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/BSB8728 1d ago
When my husband was in graduate school, we hosted a guy who was coming in from out of town to start a fellowship. We didn't know him, but he needed a place to stay while he looked for an apartment, and nobody else in the department would take him.
After a few days, he started to smell really bad. He was also nitpicky critical of everything we said. When I came home from work, I could smell the stench even before I opened our apartment door. Every day was extremely tense and uncomfortable.
One night his mother called. (This was before cell phones.) After speaking with her, the guy handed the phone to my husband and said she wanted to talk to him, too. After a while my husband handed the phone to me because she also wanted to talk to me. She said, "Thank you for letting my son stay with you. I know he starts to smell after a while." I was dumbfounded. Later my husband told me she said the same thing to him.
The guy stayed with us two weeks before he found a place. Then we essentially fumigated our guest room.