The Old House begins by saying that there is an old house that is over three hundred years old. It is a rather ramshackle house; the top story reached farther into the street than does the first. The houses near it are neat and new, making the old house something unique. The new houses think about the old house, "how long is that old decayed thing to stand here as a spectacle in the street?" (location 45).
But there is a boy who likes the old house the best. And he knows that an old man lives there. The boy is fascinated with the old man, "who wore plush breeches; and he had a coat with large brass buttons, and a wig that one could see was a real wig" (location 52).
The only person the old man interacts with is another old man who comes to do errands for him. The boy and the old man see each other daily and nod to each other, but never speak.
One day the boy wraps up a pewter soldier, gives it to the errand man to give to the old man who lives in the old house, because he know the old man must be "very, very lonely" (location 60).
The old man responds by sending a note asking the boy to come for a visit. When the boy visits, he find parts of the old house seem to come alive. The hallway is filled with knights armor and paintings of fine ladies and "the armor rattled, and the the silken gowns rustled" (location 65). The furniture thanks him for visiting, "thankee! thankee!" (location 75).
Decay is everywhere in the house. "The yard, and the walls, were overgrown with so much green stuff, that it looked like a garden; but it was only a balcony" (location 68). There is an old picture of a fine lady, whom the old man says he knew in life, but is long dead. He rescued the picture from a shop down the street, filled with many other picture of long dead people from the past.
The pewter soldier talks to the boy, pleading to be taken home, "it is so lonely and melancholy here!...The whole day is so long, and the evenings are still longer!" (location 90). The boy tells the soldier he must remain because he was a gift to the lonely old man, but the pewter soldier jumps out of his drawer, only to fall, lost in a crevice.
Later, the boy learns that the old man has died. In the spring, they raze the old house, putting up a new house in its place. To most, the old house was only a ruin.
Years later, the boy, grown up and married, moves into the new house where the old house stood. Digging through the garden, his wife finds none other than the pewter soldier. The grown up boy tells his wife about the old man who had lived there in the old house.
The wife wonders that the old man must have been very lonely. The pewter soldier agrees, but says "but it is delightful not to be forgotten" (location 150).
The preservation of the past is a central theme to this story. Though there is decay in old things (and very importantly older people), but they are unique and interesting, and giving them some remembrance, thought, or a nice visit is, in Andersen's words, delightful!
Click Here for a short biography of Hans Christian Andersen
Click Here for a review of Hans Christian Andersen's A Drop of Water
Click Here for a review of Han's Christian Andersen's The Story of a Mother
Click Here for a review of Hans Christian Andersen's The Happy Family
Click Here for a letter from Hans Christian Andersen to Charles Dickens
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