The story of Hans Christian Andersen, a children’s story writer who was afraid of children

Although few people know it, Hans Christian Andersen is one of the most famous children’s story writers in history. In real life, this Dane was very extravagant and his habits intrigued many people. Andersen himself did not consider himself a writer for children, which is why he refused the proposal to create a monument surrounded by children. Shortly before his death, he asked a composer to create a march for his funeral that would set a childlike rhythm. He did it because he was sure that way he would invite more children to his farewell.

We, from incredible.clubwe love Andersen’s short stories, but we didn’t know that his own life could serve as the basis for such a passionate story.

“In 1805, in Odense, a young shoemaker and his wife lived in a small room. He was only 22 years old, with an amazing intelligence and a poetic temperament; she, 4 years older, didn’t know much about the world, but she had a big heart. The man had just established himself as a shoemaker’s teacher and built the shoe shop and the double bed by himself, using only the boards that had previously been used as Conde Trampe’s coffin. As a souvenir, only the black fabric of the catafalque remained.

On April 2, 1805, in the same place full of flowers and candelabra where the dead Count had been, there was a little boy screaming, full of life, and that little boy was me, Hans Christian Andersen”.

This is how the Dane describes his birth in an autobiographical book called the tale of my life🇧🇷

The house where the writer spent his childhood

Despite the poverty and times of crisis that the family had to face, the first years of Andersen’s life were very happy. His father, Hans Andersen, adored his son and they spent a lot of time together. In addition, his father loved books, always read him fairy tales, made toys and painted pictures. The writer inherited his father’s love for handicrafts: he knew how to sew very well and cut figures of animals and fantastic scenes out of paper.

The author had difficulties with school. Andersen was an intelligent teenager, but he had problems with writing – until the end of his life he continued to make many mistakes. Today, what he had would be called dyslexia. Sometimes there were so many errors that editors couldn’t bear to read manuscripts through to the end, so Andersen had to hire women to rewrite his works before they were sent to the publisher.

Andersen had no friends; the other children didn’t want to play with such a strange and nervous boy. His only friend, according to himself, was the future king of Denmark, Frederick VI, with whom the writer maintained communication throughout his life.

Monument to the writer in his hometown, Odense

In 1812, Andersen’s father, Hans, had to fight in the war. He came back after 2 years, completely sick. A few years later, he died, and the family plunged into an abyss of poverty. Andersen had to drop out of school and take up work as an apprentice shoemaker, a job he hated. What he really liked was the theater and books. At 14, he packed his bags and left for Copenhagen with just 13 rixdalers in his pocket.

The first book published by H. C. Andersen

The first years in the capital were very hard for the future writer, and he literally had to survive. Hans Christian had a beautiful soprano voice, so he managed to join the chorus of the Royal Theater and lived on a modest salary. However, in a short time his voice began to fail and he had to leave work.

The teenager wanted to be a dancer, but his physique did not allow it. Andersen was tall, long-legged and long-armed, and very lean. According to scholars, the writer had Marfan syndrome.

One day, Andersen showed the director of the royal theater, Jonas Collin, a play he had written. The director realized that the boy had talent and therefore asked the King of Denmark, Frederick VI, for a certain amount of money for Andersen’s training. Unfortunately, he didn’t stay long because he started to get bullied by his peers. Upon seeing this, Collin arranged for him to take private lessons.

In 1829, Andersen’s first book was published. It wasn’t a book of short stories, but a fantastic story called A walk from the Holmen Channel to the eastern tip of the island of Amager🇧🇷 This work brought him considerable success.

A year after the publication of his first book, Andersen, then 25 years old, took his first trip. In the city of Faaborg, he stayed at his colleague Christian Voigt’s house for 3 days and quickly fell in love with his sister, Riborg. It was with her that he lived his first romance. However, she was engaged. He had to come to terms with the situation, but he later stated that he never forgot about it. When the writer passed away, a letter from Riborg was found in his chest, which he had kept for 45 years. Jonas Collin burned the message unread.

Andersen kept Riborg Voigt’s letter for 45 years

In 1831, the writer made his first trip abroad. He went to Germany. A few years later Andersen left Denmark to tour Europe for 16 months. Traveling was his great passion and during the trips quite strange aspects of the writer manifested themselves. Wherever he went, he always had a rope. The writer was terrified of fires and said that if he needed to, he would use the rope to escape through the window.

Its great success came in 1835. The novel the improviser, which featured the story of his own trip to Italy, was very successful in his homeland. In the same year, his first book of short stories was published, in which there were, among others, The princess and the pea🇧🇷 A year later, Andersen’s books made him a very wealthy man. He went on to earn so much money that by the end of his life he was a millionaire.

In 1840, Andersen met his second love: the Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, 15 years his junior. He confessed his love to her in a letter when she had already left Denmark. A year later, when they actually met in person, she showed no sign that she had read the letter. In one of the writer’s diaries from 1843, the phrase “I love you!” appears, and he was talking about Jenny. It is important to mention that Andersen wrote many diaries and they were published in 12 volumes after his death.

After that, Andersen and Jenny met only once, but wrote to each other until the end of the writer’s life. In the letters, she called him “brother” and “boy.” the tales The Snow Queen and The Nightingale and the Emperor of China were dedicated to her.

It is also important to mention that the writer never married and never had children. He was always afraid of children. Apparently, the bullying that he suffered in childhood affected him greatly.

In 1847 Andersen’s first autobiographical book, the tale of my life🇧🇷 Some people say that this work is not as exciting as his short stories, since in the book he complains a lot about critics (negative reviews have always affected him a lot) and describes the details of meetings with famous people of his time, as he loved to make friends with people in high society.

Andersen’s short stories were always controversial and not everyone liked them. Some people thought they weren’t very instructive for children, and many stories showed the victory of evil over good. The writer responded by saying: “Good wins in eternity.”

One of Andersen’s most famous friends was Charles Dickens. They met at a party in 1847 and exchanged compliments. For 10 years, Andersen sent many letters to Dickens, but received few responses. However, in 1857, Dickens invited his Danish colleague to spend some time at his country house, and Andersen accepted.

The writer stayed at Dickens’s house for 5 weeks, more than the two that were scheduled, a period that seemed like an eternity for the English writer’s family. As soon as he entered, he said that in Denmark it was customary for the eldest son of the house to shave the guest every day. After a week, Dickens escaped to London and left his wife and many children alone with the eccentric writer.

During this period, Andersen fell in love with Dickens’s wife, drank heavily and was very depressed by some negative reviews of his works that appeared in a newspaper. One day, Dickens returned, took Andersen’s personal things and took him to London in a carriage that he drove himself. On the way, he gave instructions on how Andersen could return to Copenhagen.

Andersen felt it was all part of the local hospitality, and he always spoke of Dickens and his time at his home with great fondness. Dickens himself left a message on the mirror which read: “Andersen slept in this room for 5 weeks which to our family seemed like CENTURIES”.

The life story of Hans Christian Andersen is, among other things, a story of phobias and fears. He suffered from toothaches for many years (he ended up losing them all), and always thought that his gift for writing depended on how many teeth he had. In 1868 he lost his last tooth and declared that from that moment on he could no longer write short stories.

Andersen was afraid of many things: dogs, losing documents, theft and much more. Dickens recounted that once, before getting into a carriage, he hid his belongings in his shoe, including his notebook. He ended up with a lot of blisters on his feet. In addition, Andersen was afraid of being poisoned. Once, he received a box of chocolates from some children. Suspecting they were poisonous, he gave the chocolates to his nieces. When he realized the sweets were good, he took the box back.

As we mentioned earlier, Andersen never had a wife or children. Moreover, during all his life he never experienced carnal love. While in Paris, around 1860, he went to brothels, but not to have sex. Andersen enjoyed talking to women. The famous writer Alexander Dumas hinted that visits to these places had other purposes, which left the Danish writer deeply indignant.

Despite his wealth, Andersen was a stingy man (probably a consequence of his poor childhood) and always accepted invitations to eat. He had a list of people he used to have lunch and dinner with so he could see them all. However, he was not greedy and always responded to requests from lowly people.

Another phobia of the writer was…