TO THE LADY-SUBSCRIBER IN THE COUNTRY.
New York Sept. 1850.
One prefers to write to those for whom one has the most to tell, and I
have an ink-stand full of gossip about the great Jenny, which, though it
might hardly be news to those who have the run of the sidewalk, may
possibly be interesting where the grass grows. Nothing else is talked
of, and now and then a thing is said which escapes the omniverous traps
of the daily papers. Upon the faint chance of telling you something
which you might not otherwise hear without coming to town, I put my
ink-stand into the clairvoyant state, and choose you for the listener
with whom to put it “in communication.”
Jenny has an imperfection—which I hasten to record. That she might turn
out to be quite too perfect for human sympathy, has been the rock ahead
in her navigation of popularity. “Pretend to a fault if you haven’t
one,” says a shrewd old writer, “for, the one thing the world never
forgives is perfection.” There was really a gloomy probability that
Jenny would turn out to be that hateful monstrosity—a woman without a
fault—but the suspense is over. _She cannot mount on horseback without
a chair!_ No lady who is common-place enough to love, and marry, and
give her money to her husband, ever climbed more awkwardly into a
side-saddle than Jenny Lind. The necessity of finding something in which
she was surpassed by somebody, has been so painfully felt, “up town,”
that this discovery was circulated, within an hour after it was
observed, to every corner of the fashionable part of the city. She
occupies the private wing of the New-York Hotel, on the more secluded
side of Washington Place, and a lady eating an ice at the confectioner’s
opposite, was the fortunate witness of this her first authenticated
human weakness. Fly she may! (is the feeling now,) for, to birds and
angels it comes easy enough—but she is no horsewoman! Fanny Kemble,
whom we know to be human, beats her at that!
Another liability of the divine Jenny has come to my knowledge, though I
should not mention it as a weakness without some clearer light as to the
susceptibilities of the angelic nature. It was mentioned to a
lady-friend of mine, that, on reading some malicious insinuations as to
the motives of her charities, published a few days since in one of the
daily papers of this city, she wept bitterly. Now, though we mourn that
the world holds a man who would so groundlessly belie the acts of a
ministering angel, there is still a certain pleasure in knowing that
she, too, is subject to tears. We love her more—almost as much more as
if tears were human only—because injustice can reach and move so pure a
creature, as it can us. God forbid that such sublime benevolence, as
this munificent singing girl’s, should be maligned again—but so might
Christ’s motive in raising Lazarus have been misinterpreted, and we can
scarce regret that it has once happened, for, we know, now, that she is
within the circle in which we feel and suffer. Sweet, tearful Jenny! She
is one of us—God bless her!—subject to the cruel misinterpretation of
the vile, and with a heart in her angelic bosom, that, like other human
hearts, needs and pleads to be believed in!
I made one of the seven thousand who formed her audience on Saturday
night; and, when I noticed how the best music she gave forth during the
evening was least applauded—the Hon. Public evidently not knowing the
difference between Jenny Lind’s singing and Mrs. Bochsa Bishop’s, nor
between Benedict’s composition and Bellini’s—I fell to musing on the
secret of her charm over four thousand of those present—(allowing one
thousand to be appreciators of her voice and skill, and two thousand to
be honest lovers of her goodness, and the remaining four thousand, who
were also buyers of five-dollar tickets, constituting my little
problem.)
I fancy, the great charm of Jenny Lind, to those who think little, is,
that she stands before them as an angel in possession of a gift which is
usually entrusted only to sinners. That God has not made her a wonderful
singer _and there left her_, is the curious exception she forms to
common human allotment. To give away more money in charity than any
other mortal and still be the first of primas donnas! To be an
irreproachably modest girl, and still be the first of primas donnas! To
be humble, simple, genial, and unassuming, and still be the first of
primas donnas! To have begun as a beggar-child, and risen to receive
more adulation than any Queen, and still be the first of primas donnas!
To be unquestionably the most admired and distinguished woman on earth,
doing the most good and exercising the most power, and still be a prima
donna that can be applauded and encored! It is the _combination_, of
superiorities and interests, that makes the wonder—it is the
concentrating of the stuff for half-a-dozen heroines in one simple girl,
and that girl a candidate for applause—that so vehemently stimulates
the curiosity. We are not sufficiently aware, I have long thought, that
the world is getting tired of single-barrelled greatness. You must be
two things or more—a revolver of genius—to be much thought of, now.
There was very much such a period in Roman history. Nero found it by no
means enough to be an Emperor. He went on the stage as a singer. With
the world to kill if he chose, he must also have the world’s willing
admiration. He slept with a plate of lead on his stomach, abstained from
all fruits and other food that would affect his voice, poisoned
Britannicus because he sang better than himself, and was more delighted
when encored than when crowned. So sighed the Emperor Commodus for a
two-story place in history, and went on the stage as a dancer and
gladiator. Does any one suppose that Queen Victoria has not envied Jenny
Lind? Does Washington Irving, as he sits at Sunnyside, and watches the
sloops beating up against the wind, feel no discontent that he is
immortal only on one tack? No! no! And it is in America that the
atmosphere is found (Oh prophetic _e pluribus unum!_) for this plurality
of greatness. Europe, in bigotry of respect for precedent, forgets what
the times may be ready for. Jenny Lind, when she gets to the prompt,
un-crusted and foreshadowing West of this country, will find her
six-barrelled greatness for the first time subject to a single trigger
of appreciation. Queens may have given her lap-dogs, and Kings may have
clasped bracelets on her plump arms, but she will prize more the
admiration _for the whole of her_, felt here by a _whole people_. It
will have been the first time in her career, (if one may speak like a
schoolmaster,) that the heaven-written philactery of her worth will have
been read without stopping to parse it. Never before has she received
homage so impulsive and universal—better than that, indeed, for like Le
Verrier’s planet, she was recognised, and this far-away world was
vibrating to her influence, long before she was seen.
One wonders, as one looks upon her soft eyes, and her affectionate
profusion of sunny hair, what Jenny’s _heart_ can be doing, all this
time? Is fame a substitute for the tender passion? She must have been
desperately loved, in her varied and bright path. I saw a student at
Leipsic, who, after making great sacrifices and efforts to get a ticket
to her last concert at that place, gave it away, and went to stroll out
the evening in the lonely Rosenthal, because he felt his happiness at
stake, and could not bear the fascination that she exercised upon him.
Or, is her rocket of devotion divided up into many and more manageable
little crackers of friendship? Even that most impassioned of women,
Madam George Sand, says:—“_Si l’on rencontrait une amitié parfaite dans
toute sa vie, on pourrait presque se passer d’amour._” Do the devoted
friendships, that Jenny Lind inspires, make love seem to her but like
the performance, to one listener, of a concert, the main portion of
whose programme has hitherto been sufficient for so many? We would not
be disrespectful with these speculations. To see such a heaven as her
heart untenanted, one longs to write its advertisement of “To Let.” Yet
it would take polygamy to match her; for, half-a-dozen poets, two
Mexican heroes, several dry-goods merchants, and a rising politician,
would hardly “boil down” into a man of gifts enough to be worthy of her.
The truth is, that all “institutions” should be so modified as not to
interfere with the rights of the world at large; and, matrimony of the
ordinary kind—(which would bestow her voice like a sun dial in a
grave)—would rob the Public of its natural property in Jenny Lind. But
an “arrangement” could be managed with no unreasonable impoverishment of
her husband; for, a month of her time being equal to a year of other
people’s, her marriage contract might be graduated accordingly—eleven
months reserved to celibacy and fame. It is a “Procrustes bed,” which
cuts all love of the same length, and what “committee of reference”
would not award a twelfth of Jenny Lind as an equivalent consideration
for the whole of an average husband?
Doubting whether I should ever venture upon so delicate a subject again,
I will make a good round transgression of it, by recording a little bit
of gossip, to show you that the fond Public is capable of its little
jealousy, like other lovers. There is a Swedish settlement in Michigan,
which, on Jenny’s arrival, sent a committee of one—a young Swedish
officer who had given up his epaulettes for the plough—to ask a
contribution for the building of a church. Jenny promptly gave five
hundred dollars, and the deputation was very contented with that—but
added the trifling request for a doxology in the shape of a
Daguerreotype of the donor. Willing as a child to give pleasure to the
good, the sweet nightingale drove straight to Brady’s, allowed the happy
sun to take her portrait, and gave it to her countryman. But now comes
the part of it which the enamoured Public does not like—for, the
Committee stays on! Instead of going home to set those carpenters to
work, he is seen waiting to help Jenny into her carriage after the
concerts, and, in the comments made upon this, his looks are pulled to
pieces in a way that shows how any approach to a monopoly of her is
jealously resented. Fancy the possibility of a small settlement in
Michigan having such a “new settler” as Jenny Lind!
There is an indication that Providence intended this remarkable woman
for a citizen of no one country, in the peculiar talent she possesses as
a linguist. A gentleman who resided in Germany when she was there, told
me yesterday that one of the delights the Germans found, in her singing
and in her society, was the wonderful beauty of her pronunciation of
their language. It was a common remark that she spoke it “better than a
German,” for, with her keen perception and fine taste, she threw out the
local abbreviations and corruptions of the familiar dialect, and, with
her mastery of sound, she gave every syllable its just fulness and
proportion. She is perfect mistress of French, and speaks English very
sweetly, every day making rapid advance in the knowledge of it.
Several of our fashionable people are preparing to give large parties,
as soon as the fair Swede is willing to honor them with her company, but
she is so beset, at present, that she needs the invisible ring of Gyges
even to get a look at the weather without having “an audience” thrown
in. She can scarce tell, of course, what civilities to accept, or who
calls to honor her or who to beg charity, but her unconquerable
simplicity and directness serve to evade much that would annoy other
people.