The remarkable letter, which fetched £4,600 and is to stay in London, is just one in an extraordinary trove of correspondence, images and autographs sold by the Suffolk auction house Lacy Scott & Knight on Saturday. “He could not pronounce the name of his own book The Improvisatore, in Italian and his translatress appears to make out that he can’t speak Danish,” Dickens wrote. “He spoke French like Peter the Wild Boy and English like the Deaf and Dumb School,” complained the great author, making a cruel reference to the well-known story of a feral German boy “Peter”, an ungainly court favourite in Georgian England.Īnd, according to the reluctant host, Andersen was no better in any other language. By the time Andersen’s visit had come to an end, after a full five weeks, Dickens felt compelled to confide to the former prime minister Lord John Russell that the creator of some of the world’s best-loved fairytales was a bad house guest.
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