البجعات المتوحشات by Hans Christian Andersen

Weirded out, Dickens made him a daily appointment at a nearby barbershop instead. When he arrived, he asked that one of Dickens’s own sons give him a daily shave, explaining that this was a custom for hosting male guests in Denmark. Andersen, socially awkward and apparently one of the nineteenth century’s premier literary softbois, was not good at picking up on social cues or maintaining any kind of formal demeanor, demanding in one way or the other that he remain the center of attention. I’ve definitely seen this horror movie.)Īlthough the Dickens family was expecting him, in a way, they could have never expected him.

(If it weren’t for the fact that Andersen seems kind of cluelessly sweet, this would sound like horror movie. Which, he absolutely, definitely did not mean. Annoyed by the correspondence, in 1856 Dickens insincerely and curtly mentioned (in a letter laden with the kind of weird flattery that often conceals petty meanness) that Anderson would be welcome to stay with his family, if he were ever in the neighborhood. Perhaps a little too encouraged by this gesture, Andersen sent Dickens regular letters for the next nine years. Andersen apparently made a good impression on Dickens, too, because a few weeks later, Dickens sent him a package containing some of his books, and a personal note. They had a friendly conversation-afterwards, Andersen wrote a letter to his friends in Denmark, ecstatic that Dickens had lived up to his hopes. A little much, maybe, but definitely nice. Andersen was not yet well known in England (his stories were being translated from Danish for the first time), and he was starry-eyed, introducing himself to the much more famous Dickens and calling him “the greatest writer of our time.” Which is nice. Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen first met at a party in the summer of 1847.

البجعات المتوحشات by Hans Christian Andersen