# A Picture-Book without Pictures and Other Stories/Memoir of Hans Christian Andersen

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New York: C. S. Francis & C.o, 252 Broadway, pages 7–32
MEMOIR OF
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN,
BY MARY HOWITT.
MEMOIR.
Whether regarded as the human being asserting in his own person the true nobility of mind and moral worth, or the man of genius, whose works alone have raised him from the lowest poverty and obscurity, to be an honored guest with kings and queens, Hans Christian Andersen is one of the most remarkable men of his day.
Like most men of great original talent, he is emphatically one of the people; and writing as he has done, principally of popular life, he describes what he himself has suffered and seen. Poverty or hardship, however, never soured his mind; on the contrary, whatever he has written is singularly genial, and abounds with the most kindly and universal sympathy. Human life, with all its ​trials, privations, and its tears, is to him a holy thing; he lays bare the heart, not to bring forth hidden and revolting passions or crimes, but to show how lovely it is in its simplicity and truth: how touching in its weaknesses and its short-comings; how much it is to be loved and pitied, and borne and striven with. In short, this great writer, with all the ardor of a strong poetical nature, and with great power in delineating passion, is eminently Christian in spirit.
It is a great pleasure to me that I have been the means of making the principal works of Hans Christian Andersen known, through my translations, to English readers; they have been well received by them, and I now give a slight memoir of their author, drawn from the True Story of his own Life, sent by him to me for translation, and which has lately been published.
The father of Hans Christian Andersen was a shoemaker of Odense. When scarcely twenty, he married a young girl about as poor as himself. The poverty of this couple may be imagined from the circumstance that the house afforded no better bedstead than a ​wooden frame, made to support the coffin of some count in the neighborhood, whose body lay in state before his interment. This frame, covered with black cloth, and which the young shoemaker purchased at a very low price, served as the family bedstead many years. Upon this humble bed was born, on the second of April, 1805, Hans Christian Andersen.
The father of Andersen was not without education; his mother was the kindest of human beings; they lived on the best terms with each other, but still the husband was not happy. He read comedies and the Arabian Tales, and made a puppet theatre for his little son, and often on Sundays took him out with him into the woods round Odense, where the solitude was congenial to his mind.
Andersen’s grandmother had also great influence over him, and to her he was greatly attached. She was employed in taking care of a garden belonging to a lunatic asylum, and here he spent most of the summer afternoons of his early childhood.
Among his earliest recollections is the residence of the Spaniards in Funen, in the years ​1808 and 1809. A soldier of an Asturian regiment took him one day in his arms, danced with him amid tears of joy, which no doubt were called forth by the remembrance of a child he had left at home, and pressed the Madonna to his lips, which occasioned great trouble to his pious mother, who was a Lutheran.
In Odense at that time many old festivities were still in use, which made a deep impression on the boy, and were as so much material laid up in his richly poetical mind for after use, as all who are familiar with his works must be well aware. His father, among other works, industriously read in his Bible. One day he closed it with these words: “Christ became a man like unto us, but a very uncommon man!” at which his wife burst into tears, greatly distressed and shocked at what she called “blasphemy.” This made a deep impression on the boy, and he prayed in secret for the soul of his father. Another day his father said, “There is no other devil but what a man bears in his own breast!” After which, finding his arm scratched one morning when he awoke, his ​wife said it was a punishment of the devil, to teach him his real existence.
The unhappy temper of the father increased from day to day; he longed to go forth into the world. At that time war was raging in Germany. Napoleon was his hero, and as Denmark had now allied itself to France, he enlisted as a private soldier in a recruiting regiment, hoping that some time or other he might return as a lieutenant. The neighbors, however, thought it was all a folly to let himself be shot for no purpose at all. The corps in which he served went no farther than Holstein; the peace succeeded, and the poor shoemaker returned to his trade, only chagrined to have seen no service, nor even been in foreign lands. But though he had seen no service, his health had suffered; he awoke one morning delirious, and talked about campaigns and Napoleon. Young Andersen, then nine years old, was sent to the next village to ask counsel from a wise woman.
“Will my poor father die?” inquired he, anxiously.
“If thy father will die,” replied she, “thou wilt meet his ghost on thy way home.”
​Terrified almost out of his senses lest he should meet the ghost, he set out on his homeward way, and reached his own door without any such apparition presenting itself, but for all that, his father died on the third day.
From this time young Andersen was left to himself. The whole instruction that he ever received was in a charity-school, and consisted of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but of the two last he knew scarcely anything.
About this time he was engaged by the widow of a clergyman in Odense, to read aloud to herself and her sister-in-law. She was the widow of a clergyman who had written poems. In this house Andersen first heard the appellation of poet; and saw with what love the poetical talent of the deceased pastor was regarded. This sunk deeply into his mind; he read tragedies, and resolved to become a poet, as this good man had been before him.
He wrote a tragedy, therefore, which the two ladies praised highly; it was handed about in manuscript, and people laughed at ​it, and ridiculed him as the “play-writer.” This wounded him so deeply, that he passed one whole night weeping, and was only pacified, or rather, silenced, by his mother threatening to give him a good beating for his folly. Spite, however, of his ill success, he wrote again and again, studying, among other devices, German and French words, to give dignity to his dialogue. Again the whole town read his productions, and the boys shouted after him as he went, “Look! look: there goes the play-writer.”
One day he took to his schoolmaster, as a birthday present, a garland, with which he had twisted up a little poem. The schoolmaster was angry with him; he saw nothing but folly and false quantities in the verses, and thus the poor lad had nothing but trouble and tears.
The worldly affairs of the mother grew worse and worse, and as boys of his age earned money in a manufactory near, it was resolved that there also Hans Christian should be sent. His old grandmother took him to the manufactory, and shed bitter tears because the lot of the boy was so early toil ​and sorrow. The workmen in the factory were principally German, and discovering that Andersen had a fine voice, and knew many popular songs, they made him sing to them while the other boys did his work. He knew himself that he had a good voice, because the neighbors always listened when he sang at home, and once a whole party of rich people had stopped to hear him, and had praised his beautiful voice. Everybody in the manufactory heard him with equal delight.
“I can act comedy as well!” said the poor boy one day, encouraged by their applause, and began to recite whole scenes from the comedies which his father had been in the habit of reading. The workmen were delighted, and the other boys were made to do his tasks while he amused them all. This smooth life of comedy acting and singing lasted but for a short time, and he returned home.
“The boy must go and act at the theatre!” many of the neighbors said to his mother; but as she knew of no other theatre than that of the strolling players, she shook her head, ​and resolved rather to put her son apprentice to a tailor.
He was now twelve, and had nothing to do; he devoured, therefore, the contents of every book which came in his way. His favorite reading was an old prose translation of Shakspere. From this, with little figures which he made of pasteboard, he performed the whole of King Lear, and the Merchant of Venice.
Andersen’s passion for reading, and his beautiful voice, had in the meantime drawn upon him the attention of several of the higher families of the city, who introduced him to their houses. His simple, child-like behavior, his wonderful memory, and his sweet voice, gave to him a peculiar charm; people talked of him, and he soon had many friends; among others, a Colonel Guldborg, brother to the well-known poet of that name, and who afterwards introduced him to Prince Christian of Denmark.
About this time his mother married a second time, and as the step-father would not spend a penny, or do any thing for her son’s education, he had still more leisure. He had ​no playfellows, and often wandered by himself to the neighboring forest, or seated himself at home, in a corner of the house, and dressed up little dolls for his theatre, his mother in the meantime thinking that, as he was destined for a tailor, this was all good practice.
At length the time came when he was to be confirmed. On this occasion he had his first pair of boots; he was very vain of them, and that all the world might see them, he pulled them up over his trousers. An old sempstress was employed to make him a confirmation-suit out of his deceased father’s great coat. Never before had he been possessed of such excellent clothes; the very thoughts of them disturbed his devotions on the day of consecration.
It had been determined that Andersen was to be apprenticed to a tailor after his confirmation, but he earnestly besought his mother to give up this idea, and consent to his going to Copenhagen, that he might get employment at the theatre there. He read to her the lives of celebrated men who had been quite as poor as himself, and assured her that he also would one day be a celebrated man. ​For several years he had been hoarding up his money; he had now about thirty shillings, English, which seemed to him an inexhaustible sum. As soon as his mother heard of this fund, her heart inclined towards his wishes, and she promised to consent on condition that they should consult a wise woman, and that his going or staying should be decided by her augury. The sibyl was fetched to the house, and after she had read the cards, and studied the coffee-grounds, she pronounced these words.
“Your son will become a great man. The city of Odense will one day be illuminated in his honor.”
A prophecy like this removed all doubts.
“Go, in God’s name!” said his mother, and he lost no time in preparing for his great jourmey.
Some one had mentioned to him a certain female dancer at the Royal Theatre as a person of great influence; he obtained, therefore, from a gentleman universally esteemed in Odense, a letter of introduction to this lady; and with this, and his thirteen rix-dollars, he commenced the journey on which depended ​his whole fate. His mother accompanied him to the city gate, and there his good old grandmother met him; she kissed him with many tears, blessed him, and he never saw her more.
It was not until he had crossed the Great Belt that he felt how forlorn he was in the world; he stepped aside from the road, fell on his knees, and besought God to be his friend. He rose up comforted, and walked on through towns and villages, until, on Monday morning, the 5th of September, 1819, he saw the towers of Copenhagen; and with his little bundle under his arm he entered that great city.
On the day after his arrival, dressed in his confirmation-suit, he betook himself, with his letter of introduction in his hand, to the house of the all-potential dancer. The lady allowed him to wait a long time on the steps of her house, and when at length he entered, his awkward, simple behavior and appearance displeased her; she fancied him insane, more particularly as the gentleman from whom he brought the letter was unknown to her.
​He next went to the director of the theatre, requesting some appointment.
“You are too thin for the theatre,” was the answer he obtained.
“Oh,” replied poor Andersen, “only ensure me one hundred rix-dollars, and I will soon get fat!”
But the director would make no agreement of this kind, and then informed him that they engaged none at the theatre but people of education. This settled the question; he had nothing to say on his own behalf, and, dejected in spirit, went out into the street. He knew no human creature; he thought of death, and this thought turned his mind to God.
“When everything goes adversely,” said he, “then God will help me; it is written so in every book that I ever read, and in God I will put my trust!”
Days and weeks went on, bringing with them nothing but disappointment and despair; his money was all gone, and for some time he worked with a joiner. At length, as, with a heavy heart, he was walking one day along the crowded streets of the city, it ​occurred to him that as yet nobody had heard his fine voice. Full of this thought, he hastened at once to the house of Professor Siboni, where a large party happened to be at dinner, and among the guests Baggesen, the poet, and the celebrated composer, Professor Weyse. He knocked at the door, which was opened by a female servant, and to her he related, quite open-heartedly, how forlorn and friendless he was, and how great a desire he had to be engaged at the theatre; the young woman went in and related this to the company. All were interested in the little adventurer; he was ordered in, and desired to sing, and to give some scenes from Holberg. One of these scenes bore a resemblance to his own melancholy circumstances, and he burst into tears. The company applauded him.
“I prophecy,” said Baggesen, “that thou wilt turn out something remarkable; only don’t become vain when the public admires thee.”
Professor Siboni promised immediately that he would cultivate Andersen’s voice, and that he should make his debut at the Theatre ​Royal. He had a good friend too in Professor Weyse, and a year and a half were spent in elementary instruction. But a new misfortune now befell him; he lost his beautiful voice, and Siboni counselled him to put himself to some handicraft trade. He once more seemed abandoned to a hopeless fate. Casting about in his mind who might possibly befriend him, he bethought himself of the poet Guldborg, whose brother the colonel had been so kind to him in Odense. To him he went, and in him he happily found a friend; although poverty still pursued him, and his sufferings, which no one knew, almost overcame him.
He wrote a rhymed tragedy, which obtained some little praise from Oehlenschlager and Ingemann—but no debut was permitted him on the theatre. He wrote a second and third, but the theatre would not accept them. These youthful efforts fell, however, into the hand of a powerful and good man, Conference Counsellor Collin, who, perceiving the genius that slumbered in the young poet, went immediately to the king, and obtained permission from him that he should be sent, ​at Government charges, to one of the learned schools in the provinces, in which, however, he suffered immensely, till his heart was almost broken by unkindness. From this school he went to college, and became very soon favorably known to the public by true poetical works. Ingemann, Oehlenschlager, and others then obtained for him a royal stipend, to enable him to travel; and he visited Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy. Italy, and the poetical character of life in that beautiful country, inspired him; and he wrote the “Improvisatore,” one of the most exquisite works, whether for truthful delineation of character, or pure and noble sentiment, that ever was penned. This work most harmoniously combines the warm coloring and intensity of Italian life with the freshest and strong simplicity of the north. His romance of “O. T.” followed; this is a true picture of the secluded, sober life of the north, and is a great favorite there. His third work, “Only a Fiddler,” is remarkable for its strongly drawn personal and national characteristics, founded upon his own experience in early life. Perhaps ​there never was a more affecting picture of the hopeless attempts of a genius of second-rate order to combat against and rise above poverty and adverse circumstances, than is given in the life of poor Christian, who dies at last “only a fiddler.”
In all these works Andersen has drawn from his own experience, and in this lies their extraordinary power. There is a child-like tenderness and simplicity in his writings; a sympathy with the poor and the struggling, and an elevation and purity of tone, which have something absolutely holy about them; it is the inspiration of true genius, combined with great experience of life, and a spirit baptized with the tenderness of Christianity. This is it which is the secret of the extreme charm his celebrated stories have for children. They are as simple and as touching as the old Bible narratives of Joseph and his brethren, and the little lad who died in the corn field. We wonder not at their being the most popular books of their kind in Europe.
It has been my happiness, as I said before, to translate his three principal works, his Picture Book without Pictures, and several of ​his stories for children. They have been likewise translated into German, and some of them into Dutch, and even Russian. He speaks nobly of this circumstance in his life. “My works,” says he, “seem to come forth under a lucky star, they fly over all lands. There is something elevating, but at the same time something terrific in seeing one’s thoughts spread so far, and among so many people; it is indeed almost a fearful thing to belong to so many. The noble and good in us becomes a blessing, but the bad, one’s errors, shoot forth also; and involuntarily the prayer forces itself from us—‘God! let me never write down a word of which I shall not be able to give an account to thee!’ a peculiar feeling, a mixture of joy and anxiety, fills my heart every time my good genius conveys my fictions to a foreign people.”
Of Andersen’s present life we need only say that he spends a great deal of his time in traveling; he goes from land to land, and from court to court, everywhere an honored guest, and enjoying the glorious reward of a manly struggle against adversity, and the ​triumph of a lofty and pure genius in seeing its claims generously acknowledged.
Let us now see the son of the poor shoemaker of Odense—the friendless, ill-clad, almost heart-broken boy of Copenhagen—on one of those occasions, which would make an era in the life of any other literary man, but which are of every day occurrence in his. I will quote from his own words.
“I received a letter from the ministry, Count Rantzau Breitenburg, containing an invitation from their majesties of Denmark to join them at the watering-place of Föhr; this island lies in the North Sea, on the coast of Sleswick. It was just now five and-twenty years since I, a poor lad, traveled alone and helpless to Copenhagen. Exactly the five-and twentieth anniversary would be celebrated by my being with my king and queen. Everything which surrounded me, man and nature, reflected themselves imperishably in my soul; I felt myself, as it were, conducted to a point from which I could look forth more distinctly over the past, with all the good fortune and happiness which it had evolved for me.
“Wyck, the largest town of Föhr, in which ​are the baths, is built like a Dutch town, with houses one story high, sloping roofs, and gables turned to the street. The number of strangers there, and the presence of the Court, gave a peculiar animation to it. The Danish flag was seen waving, and music was heard on all hands. I was soon established in my quarters, and was invited every day to dine with their majesties as well as to pass the evening in their circle. On several evenings I read aloud my little stories to them, and nothing could be more gracious and kind than they were. It is so well when a noble human nature will reveal itself, where otherwise only the king’s crown and the purple mantle might be discovered.
“I sailed in the train of their majesties, to the largest of the Halligs, those grassy runes in the ocean, which bear testimony to a sunken country. The violence of the sea has changed the mainland into islands, has again riven these, and buried men and villages. Year after year are new portions rent away and in half a century’s time there will be nothing left but sea. The Halligs are now low islets, covered with a dark turf, on which a few ​flocks graze. When the sea rises, these are driven to the garrets for refuge, and the waves roll over this little region, which lies miles distant from any shore. Oland, which we visited, contains a little town; the houses stand closely side by side, as if in their sore need they had huddled together; they are all erected on a platform, and have little windows like the cabin of a ship. There, solitary through half the year, sit the wives and daughters spinning. Yet I found books in all the houses; the people read and work, and the sea rises round the houses, which lie like a wreck on the ocean. The church-yard is half washed away; coffins and corpses are frequently exposed to view. It is an appalling sight, and yet the inhabitants of the Halligs are attached to their little home, and frequently die of home-sickness when removed from it.
“We found only one man upon the island, and he had only lately arisen from a sickbed; the others were out on long voyages. We were received by women and girls; they had erected before the church a triumphal arch with flowers, which they had ​fetched from Föhr, but it was so small and low, that one was obliged to go round it; it nevertheless showed their good will. The Queen was deeply affected by their having cut down their only shrub, a rose-bush, to lay over a marshy place which she had to cross.
“On our return, dinner was served on board the royal steamer, and afterwards as we sailed in a glorious sunset through this archipelago, the deck of the vessel was changed to a dancing hall: servants flew hither and thither with refreshments; sailors stood upon the paddle-boxes and took soundings, and their deep tones might be heard giving the depth of the water. The moon rose round and large, and the promontory of Amrom assumed the appearance of a snow-covered chain of Alps.”
The next day he visited the wild regions about the promontory, but our space will not admit of our giving any portions of wild and grand sea-landscape which he here describes. In the evening he returned to the royal dinner-table. It was on the above mentioned five-and-twentieth anniversary, on the 5th of September; he says, ​“The whole of my former life passed in review before my mind. I was obliged to summon all my strength to prevent myself bursting into tears. There are moments of gratitude, in which we feel, as it were, a desire to press God to our hearts! How deeply I felt at this time my own nothingness, and how all, all had come from him! After dinner the king, to whom Rantzau had told how interesting the day was to me, wished me happiness, and that most kindly. He wished me happiness in that which I had endured and won. He asked me about my early, struggling life, and I related to him some traits of it.
“In the course of conversation he asked me of my annual income. I told him.
“ ‘That is not much,’ said he.
“ ‘But I do not need much,’ I replied; ‘my writings furnish something.’
“ ‘If I can in any way be serviceable to you, come to me,’ said the king in conclusion.
“In the evening, during the concert, some of my friends reproached me for not making use of my opportunity.
“ ‘The king,’ said they, ‘put the words into your mouth.’
​“ ‘I could not have done more,’ said I; ‘if the king thought I requited an addition to my income, he would give it of his own free will.’
“And I was right; in the following year the king increased my annual stipend, so that with this and my writings I can live honorably and free from care.
“The 5th of September was to me a festival day. Even the German visitors at the baths honored me by drinking my health in the pump-room.
“So many flattering circumstances, some people argue, may spoil a man and make him vain. But no, they do not spoil him, they make him, on the contrary, better; they purify his mind, and he thereby feels an impulse, a wish to deserve all that he enjoys.”
Such are truly the feelings of a pure and noble nature. Andersen has stood the test through every trial, of poverty and adversity; the harder trial that of a sun-bright prosperity, is now proving him, and so far, thank God, the sterling nature of the man has remained unspoiled.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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