CHAPTER VI

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.