Denys Finch Hatton's room and board

A. This is an interesting question which I've not seen raised before. The question arises from a twenty-first century perspective, and was not, I would guess, an issue in the Victorian / Edwardian era in which Karen Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton grew up. Guests to English country homes did not pay rent or fees; their presence was considered payment enough. The famous Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen spent much of his life traveling from home to country home of wealthy Danish gentry--who knew that he could not afford a country home of his own. (Karen Blixen's relatives, the Krag-Juel-Vind-Frijs's, hosted him regularly.)

Denys Finch Hatton brought wine and foodstuffs for his visits. We have Karen Blixen's testimony to this in Letters from Africa.

Your question does raise a point, however. Karen Blixen once wrote a story that hints that some form of payment might have been expected. In "The Old Chevalier," a story in which the lead character has an evanescent romance with a wandering figure, Karen Blixen says:

We two had played. A rare jest had been offered me and I had accepted it; now it was up to me to keep the spirit of our game until the end. Her own demand was well within the spirit of the night. For the palace which he builds, for four hundred white and four hundred black slaves all loaded with jewels, the djinn asks for an old copper lamp; and the forest-witch who moves three towns and creates for the woodcutter's son an army of horse-soldiers demands for herself the heart of a hare. The girl asked me for her pay in the voice and manner of the djinn and the forest-witch, and if I were to give her twenty francs she might still be safe within the magic circle of her free and graceful and defiant spirit.

Copyright © 2007 by Linda Donelson. All rights reserved. During the past quarter century, Linda Donelson has been the only author writing about Karen Blixen for an international audience. Her biography, Out of Isak Dinesen (1998), was the Number One Best-Selling Scandinavian / or related title at Amazon.com for five years.

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