"We have both of us one and the same friend, Chamisso!" replied I, and at these words he leapt up exultantly.
"You are then Andersen!" he exclaimed; threw his arms around my neck, and his honest eyes beamed with joy.
"Now you will stop several days here," said he. I told him that I could only stay a couple of hours, because I was travelling with some of my countrymen who were waiting for me.
"You have a great many friends in little St. Goar," said he; "it is but a short time since I read aloud your novel of O. T. to a large circle; one of these friends I must, at all events, fetch here, and you must also see my wife. Yes, indeed, you do not know that you had something to do in our being married."
He then related to me how my novel, Only a Fiddler, had caused them to exchange letters, and then led to their acquaintance, which acquaintance had ended in their being a married couple. He called her, mentioned to her my name, and I was regarded as an old friend. Such moments as these are a blessing; a mercy of God, a happiness—and how many such, how various, have I not enjoyed!
I relate all these, to me, joyful occurrences; they are facts in my life: I relate them, as I formerly have related that which was miserable, humiliating, and depressing; and if I have done so, in the spirit which operated in my soul, it will not be called pride or vanity;—neither of them would assuredly be the proper name for it. But people may perhaps ask at home, Has Andersen then never been attacked in foreign countries? I must reply,—no!
No regular attack has been made upon me, at least they have never at home called my attention to any such, and therefore there certainly cannot have been anything of the kind;—with the exception of one which made its appearance in Germany, but which originated in Denmark, at the very moment when I was in Paris.
A certain Mr. Boas made a journey at that time through Scandinavia, and wrote a book on the subject. In this he gave a sort of survey of Danish literature, which he also published in the journal called Die Grenzboten; in this I was very severely handled as a man and as a poet. Several other Danish poets also, as for instance, Christian Winter, have an equally great right to complain. Mr. Boas had drawn his information out of the miserable gossip of every-day life; his work excited attention in Copenhagen, and nobody there would allow themselves to be considered as his informants; nay even Holst the poet, who, as may be seen from the work, travelled with him through Sweden, and had received him at his house in Copenhagen, on this occasion published, in one of the most widely circulated of our papers, a declaration that he was in no way connected with Mr. Boas.
Mr. Boas had in Copenhagen attached himself to a particular clique consisting of a few young men; he had heard them full of lively spirits, talking during the day, of the Danish poets and their writings; he had then gone home, written down what he had heard and afterwards published it in his work. This was, to use the mildest term, inconsiderate. That my Improvisatore and Only a Fiddler did not please him, is a matter of taste, and to that I must submit myself. But when he, before the whole of Germany, where probably people will presume that what he has written is true, if he declare it to be, as is the case, the universal judgment against me in my native land; when he, I say, declared me before the whole of Germany, to be the most haughty of men, he inflicts upon me a deeper wound than he perhaps imagined. He conveyed the voice of a party, formerly hostile to me, into foreign countries. Nor is he true even in that which he represents; he gives circumstances as facts, which never took place.
In Denmark what he has written could not injure me, and many have declared themselves afraid of coming into contact with any one, who printed everything which he heard. His book was read in Germany, the public of which is now also mine; and I believe, therefore, that I may here say how faulty is his view of Danish literature and Danish poets; in what manner his book was received in my native land and that people there know in what way it was put together. But after I have expressed myself thus on this subject I will gladly offer Mr. Boas my hand; and if, in his next visit to Denmark, no other poet will receive him, I will do my utmost for him; I know that he will not be able to judge me more severely when we know each other, than when we knew each other not. His judgment would also have been quite of another character had he come to Denmark but one year later; things changed very much in a year's time. Then the tide had turned in my favor; I then had published my new children's stories, of which from that moment to the present there prevailed, through the whole of my native land, but one unchanging honorable opinion. When the edition of my collection of stories came out at Christmas 1843, the reaction began; acknowledgment of my merits were made, and favor shown me in Denmark, and from that time I have no cause for complaint. I have obtained and I obtain in my own land that which I deserve, nay perhaps, much more.