The Anna Mary Letters to Hans Christian Andersen

The Anna Mary Letters to Hans Christian Andersen

                             by Stephen Gray

    I.                                    Ulva Cottage

                                           Hamilton

                                           Scotland

                                           1 January 1869

Dear Mr. Anderson.  My name is Anna Mary.

Last-born of Mary my mother, deceased

Of the desert fever while I was but a 'wee bairn'; 

I am but ten, too young to remember her voice.

I do like your fairy tales so much -- the tin soldier and the ugly,

Ugly duckling.  I would like to go and visit you.

When Papa comes home from Africa I intend

To ask him to take me.  I live where he began

As a piecer of cotton, threading those bales . . . 

Long enough to join us over six thousand miles;

What with the water-thrust and water-damp 

The Clyde is perfect for the manufacture of cloth;

Without cotton my dolly'd have no clothes.

I'm sure he will agree.  In the New Year.

  II.                                        17 June 1871

Four of his children in this cottage on the Clyde; good and damp

Enough to drive the cotton, even if it's not Victoria Falls.

I send you the photo of my Papa and me:

His arm is about me and mine about my dolly.

I would like you to notice my hoop-skirt and pantaloons,

But not my face and hair scooped away, ugly still;

Papa draws back breath and calls me 'sprightly' now;

If you ask me he's forgotten the meaning of his own hearth;

He says we're sickly and weak, bad seed,

But he's the one won't kiss for bad teeth, rotten tongue;

He was born here, he should know; we were born

In the wildest desert so generous, where a man may breathe indeed.

He said bright Denmark was out of the qustion:

Only dark Africa calls, where he may make himself

A paradise away from this, his woven wet hell.

  III.                                      24 September 1874

O Hans Andersen, You will have seen from the papers

How the tale has no magic ending for us, quack quack.

My father is the one Mr. Stanley found out there

And he could not persuade him to return to us.

Robert's gone, Thomas and Ossie too --

Poor seed, this little mermaid never will swim;

What great, great sorry I have had this year.

I did expect Papa to take me to your Copenhagen.

Instead of going the different places I fully intended

With Papa, I have been obliged to take the sad journey to London

To see what's left of him buried in Westminster Abbey.

We had all wreaths of full white flowers

To lay on his coffin; our Queen sent one too

From out of her palace with deepest regrets.

I am the only one of our seed left alive now'

We shall be threadbare, me and my toy;

Don't you think flowers are so beautiful,

Ice-white and wound in a heart --

The shape of the continent where his lies?

  IV.                                          30 October 1874

Back at our industrious Blantyre:

Papa's two faithful servants were here last week

To visit me.  Many interesting things they told

About Papa and one of them, called Chuma, made

A model grass hut in which he placed my doll

As an example, to show the position where

Father knelt and died; and Susi endlessly

Fussed with the bed to get it exactly correct.

Quack quack, my dear.  What else can I say?
Susi says they brought his remains back from Ilala

Only to prove to the consul at Zanzibar no black man

Poisoned him; he died of his own disease.  Tin god.

You're the one who understands

And I am your sincere friend. 



From the London Review of Books, 28 January 1993.

The correspondence between Anna Mary Livingstone and Hans Christian Anderson extended over five years.  Thirteen letters remain.