Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847

But the time now comes when the great business of all novels—love—is brought upon the scene. And here we have an observation to make which we think may be deserving of attention.

Antonio, the Improvisatore, is made, in the novel, to love in the strangest fashion imaginable. He loves and he does not love; he never knows himself, nor the reader either, whether, or with whom, to pronounce him in love. Annunciata, the first object of this uncertain passion, behaves herself, it must be confessed, in a very extraordinary manner. We suppose the exigencies of the novel must excuse her; it was necessary that her lover should be plunged in despair, and therefore she could not be permitted to behave as any other woman would have done in the same circumstances. She has a real affection for Antonio; yet at the critical moment—the last moment he will be able to learn the truth, the last time he will see her unless her response be favourable—she behaves in such a manner as to lead him inevitably to the conclusion that his rival is preferred to him. This Annunciata, the most celebrated singer of her day, loses her voice, loses her beauty,—a fever deprives her of both;—and not till her death does Antonio learn that he, and not another, was the person really beloved. Meanwhile, in his travels, Antonio meets with a blind girl, whom he does or does not love, on whom at least he poetises, and whose forehead, because she was blind, he had kissed. He is afterwards introduced, at Venice, to a young lady, (Maria) who bears a striking resemblance to this blind girl. She is, in fact, the same person, restored to sight, though he is not aware of it. Maria loves the Improvisatore; he says, he believes that his affection is not love. He quits Venice—he returns—he is ill. Then follows one of those miserable scenes which novelists will inflict upon us—of dream, or delirium—what you will,—and, in this state, he fancies Maria is dead; he finds then that he really loved; and, in his sleep or trance, he expresses aloud his affection. His declaration is overheard by Maria and her sister, who are watching over his couch. He wakes, and Maria is there, alive before him. In his sleep he has become aware of the true condition of his own heart; nay, he has leapt the Rubicon,—he has declared it. He becomes a married man.

Now, in the confused and contradictory account of Antonio's passion, we see a truth which the author drew from his own nature and experience,—a truth which, if he had fully appreciated, or had manfully adhered to, would have enabled him to draw a striking, consistent, and original portrait. In such natures as Andersen's, there is often found a modesty more than a woman's, combined with a vivid feeling of beauty, and a yearning for affection. Modesty is no exclusive property of the female sex, and there may be so much of it in a youth as to be the impediment, perhaps the unconscious impediment, to all the natural outpouring of his heart. The coyness of the virgin, the suitor, by his prayers and wooing, does all he can to overcome; but here the coyness is in the suitor himself. He has to overcome it by himself, and he cannot. He hardly knows the sort of enemy he has to conquer. Every woman seems to him enclosed in a bell-glass, fine as gossamer, but he cannot break it. He feels himself drawn, but he cannot approach. His heart is yearning; yet he says to himself, no, I do not love. A looker-on calls him inconstant, uncertain, capricious. He is not so; he is bound by viewless fetters, nor does he know where to strike the chain that is coiled around him.

Such was the truth, we apprehend, such the character, that Andersen had indistinctly in view. He drew from himself, but he had not previously analysed that self. It is, therefore, not so much a false as a confused and imperfect representation that he has given, which the reader, if he thinks it worth his while, must explain and complete for himself. Perhaps, too, a fear of the ridicule which an exhibition of modesty in man might draw down from certain slender witlings, from the young gentlemen, or even the young ladies, of Copenhagen, may have, in part, deterred him from a faithful portraiture. To people of reflection, who have learned to estimate at its true value the laugh of coxcombs, and the wisdom of the so-called man of the world—the shallowest bird of passage that we know of—such a portrait would have been attractive for the genuine truth it contains. It would require, indeed, a master's hand to deal both well and honestly with it.

The descriptions of Italy which "The Improvisatore" contains are sufficiently striking and faithful to recall the scenes to those who have visited them; which is all, we believe, the best descriptions can effect. What is absolutely new to a reader cannot be described to him. If all the poets and romancers of England were to unite together in a committee of taste, they could not frame a description which would give the effect of mountainous scenery to one who had never seen a mountain. The utmost the describer call do, in all such cases, is to liken the scene to something already familiar to the reader's imagination. Though generally faithful, we cannot say that our author never sacrifices accuracy of detail to the demands of the novelist, never sacrifices the actual to the ideal. For instance, his account of the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel, is rather what one is willing to anticipate it might be, than what a traveller really finds it. To be sure, he has a right to place his hero of the novel where he pleases in the chapel, relieve him from the crowd, and give him all the advantages of position: still his perfect enjoyment of all that both the arts of painting and music can afford, and that overpowering sentiment which he finds in the great picture of the Last Judgment by Michel Angelo, (a picture which addresses itself far more to the artist than the poet,) strikes us as a description more from imagination than experience.

A little satire upon the travelling English seems, by the way, to be as agreeable at Copenhagen as at Paris. Our Danish friends are quite welcome to it; we only wish for their sakes that, in the present instance, it had been a little more lively and pungent. Our Hans Andersen is too weak in the wrist, has not arm strong enough "to crack the satyric thong." Mere exaggeration maybe mere nonsense, and very dull nonsense. The scene is at the hotel at Terracina, so well known by all travellers.

"The cracking of whips re-echoed from the wall of rocks; a carriage with four horses rolled up to the hotel. Armed servants sat on the seat at the back of the carriage; a pale thin gentleman, wrapped in a large bright-coloured dressing-gown, stretched himself within it. The postilion dismounted and cracked his long whip several times, whilst fresh horses were put to. The stranger wished to proceed, but as he desired to have an escort over the mountains where Fra Diavolo and Cesari had bold descendants, he was obliged to wait a quarter of an hour, and now scolded, half in English and half in Italian, at the people's laziness, and at the torments and sufferings which travellers had to endure; and at length knotted up his pocket-handkerchief into a night-cap, which he drew on his head, and then, throwing himself into a corner of the carriage, closed his eyes, and seemed to resign himself to his fate.

"I perceived that it was all Englishman, who already, in ten days, had travelled through the north and the middle of Italy, and in that time had made himself acquainted with this country; had seen Rome in one day, and was now going to Naples to ascend Vesuvius, and then by the steam-vessel to Marseilles, to gain a knowledge also of the south of France, which he hoped to do in a still shorter time. At length eight well-armed horsemen arrived, the postilion cracked his whip, and the carriage and the out-riders vanished through the gate between the tall yellow rocks."—(Vol. ii. p. 6.)

"Only a Fiddler" proceeds, in part, on the same plan as "The Improvisatore." Here, too, the author has drawn from his own early experience; here, too, we have a poor lad of genius, who will "go through an immense deal of adversity and then become famous;" here too we have the little ugly duck, who, however, was born in a swan's egg. The commencement of the novel is pretty, where it treats of the childhood of the hero; but Christian (such is his name) does not win upon our sympathy, and still less upon our respect. We are led to suspect that Christian Andersen himself, is naturally deficient in certain elements of character, or he would have better upheld the dignity of his namesake, whom he has certainly no desire to lower in our esteem. With an egregious passion for distinction, a great vanity, in short, we are afraid that he himself (judging from some passages in his Autobiography) hardly possesses a proper degree of pride, or the due feeling of self-respect. The Christian in the novel is the butt and laughing-stock of a proud, wilful young beauty of the name of Naomi; yet does he forsake the love of a sweet girl Lucie, to be the beaten spaniel of this Naomi. He has so little spirit as to take her money and her contempt at the same time.

This self-willed and beautiful Naomi is a well-imagined character, but imperfectly developed. Indeed the whole novel may be described as a jumble of ill-connected scenes, and of half-drawn characters. We have some sad imitations of the worst models of our current literature. Here is a Norwegian godfather, the blurred likeness of some Parisian murderer. Here are dreams and visions, and plenty of delirium. He has caught the trick, perhaps, from some of our English novelists, of infusing into the persons of his drama all sorts of distorted imaginations, by way of describing the situation he has placed them in. We will quote a passage of this nature: it is just possible that some of our countrymen, when they see their own style reflected back to them from a foreign page, may be able to appreciate its exquisite truth to nature. Christian, still a boy, is at play with his companions; he hides from them in the belfry of a church. It was the custom to ring the bells at sunset. He had ensconced himself between the wall and the great bell, and "when this rose, and showed to him the whole opening of its mouth," he found he was within a hair's breadth of contact with it. Retreat was impossible, and the least movement exposed his head to be shattered. The conception is terrible enough, but by no means a novel one, as all readers conversant with the pages of this Magazine will readily allow, by reference to the story of "The Man in the Bell," in our tenth volume,⁴ one of the late Dr Maginn's most powerful and graphic sketches. But the natural horror of the situation by no means satisfies this novelist; he therefore engrafts the following imaginations thereupon, as being such as were most likely to occur to the lad, frightened out of his senses, stunned by the roar of the bell, winking hard, and pressing himself closer and closer to the wall to escape the threatened blow.

"Overpowered to his very inmost soul by the most fearful anguish, the bell appeared to him the jaws of some immense serpent; the clapper was the poisonous tongue, which it extended towards him. Confused imaginations pressed upon him; feelings similar to the anguish which he felt when the godfather had dived with him beneath the water, took possession of him; but here it roared far stronger in his ears, and the changing colours before his eyes formed themselves into gray figures. The old pictures in the castle floated before him, but with threatening mien and gestures, and ever-changing forms; now long and angular, again jelly-like, clear and trembling; they clashed cymbals and beat drums, and then suddenly passed away into that fiery glow in which every thing had appeared to him, when, with Naomi, he looked through the red window-panes. It burned, that he felt plainly. He swam through a burning sea, and ever did the serpent exhibit to him its fearful jaws. An irresistible desire seized him to take hold on the clapper with both hands, when suddenly it became calm around him, but it still raged within his brain. He felt that all his clothes clung to him, and that his hands seemed fastened to the wall. Before him hung the serpent's head, dead and bowed; the bell was silent. He closed his eyes and felt that he fell asleep. He had fainted."—(Vol. i. p. 59.)

Are these some of the "beautiful thoughts" which Mrs Howitt finds it the greatest delight of her literary life to translate? One is a little curious to know how far this beauty has been increased or diminished by their admiring translator; but unfortunately we can boast no Scandinavian scholarship. This novel, however, is not without some striking passages, whether of description of natural scenery, or of human life. Of these, the little episode of the fate of Steffen-Margaret recurs most vividly to our recollection. Mrs Howitt, in her translation of "The True Story of my Life," draws our attention, in a note, to this character of Steffen-Margaret, informing us that it is the reproduction of a personage whom Andersen becomes slightly acquainted with in the early part of his career. She thus points out a striking passage in the novel; but the translator of the Autobiography and of "Only a Fiddler," might have found more natural opportunities for illustrating the connexion between the novel and the life of the author. There is no resemblance whatever between the two characters alluded to, except that they both belong to the same unfortunate class of society. Of the young girl mentioned in the life, nothing indeed is said, except that she received once a week a visit from her papa, who came to drink tea with her, dressed always in a shabby blue coat; and the point of the story is, that in after times, when Andersen rose into a far different rank of society, he encountered in some fashionable saloon the papa of the shabby blue coat in a bland old gentleman glittering with orders.

Christian, the hero of the novel, a lad utterly ignorant of life, has come for the first time to Copenhagen. Whilst the ship in which he has arrived is at anchor in the port, it is visited by some ladies, one of whom particularly fascinates him. She must be a princess, or something of that kind, if not a species of angel. The next day he finds out her residence, sees her, tells her all his history, all his inspirations, all his hopes; he is sure that he has found a kind and powerful patroness. The lady smiles at him, and dismisses him with some cakes and sweetmeats, and kindly taps upon the head. This is just what Andersen at the same age would have done himself, and just in this manner would he have been dismissed and comforted. There is a scene in the Autobiography very similar. He explains to some kind old dames, whom he encounters at the theatre, his thwarted aspirations after art; they give him cakes;—he tells them again of his impulses, and that he is dying to be famous; they give him more cakes;—he eats and is pacified.

The ship, however, had not been long in the harbour before his princess visited it again. It was evening—Christian was alone in the cabin.

"He was most strangely affected as he heard at this moment a voice on the cabin steps, which was just like hers. She, perhaps, would already present herself as a powerful fairy to conduct him to happiness. He would have rushed towards her, but she came not alone; a sailor accompanied her, and inquired aloud, on entering, if there were any one there. But a strange feeling of distress fettered Christian's tongue, and he remained silent.

"'What have you got to say to me?' asked the sailor.

"'Save me!' was the first word, which Christian heard from her lips in the cabin; she whom he had regarded as a rich and noble lady. 'I am sunk in shame!' said she. 'No one esteems me; I no longer esteem myself. Oh, save me, Sören! I have honestly divided my money with you; I yet am possessed of forty dollars. Marry me, and take me away out of this wo, and out of this misery! Take me to a place where nobody will know me, where you may not be ashamed of me. I will work for you like a slave, till the blood comes out at my finger-ends. Oh, take me away with you! In a year's time it may be too late.'

"'Should I take you to my old father and mother?' said the sailor.

"'I will kiss the dust from their feet they may beat me, and I will bear it without a murmur—will patiently bear every blow. I am already old, that I know. I shall soon be eight-and-twenty; but it is an act of mercy, which I beseech of you. If you will not do it, nobody else will; and I think I must drink—drink till my brain reels—and I forget what I have made myself!'

"'Is that the very important thing that you have got to tell me?' remarked the sailor, with a cold indifference.

"Her tears, her sighs, her words of despair, sank deep into Christian's heart. A visionary image had vanished, and with its vanishing he saw the dark side of a naked reality.

"He found himself again alone.

"A few days after this, the ice had to be hewed away from the channel. Christian and the sailor struck their axes deeply into the firm ice, so that it broke into great pieces. Something white hung fast to the ice in the opening; the sailor enlarged the opening, and then a female corpse presented itself, dressed in white as for a ball. She had amber leads round her neck, gold earrings, and she held her hands closely folded against her breast as if for prayer. It was Steffen-Margaret."

"O.T." commences in a more lively style than either of the preceding novels, but soon becomes in fact the dullest and most wearisome of the three. During a portion of this novel he seems to have taken for his model of narrative the "Wilhelm Meister" of Goethe; but the calm domestic manner which is tolerable in the clear-sighted man, who we know can rise nobly from it when he pleases, accords ill enough with the bewildered, most displeasing, and half intelligible story which Andersen has here to relate.

We have occupied ourselves quite sufficiently with these novels, and shall pass over "O.T." without further comment. Neither shall we bestow any of our space upon "The Poet's Bazaar," which seems to be nothing else than the Journal which the author may be supposed to have kept during his second visit to Italy, when he also extended his travels into Greece and Constantinople.

We take refuge in the nursery—we will listen to these tales for children—we throw away the rigid pen of criticism—we will have a story.

What precisely are the laws, what the critical rules, on which tales for children should be written, we will by no means undertake to define. Are they to contain nothing, in language or significance, beyond the apprehension of the inmates of the nursery? It is a question which we will not pretend to answer. Aristotle lays down nothing on the subject in his "Poetici;" nor Mr Dunlop in his "History of Fiction." If this be the law, if every thing must be level to the understanding of the frock-and-trousers population, then these, and many other Tales for Children, transgress against the first rule of their construction. How often does the story turn, like the novels for elder people, upon a marriage! Some king's son in disguise marries the beautiful princess. What idea has a child of marriage?—unless the sugared plum-cake distributed on such occasions comes in aid of his imagination. Marriage, to the infantine intelligence, must mean fine dresses, and infinite sweetmeats—a sort of juvenile party that is never to break up. Well, and the notion serves to carry on the tale withal. The imagination throws this temporary bridge over the gap, till time and experience supply other architecture. Amongst this collection, is a story in which vast importance is attached to a kiss. What can a curly-headed urchin, who is kissing, or being kissed, all day long, know of the value that may be given to what some versifier calls,

"The humid seal of soft affections!"

To our apprehension, it has always appeared that the best books for children were those not written expressly for them, but which, interesting to all readers, happened to fasten peculiarly upon the youthful imagination,—such as "Robinson Crusoe," the "Arabian Nights," "Pilgrim's Progress," &c. It is quite true that in all these there is much the child does not understand, but where there is something vividly apprehended, there is an additional pleasure procured, and an admirable stimulant, in the endeavour to penetrate the rest. There is all the charm of a riddle combined with all the fascination of a story. Besides, do we not throughout our boyhood and our youth, read with intense interest, and to our great improvement, books which we but partly understand? How much was lost to us of our Milton and our Shakspeare at an age when nevertheless we read them with intense interest and excitement, and therefore, we may be sure, with great profit. Throughout the whole season of our intellectual progress, we are necessarily reading works of which a great part is obscure to us; we get half at one time, and half at another.

Not, by any means, that we intend to say a word against writing books for children; if they are good books we shall read them too. A clever man talking to his child, in the presence of his adult friends,—has it never been remarked, how infinitely amusing he may be, and what an advantage he has from this two-fold audience? He lets loose all his fancy, under pretence that he is talking to a child, and he couples this wildness with all his wit, and point, and shrewdness, because he knows his friend is listening. The child is not a whit the less pleased, because there is something above its comprehension, nor the friend at all the less entertained, because he laughs at what was not intended for his capacity. A writer of children's tales—(If they are any thing better than what every nursery-maid can invent for herself)—is precisely in this position: he will, he must have in view the adult listener. While speaking to the child, he will endeavour to interest the parent who is overhearing him; and thus there may result a very amusing and agreeable composition.

We have met with some children's tales which, we thought, were so plainly levelled at the parent, that they seemed little more than lectures to grown-up people in the disguise of stories to their children. Some of the very clever stories of Miss Edgeworth appear to be more evidently designed for the adult listener, than to the little people to whom they are immediately addressed. And they may perhaps render good service in this way. Perhaps some mature matron, far above counsel, may take a hint which she thinks was not intended—may accept that piece of good advice which she fancies her own shrewdness has discovered, and which the subtle, Miss Edgeworth had laid, like a trap, in her path.

We are happy, we repeat, that we do not feel it incumbent upon us to settle the rules, the critical canon, of this nursery literature. We have no objection, however, to peep into it now and then, and we shall venture to give our readers another of Andersen's little stories, and so take our leave of him. We omit a sentence, here and there, where we can without injury to the tale; yet we have no fear that our gravest readers will think the extract too long. Our quotation is from the volume called "Tales from Denmark." There is another collection called, "The Shoes of Fortune;" these are higher in pretension, and inferior in merit.