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Updated: May 10, 2025
Andersen sums up the unnatural point of view in these words: "When Kay tried to repeat the Lord's Prayer, he could only remember the multiplication table." Now, without taking these words in any literal sense, we can admit that they represent the development of the head at the expense of the heart. An example of this kind of story to avoid is Andersen's "Story of the Butterfly."
And some kind friends, grown-up people, whose opinion was not unimportant, advised him by all means to give up writing such stories as he had no talent for them; and it was only later, that, to use Andersen's own words, "every door and heart in Denmark was open to them."
If the poor, abused Ugly Duckling of Hans Andersen's tale had strayed on a wintry day to her door, she would have taken it in, and nourished, and cherished it all through the cold, dark weather; but when the summer was come, and the duckling grown into a swan, spread its broad white wings against the blue sky, she would have watched it fly away without word or sign to detain it; she would have had nothing in common with it then.
That story of Hans Andersen's, which she had read, about the little mermaid who danced, and felt that swords were wounding her feet while the prince smiled on his bride yes, that was her case. She would have to stand by in silence and see him caressing another woman, while every caress would stab her like a sword. Was there no way of stopping it? Ah! what is that?
On the last day of April she uses another expression from the same poem, which is more an adaptation than a reproduction: "To-morrow April will hide her tears and blushes beneath the flowers of lovely May." In a letter to a friend at the Perkins Institution, dated May 17, 1889, she gives a reproduction from one of Hans Christian Andersen's stories, which I had read to her not long before.
It was a million miles away to any other sort of world; and that world, in so far as it had reference to a past, was a subject not mentioned among the men of Heart's Desire. Yet this morning there seemed to be something upon Dan Andersen's mind, as he edged a little farther along into the shade, and felt in his pocket for a match.
He clapped his arms akimbo and looked down at some one among the group of bustling soldiers. "I'll show you how to be a rebel, you damned skunk." Andersen's heart beat fast. "Good heavens!" he thought. "Is it possible?" His head grew chill as if struck by a cold wave.
This letter is published in the Perkins Institution Report , p. 204. The original story was read to her from a copy of "Andersen's Stories," published by Leavitt & Allen Bros., and may be found on p. 97 of Part I. in that volume. Her admiration for the impressive explanations which Bishop Brooks has given her of the Fatherhood of God is well known.
"The principal thing," says he, "in Andersen's best and most elaborate works, in those which are distinguished for the richest fancy, the deepest feeling, the most lively poetic spirit, is, of talent, or at least of a noble nature, which will struggle its way out of narrow and depressing circumstances.
It had been, well, a sort of a review of a new illustrated edition of Hans Andersen's Tales, treating them as if they were modern stories, commenting on them from the point of view of morals and probability making fun of people who couldn't give themselves up to the charm of a story unless it tallied with their own horrid little experiences of life.
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