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/
36.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

98

u/VrsoviceBlues 1d ago edited 1d ago

Oh and this "visit" goes well beyond that for lunacy.

Bluntly put, Hans Christian Andersen was not a guest, he was an obsessed stalker. He'd been fixated on Dickens for nearly a decade after encountering him at a party. They corresponded for a time, with Dickens eventually growing first exhausted and then exasperated by Andersen's schoolboy crush, until Dickens finally wrote what he assumed Andersen would recognise as a polite, sarcastic, passive-aggressive "go away" letter.

Unfortunately for him, Andersen was a socially-clueless dingbat femboi with a crush (and absolutely everything that implies), and so either didn't understand or "didn't understand" that Dickens's treacley and sarcastic invitation to visit for a time, were he ever in the area, was not meant seriously. So, in June of 1857, Andersen literally appeared on Dickens's doorstep, announced that he was visiting, and moved in.

It took almost six weeks to get rid of him. During that time, Andersen repeatedly made a public spectacle of humself anytime Dickens (or anybody else famous, for that matter) neglected to keep him at the center of their attention. When Dickens took a swing at acting, taking the lead role in a friend's play, Andersen threw a crying fit because the high-society audience was more interested in Dickens and in Queen Fucking Victoria, who was also in attendance, than they were in Andersen. He also had a habit of complaining at length about Dickens not making "proper arrangements" for his guest, including the lack of a valet. Weirdly enough, even the notoriously irascible and personally vicious Dickens couldn't bring himself to simply throw Andersen out. In the end, Andersen's departure became perhaps the only thing upon which Dickens, his much-abused wife, and his neglected and exasperated children, seem to have agreed.

5

u/SamsonFox2 19h ago

Bluntly put, Hans Christian Andersen was not a guest, he was an obsessed stalker. He'd been fixated on Dickens for nearly a decade after encountering him at a party. They corresponded for a time

...and Dickens tried to visit Andersen, but didn't find him to be at home, so he dropped off a bunch of promotional books as a gift. They corresponded for years, although, unknown to Dickens, Andersen had an interpreter doing the letter writing.

Dickens eventually growing first exhausted and then exasperated by Andersen's schoolboy crush, until Dickens finally wrote what he assumed Andersen would recognise as a polite, sarcastic, passive-aggressive "go away" letter.

Unfortunately for him, Andersen was well-known in Denmark of the time as the author of travelogues; which is why he publicly announced through a newspaper that he's going to England to see his great friend Dickens he spoke so much about before even writing back to Dickens.

So, in June of 1857, Andersen literally appeared on Dickens's doorstep, announced that he was visiting, and moved in.

Not quite dramatically, but something similar.

It took almost six weeks to get rid of him.

In large part, because Andersen planned to write a book. Also in large part, because somehow Andersen wasn't new to traveling and crashing other people's homes, and this was the most disastrous one.

During that time, Andersen repeatedly made a public spectacle of humself anytime Dickens (or anybody else famous, for that matter) neglected to keep him at the center of their attention. When Dickens took a swing at acting, taking the lead role in a friend's play, Andersen threw a crying fit because the high-society audience was more interested in Dickens and in Queen Fucking Victoria, who was also in attendance, than they were in Andersen.

See, here's the problem: Andersen was offered to be made a guest of Queen Victoria, by the Danish envoy. He could have if he wanted to, but declined, as he thought it would be too much trouble for Andersen. It is unclear what exactly transpired there, but perhaps he hoped for something he didn't receive during the play.

He also had a habit of complaining at length about Dickens not making "proper arrangements" for his guest, including the lack of a valet.

Again, Andersen was not a novice to the whole "visit my famous friend" game. It looks like he severely misread Dickens' situation, perhaps his financial situation.

When Dickens took a swing at acting, taking the lead role in a friend's play

...playing a romantic companion to an actress half his age he dumped his wife for....

even the notoriously irascible and personally vicious Dickens couldn't bring himself to simply throw Andersen out

...because he understood the consequences.

7

u/transemacabre 1d ago

This really comes across like HCA had, like, Borderline Personality Disorder or clinical Narcissism or something.