JENNY LIND
I
The conceit that to induce Jenny Lind to sing in this country would
add to his reputation and fortune and to her fortune and reputation
came to Barnum in October, 1849. He had been resting, as much as he
ever rested, at “Iranistan,” and was devoting his leisure to schemes
for the improvement of his Museum and his dignity. He considered a
Congress of Nations, an exhibition to excite the admiration and awe of
the United States and Europe, which would consist of a man and a woman,
the most perfect specimens available, from every accessible country
in the civilized and savage world. He sent an agent abroad to scout
for the appropriate types, but the project was one that required large
financial outlay and considerable time for its proper execution, and in
the meantime Barnum became interested in Jenny Lind.
He had never heard Jenny Lind sing, and he had never even seen her,
since she arrived in London a few weeks after he left there with
General Tom Thumb; but he had heard of her singing and her personality,
for both were objects of universal admiration abroad. In Europe she was
the idol and the ideal of the moment, and whatever people she visited
readily accepted her as a genius whose gifts they were happy and
privileged to enjoy. In this country she was unknown to all except the
few transatlantic travelers and those who read the musical notes from
abroad.
For several days after he thought of importing Jenny Lind Barnum made
calculations on the backs of envelopes, and all his calculations led
to what seemed to him the inevitable result of a properly executed
conception: immense success. He realized that his work would not be
easy, in fact that it would be more speculative and more exacting
than anything he had ever previously attempted. But Barnum’s two
conclusions were, in his own words: “1st. The chances were greatly
in favor of immense pecuniary success; and 2d. Inasmuch as my name
has long been associated with ‘humbug,’ and the American public
suspect that my capacities do not extend beyond the power to exhibit
a stuffed monkey-skin or a dead mermaid, I can afford to lose fifty
thousand dollars in such an enterprise as bringing to this country,
in the zenith of her life and celebrity, the greatest musical wonder
in the world, provided the engagement is carried out with credit to
the management.” To this second consideration Barnum attached great
importance, for it is clear that his Congress of Nations was conceived
with the same purpose, which was a desire to show America that he was
a man of esteem as well as an amusing and extraordinary character,
and that his mind worked along high lines for the edification of
his countrymen. Although the term “humbug” was self-imposed, and
fruitful of publicity, there was no getting away from its reproachful
implications, and Barnum sometimes rankled under its insinuations of
guilt; though he was too wise to deny them as just, he aimed to prove
them unjustified. Jenny Lind, he knew, would transform him from a
showman into an impresario, and he also expected that if her tour was
properly managed it would make both of them more wealthy than they had
ever been.
Barnum looked about for an agent to entice her to the United States by
means of stupendous bait, and he found him in the person of John Hall
Wilton, an Englishman who was visiting this country with The Sax-Horn
Players. In a few minutes’ conversation Barnum and Wilton agreed that
if Wilton secured Jenny Lind’s services for Barnum he was to have a
liberal commission, and that if he was not successful he would receive
only his expenses and a small sum for his time. There is some reason to
believe that Wilton suggested the Jenny Lind project to Barnum in the
first place. Barnum’s letter of instruction to Wilton begins, “In reply
to _your proposal_ to attempt a negotiation with Mlle. Jenny Lind to
visit the United States professionally.” As we shall see later, Barnum
often omitted credit in his autobiography where it was due, preferring
to take the admiration of his readers for his own perspicacity in
many instances of conceptions which originated in the minds of other
men. Wilton left for Europe on November 6, 1849, carrying letters of
instruction from Barnum and letters of introduction to his bankers,
Baring Brothers. His instructions were to engage Jenny Lind on the
basis of a share in the profits of the concerts, if possible, and
if that was not possible, to engage her at $60,000 for one hundred
concerts, or, if absolutely necessary, to offer her $150,000 for one
hundred and fifty concerts. Wilton was also empowered to engage an
orchestra conductor and another singer.
Wilton visited London, where he discovered that Jenny Lind was resting
at Lübeck in Germany. He wrote to her and learned that one of her
stipulations for an American tour, to which she was not averse, was
that she be accompanied to the United States by Julius Benedict,
afterwards Sir Julius Benedict, the composer, pianist, and orchestra
director, and by Giovanni Belletti, an Italian baritone. Wilton engaged
both these artists in London and proceeded to Lübeck. Jenny Lind told
him during their first interview that she had offers from several
persons for a tour of the United States. One of these was from the
famous Chevalier Wyckoff, who had toured this country as the manager
of Fanny Elssler, the danseuse, with great success. Wyckoff was an
American, who was well known for many years at the courts of Europe,
and who had attained notoriety by a speculative marriage with a titled
lady and by the account which he later wrote of his love affairs.
Chevalier Wyckoff told Jenny Lind when she happened to mention Mr.
Barnum that Barnum was a mere showman, and that in order to make money
out of her he would put her in a box and exhibit her about the United
States at twenty-five cents admission. This prediction had frightened
her, and she wrote to Joshua Bates, of Baring Brothers, at whose London
house General Tom Thumb had performed; he had reassured her that if she
dealt with Barnum she would not be dealing with an adventurer.
There were two other things that attracted Jenny Lind to Barnum: he
was the only manager who did not ask her to share in the losses as
well as the profits, and she liked the picture of “Iranistan” that was
engraved on Barnum’s letterhead. After she came to this country and
stayed a night at “Iranistan,” she said to Barnum: “Do you know, Mr.
Barnum, if you had not built ‘Iranistan,’ I should never have come
to America for you? I had received several applications to visit the
United States,” she explained, “but I did not much like the appearance
of the applicants, nor did I relish the idea of crossing 3,000 miles
of ocean; so I declined them all. But the first letter which Mr.
Wilton addressed me was written on a sheet headed with a beautiful
engraving of ‘Iranistan.’ It attracted my attention. I said to myself,
a gentleman who has been so successful in his business as to be able
to build and reside in such a palace cannot be a mere adventurer.’ So
I wrote to your agent, and consented to an interview, which I should
have declined, if I had not seen the picture of ‘Iranistan’!” Which
was a confirmation of Barnum’s already firm conviction that it pays to
advertise.
However, the story is not so simple as Jenny Lind made it. As her
letters and her biographers show, she had been considering a tour of
the United States for some time. In 1849 she was at the height of her
popularity, and in that year she had abandoned forever the medium
through which she had gained that popularity, the opera. After much
profound feeling, rather than thought, on the subject, she had come to
the conclusion, induced by the influences surrounding her throughout
her life, that to sing in opera was immoral, that the stage was
immoral, and that opera was merely drama set to music. The dangers and
pitfalls surrounding a virtuous prima donna, as well as the innuendoes
and implications, were not, in the opinion of Jenny Lind, worth the
adulation she received everywhere. She had determined never again to
sing in opera as long as she lived, and she kept to that determination.
But she had another profound desire: she wanted money, not for herself,
but in order to endow a hospital for poor children in Stockholm, where
she was born. Before her American tour she had enough money to use for
her own comfort for life, but she did not have enough for her hospital,
and she could never be thoroughly happy without the great sense of
personal satisfaction which her charities gave her. In order to carry
out this desire, she was considering a Russian tour, at the invitation
of royal personages, when Barnum’s offer came. She did not much like
the idea of a Russian tour, because Josephine, her constant companion
and religious mentor for many years, Mlle. Josephine Åhmansson, was ill
and could not tour Russia in comfort. There is also in Jenny Lind’s
correspondence the hint of another reason, always powerful with her.
Russia was too much like France, which she hated and never had visited
professionally since the days of her education, because France was
immoral. Barnum’s offer was larger than any she had received to sing
anywhere. In the Hotel du Nord at Lübeck, with no one but Josephine
Åhmansson and the Swedish consul to advise her, Jenny Lind signed
the Barnum contract. She had been accustomed to take much advice and
counsel before making any professional or business decision, but here
she acted quickly and without any of her usual hesitation and nervous
distrust of herself and the world. The Barnum contract meant two things
for her: she would never be compelled to sing in opera again, and she
could afford to build her hospital in Stockholm, and those were all she
wanted at the time.
Barnum’s contract with Jenny Lind provided that she was to sing
under his management in one hundred and fifty concerts or oratorio
performances, distributed over a period of one year, if possible,
or at most eighteen months from the date of her arrival in New York,
the concerts to take place in the United States and Havana, Cuba. She
was to have control of the number of concerts to be given each week,
providing that there should be no less than two in each week, and there
was a special provision that never was she to be required to sing in
opera. Barnum in consideration for these services agreed to furnish
her with a maid, a male servant, and place at her disposal a carriage
and horses with the necessary attendants in every city visited; to pay
the traveling and board expenses of Jenny Lind, her companion, and her
secretary; and to pay her $1,000 for each concert and oratorio in which
she sang. It was also provided that if, after seventy-five concerts,
Barnum should have realized a clear profit of $75,000 for himself,
then Jenny Lind was to receive, in addition to her $1,000 a night,
one-fifth of the net profits of the remaining seventy-five concerts.
If, on the other hand, the receipts fell short of expectations after
fifty concerts, the agreement was to be revised. Barnum also agreed to
pay Julius Benedict $25,000 for his services as musical director of the
concerts, and Signor Giovanni Belletti, the baritone vocalist, $12,500.
A clause was added to the effect that Jenny Lind was always at liberty
to sing for charity, providing only that the first and second concerts
in each city should not be for any charity. The contract required that
before Jenny Lind, Julius Benedict, and Signor Belletti left Europe,
Barnum must place the entire sum of $187,500 in the hands of Baring
Brothers, as security for his fulfilment of the terms of the agreement.
Barnum scraped together all his resources and made efforts to raise
$187,500 in cash. He visited Wall Street and offered the president of
his bank some second mortgages as security for a loan; he suggested
that the Jenny Lind contract be made over to the bank, which was to
appoint a receiver of all profits exceeding $3,000 a concert. The
banker laughed and said: “Mr. Barnum, it is generally believed in
Wall Street that your engagement with Jenny Lind will ruin you. I
do not think you will ever receive so much as three thousand dollars
at a single concert.” Barnum was angry; he answered that he would
not take $150,000 for his contract, but upon further inquiry in Wall
Street he discovered that nobody was willing to offer anything for it.
Finally, John L. Aspinwall, of the reputable banking firm of Howland
& Aspinwall, gave him a letter of credit on Baring Brothers for a
large sum on his mortgages. He then sold some of his real estate and
discovered that with all his efforts he was still $5,000 short of the
required sum. He knew no way of getting it. He happened to mention his
predicament to the Rev. Abel C. Thomas, a good friend, who was one of
the leading Universalist preachers of this country; Barnum was also an
active Universalist, and the Rev. Abel C. Thomas lent him the necessary
$5,000.
Meanwhile, John Hall Wilton had returned to the United States with
the signed contract. There was no cable across the Atlantic then, and
when Wilton arrived in New York on February 19, 1850, Barnum did not
yet know whether his mission had been successful. He was at his Museum
in Philadelphia, and Wilton immediately telegraphed him in code that
he had secured Jenny Lind’s services, and that she was to begin the
concerts the following September. Barnum was uneasy; he felt that the
time between the signing of the contract and the first concert was
too long for the maintenance of continued public interest, and he
telegraphed Wilton to mention the contract to no one until he met him
next day in New York. But news of this nature is difficult to keep
secret, and the next morning, as Barnum was riding in the train from
Philadelphia to New York, he read about his Jenny Lind contract in the
New York newspapers.
He was anxious to see how this announcement would strike a member of
the general public. While the cars were being changed at Princeton,
Barnum told the conductor, who was an acquaintance, that he had just
engaged Jenny Lind to visit this country. “Jenny Lind? Is she a
dancer?” asked the conductor. The question chilled Barnum. He informed
the conductor who and what Jenny Lind was, as his first step in
educating the public, and he realized that he could not have too much
time for the work before him. “Really, thought I,” he wrote in his
autobiography, “if this is all that a man in the capacity of a railroad
conductor between Philadelphia and New York knows of the greatest
songstress in the world, I am not sure that six months will be too long
a time for me to occupy in enlightening the entire public in regard
to her merits.” Classical music has never had a circus appeal, but in
order to come out of his contract with a profit, Barnum had to sell
Jenny Lind as extensively as he sold the circus in later years. His
instinct was sound when he quizzed the conductor on Jenny Lind, for it
was to conductors and even to brakemen that Barnum had to appeal for
financial support of his huge enterprise.
II
Though Jenny Lind was unfamiliar, even as a name, to the vast multitude
in the United States, she was known throughout every country in Europe
as The Swedish Nightingale, a name which was said to have been given
her by Douglas Jerrold, a writer in _Punch_, who later gave the glass
house of London the name of Crystal Palace. One would like to believe
that this was the origin of that famous sobriquet, but, unfortunately,
Jenny Lind had been called The Swedish Nightingale by her early
admirers in her native country, Sweden.
She was born in Stockholm, October 6, 1820, and was christened Johanna
Maria Lind, but no one from her early childhood ever called her
anything but that charming combination of sounds, with its implications
of familiarity and Victorian virtue, Jenny Lind. Her father, Nicolas
Jonas Lind, was a good-natured roisterer, twenty-two years old when
Jenny was born. He was able to do little towards the support of his
family by means of his position as bookkeeper. But he loved Bellman’s
songs, and Bellman was the Swedish Burns, and he sang those songs with
a good voice. All the practical management of the family affairs was
left to Jenny’s mother, the influence of whose piety, austerity, and
stubbornness on her daughter was undeniably great. At the period of
Jenny’s birth her mother was keeping a day-school for girls. In her
early years she was also influenced by her grandmother on her mother’s
side, who implanted firm religious beliefs in the child. It was this
grandmother who first discovered that Jenny Lind had musical talent.
At the age of three Jenny reproduced on the square piano which her
half-sister used for practising her scales a military fanfare she had
heard.
Later when Frau Lind was compelled to go out as a governess, Jenny
was cared for by her grandmother in the Home for Widows of Stockholm
Burghers. Thus her religious instruction was continued. Jenny used to
sit at the window in the Home for Widows of Stockholm Burghers and
sing to a cat “with a blue ribbon round its neck.” On one morning the
maid of a dancer at the Royal Opera House heard the child singing and
reported the discovery of a phenomenal voice to her mistress, who sent
for Jenny. Her mother took her to the Royal Opera House, and when the
dancer heard the child’s voice she immediately pronounced her a genius
and advised the parents to have her educated for the stage. But both
Jenny’s mother and grandmother believed fiercely that the stage was
immoral. Her mother, however, agreed to allow the child to be taught
singing, and she accepted a letter from Mademoiselle Lundberg, the
dancer, to Herr Croelius, Court-Secretary and Singing-Master of the
Royal Theater. Jenny sang for Herr Croelius, who took her to Count
Puke, the head of the Royal Theater. He asked how old she was, and when
he was told that she was nine years old said irritably, “But this is
not a _crèche_.” With great difficulty he was persuaded to listen to
the child. Jenny herself explained later that she was “a small, ugly,
broad-nosed, shy, gauche, under-grown girl.” But as Count Puke listened
to her sing, he was moved to tears, and he made arrangements to have
her taught singing and brought up at the expense of the government.
Frau Lind felt that she was “sacrificing her child to the stage,” but
her financial condition was such that she could not afford the luxury
of allowing one of the world’s greatest voices to go uncultivated. A
contract was signed with Frau Lind, by which it was provided that the
Royal Theater would supply the child with food, clothes, and lodging,
tuition in singing, elocution, and dancing, while Frau Lind was to
teach her daughter “the Piano, Religion, French, History, Geography,
Writing, Arithmetic, and Drawing.” After the child was educated, the
Royal Theater was to have her services at a salary.
Jenny Lind, as much as she may have been troubled by uncongenial home
environment--for her mother was stern and cruel as well as bigoted and
intolerant--never suffered from lack of recognition of her talent. Her
official biographers[7] report that: “From her earliest childhood, her
gifts were felt to be surpassing; and this feeling never flagged. From
the beginning of her dramatic career to its close, it is one unbroken
triumph; and she had this singular good fortune of finding her way
to the exercise of her gifts, before a sympathetic public, as soon
as she had them to exercise.” It was as a child actress that Jenny
Lind was first praised, for at the age of ten she took parts in the
Royal Theater productions. A Stockholm newspaper protested that it was
immoral to allow a child of her age to play with such innocent abandon
a part of such immorality in “Thirty Years of a Gambler’s Life.” She
also sang at private concerts, and at the age of seventeen made her
début in opera and was received with great applause. Throughout her
lifetime she kept the seventh of March, for that was the day in 1838
of her début, as a second birthday, that of her art. She won popularity
and acclaim almost at once and continued to sing in opera.
By her twentieth year Jenny Lind was recognized and idolized by the
Swedish public both as a singer and an actress. The musicians of
Stockholm, and in fact of all Sweden, had no more to teach her, and
they were content to praise her. The directors of the Royal Theater
offered her the highest salary they were allowed to offer, $750 a year
for three years. But Jenny Lind refused their offer, arguing that it
was “not with half-developed, if even happy, natural gifts, that an
artist can keep his ground.” She had decided to study abroad. Several
influences persuaded her to this decision. Geijer, the eminent Swedish
historian, who wrote _lieder_ which Jenny Lind sang, had written a song
to her in which he said:
“Oh! if from yon Eternal Fire,
Which slays the souls that it sets free--
Consuming them, as they aspire--
One burning spark have fallen on thee!
“Fear not! Though upward still it haste,
That living fire, that tongue of flame!
_Thy_ days it turns to bitter waste;
But ah! from heaven--from heaven it came!”
These words, she afterwards felt, launched her into the open sea of
public appearance. They told her that it was not wrong of her to aspire
to fame, which was hedged with temptations, or to think of her talent
in high spiritual terms, for after all it came from heaven. Where
else should the poor daughter of a boarding-school mistress and an
accountant with an ear for popular lyrics get a voice that was gaining
universal praise? Thus she squared her religious doubts as to the
propriety of utilizing her accomplishments.
Herr Berg, who had taken Croelius’s place as her instructor, admitted
to Jenny Lind that he had no more to teach her. Then Signor Giovanni
Battista Belletti, who was afterwards to accompany her to America,
came to Stockholm from Italy and joined the Royal Theater company.
Jenny Lind admired the technical features of this baritone’s voice, and
when asked where he learned his technique, Belletti replied, “At Paris
under Garcia.” Manuel Garcia was the most celebrated maestro of Europe;
Jenny Lind determined to visit him, and in July, 1841, she left for
Paris with a female companion.
Soon after her arrival in Paris, Jenny Lind called upon Garcia. He was
the brother of Mme. Malibran and Mme. Viardot, the two most famous
divas of the day, and his reputation as a teacher was unsurpassed. He
listened to Jenny Lind sing scales and the _Perche non ho_ of _Lucia_.
She broke down completely. The strain of an extended concert tour in
Sweden, which she made in order to get enough money to live in Paris,
and the excessive number of performances at the Royal Theater since
she had discovered her voice, had chosen this vital moment to reveal
their effect. Garcia said, “Mademoiselle, vous n’avez plus de voix.”
He did not say what was later attributed to him by some newspapers,
“Mademoiselle, you have no voice,” but, “Mademoiselle, you no longer
have a voice,” which was bad enough. The shock was a terrible one, and
in great distress Jenny asked Garcia what she could do to recuperate.
He told her not to sing a note for six weeks, to talk as little as
possible, and then to visit him again, when he would decide if he could
take her as a pupil. She spent the six weeks learning Italian and
refurbishing her French, for she knew that eventually she would sing
in those languages. The rest of the days she listened to the agonizing
melody of the Paris street vendors, and the two themes which afterwards
remained in her head were, “Haricots, haricots, verts!” and “Ah, le
vitrier!” Mme. Ruffiaques, at whose _pension_ Jenny Lind boarded, wrote
in a letter that “she scarcely could have believed such dignity of
conduct possible in a young person coming alone to Paris.”
After the six weeks of probation, Garcia consented to give Jenny Lind
two lessons a week. He taught her the management of her breath, the
production of the voice, and the blending of its registers, of which
she had known nothing. For ten months she continued her studies under
Garcia. The problem then arose whether she should appear somewhere on
the Continent or return immediately to Stockholm. Paris she hated.
It was too immoral. Its frivolity displeased her, its selfishness
irritated her, but its restless love of excitement in all forms
horrified her. To return to Stockholm without having sung in Paris
would be to incur the implication that she was not good enough to
sing in Paris, and Stockholm received its opinions on art and music
from Paris. In a letter written at this time she told of her despair:
“It might perhaps be better for me to engage myself somewhere as
nursery-maid; for it is a very difficult thing to appear, here, in
public. On the stage it would be out of the question. It could only
be in the concert-room: and there I am at my weakest point, and shall
always remain so. What is wanted here is--‘admirers.’ Were I inclined
to receive them, all would be smooth sailing. But there I say--STOP!”
She was no longer the “small, ugly, broad-nosed, shy, gauche,
under-grown girl.” She was beginning to burgeon into a plain, but not
unattractive, womanhood. Never was she what might be called beautiful,
and her most ardent admirers have always been ready to admit that she
was plain, confining their raptures to her voice and its effect on her
appearance as she became inspired by its loveliness and the force of
the music she was singing.
Meyerbeer heard her on the stage of the Paris opera house privately,
and he said of her voice, “Une voix chaste et pure, pleine de grâce et
de virginalité.” He advised her to sing at once in Germany, but she had
already signed her Swedish contract and was homesick for Stockholm.
She never sang in public at Paris during her life, and the Parisians
resented her refusal to sing there, but she kept her determination to
reproach France by ignoring it, and made only one public appearance in
France, a concert for charity at Nice in her last years. When invited
to sing at the Paris opera, she wrote the director, “For the more I
think of it, the more I am persuaded that I am not suited for Paris,
nor Paris for me.” She was quite right. It is very unlikely that Paris
would ever have become wildly enthusiastic about “une voix chaste et
pure, pleine de virginalité”; and it would have been impossible for
Jenny Lind to be happy in a city where the senses were of more interest
than the pleasures of the _religieuse_ to which she was so passionately
addicted.
The next two years were spent in Sweden and Denmark. A triumph at
Copenhagen awakened Jenny Lind to the possibility of extending her
popularity. She had thought merely of Sweden as the sphere of her
activities until Denmark expressed its approval. In Copenhagen too she
met Hans Christian Andersen, who wrote of her in his autobiographical
_Das Märchen meines Lebens_: “Through Jenny Lind I first became
sensible of the holiness of Art. Through her I learned that one must
forget one’s self in the service of the Supreme. No books, no men,
have had a more ennobling influence upon me as a poet than Jenny Lind;
and therefore have I spoken of her so fully and so warmly. Her praises
were sounded everywhere, the praises not of the artist only but of the
woman. The two united awoke for her a true enthusiasm.” It is this
combination that makes that enthusiasm so unique in the history of
artistic and dramatic triumphs; praise of her personality and praise
of her voice were equal, and it was that combination which no other
singer had ever achieved, which none has since surpassed. The history
of her triumphs in this country and in Europe is the story of one of
the world’s great furors, if nothing else; its spread was so wide and
its legendary development so exalted that even to-day we who have no
impression of the sound of her voice know the name of Jenny Lind. And
like many a legend, distance has added charm to the reality.
Meyerbeer remembered that voice he had heard in Paris, and he sent for
her to sing in his operas in Germany. But she was inclined to remain
in Sweden, where the directors of the Royal Theater were awakening to
her importance and offered her $2,100 a year for eight years, to be
followed by a life pension. To friends who urged upon her the value of
a European reputation she would not pay attention, and she decided to
accept this offer and continue to shine in the light of her familiar
popularity. She was always doubtful of her ability to conquer strange
audiences and ever ready to sacrifice wide success to her timidity. A
friend in despair mentioned to another friend that Jenny Lind intended
to sign this Swedish contract. The second expressed it as his opinion
that Jenny Lind was wise to do so; that she knew her limitations, that
she realized Sweden was not Germany, and that it showed good judgment
to face the fact that she could not win triumphs in an extended sphere.
The friend hurried to Jenny Lind with these opinions, and she became
so angry that she tore up her Swedish contract. A challenge to her
pride always proved successful at every turn in her career; and she
never seemed to entertain any desire for achievement until some one
expressed doubt of her ability to attain it. Nevertheless, she left
for Germany doubtful and uneasy about her future, for Berlin had heard
such stars as Malibran, Sontag, Grisi, Persiani, and even the great
Madame Catalani herself, and Jenny Lind must appear before audiences
who would compare her accomplishments with the memories, and in some
cases the present talent, of these cherished favorites. But this thin,
pale, plain girl, with marked broad Scandinavian features, who looked
at first glance to an observer “like a very shy country school-girl,”
was accepted by kings and queens, critics and composers as soon as
she opened her mouth. She made her public début in Bellini’s _Norma_
and was received with tremendous enthusiasm by the Germans, and when
she followed this with Meyerbeer’s _Camp of Silesia_, which had been
written for her, she became the rage of Berlin.
From this time on Jenny Lind’s career becomes a series of unbroken
triumphs which trailed themselves through every country she visited and
increased in volume as they progressed. In Vienna a staid music critic
of the _Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung_ declared the appearance of Jenny
Lind “an event altogether exceptional; such as has never before been
witnessed, and will probably never be repeated.” She was called before
the curtain twenty-five times there, and the Empress Mother of Austria
dropped a wreath before her feet. Thousands of people waited for her
to leave the opera house until daybreak, and then the horses of her
carriage were unharnessed by enthusiastic students, and she was only
able to proceed to her lodgings with the aid of a detachment of cavalry.
And all the time she was homesick for Sweden, and melancholy. She
had not wanted to sing in Vienna and only did so at the earnest
solicitation of Prince Metternich and Baron Rothschild. Again she had
feared she might lose the reputation she had won in Germany, and once
more she felt repugnance for the stage. Even after accepting Herr
Pokorny’s offer to appear at his theater in Vienna, she wrote to her
friend and adviser, Madame Birch-Pfeiffer: “Tell Herr Pokorny that I am
very grateful to him for the offered half-receipts and quite satisfied
on the score of money; but--that he must engage some other singer; for
he cannot reckon on me, as I cannot accept the engagement, and cannot
believe that I should be able to carry it out in Vienna. Break it off,
good mother. I am contented with very little, and shall perhaps sing
no longer than till next spring, as I can then go home, by Hamburg,
and afterwards live in peace. For, you see, mother Birch, this life
does not suit me at all. If you could only see me--the despair I am
in whenever I go to the theater to sing! It is too much for me. This
terrible nervousness destroys everything for me. I sing far less well
than I should, if it were not for this enemy. I cannot understand how
it is that everything goes so well with me. People all take me by the
hand. But all this helps nothing! Herr Pokorny would not be very well
pleased, for instance, if I were to sing there once only and, that
once, fail. For the money he offers me he can get singers anywhere who
are not so difficult to satisfy as I am, and who, at least, wish for
something, while I wish for nothing at all!” In this and other letters
of a similar character one gets the impression that Jenny Lind was
extremely proud of her humility. She often alluded to the fact that
managers could get other singers who would do as well as she for the
same money, and who really enjoy singing on the stage. But through it
all there is a note of superiority to those poor deluded persons, an
unconscious implication that the right attitude is her attitude, and
the sly, lurking assurance that really there are no other singers who
would be worth the same money.
The Jenny Lind fever is so interesting in artistic annals, because
it was not merely a popular excitement, but just as much a _succès
d’estime_. There were mad rushes to get to her concerts, and frenzied
efforts to catch a glimpse of her face, but wherever she performed
she also conquered the critics and gained high praise from musicians
of enduring fame. Her voice must have been one of the best Europe has
ever heard. The people will readily rush to worship a golden calf, but
Berlioz, Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Meyerbeer could not be stampeded
into inordinate praise, and if their opinions seem to us to-day
somewhat extravagant, we must remember that they were written under the
influence of an extraordinary emotional accomplishment. Even Richard
Wagner, who would not have been moved by the white dresses and holy
innocence of this operatic virgin, was impressed with her voice and
individuality when he heard her at Berlin in Mozart’s _Don Giovanni_.
Chopin wrote of her art: “She does not show herself in the ordinary
light, but in the magic rays of the aurora borealis. Her singing is
infallibly pure and true and has an indescribable charm.” Moscheles,
Thalberg, Taubert, and Schumann were her admirers, and Mendelssohn,
who wrote his _Elijah_ for her, kept up a correspondence which only
ended with his death in 1847. He said of Jenny Lind, “She is as great
an artist as ever lived; and the greatest I have known.” It is rumored
that Mendelssohn was in love with her, and it may be so; however, he
was married, apparently quite happily, and Jenny Lind could never
have been cast in the rôle of home-breaker. Jenny Lind, if she had
met Mendelssohn before he had met his wife, might have had a greater
artistic fame than she enjoyed, for she needed the humanizing and
inspiring influence of an artist to counteract the religious repression
to which she constantly subjected herself. She also needed some one
to tell her, or at least to make her realize, what was art, for even
Mendelssohn was constrained to admit in bewildered perplexity, “She
sings bad music the best.”
When she was ill for a few days in Berlin, Meyerbeer wrote to her and
asked that Heaven might grant her “relief from those doubts in the
power of your talent which turn even your days of triumph into days
of anxiety.” It was just that which she needed to perfect her art
and her personality, but Meyerbeer was asking too much from Heaven.
These doubts were a concentrated compound, consisting of lack of
self-confidence, pious preoccupations and moral repressions, together
with a crafty fear of losing altogether whatever she had already
gained. They did not affect her popularity, for even with her doubts
she did sing wherever she had the opportunity, but they undoubtedly
affected her art, and without them she might have been the greatest
singer the world has ever known. With them she was held back from
supreme artistic triumph in this world that she might enjoy comfort in
the next, and it is to be hoped that her spiritual promises to herself
have been fulfilled.
There were disparagers of Jenny Lind, but they rarely found fault
any more discriminately than those who shrieked praise of both her
personality and her powers. The testimony of several great artists in
other fields, who found her unimportant and even dull, was natural,
for she must have been so to any one who could not become enraptured
with her vocal perfection, but yet it is a reflection on the powers
of that voice that it could not move the emotions of several great
men, unprejudiced by too much technical knowledge of music. Carlyle
heard her in England and was thoroughly bored. “Lind seemed to me,” he
wrote, “a very true, clear, genuine little creature, with a voice of
extraordinary _extent_ and _little_ richness of tone; who sang, acted,
etc., with consummate fidelity, but had unfortunately nothing but mere
_non_-sense to sing or act; a defect not much felt by the audience,
as would appear, but very heavily pressing upon me for one. ‘Depend
upon it,’ said I to Fuz, ‘the Devil is busy _here_ to-night, wherever
he may be idle!’--Old Wellington had come staggering in to attend the
thing. Thackeray was there; d’Orsay, Lady Blessington,--to all of whom
(Wellington excepted!) I had to be presented and grin some kind of
foolery,--much against the grain. It was one o’clock when we got home;
on the whole, I do not design to hear Lind again; it would not bring me
sixpence worth of benefit, I think, to hear her sing six months in that
kind of material.” She sang _La Somnambula_ when Carlyle heard her.
Hawthorne heard her in England, and “on the whole, was not very much
interested in her.” Thackeray wrote his wife from Cambridge, England:
“Then we went to Jenny Lind’s concert, for which a gentleman here gave
us tickets, and at the end of the first act we agreed to come away. It
struck me as atrociously stupid. I was thinking of something else the
whole time she was jugulating away, and O! I was so glad to get to the
end and have a cigar, and I wanted so to go away with Mr. Williams,
for I feel entirely out of place in this town.” It is significant that
Carlyle and Thackeray, and as we shall see when we come to America,
Walt Whitman, were all dissenters from the Lind religious wave, but it
does not necessarily mean that she did not have a good voice. It does
seem to indicate clearly, however, taken along with the evidence of
Mendelssohn’s reluctant admission, that she did not sing good music.
Then, too, the very extravagance of the popular mania with its false
sentiment and absurd idolatry were likely to prejudice these men
against what had been heralded to them as a phenomenon of the ages and
what turned out to be only a benevolent soul coupled with a lovely
voice, who usually sang most commonplace and oftentimes dull music to
the accompaniment of large-scale fatuity upon the part of her doting
audiences.
III
Jenny Lind went to England in April, 1847, and was greeted cordially by
Mendelssohn, who was conducting four performances in London of his new
oratorio, _Elijah_. She was also welcomed by her friends, Grote, the
historian, and his wife. She made her début at Lumely’s Her Majesty’s
Theater on May 4, 1847, and the excitement was intense. From early
hours in the afternoon, until half-past seven when the doors were
opened, crowds stood outside in the Haymarket, and when the theater was
finally opened, there was a crush which was named later “the Jenny Lind
crush,” in which gentlemen lost their hats and ladies parts of their
dresses. Before she sang a note the audiences applauded loudly, and
after her concerts the newspapers were extravagant in their adulation.
After a tremendous public success, and a welcome by all the best
people, Jenny Lind returned to Stockholm, with an intervening
engagement in Germany. Upon her arrival in Stockholm, she was
unfavorably impressed with its moral differences from England. She
wrote to her Viennese friend, Madame von Jaeger: “There is, here, I
confess, such frivolousness in everything that I am sad.... I sometimes
doubt whether I can find joy and happiness here. The last three years
have given me a great deal clearer insight. Do not imagine that they do
not treat me well; on the contrary: I have nothing at all to complain
of, myself: only, it does pain me that our nation should, through
French influence, have lost so much of its true self.” In order to
counterbalance this insidious French influence in some measure, Jenny
Lind devoted the entire proceeds of her Swedish performances to the
foundation of a Theater School, which would help to rescue the stage
from what her biographers call “the perverting influences which had
largely dominated it since the early part of the century.” She returned
to her beloved Victorian England for renewed triumphs in 1848.
And on this second trip Herr Julius Günther accompanied her. He and
she had sung together in opera and in the concert hall since the
time of her return from Paris. Just before leaving for her début in
Berlin, which led to her first great triumph, they had become somewhat
engaged. After her first London success she met him in Stockholm, and
when he saw that her successes had not placed her out of his reach,
he spoke again, and rings were exchanged. Jenny Lind’s biographers
do not go into this relationship intimately because it is not their
purpose, their book declares, “to enter into all the private and
domestic incidents of our heroine’s life, except so far as they touch
her artistic career.” It is doubtful whether in the life of a public
character there are any private and domestic incidents that do not
touch her artistic career. Undoubtedly, love, marriage, or betrothal
have an influence upon a personality which must not be overemphasized,
but which surely need not be underestimated.
Religious influences on Jenny Lind were heavy. In England she had
met among others Bishop Stanley, and she associated with and was
continually surrounded by churchgoers whose interest in their spiritual
life made it impossible for them to see with a wholesome outlook
many advantages in worldly existence. The moral repugnance which she
had early entertained for the stage, inherited from her mother and
grandmother and fostered by her intimate associations, bred a feverish
anxiety to be done with theatrical life. Besides the feeling that opera
was improper morally, she hated its Bohemianism and was annoyed by its
intrigue. Then there was Mademoiselle Josephine Åhmansson. Jenny Lind
was deeply impressed by the strong piety of this woman, who was her
constant companion. Mrs. Stanley, wife of the Bishop, at whose palace
Jenny Lind stayed several times, wrote in a letter to her sister:
“Her companion is the best that could be for her; and as Jenny said,
‘She has lived so much with clergymen, she is so clever at explaining
to me the Bible, and we talk all out of it on Sundays.’” Josephine
Åhmansson was throwing her influence against opera, and Jenny was
disturbed at the prospect of the future. Herr Günther, now returned
to Stockholm, was an opera singer; marriage with him would mean that
even if she herself retired from the stage she would always live in
its professional environment. Herr Günther could not give up opera,
apparently, although there is no record of any attempt upon the part of
Jenny Lind to persuade him to do so. There was an exchange of letters,
and the engagement was ended.
At Newcastle about this time in the house of Joseph Grote, brother of
the historian, Jenny Lind met Captain Claudius Harris, of Her Majesty’s
Indian Service. Captain Claudius Harris was fascinated by The Swedish
Nightingale, and she liked his manners. She said that he had a “pure
mind,” but apparently he was not very good company, for when she was
first introduced to him she said, “Oh! What a dull young man!” But he
was handsome, tall, with regular features, and profoundly religious.
Later in the winter she was singing at Bath, and she called on Captain
Claudius Harris’s mother to inquire after her son’s health. He hurried
to his mother’s house, saw her frequently at Bath and wherever she
appeared in the neighborhood. They were engaged to be married. She told
him that he must tell his mother, to which he answered, “Do not be
angry with me: I have already talked to her about it,” and she was not
angry, but thought his filial devotion only proper.
But Captain Claudius Harris consulted his mother too much. She had
brought him up a strict Evangelical and instilled in him her own
complete horror at the thought of the theater. Captain Harris regarded
Jenny Lind’s dramatic powers as temptations in her path, and Jenny
Lind began to grow uneasy. It was one thing for her to dislike the
stage on moral grounds, but it was quite another for any one to
challenge the propriety of her career. She wanted, she said, to live
quietly near “trees, water, and a cathedral,” but she did not want
to look back upon her whole careful life as a career of sin. Captain
Harris and his mother had been doubtful about Jenny Lind from the
first, for, after all, she _was_ an actress, although Captain Claudius
Harris assured his mother that a sweeter, purer soul than Jenny Lind
never lived. A marriage settlement was drawn up, and Captain Claudius
Harris wished to bind his bride in writing never to return to the stage
again. She insisted that the marriage settlement must give her absolute
control of her own destiny, and also, incidentally, of her own fortune.
This last Captain Claudius Harris declared to be “unscriptural.” Jenny
Lind refused to sign, and the Captain, with his mother behind him, was
firm. She confided her troubles to Mr. Nassau Senior, a lawyer and a
writer, who later made a private record of the whole affair, which was
published by his son. She told him that she was plagued by people who
wanted her “to think the theater a temple of Satan, and all the actors
priests of the Devil,” that they required her “not only to abandon her
profession, but to be ashamed of it,” and “to go down to Bath, among
people who care for nothing but clergymen and sermons, as a sort of
convert or penitent.” Jenny Lind would have enjoyed the company of
clergymen and the people who cared about nothing but them and their
sermons, but she, who had looked upon her whole life as spiritually
superior, would not be considered a convert to something she already
believed in so profoundly and a penitent for sins she had never allowed
even to tempt her.
Nassau Senior advised her if she needed comfort to come to Paris after
she had settled with Captain Claudius Harris, or to remain happily
engaged to him if he agreed to her terms. Captain Harris terrified her
by “threats of torment here and hereafter if she broke her word,”
Nassau Senior said, “and last of all, when in the joy of reconciliation
she was singing to him, she turned round and saw that he had gone to
sleep.” This was too much, and as Mrs. Grote was sitting, nursing a
headache, by the fire of her Paris apartment, there was a tap at the
door, and Jenny Lind entered.
She had broken her engagement to Herr Günther because he could not
give up the stage, and her engagement to Captain Claudius Harris
because he insisted that she give up the stage. She regarded herself
as stubborn and independent, but it was a modest request that she
made of Captain Claudius Harris: some slight control of her own
personality. Immediately after this crisis she did retire from the
stage. She had attempted to sing her operas in concert halls in England
without scenery or acting, and the attempt was the one and only
failure to attract crowds. This goaded her to give a few last operatic
performances in England, a final gesture to the world that she was not
to be underestimated except by herself. Then she went to Germany for
rest and a milk cure and a grape cure. And while Jenny Lind was resting
at Lübeck, Barnum’s offer, with its opportunity to make enough money
to retire and build her hospital for Stockholm children, came like a
dispensation from heaven and was accepted without hesitation.
After a hurried trip to Stockholm, Jenny Lind and Josephine Åhmansson
left for England, where she was to give a few concerts before her
departure for the United States. Barnum had arranged these concerts,
and had also hired a music critic to write accounts of them for a
Liverpool newspaper. These criticisms were sent to him on the boat that
left for New York just before Jenny Lind’s departure and were reprinted
in American newspapers.
Jenny Lind’s farewell English concerts were a series of frenzied
triumphs, much to the satisfaction of Barnum, who had counted upon
them to stimulate excitement in this country. At Manchester the bed on
which Jenny Lind was said to have slept in _La Somnambula_ was put on
exhibition and offered for sale. Just before going aboard the steamer
_Atlantic_ she was presented with a bunch of grapes measuring three
feet, six inches in circumference, fourteen inches in diameter, and
one foot, six inches in length, weighing eight pounds. She went aboard
the _Atlantic_ on August 21, 1850, and the Liverpool police found it
necessary to warn Barnum’s agent to have her on the ship several hours
before the time of departure, or they would not guarantee her safety
from the crowds.
A passenger on the same steamer, who published his account of the
departure in the _New York Herald_ for September 2, 1850, reported
this incident just before the boat sailed: “An amusing incident,
however, occurred about this time, which excited the mirth of even
Jenny herself, and which I quietly noted as one of the many desperate
cases of ‘Lind fever’ that fell under my observation. Accompanying
us in the tender was an elderly man of very genteel appearance, who
paced the deck in evident anxiety and impatience, and whose luggage
seemed to consist of a solitary pair of unmentionables, which were
carelessly rolled up and ‘tucked’ under his arm. Arriving alongside of
the leviathan _Atlantic_, he sprang over the gangway with surprising
agility, and exclaimed, ‘Where’s Jenny Lind? Can anybody tell me if
Jenny Lind is to be seen? Oh! where the devil is Jenny Lind?’ Not
obtaining a very satisfactory reply to his beseeching queries (and
especially to the last, which was uttered in a tone betokening the
strongest kind of despair), and being informed that he must either
leave the ship or submit to summary ejectment, he broke away from the
gangway and rushed forward, muttering, ‘Impossible! I must go. Can’t be
helped. Borrow clothes on board, no doubt,’ &c.”
The enthusiasm was unparalleled, and more of it was personal than
artistic. It was natural that thousands should bid her good-bye, for in
1847, 1848, 1849, and 1850 Jenny Lind was more popular personally in
England than Queen Victoria. Her charities had contributed somewhat to
this effect, for she had sung many times for the benefit of hospitals
and other institutions.
This was the state of the public mind about Jenny Lind when Barnum
imported her in August, 1850. And he had taken steps to insure that
that state of mind would be transplanted with her to the United States
in even greater measure.
IV
Music was not flourishing in the United States when Barnum engaged
Jenny Lind. Lyman Abbott’s father, who enjoyed music, his son writes
in his _Reminiscences_, went regularly to Christy’s Minstrels, because
the voices were good, although the jokes were bad. Madame Malibran,
the sister of Manuel Garcia, who taught Jenny Lind, appeared in opera
in New York under the management of her father in 1826. But the
Havana Opera Company, of which she was the star, did not create much
enthusiasm when it performed opera in English. N. P. Willis, the poet,
who wrote a memoir of Jenny Lind, said that her arrival in the United
States marked an epoch for music in America. “No singer, who could
still please a court and an European capital, thought yet of a trip to
the transatlantic Republic; and though sometimes, as in the case of
Malibran, we have had great celebrities here _before_ they were famous,
and oftener still, have had them here _after_ their dawn and in their
twilight--we had never seen one of the first magnitude during her
meridian.”
Such was the situation with which Barnum was confronted when Jenny Lind
signed his contract, and though he had in her personality and ability
excellent material for his ends, it was necessary for him to work hard
on almost barren ground in order to make his $187,500 come back with
accretions.