A house guest who outstays his welcome is no fairy tale
When the US Founding Father Benjamin Franklin observed that house guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days, he clearly knew a thing or two about human nature. Friendship can withstand many a makeor-break test: disaffection, betrayal, jealousy. Amity can weather infidelity, envy and distance.
But curiously not proximity. And certainly not prolonged proximity. The bonds of trust and mutual respect that have endured for decades simply cannot survive a literal interpretation of the phrase “do make yourself at home”. Absolutely everybody says it. Absolutely nobody means it. And anyone who, shockingly, takes it at face value is a fool or foreign.
Perhaps that explains why Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Dickens fell out so dramatically, so irrevocably after the former stayed with the latter in the summer of 1857. The discovery of new correspondence reveals that the socially awkward Dane’s five-week stay with Dickens at his country home, Gad’s Hill Place in Higham, Kent, was not a success. Quite the opposite. Andersen was given to mood swings and once lay on the lawn crying over a bad review. Dickens was feeling unhappy after
Little Dorrit received a poor reception and was considering divorce. Clearly neither was in a position to offer the other much support or, as it transpired, sympathy. Instead the cracks began to show. Dickens was particularly vituperative about his friend’s poor language skills. “He spoke French like Peter the Wild Boy and English like the Deaf and Dumb School,” he wrote.
Harsh words. But five weeks is a long time when your friend keeps getting drunk and weepy and complaining there is nobody to shave him in the morning.
Anyone who has ever rented a French gîte or Italian villa with another family will surely understand. Other people’s unspeakable personal habits, once witnessed, can never be forgotten, even if they may some day be forgiven. But at least such friendship farragos take place on what psychologists call secondary territory.
Our homes, being primary territory – personalised and valued
– are far more contentious spaces. We feel comfortable there because we feel in control. Woe betide those who would undermine that sense of authority and ownership. Thus, temporary incursions can be tolerated – nay, welcomed! – especially if accompanied by a few bottles of Burgundy and a generous bunch of lateseason delphiniums.
But when visitors linger, start to roam too freely, or contaminate our dominion by strewing their shoes and coats around, we cavil at the invasion. If they compound the error by outrages such as breathing too loudly, showering for too long or creating resource shortages by using up the milk, well, it’s a wonder we don’t beat them to death with sticks.
But are we not civilised people? We are, so we go to great pains to hide it. Generally badly. The outcome? A tetchy, passive-aggressive host, a defensively truculent guest and a friendship in tatters.
Whether the relationship can be salvaged largely relies on one or other beleaguered party pinpointing the problem and saying the unsayable. Or one could take the Dickensian route. Post the disastrous stay, Dickens wrote Andersen only one more letter – bidding him farewell.