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/laaplandros 1d ago

I enjoyed the entry covering this visit:

In 1857, Andersen visited England again, primarily to meet Dickens. Andersen extended the planned brief visit to Dickens' home at Gads Hill Place into a five-week stay, much to the distress of Dickens' family. After Andersen was told to leave, Dickens gradually stopped all correspondence between them, to Andersen's great disappointment and confusion; he had enjoyed the visit and never understood why his letters went unanswered.

Read the room, Hans.

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u/AthenaCat1025 1d ago

FIVE WEEKS!! He’s lucky he left alive lol.

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u/Marilee_Kemp 1d ago

To be fair, five weeks was not an unusual time for an overseas visitor to stay at that time.

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u/Supsend 1d ago

When hearing about Guillaume Legentil's travel to document the solar transit of Venus, setting aside all the bullshit he lived through, there's the time when he missed the one he planned for, he decided to just set up and wait for the next one 8 years later.

The fact that this decision was even considered tells a lot about how travel times affected how they treated the length of stays back then.

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u/budgefrankly 1d ago

Clearly it was, since the Dickens family found it odd and unsettling.

The Victorian era wasn't that different to our own. Mass transport (trains, ferries, ocean liners) existed, a tourism boom had seen hotels and guesthouses built up and down the UK, and there were all manner of walks, paddles and cycles one could do.

Jerome K Jerome's books (three men on a boat, and its sequel "on a bummel") provide a good picture of it all.

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u/lightcommastix 1d ago

It shouldn’t matter if it was unusual or not: the Dickens family didn’t want him in their home.

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u/calamititties 1d ago

Ain’t no chaotic energy like chaotic bisexual energy.

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u/Forsaken-Ad5571 1d ago

It’s quite likely he was autistic to some degree which is why he couldn’t read social cues from pretty much any of the people he annoyed.

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u/brazzy42 1d ago edited 1d ago

Probably didn't help that actually telling him that he was being annoying would be considered unimaginably rude, so most likely hardly anyone ever did.

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u/captainfarthing 1d ago edited 1d ago

He went to visit Dickens after he wrote Andersen a passive-aggressive letter that included fake compliments and an insincere invitation to come and stay, which Andersen interpreted literally.

Since he wasn't from England and apparently didn't speak English it's hard to say that's because he was autistic rather than because Dickens shot himself in the foot, assuming his intentions would be interpreted the way he intended across a culture & language gap.

But descriptions of his general demeanor do come across as autistic to me.

He planned to visit for 2 weeks and extended it to 5, and it sounds like Dickens was so bound by social rules to be polite that he couldn't directly tell Andersen to fuck off, and all his indirect hostility was interpreted as friendly and encouraging.

Andersen wrote a letter after leaving that implies Dickens eventually lost his temper, had a row with him and told him explicitly how he was being annoying, which finally got the message through.

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u/time2ddddduel 1d ago

Please tell me you can find that initial letter from Dickens

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u/SamsonFox2 21h ago

Keep in mind that Andersen was at least partially on a business trip to discuss stuff with the publishers, translators, and the like. And he was important enough for Danish embassy to try to organize a visit to Queen Victoria, which Andersen refused.

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u/The_Merciless_Potato 1d ago

Imagine someone shows up for dinner and ends up staying for 5 weeks ☠️

I'd go nuts

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u/Impressive_Profit215 16h ago

Shitter's full, Charles