“I shall be able to gain there in the course of one or two years a

very large fortune, and, after three years, should not require to sing

a note unless I wished to do so. My heart resisted my going to England

at the present time; and indeed it is heavily weighted and I often

have a hard time of it; now I need not think of England and I feel

quite relieved, since three days ago I signed the contract. Herr

Benedict (son of the M. Benedict you saw at Meran) comes with me, and

you could not meet with a more honourable man or better friend, and at

the same time with a more reliable musician. An old friend of mine,

Signor Belletti, goes also. He is a distinguished singer, and we have

known one another from old times in Sweden, for the last twelve years.

In short, nothing could have been arranged more admirably. I gave over

at once any plans as to Russia, and did so gladly; for Josephine could

not have stood a Russian journey.... So now we remain—and more

particularly Josephine—here in Lübeck until we take the first steamer

leaving for Stockholm, which I hope will be in April. Then I go home—

sing there a few times in concerts (as I have promised my King to do),

make arrangements in view of my long absence from Sweden, and leave

Stockholm again the last day of June or the beginning of July, in

order to go through a ‘Milch Kur’ somewhere (only not too far away).

This I must have concluded by the middle of August in order to leave

for Liverpool, there to take the steamer for America the first days of

September! It would be something soothing and strengthening to my

feelings, if I could pass the latter weeks of my stay in Europe in

your company, my beloved friends. I therefore need not say further,

how I should rejoice loudly (Germ.: ‘himmelhoch jauchzen’) were such a

prospect open to me. I should much like to go to Salzburg! but more of

this when we meet at Berlin; for I fancy I shall come to you at about

the end of February, or beginning of March. I shall probably soon pay

a visit of some days at Hanover, in order to sing for the good Crown

Prince; I have been so much urged to go there, that I mean to comply

with the request.

“Well! I hope I have now told you something about us, and that,

besides, you know now that we do not go during the winter to Sweden.

Greet my beloved revered father! Greet the brothers also, and the good

Schröder! When shall I receive the letter from her? How good it was of

Hermann to write to me! and how clearly do I see the scene on

Christmas-eve at your home! We also had a Christmas-tree! Good people

here are fond of us. Next Thursday, the 17th, I am giving—a concert,

you think? Nay, a children’s ball! and I look forward to it with a

right royal joy!

“Farewell, beloved soul. Preserve to me your inestimable love, as I

remain for life

“Your ever grateful and loving

“JENNY.”

Her Christmas-tree! That was what she could never miss: all through her

life, she loved, like a child, the home-feast, the children’s fun of

Christmas-tide. Those who knew her can recall no scene to which she

could more deliciously abandon herself with brimming joy than a

children’s dance at Christmas. All the old Swedish merriment and motion

would bubble up in her at such a time: and her face would laugh all over

with exuberant humour, and her whole body seemed to dance. She had a

gaiety that was infectious: and no wonder, that she managed to make even

a Lübeck hotel merry with her radiance. “Good people here are fond of

us,” she writes; and moreover it may possibly have added to the pleasure

of the Ball that young Mr. Otto Goldschmidt came over to it from

Hamburg, and danced with her many a time. The painful memories of the

last English visit are still heavy upon her heart; and she is profoundly

relieved to think that she is not called upon for the present to face

scenes so charged with recent trouble. All, therefore, is smiling. The

American tour offers just the escape which she needs: and, in the

meantime, she is pleasantly employed in a series of concerts, in the

North German towns, one of which becomes the opening of a friendship

which had a deep interest for her, and which accompanied her path far on

into life. She sang at Hanover on January 29th, and the King and

Queen[154] returned “enraptured, and overpowered” from hearing her in

her Swedish songs; and her Majesty the Queen has graciously put together

for this book, from her diary, her own record of the intimacy which that

concert initiated. She tells how “her relations with this gifted and

noble-minded artist form one of the pleasantest recollections of her

life.” It was not, indeed, the first time that she had heard her sing:

for she had been present in March, 1845, when she sang ‘_Norma_,’ and in

June, 1846, when she gave ‘_La Sonnambula_’—

“I shall never forget,” her Majesty writes, “the touching and

elevating impression which the incomparable singer produced on all

those present, even on those least easily moved, by her exalted

conception of these parts. She made of ‘_Norma_,’ in the most

wonderful manner, a sublime female figure and prophetess, so that the

part became, throughout, a perfect and glorious new creation. No eye

remained dry while listening to the magic of this divine voice which

stirred to the innermost even those who sang with her. In a word, such

emotions can never be repeated.”

So it had been; and, now, in 1850, their Majesties saw an opportunity of

making acquaintance with one whom already they so highly admired.

“Several times,” the Queen records, “the King and I had the

unspeakable happiness of hearing the lovely ‘Northern Nightingale,’ as

he always called her, sing to us at home, in a small and intimate

circle; and we were, of course, from that time forth, quite under the

fascination of her lofty and religious spirit. For my dear husband

especially, with his deep feeling, his vivid imagination, and his

great mental gifts, these days of musical delight remained for long in

his memory, as a source of unclouded joy.

“From Hanover, Jenny Lind went to Göttingen, and then came back to us,

to say good-bye. She told us, with real delight, and in the joyous

childlike manner so peculiarly her own, how greatly the fresh

enthusiasm of the young students at the University had gratified her.

They had unharnessed the horses from her carriage after the concert,

and had dragged it to the hotel with endless shouts of joy: and, then,

had serenaded her, so that she had had to raise her voice in thanks to

them from the balcony. Enthusiastic shouts of applause had gone up

again and again from a thousand throats, together with a perfect

shower of flowers.”

The concert, to which the Queen refers, was given on February 4th. Jenny

Lind had sung for herself on the 2nd and she gave this second concert

for the poor. It was, indeed, one of her wonderful triumphs; she swept

the students into a storm of rapturous enthusiasm by her delivery of

Mendelssohn’s ‘Rheinisches Volkslied,’ throwing into the last stanza,

with its outburst of arch and ringing delight—“O Jugend, o schöne

Rosenzeit!”—an energy, and a glow, which were absolutely irresistible.

The F-sharps that occur so frequently in the song would lend themselves

to the most exciting capabilities of her voice; and then her look of

archness, her surrender of herself to the swing and the motion of the

music as it broke out on the high notes, her speed, and her thrill, and

her power of personal magic—Ah! no wonder that the Göttingen students

lost their heads that evening.

She was elected, by the enthusiastic students, a member of a famous

guild of theirs, known as the “Burschenschaft Hannovera,” which, at that

particular date, was enjoying a period of special success. She became a

“Sister-Associate,” and was presented with the red, white, and green

ribbon of the guild. Her portrait was hung up in their Assembly Room. On

her leaving Göttingen on February 5th the whole guild accompanied her to

Nordheim, a distance of four hours, where a halt was made at the inn

“The Sun,” and addresses delivered, in return for which she sang several

songs for a farewell. She sent off to a small shop in the town, and

bought green and white ribbon, which she tore up into small shreds and

gave each student a piece. So freely and delightedly did she surrender

herself to the glow and the fun of this scene.

A few days later she received a silk ribbon, of the guild colours, on

which were inscribed the thirty-two names of the students who had sent

it. She wrote, on the 13th February, the following reply:—

“GENTLEMEN,

“I accept, with sincere gratitude, the ribbon which you have sent me:

and shall preserve it faithfully to my dying day.

“Even without this outward token, the 5th of February, 1850, would

have remained engraven on my memory with indelible letters of gold;

but, nevertheless, I regard the ribbon with pride and joy, well aware

of the honour thereby conferred upon me. Oh! that the sun may often

shine as softly upon us all as it did on that day, though such moments

cannot often be a mortal’s lot! Let us then retain their memory, long

after youth has forsaken us!

“And so I once again stretch out my hand to you all, even from a

distance, as a loving sister; in the hope that you will accept

indulgently these poor and inadequate words of mine.

“May Heaven protect you all! That is the prayer of your grateful, and

deeply moved

“JENNY LIND.”

She was faithful to her word: for the ribbon was found, preserved among

her memorials, after her death. The escort to Nordheim, with its boyish

gaiety is still vividly remembered by those who took part in it.

She came back to Hanover to sing for the poor on the 9th, after a

concert on the 7th at Bremen. “The Good-bye,” which she then said to the

Queen of Hanover was but the beginning of a friendship which so well

illustrates her character, and has so much of interest in itself, that

we venture to insert, at this place, all that the Queen has kindly

recorded for us of this after-intimacy, even though it carry us far

beyond the limits of time set us in this book. The personal warmth and

affection of the Queen’s memories will more than compensate to the

reader for the breach that we are compelled to make in the continuity of

our story.

“Our second meeting with Jenny Lind,” continues the Queen, “took place

several years later[155] in the island of Norderney, where she, in

company with a dear old friend from Hamburg, spent the season with

us.”

“This was the highest point of our friendship with this gifted soul;

for she came to us daily in the morning, telling us stories out of her

full life, or interchanging ideas with us whereby we could fully

estimate the depth and purity of her feelings, the greatness of her

mind. Often in the midst of our conversation, she jumped up and sat

down at the piano, and her singing at that time was more full of soul,

if possible, than at other times.

“What a powerful effect the following little episode had on us! My

youngest daughter, Mary, then scarcely three years old, was on my arm

while I stood beside the piano. The child listened attentively to the

heavenly song, then suddenly she threw her arms round my neck and

burst into tears! ‘That is my greatest triumph!’ cried Jenny Lind,

greatly moved.

“Oh! those happy hours, spent with her, flew but too quickly by, but

the remembrance of them lives to this day, unchanged, in my heart.

“In the afternoon, when we took our walk on the shore, Jenny Lind

sometimes accompanied the King on horseback. She rode very well; and

took great pleasure in these excursions. She also seemed much pleased

when we visited her, and her dear old friend, in their pretty

fishing-cottage. She frequently came to supper, after which we

generally had some music; and I even had the delight of singing duets

with her, of which I was not a little proud.

“For our sake, Jenny Lind remained in Norderney till the end of our

stay there, and then returned with us to Hanover. On the steamer that

took us all to Bremen, she was in such ecstasy at the beauty of the

North Sea, that she began to sing Taubert’s song ‘Vöglein, was singst

im Walde,’ and when she came to the line, ‘Ich muss nun einmal

singen,’ her voice sounded clear as a bell over the noise of the

waves. We were all completely electrified by the overpowering

impression, and the tears ran down from my dear husband’s eyes. In

Hanover, our two fellow-travellers rested some hours under our roof,

and when the sad hour for parting struck, our hearts were quite heavy.

“The next time we met was in Düsseldorf, at the great musical festival

of the Rhine, when the _Elijah_ was performed under the conductorship

of her amiable and talented husband in 1863. It was in this _Elijah_

that we heard for the last time the voice of our dear Northern

Nightingale. The magnificent scene between the widow and Elijah, which

she sang with Stockhausen, was one of the most powerful and

heart-stirring performances we ever heard: and the excellent

conducting of Mr. Goldschmidt contributed greatly to the perfection of

the whole performance.”

The Queen records how the friendship, thus begun, lasted on through the

troubles which fell on the Throne of Hanover in 1866, to their final

meeting in London in 1876.

Such was the depth, and warmth, of that intimacy which sprang up during

those winter months in 1850, when the Hôtel du Nord in Lübeck was the

centre of so much quiet activity. It illustrates the character of the

attraction she exercised over people of high cultivation. They were

drawn towards a personality which broke through her song, even as it

mingled with it; and which spoke to them of that which would, when the

music had died away, abide as an enduring basis of friendship to which

they would turn in time of spiritual need.

But we must return to Lübeck, and pick up the thread of our story again.

She sang on February 9th at Hanover for the poor; at Oldenberg on the

12th and at Bremen on the 20th; again at Hanover, for charity, on the

25th; and at Brunswick on the 27th, where she received two illuminated

addresses. So she passed to Berlin.

By the opening of March, she found herself ensconced in the house which

was so dear to her, in the old room so crowded with earlier

associations, encompassed about with that home-warmth which she

cherished with all the powers of her soul. Everybody in the house was

taken to her heart, from her “father” at the top, to the servants, and

porters, whom she remembers in her letters. She sang on the 8th for

charity: and she seems to have been persuaded to throw in another

concert, for the same good purpose, on the 13th, postponing her concert

for Herr Hendrichs until the 18th, after a rapid journey to sing at

Dresden on the 15th. She was in excellent force at this moment. “My

voice is behaving well, thank God,” she wrote from Berlin on the 13th to

her guardian, Herr Munthe. “And what a joy it is to see the people so

satisfied! Always the houses are crowded. And what an amount I have got

together for the poor, by singing during these few weeks! Yes! Praise be

to God!” Such was her own simple account of what was happening. Let us

hear from others what they were thinking. In the _Deutsche Allgemeine

Zeitung_, at Leipzig, a notice appears of the Berlin concert of March

8th. The writer goes, that he may once again offer himself to the

wonderful magic of her voice and presence. He can tell of the crowd, of

the price of the tickets, of the excitement: but of her singing itself,

he will not speak a word. What could be said, has been said; and as to

the strange, overwhelming power of her tones, no words can ever avail to

portray it. Only so much will he say—that, far from the strain of time

having told upon it, it is fresher, and stronger than before.

“And, then, the unspeakable charm of the rendering, the deep truth of

the expression, the wonderful grace of the nature so profoundly

harmonious and artistic—that is all unchanged!” The mastery with which

she sang the Italian pieces from the _Puritani_, and the _Turco in

Italia_, made him regret all the more that she does not sing “the German

music, which she loves; for in the rendering of this music, which

depends, above all, on feeling and inner spirit and taste, she is

unsurpassed.” She was altogether magical “in her singing of Meyerbeer’s

duet ‘La Grand’mère’—and the _pianos_ at its close could not possibly

have been rendered more gracefully and more exquisitely. But the crown

of the evening was her rendering of the songs—Schumann’s ‘An den

Sonnenschein’—Lindblad’s ‘Schlottfegerbub,’ and Taubert’s ‘Ich muss nun

einmal singen.’ Those who have once heard her sing these, can never

forget them!”

Here is another delicate record of the impression she produced on a

cultivated hearer on the Berlin visit. It is a letter written by

Professor Jüngken, a famous physician attached to the Court of Berlin,

in answer to inquiries about her from her anxious friend, Professor von

Jäger, in Vienna.

“For a month,” he writes, “the town was on the stretch for the arrival

of Jenny Lind. For a month had the Wichmanns engaged her her rooms; at

last, she appeared! We saw her first at a brilliant soirée at Count

Redern’s which all the royalties now in Berlin honoured with their

presence. The Lind, as soon as she caught sight of me, came across to

me, and her first question was ‘How are the Jägers? They have written

to me about you. Tell me a great deal about them!’

“Two days after this, we heard her at a concert. She is, certainly, a

marvellous apparition, with an attraction that is irresistible. Her

voice is very beautiful; her deliverance is noble; but her play of

expression!—that is positively bewitching. She will sing no more on

the stage; but, then, there lies in her eyes, in her mien, an

expressiveness which is equal to the most perfect acting. It is a

delight indeed to listen to her; but a still greater delight to _see_

her sing. Her deliverance of her songs is, undoubtedly, unsurpassable,

and it is peculiarly her own. I have heard greater artists than the

Lind; and, for instance, the Rossi (Madame Sontag) stands on a grander

level of art. But I have never heard but one Lind, nor any artist who

knew better how to fascinate.

“A day before her departure, Madame Wichmann was good enough to ask us

to tea alone with the Lind, where we delighted ourselves for a couple

of hours with her in the highest possible degree, and learnt to know

what a really charming and dear child she is. I had to tell her

everything about your family, your fortunes, your affairs, she would

know it all.”

Nor did Herr Rellstab fail to offer his tribute. Indeed, he proudly

welcomes the wonderful singer back from her European fame to the scene

of those first triumphs, which he had himself so enthusiastically

saluted. Berliners cannot forget, he writes, in the _Berlin Zeitung_ on

the 10th of March, that the first tones of that world-famous voice,

which now rings, like a bell, wide over land and sea, were heard, by

those outside her native home, at Berlin on that day in December, 1844,

when she sang to us her ‘Norma.’ She returns now as to a genuine home—to

be greeted as a daughter whom they had seen, with joy and pride, go

abroad to try her worth in the world, and who now comes back to them,

decorated with every gift of fame and honour—a yet more perfect artist

and woman than before. He then goes on to tell how her very first notes

recalled him to the unique peculiarities of her gifts.

“The sorrowful _andante_[156] in the aria from the _Puritani_ gave her

an opportunity of revealing that utterly magical sweetness of her

voice, that pathos in its ring, that smoothness in its phrasing, that

dying-away and vanishing of the _pianissimo_, which the supreme artist

delivered with the most absolute precision.”

He notices how half at least of the spiritual effect of her singing is

lost, if she is not seen as well as heard.

“For it is her peculiar charm, in which no other artist can touch her,

that the expression of the melody seems to play around her very life,

to breathe itself over her features, to stream forth through her

eyes....”

“The singer’s voice has gained in power, her execution in certainty;

yet, perhaps, the strain and effort were a little more marked than

they used to be, in the high notes, and at passages of the strongest

colouring, where, of old, it was so perfect that one never used to

notice that the difficulties were difficult at all. One hardly can say

whether it be a habit that has crept in, or the custom of singing in

very large spaces, or the different taste of a different public,

needing stronger material, that has drawn the artist to just exceed,

here and there, that fine line, which, for us, marks the limit of the

purest beauty, and which she, formerly, clung to with such absolute

and unerring self-command.”

She sang Meyerbeer’s duet ‘La Grand’mère’ with our old friend Fräulein

Tuczec, and here “she gave us,” says Herr Rellstab, “the most

fascinating and innocent and playful grandchild on whom a grandmother

has ever looked down and smiled.”

In the Rossini aria, brilliant as was the execution, he missed the

spiritual and tender qualities, which are found to perfection in her

singing of the ‘Lied,’ in which she seems to create the music, and to

reveal herself as a poetess in musical expression. Each song is given a

living colour of its own.

In one of these she made us feel as if a “maiden was talking to

children—to children such as we all would wish to be for ever.”

In the national ballad, which she sang on her recall, “it was,” says

Herr Rellstab, “as if she were once more greeting her own home with her

mother tongue—so full of heart-blessings were her tones; and everything

seemed bathed in the fresh flood of pure mountain air.”

Our Berlin critic has lost, as we see, nothing of his old enthusiasm.

And he follows her, song by song, through the second and third concerts,

with a devotion that knows no bounds. He proclaims her absolute

supremacy now as a concert-singer, no less than before as a dramatic

artist. And it is now, in this context, that he, again and again, calls

attention to her creative dramatic intensity, by which she spreads about

her song the colour and atmosphere of the scene which it embodies,

lending to this purpose her whole frame, so that features and motions

and look and expression all combine with the music to convey a single

and overwhelming impression. In this, it is remarkable how he repeats

the very words of Professor Jüngken, in conveying that which so struck

them both.

He tells us how, in giving Weber’s song from _Oberon_, ‘Ocean du

Ungeheuer,’ with orchestral accompaniment, “she managed to bring before

us the whole majestic scenery of Nature with its terrors and its

charms,” so that no one could tell whether it is eye or ear which was

most captivated. “Both look and tone can never be forgotten, with which

she wove a woeful image round about the words ‘Wo die Fluth ein Leben

raubt.’”

On the 20th of March, he wrote in the same journal a criticism of her

concert on behalf of Herr Hendrichs.

After brief thanks to the other performers whom he cannot stop to praise

in presence of the one overwhelming impression, he goes on to assert

that, of all the three evenings, the great singer reached, in this last,

her highest level. In the aria from Mozart’s _Figaro_ (the last air of

“Susanna”)[157] she filled the music with the sense of moonlight, and

the stillness of the garden, and the scent of flowers. The soft depth

which she put into the words “notturna face”—the light play of the

hovering breath, made one say “This is not Susanna who waits for Figaro—

it is Juliet who looks for Romeo!” so powerfully did the artist’s ideal

work upon the real, to draw from it a beauty beyond its own.

Her second piece was a little spring ballad—sung for the first time by

her—“Song of the Bird and the Maiden.”[158]

And she followed this with Mendelssohn’s _Suleika_.

“That Eastern wonder-dream, with its violets that peep, its stars that

twinkle, its roses that yield their perfumes, its holy river with its

rushing stream—was it all real? And he who could forget the

‘Forget-me-not!’ must be one who, in the poet’s words, ‘Can never be

remembered in life or death.’”

After “the roses, and violets,” of the German she gave an Italian aria,

which was full of sunlight and sparkle, as it ran laughing from her

lips. And then yet once again the critic cannot but ask himself what it

is, beyond all the marvellous technical skill, which breathes through

every form, and gives light to every colour, in this supreme singing?

And, once again, he is compelled to give the old answer, “The simple

truth can express itself quite simply; it is the purity of soul which

speaks through all the artistic form.” It is for this he gives her

thanks with all the thousands who share his feelings. And with this he

wishes her God-speed to that far land to which she goes across the

ocean—and a happy return once more to this her home.

She was off on the 20th to Hamburg, bent on a purpose, of which the

record has been supplied to us by one who was deeply interested in its

success. Madame Clara Schumann has kindly written down, out of her diary

kept at the time, the following account of what occurred. The picture

given by her of Jenny Lind’s swift and vivid appearance on the scene,

from entry to exit, is warm with affection, and coloured with the

reality of life. The words bubble up out of a thankful heart, with all

the quickened insight of a free delight; they can best be left to tell

their own tale in their own native freshness and unaided force.

“March, 1850. Hamburg.

“Wednesday, the 20th.—I was just lying down a little after dinner and

reading in a letter about Jenny Lind’s appearance in Dresden, when she

herself came in, having only just arrived from Berlin. I was very

pleased and so was Robert, who, however, had had a sort of

presentiment of her coming all day. She was most amiable and said she

had come from Berlin so quickly, as she wished to sing at my concert

in Hamburg; she was not a little astonished to hear that it was over,

for Robert had written to her that we were going to leave on the 23rd,

from which she concluded that the concert would take place on the

22nd. She immediately offered to sing at my concert in Altona,[159]

which was fixed for to-morrow, a proposal I of course most gladly

accepted. I felt inclined to smother her with delight and gratitude.

“On _Thursday, the 21st_, Lind called on us for a small vocal

rehearsal, but which turned out something more, for she sang a good

many of Robert’s songs, and how she sang them, with such truth, with

such deep feeling and simplicity, how she sang at _first sight_

‘Marienwürmchen,’ ‘Frühlingsglaube,’ from an album unknown to her,—

that is a thing never to be forgotten! What a grand, heaven-inspired

being she is, what a pure, true artist’s soul, how all she says

refreshes one, how she always hits upon the right thing and expresses

it in few words! in short, never perhaps have I loved and reverenced a

woman as I do her. These songs will for ever sound in my heart, and

were it not wrong, I should say that I don’t wish to hear these songs

sung by any one else but herself. I need scarcely mention that Robert

is equally charmed with her; for a composer it is a special delight to

hear his songs rendered as coming from the depths of his own heart.

She left, and each time she left, I stayed behind in a state of

intense excitement, her notes and words continuously quivering in my

soul.

“The Soirée in Altona on the evening of the 21st was splendid. Rarely,

I should think, you would find so much combined as to-day,—a crowded

hall, tremendous enthusiastic cheering, the exquisite singing, my own

performance not so bad, Robert’s beautiful second trio with Boie and

Kupfer,—in short, nothing was wanting to make it all perfection. How

she sang, how the ‘Rheinisches Volkslied,’ by Mendelssohn, how the

‘Sonnenschein,’ by Robert, no—that cannot be described! Robert said to

her: ‘That really makes the sun shine on one’s back;’ such freshness,

such childlike innocence and simplicity; one must hear that again and

again,—and the audience indeed insisted on an encore. And how she sang

‘Der Himmel hat eine Thräne geweint,’ with such intelligent rendering,

putting her very soul into it!

“It cannot be expressed in words what a heavenly impression is made by

such rendering of such songs!

“Otten called on us, and urged us to give another matinée at Hamburg

to-morrow, and to persuade Lind to sing. But much as I might wish it,

I should nevertheless not like to do it for my own benefit. I proposed

her giving concerts at which I would play, or our giving a matinée

together for the poor; but she disapproved of all this, and said, she

would only sing if I were to give a matinée for myself, and she would

then leave for Lübeck in the afternoon, instead of in the morning. She

pressed me hard and I accepted, for who could have resisted so

tempting an offer? Evidently she wished also to obtain a pecuniary

advantage for us, for later on she expressed her great satisfaction on

hearing that the matinée would be very well attended. She also

insisted on high prices, but that I did not approve of, and she at

last gave in.

“Towards evening dear Jenny came to us, and we again had a vocal

rehearsal, which as before turned out something grander. She sang the

‘Nussbaum,’ ‘Widmung,’ ‘Frühlingsnacht,’ ‘Stille Liebe,’ and a good

many others besides, also from Robert’s opera _Genoveva_ in the last

act.

“I should have preferred a thousand times spending the whole evening

with her in this way to having to go to a party. Jenny Lind was also

invited, but she wished to devote her last evening to her hosts

(Madame Brunton and Frl. Seminoff); altogether she does not like going

into society, it is even difficult to get at her at home, and quite

_impossible_ for the curious.

“She takes the greatest care of her voice; she does not dance, and

drinks neither wine, nor tea, nor coffee. She is in every way an

ethereal being! She was most attentive to me in other things besides

singing so very kindly at two of my concerts, staying on here on

purpose for them, &c.; so, for instance, she never suffered me to go

to her for a rehearsal,—further, she always fetched us to the concert,

and so on! On the other hand, what pretensions are made by inferior

songstresses!”

“Saturday, 23rd.

“Matinée. Exceedingly full, great cheering. Jenny Lind had seated

herself behind the lid of the piano, whereupon a general commotion

ensued, for few only could see her and yet every one wished to see

her. She again sang most exquisitely,—Mozart’s aria from _Figaro_ with

enchanting simplicity (Frl. W. might have learnt respect for the

composer from her)—besides songs by Mendelssohn, four songs by Robert,

winding up again with the ‘Sonnenschein’ twice over. To-day she gave a

proof of how she takes in everything that she sings, by singing the

latter part of the ‘Frühlingsnacht’ by heart, the leaves having got

into confusion in being turned over. All Robert’s songs she sang in

the manner which I had pictured to myself as ideal, but in which I had

never dreamed to hear them sung. She does not pass by any delicate

point, which others overlook completely; in the same way it is a real

pleasure to watch her, when others are performing, for nothing escapes

her, not even the softest, most subtle harmonic change.

“After the matinée Jenny Lind would on no account allow us to take her

home, but said good-bye to us at our house, and the parting pained me

very much indeed. Robert has a warm admirer in her! She whispered to

me one day: ‘What a genius your husband is, how much I reverence him!’

How pleased she always was on noticing that she had sung his songs to

his satisfaction! But let this suffice, for words are but a poor

reproduction of the feelings.”

Nothing can be more engaging than this picture of her. These days were,

indeed, singularly happy. She was in the full tide of her power. She

moved from triumph to triumph. She was free from all the harassing

turmoil and distracting emotions of the stage. She had left behind and

shaken off the agitation and distresses of the heart, with which the

last year had been so clouded. She was at her own disposal: she could

come and go as she chose. She saw her way ahead along a road that teemed

with promises. She was ever close to affectionate friends: and new

intimacies were springing up all round her. Her great gift was there, to

use for the ends to which she loved to dedicate it: she had but to lift

her voice, and the poor on whom her pity alighted, were relieved with

boons, or her fellow-artists, whom she admired and reverenced, were

released from their anxieties. Wherever she went, she carried blessing

with her. And life was young in her: and spirits were high: and she

revelled in the liberty of movement that was now so easy, and so

possible. There is a sense of springing vivacity left upon us by the

memorials of this time. We can feel it in the rapidity of her musical

insight which so struck the great pianist: and in the irresistible zeal

with which she throws herself into the congenial task of doing her best

for her friends. And, yet, how noticeable, in this record of Madame

Schumann, is the touch of domesticity which she noticed in Jenny Lind!

Still, with all this gaiety, she held herself aloof: she suspected and

disliked “Society”; she reserved to herself a private corner, which it

was almost impossible to penetrate, where she hedged herself in against

all but the chosen few; and even they had to approach it with care and

caution. This was eminently characteristic. Her enthusiasm for

Schumann’s genius, which had begun under the guidance of Mendelssohn in

1846, who had first shown her the beauty of his Lieder, seems to have

let her, instinctively, inside his music: and even Madame Schumann was

surprised at the speed with which she took possession of his songs, and

at the delicate security of her interpretation of his mind. “Ah! who was

it that made that sun shine?” she rejoined when the composer said that

her singing made him feel it warm on his back. She felt her whole being

move under his sensitive hand; and she knew all the vibrations of his

sentiment. At the very close of her life, while she lay on her death-bed

at Malvern, in weakness and misery, once as her daughter opened the

shutters and let in a ray of morning sun, she just let her lips shape

the first bars of the old song she loved, ‘An den Sonnenschein.’ They

were the last notes that she ever sang on earth.

Everything conspired to be good at this particular time. From Sweden

came a grateful acknowledgment of a kindness which she had been able to

do on behalf of Lund University, where an effort to establish a large

institute for the “Academic Union,” had come to a block for lack of

funds. The building was for the use and pleasure of the youth of the

university: and the cause touched her; and, with the sanction of Herr

Munthe, she had lent them 10,000 crowns to save the scheme. A thankful

recognition of this act was drawn up and signed, on March 14th, by the

representatives of all the “Academic Nations” of Lund. “That the

building can now be continued without interruption,” it declared; “and

that it will be ready, in all probability, for the Oscar Day this year

(Dec. 1), the Academic Union have to thank principally a name which is

full of good omen wherever it is heard in the whole civilised world, but

nowhere has it such a musical sound as in the ears of the young men of

Sweden.”

This pleasant piece of gratitude would have greeted her probably at

Lübeck, whither she got back about the 26th of March to find Mdlle.

Åhmansson much better than when she left her. “My little dog, too,” so

she writes to Madame Wichmann, “was so affectionate to me; and jumped up

at once on to my lap, and lay there as quiet as possible!... Just think,

dearest,” she goes on, “that I sang twice in Altona and Hamburg! The

Wieck-Schumanns were there, and they were too delightful, and too

remarkable, and too gifted not to kindle love and admiration. And I

count it a special honour to have been allowed to sing a couple of

little songs at their concerts.”

A bracelet had come, it appears, through the Lord Chamberlain, from

Berlin as a tribute for her singing. “The thing is pretty, and

artistic;” she goes on in the same letter: “and it cannot but be a great

pleasure that their Majesties should have personally chosen the gift.

But my singing has ever received such appreciation, and reward, that it

was a kind of recreation to be allowed just once to sing freely on an

occasion like that.—But kings, and queens, and such like, must always

put a high value on their pleasures!”

The happy time at Lübeck is running rapidly out: and she is close on the

date fixed for her return to Sweden. She writes yet once again, in her

own English, to Baroness French in return for letters received from her

on February 6th:—

“How kind, how very kind of you not to forget me! I remember so well

how pleased I was when I first had the honour of meeting you (in the

carriage, when we were going off to Manchester), and how I felt sure

that it would be very easy to love you, and your dear, dear daughter!

“I am, thank God, much better than before I left England; I feel only

very seldom that bad headache; and what deliverance I cannot tell! Our

doctor here has so perfectly understood my whole constitution that he

has made me a different person in that respect that my head is

restored!! We are now waiting for the Swedish boat to take us to

Sweden ... in about fourteen days. I intend to remain in my dear

country till about the end of June; and then, we are going to

Schlangenbad and Ems; and from thence to London (for a few days only)

for Liverpool. And _there_ is the great point! From Liverpool we will

be saying farewell to Europe for one or two years.... I will keep you

in a very constant memory.... A kiss on dear Miss Georgina’s forehead

from her friend Jenny; and for you, dear Madam, the expression of my

sincere love, and deep attachment.

“Your devoted

“JENNY.”

“Lübeck, April 10th, 1850.

One other letter, full of her innermost heart, she wrote to Augusta von

Jäger, the Professor’s daughter, of whom she was very fond, and who had

sent her a water-colour picture of Meran, where such happy days had been

spent with the Wichmanns.

The letter will show how deeply she was moved, at this time, by an

evangelical piety, which had stirred her during her last English visit,

and which woke in her a vivid sense of human sin, and of the peace to be

found in God’s forgiveness. She was full of eager desire to speak to

others of the peace which she had found for herself; and her affection

for Augusta von Jäger prompts her zeal, as a messenger to her soul.

“MY OWN DEAREST GUSTI,

“Whenever I hear anything of you, and of Vienna, my whole heart goes

out to it; and I feel how deep and fast my soul clings to you!

“I call it friendship indeed, my dear Gusti, that you should, in spite

of my long long silence, still prove true in thought of me, and not

only in thought, but had also made for me so precious a remembrance.

You cannot think what joy I have taken in it. Would that I could speak

my thanks in words! At any rate, believe most assuredly, that I not

only have ‘a little tiny bit of love’ for you, but that it must ever

have a profound part in my own life-story, without my even troubling

myself to bring this about; for were I never to hear from you again,

or were I never to let you hear of me—still it would remain through

fair or foul, through life and death. And I believe, and hope that you

think so of me—do you not?... How glad I shall be to get to Vienna,

and spend some evenings with you! Ah! much, very much, must one live

through, before one learns to fasten on the Life, the Higher Life.

Much—very much—should I like to tell, in quiet, to you, my dearest

friends—you and your mother—that I might share it with you! My life is

so full, so beautiful, so wonderful, so great, that I often feel a

lively desire to share all its memories with those whom I love! I have

for long had the most eager wish to earn, somewhere, a great deal of

money, so as to endow a school for poor lost children in my own

country. And the invitation to America came as a direct answer; so

that I go there in this confidence; and I pray God in Heaven, out of a

full heart, that He will guide me thither, as ever before, with His

gentle hand; and will graciously forgive me my sins, and my

infirmities. I shall have much to encounter; it is a very big

undertaking. But since I have no less an aim before me than to help in

widening God’s kingdom, the littlenesses of life vanish in face of

this!

“My dearest Gusti, my Bible was never more necessary to me than now—

never more truly my stay! I drink therein rest, self-knowledge, hope,

faith, love, carefulness, and the fear of God; so that I look at life

and the world in quite another fashion to what I did before. Would

that all men could come to this knowledge, and that we all daily

feasted on this Divine Book; and would that my own Gusti would take

all her trouble to this Book! Then first should we all know how to

taste the true life!”

She tells her of her plans, and closes thus:—

“You see how little peace they let me enjoy. But I am very, very

happy! There is nothing I want; and everything goes well with me. My

voice is better than ever. I have long left the stage; and I firmly

believe that this decision has brought my soul happiness and peace.

And now, farewell, my own sister! Heaven send you its blessing; may my

image bring you always courage and joy, for indeed I mean you well!

Let me, sometimes, have a word or two from you; and count ever on my

true attachment, and on my unchanging love. For life,

“Your sister,

“JENNY.”

Already, she had intended to have been at home; but the Baltic ice still

delayed the steamers, so that it is May before she is off. She gave

three concerts before leaving the town in which she had found herself so

entirely at home—one on the 6th of April, for the poor of Lübeck,

another on the 20th for the widow of the orchestral director, Bach, and

yet another on the 26th for the pianist Schreinzer. On the 7th of May,

she wrote a very affectionate letter to her great friend, Madame

Schwabe. She is to sail on the morrow. She apologises much for not

having written before, and tells of herself, and all her plans. “I am

much better than ever before; my head is incomparably better, and my

whole being is in good order.” She has greatly enjoyed singing to the

Germans, who are so wonderfully alive to the touch of music. She is

impatient to see America, and the Falls of Niagara, and the Atlantic

Ocean. Alas! she will not get any stay in her beloved England for a long

time! She asks for her friend’s prayers. Young Mr. Goldschmidt has been

over from Hamburg, and has played in a concert, and tasted a little

spring air, and heard the nightingales. And so good-bye!

It is a bright, hopeful letter, during a time of special cheerfulness

and ease. She had thoroughly enjoyed it. Her health was renewed, her

voice was at its finest, her spirits were high, her soul was at peace.

High and low, rich and poor, artists and public—all were at her feet.

She had carried out her dearest aims with unhindered liberty. She

revelled in her new-found freedom. So home, with a glad heart—home yet

once again, for a triumphal passage over the familiar scene, before she

launched out on to the great ocean, to the far land, where a wholly new

life awaited her into which she passes out of our sight, beyond the

range set us in this record of her artistic career.

CHAPTER IV.

HOME ONCE MORE.

She reached Stockholm on the 12th of May, in our old friend “The

Gauthiod,” and was welcomed home by an immense crowd, who had assembled

on the quay to greet her. She was to sing at six concerts in the Royal

Theatre, on the 24th, 28th, and 31st of May, and the 3rd, 5th, and 7th

of June; and, besides these, there were to be two State Concerts during

June in honour of the wedding of the Crown Prince. The tickets for the

concerts were put up for auction, but all the profits went to the Royal

Theatre.[160] It was, we remember, on its behalf, that the King had

invited her to return and sing. On the concerts themselves, the _Daily

Allehanda_, her old friend, wrote that it was enough to say that—“she

was the same as ever.”

“Though Mdlle. Lind may not appear again in any _rôle_ on the stage

itself, yet it is only the costume which we miss; for if you will only

go and see and hear her sing, in the _Puritani_, or as the woodland

child in _Vielka_, or as the passionately sorrowing Donna Anna, or,

again, as Jenny Lind herself, impulsive, naïve, and charming, pouring

out her wonderful music in Taubert’s little Lied—then come back and

say whether you have ever heard such dramatic singing, or seen a more

living representation in look, manner or expression of each several

character whose mind and feelings the artist proposed to paint in

song.”

Fröken von Stedingk was faithful as ever, in welcoming her back, and

warmly defended her resolution to leave the boards.

“In the spring,” she writes in her diary, “I met Jenny Lind again.

Many were blaming her, just then, for the decision she had taken, and

which had, no doubt, been painful to her—the decision to quit the

stage. I could not possibly disapprove it, knowing as I did the

convictions on which it was based, however much I might, personally,

be the loser. She now sang only in concerts. Thus she closed her

theatrical career at the very height of her triumph; she deliberately

renounced the admiration which everywhere followed her, and this in

consequence of a resolution which in my eyes, makes her more worthy of

honour than ever.

“Many suppose this resolution to be the result of Pietism. Jenny Lind

is as God-fearing as she is pure, but had Pietism been the cause, she

would not herself have gone to the play, which she declared that she

liked to do, to see others act. No! but she had felt how physically

and morally wearing was the work in the service of dramatic art, so

that, for instance, for several days after a performance of _Norma_,

her nerves would be so shattered that she would be unfit for other

useful mental occupation.”

Fröken von Stedingk attended the Queen Dowager’s _soirée musicale_ in

the spring, and she tells us how, when Jenny Lind was taking leave of

the Queen Dowager, “Her Majesty asked her to choose for herself one of

some magnificent bracelets set before her. But she, with tears in her

eyes, begged to be allowed the favour of having sung once before the

Queen, without any more reward than the tiny bunch of forget-me-nots

which were in a vase on the table. The Queen then gave her the simple

flowers, which seemed to make her happier than diamonds; and this little

incident, which I witnessed, well illustrates Jenny Lind’s way of

feeling.”

Nor was it only the Court which desired to do her special honour at this

parting.

In the course of June, she received a tribute which embodied, in a

distinct and remarkable manner, the profound feeling with which the

entire body of her people were touched, by the splendour of her

generosity. A medal had been struck in her honour, to which almost every

one of distinction in Sweden, from the King downwards, subscribed; the

committee of presentation included the names of the

BARON DE GEER,

COUNT B. VON PLATEN,

G. ALBERT EHRENSWÄRD,

J. L. ASPELIN,

A. F. LINDBLAD,

J. A. FRÖST,

JULIE LÖFVENSKIÖLD,

ELIZABETH BERZELIUS,

F. VON DARDEL,

J. N. BORELIUS,

BARON BERNHARD VON BESKOW,

CHARLOTTE MURRAY.

The Address with which the gift was presented is singularly graceful;

and it fitly closes the record of public tribute given in this book, in

that it recalls, yet once again, at the end of her artistic life in

Sweden, the tone and temper which we noticed in all the earliest records

of her appearance.

A spiritual and moral force animating Art; a spiritual and moral service

for Art to render—these are the two poles of her Artistic belief: and it

is these which the following Address notes with felicity and fervour.

“_To Jenny Lind._

“The lovers of music at Stockholm have, during the present spring, as

well as during the winter season of 1847–48, enjoyed a succession of

memorable feasts, at which they have admired alike the Artist’s

genius, and the nobility of heart wherewith she has dedicated her

triumphs exclusively to Charity and Benevolence, and has thereby

testified that the aim of true Art is something higher than to please,

and to astonish.

“Having been privileged to witness these festivals of Art, where the

beauty of the soul found its expression through the medium of song,

the lovers and friends of music are desirous that the great artist, on

leaving her native country, should carry away with her some outward

token of this period of her life, of which the inner memory, which is

at all times the companion of virtue, will follow her through life,

until that other world is unveiled to her of which she has been the

messenger to us through the language of music.

“The undersigned have received the agreeable charge of handing to her

this simple souvenir,” &c.

The medal was struck both in gold and silver and bronze. On its face was

the bust of Jenny Lind, draped, with the left shoulder brought rather

forward. On the back was a design in which the figures of Charity and

Patriotism stand on either side of the Genius of Song, while a symbolic

figure of Gratitude, bearing a wreath of Immortelles, kneels at the foot

of the throne, and inscribes the date of the gift, made by Jenny Lind,

out of the profits of her last operatic season in Sweden—December 3,

1847, to April 12, 1848. Inside the laurel wreath that encircles this

design are given the names of the chief characters in which she sang,—

Norma, Lucia, Agatha, Amina, Susanna, Alice, Maria, Adina. Below the

group of figures runs the inscription: “In memory of the friends of

Lyric Art in Stockholm.”

The gift was one which went home to her heart. She recognized in it her

own people’s appreciation of her career—their warmth of affection, their

delight in her glory, their grateful sense of her loyalty to them. Those

three medals were zealously treasured by her to the very close of her

life, as a precious token of the bond of kinship which knit her so fast

to the land of her birth, and to her childhood’s home: and so fully did

she acknowledge the appeal made, in the design, to her patriotism that,

on her death, she left the medals to be committed to the National Museum

at Stockholm, where now they lie, a pledge of the unbroken bond to her

country, which no long years of separation had served to weaken or

annul.

Before she left Stockholm she twice sang some Sacred music, on a Sunday,

at Evening Prayers; once on June 8th, in the Jakobs-kyrka, and, again,

later in the St. Clara Kyrka.

In the London house, at Moreton Gardens, where her last years were

spent, there hangs a most graceful picture, in water-colours, of the

west gallery in St. Clara, as she stood to sing the solemn solo in the

_Elijah_, “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun.”[161] Her

upright figure, in its elevated pose, is beautifully caught, thrown out

against the floods of mellow light that pour in through the western

window. Something there was in her, at that moment, as in the church of

that very parish where her troubled infancy first felt the light, she

was delivering, with all her dedicated powers, to the praise and honour

of God, the message of radiant hope which awaited the righteous—

something there was, which arrested the artist’s eye, and interpreted to

him its significance. He left on the paper a record, which conveys, at a

glance, the rapt, upward look, so familiar to those who knew her; and he

spread about her the glow of a sunlight, which seemed a symbol of that

shining glory of which her voice rang out the promise.

In that church she sang for the last time in Sweden under the

maiden-name which was hers by birth. The service was on June the 25th,

and on the 27th day of the month she started from Stockholm on her great

venture.

CHAPTER V.

DEPARTURE.

She left her country with a happy sense of the goodwill that was

faithfully following her career, as it opened out into paths that

carried her far afield. She had a few engagements to fulfil on her way

across Europe, before she joined her companions, Benedict and Belletti,

who were awaiting her in London.

She crossed quickly through England, only sleeping a couple of nights in

London, and reaching Crumpsall, near Manchester, the home of her

faithful friends the Schwabes, in time to rest a few days before

fulfilling her engagements at Liverpool on the 16th and 19th of August.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Schwabe accompanied her; and she had, therefore, the

comfort of affectionate intimacy to help her through the racket and

distress of the final start.

The two concerts were to raise money towards paying for the new hall of

the Liverpool Philharmonic Society in which they were given. The first

of these, on the 16th, was noticeable only for “causing an excitement,”

according to the _Times_ of August 19th, “to which the musical annals of

Liverpool can find no parallel.” “The enthusiasm went far beyond

fever-height.” She sang her famous pieces, ‘_Qui la Voce_;’ ‘_Und ob die

Wolke_,’ from the _Freischütz_; ‘_Non paventar_,’ from the _Flauto

Magico_; a Duet from the _Turco in Italia_, with Belletti; and, then

(after a new Song by Benedict, called ‘Take this Lute’), the Norwegian

Echo Song, accompanying herself.

So far she was on old ground; but, at the second concert, a very

different and a vital departure was made. It was her first singing of

the _Messiah_, in which, in later years, she proved herself

incomparable.

The excitement of expectation was intense. On August 19th, the _Times_

critic[162] reports that as he writes his despatch, on Saturday 17th,

“The rehearsal for the _Messiah_ is now proceeding at the Philharmonic

Hall, the precincts of which are besieged by a mob anxious to obtain a

glimpse of Jenny Lind. The greatest curiosity prevails about this

performance; for Mdlle. Lind has never sung in an Oratorio of Handel’s

since her arrival in this country. Monday night will show whether she

will achieve the same success in the _Messiah_ as in the _Creation_,

and the _Elijah_.”

As to the rehearsal, he records with warm commendation that,

“Mdlle. Lind was, as usual, the first to arrive, the last to depart,

and the most attentive to her own music, and to the indications of the

conductor. If every one were as painstaking and zealous at rehearsals

as Mdlle. Jenny Lind, the critic would have much less to complain of.”

On the 20th, the critic telegraphs the result for the _Times_ of August

21st.

“Jenny Lind’s singing surpassed anticipation. Her energy, and

brilliant execution of ‘Rejoice greatly’; her expression in ‘He shall

feed His flock’; her tenderness in ‘How beautiful are the feet’; her

fervid devotion in ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’; and her fine

rendering of the last air, ‘If God be for us,’ which made it a new and

unexpected feature, raised unbounded enthusiasm. In the Recitatives,

besides the excellence of her vocalisation, the pointed, articulate

manner in which she pronounced the English words, excited general

admiration.”

After praising Belletti, and the chorus, and criticising the band, he

tells how, at the close, the National Anthem was sung,

“Jenny Lind giving the two principal verses. The scene that ensued

defies description. The walls of the building reverberated with

cheers. Hats, sticks, handkerchiefs were waved in every direction. The

platform of the orchestra was covered with bouquets and wreaths, many

of which fell upon the head and the shoulders of the songstress. It

was a leave-taking such as even Jenny Lind has rarely experienced.”

In the _Times_ of the 22nd, Mr. Davison contributes a detailed criticism

of her delivery of the numbers in _Messiah_. He has much to say, which

comes with the authority of a most skilful and experienced judgment.

“Mdlle. Lind’s performance, in the _Messiah_, has,” he considers,

“enhanced, if possible, her reputation. ‘Rejoice greatly’ is a

veritable _Bravura_, not a mere senseless display of roulades and

_fioriture_, but a gush of melody in which the exultant feeling of the

text is expressed with a power that springs from inspiration. The

elaborate divisions of the Song demand the greatest flexibility, while

its peculiar vocal character can only be expressed by a voice at once

strong and brilliant, combined with a free command of the upper notes.

These physical requisites are among the peculiar gifts of Mdlle. Jenny

Lind, whose well-known intelligence and reverence for the text enabled

her to employ them with the finest effect.”

“The air ‘He shall feed His flock’ requires a simplicity which derives

effect from the innate and unobtrusive beauty of the music. This

divine melody fell from her lips like soft water from a spring. The

reading of the words was perfect; and the shake at the end,—the

legitimate and only ornament introduced—was executed with a finished

neatness and a command over the _sotto voce_ which afforded the

fullest satisfaction to the ear.”

Again,

“‘For now is Christ risen’ had in it something of positive

inspiration. The termination—strictly according to the text without

even a concluding shake—was far more effective than all the singer’s

art could have made it, exercised without that feeling of veneration

which teaches that to touch such music is to spoil it.”

In conclusion, he considers that—

“The depth and sublimity of the music exhibited Mdlle. Lind’s talents

in a totally new light.”

So triumphant was the first historical opening on the field with which

she so intimately identified herself in later years. It was a wonderful

passage from the atmosphere of the _Figlia_ to that of the _Messiah_;

but the English knew, now, at what level her supreme gifts lay; and they

welcomed her on to the ground of their famous Oratorio with a heartiness

of recognition which she cordially recognised. It was to the English

that she specially loved to sing the music of the Oratorio.

Her last day at Liverpool was taken up with visits to view the new wing

of the Southern and Toxteth Hospital, due to her last year’s singing;

and with receiving there a silver tea-kettle and a pair of silver

candlesticks.

[Illustration:

_Mademoiselle Lind from a photograph by Kilburn Aug^t. 1850._

]

On the evening before sailing, her Swedish heart was at work; she could

not let herself go on this new and strange experiment without desiring

the sanction and the blessing of the “old folk at home.” Back to father

and mother her thoughts were travelling; she must feel herself covered

by their authority; she must let her last words be to them. So, on the

evening before the start, she sat down and wrote the following letter,

with its buoyant hope, with its tender daughterly humility.

The daguerreotype, to which she refers, is the one from which the

picture on the opposite page is taken. It was engraved in the

_Illustrated London News_ of the day: but the present picture is taken

fresh from the old plate, which has, by diligent search, been recovered,

and used.

“Liverpool, 20th Aug., 1850.

“MY DEAR PARENTS,

“May these lines find you in the enjoyment of good health. I have been

very well since I left Sweden, and am now starting for the New World.

For we leave to-morrow morning at half-past ten.

“I have been eight days in England, and have sung here in two

concerts, both of which have been most successful, and the English

public has greeted me as if I belonged to them. I am met everywhere

with heartiness and love. Oh, may I succeed in deserving them more and

more!

“I have been to see the steamer which will take us over to America,

and nothing grander of its kind, I should think, could be found in any

country. The vessel is 300 feet by 80, and is decorated so

magnificently that one can fancy oneself in a rich private house.

“I look forward to the sea—the ocean!

“When I have got across, I shall let you hear again. As my mother

wished to have a Daguerreotype of my poor features, I have sat for one

in London. I hope it will have succeeded. Farewell, good mamma and

papa! Think of me with friendliness, and give me now and then your

blessing, for a parents’ blessing is something good to travel with.

Let me hear occasionally how you are at Pommern.[163] Remember to look

into the books which I gave you, while stopping with you there—and may

the Lord Himself enlighten and bless you! Thus prays most sincerely

“Your attached “DAUGHTER.”

There is a quaint touch of parental authority in the last sentence of

the letter, which blends curiously with the beautiful and childlike

simplicity with which she asks for the parents’ blessing on her

going-forth. The whole letter is a delightful foil to the following

account of the wild popular excitement that was fermenting, at this

moment, round the girl who was herself engaged in writing those plain,

quiet, humble messages, so full of domestic affection and simple piety,

to the two wondering parents in the old country.

_Jenny Lind’s Departure for America._[164]

“Liverpool, Wednesday night.

“Jenny Lind is gone—gone amid a scene of triumph which was not more a

tribute to her own surpassing work and talent, than to the art which

it is her honour to profess and to which she does so much honour. Ere

these few hasty lines are before the reader, this incomparable

songstress will have performed one-fourth of her voyage to the United

States, where, we are assured, a reception awaits her which will cast

in the shade even the splendid ovation which has just attended her

departure from among her European admirers.

“Fresh as I am from this magnificent display of public feeling and

sympathy, I can scarcely enter into details. With ears still deafened

with the booming of cannon, and the shouts of the thousands who were

assembled on either side of the Mersey, and eyes dazzled by the gay

effect of innumerable craft, which were illumined by the sunlight as

they ran to and fro on the river, or followed in the wake of the

_Atlantic_, I can scarcely give you a sober description of this

extraordinary scene.

“The authorities foresaw there would be a great demonstration, and

took their precautions accordingly. Fancy what must be the interest

excited by Jenny Lind, when the police thought it necessary to notify

to Mr. Barnum’s agent, that if the lady took her departure from the

quay at the hour generally expected, they could not ensure the safety

of life and limb. We doubt much whether any sovereign was compelled to

change the programme of his movements for such a reason. Yet so it

was; and much hurrying to and fro was there in consequence. Instead of

leaving at nine or ten o’clock, as had been arranged, Jenny Lind was

obliged to slip out privately at a quarter to eight, and go down all

manner of back streets to be able to get to the pier unperceived. In

this she was successful; and while the intending sightseers were

disposing of their muffins and coffee, the little woman whom they were

all going out to see had quietly gone on board the _Atlantic_ in a

river steamer; but not until after she had been annoyed (during a few

minutes’ stay on the pier) by a crowd of idlers who pressed round her

in the most rude manner, and could scarcely be kept off by the police.

“When at last the hundred and fifty passengers who had engaged all the

berths were received on board, with all their luggage, and had taken

leave of all their friends, and when the sound of a gun booming across

the water from the bows of the steamer announced that all was ready

for departure, what was certainly a ‘great scene’ commenced. The

immense floating mass began to move, and, as if by magic, all the

craft that had been playing about on the surface of the river, formed

into lines, and made a sort of procession. As the _Atlantic_ steamed

up from her moorings, past the Albert Docks, she turned her head

inshore, in the direction of the town, and slowly passed in front of

the magnificent line of quays, amidst the enthusiastic shouts of

thousands of human beings who lined the shore, not merely on the

Liverpool side, but also all along the Cheshire coast, from Birkenhead

onwards to the mouth of the great arm of the sea. Salutes were fired

from the shore, and were returned from the _Atlantic_; and the whole

scene,—such an army of craft of all sorts and kinds floating, with

pennants flying—such a shouting—such a roaring of cannon—such a bright

sunlight (which broke out suddenly, as if to afford presage of fair

weather)—was really one of the most extraordinary sights we ever

witnessed. Every eye was strained to get a sight of Jenny Lind. There

the little woman stood on the paddle-box, with her arm in that of

Captain West, and waving her handkerchief enthusiastically in return

for the greeting of the crowds who had assembled to witness her

departure.”

Such was her farewell, as she passed from the Old World to the New,

travelling out over the unknown waters, to discover whether Music had

power to draw towards her the hearts of these immense populations in

far-away cities, with the same security with which it had knit to her

the affections of all those to whom her voice had spoken, in the land

that lay about her home. So she sails, wafted out, for her adventure, on

the wings of all the favouring hopes with which it was possible for that

Old World to send her forward. Those ringing cheers, those crowded

boats, those fluttering handkerchiefs, those straining eyes, which

followed her out of Liverpool, spoke to her of all the wonderful days in

Europe that lay behind her—days that had never once failed to bring her

their unceasing tribute of praise and welcome and love, as often as she

invoked them, ever since she first babbled out her earliest speeches as

a little child on the boards of the Stockholm Theatre.

And this unfailing triumph had never limited itself to a mere

admiration. Always it had been an admiration that was transfigured, by

its own inward force, into genuine affection. Always it had felt the

power of her personality; and had understood her deeper motives, and her

serious intention. She had never been wholly misunderstood in her desire

that, by her Art, she should touch the finer issues of the religious

consciousness, and enlarge the resources of a human charity.

All this was behind her, to forward and cheer her, as she tempted the

new Atlantic seas. Nor did the promise of high fortune belie itself. The

pledge was redeemed in a measure that ran over and over. It is not our

present part to follow her in this adventure, nor to tell the familiar

tale of the boundless enthusiasm that awaited her every step from the

moment that she touched American shores. Our special part ends at this

point, where the old European career, in its special sense, closes. Up

till now, her Dramatic and Artistic life had developed, step by step and

stage by stage, in an orderly sequence of gradations. She has now

touched the final level on which her future career is to move; there is

no new fashion it is to take. The platform of the concert-room is the

ultimate spot of vantage from which she is to reach the world of men. It

is needless to expand a record which would merely repeat in detail the

same typical success. We have seen enough already to prove that, in her

abandonment of the stage, she had not surrendered her chance of

delivering her Artistic message. On the contrary, though her marvellous

histrionic gift was put aside, she found a freedom of scope, a glad

outlet, for her singing, which rather increased than diminished the

exercise of her sway. The fervour that accompanied her concert-singing

was in no degree less than that which, of old, had besieged the doors of

the theatres. The opportunities which it offered her for beneficence

were, at least, as magnificent as before. Moreover, in the Oratorio, she

more and more found the most congenial and adequate of all the fields in

which she could exercise the full force of her powers, and attain the

noblest realisation of her ideal.

We send her out, then, on her American visit, with no sense that her

career, in touching its final level, has less triumph in store for her

than any of the steps which led to it. We shall leave her to go ever

forward, still encouraged, from New York to Savannah, with the same

passion of devotion, the same thrill of a unique experience, which she

had evoked already in Stockholm and Berlin, in Vienna and London.

But, though we do not follow her steps farther, we cannot part with her

without recording a message or two which she herself sends back, as from

the new land, to those who watch after her in the old countries. And the

messages are to those who have been our companions through this book;

and we shall be glad to feel that they receive good news from her, and

that they and she are still undivided, though the Atlantic rolls

between.

And as her last letter, at the moment of leaving Europe, had been

written to her parents, so let the first that we quote from America be

due to the same filial loyalty. It gives her simple enjoyment and wonder

at the great voyage.

“Boston, 27th September, 1850.

“MY DEAR PARENTS,

“It does seem strange to be so far from home, so far from Europe! I

trust these lines find you in perfectly good health. I take for

granted that you have been informed long ago of my safe arrival at New

York, 1st September.

“The voyage was in every respect extremely interesting. True, eleven

days on the sea is a good deal, but the sight of the ocean, under all

its various aspects, was oh! so grand!—the rising and setting of the

sun, moonlight, the new stars, the rainbows, the phosphorus, porpoises

and seals, storm, fog, and then again a surface calm as a mirror. All

these changes we could watch in turn. We had a magnificent boat, and a

particularly clever, attentive, and charming Captain. I was not ill in

the least, but kept wonderfully well all the time. I went on deck to

have a look at the storm; it was splendid! We lay deep sunk in the

trough of the waves, the colossal ship floating like a tiny eggshell

on the immeasurable expanse of the waters. The ship’s guns were flung

hither and thither, ropes as thick as my waist came sweeping in piles

across the deck, the waves, as high as big houses, of the most

intensely beautiful light green, dashing towards the bridge with such

violence as to overthrow and injure three sailors and one of the

officers. After the storm, which lasted twenty-four hours, it turned

fine, and then we had all kinds of glorious sights.

“I sat up, quite on the very edge of the prow, close to the old man

blowing his horn (the ‘old man,’ I must add, was of wood!), with a few

friends and the Captain, who made it their business to take care of

me, and I really felt elated by the superb spectacle before me.

“We gave a concert (on the ocean!) for the crew, and once or twice we

had a merry bit of dancing; and in this way time flew by quickly

enough.

“New York, as to its situation, reminds me very much of Stockholm.

“I was met with quite an astonishing reception. I have already given

six concerts there, in a hall with room for 11,000 people; it has been

crowded each time, and we shall most likely be able to give about

forty to fifty concerts in New York alone.

“Here everything is done on a large scale. The first ticket sold the

day before yesterday in this city for to-day’s concert (the first one

given here) was sold for as much as——625 _dollars_! The tickets, you

must know, were sold by auction. It is amazing what heaps of money

they seem to have here.

“My health is, as usual, thank God, in excellent condition; my voice

is fresh and strong, and I am looking forward extremely to some plan—

after this ‘_tournée_’ is over—for enjoying peace and rest; for,

indeed, in these two matters, so precious to us, human beings, I seem

to be given but a very small share, torn and bothered as I am from

morning to night. Still, it is touching to see such goodwill and

kindness; people seem not to know how to do enough to show their

favour and the genuine interest they take in me.

“I wish I could send home to Pommern some of the lovely flowers and

the splendid fruit which are continually sent to me. The peaches are

delicious, and grow here in great abundance. We have still warm

weather, and ever a divinely blue sky.

“_October 1st_—Time does pass! I shall now soon be thirty years of

age! How happy I am to become an ‘ould hag’! Every day I see round me

numbers of new faces,—so many, in fact, that I find it a bore—but I am

going to try and terminate my engagement as quickly as possible—

_perhaps_ in a year! When we meet I shall have heaps to tell you,

which now I have no time to relate. It is already more than three

months since I was taking part in the country dances round the maypole

at Pommern. It does seem so strange!

“I wish I could soon hear that you both are well. Now, pray do take

care of yourselves, so that still many a green spring and many a

chirping bird may gladden your soul! Rest assured that all I have said

or written has been done with the truest and best intentions; and pray

remember with tenderness your far-distant

“DAUGHTER.”

That letter will, certainly, bring relief, and joy to the little house

at Pommern, where she had so lately “danced round the maypole.” She,

like her own favourite skylark, is ever—

“True to the kindred points of heaven, and home.”

The next of the letters repeats how freely and cheerfully things are

going. It is written from Boston, on October 2nd, 1850, to her Guardian,

Herr Munthe.

“I have given eight concerts, and hitherto the success has been

unparalleled. I devoted the first two in New York to charities,

because they had raised such enormous prices (by auction)—that I

considered this to be a plain duty. My agreement with Mr. Barnum has

been quite altered; and Mr. Barnum has shown, and is still showing

himself, extremely generous, and reasonable; and seems to have made it

his first object to see me satisfied. I understand that we rarely make

less than $10,000 at a concert. Hitherto the receipts have varied

between $12,000, $14,000, $16,000! And thus my share for six concerts

is about $30,000!”

Good news, this, for the kindly old judge at home! His warm heart would

kindle over the triumphant success, even though he foresaw a big job

ahead for his prudence and his wits, when it came to the dispensing of

these vast sums in accordance with the scruples and the anxieties of her

beneficence.

On November 8th she wrote again from Boston to her Guardian a letter

full of her characteristic temper.

“It is indeed a great joy, and a gift from God, to be allowed to earn

so much money and afterwards to help one’s fellow-men with it. This is

the highest joy I wish for in this life; everything else has

disappeared from the many-coloured course of my path on earth. Few

know, though, what a beautiful and quiet inner life I am living. Few

suspect how unutterably little the world and its splendour have been

able to turn my mind giddy. Herrings and potatoes—a clean

wooden-chair, and a wooden-spoon to eat milk-soup with—that would make

me skip like a child, for joy! And this—without the slightest trace of

exaggeration, or that sort of thing.

“Benedict and Belletti are kind and pleasant. Benedict and I play nice

little duets on the piano, and the time goes quickly and happily.

“The bird-song, ‘I know not why I am singing,’ and Herr Berg’s song

with the long-sustained notes, and the Norwegian echo-song—these are

the standing pieces which I must sing at every concert.”

This speaks straight from her heart. It holds in it her deepest motives—

motives, strong from the first, but which have gained in strength as she

developed. Her original sense that her singing was God-given has been

intensified by the more positive religious influences which had flowed

in upon her through her English Evangelical friends, and expresses

itself, now, in the desire for inner peace in the quiet recesses of the

soul: while the hope of beneficent service to her fellow-men has become

absorbing. Still, with all the growth, there is no change whatever in

the “Jenny” who would “skip for joy over the herring and the potatoes,

and the clean wooden-spoon” That declaration is instinct with her very

breath. She never lost, either the spontaneous simplicity of plain

living, or the buoyant gleefulness of the dancing child.

And, now, to part with her best friends with whom we have seen her spend

such happy days, and to whom she pours out her fondest affections—the

Wichmanns. They are not forgotten in the novel whirl of American

affairs.

“My dearly beloved Amalia,” she writes from Philadelphia on December

5th, 1850, to Madame Wichmann, “I feel so great a desire to write you

some lines that I cannot keep silence any longer. I long to know how

you all fare; and would like, too, to tell you something about myself;

for I know well how great an interest you take in my fate. I will no

longer restrain myself; for I find my thoughts all flying to you with

such love and confidence that I feel grateful and happy in the mere

act of communing in spirit with you. And, surely you have not

forgotten me!

“What are they doing in Germany? I am in great anxiety over the

situation there. Will there really be war? Where will you go in that

case? For God’s sake, write me a line about that.

“If all goes ill in Europe you might come to America, and fetch me

away. How is Otto?[165] Is he stronger? I was so glad to see him in

Baden; and fancied that in him I saw you all.

“... I and all of us are extremely well. My head is quite

re-established: and my voice is better than ever. The climate here is

very good. Nearly the whole autumn we have had a clear blue sky, such

as we had at Meran, when it was at its best....

“Mr. Barnum behaves extremely well towards me: and I could not wish

for anything better.

“In the month of July we hope to be back in Europe, for we hope to see

the Great Exhibition. Ah! if _you_ were to come there! You, Amalia,

have never been in London; how interesting it would be to see it!

Think it over, dearly beloved Frau!

“If you see Taubert, tell him, please, that they will not listen here

to anything but his song ‘I must be singing.’ Since I got a very nice

translation of it in English, I have to sing it at every concert.

Greetings to all my friends—Herr Taubert—Professor Werder—Magnus—

Madame Mendelssohn, etc.

“I wept for joy the other day, when the Prussian Envoy, Herr von

Gerolt, brought us greetings from Her Majesty the Queen of Prussia.

When next you meet His Excellency Herr von Redern, pray tell him how

truly grateful I feel for this mark of Her Majesty’s sympathy. Greet

him at the same time.

“Faithful love to you all!

“From yours ever gratefully,

“JENNY.”

So we leave this sweet and delightful friendship which played so deep a

part in her early years of European success. It has remained her

constant support throughout—a harbour, in which she never failed to find

refuge and peace.

One thread out of her old life, which we have already tracked into the

new, is alas! soon to be slit. It is a thread woven deep indeed into the

tissue of her memory and her soul. The long and curious story of her

mother which we have followed through so many incidents, ends at last

during the American trip with the news of Fru Lind’s death. What a

strange and unanticipated change had come over the scenes of poor Fru

Lind’s life since, pinched and driven by the hard days, unsuccoured and

unsustained, she had been forced to put out her new-born child with the

Parish Clerk of Ed-Sollentuna, and turn from her hurried sickness and

nursing to fight her way alone against a baffling world! “That child

will bring you help! mark my word,” the old grandmother had said to her:

but she little knew the full and wonderful sense in which those words

would prove themselves true. Now, in 1851, lifted out of all anxiety by

that child’s help, transplanted into a kindly and peaceful home which

the child had given her, in company with the husband whom, in spite of

all his weakness in those earlier times when she had to struggle on

alone, she loved with an affection that he warmly returned, she could

sit and rest among the quiet country-sights, and could sweeten her

sourer humours, and could soften her asperities, and could come to

kinder terms with the human earth about her, as she caught all the

echoes of that praise with which the wide world outside was welcoming

that child of hers, once so forlorn, of whom, with all her tough

bitterness of disposition, she had always been so proud; and could hear

of the uncounted wealth which was being poured in upon her, in measures

that must have made her breathless as she listened to their tale. No

fairy godmother could have worked a more marvellous transformation; and

yet all had been done by the earnest, intelligent, devoted steadiness,

the “incredibly hard work,” of that tiny scrap of a child who once sat

in the porter’s window at the Widows’ Home, and sang away to her cat

“with the blue ribbon round its neck”; and who, now, knew not how to

escape from the thousands who thronged to hear her in lands beyond the

sea where her name was already familiar and dear as a household word.

She, by God’s grace, had done it: and now at the end of all, she is the

very same “Jenny” who trotted off by her mother’s side to the

Opera-House, to try their fortune with old Croelius. Still she loves to

think of the “milk-soup and the wooden-spoon” that belonged to the old

simple days of childhood; and her heart drew closer to her mother, now

that the Atlantic rolled between them, than it ever could in the earlier

days when the roughness of the surface-life harshened the home, and

forbade those springs of gentleness to flow between a mother and

daughter whom so much held estranged. Certainly, it was with a bitter

pang that Jenny Lind heard, in December 1851, of her mother’s death.

Some words which she wrote about it in 1852 tell how “everything had

become smooth and nice” between them; how her mother had become so much

quieter and more reasonable; how she had hoped to “surround her old age

with joy, and peace and tender care.” “Now it is too late! Peace be with

her soul.”

Too late, perhaps, for all that she yet planned to do; but not too late

to have done much to secure that “peace” to her declining days, which

was the gift most sorely needed by that disturbed and harassed heart.

Perhaps, now that she has herself taken leave of her friends, we may

give one last picture of her, as she was seen in the thick of her

American work, by the sympathetic eyes of Mr. Parker Willis, an American

author, whose reminiscences of ‘Famous Persons, and Famous Places’ were

published in 1856.

He has most graphically described a typical day’s work in New York, with

its mingled glow and grind.

“It was the morning after her last concert (in New York), and among

the business to be attended to, in the winding up of a visit to a city

where she had already given away $30,000 in charity, was the result

certified in the following report:—

“The undersigned, a committee named by Miss Lind to divide the

appropriation of the sum of $5,373·20 cents, the proceeds of a

morning concert, have distributed the said funds as follows:—

New York, Nov. 26, 1850.

C. S. Woodhule. B. Raird. R. B. Mintum. Wm. H. Aspinwall. John

Jay.

$

To the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor 1000

Widows with poor children 300

Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum 300

Female Assistance Society 300

Eastern Dispensary 250

Northern Dispensary 250

Eye and Ear Infirmary 250

Hebrew Benevolent Society 200

Prison Association 200

Destitute children of seamen 200

Homeless and destitute boys 100

Swedes and Norwegians in New York 273·20

Swedish Bibles and Testaments 200

Brooklyn Orphan Asylum 250

The poor of Williamsburg 100

The poor of Newark 100

The poor of Jersey City 100

Temperance societies 500

St. George’s Society 500

———————

5373·20

———————

“There was also another matter which formed an item in the ‘squaring

up’ of the New York accounts on that day. A paragraph had reached her

making mention of a Swedish sailor who had perished in endeavouring to

save the lives of passengers on the wreck of a vessel. Jenny Lind had

sent to the Swedish Consul to make enquiries whether he had left a

family. His widow and children were found by the Consul,[166] and

Jenny had sent him $500 for their use. This was mentioned by M.

Habicht to a lady, who mentioned it to us, and by this chance alone it

became public.

“But while all these sufferers were receiving her bounty, and she was

settling with banks and managers for the payments—what else was her

life made up of on that day?

“It was now half-past nine in the morning, and three servants of the

hotel and two of her own had been ordered to guard her room till she

could eat her breakfast. But well-dressed ladies cannot be stopped by

men-servants: and her drawing-room was already half full of visitors

on particular business who had crowded past insisting on entrance.”

He goes on to describe vividly the “lady-beggars,” to whom she hurriedly

offered $20 or $30, as the shortest way to be rid of them; and how this

is rejected with indignant protests. “We did not expect this pittance

from _you_!” “Excuse me, I came for a donation, not for alms!” etc.,

etc. Then there are the “applicants for musical employment; passionate

female admirers; a dozen ladies with albums; some who had worked things

for her; one who had come indignantly to ask why a note containing a

poem had not been answered.”

So the audience would go on; and Mr. Willis cannot wonder, that in the

evening, when he goes to a party at a lovely villa ten miles from town

to meet her, he should find her looking fatigued. But she received him

with a merry inquiry as to where he came from, in reference to some

spirit-séance, to which he had lately taken her. He told her in answer

that they had been inquiring of a spirit whether Jenny Lind had any

talent which she would have developed but for the chance possession of a

remarkable voice? and if so, what was it?

“‘And the spirit said, it was working frocks for poor little children,

I suppose,’ was her immediate anticipation of the reply, uttered with

an expression of arch earnestness which confirmed us in the opinion we

have gradually formed, that a love of the comic and the joyous is the

leading quality in her temperament.

“During the time that we remained near her, there were constant

introductions. And in these she bandies no compliments. If a remark is

made which has no rebound in it, she drops it with a monosyllable, and

without ever gracing its downfall with an insincere smile. She affects

no interest which she does not feel; and puts an abrupt end to a

conversation which could only be sustained by mutual pretence of

something to say; she differs suddenly and uncompromisingly when her

sense of truth prompts her to do so; and repels, instead of even

listening silently to, complimentary speeches. At all times, she is

particularly honest and simple.”

He describes how he took leave of her:—

“She had withdrawn from the crowd, and was sitting in one of the deep

alcoves of the saloon; one of the trellised windows, which looked out

upon the park, formed a background to her figure. She sat in a posture

of careless and graceful repose, with her head bent on one side, her

eyes drooped, and her hands crossed before her, in the characteristic

habit which has been seized by the painters who have drawn her. There

was an expression of dismissed care replaced by a kind of childlike

and innocent sadness, which struck us as inexpressibly sweet, and

which we mentally treasured as another of those phases of expressive

beauty of which that strong face is capable. And as we looked on her,

there suddenly appeared through the window behind, half concealed by

her shoulder, the golden edge of the just-risen moon. It crept to her

cheek before she had changed the attitude in which she indolently

listened to her friend as he talked; and for a moment the tableau was

complete. It was so startling, and yet so apt and so consistent, that,

for an instant, it confused one’s thoughts.... But the taking of a

step forward disturbed it, ... and we could only then call her

attention to the bright orb lifting behind her. The moment after she

had said ‘Good-night,’ and was gone.”

That shall be our last vision of her. For we, too, must be saying

Good-night, and be going.

LAST WORDS.

This Memoir of Jenny Lind has touched its appointed close, now that she

has finally and for ever shaken herself free from that theatrical career

into which she had been thrown from her very infancy, and within which

she had developed and matured all her artistic capacities. We have seen

how she had deliberately and spontaneously cast it all away behind her,

at the very moment when her wonderful histrionic powers were at the very

height of their fulfilment. We know that she did this in obedience to

the rooted convictions of her innermost self—convictions which had grown

up within her secret will until they had become an imperious call on her

spirit which no resistance or plea from without could break down, and no

alluring fame or promise of wealth could beguile. She had done it in

spite of all the world could do to prevent it. And now that it was done,

she has found, as we have seen, that the path of Art is open as ever to

her. She still can exercise her allotted mission to mankind; still can

appeal to men through her marvellous gift of song; still can wake to

finest issues all the nobility and purity and joy that lie asleep in

human souls until the kiss of music breaks their sealing slumber.

Such would be, for years to come, her public career, full as ever of

magnificent opportunities triumphantly used. And, just in order to

verify our words to the minds and imaginations of our readers, we will

venture to give a rapid glance, before closing this volume, down the

long line of musical events which marked the life that now lay ahead of

her. But, first, we must recall one domestic fact of primary importance.

The life ahead, however artistically continuous with the life which had

preceded it, was now carried on under vitally changed conditions; for on

the 5th February, 1852, at the house of Mr. S. Grey Ward in Boston, she

was married, by Bishop Wainwright of New York, to Mr. Otto Goldschmidt.

We remember the beginnings of their intimacy: how they had met again and

again at Lübeck and Hamburg; how they were drawn together by the common

memory of Mendelssohn; how close were their musical sympathies. So it

was, that when it appeared probable that Julius Benedict would part

company with her in the midst of the American tour, communications began

to pass between her and Mr. Goldschmidt’s family, without his knowledge,

pressing the expediency of his coming out to take up the part of pianist

as soon as it was vacant. He was then still young, but she had an

enthusiastic admiration of his talent, and especially delighted in his

sympathetic power as an accompanist—a gift on which she set the highest

value. “Whether he accompanies me,” she wrote to Judge Munthe in

October, 1851, “or I accompany myself, it is absolutely the same thing.”

The venture was made, and with entire success. He arrived at the end of

May, 1851, and brought to her, in the thick of the loud and racketting

distractions, the touch of that serious Art which they had both learned

to revere in the great master gone from them. He helped her to fight

through the noisy turmoil that beset her. The intimacy quickly deepened,

and in him she learned that she could find “all”—so she wrote—“that her

heart ever yearned after and loved.” The letters that she sent home

immediately after the marriage, on the 16th of February, to his parents

and to her dear friend, Mrs. Stanley, who had known her so well in her

old trouble, prove how profoundly her whole being, in all its deepest

motives and aspirations, had gone out into this happy union. And we know

a little, from our record of her career, all that it would mean to her.

It meant that the old life of the wandering musician, carrying wares

from east to west, with its homelessness, its isolation, its insecurity,

was all to end. We know too, how she had hated the condition of the

unattached and unsteady wandering—the lodging with its forlorn

emptiness, the inn with its naked publicity. The friendships, formed by

the way, warm and intense as they had been, could but be as passing

gleams, as broken suggestions of that reposeful home for which her

spirit pined. And now the release had come; she was lifted clean out of

the tumult and the loneliness; she was received into the warmth of

endearing affection, and into the happy honour of wifehood.

And this promise of good things with which this marriage opened to her

was never to fail her. For the remaining thirty-five years of her life,

whatever troubles they might bring with them to her, as to all, she was

never to miss the sense of this sympathetic understanding, of this

secure loyalty, of this delicate trust, always there at her side. With

her rigorous idealism, with her artistic emotion, she could not be

herself without putting to full proof the strength of the tie that bound

them. And it bore every test with a quiet steadfastness which nothing

could seriously weaken or disturb. It was knit fast by entire community

of interests and tastes, as well as by the more intimate sympathies.

Both shared the same religious convictions; both enjoyed the same type

of work, of amusement, of society; both found their delight in the same

circle of friends; each had a heart-whole admiration for the other’s

gifts. Moreover, outward circumstances favoured their union from first

to last; and no loss, or damage, or misfortune, broke for a moment the

even tenor of their days. To those who had the privilege of intimacy

within their inner household for the last twenty or thirty years, it

seems difficult to imagine how any marriage could have brought to her

more steadiness or smoothness of tone and harmony and habit.

With their marriage the American tour came to a close. They gave,

together, during May, 1852, three farewell concerts in New York, and

then, after lingering in England through June, for Mr. Goldschmidt to be

introduced to her old friends there, they crossed to Hamburg; and after

touring in Switzerland, etc. settled finally at Dresden in the autumn,

where they remained for the next five years. It was there that a son was

born to them in 1853, and a daughter in 1857.

In 1858 they were finally drawn to England, and decided on establishing

their home there. After some years in Argyll Lodge, a villa looking out

on Wimbledon Common, where their third child was born, they bought some

ground and built a house, which was named Oak Lea, on the fringe of

Wimbledon Park, at a spot where, in her early London seasons, she used

to ride down with Mrs. Grote to picnic and listen to the nightingales.

In 1874, finding themselves too remote from the musical life of London,

they left Oak Lea and bought a house in Moreton Gardens, which was their

home until her death.

Such, in briefest outline, was her married life; and even these few

lines are enough to reveal the contrast between its steady quietude and

fixity, and the old helter-skelter days of incessant disturbance.

And now let us sketch, with a like brevity, the record of the main

musical engagements which occupied their married years, just to convince

ourselves how richly she continued to fulfil her artistic career. In all

the work here recorded she enjoyed the active co-operation, and often

the leadership, of her husband.

She sang during the early half of 1854 in Dresden, Berlin, Leipzig,

Vienna, and Pesth. In 1855, after concerts in Hamburg and Bremen, she

made a most brilliant tour from March to May in Holland, singing at

Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leyden, Utrecht, the Hague, Haarlem, Dortrecht,

and in Friesland. In the June of that year, she began her visits to the

Lower Rhenish Festival at Düsseldorf, which she repeated in 1863 and

1866. From December, 1855, to June, 1856, she made a round of England,

Scotland, and Wales, accompanied by a strong band of supporters—F.

Lablache, Weiss, Ernst, Sainton, Swift, and Piatti—and had a most

extraordinary success.

It was in the midst of this tour, on March 11, that together they gave a

most famous concert in Exeter Hall, on behalf of the Nightingale Fund,

to which they paid in the whole of the receipts—£1,872. In recognition

of this, besides a special vote of thanks, they received as a memorial a

beautiful bust of the Queen, presented to them, at the Mansion House, by

the hand of the Lord Mayor.

In December, 1855, they gave a musical evening at Windsor Castle before

the Queen; and both appeared at a royal performance in Buckingham Palace

in May, 1856. In the June of that year, under the leadership of

Sterndale Bennett, she introduced to England Schumann’s _Paradise and

the Peri_ at a concert of the Philharmonic Society in the Hanover Square

Rooms.

In 1857–58, besides singing at Dresden, Prague, Breslau, Königsberg,

Danzig, and Posen, she made a momentous appearance in the _Messiah_, at

Halle, for the completion of the Handel monument.

In 1859 she went round the chief Irish towns, assisted by Belletti and

Joachim; while in 1861–62 she sang in concerts and oratorios in England

and Scotland, with the assistance of Belletti, Sims Reeves, and Piatti;

besides giving three oratorios, for charitable purposes, at Exeter Hall

during the time of the International Exhibition.

Besides these, _Elijah_, given on October 22nd, on behalf of “London

Over the Border,” and in special succour of a hard-pressed and

persecuted clergyman struggling with the misery of North Woolwich,

roused an immense enthusiasm. “What was written of this remarkable

exhibition,” says _The Times_ in its notice of the performance, “years

ago, might be re-written now without a syllable to withdraw, without an

epithet of admiration to change or modify.”

In May and July of 1863 she took part in the historic revival of

Handel’s music to the _Allegro_ and the _Penseroso_ of Milton, and this

music she sang again in the autumn at Liverpool and Manchester.

In the years that followed she would sing whenever a special occasion

arose. It might be in the _Messiah_ for the Clergy Fund Corporation in

January, 1865; or at Cannes at her one Concert on French soil in 1866,

for the Civic Hospital; or the Musical Festival at Hereford in 1867; or

in Mr. Goldschmidt’s _Ruth_ in 1869, in Hamburg and London; and again at

Düsseldorf and in London in 1870 and 1871. She took an intense interest

in this oratorio of her husband’s. In April, 1871, it is pleasant to see

her take part in one more concert with Madame Schumann at No. 14, Hyde

Park Gardens. In May, 1873, she sang in Northumberland House before it

was swept away by the new improvements; and after helping the Turkish

Refugee Fund in February, 1877, and singing on behalf of the Albert

Institute in a Royal Concert at Windsor in May, 1880, she made her last

public appearance at a concert given for the Railway Servants’

Benevolent Fund at the Spa, Malvern Hills, on July 23rd, 1883. From 1876

to 1883 her main musical interest lay in leading and training the

soprani of the Bach Choir; while from 1883 to 1886 she threw all her

energies into her work for the School of Singing, in the Royal College

of Music.

Such was the after-life. And we part from her, then, in midcareer, in

the full confidence that all will be well with her, and that half her

triumph as an Artist is to come.

Yes! The voice—the perfected use of the voice—will remain to enthral and

to exalt. But yet, we must confess that something is gone, which will

never be again—the freedom of the Actress to place at the disposal of

her voice all the resources of her imaginative passion. This is gone for

ever; and the question may still haunt us, Did she never regret the

decision taken? Those accumulated stores of experience gained from

childhood, exercised and trained by twenty years of work and of success—

was it nothing to her that these were thrown to the winds? Did not the

gift itself within her, so instinctive, so deep, stir at times and yearn

for an outlet? Did she never, in all the long years, feel for the warmth

and the inspiration of some heroic hour, when she had drawn men,

spell-bound, into the sway of the passion to which she alone could give

expression? Is it possible that any one should possess the power, and

not, at times, desire to use it?

The answer is absolute. No traces of such a regret are recorded, even by

those most intimate with her, to have ever crossed her mind. Far from

falling under even the passing influence of such a regret at the step

once taken, she does not appear to have been even moved by the impulse

from within now and again just to liberate her pent-up skill. Not that

she recoiled from the Stage itself with any repugnance or moral

condemnation. On the contrary, she would often go to the play; and would

take an interest in this or that new actor or actress. She was, on these

occasions, a rather merciless critic; and she would be very severe on

any defect in technical training, or any stupidity of mannerism. All

this came from her genuine appreciation of dramatic Art: she still

recognised its high capabilities; she had not withdrawn her sympathies

from it. And yet it never crossed her imagination that she might herself

find joy in wielding the strange dominion again. She found a childlike

delight in private, sometimes, in letting loose her marvellous gift of

merry mimicry. Once, for instance, when quite alone with an intimate

Swedish friend, she began to revel in making her laugh with the most

whimsical imitations of the various celebrities of the Stage at that

day; and, after overflowing with brilliant fun over it, she exclaimed:

“You see, I have not lost my old art!” as if she was glad to feel it was

there. But, nevertheless, nothing seemed ever to suggest to her: “Would

you not love to exercise that art as of old?”

Her fixed and unwavering sentiments are given in a very vivid letter,

written, years after, to the same Herr Forsberg, of the War Office, to

whom she wrote on the death of her mother.[167] His deep interest in the

theatre had led him to send her a poem called ‘Thalia’ in honour of the

drama, which might wake up old memories. She, in answer, tells him how

she came to see that all the tears shed on the stage were sham tears;

and how, unsatisfied by success, she opened her Bible and there came

upon these words (written on the margin of some text, by herself, as we

suppose) “my newly-found Lord, who first taught me to shed the genuine

tears.” Her new religious experiences seem to have made the emotions of

the Stage feel hollow, and superficial.

She, then, recalls the physical agonies that it entailed, of which she

is vividly reminded by a scene of home-happiness. “Walter” (her son),

she writes, “is just at this moment rushing into the room dressed up

in my jacket of the ‘Figlia,’ in which he is acting coachman, and is

supremely happy: he has got a huge hat on, with a real cockade, and is

offering to take me for a drive in his carriage, which is made out of

chairs piled up on the table! I cannot refrain from comparing the

present purpose of the jacket, and the anguish I felt when it covered

my poor limbs. There is Walter, quite enchanted: and I was trembling

all over while I wore it!”

This is, of course, an after-view which needs many qualifications; but

it embodies the permanent impression left on her memory—a memory of

bodily and mental misery. The Art was exercised at too heavy a cost. It

took too much out of her.

In estimating the cost, we must remember her mode of acting. There is

one form of the dramatic gift which lies in the power of

self-abandonment, of absorption in a character foreign to the natural

self—in a character taken up, assumed, worn, penetrated, as a study, by

the intensity of the imagination. The actor leaves himself behind; and

only imagines what that other character would feel under given

circumstances. Such an actor keeps his own inner store of emotion

unused; when he acts, he is not himself, but another person. But Jenny

Lind has told us herself that she worked on the exactly opposite method.

She carried herself into her parts. She could not act any character

which she could not adopt for her own, or imagine herself to be. For the

time, she was it. This is what limited her range. This is what debarred

her from acting an evil character. She could not do it merely as a

scientific impersonation; she must picture herself as inside the part;

she must surrender herself to the sway of the evil passion to be

portrayed.

Now, such a method would, no doubt, have overwhelming effect on happy

occasions; but it is terribly expensive. It draws on the private

resources; it exhausts the personal powers; it carries all the tumult

and pain of the Drama within the secret recesses of the self. Such a

process tears at the heart of life. It spends more than it can reclaim.

No wonder, that, as she looked back, the prevailing thought was mainly

of the tortured nerves and exhausted vitality which such acting as this

involved.

And not only did she escape from the torture of exhausted nerves: but

more than that. She evidently felt a positive gain in inner freedom.

Something there was in her deepest self, which sprang up into a

liberated life when once she found herself a musician only, and not an

actress as well. That is why she could never even feel as if she missed

any fulfilment of her full powers.

And this element in her which found itself free was just that in her

which constituted the very core of her artistic gift. For in herself, as

in her art, she was a passionate Idealist. She had none of the realistic

instincts, which delight in burrowing inside the crust of facts and

incidents, ugly and repellent though they be, in order to drag out their

inner secret. Her native tendency was, not to dig beneath the coarse

rind, and pluck out its mystery, but to escape and soar away from all

that was common and gross; she was like her chosen emblem the skylark,—

“That singing still doth soar, and soaring ever singeth.”

Perplexities, shocks, obstacles,—these did not evoke in her a wish to

master them; rather they jarred against her conscience; they drove her

to indignant protest, and anxious inquiry. That was her temperament, and

therefore it was that she was not sure of herself in the stress of

action, in the thick of facts. She could not trust her own judgment. She

was greatly subject to changing impressions, and to inconsequent

influences. She lost her confidence. The field of active life was not

her true ground. She was an Idealist. Only when aloof from the shift of

bewildering Circumstance, did she rise to her full supremacy, and move

with perfect consistency, and absolute security of foot.

She was an Idealist; that was her dominant self. And, therefore, it was,

that she felt herself free and self-possessed when she had, once and for

ever, cast out the theatrical interests which were dragging her in a

cross direction. The Stage compelled her to be in constant contact with

all the whirl, and noise, and jar of circumstance. It pinned her down to

all the pettiness, the dishonourable inferiorities, of a restless

conflict with a hard and unworthy environment. It imprisoned her within

those jangling conditions from which her instinctive idealism was ever

urging her to take wings and fly away. It could not go on. And, when

once the effort of escape was over, she could not but feel herself

rescued as from a prison. Her innermost being could put itself out, now,

in music, with as little jar or fret from external accidents as was

humanly possible. She could pass straight on to the concert platform

from her inner musings, and could there deliver herself of her full

message, just as it burned within her to give it, with nothing to

consider except how to set it free in that form which her own inward

judgment commended to her.

Music, then, gave to her idealism uninterrupted scope, while the

accidental and external conditions of the Drama were incessantly

traversing it; and it was, therefore, the musician that gained, at the

cost of abandoning the actress. But yet further; behind the idealist lay

the woman, with certain deep-root instincts which only won their freedom

through the surrender of the Stage. Of these instincts we have spoken

already. They were, first, the domestic instinct, with its intense

desire for the stability of home. And, secondly, the religious instinct,

with its yearning for inward peace. These emotions had no easy way in

her, at the very best. The artist in her was very strong; she had all

the ebbs and flows of impulse, the rapid susceptibility to changing

influences, the shifts of temper, the sweeps of emotion, which make the

artistic nature so perilous, and so difficult to control. She had to get

all this in hand; she had to set herself to master all that aggravates

the morbid humours of irritable nerves. It was all she could do so to

manage that these deeper desires for stable peace could get forward

towards their fulfilment. They needed every succour that external life

could supply. And how then would they ever survive, so long as the

impulsive and sensitive self was shaken and kindled by all the

turbulence of a dramatic career? How would they have a chance of winning

their footing, until she was released from that houseless wandering,

amid uncongenial strangers, which such a career involves?

It was these twin instincts which suffered most obviously and most

acutely, from the disturbance inevitable to the Stage; and it was their

imperious pressure which impelled her to cut herself loose from that

which hindered their freedom. Two little stories illustrate how she felt

herself drawn to what she did. The first is domestic. In America, they

tell how, at the very height of that unparalleled triumph, with all that

great world ringing with her praise, she visited a young mother, and,

after kissing the tiny, rosy baby, according to some Swedish fashion, on

its ear and its heel, she turned to the mother and cried—“Ah, how I envy

you! you have something to live for!” There is the woman’s cry, breaking

through the artist. It must not be taken for more than it is worth. She

would often acknowledge the sufficiency of Art, hallowed to its highest

purpose; and would be alive to the danger that besets Art from the

domestic side. But, for all that, the voice spoke genuinely, out of her

very soul. The fuller her artistic passion, the deeper grew her longing

for a something at the background which should be, not the expression of

life, but life itself.

And, then as to the religious motive. Once an English friend found her

sitting on the steps of a bathing-machine, on the sands, with a Lutheran

Bible open on her knee, and looking out into the glory of a sunset that

was shining over the waters. They talked, and the talk drew near to the

inevitable question, “Oh, Madame Goldschmidt, how was it that you ever

came to abandon the Stage, at the very height of your success?” “When,

every day,” was the quiet answer, “it made me think less of _this_”

(laying a finger on the Bible) “and nothing at all of _that_” (pointing

out to the sunset). “What else could I do?” The answer is obviously

dramatic; not literal. She is using the immediate situation, in which

she spoke, as a symbol of what she intended to convey. She is not giving

the actual motives which took her from the Stage; but she is

interpreting the inner experience, which, for her, justified the

original step, and which made it impossible to regret it. There, as she

sat on the beach, she saw one more confirmatory instance, before her

very eyes, of that secret which made her abandonment of the Stage so

intelligible, and so satisfactory. The Bible, and the Sunset! There is

what she always needed! There is what she wished at all cost to

preserve. Each of them is closed and barred, to all who cannot bring to

them a certain spiritual tone: and it was this tone which she found it

impossible to preserve amid the disquieting distractions of an actress’s

life. There is nothing morbid, or morose in this judgment of hers. She

is not bringing to bear upon the theatre any exaggerated temper of

religious puritanism. Even if, at the moment of the actual withdrawal,

she was possessed by influences which disturbed her normal conscience,

yet even then she repudiated, with hot indignation, any aspersion which

implied contempt for her profession. And her determination to withdraw

ran back far behind the time when that special form of religious

puritanism affected her: and it lasted on, with undiminished strength,

long after she had recovered, again, her more habitual judgment. No! It

was religion, if you will, that moved her; but it was the simple and

wholesome religion of a pious soul, who felt that she _must_ retain the

plain and primitive peace, which is the secret of all high and noble

living—that she must sacrifice all, rather than suffer the turmoil of

the world to blind her eyes to those mysterious visions that are thrown

open through the gates of a sunset, or are set stirring by the still

voices of the Bible. So she deliberately judged; and for that judgment

she alone could know fully the grounds; and she alone can bear the

responsibility. Only, let us be clear what that responsibility exactly

involved. It was not that she withdrew from man’s service the gifts

entrusted to her for his use: for she always felt that her best gift,

that of song, gained, rather than lost, by her sacrifice of the Stage.

She was not, then, sacrificing her proper mission for the sake of the

woman’s need of relief, and peace; rather she felt herself to be paying

the price that her full artistic mission to mankind asked of her. And

the whole of her after-life seemed to be to justify the decision taken.

She never saw any cause to doubt but that what God had asked of her,

that she had done. And, certainly, the choice she made did justify

itself by its spiritual results. By it she did retain the eyes which

could look out into the sunset, and the heart that could read the Bible.

By it she did keep herself, to the last, “unspotted by the world,”

untouched by meaner motives, untainted by the breath of jealousy, or by

the suspicion of earthly ambition. Nothing ever brought low that strange

nobility of mind which was her mark, and her possession. Nothing ever

clouded or discoloured that strain of haughty purity, which penetrated

her being. Always she was shut away from the fever and the fret, that

harries high spirits into disquietude, and vexes them with the miserable

sense that they have slipped down from their true estate. Faults she

had; blunders she made; we have not disguised or ignored them. But they

were the faults and blunders to which such a character as we have here

attributed to her, is liable. They were of the kind which belong,

naturally enough, to the high-strung intensity of her life. They came

from the misjudgments of genius; from the recoil of a noble and trustful

innocence; from the reaction of vehement aspirations; from the

disproportion to which artistic inspiration is so prone. Such failings

and infirmities are, themselves, the evidence of the strain laid upon

the will by the force of the ideal towards which it is set. Life, for

her, was difficult to manage rightly, and smoothly, just because she had

kept her spiritual temper unflawed and unbeguiled. Still, through all

her perplexities, and bewilderments, she never ceased to walk, with the

star of a divine mission clear above her head. She kept the heart and

the simplicity of a child. She had the same faith in God with which a

child looks for a father’s blessing, and trusts in the pardon of Jesus.

So we have watched her pass unscathed from out of the rough and

dangerous obscurity in which her days began, through all the temptations

with which the most overmastering and bewildering success can encompass

and perplex the path of a world’s favourite—until we leave her, lifted

high above the perils that beset the lower way, secure of herself,

secure of a home, secure of spiritual peace.

There are few careers which have a more fascinating tale to tell of

rapid and brilliant passage out of darkness into triumph, out of poverty

and harshness into a blaze of glory. But there is no career which can

leave a deeper impression of the entire supremacy, over all the world

can bring, of the spiritual motive. She is given everything; and yet all

is as nothing, if it does not leave her free to sit alone by the

sea-shore, and to look at the sunset, and at the old Lutheran Bible,

with the pure eyes that can see God.

That was the verdict of Jenny Lind; and that verdict was the secret of

her peculiar power. Therefore it is, that she has left in men’s memories

the name of one who, rare and splendid as were her gifts, was yet,

herself, greater than her gifts—of one whose voice sang to them as no

other ever sung, because it came charged with some high message that “no

ear hath ever heard.” In all this, her life was a standing witness

against the fallacy that haunts the popular use of the phrase, “Art for

Art’s sake.” Nothing, indeed, could sunder, or weaken her loyalty to

Art. She was an artist of the artists. She was true, in her artistic

allegiance, to the very backbone; and would suffer no alien dominion

within the frontiers that Art might claim. But with her whole soul, she

disbelieved in any attempt to allot to Art a domain separate from the

integral and central self; and that integral and central self was

spiritual; and, if spiritual, then, of inward and inherent necessity,

moral. Art could never be isolated from this animating principle of

which it was the expression and the embodiment. It was, in itself,

however subtle and delicate its mechanical organisation, yet but a

lifeless body, unless it were filled, and penetrated, and transfigured

by the breath of this spiritual soul. Here, then, lay its spring of

strength. And it is Art itself, therefore, that demands of the artist

the sacrifice of all that hinders the purity of its central source. Yes!

the very treasures and gifts of Art might have to be surrendered in

order to preserve the life itself. The right eye might have to be

plucked out, the right hand cut off, rather than that the spiritual

faculty, which alone could use the hand and the eye, should be itself

ruined, or lost. That, we repeat, was Jenny Lind’s unswerving creed:

and, under the sanction of that creed, she counted the magnificence of

her dramatic triumphs as a very little thing, in comparison with the

duty of retaining her highest gift in its noblest exercise.

We have spoken of this act of hers as of a renunciation, a sacrifice;

how else could we speak of it, when we recall the splendid fame that she

abandoned? And, yet, was there any one who ever bore upon her less sign

of effort or of struggle in her surrender? It hardly seemed to have cost

her a pang to let it go, so strong upon her was the motive-pressure of

the ideal for the sake of which she cast it all behind her. Indeed, she

was most strangely independent, not merely of fame, but even of that

free and public exercise of her gifts which many a high artistic soul

craves as its essential environment. Not only in the resignation of the

Stage, but in after years, also, when she had practically withdrawn from

public singing, she seemed to make her surrender with the same ease. She

had no instinctive hunger for opportunities of self-manifestation. There

was no restless desire to feel her old power at work. The musical ideal

was high, and serious as ever; but she could nurse it alone, or with the

few who knew. And the firmer the ideal, the more rooted grew her horror

of all the friction and the harshness of publicity.

So she lived, without a passing shadow of regretful ambition, for

thirty-seven years after her great decision. At home in England, her

adopted land, she saw grow up, about her feet, her children,[168] and

her children’s children; and to the very last, she found her deepest joy

in the simplicities of children’s feasts, and in the sweet homeliness of

country-scenes. So she lived, quiet and aloof, in honourable dignity, in

freedom and in beneficence, unvexed by clamour, untraversed by intrigue.

The affections of friends she had ever about her, intimate and

reverential: and the repose of home; and the trustfulness of wedded

love. This was the background she vitally needed in order to secure

herself against the ruin of unrest, and to retain, in their integrity,

her native nobility of soul, her spiritual solemnity, her perfect purity

of tone. So she remained to the very end, original, separate, exalted;

leaving, when she died,[169] to all those who loved her, the impression

of something unique and incomparable,—

——“the memory of what has been

And never more will be.”

Never more here, on earth! Never more will men listen enthralled by the

sound of that singing in which the very soul of poetry and holiness

seemed to have found for itself a living vehicle, a spiritual body.

No! Never more here! But all the gifts that were in her, penetrated as

they were by spiritual significance, told of immortality. Such a

presence as hers, erect and prophetic, was itself a pledge that its life

cannot be spilt as water in the dust. It may be burdened, as she was, by

the perplexities that encompass it with darkness, but it cannot doubt

the secret which it holds in itself: it cannot doubt its own

unconquerable hope: it cannot doubt its own witness to the necessity of

an eternal home where that which here was but suggested will be

achieved—that which here did but begin shall be fulfilled. Of her, if of

any, is the poet’s word true—

“Sorrow is hard to bear; and doubt is slow to clear;

Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:

But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear;

The rest may reason and welcome: ’tis we musicians know!”[170]

[Illustration:

WYND’S POINT, MALVERN HILLS, MADAME GOLDSCHMIDT’S COUNTRY HOME, IN

WHICH SHE SPENT MUCH OF THE LAST YEARS OF HER LIFE, AND IN WHICH SHE

DIED IN NOVEMBER 1887.

]

INDEX.

A.

Adelaide, Queen, 295

“_Ah! non credea mirarti_” (_La Sonnambula_), 278, 280;

Lablache on, 281

Åhmansson, Mdlle. Josephina, companion to J. Lind, 387;

illness of, 402, 403;

at Lübeck, 406, 410, 424