Hans Christian Andersen and the manors
Hans Christian Andersen was very fond of country life at the Danish manors. When the poet didn’t travel abroad, he often stayed several days or weeks at the manor houses, and some of them he visited many times.
Hans Christian Andersen was very fond of country life at the Danish manors. When the poet didn’t travel abroad, he often stayed several days or weeks at the manor houses, and some of them he visited many times. For instance, Hans Christian Andersen was 37 times at Basnæs Manor in Sealand and 24 times at Glorup Manor in Funen. All in all Hans Christian Andersen visited about 50 manors, and totally he spended more than four years in the historical and imposing buildings.
Glorup Manor. Lithography by F. Richardt, 1857
Hans Christian Andersen had several accesses to the visits at the manors. Through the Collin family, where the poet almost had become a son of the house, he was, for instance, introduced at Hofmansgave Manor in Funen and Nørager Manor in Sealand. The Classens family at Corselitze Manor and the Lerche family at Lerchenborg Manor were acquaintances of Copenhagen, and the Stampe family at Nysø Manor, where Hans Christian Andersen stayed several times, knew the Wulff family in Copenhagen, who had throw their house open to the young Andersen. As the poet’s fame increased more and more doors opened up for him.
A good example on Hans Christian Andersen’s life at a manor we find in an entry in his diary from November 6 1845, where Andersen is at Glorup Manor, his favourite summer residence in Funen:
‘How a day goes. Up at eight o’clock and drink coffee, potter about and write to ten o’clock, then walk through the long avenue, through the gate by the field lane to Holuf Gaard, look at the strait and walk back, read, sew, and twelve o’clock lunch with a glass of port, then rest a little, walk, after that, for an hour, as before, it is the same road and it prolongs out to the other side; write and read to about four o’clock, dress and it is dinner from four to five, now it is the most boring time until eight o’clock; I sit in my room, can’t be bothered with anything, even sleep; One of the waiters plays the flute badly, practising on a piece of music, I think of the flute player in the “Qvarantainen” and has the same feeling. The wind is whistling outside, the fire in the stove is rumbling, the moon is shinning in. – I will not think of those at home, then I am longing! – Downstairs I make the whole conversation from eight to ten; it is rumbling in Miss L.’s stomach; the waiter who calls out the excellency that now the manager is there to speak with him is the only rest; I look for the watch, it doesn’t seem to go, and when it finally strikes then the strokes fall as they were walking at a funeral march – Ten o’clock upstairs and half an hour afterwards to bed.’
However, there were also more lively days at the manor houses with festivities and different kinds of entertainment. In a letter to Edvard Collin, August 3 1832, Hans Christian Andersen writes about a stay at Hofmansgave Manor:
‘At Hofmansgave I stayed for a couple of days! That’s lovable people. We had thousands of fun and games. You probably know it. One day we made coffee ’on a neck’ and crawled on our hands out into the Kattegat as far as we could, gentlemen and ladies. Vi also played comedy. I was Rasmus Montanus.’
Furthermore, during the stays excursions were made to the surrounding manors.
Hans Christian Andersen at Frijsenborg Manor 1865. Photographer: Henrik Tilemann
The manors inspired Hans Christian Andersen to his literary production. Essential parts of his second novel, O.T. (1836), are inspired by Lykkesholm Manor in Funen, and in Only a Fiddler from 1837 there is a thorough description of Glorup Manor from the outside – Hans Christian Andersen visited Glorup for the first time in 1839. The inspiration to the fairy tale “The Happy Family” is from the docks which grew in Glorup’s garden, and at Gisselfeld Manor in Sealand the poet had: ‘An idea to a story about a duck, that cheered me up a bit.’ (Dairy July 5 1842). That was the tender beginning to his most famous fairy tale, ‘The Ugly Duckling’.
Here, you can see the 22 Funen manors which Hans Christian Andersen visited.
Literature:
Erik Lassen: H.C. Andersen og Herregaardene, Cicero, 1993.