Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/712

700 both for his preservation of us in prison, and deliverance of us out of it; and then taking a solemn farewell of each other, we departed."

 

 From The Spectator.

child-world has lost a friend, who was to it what Shakespeare is to the grown-up world of men and women, by the peaceful passing-avvay of "dear And'sen," as every one in Copenhagen called the wonderful story-teller, — to the last, a child in heart and in ignorance of the ways of worldliness. He belonged to the quaint and simple Danish city all his life as entirely as Thorwaldsen belonged to it in his later years, and in a more intimate way — in proportion to the expansiveness of his own nature and the warmth and variety of his own sympathies. He belonged to every family, and had more than the entrée — for, after all, that implies a grace, — his own place in every household. With the servants, as with the masters, he was "dear And'sen," and nobody ever passed him without a salutation. It is hard to fancy city and suburb without his familiar, shabby, ungainly, slouching figure, in its ill-fitting, unbrushed clothes (he always wore flopping trousers which touched the toes of his gigantic boots, and a shawl, his own or anybody's, it did not matter, wrapped round his shoulders), and his ugly, musing face, abstracted-seeming, but keenly observant too, with its high receding forehead, its close-set eyes, and the steep incline from the top of the forehead to the nape of the neck, as if the back of the head had been sliced away. His individuality was perhaps more marked than that of any famous man on record, and remained more entirely unchanged by the lapse of time and by circumstances. He never ceased to be a study to the observer who first regarded him with the curiosity he inspired in every one; but each day's observation was a fresh confirmation of the impression he had made within an hour of meeting him. In that charming Danish society, frank, kindly, simple, cultivated, it was a child they had set in the midst, — a child, according to the ideal of childhood; keenly sensitive, entirely egotistical, innocently vain, the centre of life, interest, concern, and meaning to himself, perfectly unconscious that there existed another standard, an outer circle, taking it for granted that everywhere and in everything he was to be first and all; glad with the gladness, sorrowful with the passing grief, of childhood, petulant and pouting, downright, without a notion of reticence, or indeed of modesty, but equally without a notion of evil or indecency; full of optimist satisfaction when all was well with himself, and yet incapable of self-seeking, or design of any kind; disinterested as much from ignorance of advantage to be gained or objects to be sought, as from the nobler source of disinterestedness; incapable of considering the convenience, or of understanding the ways and methods of other people; in a word, always interesting, but sometimes troublesome.

Nobody in Copenhagen would, however, have been guilty of the treason of thinking Andersen troublesome. To the inexhaustible indulgence accorded to a pet child they added the profound veneration with which imaginative people regard genius, especially in its poetic manifestation. The "dear And'sen" had rooms of his own, but he was rarely in them, and he not only went as often as he liked, at any hours he liked, to everybody's house, but he might bring any number of people, and to have a friend who knew Andersen was a passepartout in Denmark. He was perfectly regardless of the ordinary forms of social life; his personal habits were exceedingly careless, not to say repulsive; he was not agreeable as a next neighbour, or as observed from over-the-way, at a dinner-table, for he ate voraciously, and was a decidedly dirty feeder; he had no notion of time, and as pertinaciously required every one to be at his beck and call as any curled darling in the nursery who is at once the plague and the joy of the household. He had not an idea of self-restraint or of à propos, and his intense egotism was nourished by everybody and everything. It never occurred to him that he was not the centre of every one's life and thoughts. He once entered a room, shook hands all round, and then descrying a stranger — a young English lady just arrived at Copenhagen — he went up to her, took her by both hands, addressed her as "the English rose, who had come to Denmark to see a great poet," added, " All your friends will be happy that you are with Andersen," and went off to fetch a photograph of himself, which he bestowed on her with much emphasis. The admiring circle 