After his father’s death, when he himself was about eleven, little Hans Christian was more solitary than before, and shut himself up still more with his doll’s clothes, his toy theaters, and his books, for he was, like his father, very fond of reading.  Especially did he like those books which had anything about ghosts or witches or fairies in them.  While he was but a child, he wrote a play of his own, in which most of the characters were kings and queens and princesses; and because he felt that it could not be possible that such lofty personages would talk the same language as ordinary people, he picked out from a dictionary, which he managed somehow to get hold of, French words, German words, English words, and high-sounding Danish words, and strung them all together to make up the conversation of his characters.

It was no more than natural that such a strange, unattractive-looking child should be made fun of by the prosaic, commonplace people of his neighborhood, and this was untold pain to the sensitive boy.  There were, however, in the town, people of a higher class, who perceived in the boy something beyond the ordinary, and who interested themselves in his behalf.  They had him sent to school, but he preferred to dream away his time rather than to study, and his short period of schooling really taught him nothing.

His mother, careless as she was, began to see that matters must change—­ that the boy could not go on all his life in this aimless fashion; but since he steadily declined to be a tailor or a cobbler, or indeed to take up any trade, it seemed no easy question to settle.  However, in 1818, there came to Odense a troupe of actors who gave plays and operas.  Young Andersen, who by making acquaintance with the billposter was allowed to witness the performances from behind the scenes, decided at once that he was cut out to be an actor.  There was no demand for actors in his native town, and he therefore decided to go to Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, there to seek his fortune.

With about five dollars in his pocket, Andersen reached Copenhagen in September, 1819, but he found that a fortune was by no means as easily made as he had fancied.  He himself felt convinced that he should be a famous actor, but how was he to convince any one else of this fact?  From one actor to another, from one theater manager to another he went, but all told him that for one reason or another he was not fitted for the stage.  Particularly did Andersen resent the excuse of one manager, who told him that he was too thin.  This fault Andersen assured him that he was only too willing to remedy, if he would only give him a chance and a salary; but still the manager refused.

Finally the boy was destitute of money and knew not where to turn for more, for he was too proud to go back to his native town.  However, an Italian singing teacher, Siboni, into whose home Andersen had almost forced himself while a dinner party was in progress, became interested in him, and with some friends provided him with enough to live on.  He also gave him singing lessons until the boy’s voice gave out.  Other influential people gradually became interested in the strange creature, who certainly did appear to have some talent, but who had even more obvious defects; and so he lived on, supported in the most meager fashion.