What shall I say to you of my troubles and vexations! As I could
confide them to no one, they have dwelt in my heart. Art is ever
dearly bought, and the true artist easily deceived, for it is only
by renouncing the material good that he may obtain the divine
happiness of following the guidance of his imagination and
creative power. To understand himself rightly, he must renounce
all else, give himself wholly to his art, and fight ignorance and
stupidity. I am not the man to give up the battle, but how many
wounds and blows before one reaches the goal! The recompense art
gives is a success even in failure. Last year Rubini and Madame
Persiani at the same prices—it really seems impossible—gave
concerts here to empty benches.
In June he returned to Bergen, via Hamburg. In September he went to
Christiania to assist a Swedish artist, and in December gave his own
concerts. In January, 1843, he visited Sweden, and Wergeland says:—
After giving concerts at Carlstad and Orebro, he arrived one
night, at one o’clock, at Upsala, dragged in a huge old coach by
six horses through the snow. Upsala, cosily nestled among
forest–clad hills, is one of the oldest and most remarkable cities
of Sweden. One thousand years ago it was the principal centre of
heathen worship. In the low temple, on the rude altar, the Vikings
came to offer up to Odin and Thor the customary Yule sacrifice.
All the great movements in the Swedish history of those early days
were inaugurated in this temple, and dim memories thickly shroud
the place. Four hundred years ago the first Swedish university was
founded. All the science, art, literature, and poetry the Swedish
people have produced originated there; and many illustrious names,
such as Linnæus and Berzelius, shed their radiant halo far beyond
the boundaries of the country. Upsala now is only a student’s
camp. Libraries, lecture halls, laboratories, museums, and
dormitories cluster around the cathedral, and all the life of the
place has been absorbed by the one institution—the University. Ole
Bull came to Upsala not to give a concert, but to play for the
students. It is true, as Jules Janin said of him, his violin is
his love, his art his life. To express himself in tones and be
understood is his one great joy, and he went to Upsala because the
students have, and always have had, a great reputation for musical
sensibility and musical education. But his entry was not very
propitious. The night was dark, no inn was to be discovered, and
the cold was biting. Suddenly a swarm of young students returning
from a Christmas masquerade singing, dancing, and making merry,
came along, and, of course, the large old coach and six became the
butt of their frolic. It ended in Ole Bull’s ordering the coach to
turn about and drive back to Stockholm.
This occurrence led to some misrepresentations and ill–natured comments
in the local journals, to which Ole Bull replied in a letter published
in the _Aftenbladet_, January 22, 1843. After explaining the
circumstances, and reminding those who had accused him of failing to
keep an engagement that no concert had been announced, and that he was
therefore free to act as he thought best, he concludes thus:—
Although I do not recognize the right of any man to call me to
account for my conduct when I have wronged nobody, although I
believe I ought not to be excluded from the universal right of a
man to determine his own actions, still, I am willing to state
briefly my motives for leaving Upsala without playing, cherishing
the hope that a cultured and impartial public will feel and agree
with me that it was something quite other than a freakish
temperament which led me to take that step.
I had laid my route by way of Upsala with the intention of
inviting, as I had done in Lund, the students of the University to
attend my concert, cherishing the fond hope that the cultivated
young men at Sweden’s first University would kindly receive,
through me, a musical greeting from the brother–land, and give me
their approbation. Although the insignificant affair which took
place on my arrival in Upsala of itself neither could so offend me
that it should lead me to leave the town in “angry mood,” nor
seduce me to such an act of injustice as to lay the fault of a few
thoughtless young men at the door of a numerous and honorable
corporation, still, every one who intelligently and impartially
examines the matter will see that it brought me into a frame of
mind not at all in harmony with the problem I was about to solve.
Consequently, it was not anger on account of the wrong I had
suffered, or ill–will toward Upsala town and the students, but
despondency and dejected spirits which led me so quietly to leave
a town which I both desire and expect to see again under more
favorable circumstances, for no one recognizes more fully than I
that it is the aim and object of art to unite, not to disunite.