Comment by dang

What an great article and what a great life. I had no idea.

When he was 11, his father died and Andersen took a job in a factory where he had his trousers pulled down to prove he was a man.

Aged 14, he left [...] to make his fortune in Copenhagen. “First you go through an awful lot, and then you become famous,” he explained to his anxious mother, as though the plot of his life had been written already.

“I shall have no success with my appearance,” he reflected, “so I make use of whatever is available.”

If he sounds like a character invented by Charles Dickens, it is because Uriah Heep was modelled on Andersen, whom Dickens met in 1847. David Copperfield’s first sighting of Heep was “a cadaverous face” peering out of the round tower: “He had a way of writhing when he wanted to express enthusiasm, which was very ugly, the snaky twistings of his throat and body.” “If you’re an eel, sir,” counsels Betsey Trotwood, “conduct yourself like one. If you’re a man, control your limbs, sir!” In our own kinder age, we might diagnose Anderson with dyspraxia.

He saw himself, however, not as an earthly being at all but “one who seemed”, as he told Dickens, “to have fallen from the skies”.