(The following post is by Troy Smith, Nordic Area Reference Librarian in the European Reading Room. All translations are his own.)
In 1820, the Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted (1777–1851) watched as an electric current moved the needle on a magnetic compass. In other words, he observed that electricity generates a magnetic field. The discovery of electromagnetism made Ørsted famous throughout Europe and would pave the way for the magnetic telegraph and more advanced forms of communication technology.
The Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division recently acquired a unique set of the first edition of Ørsted’s collected and posthumous writings, Samlede og efterladte Skrifter. What makes this set special is that the author presented it to his daughter Sophie Dahlstrøm, whose birthday is today (January 8). Sophie was married to the lawyer F. C. E. Dahlstrøm, who had served as secretary to her uncle Anders Sandøe Ørsted, the future prime minister of Denmark. The inscription on the flyleaf in the first volume of the Library’s copy reads: “To my dear Fr. Dahlström and Sophie Dahlstrøm born Ørsted from the most heartily affectionate H. C. Ørsted.”
This acquisition fills a gap in the Library’s general collections, which have no contemporary editions of Ørsted in Danish. Furthermore, his humanistic writings were nowhere to be found in the original Danish anywhere in the Library until now. Above all, this particular set of Ørsted’s Samlede og efterladte Skrifter belongs in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division because it augments a remarkable collection already held there: The Jean Hersholt Collection of Hans Christian Andersen. Jean Hersholt was a Danish-American film actor who, with his wife Viva, amassed an outstanding array of Andersenian books, manuscripts, letters, and art objects. As a way of showing thanks to his adopted country, Hersholt donated the collection to the Library of Congress in 1951. (The Catalog of the Jean Hersholt Collection of Hans Christian Andersen can be downloaded from HathiTrust.)
But what does the fairytale author have to do with the physicist, besides being contemporaries in the vibrant cultural milieu that was Golden Age Copenhagen? One might assume that each belonged to a different “culture.” (The twentieth-century British author C. P. Snow would use this term to describe the division between the sciences and humanities in the title of his famous book, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.) In the first half of the nineteenth century, however, humanists and scientists frequently engaged with each other and each other’s work. Not only was Ørsted the author of poems and philosophical treatises; he was also a fatherly mentor to Andersen and the first to truly appreciate what his young friend had achieved with the early volumes of his fairytales. Andersen had hoped to win lasting success with his 1835 novel Improvisatoren (The Improvisatore), but, as Ørsted rightfully predicted, “Improvisatoren has made you famous, the fairytales will make you immortal.” In turn, the biographer Dan Ch. Christensen has recognized the influence of Ørsted’s thought on such fairytales as “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Bell,” “The Shadow,” and “The Drop of Water.” So inseparable were Ørsted and Andersen that they were known as the “big” and “little” Hans Christian, respectively; although the gangly Andersen towered over Ørsted, the older friend had a larger local reputation.
Thus, any book inscribed by Ørsted would complement the Hersholt Collection of Hans Christian Andersen, but this copy of his Samlede og efterladte Skrifter has a more intimate connection to the fairytale author through one of its dedicatees, Sophie Dahlstrøm née Ørsted. For most of the 1820s and until 1832, Andersen regularly celebrated Christmas with Ørsted’s family at the residence of A. S. Ørsted. Here Andersen would make his distinctive paper silhouettes and collage books for H. C. Ørsted’s daughters, Karen, Mathilde, and Sophie. In addition to four paper silhouettes, the Hersholt Collection also contains a Billedbog (picture-book) that Andersen made for Jonas Drewsen, the grandson of his friend A. L. Drewsen, and this item has been digitized and is available through the link above.
Courtesy of the Danish Museum of Science and Technology, Elsinore, Denmark.
Sophie performed housekeeping duties for Uncle Anders, whose wife (also named Sophie) had died tragically at the age of 36. This work brought Sophie into contact with her uncle’s secretary, Dahlstrøm. After falling in love with Sophie, Dahlstrøm successfully proposed to her when she was at the then-marriageable age of 16. What he did not know at the time was that Andersen had been trying to work up the courage to propose to Sophie himself. Thanks to his reticence, Andersen had to endure the sight of the loving couple when he was invited, as was customary, to read his fairytales aloud to the family circle. As he recalls,
They were both so happy. I took her hand for the first time. Two times I pressed it, and I was in a fine humor; I think it showed completely, for I did not suffer and was infinitely calm. Now I am at home, I am alone—alone! As I always shall be! By this Christmas I would have certainly said to her what never could have been good for her! Now I will never marry, no young girl grows for me anymore, day by day I become more of a bachelor! Oh, I still walked among the young yesterday, this evening I am old. God bless you, dear, beloved Sophie; you shall never know how happy I could have been with a fortune and with you.
If Andersen was welcomed into the Ørsted homes as the author of famous fairytales, his lack of affluence meant that he might not have been accepted as a suitor to the family’s daughters. The despairing lament by Andersen quoted above is by no means unusual, as he often complained that he did not have enough money to support a family and would remain unmarried for the rest of his life. But if Andersen and Sophie were separated in this world, his global reputation as one of the most widely translated authors of all time means that they will be forever united in memory. Now, with the acquisition of Sophie’s copy of her father’s Samlede og efterladte Skrifter, the Library of Congress has augmented the Hersholt Collection with an item that recalls an important episode in Andersen’s life story.
(Quotations and episodes from Ørsted’s life are drawn from Christensen, Dan Ch. Naturens tankelæser. En biografi om Hans Christian Ørsted. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 2009.)