HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4559, 30 October 1875, Page 1 (Supplement)

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN.

(Erom the Spectator.) The child-world has lost a friend, who was to it what Shakupere is to the grown-up world of men and women, by the peaceful passing away 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 entrie —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. In that charming Danish society, frank, kindly, simple, cultivated, it was a child they had set in their 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. His talk was always like that of an ideallyglfted child—question, narrative, fancy, but never meeting, or going with, or borrowing from other mind#. He would begin to tell a story—after a few minutes’ abstracted gazing at some little object, a straw, a pebble, no matter what —most commonly a toy or a fl OW er—and pour out his fancies in the plain, unadorned forms of the Danish, his_ voice exquisitely modulated with every emotion or meaning, and his great, ugly, ape-like hands, which looked as if nothing that they touched could escape sullying or destruction, deftly cutting out the quaintest designs in paper, with wonderful rapidity and delicacy, as he spoke. He loved children, storks, and flowers with something approaching passion, of which, otherwise, there was no trace in him. To children he yielded place, which no “ big people ” ever expected from him. He would bear interruption by a child, and patiently answer its questions, always becoming more child-like himself in doing so ; he understood children and they understood him, after the occult fashion of the higher animals, and he might be commonly seen built up in a bower of children, with one on each foot, where there was plenty of roomfor it, and an outer edge of them as the less privileged audience. To them he was “ dear And’sen,” too, and a playfellow; also a confidant and helper. Many a tooth has-been extracted, many a dose of medicine administered, under the influence of a story from Andersen; and the Copenhagen children’s favorite toys are the persouages of his stories made in terracotta.' The chief favorite is “Ole Luckoi,” who comes to visit the little ones in their sleep —never until they are fast asleep, though—and whispers to them pleasant dreams of the coming of Santa Claus. “Ole Luckoi” is a comical little fellow with two umbrellas tucked under his arm, one to be held over the 1 heads of good children, bringing good dreams; the other to be hold over the heads of children who have thought or done “ what the good God does not like,” bringing dreams of discomfiture. Andersen never invented a story or created a personage to frighten a child to to produce any feeling of suspense or repulsion; Luckoi was not to be waited for in the dark, with trembling limbs and beating heart; ho ; could 1 never be seen, and one always knew, when he trod upon the stair, whether the child was really sleeping. - In every order his descriptions, and the accessories of his stories, impromptu as they always were, were wonderfully accurate, and people wondered, for he never studied botany or any other science from books, yet when lie gave a soul and a costume to a flower, he never departed from its color or its character —for instance, in his wonderful story of the despotia father-carrot, and his lovely daughter, in her pale yellow gown, with the feathery green necklace. This story he improvised to reward a little girl who had obeyed her mother’s injunctions that she should eat a tough old carrot which was in her plate of soup. To get him on the subject of storks was whimsically pleasant. He had so closely studied a colony of these birds that every one had a character and a history for him ; stork family life, stork heart, stork brain, every reality and every fancy that even his imagination could bring out would reward the questioner as to stork character andqualities. “What a pity it is Andersen cannot have a stork wife !” was more than once said. All things animate and all the things we call inanimate responded to the call of his delightful fancy, and he revelled in his own power. That it could have a rival in attractiveness, or that it ever could bore. others, no more occurred to him than it occurs to any only child to suspect the existence of a rival with its parents. Wherever he was, he was not only first, but all, as a matter of course. The “name-day” of the “ English Hose ” as he called her, betel while she was in the same house with the poet, and several other guests were also there. After the pretty Danish fashion, her hostess gave a name-fete, of which the Hose was queen, with the right to choose a king for the day. Her privileges were explained, and she prepared-to declare her choice, but she had reckoned without “ dear And’sen,” who greeted her at onco with—" I—I —yes, And’sen himself will be your choice ; you shall say that And’sen was your name-day king ” —and so it had to bo. r He never loft her side all day ; ho was as constant as one of his own storks, and his entire conviction of her proud content was rfo simple and so manifest, that np one could

have ridiculed it who boasted any heart or the faintest sense of humour.

His marvellous simplicity extended to every affair of life. He who made many rich was poor himself. His books brought him very little ; the tiny pension allowed him by the State and his free stall at the theatre constituted his wealth. But he never thought of money ; in that, too, lie had all a child’s perfect trustfulness. Some spirited attempts were made to marry him—one in particular, by a handsome peasant girl, who wrote him a love-letter, and took it to him herself. When he had read it, she urged her cause in words. “ I would be so good to you,” she said ; “ I would take such care of you.” “ I don’t doubt it," he replied; “ but, my good girl, I don’t want to be married.” He had a grand passion he used to say, once, and it was enough for all his life ; and then he would weave some of his purest, brightest, most beautiful and graceful fancies round the image of—Jenny Lind. His sleeps well in the city which loved and honored him so truly, whose every day life is full of him and of associations with him, whose every familiar object has been lent new meaning by his extraordinary fancy, and his simple, trustful, childlike heart. His memory ■will be kept green throughout a long period of remembrance, by plentiful traditions of one whoso character was as unique as his genius.