Hans Christian Andersen: Little Mermaid, Big Problems

have a lot of good information. Still, what a life. I just want to get paid to go places and tell people about how I went there. I already do it so much, I know, for free. Yeah, hell, I paid to It's almost you know, Christmas in the way that we celebrate it. We got our tree up, um, you know, we're commercial holiday celebrators around here. And so we watched what we watched some TV episodes last night. But it's almost movie time because the days leading up

to Christmas you gotta crank out the movies. So true. What's what's your giving? Your top three? Well, Christmas Caro number one easily easy. I mean, I still love home alone. I could probably do it from memory, but it feels so nostalgic. Spirited is kind of a new fade. I guess, my god, why is it so good? It was so fun. I also love Klaus the animated movie where he has to go to the North Pole and make the post office work and he invents writing letters, Cutlanta and stuff.

It's so fun and good and I love it. That movie doesn't get the respect to deserve. That movie was hand drawn. Still look like c G stop motion. It's it's just like every animation silent once, but it was all done by hand. Its gorgeous, it really is. The voices are great, like, the cast is really great. The story is really sweet, and I mean he goes up there and the town is like horrible. It's like, okay, awesome. Everybody's really mean to each other, so it's pretty funny.

I love it. It was. It was really good. It's a really good for kind of a newer one. I guess. I don't know new years ago. It was a few years ago, seventeen or something like that. It sounds right. It's on Netflix. It's really good. Yeah, Muppets is so good. Clouds is great. I also really weirdly love The Guardians. What's it called, Oh, Rise the Guardians. Yes, that's a great movie. Jack Frost and Santa and the Easter Bunny and Fairy and all that. Baldwin is like this slavic

Santa Clause this big Zoe, which makes sense. It seems like Santa Claus a bee would have like a SMaL barty in accent or something totally, but he's like like tattoos. It's dude. I remember seeing trailers for this movie going and really rolling my eyes and the game looked dumb, but it was. It was really charming. It's a really sweet story. I loved it. I love Jack Frost, well,

you love Crispine. I do love christ Whatever I'm interested look right off the bat, I'm just gonna say, send us your favorite Christmas movies, because we always like recommendations. And there's a bunch we haven't seen. There are a bunch we haven't seen, and sometimes it's just like that, you see one and you're like, no, I don't want to see that, and then then somebody tells you, like no, seriously, do it, and it's worth watching and and ends up

being one of your favorites. So shoot us your lists would love to hear him. Well, we're going to get into our story today. And this was sparked by a little Christmas idea because we were looking at Charles Dickens, you know Mr Christmas, and he has you might have heard quite a silly story involving the author Hans Christian Anderson. Well that led us to Hans Christian Anderson. And this guy's love story is out of this world. But the

man himself is very interesting. So we really wanted to get into that today because you know author Hans Christian Anderson. He's most well known for stories like Thumblina, the Princess and the Pa the Snow Queen, on which Frozen is very loosely based, and of course The Little Mermaid, on which The Little Mermaid is sort of loosely based. Um. Well, Hans was a tall, awkward, odd looking man who was a self proclaimed virgin his entire life, but not for

lack of trying. He felt deeply in love with men and women alike, but they were always people that he knew he could never get. But he turned his heartbreak into fairy tales and gave the world some of its most classic children's stories. So let's hear all about the awkward love of Hans Christian Anderson, and then in our next episode we'll tell just the story of him and Charles Dickens. Let's do this, Hey the French, come listen. Well,

Eli and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking, a romantic tips. It's just about pridiculous relationships a lover. It might be any type of person at all, and abstract consent are a concrete wall. But if there's a story where the second glance, we'll show ridiculous role. That's a production of I Heart Radio. Hans Christian Anderson was born in Odense, Denmark, in eighteen o five, and his

parents were poor. His father was a twenty two year old man also named Hans, and he was just a shoemaker. He had almost no education, and his mother was a forty year old woman named Anna Maria and hers daughter a big age gap between those two. Now. She washed

laundry for neighbors to help with the family income. But though they had little to their name, his parents really cared for him and they spoiled him as much as they could, and they would build their own toys for him, and they would encourage him to use his imagination to entertain himself, because they couldn't just go out and you know, by a PlayStation or Dikolie Elmo or whatever it is. Yeah, his father would read to him at night from Arabian nights and this gave Hans a real love of fantasy

and adventure stories. And like I said, this kid is kind of tall, it's really awkward. He was gangly, but he loved singing and dancing. He looked very silly doing it, but he just didn't care. That's how we should all being. Yeah, just do it. It's so good for you. I wish I know some like tall, gangly clown types and I love them singing dancing around. That's great. I often was like I would do it more if I was, like

if I look like a marionette. Absolutely Sadly, Hans's father died in eighteen sixteen, when Hans was just eleven years old, and the next year his mother remarried and Hans started going to a local school for poor children. He got a very basic education there, but like any time you go to school, he was also teased a lot for being odd looking and wearing cheap, hand me down clothes. They were like, where are your air Force ones or something cooler from today? Air a shoe. Yeah, Nelly had

a whole song about it. Look, this is me dating myself, but that's what was really in. It's you dating yourself and me showing how outside of pop culture I am. We both sounded real cool. Just when Hans was fourteen, he managed to move to Copenhagen to find other weirdos like himself. The purpose of life, in my opinion, is to find your weirdos, and he wanted to pursue his dreams of being an actor and a singer. He was actually quite a talented soprano, so he was quickly accepted

to the Royal Danish Theater in Copenhagen. Good job, Hans. Unfortunately, shortly after being accepted, his voice change. I was a soprano when I was a kid. Oh yeah, I was a very high pitched singer. Yeah, they gave me solos. They're like, some of the girls can't hit these notes. It must be tough for a person looking for good singers, like a choir director. And you find this prepubiscent boy.

So the most beautiful, angelous voice and you're like, I sort of want to go back to the times when we could make you a Unich so he could present forever. Coral instructors didn't think that. I mean, I'm glad we wouldn't away from that practice. But I bet there's a choir director out there who has every now and then been like in a different age I was. I was a star soprano as a child. So maybe maybe it was considered so he couldn't pursue the soprano dream like

he had had before. But one of his colleagues at the theater had told Hans, dude, you are a poet. And Hans took that and ran with it, and he started writing like crazy. Now. One of the directors at the Royal Danish Theater, Jonas Colin, saw a lot of potential for this kid, and he said, all right, you know what, You're gonna be a poet. You're gonna be a writer. I'm sending you to grammar school in and Hans is like, you kid me in that place is

so expensive, like my mother washes laundry. I cannot pay for this one day. It's right. Well, Jonas Collins said, don't you worry about that? Kid, We're going to make it work. And he believed so hard in this boy, and he had such good connections that he managed to get Hans's tuition covered by King Frederick the Six. And you might wonder why King Frederick the six was paying for this random, poor kid to go to this expensive grammar school. Well there's a little bit of a conspiracy

theory behind this. And here, as our friend and producer Ben Bolan puts, it is where it gets crazy. Los Angeles Times published an article in that says, for years, Hans Christian Andersen's biographers haven't really trusted the author's own story about his birth. According to biographer Yen's Jorgensen, at Broholm Castle, a seventeen year old noble girl named Elise as felt Larvig was known to be pregnant out of wedlock in eighteen o five, around the time that Hans

Christian Andersen was born. The next year she married Crown Prince Christian of Denmark against everyone's wishes, and the whole marriage was brief, happy and kept pretty quiet. But the child she was pregnant with before their marriage, there is

no record of. Yeah, this Prince Christian of Denmark who went on to be king in his Wikipedia in any articles I could find about him, no mention of Elise ali felt Larvic, but in documents about her she definitely was in love with them and was briefly married to him. But they really were just like she's It was a class thing, like she was out of his class. So

it was this marriage nobody was really happy about. And they also allegedly had a second child together after they were married, a daughter who was hidden away and taken away from Denmark. Damn and get this, at Castle Broholm there was a housekeeper named Anna Maria and HER's daughter the exact name of Hans Christian Anderson's mother. And after eighteen o five, when this woman was Ignanton, then mysteriously not there's suddenly no record of Anna Maria anderstaughter working

at Castle Broholm anymore. Suddenly, around the same time, this forty year old woman shows up in a village with a brand new baby. And wherever this twenty two year old husband came from. Okay, if that's not suspicious enough. Crown Prince Christian, who like I said, would later be King Christian the eighth of Denmark. Apparently he had ten children outside of his marriages, and all of them were

diligently provided for. So if it felt a little weird to you that the royal purse was being used to pay for this random, poor child's education, then this conspiracy theory might be the answer for you. I mean, sounds legit right now. None of this is officially proven, of course,

and other scholars highly doubt the claim. But Jorgensen, who in the nineteen eighties was actually the principle of the slay Elsa school where Hans Christian Andersen study, wrote in his biography that in the time that Hans attended school there, townspoke wrote letters to each other talking about how amazed they were with just how often Prince Christian visited this small town. What's he doing here again? What is there to see in Slasa? He comes to see every school play,

every baseball game. It's almost like his son is there. Jorgenson also checked the records and saw that Anderson's tuition was more than twice the usual costs to go to that school, like they paid double to go to that school, and all the payments were traced back to the royal family. Even stranger Anderson's name never appears on the rolls. Jorgenson wrote, quote, to enroll, you had to show a birth certificate, but Hans didn't have one. That's so wild. I'm starting to

believe this more and more. And it's true. Hans Christian Anderson did not get a birth certificate get until he was seventeen years old in November. So random noble girl has a baby that disappears, and at the same time a housemaid with the same exact name as his mother suddenly has a baby at forty years old with a two year old band. And then that baby is cared for by the royal family for his whole life. Come

on and visited and visited. Was he born of a secret romance between the crown prince and a noble girl? Did they just hand this baby off and promised to make sure his life was comfortable? This biographer Jorgenson really makes it seem like that was the exact case, and to me, it just seems like that's got to be what's happened, right, It's too obvious. They didn't even do a very good job at covering it up from my perspective.

But the Hans Christian Anderson Center in Denmark says Jorgenson's theories quote rest on a scandalous abuse of sources and have been phatically denounced by experts on King Christian eighth. But of course, as with many conspiracy theories, those denouncements have only furthered people's belief in the idea. Well, why are you trying to cover it up? Then? I know right now it's a little strange. Christian Anderson technically might

have been heir to the throne of Denmark. Weird, and if I know one thing about heirs to the throne of Denmark. Uh, those stories always end well and they're kind of whiny. Well, whoever his parents were, and for whatever reason, the royal family paid his tuition. Hans Christian Anderson was actually not a great student. Dam You know, the king wants you to be here in maybe you should apply yourself. No, he was very weak. It's spelling.

He could not write formally, which, according to famous author's dot org Is quote, probably why his writing style was simplistic, with everyday spoken language, something that would later prove to be more of a feature than a bug. Right's set his writing apart. Yeah, his basic simple children's writing was like what made his stuff so easy? To read and what made children love it so much? Yeah? Absolutely, But at the time his headmaster was cruel and his instructors

discouraged him from writing, which made him really depressed. But he persevered and he managed to finish school in eighteen twenty eight, at which point he fiercely dedicated himself back to writing again. He had written some short stories during school,

despite the discouragement he got. He had had a few little things published here and there, so he knew that this was a potential future for him still, and the next year after graduating, he published a short story called a Journey on Foot from Holman's Canal to the East Point of Amager, and he found decent success with that publication short story long title. Yes. In eighteen thirty three, he got himself a little grant from the King other random little benefit from the royal family here, dude, I

mean King and Christian. Now, this grant allowed him to travel all across Europe, and while he's doing this, he's hearing local folk tales and fables, and he's taken in all these random stories and different cultures. And this allowed him to eventually write multiple collections of fairy tales that he released I think in three volumes, and these included Thumb, Bolina, the Princess and The pa Tom Thumb, The Emperor's New Clothes, and of course The Little Mermaid, Classic Tales, Classic Tales.

Now on and on his writing career went until he became the Hans Christian Anderson that we know and love today. But what about his love life? So many authors we have talked about were absolutely drowning and sex just talked about him. Walt Whitman like to go troll around for young men, right about it in his diary. And these

weren't necessar early hot studs either. No, no, no, Well, Anderson's own sexuality has been debated by scholars for decades, and we're going to start digging into those dirty details right after this. Bright Welcome back to the show, everybody. So Hans Christian Anderson. Biographer Elias Bredsdorf analyzed Hans's diaries and concluded that he lived and died a virgin, but was also a compulsive masturbater. And he made little plus signs in his diary every time he well, they love

these little codes. They had a sex code. Right, Well, you know, somebody snatches my diary, I don't want him quite to know that's going on, although he makes it pretty obvious, as The Guardian paraphrases, Hans would write, quote today, I had a visit from so and so. They're so sweet. When they left, I had a double sensuous plus plus again,

just like, what could he mean? Historian Richter Norton writes that Alfred Kinsey, the American sexologists, read a bunch of Anderson's original manuscripts and quote could say unequivocally that they were straight out homosexual stories. Scholars have found that when analyzing Hans's stories, while many of them are tales of goodness triumphing over evils such as the Snow Queen, others are pessimistic and sad. Britannica writes that quote, a strong

autobiographical element runs through his sadder tales. Throughout his life, he perceived himself as an outsider, and despite the international recognition he achieved, he never felt completely accepted. He never married, but again not for a complete lack of trying. His diaries do make it pretty clear that he had sexual attraction and urges. He's always right and like and saw this person today and could barely contain myself my blood is boiling. I'm burst into the seams. I gotta have

that booty um. And then he would write like, no, no, no, I've never had any booty and I never will. BLUs BLUs BLUs BLUs plus BLUs lush blush BLUs so. Historian Patrick Fleming cites one of Anderson's diaries in thirty four that says, quote, my blood is churning, huge sensuality and struggle with myself. If it really is a sin to satisfy this powerful urge, then let me fight it. I

am still innocent, but my blood is burning. And he makes that reference a lot that he's still innocent, he's still chased, he hasn't been deflowered or whatever words he uses at the time. And there is an element of religiousness to this, right, Like he does reference the sin and things like that. So he was pretty religious. But I think maybe that's more of a crutched lean on than it is a reason that he never did have any sex. But we'll get into that a little bit more.

Fleming says that a lot of Anderson's diaries had this sort of juxtaposition between his you know, his immense horny nous and his obsession with suppressing it. But still these pages are just peppered with plus signs everywhere. So he obviously kept trying to, you know, work his issues out on his own. He is the self serve station. He's like, I can't go out today, need to polish the Pewter plus plus plus. Some biographers are convinced of Anderson's homosexuality,

but others say it's more complicated than that. But certainly, as Fleming says, quote outside the normative expectations of nineteenth century Denmark, right, which must have been very narrow. I mean, most places in nineteenth century were pretty narrow. Anderson's own physician described his sexuality as acetic or practiced with severe self discipline and abstention. But Fleming sece by Eve Sedgwick called Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl that proposes that

masturbation was its own form of sexuality. If not literally, Fleming rights, then looking at it like a form of sexuality is at least a way to reevaluate our typical assumptions about sexuality. He says that with this in mind, it helps us to see quote that sexual identity exists

along multiple intersecting acts. Including not just the biological sex or gender assignment of one's self and one's partner, but the number of partners including zero, whether sexual expression is physical or emotional, the cultural and historical communities in which one exists, and other factors that no list could exhaust.

So basically saying sexualities spectrum, and there's a lot of different things that could inform that sexuality I have really nothing to do with your internal life and a lot to do with external life. Yeah, And we can't just, you know, narrowly categorize every person into these broad sort of umbrellas, right, Like, maybe there is this sort of solo sexuality where you are, you have sexual urges and you're willing to masturbate, but you don't want to have

sex with other people. Um. I believe that's what Cedric is sort of talking about. Uh in her article about Jane Austin and Flemming picks that up for Anderson and again they say, maybe not really specifically solo sexuality as a thing, but can we at least consider it and open our minds a little bit? Right? Well, and you can see it too, because like, like, for example, if

you talk about a sexuality which we've done a little bit. Um, I know that's also got a very wide spectrum of what like, some a sexuals are fully a romantic, are not interested in any form of anything, right, But there's also romantic a sexual that do want some form of ro mance and or fine with having sex. It's just not a big driver maybe for them. And then some are like I like the romance part where we hold hands and then we kiss and we cuddle, but there's

no like sex part. I don't like that part, you know, and so on and so forth. Like there's a huge, huge spectrum with a sexuality, So I could I could see maybe like a solo like version where you're like, I like, I feel attraction, but I don't want the

physical intimacy part. Yeah, And I can't speak for a sexuals, but what's the difference between I'm decidedly solo sexual I like to masturbate, but I don't like sex, and someone who's like I have trauma curable or treatable or at least explorable trauma that makes it very difficult for me to have sex with other people but not to masturbate. Um, you know what point do you say? No? No, I'm just solo sexual and that's okay versus I don't know.

I'm I'm there's there's a world out there that I'm not exploring because you know, because it's fear trauma or whatever, your anxiety, that kind of thing. Yeah, I wonder, I wonder if it's really like, well, what are you happy? Yeah? One way, like I do you feel like I've I have a limited life because I can't get out there and do what I want to do, Then obviously you

should address that. If you're like, I feel perfectly happy with this and I don't want anything different than who Who's to say that that's a wrong way to live in your life? Right? Right? Sexuality is so uh messy in in the best and worst ways now. Hans Krishn Anderson's sexuality was not discussed publicly until years after his

death in eighteen seventy. Expatica dot com tells us that a newspaper quote hinted that he may have been a homosexual in and none other than a man we've mentioned many times on this show and have an episode coming up about Magnus. Hirschfeld wrote an article in nineteen o one discussing Hans Christian Andersen's likely homosexuality, but Robert Lapage writes in The Guardian that there's evidence that Anderson was

actually bisexual and crushed on both men and women. To explore that we're going to actually jump forward in time and start with a love that Anderson felt in his late thirties with the Swedish opera singer Jenny Lynde. Jenny Lynde was touring Denmark with the Royal Swedish Opera in eighteen forty three when she met Hans. Now she's one of the most successful women artists in her time. Her career was nearing its height at this point, and Hans was supposedly so taken with her that he wrote his

fairy tale The Nightingale as a tribute. This is the story of a Chinese emperor who caged a nightingale with the most beautiful singing voice in the kingdom, and he loved it so much that a salesman sent him a golden mechanical nightingale covered in jewels that sang for him and never got tired. So the emperor set the real nightingale loose. She was happy to be free, but was sad to be rejected in favor of a mechanical bird. Eventually, the Emperor got tired of hearing the same song over

and over again, and he broke the Golden Nightingale. Then he got very ill and wished his real bird would come back, and the Nightingale did. She sang to him at the window every day and made him healthy again. She actually the Emperor asked her to come back and live in her cage again, and she was like, no, I'm good. She just sang at the window and he's like, all right, this is cool. I'll just sting for you at the window, but I can continue to fly around

my nastural habitat. Now. This story was published and it was a huge hit. I mean, Hans christ Needersen already a pretty big name at this time, and this story just took off. And this also contributed to Jenny Lynn's rising fame across Europe because everyone knew it was basically about her. In fact, everybody started calling her the Swedish Nightingale as an name, so really kind of just gave

her the the Anderson bump. A side note about this story, Oscar Wilde later wrote a response to this story called The Nightingale and the Rose and this was alluded to by Emily Dickinson in a letter to the woman that she loved Susan Gilbert and we're going to do them in an episode later too. So just a lot of ridiculous romance crossover going around the Nightingale here. I think we even discussed Jenny lynd in our episode about Tom Thumbs and the Barn. Jenny lyn hung out with Pt

Barnam a lot now. Hans Christian Andersen wrote frequent pouting letters to Jenny about how infatuated he was with her. He wrote in one diary entry quote, no books, no men have had a more ennobling influence upon me as a poet than Jenny Lynde. And they hung out all the time. Whenever she was in Denmark, they would go to lunch together. He would just kind of follow around like a puppy dog, but in person he was shy and awkward and he didn't really know how to talk

to her. One day in eighty four he met her on a train platform and she was about to leave for an opera concert, and he slipped her a letter that asked her to marry him, and she got on the train and was like, I'll open this on my way, and unfortunately Hans Christian Anderson Foundation tells us that Jenny's answer was not preserved. We don't have that letter, but we do have one where she said, quote that God bless and protect my brother is the sincerest wish of

his affectionate sister Jenny. He's really trying to be like, oh boy, we are just like siblings, aren't we. Hans, I love you, but not like that. A year later in she returned to Copenhagen for a concert tour, and Hans saw her daily. He admired her more than ever,

but she did not reciprocate romantically. She held a dinner of her friends at the Royal Hotel and in a toast, she honored the ballet master Auguste Bournonville and said he had been like a father to her and borne and Ville replied saying, well, now all Danes are gonna want to be my son, so they can consider themselves your brother. And to that, Jenny replied, quote, that is too many

brothers for me. I would rather choose one to represent all the rest, And she picked up a second class of champagne, walked over to Hans Christian Anderson handed it to him and said, quote, will you be my brother? And he's like no, no, she clinks glasses with him. He knew it was never going to happen between them. They call it really bittersweet. I mean, can you imagine just just that moment where he's like, she's coming over, just coming over, She's going to give me a champagne glass,

and she's like, will you be my brother? He's like, think, I'll just go walk into a river. But he did keep that champagne glass in his living room until the day he died, and it can be seen today in the Hans Christian Anderson House in his hometown of Odense, so it really mattered to him. Now. Jenny Lynne, biographer, believed that he based the Snow Queen's titular character on her with a Heart made of ice mh. But that was never explicitly said by Anderson himself, so we don't

know for sure. So Frozen was originally based on the Snow Queen. That was their plan the Disney movie Frozen, but they changed the script like thirty times and it got way far away from it. But roughly the same story of a girl out in the wilderness who thinks that she can't love. She's got stone in her heart,

ice in her heart. And this one biographer says, Hans sort of in it, like in cell way wrote this about her as an insult, like you know, you're so cold, such a nice queen, but you know, I think only timing really suggests that we don't know that that's true or not. But if so, it was not the first time that Hans Christian Andersen wrote his heart break into

one of his children's stories. Like we said, he also had a deep, passionate and confusing love for a few men in his life, and one of them would make Hans Christian Anderson's heart flounder and drive him to write a story about a tiny woman who lived under the sea, the Little Mermaid, And we're gonna hear about that story right after this Welcome Back everyone. In one of our favorite sources, the Marginalien Maria Popova writes about Harriet Hosmer.

She was the world's first successful female sculptor. She's an American. She was awesome. She really shattered the mold. You could say, I see what you did there now. After a visit from Hans Christian Anderson, Harriet Hosmer wrote that he was quote a tall, gaunt figure of the Lincoln type, with long, straight black hair shading a face striking because of its

sweetness and sadness. It was perhaps by reason of the very bitterness of his struggles that he loved to dwell among the more kindly fairies, in whose world he found no touch of hard humanity. I would love to hang out with the more kindly fairies too, there weren't I am so sick of hard humanity. Seriously, now, when we look back at Anderson's life, we can kind of see how sad he must have been all the time, and why he might have wanted to get away from that

hard humanity and hang out with fairies. He was an awkward boy who wanted to dance around and bring joy and song to people who ended up teasing him. Then he was a bright and creative student who was discouraged from his own passions by his teachers. And then even after his first two volumes to children's stories, those fairy tales like Thumbelina, critics skewered him. They said it was too simplistic, it didn't have enough morals, and children's literature

was meant to educate, not entertain. That reminds me of our episode about Margaret wise Brown, Yes, about how they were changing you know that you know, what was considered appropriate for kids, and they were like, you know, you can only give kids moral fables from tales, you know that tell him how to be a person. And she's like, what if it's just like a dog in a coat And the kids were like, yeah, what about a dog in a coat? Sitting a dog in a coat? I kind of wanted to read this dog in a coat

story that you're talking about. Scott was He's got it. But also in Hans's life, he was passionate and emotionally intense, but he had guilt over his own sexual feelings, and he had a habit of falling in love with very unattainable people. I should mention that Jenny Lynde he knew he wouldn't have a good relationship with because of her touring schedule, so he kind of set himself up for failure there. She was also away younger than him, she

was like fifteen or sixteen when he proposed. By the way, as tough as his rejection from Jenny Lynde was, it was nothing compared to the most intense love he felt throughout his life, to a friend he'd known since school named Edward Colin. This was the son of Anderson's early benefactor, the theater director Jonas Colin, got to Anderson the tuition money from the King for grammar school away back when the guy pulled all those strings by saying, Hey, I've

got your illegitimate son here. Don't you want him to be something one day now? Anderson lived with the Collins for a while, and at first Edward wasn't very impressed by this awkward kid who kind of barged into his life and home. But his dad had them practicing Latin

and grammar together, and over time they became closer. Edward thought it was so cool to have a friend his age hanging around all the time, and Hans Christian Anderson thought it was so cool to have a friend his age that he was head over heels, completely absolutely destined in love with. Gabrielle Bellow writes on lith Hub that Edward never really knew quite what to say when Anderson got emotional with him, and quote often simply expressed or

feigned ignorance of Anderson's lust. Probably the best way to go about it. I guess, although you kind of want to be first, because you're kind of leading him along a little bit too. If you're just like, you know, I'm so in love with you. I think you're so amazing, and you're I'm just feel so passionate about you, just to be like, okay, cool, great, yeah exactly. One time Anderson slipped a rose under Edward's pillow while he slept, and later wrote him a very special poem about roses.

And we found this on Danish translator John Iron's blog. So let's go down to poetry Corner and here Hans Christian Anderson's poem to Edward Collins. The rosebud, rosebud, ever firm and round like a young girl's lips, so sound when I kiss you as my bride, lovelier, Still you open wide? One more? Kiss your lips inspired, feel my heart's fire. I must straightway have confessed. No lips have I ever kissed, No girl waits with heart so true rose, My kiss must be for you, ah my yearning, ne'er

will tire feel my heart's fire. That is very passionate. And Edward Colin got this palm and was like, yeah, I think she'll like it. Nice, nice right in there, buddy, Hans is like, by rosebud, I mean your butth hole. I thought he meant lips. I know he didn't. I wasn't misreading it. That's the gen Z version. Yeah. Edward Collins again just not really knowing what to say when he gets things like this. So he's just like, nice,

good words. You're you're a real writer, buddy. Now in their twenties, Anderson continue to write Edward letters, famously saying quote I long for you as though you were a beautiful Calabrian girl. And you know, once again, we're guessing Edward was just like cool, bro, glad, we're buds too.

Another time, Anderson seemed to switch the proverbial gender roles that he had written for them in that one by saying, quote, my sentiments for you are those of a woman, the femininity of my nature, and our friendship must remain a mystery, to which I'm sure Edward probably simply replied L O L left him on red. Yeah right, or maybe he was like, yeah, mystery, that sounds good. Let's never let's

look he never forget Strea. Now, the letters kept coming, Anderson sent Edward all his stories he was writing, and he slipped little sentiments like those into his attached notes. In eighteen thirty four, Edward couldn't really take it anymore, and he snapped back in a letter, quote, you write too much. You have deplorable productivity. Below says this almost broke Hans his heart. But quote as in many unhealthy relationships,

Anderson kept at it. But she writes that this desperation was quote perhaps at least partly born out of the immense pressure and pain of his day to repress his queerness. Right, Like, he doesn't really know what to say. He's just obsessed with him and it's confusing him, and it's frustrating him. And if he's like pretty religious, you know, I'm sure it made him feel terrible, like very healthy and wrong.

And again we go back to this unattainability where he's like, he knows at this point, he willingly knows that his friend has turned him down. Right, has said as much, like if it was going to happen, it happened by now. But he keeps He's like, well, if I focus on him, then I know I never have to worry about crossing that line, or I know I have to have to find someone who might like me, and then I screw

it up. So lots of reasons now. When his buddy Edward announced his plans to get married to a woman named Henriette in Anderson was devastated, but he kept inserting himself into their lives, even tried to start a friendship

with Henriette by sending her letters, which is awkward. Soon, though, Bellow writes, Anderson seemed to be actively trying to stop their marriage from happening now, in what Bellow calls one of his less angered states, Edward once wrote Anderson a letter in eighteen thirty six and referred to him in it as quote a worthy friend. Well, Hans Christian Anderson got a little pio by this little princess and the piote. He wrote back, quote, why do you call me your

worthy friend? I don't want to be worthy. That is the most insipid, boring word you could use. Any fool can be called worthy. I have hotter blood than you and half of Copenhagen Edward. I also long for you to shake you, to see your hysterical laughter, to be able to walk away insulted and not come back home to you. For two whole days, talk like talking to him as if he's his wife, right Like, I'm going to storm away from you and give you the silent

treatment for two days. How do you like that? Right? You're going to sleep on the couch tonight. You're really in the doghouse, now, Edward Worthy, what an insult? Well, he's just like, I'm more special than that. I'm not. Just like it's like saying, no, you're my good buddy. It's not enough, right, Like it's not a special word, Like you and I were more than just good pals, Like you should acknowledge the very very special relationship we have.

And Edward is like, how about just special without all the variants? Can we can we just be friends? Right? Well? Edward and Henriette did get married, and later Edward would write in his own memoir quote, I found myself unable to respond to this love. And this caused the author much suffering. He thought, you know, the human world, it's a mess. Life under the city is better than anything

we got up here. So he put pen to paper and he started writing The Little Mermaid, which historian Rick Norton says was a direct response to his feelings for Edward Colin. He had written to Edward in an eight thirty five letter quote, if you look down to the bottom of my soul, you would understand the source of

my longing and pity me. Even the open, transparent lake has its unknown depths which no divers no. And in the original Little Mermaid, Bellow says Andrew's and describes the Mermaid's world in a way that really mirrors this letter kind of drew on his own language. Uh. He calls it a magical and mysterious place that we surface humans can barely imagine. Again, unknown depths no divers could know. Right, So let's look at the story at a Little Mermaid.

You've got a girl who has the most beautiful voice in existence? Is this Anderson because he was at the time one of Europe's most treasured authors. But much like the Disney movie, in his story, when this little Mermaid makes a deal with a sea witch so that she can get legs and visit the prince that she once rescued from drowning, she finally gets to be a part of that world that she always wanted to be part of.

But she can't speak, She's lost her voice, and this kind of feels a lot like Anderson's own challenges in expressing his true nature. Right, He's like, I always wanted to go talk to Jenny Lynde, but when I I made the trade to get the ridge to go up to her, and once I get there, I have no voice. I can't say anything yeah or or. I can't be

honest with Edwards. I mean, I guess he was kind of honest with Roundabout hinty way though, right, true, true, I write you a metaphor of a poem rather than just say, hey, buddy, I want to make out with you. What do you think you can see why, especially if he wasn't incursed at always? What do you want to

lose the friendship too? I don't know. Well. In his fairy tale, mermaids live for three hundred years, but they have no souls, and upon their death they simply dissolve into see foam and cease to exist, but humans get to live forever in heaven. So the little Mermaid makes the deal, trading her voice for legs. But in the original fairy tale, every step she takes on her legs feels incredibly painful, like she's walking on sharp knives, and the witch says she'll only get a soul if she

marries the prince. If not, then on the day he marries someone else, she will die from a broken heart and dissolve into sea foam and suffer all that pain for nothing. And the Prince hangs out with the mermaid all the time. He loves to dance with her, which she does despite the excruciating agony that she feels, but he never falls in love with her. Instead, he falls in love with the princess, who he believes is the

woman who rescued him from drowning. Right, So you can see how it really mirrors Anderson's sort of melancholy relationship with love. Right, Like maybe Hans Chrishn Anderson feels that he is sort of soulless or that his soul is corrupt, right with these sinful feelings he has, and that maybe if he finds true love that will redeem him or sort of justify those feelings. Otherwise he's thinking, all I

might as well just dissolve into the sea. Obviously, we've got the mermaid hanging out with the prince, giving him and anything he wants, dancing with him, right and entertaining him despite the extreme agony that she feels walking around on these legs, and that feels a lot like how Anderson might have felt growing up being best friends with Edward. Right, I love hanging out with you, and it's the most

painful thing I get. Love. Definitely pain Yeah, absolutely. And then you've got in the story, Edward, I mean the prince right, who thinks that that stupid princess saved him from drowning Henriette right when it was actually cons Christion Anderson, I mean the little mermaid who saved him. So Anderson's like, no, Edward, I'm the one who helped you grow into the menu are today, and yet you're going to go marry this this girl you think is so special, who did nothing

for you. I've been here for you the whole time, Right, you can really see the parallels here. I think it's fascinating. Yeah. Absolutely. Now, after the Prince marries the Princess and the Little Mermaid is about to die, Themaide sisters come to the surface, having made a new deal with the Sea Witch. They give the sea Witch their hair in exchange for a dagger that if the Little Mermaid uses to kill the prints and drip blood on her feet she'll turn back

into a mermaid. But the little mermaid just can't do it. She throws herself from the ship and dissolves into c foam, But instead of ceasing to exist, she ascends into the sky as an air spirit, and because of her selflessness, is given the chance to earn a soul by doing good deeds for mankind for three hundred years, which let's see eighteen thirty thirty seven, so we're still in it. Yeah, she should still be working on working on some good Yes,

get down here, mermaid. I got some suggestions for it. That soul. I think it's lame to be like, you were so selfless, so now you get to be selfless with three hundred years and then hey, it's that or dissolving a c foam a ce film. You know, there's a lot of debate about the ending of this story. Critics were kind of mixed on it at the time. It's a it's the The ending is one of the biggest things he changed because he based this on a story called Undine or Undine about a mermaid kind of

a similar setup. Um, but she just died at the end. I was just like, no, I want to give it a little more of an uplifting thing. And some people have said, well, is that him trying to find himself a happy ending or he's just unwilling to kill this character off. I sort of like it as this idea of I have wonder if Hans wasn't like man. I wish I could just stab Edward. I hate him so much. I'm so mad at him for what he did to me.

But you know what, instead, No, I'm going to release myself and maybe that will redeem me and I'll and I'll be given a better chance for a better life after this. But you can also see if someone's religious that they you know, there there should be a way to redeem yourself and I earn a place in paradise and all that stuff, right right, I think it's fascinating. I haven't read the original story of you, however, I

haven't actually know. I mean, I guess we we did a show years ago, we did the actual fairy Tales, and that's kind of the only time that I had ever really dove in and saw how much more crazy especially Grims of course, yeah, um, the Grim Brothers. The Grim Brother's whole point was, let me make you scared. And miserable and horrified. Yeah, we're trying to freak. Yeah. Hans went back and forth between like I really want to make you feel good about yourself and entertain you,

and also like, isn't life miserable? I do feel sorry for how anguished he must have been. Yeah, I mean you said in cell and I think that's kind of accurate,

because I don't think he wanted to be necessarily celibate. Yeah, I mean, yes, no, because I mean he didn't, but he must have because I think he also kept himself are I think he found reasons to I mean again in that sort of insult kind of way, like found reasons to blame other people when really he could have looked a little more inward and then like, well what am I? What am I putting out in the world? Yeah? Yeah,

you know who am I talking to? And how? Because that was the other thing too, is he you know what wasn't direct and then but was smothering at the same time. Yes, that's very frustrating for anyone. Right, Well, I guess that's what I meant when I was talking about Edward, you know, deflecting and that being kind of the best way to do it. I guess that's pretty informed by I don't know, being being a woman, because you can't. It's very hard to just outright be like no,

because then you're mean. And if you make a man mad about something like that, sometimes it puts you in serious danger and he gives a little bit of stock or stocker. So even if you're not like this guy does really want to stab me for real, he at least will make me really uncomfortable and like be invading my space and constantly in my ace and saying things

that make me uncomfortable and stuff like that. So, you know, sometimes the easiest and like you said, not always effective, but sometimes it feels like the safest, easiest route is to be like how you you ha ha ha, so you're the best, you know, kind of try to like get them to realize without actually staying out loud like I don't want that, I'm not interested in that way, please leave me alone, which can lead to hell hath no fury, sort of like a writer's scoring. Like a

writer's score. Yeah, I mean it's a lot of miscommunication, indirect communication, right that that, lad, I mean, you're right about the threats and the worry and the concern, but it's also just the spiral of no one's just saying it right, so you keep kind of circling. Well, he didn't outwardly reject me, so I'm gonna kind of keep

hinting at it. And he's like, well he hasn't so he hasn't directly asked me, So I'm going to keep hinting rejection, and they're just whirlpooling each other into this this misery spiral. Do we know if homosexuality was illegal

in Denmark at that time? I do know that it was decriminalized in nineteen thirty three, so I couldn't find anything specific about the eighteen hundreds, but it looks like I does suggest that it was a criminal action before that before So yeah, well that might be part of it where you can't be that open sure with your questions or like trying to determine exactly what you're trying to get out of this Rosebud poem and stuff like.

Unfortunately it was it was a question that was on par with like are you a pedophile or you missed you know, like something could ruin your life and career, and people would be like, I'm not inviting you over anymore, you can't be around my kids like horrible ship. It's not appropriate to put those on par but that's kind of how it was, and the self loathing from both religious and legal right right, So maybe Edward even had a little bit like, well, I don't want to ask

because then we can't really be friends anymore. And I do value your friendship, and I don't want to say something that will offend you so much that you'll be like, I can't. You know, you got to imagine that if he's like, are you homosexual? And Christian Anderson were like, no, what would give you that idea? But he wouldn't be like, come on, will you give me that idea? Let me

let me pull out these receipts. My feelings for you are as a woman, Yeah, that you've put a rose under my pillow while I slept, Sir, I think that was a normal brow thing to do. Well, look, Hans Christian Andersen's love life is clearly incredibly complicated, especially for a man who never even once ever had sex. He himself like seemed to be very passionate about love, but he also didn't seem quite sure what to do with it, right.

He didn't really seem to understand his own feelings. He might have been afraid to act on the mfs we've said, or a shame to discover what was under the surface. So, you know, when he felt strongly about one and he couldn't contain it anymore, he kind of did overflow in the worst way possible and scare these people off, whether

he knew he was going to or not. So maybe his pursuit of unattainable people was deliberate to protect himself from, you know, a less predictable rejection, right, like, well, if I go after them, I know it's not gonna work, but if I go to this person, it might, and then it would hurt me more than it doesn't. But Jenny and Edward were not the only two people that he was obsessed with, who also kind of thought that

Hans was a little too much. He also spent an infamous summer with Mr Christmas himself, Charles Dickens, And we're going to talk about all of that in our next episode, so definitely stay tuned for that. It's gonna be a special Christmas story. Um, just about just about the two of them. I love it. Yeah, I'm very excited to tell you all that story special Christmas episode. We might have a bonus treat in store for that episode two. Um, so stay tuned. Yeah, please let us know what you

thought of Hans Christian Anderson his love love. I wish we could have done a whole biography about how his all of his stories were written and when and all this stuff. Fascinating stuff, but of course, you know, ridiculous romance. We got to keep it to the subject. Um, but he certainly had some ridiculous romances, sure did. And I'm a little sorry for him, Yeah, I am. Yeah. Well, let us know what you think of Hans Christian Anderson's

masturbation diary or his Reeders Nightingale or his best friends. Um. You can reach us through email It's ridic Romance at gmail dot com. Yeah, or find us on Twitter and Instagram on at oh great, it's Eli. I'm at Dynamite Boom and the show is at ridic Romance and we will catch you all in the next episode we talk about Mr Christmas. Thank you all so much for listening. Thank you so long. Friends, It's time to go. Thanks

so listening to our show. Tell your friend's names, Uncle's in dance to listen to a show ridiculous role nance