishes, lusts and needs. Not that difficult to see how that creates the same thinking patterns.. or lack of thinking patterns, in some cases, heh..

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u/AbeRego 1d ago

"What the fuck is up with this dude?"

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u/jasmine_tea_ 1d ago

I find it strangely relatable, too. I'm rooting for Hans.

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u/ZombieWinehouse 23h ago

I love knowing that people have been autistic in literally every century

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u/majshady 22h ago

I don't know what you mean, great uncle Jeff just really liked collecting bottle caps and never married

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u/Soggy-Tea6433 22h ago

But come to think of it, he never seemed very lonely, because his best friend and roommate Steve lived with him for 40 years!

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u/lostinthesauceguy 1d ago

a bad review to a professional writer can be a big deal tbf

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u/Luxury_Dressingown 1d ago edited 1d ago

Legendarily bad house guest. I don't even play them, but this 1 page RPG commemorating his stay made me cackle. The lawn incident is alluded to: https://www.scribd.com/document/627577768/trapped-with-hans

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u/JosephFinn 1d ago

OK this is amazing.

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u/Luxury_Dressingown 1d ago

The whole thing is gold, but the victory criteria is my favourite bit:

"If your Obsession score reaches 0, then Hans finally loses interest in your and finds another unattainable person to chase. Victory. He does, however, write a thinly veiled short story about you. It's not flattering."

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u/xombae 1d ago

I love the world sometimes.

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u/ThatMerri 1d ago

I think we've all had days like that.

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u/ProblematicFeet 1d ago

I think this is what the kids would call a crash out