Historical Figures Who Were Major Stans
No amount of fame and fortune makes one immune to parasocial relationships. The rich and famous have howling voids inside them that can only be filled with blind worship, too, so naturally, they had their own Beyhives and Arianations. The only difference is that, more often than not, they had the opportunity to meet — and sometimes completely weird out — their idols.
Salvador Dali
Naturally, the artist who most thoroughly explored the subconscious and dreams was obsessed with Freud, to the point of spending years fantasizing about meeting him, including “long and exhaustive imaginary conversations,” and even skulking around Vienna hoping to run into him. When they finally did meet, Dali brought along paintings and writings with the hope of impressing his intellectual idol, but they were mostly flummoxed by each other. Freud later wrote approvingly of Dali, but the artist’s feelings were irreparably hurt. He made several unflattering sketches of Freud and wrote that “Freud’s cranium is a snail! His brain is in the form of a spiral — to be extracted with a needle!” Surely a scorned Swiftie has expressed similar sentiments.
Hans Christian Andersen
Like everyone in the mid-1800s, Hans Christian Andersen couldn’t get enough Dickens. After meeting briefly at a party, where Andersen went slack-jawed over “the greatest writer of our time,” he wrote letters to old Chaz for nine years straight. Dickens attempted to curtail the postal flood by telling Andersen to drop by if he was ever in town (Victorian manners were something else), not expecting that Andersen would actually take him up on it. Not only did he stay three weeks longer than he promised, he monopolized Dickens’ attention, including rushing to take his arm when he offered it to a lady at dinner. Dickens ended up basing an unflattering character on Andersen, which was probably still pretty thrilling for him.
Mark Twain
As a preteen boy, Mark Twain came across a loose page from a book about Joan of Arc and immediately fell in love. It just so happened that the page in question detailed her imprisonment in her underwear, her clothes having been stolen by sadistic captors, but that probably wasn’t formative or anything. He went on to write what he (and he alone) considered his best book, a fictional account of the life of the woman he called “the divine soul, the pure character, the supreme woman, the wonderful girl” from the perspective of one of her servants so it could be both fawning and accurate. Yep, Twain wrote Joan of Arc fanfiction.
Martin Luther King Jr.
In 1967, if you were told Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wanted to meet you, you’d probably assume you were dreaming. When that happened to Star Trek star Nichelle Nichols at a formal dinner, she certainly did. “I turned, and about 10 or 12 feet away from me, there was Dr. Martin Luther King, and my mouth just dropped open,” she said. It turned out he was a huge Trekkie, and in fact, when Nichols mentioned that she was thinking of leaving the show, he was the one who convinced her to stay. Sadly, he didn’t live to attend any dorky conventions.
Bram Stoker
In 1868, the man who would own Dracula read Leaves of Grass and loved it so much that, four years later, he wrote almost 2,000 passionate words that can only be described as a love letter to Walt Whitman. It was such an intimate missive that he sat on it for another four years before finally sending it, getting a much more succinct but encouraging letter in response. Stoker and Whitman eventually met a few times and possibly even became lovers.
Moral of the story: Always shoot your shot.
