Information
There was much mutual respect between Charles Dickens and the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. In 1857 Andersen’s second visit to England was made at the special invitation of his friend, to whom he had just dedicated his latest book ‘To Be or Not To Be’. Feeling queasy after his early morning sea crossing, Andersen arrived at Gad’s Hill Place on 11th June to be warmly welcomed by Dickens. When Dickens was at home, Andersen was made much of and enjoyed entertaining the family and guests with his little paper cut-outs, songs and Danish phrases. He joined in English country life, accompanying Dickens to church at Higham and playing cricket on the lawn. He was not so happy when Dickens was away on business in the London office of his magazine ‘Household Words’, feeling that the children ignored him, and struggling to make himself understood. However, given to hypochondria and inclined to fuss about things like arrangements for his morning shave, he was clearly not an easy guest. Dickens confided in a letter to a friend ‘We are suffering a good deal from Andersen’. Nonetheless, he and his wife were quick to soothe Andersen’s evident distress over critical reviews of his new novel in the English press by dismissing them as ‘rubbish’. In his diary, Andersen described the companionable walk the two men then took to what Dickens called ‘Andersen’s monument’ since he himself had not known of it before. This was the commemorative obelisk to one of the pioneers of the first Reform Bill on Telegraph Hill in Higham, from which there was a sweeping view of the Medway. In one of his last entries before he made a tearful parting from Dickens, Andersen recorded a snapshot impression of Gad’s Hill Place on a hot July night.
Quotations
Saturday June 28th
And when we were walking on the road, he wrote with his foot in the sand. ‘That’s criticism,’ he said and rubbed it out, ‘and it’s gone just like that!’ – ‘A work which is good survives on its own merits. You’ve experienced it before; see what the verdict is!’ We lay up by the monument all evening. A mist was rising from the sea; the sun shone on the windows in Rochester. We drank mixed wine up there. Later there was lightning. …When I went to bed, Dickens said he hoped everything had now been forgotten and that I would sleep well. When I was asked at dinner how long I was staying in England, I answered, ‘Long for Mr. Dickens, short for me!’
Monday July 13th
… When Dickens arrived home late, everything was pleasant. It was a starry night. The red house with the four bay windows, the porch with its stone columns, the big window above, the gilded vane on the little turret, the cedar trees over on the other side of the road, the raven in the empty dog house, the dogs Dandy and Turk, Hogarth’s pictures in the corridor, a richly pasted screen.
Place | Extract |
| Broadstairs | Charles Dickens was an admirer of his and invited Andersen to supper with him and his family at their house in Broadstairs on his last evening in the country... |
| Gadshill | Feeling queasy after his early morning sea crossing, Andersen arrived at Gad’s Hill Place on 11th June to be warmly welcomed by Dickens... |
| Ramsgate | His ten weeks in Britain had seen him receive the kind of acclaim and recognition he felt he had not been accorded in his own country... |
