“I have raised up one from the North.” Isaiah, xli. 25.—It is a curious
case of the truth of the old Bible to nature, or rather of the
coincidence of the two, that both make more physical and moral account
of the north point of the compass than of the south. “Fair weather,”
saith the book of Job, “cometh out of the north;” and thence, too, in
all ages, has come the clearing of the social sky. All the old prophets
and modern geographical scientists, like Mr. Buckle, agree. The south,
says the old writ, is “invaded” with “whirlwinds” and armed men. The
upper strong Barbarians fall upon to purge the dissolute empire of Rome.
From high latitudes come the Scandinavian rovers to be converted into
English lords. From Norway, the north way, comes Leif Ericson before
Columbus to discover America and have his monument, let us trust, in
these last days; and more than forty years ago, yet in the memory of
many that hear me, Ole Bull, whom his friend and compeer of kindred
genius, the poet and novelist now among us, Björnstjerne Björnson, calls
“our greatest citizen,” at his burial in the land where seventy years
ago he was born, dying in his own house on the Isle of Light or Lysö of
a malignant disease, yet with little pain and in full possession of his
powers till within a half hour of his expiring breath....
I must not omit my thanks for the delight Ole Bull gave with his violin
at his first coming to this country more than forty years ago. From the
touch of his bow, as if Neptune were speaking to the sea, a wave swept
over the land from that ocean of harmony that slumbers in the human
soul. Out of the same deeps came a second wave at the voice, much later
among us, of Jenny Lind. Technical criticism cannot countervail much
when a man has just wrought a miracle on the spot, and the United States
rose to this as, in the same calling, never to any other man. Young and
green then, as respects concord and melody, we may have been. The
matchless personal grace of the musician, alike at thirty and
three–score, may have had its part in the effect. Who that saw it does
not remember the appearance that, as Björnson says, made it here, as
well as in Norway on his return, “a feast to look at him;” the supple
sway that was rhythm in his frame, so tall, with its breadth of shoulder
and tapering waist, the firm feet which the broad platform seemed not
worthy to be a stool for, the arms of wrought steel, more flexible than
willow wands, the face in which, as much as in any countenance we ever
beheld, the smile was a benediction, and the hair that was tossed about
his brow as if inspired with the unison of the strings; and had he
spoken on the stage where he stood, the whole audience would have known
as well as some of us in private soon did, that the violin was not, and
no instrument made with hands could be, so sweet as the voice. He was
embodied beauty and an incarnate hymn—a mesmeric, irresistible man....
His speech, of which I shall give some samples as I close, like Anton
Rubinstein’s, was as rare and original as his notes. He was not, like
some people I have known, marvelous in a performance as of a sermon or a
tune, and, on leaving desk or orchestra, with nought of interest left,
the whole man gone, spent, exploded in what had been sounded or said. To
be a true artist is a wonderful thing. But into the artist the whole of
him, as of none truly great or good, could not be put....
But musical was with him largely a form of patriotic feeling, and for
love of liberty for himself and all men he was a living flame. He
respected more the nobility of nature than of political schemes. The
pretensions of barons and earls in England or elsewhere, not backed up
by personal merit, were nought to him, mere ciphers, deriving all their
value from their situation in a column. In the honest but reactionary
King of Norway he had a social friend; but, in pushing the right assumed
of veto against laws of the Norwegian parliament, this little potentate
of two or three millions of subjects became his diplomatic foe; and Ole
Bull represented the peasant population of the kingdom. It was natural
he should sympathize strongly with us against secession and slavery in
our civil war, and he maintained our cause abroad as warmly as he did in
our midst. Like David, he declared God’s statute of freedom, “speaking
of his testimonies before kings and was not ashamed.”...
It remains to consider Ole Bull not only as an artist and patriot, but
man; for, beyond all else, he was humane, cosmopolite, a citizen of the
world, and did not distinguish himself, save by genius which he could
not help, from other men, but was in union and close communion with all;
and detract as we may from a man’s talents, or criticise as we will his
accomplishments, the fact of a great wide and common love for him and
from him cannot be set aside. He was a magnet. Living nearer to the
North Pole, had he borrowed a bit of the lodestone that poises the
planet? His attraction was as constant and inexhaustible for the world.
A young man, a natural player, from our rough Cape Ann yonder, seeks him
abroad to get lessons, and Ole welcomes him at once. “How did you like
him?” the young man was asked. “Like him? I cannot say enough to tell
you.” Money went from him, as it came, like wind or water. Being
unpractical if not careless almost to a fault, he was imposed upon by a
false title of land for a Norwegian colony in Pennsylvania; charges for
litigation were added; he had intended to buy a ship to transport the
colonists at his own expense,—and out of pocket hundreds of thousands of
dollars, he became poor, sick, and subject to arrest. He said, “I shall
pursue the swindlers;” then, reflecting, he remarked: “That is not
according to the Master’s precept, but if I kiss my enemy what have I
left for my friend?” “My friends,” he said, “will never defraud me, for
they know I am theirs.” “I am not content,” he told me, “with the golden
rule, for I cannot expect others to do to me as I do to them.” He was
not a professor of Christianity or of religion in any form. He informed
me he got such a shock and revulsion from the doctrines he heard
preached in his youth that he was permanently alienated from going to
church; but so much the worse for the Christians if they reject and
excommunicate him. He said to me: “They showed me so many statues and
images, coarse or blood–colored, in Italy, it made me sick and I wanted
to see a cow!” Why, I inquired of him, do the manufacturers of violins
not illustrate the law of evolution, and make as good instruments at
least as Stradivarius, Amati, and Gaspar da Salo? “Because,” he
answered, “they do not consider it a holy mission.” Earnest in his
nature, like the hot geysers of the North, he was as winsome in his
manners as any prince of the East; and, I doubt not, a true test would
detect blood of the Orient in his veins, as he said he learned from
Italy what it is to sing. Yet Norway, says Björnson, gave to his music
its theme or ground, and well does Henrik Wergeland make Norway herself
sing to him.
We must, he one day told me, see our fellow’s errors and sins, but often
“not say what we see,” putting his long forefinger on his lips as he
spoke. He graciously insinuated, rather than bluntly asserted, what he
thought. At the Chestnut Street club he made a marvelous speech, in
which he praised the curvilinear instead of direct style of the Spanish
tongue. He preferred suggestion to proposition, as do all the likewise
finely–strung. But, although he had no dogmas to offer, never lived one
who accredited more the being of God and immortality of the soul, and
the immense superiority of unseen supernal forces to the seen. Thus he
lived an ideal life, free from mercenary aims, so charming and
enchanting men that his name became a household word, and the great
manager in any city had to spend little time or means advertising him,
if it were in the air that the magician would come....
Honor, then, in this sacred place, to the man and artist, Ole Bull. He
held a sublime and tricksy, yet utterly simple bow. If he lifted us,
round after round, to heaven, he could lower us, too, with his
art, gently and safely to the ground.... He displayed wondrous
tone–gyrations, and never, as with a wooden rule, drew mechanical
parallel lines. He was a troubadour with his shell. When, like a
merryman, he made us laugh, the expression of his face showed his soul
still aloft. He was no materialist or sensualist, but a spiritualist in
the deepest sense. I judge of men by their treatment of women; and how
refined and grand his bearing was to the sex is well known in every
country our strange and singular fascinator visited....
I have missed the portrait, I meant, if a facsimile could be furnished
of it for any other man. We sometimes say of a man he was a paragon,
gem, “one entire and perfect chrysolite.” _Jean Paul Richter the only_,
the Germans say. My subject to–day is unique. There never on earth will
be another Ole Bull. He was the diamond called solitaire. The Jews were
mistaken when, in the new teacher, they thought Elias or one of the old
prophets had come again. God does not repeat himself; genius is a fresh
revelation, and never, in just the same form, descends. Speaking as in
the presence of those to whom companionship, country, and kindred blood
endeared this man of transcendent stature, yet with none of our
occidental stiffness, so lowly and familiar that he wanted once with a
friend to leave the chairs and get down on the floor to converse, I
should be bankrupt if at least in this paper money I did not try to pay
my debt. Seventy years of age; the Scripture term was his prime. He died
young in heart and hope, and friend and housemate declare they cannot
think and do not know him dead, as the tropical sun, suddenly setting,
is not quenched, though leaving all dark behind. Aspiring and
proceeding, despite his gray locks, he seemed an undeveloped child.
Nothing in his mental constitution was fixed or had grown hard. He had
not subsided from the gush and sparkle of life into the sediment of a
form or stalagmite of a creed. The crystallization went on unfinished in
the upper chambers of his soul, and had no cavern like the stalactites
of the mine in which to drop. No decay gave hint of an end. There is
sickness, death, but no end. He grew, advanced, never stopped, nor did
the sutures, even at seventy, quite close over that busy brain. “To have
to work so at my age!” said the French painter, Thomas Couture; but Ole
Bull said, “I should vegetate without new engagements to fulfill.” He so
lived, therefore, as to convince us of immortality. I know not of what
sovereign or captain from the North, the hill–country of Judæa, Isaiah
wrote; but when I think how majestic and gentle was this head man and
leader from our modern Norway, I give him the tribute of my text, as one
might salute a born deliverer and true king.
FROM REV. DR. A. McKENZIE’S SERMON ON THANKSGIVING DAY, 1880.
From these men of our own Commonwealth let me turn to a man of another
land, whose venerable and stately presence has been often seen in our
streets; who has been the citizen of many climes, making his name a
familiar word, and filling the air with melody; a man who stood before
kings and held them in wondering silence by the witchery of his fingers,
and the harmony of his thoughts; who drew the souls of men after him by
the sound of the mystic strings he touched. He made to himself a great
renown, the music and the man; both were honored, both were loved. Now
the hands have lost their cunning, and the good, gray head is seen no
more. Yet will he keep his place with all who knew him. It was among his
own people that he was greatest and best. He loved his country, its men
and women, its mountains and valleys, its rivers and lakes, its history
and its hope. He carried it with him where he went. He sought its honor
and toiled for its welfare. Loyal and loving, he wore its name upon his
brow. When he stood as one entranced, his tall form swaying to and fro,
his eye gazing far away, and the utter stillness was scarcely broken by
the sweet, weird strains which floated into it, it was the heart of
Norway we saw and heard, incarnate in her son, beating, breathing,
singing in his spirit.
When he lay wearied and dying in his island–home Norway grew still.
Spacious and comely was the room which he had made for song, where the
singer rested; but the land which mourned was wider.
He heard the requiem there, but the land was to be full of requiem.
From off the quiet waters came the tribute of admiring minstrelsy, which
long will be repeated.
When he was gone, royalty and humanity hastened with their homage to his
memory. The great city begged for his honored form to give it choicest
burial. It lay in state in his own house. It was borne in grand
procession to the distant shore. The walks were strewed with living
green. The people wept and praised. His trophies went before him, but
the stricken hearts of men were on every side of him. The eloquent words
of friendship and reverence were spoken. He found his resting–place
among the great, on a spot which had been kept for a king—which had
found a king.
And he wore no royalty but his great manhood.
Why this honor to a man? Because he had dealt well by the land. He had
given it good and glory, and the gift returned. Norway loved him because
he loved Norway.