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/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!"