Poetsbazaar01ande.Pdf

LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 914 AnSdlEb v.l this b e fors "* s re- which it J: fro " withdrlwn '"^f lo,es0o,e sta before the L161O-1096 p E T'S BAZAAR. FROM THE DANISH OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. AUTHOR OF "THE IMPROVISATOR E." BY CHARLES BECKWITH, ESQ. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1846. LONDON: Printed by Schulze and Co., 13, Poland Street. V, CONTENTS THE FIRST VOLUME. Page Biography of Hans Christian Andersen . 1 GERMANY. The Spanish Dancers . .31 Breitenburg . , .36 A Reminiscence from the steam-boat, Storen . 44 ' Liszt . .47 The Maid of Orleans . .56 The Railroad . .60 Gellert's Grave . .71 Nuremberg . .73 A Wish accomplished . .88 Munich. .92 Tyrol . .113 IV CONTENTS. ITALY. Page Entrance into Italy . .127 A Night on the Appenines . .141 The Bronze Hog . .150 Travelling with the Vetturino . .176 Arrival at Rome ..... 215 The Borghese Family . 223 The churches in Rome .... 229 Fairy palaces in reality .... 238 Christmas Eve in Rome .... 253 Three Roman boys . .258 Religious customs .... 265 The Cascades of Tivoli . .278 My boots ...... 287 BIOGRAPHY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDEfiSEN. IN these days it is indeed rare to find a man of genius emerging out of obscurity by the sheer force of his own abilities. He seems at the present time more frequently determined to his particular profession, by the compulsion or the advice of his family, or his friends, than pre- cipitated into it by his own uncontrollable impulses. Parents will have their children to be or and to school such such , they send them to be educated for geniuses. We Danes still VOL. I. B BIOGRAPHY OF acknowledge a religious veneration for the inherited yoke of the schools, and are content to accept a feeble reflection of our ancestors' superannuated wisdom. Thus, it happens that when a genuine poet arises, he is considered as a sort of foundling, is to than whom no one bound protect ; worse this, as one, the development of whose talents all, or nearly all, with more or less virulence obstruct. Yet true genius will force its way. Outward and untoward circumstances may delay its manifestation, but they only reinforce the inborn principle. Our literature has not to show two instances of a fixed determination to excel in spite of every obstacle, more re- markable than those of Oehlenschlager and Andersen. The former, long after it was vain to deny his extraordinary powers, has often been the subject of the most bitter critical attacks, while the latter first gained a plenary acknowledgment of his claims on the conti- nent, where a more enlightened civilization has HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. 3 broken down the dogmas of the schools, and substituted a taste for the fresh and the natural. Let us briefly show what the subject of our memoir has had to encounter, and how he has conquered. Andersen was born in Odensee on the 2nd of April, 1805, of poor parents. His grand- parents had at one time been wealthy villagers, whom various misfortunes had reduced to necessity, and who had, in consequence, been compelled to remove to Odensee. Here, their son carried on the trade of a shoemaker. He had, at an early age, exhibited a peculiar disposition of mind, (probably inherited from his father, who was insane,) and would sometimes vent in verse the feelings of strong dislike he entertained to his condition in life. When he was about to be married, his means were so narrow that he was compelled to construct his bridal bed out of the pedestal of a Count's coffin, which he had bought at an auction. B 2 BIOGRAPHY OF The grandmother of our poet plays an important part in the history of his childhood. She had the care of the of the garden hospital ; and here the intelligent boy, who was suscepti- ble of the most vivid impressions, and who frequently spent entire days with the old lady, listened with heart and soul to the fables and ghost stories which were related to him by the inmates of the hospital, and had his mind filled with superstitious and religious images. It is told of him, that one day he went out with his mother and some other children to glean on a property, the steward of which was well known to be morose and ill-natured, and who per- ceived them at their employment. The rest fled at his he alone approach ; stood his ground, and with his childish, naive exclamation, " How dare you beat me when God can see you?" he softened the severe man, whose stick was already lifted against him. Sometimes his father took him on his lonely walks into the forest. He made a HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. 5 doll's theatre and other playthings for the lad, and in the evening would read to him from his small library, which consisted of Holberg^s works, an old translation of Shakspeare, and a volume of story and rhyme books, which the child soon began to study of his own accord. The Spaniards had been in Fyen : they had again left, and the war approached its termina- tion. Andersen's father, however, knew not this. His melancholy enthusiasm was excited, and would not suffer him to be at peace. He enlisted suddenly as a private, expecting that the war would carry him to promotion and fortune. But reached Holstein the he only ; conclusion of peace dismissed him back again to Odensee, where he soon afterwards fell ill and died. Meanwhile, the son received a very poor education in a parish school : his leisure hours he sometimes spent with a Madame Bunkea- flod, the widow of a clergyman, who, in 1784, 6 BIOGRAPHY OF was included in a published list of Danish poets. Here for the first time he heard the name of a of with reverence poet spoken ; and now he himself determined to be a poet, and when only nine years of age, began to write comedies and tragedies, in which he sought to discriminate the characters of persons of rank from merely ordinary beings, by interlarding their speeches with French and German words. But his public was not at all grateful: the street boys called him the comedy-writer : with his strange frankness and extraordinary manners, he was exposed to many kinds of taunts, which in a very high degree mortified his affectionate and irritable mind ; and when once, on the schoolmaster's birthday, he presented him a little poem, he was laughed at for his kind intentions. Meanwhile his mother's circumstances became worse, and she sent him to a manufactory to gain something. Here he amused the workmen by his fine voice, and by scenes from but as his reciting Holberg ; girl- HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. 7 ish looks and manners soon exposed him to rude treatment, he fled from thence. He was now twelve years of age, and had read with eagerness all the books he could procure, and as he could not attain the object of his most earnest desire, viz. a visit to the theatre, he sat at home and performed alone in his puppet theatre " the whole of Shakspeare's King Lear," and " 5' The Merchant of Venice. When an itinerant troop was in the town, he procured the play- bills, sat at home with them, and composed from the dramatis persona whole comedies, such as they were, so that his mother began to fear that he was taking leave of his senses. His intense interest for dramatic affairs, and the acquaintances he made, when the Copenhagen actors visited Odensee, enabled him to succeed in obtaining small, and generally mute parts to perform. Sometimes he sang in the chorus, a privilege which enabled him to learn a number of songs, even large portions of operas. But his uncommon manners and peculiarity of 8 BIOGRAPHY OF disposition had now excited an interest in his fa- vour in several families of rank, and he was par- ticularly well received by Colonel Hoegh Guld- berg, brother to the poet. His mother marrying a second time, he was intended for the trade of a tailor, a distinction with which he felt for the time satisfied, on account of the resources which here disclosed themselves for the wardrobe of his puppet theatre. At his confirmation, he wore boots and respectable clothes for the first his this so time ; and joy upon was extravagant, that it disturbed his devotion in the church, a mood he has expressed so poetically in the " tale of the Red Shoes." He had, by degrees, saved a sum of thirteen dollars j and now he entreated his mother to let him go to Copen- hagen, in order to get an engagement at the theatre, or to become an "illustrious man," like those of whom he had read. But the good woman first applied to a fortune-teller, and as this oracle predicted for him fortune and great- " ness, and that even Odensee should hereafter HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. be illuminated in honour of him/' he obtained permission to travel. He arrived at Copenhagen on the fifth of September, 1819, just when the well-known Jewish feud, described by him self in his "Only a Fiddler/' had set the whole town in an uproar. He wandered, in the first place, to the theatre but he it from the ; only regarded outside, with the same holy devotion that a lover regards his first ideal of love. The next day he put on his confirmation dress, and went to Madame Schall, a danseuse, to whom he had a letter of recommendation.

Load more