Chapter XII: Tolstoy (1828–1910) 269 (5)

It was an immediate success, and attracted a great deal of attention. Even the Regent and his family came to one of the performances. In consequence of this, Voltaire was asked to grand houses and was the guest of great people, whom he amused and entertained in his original way. He received a pension from the Court, and when his father died more money came to him. He invested his capital very judiciously, and, unlike most geniuses, he thoroughly understood his bank-book, so that he never fell into need or poverty.

His next production was _The Henriade_, an epic poem on Henry of Navarre. The chief event in it was the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and this gave him an opportunity of expressing his hatred of fanaticism and superstition. It was censored, but he managed secretly to get two thousand copies into Paris, and the very fact of its being forbidden fruit ensured its success. As time went on, he came into close contact with the Court, and was patronized by Marie Leczinska, daughter of the ex-King of Poland, who was to be married to Louis XV. She read his poems and plays with pleasure and amusement, and for three months he was the idol of the royal circle. Anxious, however, as he had been to go to Court, he was more than glad to get away.

Voltaire never enjoyed good health. Hardly a week passed without his suffering, and when he became a victim to smallpox his case was serious. In this connection as much as in any other, Voltaire’s pluck and indomitable will-power showed itself. He fought ill-health all his life through, and triumphed. His great secret was work. Others might make an excuse of illness to take a holiday. That was not his way. He dictated, he wrote, he read, to prevent physical weakness getting the mastery over him. Another of his finer characteristics was his undefeated persistence. He never would give in. For instance, when a play of his was a failure, he was disappointed, but took it back and rewrote it. Even at the age of eighty-three he did this with a play that did not please him. All attempts to silence, suppress, insult, or ignore such a man were bound to fail. There are two instances of his being twice badly insulted. A spy named Beauregard, whom he offended, waylaid him in the street and beat him. And again later, the Chevalier de Rohan, an arrogant nobleman, fell out with him, and had him thrashed by his servants. Voltaire took lessons in fencing, and after three months challenged Rohan, who accepted the challenge. But on the morning appointed for the duel Voltaire was arrested, and sent a second time to the Bastille. He was kept in confinement for a fortnight, and then, at his own request, packed off to England.

George II was King of England. He was no lover of “boetry,” but Queen Caroline was, and was pleased to welcome him. Voltaire’s chief friend in England was Bolingbroke, and he soon became acquainted with the leading people of the day. There were Swift and Addison, whose writings he greatly admired; Pope, Congreve, Gay, the Walpoles, and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. Newton died during his visit; he attended the funeral at Westminster Abbey, and was much impressed by the tribute paid by the nation to a man of science. He diligently mastered the English language, and wrote not only letters but plays and poems in it. He expresses in his writings the greatest appreciation of British liberty, freedom of speech, and absence of intolerance. The Quakers specially interested him. He liked the simplicity of their religion, and the absence of formulas, dogmas, creeds, and ritual. He quotes one of them as saying in reply to his question, “You have no priests, then?” “No, friend, and we get on very well without them.”

Moreover, as an inveterate hater of war, he revered a sect so far removed from the brutality of military government as to hold peace for a first principle of the Christian faith. His affection for England and the English spirit can be summed up in the words he used with regard to Swift’s writings, “How I love people who say what they think! We only half live if we dare only half think.” Through him a more intimate knowledge of England was spread, not only in France but in other parts of the Continent.

In 1729, when he was thirty-five, he obtained a license to return to France, which he had only been able to visit secretly, now and then, during his stay in England. He devoted the next four years to great literary activity. Whatever he wrote always produced a certain sensation, and often brought him into trouble. Among the best of his productions were _Zaïre_, the most successful of all his plays, and _The Temple of Taste_, a brilliant burlesque, in which he satirized the overrated celebrities of the day. Owing to the death of one of his patrons with whom he had been staying, he was obliged to go into uncomfortable lodgings in a poor quarter of Paris. But whether he was in a castle or a garret, his genius for hard work never left him. The censor kept his eye on this man, who seemed bent on startling and shocking the authorities, so that Voltaire was often obliged to get his writings privately printed and secretly distributed, and even on some occasions to deny the authorship of the offending works. Things came to a head when his _English Letters_ appeared. They were by way of being criticism and praise of England, but at the same time they were a vehement attack on everything established in Church and State in France. The printer was thrown into the Bastille. The book was denounced and publicly burnt by the hangman as “scandalous, contrary to religion, to morals, and respect for authority.” His lodgings were searched, but when the officer came to arrest him the author was found to have escaped.

France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than any other country at any other time, produced a number of women who occupied a very leading position, not only in the high society of Paris, but in the intellectual and political life of the nation. They collected in their houses all the eminent men of letters and science and politics, who not only came to meet one another, but were attracted by the charm, the beauty, the wit, and the intelligence of their hostesses. Attempts have been made at other times and in other countries to imitate these French _salons_, but without anything like the same success. The names of some of these women have become historical—Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Staël, Ninon de l’Enclos, Madame du Châtelet, Madame du Deffand, Mademoiselle de l’Espinasse—to mention only a few of them. Voltaire was a favorite with those of his time, more especially with Madame du Châtelet, who went so far as to place her castle at Cirey at his disposal. She was a very clever woman, wrote books on philosophy, and at the same time she was extremely frivolous—just the sort of combination Voltaire loved. At Cirey he interested himself in refurnishing the house and in gardening. He set up a laboratory and experimented in physics; he busied himself with iron-founding; he studied astronomy and philosophy with his hostess, made love to her, quarreled with her over trifles, for she had a very hot temper; and all the while kept on producing an almost incredible amount of writings. Cirey became his home and headquarters till Madame du Châtelet died in 1749. During this period he came again into Court favor, wrote a play which was performed before the King, and was made Historiographer and Gentleman of the Chamber.

One of the most curious and interesting incidents in Voltaire’s life was his friendship with Frederick the Great of Prussia. After the exchange of many enthusiastic and ridiculously complimentary letters, they met first in 1740, and subsequently Voltaire went over to Berlin on a diplomatic mission. But it was not till 1751 that he went and stayed for any length of time with his royal friend. Half the world watched the meetings of the two most prominent men of the day. They were very different, and this made their intimacy all the more surprising. The very slender link that united them was little more than flattery. The worst qualities of both soon came to the front, and led finally to their separation. Frederick was an arrogant disciplinarian, combining with his genius as a soldier an artistic sense and some literary talent. He welcomed Voltaire because he liked to gather round him celebrated men of every description, and he hoped to gain advantage from the advice and amusement from the company of the greatest writer and wit of his age. Voltaire, on his side, loved appreciation, especially from great people. The pomp and display of Courts attracted him; he was taken in by the honors and praise that were lavishly showered on him. He was content to correct Frederick’s writings, and to be in close contact with the great man. But, like a spoilt child, he became mischievous, and the harmony between the two men, which was only on the surface, became a hideous discord.

Voltaire was given apartments in the palace; he was made a royal chamberlain, decorated with an order, and granted a pension. Royal servants attended on him; he supped with the King, and took part in an endless round of feasts and entertainments. But foolishly delighted as he was with all these honors, he noticed that the King was apt to give a sly scratch with one hand while patting and stroking with the other. Voltaire used to refer to him by the nickname “Luc,” after an ape which had a knack of biting. “The supper parties are delicious,” he wrote; “the King is the life of the company. I have operas and comedies, reviews and concerts, my studies and books: Berlin is fine, the princesses charming, the maids of honor handsome, BUT ... !”

The magnificence of his style of living gradually began to fall off, and Frederick cut down his allowance of sugar, coffee and chocolate, and the philosopher stooped to pocketing candle-ends from the royal apartments. Voltaire began quarreling with others at the Court. Plots and intrigues, petty jealousies and rivalries began to make his life intolerable. He was mixed up in a discreditable affair connected with money matters which came out in a sordid dispute between him and a Jew named Hirsch. In fact, all the glamour was fading; the glitter was proving to be very far from gold. He never took the trouble to learn German, as French was the language of the Court and good German books were rare. Lessing, the founder of modern German literature, was still quite a young man. The two men met and made friends, but the inevitable quarrel soon separated them.

At last Voltaire became bored to death with correcting Frederick’s verses: “See,” he exclaimed when a batch was sent to him, “what a quantity of dirty linen the King has sent me to wash.” The remark reached the royal ear, while on the other hand Voltaire was told that Frederick when speaking of him had said something about “sucking an orange and throwing away the rind.” The finishing touch to the growing estrangement was put by Voltaire’s wittiest and most pitiless personal satire on Maupertuis, the president of the Berlin Academy, a vain but worthy individual. Frederick could not help laughing at it, but he forbade its publication. Voltaire pretended to agree, but in a few days the _Diatribe of Doctor Akakia_ appeared. It was received with great applause and merriment, but Frederick was furious. He ordered the pamphlet to be burned by the hangman and insisted on an apology from Voltaire, who in his turn sent back his order and chamberlain’s key. This was the last straw, and Voltaire left Berlin. But he carried off with him a volume of Frederick’s verses, probably as a curiosity. He was arrested at Frankfurt and treated with uncalled-for brutality by order of the King.

The whole visit reflects no credit whatever on either of the parties. Voltaire’s foolish vanity and hot temper seem to have obscured an intellect shrewd enough to have known that such a life as he lived in the Prussian capital was empty, profitless, and utterly vain. For Frederick there was more excuse, because monarchs at all times have claimed service and homage in return for a passing smile of friendship; Court attendance they have considered a sufficiently rich reward for any devotion; and thrones have ever been surrounded by the refuse of orange-rinds out of which the juice has been sucked.

Voltaire, now over sixty, entered upon the last phase of his life, which was the calmest and certainly the noblest. After wandering from place to place, he settled down at last in a house just outside Geneva, which he called _Les Délices_. Here he entertained many visitors and had a private theater in which his own plays were performed, he himself always taking a part and stage managing. He kept up a voluminous correspondence and continued to exchange letters with Frederick, quarreling as usual but finally making it up. He wrote at this time one of his most famous works, “Candide,” which was inspired by an earthquake at Lisbon, and in it he ridiculed the idea that everything was for the best in the best possible of all worlds. The book was burned by order of the Council of Geneva. But Voltaire was now accustomed to his writings being treated in this way.

In appearance he must have been a very peculiar figure. He was very thin, he had a long nose and protruding chin, and his face always wore an amused but rather mischievous smile. His sparkling eyes, peering from under his heavy wig, showed he was very much alive. His health always troubled him, and nobody spoke about dying so much or thought so little about death. From _Les Délices_ he would drive into Geneva in an extraordinary old-fashioned carriage painted blue with gold stars and drawn by four horses. On one occasion a crowd assembled to see him alight. “What do you want to see, boobies?” he cried. “A skeleton? Well, here is one!” And he threw off his cloak.

A few years later he bought another property near by, called Ferney, and erected a château, where he spent the remainder of his days. Here he developed into a complete country gentleman, and came to be known all over Europe as the Squire of Ferney. He took great pride in all the details of the arrangements in the house. He had a bath-room made, which in those days was an almost unknown luxury, but he was very particular in matters of cleanliness and was very neat and tidy. His niece, Madame Denis, however, who kept house for him, was slovenly and a bad manager. She was an ugly and tiresome woman, without humor or even common sense. She actually wrote a comedy, which the players, out of respect for Voltaire, declined to act. She was responsible for a good deal of extravagance in the household, as well as neglect in keeping the house clean. Her uncle, who could not bear the sight of a cobweb, took advantage of her absence in Paris at one time to have the whole house cleaned from top to bottom. There were a large number of servants, and two of them once robbed their master. The police having got wind of the matter, Voltaire sent a message to the culprits to fly directly, or else he would not be able to save them from hanging. He even sent them money for the journey. So touched were they by his generosity that, having got away successfully, they settled down to live honest lives. Gardens, park, farms, nurseries, bees and silkworms, all received personal attention from this wonderful little old philosopher. An immense number of visitors, many of them celebrated people, were entertained, and after theatricals, sometimes as many as eighty people sat down to supper. Indeed, he became a little weary of being what he called “an hotel-keeper.” Some visitors stayed with him for a considerable time, and the grand-niece of the poet Corneille he adopted as a daughter.

Though now an old man, his life at Ferney, like his life at Cirey, was one of ceaseless activity. Never can any one have written so many letters. Seven thousand have been printed, but there are many more: and his correspondents ranged from kings and empresses to the humblest and most undistinguished people. With all his faults, and he had many, Voltaire never fell a prey to two of the worst failings of which a human being can be guilty—indifference and indolence.

Let us try and picture a day at Ferney. Voltaire did not appear till eleven o’clock. He remained in his room, where he had five desks all very carefully and neatly arranged with the notes and papers for the various works on which he was engaged. The rest of the morning he spent in garden or farm superintending and giving orders. He dined with the house-party, eating very little himself, his only form of indulgence being coffee. After some conversation with his guests in the early afternoon, he retired to his study and refused to be interrupted by anybody till supper-time. Then he came out in very lively spirits, led the conversation, provoked discussion, and amused every one with his jokes and repartees. In the evening there was probably a theatrical entertainment in his little theater, or he would read out some of his poems, or play chess, the only game he ever indulged in. When he went to bed he started work afresh, and as he slept very little, this would go on sometimes far into the night, especially if he had a play on hand. Madame Denis looked after the guests, some of whom, to their great annoyance, saw very little of their host.

It was in the last twenty years of his life that Voltaire played such a noble part in championing the cause of men who were subjected to gross and cruel persecution. The most famous case is that of Callas. He was a Protestant shopkeeper in Toulouse, a kind and benevolent old man. The monstrous accusation brought against him was that of murdering his son, who, as a matter of fact, committed suicide in a fit of melancholy. The motive of the murder was supposed to be that the son wanted to become a Roman Catholic, and his father, rather than allow it, killed him. Callas was tried and condemned without a shred of evidence against him. He was tortured with hideous cruelty, broken on the wheel, and finally strangled. This was in 1762. Some of the family fled to Switzerland, and Voltaire heard of the case. He soon saw that behind it lay the thing he hated most in the world, namely, religious intolerance. He set to work with an energy and perseverance which were quite extraordinary. He left off his usual literary work; he examined evidence, drew up reports, wrote statements and narratives, collected a fund, composed pamphlets, wrote to influential people, and devoted his whole time and thoughts and much money to the cause he had undertaken. He succeeded in getting a new trial, and at last, three years after the savage sentence had been passed on Callas, a unanimous verdict of complete innocence was recorded by a council of forty judges. The whole of Europe had heard of the case, because it was Voltaire who had taken up the cause of the poor and honest man who had been the victim of a vile plot. Nothing in his life gave him more satisfaction than his success in this affair. Thirteen years later an old woman in Paris, in reply to some one who asked who the little old man was whom crowds surrounded, said, “It is the saviour of Callas.” No honor that ever came to Voltaire gave him so much pleasure as that simple answer.

Nor was the case of Callas the only one in which he took an active interest. A man called Sirven was persecuted in much the same way, and would have suffered a similar fate had he not escaped. It took nine years for justice to be done this time, and Voltaire was seventy-seven when the case was retried and the accused declared innocent. Further, there was the case of Espinasse, who was sentenced to the galleys for giving supper and a bed to a Protestant minister; of Montbailli, who was falsely accused of murdering his mother; of La Barre; and several others, who for one reason or another were victims of persecution. Voltaire’s hatred of injustice had always been strong. He showed it when he was a much younger man. One occasion was the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur, the great actress, who had performed in several of his plays. Because she was an actress she was refused Christian burial. His fury knew no bounds, more especially as he had seen an actress buried in London with every mark of respect and sympathy. He wrote a poem which showed the depths of his indignation at this senseless intolerance.

Voltaire’s finest qualities, in fact, came to the front in his character of champion of the persecuted. The cynical satirist was merged into the generous and courageous upholder of justice. The oppressed and needy may get sympathy from others who are in like condition, but it is much more rare for one who is neither poor nor downtrodden to give them not only sympathy, but practical and useful support.

Voltaire, as already said, detested intolerance. He expressed this in a well-known phrase, which he repeated both in his writings and in his conversation, “_Écrasez l’infâme_” (Crush the infamous). His enemies declared that he meant God, Christ, Christianity, and religion. But this was very far from true. By _l’infâme_ he meant intolerance, bigotry, superstition, persecution, and all the hideous evils that blighted the true spirit of religion. It was _l’infâme_ that enforced the doctrines of religion by fire, torture, and imprisonment, it was _l’infâme_ that encouraged oppression and tyranny; it was _l’infâme_ that was the barrier to liberty, progress, and enlightenment; and _l’infâme_ was Voltaire’s lifelong enemy. He did as much as any one to combat this evil spirit. But it requires more than a man, it requires a people, to succeed completely; and no people have even yet got the power in any land. Voltaire was certainly not a sentimentalist, and it is interesting to note that he was the first influential writer who was struck more by the futility than the cruelty of war. He regarded both war and the intrigues of diplomacy which create it as being absolutely contrary to the best interests of nations.

It is a pity Voltaire ever left Ferney. However, he very naturally wanted to revisit Paris, which he had not seen for twenty-eight years. Also he wanted to superintend the production of a new tragedy he had just written. Madame Denis, who was bored with Ferney, seems to have encouraged him to go. Instead, therefore, of dying quietly in his home, he passed the last few weeks of his life in a perfect orgy of entertainment and excitement, and there is something pathetic in the vain little old man, masquerading for the benefit of Paris crowds. And yet his last visit to Paris, which amounted to an event of public importance, was very characteristic of the man’s whole life. He received all sorts of distinguished visitors; society flocked to see him; the French Academy, by whom in old days he had been rejected, paid him every compliment possible; actors welcomed him with enthusiasm; the middle-class turned out in crowds to see him; the Protestants worshiped the man who had fought against persecution; the mob filled the streets in awe of a man who could stand up so boldly against the powers of government; the Court and the Church avoided him because they feared him, while the preachers denounced him from their pulpits.

One of his oldest friends was greeted by him on his arrival with the words, “I have left off dying to come and see you.” The Academy’s reception was a great function. A gorgeous coach was sent for him, and as the crowd waited he appeared in the doorway, a very lean figure, with his old-fashioned gray wig surmounted by a little square cap. He wore a red coat lined with ermine, white silk stockings on his shrunken legs, large silver buckles on his shoes, a little cane in his hand with a crow’s beak for a handle, and over all this wonderful dress, a sable cloak which had been given to him by Catherine, Empress of Russia. At the Louvre two thousand people assembled, and greeted him with shouts of “Long live Voltaire!” Afterwards, at the theater, he appeared in a box, and the whole audience rose and received him with frantic applause. An actor came forward and crowned him with a wreath of laurels, while the people stormed and shouted. It certainly was a triumph, a remarkable triumph, not only for the man, but for his opinions. There was no discordant voice. As one who was present said, “Envy, hatred, fanaticism, and intolerance dared not murmur.”

But all these entertainments were too much for the old man. He grew more feeble and ill, and died at last on May 30, 1778, at the age of eighty-three. Shortly before his death Voltaire signed a declaration which summed up his belief: “I die worshiping God, loving my friends, and not hating my enemies, but detesting superstition.” His body, dressed up as though he were alive, was taken out of Paris in a carriage and buried at Scellières, about a hundred miles away. The bishops of the diocese sent an order to forbid the burial, but it was too late. No newspaper was allowed to mention his death or anything about him, and the Academy was forbidden to hold the service which was customary on the death of a member. In the twentieth century just the same orders were issued by the Russian Government when Tolstoy died. Nothing is feared more by Church and State than the influence of a great reformer.

Over Voltaire’s body controversy raged just as it had over the living man.

On the eve of the French Revolution the National Assembly of France made Louis XVI sign a decree ordering Voltaire’s remains to be transferred to Paris. This was done with great pomp and ceremony. A long procession with banners and music passed through the city. An immense sarcophagus, forty feet high, surmounted by a full-length figure of Voltaire and a winged figure of Immortality, was drawn along by twelve white horses. On it was written, “He avenged Callas, La Barre, Sirven, and Montbailli. Poet, philosopher, historian, he gave a great impulse to the human mind; he prepared us to become free.” A hundred thousand people walked in the procession through crowds of hundreds of thousands more. The body was buried in the Panthéon. But this was not its last resting-place. In 1814, on the restoration of the Bourbon Kings, his bones were removed and thrown into a waste place outside the city. This was discovered in 1864, when his heart, which had been in the possession of the Villette family, was placed inside the empty tomb.

It has been impossible to enumerate even Voltaire’s principal writings, but mention must be made of one of the most remarkable of his works, which was his “Philosophical Dictionary.” It contained brief articles on an enormous variety of subjects, each one brimful of interest, whether they were treated with serious thought and profound learning or with sarcasm and biting irony. He kept on adding to it until it reached eight volumes, and, needless to say, it shocked and infuriated as well as delighted those who read it. He also assisted with many contributions to the great encyclopædia which Diderot and d’Alembert helped to compile, and which created a great stir and exercised a considerable influence on the contemporary thought of France.

Madame du Deffand, one of the many brilliant women of eighteenth-century France, who knew Voltaire well and corresponded with him for many years, said of him that “he was good to read and bad to know.” His faults were certainly very marked, and to some extent spoilt his virtues. His vanity was almost ridiculous; he was quite unscrupulous in making money, in attacking his enemies, and in defending himself; he scoffed with cruel and bitter words, but he never mocked at any men who lived good lives. Mischief prompted him more than malice. He could not help laughing at people who pulled long faces and were incapable of laughing at themselves.

He certainly disbelieved in the creeds of the Church; but by partaking, on one occasion, of the Communion, building a church, and joining a religious order, it looked as if he were insincere, though he is not the only person who has conformed to religious observances in which he did not really believe. But Voltaire scandalized people by doing it all with his tongue in his cheek; in fact, he was altogether irreverent by nature, and reverence is a quality which the strongest opponent of any creed ought always to display. Granting all these defects, however, Voltaire’s influence in opening men’s minds, showing up what was false, sham, and hypocritical, was quite immeasurable. He had, too, the great virtue of humanity. This is not just sentimental kindness and empty sympathy, but, as John Morley expresses it, “Humanity armed, aggressive, and alert; never slumbering and never wearying; moving like an ancient hero, over the land to slay monsters, is the rarest of virtues, and Voltaire is one of its master types.”

A great upheaval was not far off, and gradually the way was being prepared for a better day in France and in Europe. Another man was at work, Jean Jacques Rousseau, whom Voltaire knew, but did not like. While Voltaire was appealing to the minds of the thoughtful, Rousseau was reading the hearts of the people and stirring their imagination. The age was one of extreme corruption, frivolity, and luxury on one side, and poverty, degradation, and misery on the other: an age of bad laws, stale traditions, and reckless cruelty. Voltaire and his friends were sowing the seeds of revolt. The people, only half-conscious, were being driven, as they so easily can be in any country where they are kept ignorant, partly by circumstances, partly by weak men, and partly by an atrocious social system, into the precipice of disaster.

The crash came in the great French Revolution, the greatest convulsion through which any country has ever passed. With all its bloodshed and violent excesses, and in spite of the reaction which quickly followed it in the rise of Napoleon, the Revolution finally destroyed a disastrous method of government, and freed the people from the worst forms of oppression which had grown up in the long reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV. Voltaire did not live to see this tremendous change; he would have deplored its violence, but his responsibility for the growth of the ideas which made such a thing possible was by no means small.

A. P.

VIII

HANS ANDERSEN

1805–1875

It matters not to have been born in a duck-yard, if one has been
hatched from a swan’s egg.

This is the story of Hans Andersen, the son of a poor cobbler and his wife a washerwoman. Nearly every child in the world has read his Fairy Stories, and the romance of his own life is almost as marvelous as one of these—more marvelous, perhaps, because it is really true. All the things he dreamt of—all the things he longed to happen, came true, so that when he was fifty he wrote it down and called it “The Story of My Life.”

Hans Andersen was born rather more than a hundred years ago in the ancient city of Odense, in Denmark. His parents were very poor, so poor that they had only one room under a steep gabled roof. In this room, which was kitchen, workshop, parlor, and bedroom, Hans Andersen opened his eyes, to the sound of his father hammering shoes. He was born in a great bed with curtains—which had been made by his father out of a nobleman’s coffin; there were bits of ragged crape still hanging about the woodwork of the bed. The little room which was Hans’ home was to him exciting and delightful beyond measure. It was full of all sorts of things—the walls were covered with pictures, and the tables and chests had shiny cups and glasses and jugs upon them. The room was always decorated with fresh birch and beech boughs, and bunches of sweet herbs hung from the rafters. In the lattice window grew pots of mint. Close to the window was the cobbler’s workshop and a shelf of books. The door was painted with rough landscapes, and when the little boy was in bed he would gaze at these and make up stories about them. His father and mother, before they came to bed, would say to one another in low voices how nice and quiet Hans was, believing him to be asleep—when he was really wide awake enjoying his own thoughts and fancies about the pictures. Between the Andersens’ cottage and their neighbor’s there stood a box of earth, which Andersen’s mother planted with chives and parsley. This was their garden, and you can read about it in the “Snow Queen.” As Hans grew up he thought there was nothing so nice in the world as his own little home, and he loved to beautify it with garlands of flowers and wild plants, which he would put about in glasses. He was very fond of his mother, who was not, it seems, a particularly attractive woman. She was good-natured, but silly and thriftless, never thinking of the morrow so long as they had a roof over their heads that day. She was careless, too, about Hans as an infant, and was in the truest sense of the word uneducated. Hans got his love of reading and his imagination from his unsuccessful, unhappy father. The cobbler was a far more educated person than his wife, and he was better born. But owing to his family’s misfortunes—for they had come down in the world—he was obliged, much against his will, to take up shoemaking; this work he settled down to with a sad and bitter heart. All his spare time he gave to reading. Books became his one comfort. He was never seen to smile except when he was reading. Sometimes he would read aloud in the evenings and his wife would gaze at him completely puzzled—not understanding, but admiring him all the same.

As Hans grew older, he and his father became great friends, and they went long walks together; and while his father sat and thought or read, Hans ran about picking wild strawberries and making pretty garlands of flowers. The cobbler certainly rather neglected his shoemaking, and as he was different from his neighbors, they shunned him and thought all sorts of evil things about him. The cobbler’s one wish was to get away from the city and to live in the country. On hearing one day that the squire of a large village required a shoemaker about the place, he offered himself as such. Then he would have a cottage and a little garden and perhaps a cow. The squire’s wife sent him a piece of silk to make a specimen of dancing shoes. For the next few days the family could talk of nothing else but these shoes and of their hopes for the future. Hans prayed to God to fulfil his father’s wishes. At last the shoes were finished and were gazed upon with admiration by Hans and his mother. Off went the cobbler with the shoes wrapped up in his apron—while his little family waited in impatience and anxiety at home. When the cobbler returned his face was quite pale and they saw something dreadful had happened. He told them the squire’s wife had not even tried on the shoes. She had just looked at them, and said the silk was spoiled and that she would not require him as shoemaker. The cobbler then and there took out his knife and cut the poor shoes in pieces. So all their hopes were dashed to the ground; their rosy hopes of a life in the country with a cow and a garden faded like a dream, and they wept.

Hans Andersen as a child had no boy friends, and he hardly did any lessons, but he was very far from being bored, because he had such a lively imagination and could always invent games and stories for himself. His father would make him toys, pictures that changed their shapes when pulled with a string, and a mill which made the miller dance when it went round, and peep-shows of funny rag dolls. What he liked best was making dolls’ clothes. In the little garden he would sit for hours near the one gooseberry-bush. This, with the help of a broomstick and his mother’s apron, he made into a little tent, and there he would sit in all weathers, fancying things and inventing stories. Very occasionally he went to a school, and at one school he made friends with a little girl and would tell her stories. They were mostly about himself—how he was of noble birth only the fairies had changed him in his cradle, and all sorts of other inventions. One day he heard the little girl say, “He is a fool like his grandpapa,” and poor Hans trembled and never spoke to her about these things again. He had a mad old grandfather at the lunatic asylum, where he sometimes went. His grandmother, the mother of his father, was a dear old lady who looked after the garden of the asylum, and brought flowers to the Andersens every Sunday. She would recount to Hans stories of her youth—of her mother’s mother, who had been quite a grand lady, and of her own happy childhood in more prosperous circumstances. Strange sights Hans would see in the court at the asylum, sights that would haunt him for days and even years, so that he would beg his parents to put him in their big bed and draw the curtains that he might feel safe. He grew up religious in a sort of superstitious way, and this was his mother’s influence. He was shocked at his father, as his mother and the neighbors were—“there is no other devil than that which is in our own hearts,” said his father one day, and Andersen’s mother burst into tears and prayed to God to forgive his father. The cobbler died when Hans was only eleven years old, and he was left alone with his mother.

He continued to play with his toy theater and peep-shows and made dolls’ clothes. But he also read all he could lay hands on, and a great deal of Shakespeare, which made a deep impression on him. He liked best the plays where there are ghosts and witches—he felt he must go on the stage. He jotted down at this time the titles of twenty-five plays; the spelling of the titles being most peculiar!

Naturally young Hans Andersen was the laughing-stock of the neighborhood. Nobody understood him, and Hans singing in the lanes and sewing and reading at home was simply regarded as a lunatic. By the time he was fourteen he had not a single friend of his own age. Boys teased him, and screamed at him, “There goes the play scribbler,” so that Hans shrank from them and would hide himself at home from their mocking eyes and voices. He longed, like the ugly duckling of his story, for the companionship of people cleverer and nobler than himself.

He was indeed very funny to look at, quite comically ugly with his large nose and feet and very small Japanese eyes, and he was so tall and gawky that his clothes were always too small for him, which made him look still odder. He became persuaded that his voice was going to make his fortune, and an old woman who washed clothes in the river told Andersen that the Empire of China lay under the water there. Hans quite believed her. He thought to himself that perhaps one moonlight night, when he would be singing by the water’s edge, a Chinese Prince might push his way through the earth on hearing his song, and would take him down into his country and there make him rich and noble. Then he might let him visit Odense again, where he would live and build a castle, the envied and admired of everybody. Long after—Andersen says in his autobiography—when he was reading his poems and stories aloud in Copenhagen, he hoped for such a Prince to appear in the audience who would sympathize and help him.

But the gentry, though much amused by the cobbler’s peculiar son, were sorry for him. He seemed to them a strange and freakish being, who, though he could recite plays from memory and make poetry, was yet so ignorant that he knew no grammar, or even how to spell. They laughed at Hans’ absurdly ambitious and childish ideas, that he was at once going to be a great writer, or singer, or actor, without any education at all. One family tried their best to get him into the local school, or to enter some trade, but he would not hear of it. He was, however, sent to the ragged school for a time to learn scripture, writing, and arithmetic. They found he could hardly write a line correctly, and he was dreadfully bored by this sort of learning. He must have been an annoying pupil, for he was always dreamy and absent-minded, and never looked at his lessons except on his way to and from school. He tried to please the master by bringing him bunches of wild flowers. He left the school as ignorant as he had entered it. At about the age of fourteen he was confirmed, and wore for the first time a pair of boots—of these he was so tremendously proud that when he walked up the aisle of the church he drew his trousers right up so that every one might see the boots, and he rejoiced that they squeaked so loudly that every one’s attention might be drawn to them—at the same time he felt he ought not to be thinking so much of his boots and so little of his Maker. The story of the Red Shoes was inspired by them. Naturally his relations began to get a little anxious about this time as to his future. He was fourteen and he had not yet done anything sensible, and was what ordinary people would call a dunce. He had, it is true, shown extraordinary skill with his needle, and this pointed to his being a tailor. While his relations talked and worried over Hans together and came to no conclusion the boy continued his desultory life. But he had great schemes in his head, and was making up his mind to take his fate into his own hands. He would, like the heroes he had read about, set out by himself to seek his fortune. This meant that he would go to Copenhagen and there find work at the Theater. This idea had come to him when the actors from the Royal Theater there had come to Odense.

Andersen had one day got permission to appear on the stage as a shepherd. His enthusiasm and funny childish ways amused and interested the actors, and Hans at once thought he was a born actor and that his fortune was made. He heard these same actors speak about a thing called a Ballet, which seemed to be finer than anything in the world, and of a wonderful lady who danced in the Ballet, and Hans pictured her as a sort of fairy queen who would help him and make him famous. His mother was rather alarmed at these plans, but Hans said in answer to her objections, “You go through a frightful lot of hardships, and then you become famous.” So the mother consulted a wise woman, who, examining the coffee grouts, said that Hans Christian Andersen would become a great man, and that one day Odense would be illuminated in his honor. Hans’ mother was then quite satisfied. The boy packed up his little bundle to take him to the ship, and so to Copenhagen. He had about nine dollars in his pocket, and was fourteen years old. Most people would say what a mad expedition and how absurd, but Hans had no fear, he was happy, for he had his wish, and was quite sure that he would make his fortune.

When he arrived at Copenhagen he rushed off to see the Fairy Queen, the dancer he had heard about, and told her how he wished to go on the stage. To show her what he could do, he took off his boots and made a drum out of his hat, and so began to dance and sing. As he had such a very odd appearance, his heavy elephantine gambols simply terrified the poor lady, she took him for an escaped lunatic, and of course showed him the door.

But Hans Andersen, still hopeful, went off to the Director of the Theater, and there met with another rebuff. He was told that only educated people were engaged for the stage. This was hard to bear, and after various adventures and disappointments Hans found he had only fifty cents left—so either he must return to Odense by the first coasting ship, or stop at Copenhagen and learn a trade. He chose a trade, and apprenticed himself to a joiner, but there the roughness and coarse talk of his fellow-joiners upset him so much that he left the same day. So there he was, friendless and with nothing to do but to wander the streets. In his wanderings, he suddenly remembered the name of a man he had heard the Odense people talk about, a musician, the Director of the Conservatoire. So off he went to this man’s house, with the purpose of asking him to take him as a pupil. When he arrived he found the musician was having a dinner-party, but Andersen was allowed in, and telling them of his object he was taken to the piano, and there played and recited. When he had finished, he burst into tears, but the company applauded and raised a small collection of money for him. The kind musician arranged that he should have lessons in singing, and Hans, full of joy, wrote to his mother that his fortune was in sight.

For the next nine months he was supported by these “noble-minded men,” as he called them, but when he lost his voice about the age of fifteen, they advised him to return to his native town and learn a handicraft, but rather than do this the poor boy was ready to endure every hardship. He lived now in a garret in the lowest quarter of Copenhagen, and had nothing to eat but a cup of coffee in the morning and a roll eaten on a bench later in the day. He was very proud and sensitive, so he would pretend that he had had plenty to eat and that he had been dining out with friends, also that he was quite warm, when his clothes were absolutely threadbare and patched, and his wretched boots let in all the wet, so that his feet were sometimes not dry for weeks. When he lay down to sleep in his attic, he tells us, after saying his prayers, he was helped by his trust in God that everything would turn out right in the end; and indeed it was almost miraculous the way something or somebody always turned up to help.

Kind-hearted people taught him German and Danish, and sent him to the dancing school to learn dancing, but they did not give him money, because they had no idea how poor he was, as he said nothing about it. The courage and determination he showed at this time were really remarkable in so young a boy, and in spite of being very nearly starved he continued to write poems and plays. One play he sent to the Royal Theater without giving his name, and never doubted in his childish ignorance that it would be accepted. It was sent back to him with a curt note saying that the play showed such a lack of education that it was absurd. But the only effect this had on Andersen was to make him write another, and he sent that to the manager of the theater; but this time those who read it said it showed unmistakable signs of talent, and advised that Andersen’s friends should ask the King to help with money to support and educate the boy. Frederick VI of Denmark was like the kind kings in Andersen’s stories. He arranged at once that Hans should be sent to the Latin School at Slagelse for three years, to be properly educated and cared for. This was arranged and Hans went off to school, but his time there was not at all happy.

The adventurous, free life he led in Copenhagen, though he had been hungry and cold, had been much more to his liking. In the story of his life he writes about this period with the greatest bitterness. He had been so happy at the prospect of learning, and when he got to school, he felt like a wild bird shut up in a cage. “I behaved,” he said, “like one who is thrown into the water without being able to swim. It was a matter of life and death to me to make progress, but there came one billow after another—one called Mathematics, another called Grammar, another called Geography—and I began to fear I should never swim through them all.” He was terribly frightened of failing, and began to think he was a dunce, for he was seventeen and had to be put with the smallest boys in the school, which was very discouraging, but it was greatly the master’s fault. He treated Hans as he would ninety-nine boys out of a hundred. He never ceased laughing at him, and seldom, if ever, encouraged him; so damping was he that Andersen really began to feel he was not worth all the trouble and money that were being spent upon him. Andersen, with his sensitive, imaginative nature, was apt to make mountains out of molehills. His imagination, indeed, was quite extraordinary, extravagant, and out of proportion to his other faculties. He needed a kind, understanding person to guide him, but he was left to himself and had few, if any, friends. The ordinary dull routine of school life made him suffer. He describes it all in his book as a sort of “Dotheboys Hall,” when it was really just an ordinary school like any other at that date. His anxiety to get on may be guessed at when we read that he nearly worried himself to death, because he got “Very good” in a report for conduct, instead of “Remarkably good.” “I am a strange being,” he once wrote. “If the wind blows a wee bit sharply the water always comes into my eyes, though I know very well that life cannot be a perpetual May day.”

When he was twenty his master moved to Elsinore, and Andersen went with him. He was pleased and excited at the change; the beautiful country round Elsinore filled him with joy; but, alas! he got on still less well with his master, who treated him, Andersen says, as a perfectly stupid, brutish boy. At that period it was considered the right thing for schoolmasters, and even parents, never to praise a child or encourage him for fear of spoiling him. Yet all the time this master was scolding and laughing at Hans, he was writing to the boy’s friends, praising his nature, his warm heart and imagination, and his diligence in work. He recommended him as worthy of any support in the way of money or education that might be given him. One day Andersen brought his master a poem he had written, and the man scoffed and said it was mere idle trash, and only fit for the rubbish-heap. This quite finished Hans; he was found by another master in deep distress. The same master told Andersen’s friends of the boy’s unhappiness and advised his removal. He was taken away. So ended what Andersen describes as the “darkest and bitterest period of my life.” He had been at school a little more than three years.