CHAPTER VII
THE SWEDISH NIGHTINGALE IN THE AMERICAN WOODS
I
After the conductor on the Philadelphia-New York train had guessed that Jenny Lind was a dancer, Barnum began to remove all possible misconceptions in the public mind concerning his new purchase, which he had this time literally procured after much trouble and expense. He wrote a statement to the press, confirming the rumor that he had engaged Jenny Lind. It was printed in all the New York newspapers for February 22, 1850, and copied by newspapers in other cities. With a noble gesture Barnum said to the public:
“Perhaps I may not make any money by this enterprise; but I assure you that if I knew I should not make a farthing profit, I would ratify the engagement, so anxious am I that the United States should be visited by a lady whose vocal powers have never been approached by any other human being, and whose character is charity, simplicity, and goodness personified.
“Miss Lind has numerous better offers than the one she has accepted from me; but she has great anxiety to visit America. She speaks of this country and its institutions in the highest terms of praise, and as money is by no means the greatest inducement that can be laid before her, she is determined to visit us.
“In her engagement with me (which includes Havana), she expressly reserves the right to give charitable concerts whenever she thinks proper. Since her début in England, she has given to the poor from her own private purse more than the whole amount which I have engaged to pay her, and the proceeds of concerts for charitable purposes in Great Britain, where she has sung gratuitously, have realized more than ten times that amount.”
It was this mention of Jenny Lind’s charities, used casually but pointedly in every publicity notice Barnum wrote that turned his speculation into a certain success. It is proof of his sagacity as a showman that he utilized all sides of his materials, and even exploited as effectively as he did their main claims to fame, any incidental personal characteristics they might reveal. He not only exploited them thoroughly, but he also foresaw the possibilities of them, at least in the case of Jenny Lind. A few years later Barnum looked back upon his accomplishment and confessed: “I may as well state,” he wrote in his autobiography, “that although I relied prominently upon Jenny Lind’s reputation as a great musical _artiste_, I also took largely into my estimate of her success with all classes of the American public, her character for extraordinary benevolence and generosity. Without this peculiarity in her disposition, I never would have dared make the engagement which I did, as I felt sure that there were multitudes of individuals in America who would be prompted to attend her concerts by this feeling alone.” Previously divas had sung for charity, and there are those who do so unobtrusively every day, yet never before or since have we heard of an artist’s benevolence in the same breath as we heard of her talents; but Jenny Lind during the entire period of her fame in America was known and discussed more as a Florence Nightingale than as The Swedish Nightingale.
Barnum, as he himself expressed it, “had put innumerable means and appliances into operation for the furtherance of my object, and little did the public see of the hand that indirectly pulled at their heart-strings, preparatory to a relaxation of their purse-strings; and these means and appliances were continued and enlarged throughout the whole of that triumphal musical campaign.” It was not necessary for Barnum to work very hard with the New York newspapers; they could be depended upon to realize that Jenny Lind was a story, and in the days when James Gordon Bennett, the elder, was hurling almost daily competitive epithets at Horace Greeley, a story was sought after with even greater zeal than to-day, when cables, wireless telegraphy and airplanes make so many of them. In 1850 the New York newspapers gave much space to the news from Europe, and Jenny Lind was creating a European sensation. The English and Continental newspapers were received by the New York newspapers on the fastest steamers, and long extracts from them took the place of local stories. Although the conductor of the Philadelphia train may have ignored it, the Jenny Lind mania in Europe did not escape the eye of the metropolitan editor. Extracts of European criticisms, accounts of her personal and artistic triumphs, comments on her benevolence, appear regularly in the newspapers of the period, so she was not exactly unknown to those in America who read the European news.
But there were undoubtedly many who did not read the European news, and it was for those that Barnum worked, because they were to pay the bills. He met an English newspaper writer who had seen Jenny Lind and had heard her sing. Barnum hired him to write articles of one or two newspaper columns once or twice each week, as long as his ingenuity and Barnum’s suggestions held out. He wrote of her personal characteristics and the warmth of her receptions in Europe, so that those who could not be fascinated by the sentimentality of her benevolence could be impressed by the prestige of European opinion. The articles were dated “London” and appeared as special correspondence from that city. Barnum told a reporter for the _Chicago Tribune_ in June, 1890, “I suppose that was the first attempt in this country to ‘work the press.’ I am free to confess that it couldn’t be done now. Besides, it is not necessary.” This last was in deference to his guest, for he always regarded reporters as guests, “whom he frequently did not wait for, but sent for,” as a friend said. But Barnum “worked the press” until he died, not always so crudely, but with invariable effect, and to-day also young men with imaginations think publicly for motion picture stars and prima donnas, bank presidents and national governments.
On August 14, 1850, the _New York Tribune_ printed an alleged letter received by Barnum from Julius Benedict, who wrote that he had just heard Jenny Lind again and assured Barnum that “her voice has acquired--_if that were possible_--even additional power and effect by a timely and well-chosen repose.” Julius Benedict also said: “Mlle. Lind is very anxious to give a Welcome to America in a kind of National Song, which, if I can obtain the poetry of one of your first-rate literary men, I shall set to music, and which she will sing in addition to the pieces originally fixed upon.” This letter was without doubt written by Barnum. It was dated from Schlangenbad, Germany, August 24, and was printed in the _New York Tribune_ of August 14. This may have been a misprint in the _Tribune_, and it may have been an error in calculation upon the part of Barnum or his employees. However, even if the letter were mailed from Germany on August 4 or August 1, it could not possibly have reached Barnum in time to print in the _Tribune_ of August 14. Besides, Barnum, as he tells in his autobiography, had been thinking for some time of this Welcome to America, and we know that the desire for such a song not only did not originate with Jenny Lind, but that she was reluctant to sing it after Barnum had made the arrangements necessary; then, Julius Benedict would not have suggested a song by a “first-rate” literary man, using one of Barnum’s favorite Yankee adjectives. Three days later the _Morning Courier and Enquirer_, a New York newspaper, printed the following card of announcement from Barnum:
“MESSRS. EDITORS:--
“Will you please to state that Jenny Lind having expressed a strong desire to sing at her first concert in New York a ‘Welcome to America,’ and Mr. Jules Benedict, the eminent composer, having volunteered to set such a composition to music, I hereby offer two hundred dollars for such a song as may be accepted for the above purpose by the following committee:--Messrs. George Ripley, Jules Benedict, Lewis Gaylord Clarke, J. S. Redfield, and Geo. P. Putnam. The songs to be addressed to the committee box, No. 2743 Post Office, New York, and to reach here by the 1st of September.”
Seven hundred and fifty-three poems were submitted to the judges, and the prize was finally awarded to Bayard Taylor, whose contribution does not do him any credit. In its report the Prize Committee stated frankly that a large proportion of the productions were “not fit to feed the pigs.” The announcement that Taylor’s poem had won the prize created a storm of protest, and most of the other 752 poets rushed or wrote to favorite newspaper editors, crying fraud. Putnam, one of the judges, was Bayard Taylor’s publisher, and George Ripley was one of Taylor’s colleagues on the staff of the _New York Tribune_. But the judges were not guilty of fraud, however appearances may have been against them. They submitted two poems, the one by Taylor, and one by Epes Sargent, to Jenny Lind, who, reluctant to sing any such song, chose Bayard Taylor’s because it was shorter.[8]
Taylor’s ode read:
GREETING TO AMERICA
Words by Bayard Taylor--Music by Julius Benedict
“I greet with a full heart the Land of the West, Whose Banner of Stars o’er a world is unrolled; Whose empire o’ershadows Atlantic’s wide breast, And opens to sunset its gateway of gold! The land of the mountain, the land of the lake, And rivers that roll in magnificent tide-- Where the souls of the mighty from slumber awake, And hallow the soil for whose freedom they died!
“Thou Cradle of Empire! though wide be the foam That severs the land of my fathers and thee, I hear, from thy bosom, the welcome of home, For song has a home in the hearts of the Free! And long as thy waters shall gleam in the sun, And long as thy heroes remember their scars, Be the hands of thy children united as one, And Peace shed her light on thy Banner of Stars!”
There was another stanza, but this is quite enough, which is what Julius Benedict and Jenny Lind thought, for only those two stanzas were set to music and sung. Bayard Taylor himself was not proud of his effort. Both he and Richard Henry Stoddard, his best friend, competed for the prize, because they both needed the $200. Taylor wrote to a friend that his “only inspiration was the hope of getting the two hundred dollars,” and the protests of the other competitors, coupled with the knowledge that he had not written a good poem, made him regret that he had ever yielded to temptation. He was worried about the effect of the poem upon his reputation, and he told Stoddard before the protests of the other competitors that he anticipated them because two of the judges were his friends. Two months after the prize was announced he wrote to Stoddard: “Did you see the Brooklyn announcement of my lecture? (‘Bayard Taylor, the successful competitor of the Jenny Lind prize.’) Is that song to be the only thing which will save my name from oblivion?” It was not necessary for him to worry: his translation of Goethe’s _Faust_ has outlived the “Welcome to America.”
William Allen Butler, author of “Nothing to Wear,” wrote a book of parodies which went into three editions, called _Barnum’s Parnassus_, purporting to be confidential disclosures of the Jenny Lind Prize Committee. The following is the most interesting poem in the book:
A VOLUNTEER ODE
By the ‘Acknowledged Best Song Writer’--Not a Competitor
I
“Ho! all ye bards, from best to worst, In village, town or city; Hand in your Songs before the 1st To Barnum’s Prize Committee!
“Ho! every charming poetess Pick out your choicest ditty, And send it on, post-paid--express-- To Barnum’s Prize Committee!
* * * * *
IV
“$200, cash! My eyes! In _cash_, two hundred dollars! Why, in the good old centuries Your Spensers and your Wallers, And those Elizabethan gents, In ruffs, and beards and bonnets, Were glad to get as many _pence_ For one of their short sonnets!”
* * * * *
The protesting poetical voices pleased Barnum immensely. He had offered his $200 for a prize ode, and he received as well several hundred letters of indignation written to the newspapers, a book of parodies, in every one of which his name was mentioned several times, and a reputation for generosity to poor literary men, who were also newspaper men.
At the same time enterprising publishers, without Barnum’s solicitation and much to his advantage, were publishing brochures on the life of Jenny Lind, in all of which her virtues were exaggerated and her powers over-rated. Her portraits were in every shop window. Jenny Lind songsters, Jenny Lind Musical Monthlies, and Jenny Lind Annuals were announced for sale six months before her arrival. A few days before she landed in New York the _Morning Courier and Enquirer_ told its anxious readers that “she possesses a greater combination of greater excellence than all who have gone before her, and ... she adds to these a divine purity and grace peculiarly her own.... Her method is fertile, her manner fervid, her execution finished to the last possible degree, and her powers as an actress remarkable.... It seems to be admitted, in fact, that she approaches as nearly to perfection in her art as can be expected of a human being unaided by magic power.” These and other advance ecstasies concerning Jenny Lind’s voice, before she had sung a note, worked up newspaper readers to a high pitch of anticipatory delight. Jenny Lind was to appear, as Barnum later expressed it, “in the presence of a jury already excited to enthusiasm in her behalf.”
II
Every berth was occupied in the _Atlantic_, which was known as the “Jenny Lind Boat,” Americans in Europe being eager to return home as her traveling companions. Accounts of her very last moments in England, her visit to Queen Victoria to bid farewell, the enthusiasm of the Liverpool mobs, were published in the newspapers here before her arrival, and they all came, as the _Morning Courier and Enquirer_ naïvely said, from “a source likely to be well informed.” On August 21, 1850, she sailed from Liverpool, and the steamer _Atlantic_ was due in New York on September 1.
In eleven days and two hours the “Jenny Lind Boat” made the passage from Liverpool to New York, and on each of those days there was an item of excitement in almost every New York newspaper about the divine creature who was honoring America with her presence. On Sunday, September 1, 1850, the _Atlantic_ was sighted. Even the elements were in favor of Barnum; the boat arrived on a holiday from work, and almost all New York tried to welcome Jenny Lind to the city. Barnum went aboard the ship with the health officer, Dr. Doane, at noon Sunday, and with a large bouquet of flowers tucked into his white waistcoat, climbed hurriedly up the ladder to greet his prima donna. But he had been anticipated, for Mr. Collins, owner of the line of “leviathans” of which the _Atlantic_ was one, had already reached the steamer with a bouquet three times larger than Barnum’s.
After they had conversed for a few minutes, Jenny Lind asked Barnum when and where he had heard her sing. “I never had the pleasure of seeing you before in my life,” he answered. She was astonished, and wondered how he had dared to risk so much money without a knowledge of what he was buying. “I risked it on your reputation, which in musical matters I would much rather trust than my own judgment,” was Barnum’s answer. He did not mention her reputation as Lady Bountiful, but he had it in mind, for it was at this point in his autobiography that he confessed that he would never have imported a woman who could only sing.
As the boat slowly rode up the harbor to its dock at the foot of Canal Street, to the accompaniment of whistles, fog-horns, waving and shouting, Jenny Lind went into raptures about the view. She said what all prima donnas and prime ministers have said since upon arriving in New York harbor. She saw an American flag and threw it a kiss, exclaiming, “There is the beautiful standard of freedom; the oppressed of all nations worship it.” Signor Giovanni Battista Belletti, with characteristic Latin ardor, made some fervent remarks. “Here is the New World at last,” he shouted with appropriate gestures, “the grand New World, first seen by my fellow-countryman, Columbus!” To have a countryman of Columbus in the party must have been of supreme publicity delight to Barnum.
More than 30,000 persons were standing about the dock, according to all the newspapers of the day, and as Jenny Lind looked at them and listened to their clamorous greetings, she said with the proper intonation of surprise, “But have you no poor people, all these people are so well dressed!” West Street for a dozen blocks was thronged with people ready and anxious to make an enthusiastic holiday of her arrival.
A large bower of green plants was decorated with flags, and two triumphal arches adorned the dock, the center of each arch bearing a large device: “Welcome, Jenny Lind!” was on the first; the second, surmounted by the American eagle, read “Welcome to America!” Barnum had arranged for the building of these arches, but quietly, so that the impression given to both Jenny Lind and the multitude was that of an official municipal greeting. Just before the steamer touched the dock, some one suggested that a Swedish flag would not be out of place. None was to be found on such short notice, and the German flag was hurriedly hoisted as an effective substitute.
Cheering broke loose, and the 30,000 swayed with excitement as the _Atlantic_ docked. As soon as the boat touched the pier, the crowd broke bounds, and the strong detachment of Fifth Ward police with great difficulty prevented many persons from being swept into the water. One man did fall off the dock, and Jenny Lind watched the rescue with sympathetic excitement. People were crowded on all roofs in the neighborhood, and all the windows looking out on to West Street were filled. Spars and rigging of near-by vessels were covered with the reckless, and the fenders and bulkheads of the Hoboken Ferry House and wharves were densely packed with men and women. As Jenny Lind stepped down the gangplank, which was covered with carpet for the occasion, the crowd made a mad dash to get nearer and snapped the gates of the dock; some men and women were trampled under others’ feet, and many were injured, but none killed. The _Tribune_ reporter saw a man, “squeezed under the mass and hardly able to breathe, holding out his new hat at arm’s length and imploring somebody to take it and prevent it from being smashed.”
Captain West, master of the _Atlantic_, escorted Jenny Lind to Barnum’s carriage. On the dock Barnum had lined up some of his Museum employees, and as Jenny Lind approached the carriage, they threw bouquets into it, making the public and newspapers believe that here was a spontaneous tribute to a great popular favorite. Writing to her cousin in the country two days after Jenny Lind’s arrival, Miss Julia Knapp, a young girl, said that as she came down the gangplank she wore “a pale blue silk hat, trimmed with lace, a slate-colored dress, with a broadcloth cloak, trimmed with velvet.”[9]
When the party was seated in his carriage, Barnum mounted the box beside the driver, because the people knew him, and “my presence on the outside of the carriage aided those who filled the windows and sidewalks along the whole route in coming to the conclusion that Jenny Lind had arrived.” It may be, too, that he wanted to give those who had no opportunity to see his songstress something for their trouble; there were nudgings and shouts of “That’s Barnum; there’s Barnum.” The crowd pressed on after the carriage, and it was with difficulty that it reached the Irving House, where Barnum had engaged rooms. Jenny Lind appeared several times at the window of the carriage and bowed to the people who were throwing flowers into it.
It was a quarter to three o’clock before the party finally arrived at the Irving House, where more than 5,000 persons had taken up places in an effort to catch a glimpse of Jenny Lind. The police cleared a passage, and she was able to proceed to her room, but the crowd would not go away and would not be quiet until loud cries for The Swedish Nightingale were finally answered by her appearance on a balcony; she waved her handkerchief to the mass of people, who howled their gratitude.
Barnum dined with Jenny Lind that afternoon, and she courteously asked to drink his health. “Miss Lind,” Barnum responded, “I do not think you can ask any other favor on earth which I would not gladly grant; but I am a teetotaler, and must beg to be permitted to drink your health and happiness in a glass of cold water.” She was much astonished that there should be a man who did not drink European light wines, but she understood and respected his views.
The crowds continued outside the Irving House all day, and every time a shadow passed before Jenny Lind’s window, or what the crowd chose as her window, enthusiastic cheers greeted it. At half-past twelve that night, the New York Musical Fund Society, which had been preparing for this occasion for three weeks, began an instrumental serenade. The musicians were escorted by three hundred firemen in red shirts, bearing lighted torches. More than 20,000 people watched, listened and cheered. Broadway was completely blocked, and the three hundred spluttering torches revealed figures on the roofs, in the neighboring windows, and hanging to lamp posts and awning frames. Barnum led Jenny Lind to one of the hotel balconies, after the loud demands for her presence threatened to drown the music of the serenade. He asked the musicians to play “Yankee Doodle” and “Hail Columbia,” and Jenny Lind with admirable tact encored both those songs. The crowd cheered madly, and she repeatedly waved her handkerchief. At quarter past one the music was finished, and she tried to go to bed, but the crowd was not yet ready for bed. George Loder, head of the Musical Fund Society, made a speech of welcome, which, by common agreement, was much too long. One of the newspaper correspondents intimated that the serenade and the speech were offered in the hope that Jenny Lind would return the compliment by giving a benefit performance for the New York Musical Fund Society.
The New York correspondent of the _Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch_ reported the following conversation which he gathered in the crowd:
“Sa-ay, Joe, don’t you think Barnum’ll make a lose? Thousand dollars a night’s a big pile, and singin’ isn’t dancin’; Fanny Elssler was the gal for _my_ money.”
“Oh, shut up! What the hell do _we_ know about singin’?”
“I’ll go in for her too; but I thought she was one of Barnum’s hums, for I heered he said he didn’t care if she hadn’t no more voice than a crow, he knowed we’d all swear she sung like an angel, if it cost us ten dollars to say we’d heered her. You know the time he showed the horse with his tail where his head ought to be? Well, all of them that paid their two shillings was satisfied. Wasn’t he stood in his stall with his tail in the manger--and didn’t they tell all the rest to go in and win, for it was a fus’ rate curiosity, jes so and no mistake?”
“Well, there ain’t no use of your talkin’, Pete; Barnum knows what he’s about. Why, s’pose he _did_ lose fifty thousand by her, he’d more an’ make it up in the Museum. The glory of the thing’s what _he_ looks at.”
But it did not look as if Barnum would lose his fifty thousand dollars. The excitement kept up unabated for weeks. The small girl, Julia Knapp, writing to her cousin Susan in Greenwich, Connecticut, said, “They call her the New Messiah we will send you a paper all about her, I suppose you have heard of Dr. Webster he was hung on Friday last.”
Not only the common people besieged Jenny Lind. The Mayor called upon her at her rooms, and she was visited all day and part of the night by people who used various claims to distinction as cards of admission to her private suite. Milliners, tailors and furniture dealers sent her articles which they had manufactured and named for her; they were grateful for her autograph in return. Water carafes with her face and name were sold. Songs and poems were dedicated to her, dances were named after her, and she conquered the kingdom of man when a cigar was called the Jenny Lind. Crowds gathered outside the hotel to watch her enter or leave. Society called in large contingents, and Barnum was fearful that the _haut ton_ of Bleecker Street would monopolize his prize and thus make her repugnant to the masses, for he realized that he was not in England with General Tom Thumb. But her reputation for kindness and simplicity won the admiration of the people, and shopkeepers continued to send gloves, hats, shawls, chairs and gowns. On the day after her arrival in New York all the morning newspapers devoted their first pages to the prima donna. The _New York Tribune_ printed four columns on the first page concerning her reception, and a poem with fifty-two footnotes explaining its Scandinavian allegorical allusions. The other newspapers gave her the same amount of space, and the interest in her was maintained at the same high pitch during her entire stay in New York.
III
On the day after her arrival, Barnum and Jenny Lind visited together with Benedict and Belletti all the public halls in New York to choose a place for her first concerts. The sky was cloudy and rain was falling, but eager spectators were out in large numbers and followed the party from amusement hall to amusement hall, so that a contemporary was able to describe the tour of inspection as a royal procession. Many of the enthusiasts were disappointed, for Jenny Lind wore a veil. In anticipation of her visit A. B. Tripler, a twenty-five-year-old speculator, built a hall which he intended to name for Jenny Lind, and which was to be used for her concerts in New York, but it was not finished in time. Therefore, Barnum, with the approval of Jenny Lind and Julius Benedict, chose Castle Garden, the largest place of amusement in the city, for her first concerts. Barnum now realized that his audiences would be larger than even he had hoped, and he accordingly hired the largest available hall and made arrangements for its alteration in order to provide more seating capacity and increased standing-room.
Barnum wrote in his autobiography: “On the Tuesday after her arrival I informed Miss Lind that I wished to make a slight alteration in our agreement. ‘What is it?’ she asked in surprise. ‘I am convinced,’ I replied, ‘that our enterprise will be much more successful than either of us anticipated. I wish, therefore, to stipulate that you shall always receive $1,000 for each concert, besides all the expenses, as heretofore agreed on, and that after taking $5,500 per night for expenses and my services, the balance shall be equally divided between us.’ Jenny looked at me with astonishment. She could not comprehend my proposition. After I had repeated it, and she fully understood its import, she grasped me cordially by the hand, and exclaimed, ‘Mr. Barnum, you are a gentleman of honor. You are generous. It is just as Mr. Bates told me. I will sing for you as long as you please. I will sing for you in America--in Europe--anywhere!’” Here we have a picture of such exceptional magnanimity on the one side, and on the other such joyous gratitude--it is a pity that it is untrue.
Concerning this change in the contract, Barnum was frank enough to add this warning in his autobiographical account of the incident: “Let it not be supposed that the increase in her compensation was wholly an act of generosity on my part. I had become convinced that there was money enough in the enterprise for all of us, and I also felt that although she should have been satisfied by my complying with the terms of the agreement, yet envious persons would doubtless endeavor to create discontent in her mind, and it would be a stroke of policy to prevent the possibility of such an occurrence.” This attitude is one which Barnum afterwards dubbed “profitable philanthropy” in speaking of his own charitable endeavors, and we could admire his foresight and his compassion, if other men’s books did not make him out to be inaccurate, to say the least.
Maunsell B. Field, whose _Memories of Many Men and Some Women_ has already been quoted in another connection, played an important part in the negotiations between Barnum and Jenny Lind. He was a member of the law firm of Jay and Field, and Jenny Lind when she first came to New York presented a letter of introduction to John Jay, Field’s partner. Jay was in Europe, and when Jenny Lind learned this, she asked Field to visit her at the Irving House, as she had urgent business for him. “Upon my arrival,” wrote Field, “I mentioned whom I desired to see, and was at once accosted by a stranger, who introduced himself to me as Mr. Barnum. He offered to accompany me to Miss Lind’s drawing-room, and I followed him upstairs. On the way, he turned to me and said, ‘I am going to introduce you to an angel, sir--to an angel!’” While they were waiting for Jenny Lind to appear, Barnum poured “ceaseless praises of her” into Field’s ear. When she finally did appear, Field noted that she looked “wonderfully substantial for an angel.”
According to Field, Jenny Lind had left for America without any formal contract with Barnum, but merely on the strength of a memorandum executed by his agent. She wanted Field’s advice in drawing up a formal contract, and Barnum, Jenny Lind, and Field sat down together and discussed terms. Field executed the contract, and it was signed the next day by Barnum and Jenny Lind. He did not state the terms of the contract, but he wrote: “After a time Miss Lind became dissatisfied with her contract, and I was sent for to revise it. Mr. Barnum made the required concessions.... Again and again Miss Lind desired changes made in the contract to her own advantage, and every time Mr. Barnum yielded. Whatever his motive, he was most obliging and complaisant, and although I have never since met him, I have always esteemed him for the good-nature and liberality which he exhibited at this time in his business relations with Miss Lind. I believe that she received every farthing that belonged to her, and that he treated her with the most scrupulous honor.”
This would seem to indicate on reputable authority that the initiative for changes in the contract came invariably from Jenny Lind, and that while Barnum was not voluntarily magnanimous, Jenny Lind was persistently dissatisfied. Many years later at a dinner party in England Jenny Lind discussed her Barnum contract with W. P. Frith, the artist, who recorded the conversation in _My Autobiography and Reminiscences_. She told Frith that she went to America bound by a legal engagement with Barnum. “Whether from being badly advised, or from the undervaluing of powers common to genius, Mademoiselle Lind found on her arrival in America, that she had made a terrible mistake in the terms of the engagement.” Immediately after her arrival she took up the terms of the agreement with Barnum, she told Frith, and it was in this reconsideration of terms that Field undoubtedly participated. Before asking for a new contract, Jenny Lind told Barnum that she was prepared to fulfil her duties, if he should demand the letter of the original agreement, and according to her own story, he listened carefully and when she had finished, said: “This, madam, is the document you signed in England, is it not?” “Undoubtedly,” said Miss Lind, “and I am ready to abide by it, if I have been unable to convince--” “Be so good as to destroy it. Tear it up, madam; and if you will instruct your lawyer to prepare another from your own dictation, naming whatever you think fair for your services, I will sign it without hesitation.”
This account gives Barnum credit for sufficient magnanimity, and it is therefore a reflection on the degree of his human vanity that he saw fit to color the truth when it was so bright in its natural complexion. Field and Jenny Lind herself make Barnum out as complaisant and yielding beyond the degree of most men of business, but Barnum is not satisfied with that glory; he must also take the initiative in magnanimity and make us believe that it was he who voluntarily offered changes in the contract. Besides, he must have known, what his lawyers could have told him, that the most he could ever accomplish in a court of equity by refusing Jenny Lind’s demands was an injunction restraining her from singing under other management in this country. It would not have been to Barnum’s advantage, if Jenny Lind had returned home dissatisfied; and rather than sacrifice the opportunities his publicity had created, it was wisdom on his part to accede to any demands. On the other hand, Jenny Lind apparently gave W. P. Frith the impression that she had bartered her gift for a pittance, when as a matter of fact the terms of the original agreement gave her $1,000 for each concert and her expenses, which was not such a “terrible mistake.” The inevitable conclusion is that neither Barnum nor Jenny Lind was acting out of the bigness of his heart or the simplicity of hers, but rather on the larger body of business principles. Under her new contract Jenny Lind received one-half of the net profits, with a guarantee of $1,000 for each concert, and a stipulation that after one hundred concerts the contract could be terminated by either party to it.
After Castle Garden had been selected, and while preparations were being made for the first concerts, Barnum took Jenny Lind to visit all the leading newspaper offices, where she watched with appropriate interest the papers being run off the presses. Mayor Caleb S. Woodhull conferred upon her the freedom of the city, which she could hardly enjoy because of the dense crowds that followed her everywhere. The president of the Art Union invited her to the opening of the season’s exhibition; after a private view of the pictures, “a magnificent collation was served,” according to a contemporary, and she was enrolled as a member of the Art Union “in the midst of a perfect shower of compliments.” Mr. Daniel T. Curtis, of Boston, sent her what the _Tribune_ described as “some of the most splendid nectarines ever grown in this country--they were a marvel to all who beheld them.”
Barnum and Jenny Lind inspected the institution for the blind, a riding academy, houses of correction, Greenwood Cemetery and the city prison. Every day each newspaper printed a special column headed “Movements of The Swedish Nightingale,” wherein it was told what she visited and who visited her. Many clergymen and people of the best reputation in the community were her daily visitors. Dr. Anson Jones, the last president of Texas, called and was delighted with The Swedish Nightingale. The Rev. Dr. Cummings with the little girls of his school visited her, and the little girls presented her with “a six dollar bouquet,” according to the exact _Herald_.
The first rehearsal was held at Castle Garden a few days after Jenny Lind’s arrival. Barnum had invited all the music critics, who brought with them all their friends, so that the audience was large enough to frighten Jenny Lind, who insisted upon comparative privacy, and at all subsequent rehearsals Barnum’s generosity was limited to the critics and a few invalids who could not bear the crush of the regular performances. While Jenny Lind was singing the _Casta Diva_ from _Norma_ at this first rehearsal, the Battery guns attached to Castle Garden boomed loudly, startling the singer and surprising the audience. It was explained that California had just been admitted to the Union, and Jenny Lind smiled her interest in the popular enthusiasm over the gold state. During the first rehearsal the Battery was crowded with people, anxious to catch the few notes of this marvelous voice that might escape from the bulky Castle Garden. After the rehearsal, Jenny Lind attempted to get to her carriage through the crowd, and she took the arm of Maunsell B. Field, who attended the rehearsal and reported the scene in his book. The crowd pressed close, and the police forced a passage for the singer. Some of the crowd broke the cordon of policemen and tried to thrust petitions for charity into Jenny Lind’s hands, while others made desperate efforts to gaze into her face, that they might tell their grandchildren they had seen Jenny Lind plain. The people took Maunsell B. Field for Barnum and addressed him familiarly by that name, as he and Jenny Lind proceeded with difficulty to her carriage. At later rehearsals various excuses were used by eager admirers to gain admission, and some men brought violins and other portable musical instruments in order to make the doorkeeper believe that they were members of the orchestra.
Barnum had decided to sell the tickets for the first concert at auction. In his youth, while touring with his traveling circus, he had witnessed an auction of tickets for Fanny Elssler’s dancing performance in New Orleans, and at the time he was much impressed with the publicity value of the scheme and with the profits it yielded. Accordingly, on Saturday, September 7, the auction was held at Castle Garden. Barnum entered the hall, late and excited, and was cheered heartily by the crowd of 4,000. He ascended into the pulpit beside the auctioneer and addressed the people. He said that he was surprised and mortified to discover that those who were present had been compelled to pay a shilling [a coin of the period worth 12½ cents] for admission to the sale. He had understood that the Garden would be open to the public free of charge for the auction sale; there was protracted applause. He announced when the tickets sold at the auction would be delivered, and a sarcastic voice from the crowd shouted the inquiry, “Another shilling admission?” The auctioneer replied heatedly, “Certainly not!” But Barnum, the champion of the people against the interests, turned towards the auctioneer and said with vehemence, “I don’t know about that! How can you tell? Let the tickets be delivered at the outer gate! (Applause with a round of groans for the exactors of the shilling admission.)”
[Illustration: JENNY LIND
Engraving from a daguerreotype
_Houdini Collection_]
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF CASTLE GARDEN
Illustrating the first appearance of Jenny Lind in America
_By permission of the New York Aquarium_]
The bidding for the first ticket was lively, and the four thousand persons who had come out on a rainy day to pay their money and take their choice, grew excited. Prices rose rapidly, and the first ticket was finally sold for $225 to Genin, the hatter, whose establishment adjoined Barnum’s American Museum. This was the best stroke of business Genin ever did. Newspapers in Houston, Texas, Portland, Maine, and intervening cities and villages, announced to their interested readers that Genin, the Broadway hatter, had purchased the first ticket for the first Jenny Lind concert at the enormous price of $225. More than two million readers knew the next morning that Genin was a hatter. An Iowa editor printed the story of one of his neighbors who discovered that he owned a hat with Genin’s label. He pointed it out to the loungers at the village post office, and he was urged to give his neighbors an opportunity for distinction by putting the hat up at auction. It was finally sold to an excited townsman for fourteen dollars. In New York men hurried to Genin’s shop to purchase hats, and, if possible, to catch a glimpse of the man who had paid $225 for the first ticket.
Barnum advised Genin to purchase this first ticket at any price for its publicity value. Some newspapers said that Genin was Barnum’s brother-in-law, and that the purchase was framed up before the auction; but Genin was not Barnum’s brother-in-law. He was merely a business neighbor and a personal friend. Genin profited by Barnum’s instructions in publicity, for a few years later, when Louis Kossuth visited this country, he took down from his shelves some of his old style hats, named them after the Hungarian revolutionist, and sold them at high prices. Genin was also the author of a _History of the Hat from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time_. Other hatters were envious of Genin’s Barnumized notoriety, and Knox, the hatter of 128 Fulton Street, advertised in the _New York Tribune_ two days after Genin’s purchase: “There is no truth in the assertion that Knox, the hatter, paid $225 for the choice of a seat at Jenny Lind’s first concert. Knox can’t afford it; and it must have been done by some Broadway Hatter, who sells a poor article at a high price, as Knox is contented with very small profits. His Fall style of Hats is the admiration of everybody.” Espenscheid, of 107 Nassau Street, advertised: “THAT TICKET--The sensible portion of the community begin to see the folly of contributing to the support of the Broadway $4 hatters in luxury and idleness, and paying for their expensive show-shops, and $225 Concert Tickets, when they have only to turn the corner of the Museum and walk a few steps to Espenscheid’s, 107 Nassau Street, where a better, lighter, more graceful and durable Hat is sold for $3.50.”
The auction sale was more successful than even Barnum had expected. Tickets near the stage, where it is not desirable to sit at a concert, brought higher prices at the auction than those in the center of the building, because almost as many persons went to Castle Garden to see Jenny Lind as those who came to hear her sing. The average price paid for the tickets to the first concert was $6.38 for each ticket. In two sessions the auctioneer sold out all the seats in Castle Garden and collected $17,864.05 for Barnum. Upon this occasion a system which has since become a regular part of the theatrical business was inaugurated: the first theater ticket speculators New York knew started shop. Hall & Son, Jolie’s, both music publishers, the Irving House and other New York hotels bought up large numbers of seats at the public auction and sold them at a large increase.
IV
Castle Garden, which since its construction in 1807 had been a fort, a cabaret, a music hall and an opera house, and which is now the Aquarium, was capable of accommodating almost 10,000 people, standing and sitting. Barnum had divided the hall into three sections, each of which was marked by lamps of different colors, red, yellow, and blue. The tickets corresponded in color with the lamps, and the one hundred ushers wore rosettes of those colors and carried wands of those colors, so that the audience gained their seats without the devastating crushes which occurred at the Jenny Lind performances in England.
The newspapers of Wednesday morning, September 11, 1850, reflect the feverish excitement that was in the air. The _Tribune_ had imported from Boston a special critic to report the concerts, and that paper informed its readers on the morning of the first concert: “To-night will be a new Avatar in our musical history--the first appearance of another divinity in the world of Song.” The _Courier and Enquirer_ warned those who intended to be present not to applaud until they were quite sure Jenny Lind had finished, “as Jenny Lind is said to diminish a final note until her audience are quite sure it has ceased, and then swell it out again upon their astonished and delighted ears.” The _Herald_ wrote: “Jenny Lind is the most popular woman in the world at this moment,--perhaps the most popular that ever was in it.” In the excitement of the moment the _Herald_ apparently forgot the Virgin Mary.
This advance adulation placed Jenny Lind at a disadvantage, for it made it necessary for her to live up to a tremendous expectation, if she was to please the discriminating. The _Courier and Enquirer_ sensed this difficulty, and begged its readers on the morning of the first concert not to be disappointed “if Jenny Lind’s singing be at all like any they ever heard from mortal lips,” for, the editor insisted gravely, “Jenny Lind is merely a mortal woman, of very substantial flesh and blood, who, gifted by nature with genius and a voice, has made herself a great singer by hard labor; just such labor, such daily practice as provokes them to wish that their neighbor, Miss A., who is an amateur vocalist, lived a square or two further down the street, when she takes her music lessons.” Barnum, too, was afraid that the great expectations which he had so largely created by his advance publicity, would act as a boomerang and cause the public to accept the reality with disappointment.
Evening came at last. The doors were opened at five o’clock, although the concert was scheduled to begin at eight, and more than seven thousand persons were seated, “with as much order and quiet as was ever witnessed in the assembling of a congregation at church,” according to Barnum’s description. A double row of policemen kept order and regulated the stream of carriages. The wooden bridge which approached the entrance to Castle Garden was brilliantly lighted the length of its two hundred feet, giving the effect of a triumphal avenue. More than two hundred boats were anchored as near as possible to the Garden, and more than a thousand people caught escaping strains of music from this vantage point; and when they could not hear, they shouted and yelled indignant interruptions, thus preventing those in the rear parts of the hall from hearing.
Inside, the hall was a mass of gas light. A wooden arch bordered the stage, and from it were hanging the flags of the United States and Sweden, with arabesque ornaments in white and gold beneath them. A large bank of flowers, spelling out the words, “Welcome Sweet Warbler,” was suspended over the pillars of the balcony directly in front of the stage. Julius Benedict and his sixty musicians entered promptly at eight o’clock and were received with applause. They began the overture from Weber’s _Oberon_, but the audience paid little attention. They were waiting for Jenny Lind, and they tolerated the preliminaries only because preliminaries increased the suspense and nervous excitement, but they were too restless to listen to them. Signor Belletti sang the _Sorgete_ from Rossini’s _Mahomet II_, and the audience applauded after he was finished with something of relief as well as appreciation.
There was a breathless moment of silent anticipation. The doors at the back of the stage opened. Jenny Lind, in a white, virginal dress, came gracefully down between the music stands, escorted by Julius Benedict, while Barnum watched nervously in the wings.
That placid face, with its thick nose and heavy Scandinavian features and its oval simplicity, stared out with frightened, earnest, blue eyes at this immense gathering, which rose to its feet in tumult, cheered as if for the foundation of a republic or the downfall of a monarchy, and hurled things handy into the air. She curtsied deeply in profound appreciation. But it was impossible to stop the riot of enthusiasm. The screaming, the shouting, the waving and the wild cheering oppressed her, as she stood in her white dress, gazing bewilderedly at the multitude of her admirers. The experience was disconcerting and alarming, as if she were suddenly, without any reason to expect it, thrown into the general assembly hall of an insane asylum. She may have been thinking of this orgy, when she said later in her broken English that Americans “are all firemens,” which the _Herald_ took to mean that “we are all on fire with musical enthusiasm.” But, possibly, Jenny Lind did not mean anything so complimentary.
The wild scene, accustomed as she was to enthusiasm, frightened her into an approach to panic, and the hysteria of the audience communicated itself in some degree to the star, who trembled and wavered in the first notes of Bellini’s _Casta Diva_, until those who listened anxiously feared that she would break down completely. But she soon regained confidence and the control of her nerves, and she finished her song in loud and clear tones that indicated complete self-possession. The last notes of the air were drowned in the appreciation of the audience, and at the moment of her conclusion a shower of bouquets hit the stage in front of her, while handkerchiefs waved, and the men cheered hoarsely.
Benedict and Richard Hoffman played a duet by Thalberg on two pianos, but no one listened; each had to tell his neighbor how superb was Jenny Lind. She appeared with Belletti and sang the duet from Rossini’s _Il Turco in Italia_, “How Shall I Please the Lady Fair?” At this point an attempt was made by those in the boats outside to besiege the hall and gain entrance, which was frustrated with difficulty and much noise by the police. Benedict and the orchestra played the overture to Benedict’s own opera, _The Crusaders_, and the audience paid their respect to the composer by listening to it, but every one sat up in his seat again when Jenny Lind sang the song with accompaniment of two flutes from Meyerbeer’s _Camp of Silesia_. She followed this with a Swedish melody, _Herdsman’s Song_, accompanying herself on the piano. This song caused tremendous enthusiasm at the first concert, and wherever Jenny Lind sang it, for it involved a perfect imitation of an echo, as the herdsman called to his flock. It was popularly dubbed “The Echo Song” and was demanded everywhere as an encore. The last number on the program was Bayard Taylor’s “Greeting to America,” which Benedict had set to music in less than a week. It was received with thundering applause, and even the critics did not dare to admit that it was the worst piece of music and poetry on the program.
At the close of the concert there were loud cries of “Barnum! Barnum!” This was as it should have been, for in America he was the author of the Jenny Lind comedy. Barnum “reluctantly” appeared. He said to the audience: “My friends, you have often heard it asked, ‘Where’s Barnum?’ Henceforth you may say, ‘Barnum’s nowhere!’” Then he said that he felt “compelled to disregard the fact that Mademoiselle Lind had herself begged him not to mention on this evening one of her own noble and spontaneous deeds of beneficence.” She would devote her share of the proceeds of the first concert, $10,000, to charity, to be distributed as follows: The Fire Department Fund, $3,000; Musical Fund Society, $2,000; Home for the Friendless, $500; Lying-in Asylum for Destitute Females, $500; Home for Indigent Females, $500; Protestant Half Orphan Asylum, Roman Catholic Half Orphan Asylum, and New York Orphan Asylum, $500 each; the Dramatic Fund Association, $500; the Old Ladies’ Asylum, $500; and the Home for Colored and Aged Persons and the Colored Orphan Asylum, each $500. The charities were chosen by Barnum, Mayor Woodhull, and Jenny Lind, and Barnum took care that no discrimination was made because of race, creed, or previous condition of servitude.
It is interesting in this connection to know that Jenny Lind abhorred negroes. She exclaimed to Maunsell B. Field in disgust, “They are _so_ ugly!” Apparently, she forgot for the moment that they are God’s creatures. Although she had æsthetic feelings about their appearance, these did not interfere with her charitable instinct, for she sent Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe $100 as a contribution to the fund for buying slaves into freedom. She also wrote Mrs. Stowe to thank her for a copy of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, and said in her letter: “I have the feeling about ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ that ... the writer of that book can fall asleep to-day or to-morrow with the bright, sweet conscience of having been a strong means in the Creator’s hand of operating essential good in one of the most important questions for the welfare of our black brethren.”
After the announcement of the charities, three cheers were given for Jenny Lind, and three cheers were given for Barnum. The Musical Fund Society gave her another serenade in gratitude for her donation of $2,000, and then she was allowed to retire to the New York Hotel, where she had removed to avoid the crowds that thronged the district of the Irving House. It was said that Barnum collected $1,000 from the proprietor of the hotel where Jenny Lind stayed for the privilege of her patronage, and wherever she went in the United States, it was said, hotel proprietors paid Barnum for the advertising value of her presence. If this was true, it reduced considerably Jenny Lind’s living expenses, which under the contract were to be paid by Barnum. The newspapers of the period printed this as an accusation against Barnum, and as a fact; there is no confirmation of it, nor is there any possibility of a positive denial. Barnum does not mention it in his autobiography, but the scheme is one that would have appealed to his business ingenuity.
The newspapers of the day after the first concert were beside themselves, and the undiscriminating praise increased with the number of concerts. The _Herald_ in an effulgence of mixed metaphors wrote of Jenny Lind’s song, “which she spins out from her throat like the attenuated fiber from the silkworm, dying away so sweetly and so gradually, till it seems melting into the song of the seraphim and is lost in eternity.” After the first rehearsal, _The Spirit of the Times_ critic wrote: “As a bird just alighted upon a spray begins to sing, he knows not why, and pours forth the increasing volume of his voice from an instinct implanted within him by that Power which made him vocal,--as flowers unfold their petals to the air, as zephyrs breathe, as rivulets leave their founts, as thoughts flow, as affections rise, as feelings develop,--so this wondrous creature sang. It was not Art. It was a manifestation of Nature.” _The Spirit of the Times_ was not a comic paper. The _Herald_ remarked casually that Jenny Lind’s appearance in the old world was “as significant an event as the appearance of Dante, Tasso, Raphael, Shakespeare, Goethe, Thorwaldsen, or Michael Angelo.” “As a cantatrice,” continued the _Herald_ writer, “she is as much superior to all her northern predecessors as Napoleon was to his contemporaries, or as Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin, was to the first ‘gemman ob color’ who used it. She has changed all men’s ideas of music as much so as Bacon’s inductive system revolutionized philosophy.” The _Herald_ sincerely believed that the advent of Jenny Lind was an indication that “the wand of civilization has fallen from the hands of the southern nations and passed to the hardy northern races.... All feel her power, all go mad who see her, and they cannot explain the secret of her influence.” Had the _Herald_ stopped in its abandon to analyze the depths of its own sentimentality, it might have had the secret of that influence. In his lofty peroration this inspired editorial writer sings that Jenny Lind has left “the effete monarchies of Europe” to sing as she confessed she never could sing in her former languishing environment to the great and free American democracy, where things never stand still. In all these criticisms there was little comment on her voice, as such. Those who did venture to criticize it found in it a certain coolness, which her champions called its purity, and a lack of ardor, which her worshipers commended as the absence of the common Latin display of disgraceful passion. But those who attempted to qualify their praise were overwhelmed by the recriminations against their judgment of those who were confirmed fanatics.
At her other concerts in New York the programs did not differ much in quality from the first, but in the later concerts Jenny Lind sang sacred music, and in these oratorios she was very popular. In his _Reminiscences_, written many years after the event, Lyman Abbott wrote: “It was impossible to doubt the Resurrection while she was singing ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth.’ She seemed a celestial witness; to doubt her testimony was to doubt her veracity.” And Jenny Lind surely would not have lied about such a thing as the Resurrection. Dr. Abbott knew a chorus girl in the oratorio choir, and when Jenny Lind sang “The Messiah” he escorted his friend to the concert. Probably Lyman Abbott as a young man enjoyed a much higher spiritual reaction than most of his contemporaries, for it is hard to believe that Jenny Lind impressed the general population as a celestial witness of the Resurrection under the exclusive management of P. T. Barnum. Another critic, however, said that her rendition of “I know that my Redeemer liveth” was “an appeal to shake the heart of a Jew.”
Other members of the Jenny Lind audiences were impressed differently. Walt Whitman wrote in the _New York Evening Post_ of August 14, 1851, in one of his _Letters from Paumanok_: “The Swedish Swan, with all her blandishments, never touched my heart in the least. I wondered at so much vocal dexterity; and indeed they were all very pretty, those leaps and double somersets. But even in the grandest religious airs, genuine masterpieces as they are, of the German composers, executed by this strangely overpraised woman in perfect scientific style, let critics say what they like, it was a failure; for there was a vacuum in the head of the performance. Beauty pervaded it no doubt, and that of a high order. It was the beauty of Adam before God breathed into his nostrils.” And in speaking of Jenny Lind later in his _Good-Bye My Fancy_, Whitman said: “... the canary, and several other sweet birds are wondrous fine--but there is something in song that goes deeper--isn’t there?”
Washington Irving, who was an old man when Jenny Lind came to New York in 1850, overcame his reluctance to combat with the crowds and finally heard her sing; he wrote to Miss Mary M. Hamilton: “I have seen and heard her but once, but have at once enrolled myself among her admirers. I cannot say, however, how much of my admiration goes to her singing, how much to herself. As a singer, she appears to me of the very first order; as a specimen of womankind, a little more. She is enough of herself to counterbalance all the evil that the world is threatened with by the great convention of women. So God save Jenny Lind!”
There seems to be no doubt from the records of the period that Jenny Lind’s voice was a brilliant and powerful soprano, dramatic, flexible and rich, and she was praised very highly for her ability to control the shake and the skilful management of her breath. She always insisted also that a singer should “look pleasant” while singing and never allow herself contortions of any kind. She had a perfect horror of careless enunciation.
After the first concerts had confirmed the greatest hopes and most fervent expectations, the personal, popular enthusiasm increased, if possible. The rumor went about that one of Jenny Lind’s gloves had been found by a citizen of New York, and the finder exhibited the glove to large crowds, charging one shilling to kiss its outside and two shillings to kiss the inside. A crowd gathered outside her hotel one evening saw two ladies appear on a balcony. The crowd looked eagerly; it could not be sure, but some of the members believed that one of the ladies was Jenny Lind. Just then the lady dropped a peach pit from the balcony, and a mad scramble followed for the possible peach pit that had lodged for a moment in the divine mouth of Jenny Lind. The only Whig candidate for Assembly in one of the districts of Rensselaer County, New York, was Jenny Lind. She had previously received a vote for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, and she received several votes in New York City for mayor.
These and other absurdities were ridiculed and held against the population of New York in newspapers of other cities, and especially by the London press. The London _Athenæum_, commenting upon the reports of Jenny Lind’s reception in New York, wrote: “‘Jenny’s in New York,’ ‘Jenny’s in America,’ shout the papers--they can scarcely credit their own good fortune. They go about asking one another if it can be true.... The gentle little lady has come amongst them to sing a few of her pastoral airs ‘for a consideration,’--and they greet her with a perfect Niagara of welcome. We never remember child’s play performed before by such a company. The whole thing looks like a vast ‘make-believe.’ America seems to have no serious business in life; and the whole people--bishops, magistrates and all--are engaged in a huge game of ‘High Jinks.’” But this criticism resembled the sober reflections of a reformed drunkard, as he sees a fellow man rolling in the gutter. The London _Athenæum_ forgot its own account by a Frankfort, Germany, correspondent published several years before: “Dine where you would during the Frankfort Fair, you heard of ‘Free Trade’--and Jenny Lind; of Railroads--and next of Jenny Lind; of the Spanish Match [the marriage of the Spanish princess]--and, still, Jenny Lind; of the Pope and the people--and, always, Jenny Lind! When she was coming--what she would sing--how much be paid--who get the places--and the like.” The London papers forgot in their ridicule of American adulation the scenes in Liverpool just before her departure, and that when she first arrived in England she bore a letter of introduction from the King of Prussia to Queen Victoria, in which His Majesty asked Her Majesty “to show every possible kindness to one of the most modest, exemplary and talented singers which any time has yet produced.” And they also forgot that when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited the opera when Jenny Lind sang, the glasses were leveled at the stage, and the royal box was almost like any other box; yet when Charles Macready performed in _King Lear_, one of his most famous rôles, while Jenny Lind was present, the stage was ignored in favor of her box. In the English provinces crowds had gathered outside Jenny Lind’s hotels, singing,
“Jenny Lind O! Jenny Lind O! Come to the window!”
And Jenny seldom would respond. _Gants_ and _mouchoirs à la_ Jenny Lind were started in London and imitated in New York. Carlyle was able to write with justice to his brother: “All people are rushing after a little Swedish woman, an Opera Singer, called Jenny Lind: 40 pounds is the price of a box (four sittings) for one night, in some cases! I saw Jenny, one day, dined with her, and had to speak French to her all dinner,--a nice little innocent, clear, _thin_ ‘bit lassie’; somewhat like a douce minister’s daughter; sense enough, too; but my notion was that I could easily raise fifty women with much _more_ sense (one in Dumfries with twice as much perhaps); and that, as to singing, with such a _shrew_ of a voice,--I would _not_ give 10 pounds or hardly 10 pence, to hear Jenny!”
It is a curious phase of the Jenny Lind mania that in cities which had not yet heard her sing, the enthusiasm of other cities was always ridiculed. Boston laughed at New York, and Philadelphia scorned both, until it was forced to hold its tongue and listen to its own raptures. And as soon as she had left a city, and the trance had worn off slightly, people shook their heads over the antics of their neighbors: London ridiculed New York, and New York laughed at Boston.
But while Jenny Lind remained in a city the enthusiasm was unbounded, and not the least enthusiastic were those who came to seek her charity. Swedes came from all over the country to remind her in her benevolence that after all they were Swedes. Maunsell B. Field was asked by Jenny Lind, according to his book, to select appropriate charities. He presented a list of institutions for her approval, and she approved them without looking at his list. Then Field started on his mission of mercy, and he was to regret that he had ever undertaken the job. “Scarcely anybody,” he wrote, “--there were a few praiseworthy exceptions--was satisfied. At almost every establishment at which I called, they tried to persuade me that a larger allotment should have been made to their particular institution, and that its needs and deservings were so much greater than those of such a sister one.” Jenny Lind herself was literally hounded by charity seekers as soon as it became generally known that she practised charity. Every day people visited her and gained admission on various pretexts, only to beg when they came within her hearing. Some ladies who called for a gift, when they received one, turned up their noses and asked, “Is that all?” Upon another occasion an indignant petitioner declared that he had not come for alms but for a donation, when the sum he received did not exceed his expectations.
She received begging letters daily, and Barnum also received his share. He said that he received an average of twenty begging letters every day during her tour of the country. One woman in Pittsburg informed Barnum that she had just given birth to twins, a boy and a girl, and that she had named them P. T. Barnum and Jenny Lind respectively, adding that in gratitude it was his duty to send her $5,000 for the immediate wants of the pair, and also that she thought Barnum should make provision for their future education and support. One man wrote: “god Nose I am Poore,” and another, who said he was too decrepit to earn a living, took advantage of Barnum’s love of religion, when he wrote: “I tak grait pleshur in Readin my bibel, speshily the Proffits.”
Acknowledgments of Jenny Lind’s donations appeared every day in the newspapers, which was excellent publicity, but it was also appropriate, for her charities were large enough to be exceptional news. There was something in Jenny Lind’s character that made charity necessary, and that was probably, as her letters intimate, a sense of possessing a gift from God, which she considered that she held in trust, and which it was therefore her duty to dispense; for all life was a terrible obligation to Jenny Lind. If she made a pecuniary fortune by means of a God-given art, it was part of the divine justice that ruled her world for her to give much of that fortune to God’s creatures, individually, and through the agencies of homes for indigent females, firemen’s funds and university scholarships. But this obligation carried with it as many worries and annoyances as it did delights and satisfactions. It even extended its annoyances to other persons, who in some cases were not even remotely associated with her. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in his Journal for September 11, 1850: “In the twilight, a visit from a vendor of essences, who offered a great bargain; namely, that he would give me a dollar’s worth of his essences, and I should write for him a poetical epistle to Jenny Lind asking charity in his behalf. Stupid dolt! it took me some time to make him comprehend the indecency of his behavior. Truly an ignoble Yankee is a very ignoble being.”
Barnum was accused continually in the newspapers of contributing nothing to charity, while his Angel gave away her money in profusion. A conundrum went the rounds of the newspapers throughout the country which read: “Why is it that Jenny Lind and Barnum will never fall out?” Answer: “Because he is always for-getting, and she is always forgiving.” It was said that Barnum himself invented this disparagement, and it would not be unlikely, for he never cared what the public thought of him so long as they talked about him. Without doubt it was Barnum’s wise policy to elevate Jenny Lind to the skies even at the expense of himself. He may have realized that every good story, including those in the Bible, has a villain, and he was quite willing to take the rôle providing the receipts were large enough. Almost every day for several weeks in October of 1850 James Gordon Bennett attacked Barnum in the _Herald_ and demanded to know when he was going to give something to charity. A sample of these misstatements read: “Jenny Lind does all the generous acts, and Barnum perpetrates all the mean doings. He has not given a penny as yet for any charitable purpose, although he makes more out of Jenny’s talents than Jenny does herself.” This was untrue, for whenever Jenny Lind gave a concert for charity, she gave her voice. Barnum paid all the expenses of the hall, the orchestra, printing and advertising. She frequently urged him to deduct the expenses from the proceeds and give the remainder to charity, but he wrote in his autobiography that he insisted on paying his share to charity, for “it was purely a business operation, ‘bread cast upon the waters,’” which “would return, perhaps, buttered; for the larger her reputation for liberality, the more liberal the public would surely be to us and to our enterprise.” Before the first concert Barnum thought the receipts might total $20,000, and he announced that Jenny Lind would give her share, $10,000, to charity. When her share totaled only $8,500, he made up the difference without any announcement of his own liberality. It was one of the ingredients of his disposition which contributed to his success that allowed Barnum, with the knowledge that he had contributed largely to Jenny Lind’s charities, to enjoy in silence what would have caused most men to write indignant letters and institute exorbitant libel suits. Barnum was never indignant publicly, and by laughing at his detractors he always gained the applause of the large numbers of his fellow citizens, who respected him because he was successful and enjoyed him because he was entertaining.
V
There were a hundred men in New York the day after Jenny Lind’s first concert who would have given Barnum $200,000 for his contract. He received offers for an eighth, a tenth, and even a sixteenth of a share in the profits, but he kept the entire contract to himself, for he did not relish assistance which refuses to take a risk. The receipts of the second concert in New York were $14,203.03, and the remaining four concerts there brought in a total of $54,988.81, making the total for the six New York concerts, Jenny Lind’s first appearances, $87,055.89. Then Barnum moved on Boston.
The party left on the _Empire State_ on the evening of September 26. As the steamer passed Blackwells Island, the prisoners were drawn up to greet Jenny Lind. She seemed much pleased and asked Barnum who these enthusiastic lovers of music were, and when she was told that they were prisoners, she hurried to the opposite side of the deck; she could not sympathize with creatures who had done wrong. Along the banks of the East River cheering crowds gathered to salute her, and as the boat passed Fort Adams at half-past two in the morning, the officers serenaded her.
In spite of the rain a large crowd assembled at the Old Colony Depot to welcome Jenny Lind to Boston. The entrance to the Revere House, where she stayed in Boston, was completely blocked with people. Soon after her arrival the Mayor and a group of his selectmen hurried to the hotel and were introduced. The Mayor assured her that, in spite of its reputation, Boston was as cordial as any place in the United States, and that she would find greater appreciation there for her talent than elsewhere. “It is not your superhuman musical endowments,” he added, “that have captivated our senses, it is your unblemished private character, and--” But here Jenny Lind interrupted and asked the Mayor, “What do you know of my private character? What _can_ you know of my private character? Sir, I am no better than other people, no better.” “Madam,” the Mayor insisted, “where there is so much goodness of heart as you display, there must be virtue. Your Christian conduct is sufficient excuse for allusion to your exalted reputation. It has charmed the world; and though small communities may be deceived in their estimate of an individual, the world, I think, cannot. The world has conceded to you all that I have pronounced of your history. Your fame has been domesticated, not only in your own country, but throughout Europe; and in America your name has become a household word. The object of this visit, Miss Lind, on the part of myself and the aldermen and other gentlemen who accompany me, is not to utter fulsome adulations; we have come to do honor to ourselves, and to testify respect for genius and virtue. We are happy to find you in such good health and spirits, and hope that your visit to America may be pleasant.” Jenny Lind’s response was that they praised her too much, and she probably meant it, for she had a very fair sense of proportion.
The people outside the Revere House refused to leave, although they were dripping with rain, until the Mayor requested them to do so. The New York newspapers eagerly copied this account, and the _Tribune_, heading its reprint “Alas for Boston!”, interpolated sarcastic comments on the Mayor’s remarks. The auction of the first ticket in Boston started at $250, twenty-five dollars more than the last bid in New York; as a Boston newspaper expressed the difference, it “at once clapped a broad-brimmed beaver extinguisher upon the flaming glories of the Mammoth Manhattan hatter, and the great city that owned him for its champion. Genin was instantaneously swamped in ticket-buying supremacy. His cake of immortality was dough, his felt and fur transcendentalism was scattered to the four winds, and he sank at once with a crashing souse into a mere eightpenny oblivion.” Ossian F. Dodge, a vocalist, paid $625 for the first ticket. The publicity Genin received had taught others its value, and Dodge paid this high price as an investment, which was successful, for immediately after Jenny Lind’s departure his own concerts were well attended.
Longfellow and the Hon. Edward S. Everett called upon Jenny Lind at her hotel, and the poet was charmed with her personality, and later with her voice. She visited Cambridge and looked through the telescope of the astronomical observatory. As she was gazing at the skies a large meteor crossed the path of the telescope, and some of the newspapers took this as a gigantic omen of “the brilliant reputation which is to attend the great vocalist on her travels through the United States.” But Barnum was attending to the details of that, and he needed no meteor’s assistance. The newspapers were kept supplied daily with fresh stories of Jenny Lind. One of these told of the antics of the coachman who had driven her to the Revere House. In mockery of his unbalanced fellow citizens, he rose on the steps of the hotel, and, extending his hands, shouted to the crowd: “Here’s the hand that lifted Jenny Lind out of the coach, gentlemen. You can, any of you, kiss it, who choose to buy that privilege for five dollars, children half-price.” A Boston newspaper told of the invention of a “Jenny Lind Tea Kettle,” which, “being filled with water and placed on the fire, begins to sing in a few minutes,” and a provision dealer in Lynn, Massachusetts, offered for sale “Jenny Lind Sausages.”
The Boston concerts were successful, and Jenny Lind’s renditions of Handel’s _Messiah_, Haydn’s _Creation_, and Rossini’s _Stabat Mater_ were especially popular. But the last concert in Boston was a riot. It was held in the Fitchburg Depot, a building badly adapted to the needs of a concert hall. Those who had purchased only standing-room stormed the hall early and took many of the seats, which led to the impression that Barnum had sold too many tickets. The hall was without ventilation, for the windows were nailed down, and the heat was oppressive. The audience kept up a loud, indignant conversation to alleviate its discomfort, and it was impossible to hear Belletti’s solo beyond the first rows of the orchestra. While he was singing, some one suggested relief by breaking the windows, and the impromptu accompaniment of the sound of smashing glass gave to his song a weird effect. When Jenny Lind herself appeared, there was more quiet, but not enough for all to hear her. A rumor that the floor would not hold the weight of the crowd threatened to become the source of a panic until Benjamin Peirce, America’s most eminent mathematician, mounted a chair and reassured the crowd by stating it as his emphatic expert opinion that the floor would hold their weight.[10] The confusion continued until the end of the concert. Barnum was threatened with violence by the crowd and was compelled to go to his hotel quietly before the concert was finished. Announcement was made that the tickets which could not be used by their rightful owners because of the appropriation of seats by the mob would be redeemed at cost price, but the mob was angry, and there was much talk of tar and feathers for Barnum, who left Boston the next day, allowing his manager, Le Grand Smith, to pay off the dissatisfied ticket-holders.
This episode, which is one of many omitted from Barnum’s autobiography, caused Jenny Lind to become dissatisfied with her manager. Throughout their tour it was difficult for Barnum to reconcile his methods with her temperament, but this was the first sign of disagreement. Jenny Lind hated crowds, and to Barnum they were a delight as well as a necessity. She hated humbug, a word which was constantly on her lips to describe all that was abhorrent to her; and Barnum called himself the “Prince of Humbugs.” When she heard that Ossian F. Dodge had paid $625 for the first ticket to her Boston concert, she said, “What a fool!”
The newspapers were also angry at Barnum for the riot in the Fitchburg depot, and one of them published an attack upon his methods that accused him openly of fraud. The editor of another Boston newspaper wrote to Barnum: “One of our occasional correspondents has sent an article which I find is in type, handling you very severely. Thinking that you would dislike very much to be placed before the public in an unfavorable light, especially at this particular time, I concluded to write this and say, that if you desire it, I will prevent its appearing in our columns. Please reply by bearer, and believe me, Faithfully yours, ----. P. S. Please loan me one hundred dollars for a few days to aid me in making an improvement in our paper.” Barnum answered: “Sir--I hope you will by no means curtail the privilege of ‘correspondents’ or editors on my account. Publish what you please, so far as I am concerned. I have no money to lend, and never yet paid a farthing ‘blackmail,’ and, _so help me God, I never will_. P. T. Barnum.” Then Barnum published the entire correspondence in the Boston newspapers, omitting the name of the editor.
From Boston the party went to Philadelphia. Philadelphia was determined not to lose its head and heart, as Boston and New York had done, and the audience that assembled in the Chestnut Street Theater was quiet, staid, and cold; they could not have been more skeptical had they been from Missouri. When Belletti came upon the stage, there was a dead silence, and after his song only a few daring hands ventured to break the heavy hostility. Jenny Lind’s appearance was greeted with a few cheers, which were conspicuous for their individuality rather than their communal strength. The first of her arias was received with only slight applause, but when she sang “Take This Lute,” the ice was broken, and the rest of the program was received with enthusiasm appropriate to her reputation.
She returned to New York from Philadelphia, and gave fifteen more concerts in Tripler Hall. At one of these Daniel Webster, who had paid a personal call in Boston, and who impressed her as America’s greatest intellect, heard her sing. He twisted impatiently in his seat while she sang florid arias, and finally whispered to one of his friends, “Why doesn’t she give us one of the simple mountain melodies of her native land?” The remark was overheard and carried to Jenny Lind, who obliged Daniel Webster with the “Mountain Song.” When she finished, he rose in his seat and bowed his large head respectfully and solemnly at the simple maiden who was curtsying to him from the stage.
After dispensing more than $5,000 in public charity, Jenny Lind returned to Philadelphia, and then went to Baltimore, where she was greeted enthusiastically by a crowd, who insisted that she appear on the balcony of her hotel. She dropped her shawl by accident, and the people below fell on top of one another and tore the shawl to bits for souvenirs. During her second visit to Philadelphia she had been subjected to evidences of popularity, but she had a bad headache and refused to appear on the hotel balcony. The crowd would not go away, and finally, in order that Jenny Lind might get rest, Barnum dressed her pious companion, Josephine Åhmansson, in the singer’s cloak and bonnet, and to authenticate the deception he smilingly received the applause of the multitude as he stood by Miss Åhmansson’s side.
In Washington Jenny Lind became a national character. The morning after her arrival President Fillmore called at her hotel and left his card, Jenny Lind being out. She was impressed with this mark of esteem and considered it a command for her presence. She wished to go at once to the White House in answer to the command, but Barnum convinced her that in the United States the President does not command individuals, and that the next morning would be time enough to return the compliment. Barnum and Jenny Lind spent the next evening in the private circle of the President at the White House, and she was charmed with the simplicity of her reception at the American court.
The concerts in Washington were held in a hall that was being built especially for Jenny Lind, and which was not finished when she arrived. Planks instead of steps, unpainted walls and rough benches, were accepted by the President, the members of his cabinet, and the leaders of Washington’s political society, in order that they might hear Jenny Lind sing. Among others, Daniel Webster, General Cass and General Scott were at the first concert. Soon after Benedict began the overture a murmur was heard in the rear of the hall. It died down, and the overture was finished. There was great applause, and Benedict turned to face the audience in gratitude. But the audience was not looking at the stage, and the applause had not been for the overture. The figure of an aged man was slowly advancing to the front of the hall. Every one made way for him, and as he crept along, the shouts and the applause increased. Bowing to the right and to the left, he feebly groped his way to his seat. Finally he reached the seat, and there was silence as all watched him slowly sink into it. Then a voice from the gallery shouted, “Three cheers for Harry Clay!”
On the morning after her first Washington concert Henry Clay called upon Jenny Lind and enjoyed a long conversation with her. Webster sent a note asking for an appointment, and it soon became a matter of state importance for the most prominent senators and representatives to visit her at the hotel. She made the trip to Mt. Vernon, and Colonel Washington, one of the President’s descendants, guided her through the George Washington house and estate. Mrs. Washington gave her a book with his autograph from the first President’s library.
On the occasion of the second concert in Washington the President and the same celebrities attended again, and Barnum was unfortunately persuaded to request Jenny Lind to sing “Hail Columbia,” which was hardly suited to her voice. Even this audience which was anxious to please was not enthusiastic over her rendition of the popular tune, and Barnum after that experience declined to suggest any songs for his star.
Richmond and Charleston paid tribute after Washington had heard Jenny Lind, and then the party left for Havana, Cuba. At Charleston she celebrated Christmas, and she ironically presented Barnum with a statue of Bacchus in Parian marble, which he kept at “Iranistan” for many years.
Jenny Lind was dissatisfied with the dirty hotel in Havana, and she left the rest of the party and went out alone to find a house. She returned a short time later and invited Barnum and his daughter to share with her a pleasant house in a suburban district, where she rested and played ball on the lawn. She insisted that Barnum too must come out on the lawn, but Barnum was getting corpulent, and he tells us that when he grew tired too soon, Jenny Lind would exclaim in “her rich, musical laugh,” “Oh, Mr. Barnum, you are too fat and too lazy; you cannot stand to play ball with me!” In Havana she met again Fredrika Bremer, the Swedish writer, who had been touring America. Fredrika Bremer had known Jenny Lind in Sweden, and when they met in Havana they talked of their Swedish friends, for Jenny Lind seemed reluctant to discuss her concerts or her triumphs. “I fancied,” wrote Fredrika Bremer, “that Jenny Lind was tired of her wandering life and her rôle of singer. We talked of--marriage and domestic life. Of a certainty a change of this kind is approaching for Jenny Lind. But will it satisfy her soul and be enough for her? I doubt.”
An Italian opera company was performing in Havana when Jenny Lind arrived, and the population was divided concerning the relative merits of singing inspired by the cold north, and that which was nurtured in southern warmth. The Creoles favored Jenny Lind, but the Castilians supported the Italians, and all the newspapers were also on their side. There was much sentiment against Barnum because of the high prices he asked for his tickets, and the hall was not crowded when the first concert began. The audience was divided into hostile factions, and Belletti, although he was an Italian, was received in silence and got no applause when he had finished. When Jenny Lind entered, a few daring hands clapped, but they were almost immediately silenced by hisses. This attitude angered her, and she pitted her voice in all its power against this hostility which seemed to her so unreasonable. After her first recitative there was a silent pause. The audience seemed afraid and undecided, but as she prepared to retire, there was a burst of applause, and she was brought back five times. Although encores were forbidden by the rules of the opera house, upon this occasion the regulation was relaxed, and Jenny Lind repeated the _Casta Diva_. Barnum could not restrain tears of joy, as he watched from his post in the wings Jenny Lind’s triumph over hostility. When she came back stage, he rushed up to her and said, “God bless you, Jenny, you have settled them!” She threw her arms about his neck, wept, and asked, “Are you satisfied?”
After four concerts in Havana, although they were financially and artistically successful, the original intention to give twelve concerts there was abandoned, and the party left for New Orleans. On this voyage Jenny Lind was troubled and distressed at the presence in the ship of four hundred reveling gold-hunters from California. When the boat arrived in New Orleans, the wharf was crowded with people who were anxious to welcome her, and she dreaded the encounter, for the quiet of her Havana vacation had increased her hatred of crowds. “Mr. Barnum,” she said, “I am sure I can never get through that crowd.” “Leave that to me,” Barnum answered. He dressed his daughter in a veil, and, taking her arm, proceeded down the gangplank, while Jenny Lind remained in her cabin. Many of the people on the wharf recognized Barnum immediately, and his manager, Le Grand Smith, stood against the rail of the deck, shouting, “Make way, if you please, for Mr. Barnum and Miss Lind.” Barnum and his daughter made their way through the crowd with difficulty and drove to the hotel where Jenny Lind’s suite had been engaged. A few minutes later Jenny Lind drove through the empty, tranquil streets of New Orleans to the hotel.
In New Orleans the concerts were very successful, and after her first appearance, the planters and other wealthy residents of the near-by Mississippi River towns came down the Mississippi to hear her. New Orleans at that time was described by a member of the Jenny Lind party as the city where “drinking seems to hold its chief abiding place in the New World,” and where “drunkenness may be regarded as one of the more prominent features of the lower classes.” Therefore Barnum chose New Orleans as a most appropriate place for his lecture on temperance. He had contributed $500 to the temperance cause, which was under the leadership in Louisiana of Father Matthew. Possibly at Barnum’s dictation or suggestion, Father Matthew wrote to all the newspapers in acknowledgment of this gift. Soon afterwards Mayor Crossman and some of the leading citizens asked Barnum to lecture on temperance. He was in excellent form that evening. He spoke of the poisonous qualities of alcohol, and when a member of the audience asked, “How does it affect us, externally or internally?” Barnum replied, “_E_-ternally.” He spoke for one hour and a quarter, and a contemporary account suggests that another hour would not have been too much. At the end of his temperance lecture he announced the date of Jenny Lind’s last concert, but the demand for tickets was great, and Jenny Lind refused to travel on the Sabbath, so that, not very reluctantly, Barnum was forced to give two farewell concerts. It was at the last concert that, according to the _New Orleans Picayune_ of the next day, “one enthusiastic individual in the pit of the St. Charles’ Theater, who vociferously encored Jenny Lind in the ‘Last Rose of Summer,’ for the third time, finding his ‘call’ not responded to, rushed out and made his way among the quadroon flower-girls on St. Charles Street, asking, ‘Have you got the last rose of summer?--where’s the last rose of summer? I’ll give five--I’ll give ten dollars for the last rose of summer.’”
The concert party proceeded up the Mississippi River, and Jenny Lind gave performances at Natchez and Memphis. At Nashville, Tennessee, they arrived just before April Fool’s Day, and on the first of April Barnum exercised his cruel and unthinking practical sense of humor by obtaining blank telegraph forms and sending his companions and employees alarming despatches from home. Le Grand Smith received a message from his old father in Connecticut that the family homestead was in ashes, and some of the minor employees had offers for their services from banks and other institutions. The musical performers were offered long engagements in New York or London, and one of the married men was informed that he was the father of twins. The next morning they read in a Nashville newspaper an account of the deception, for Barnum was proud of his wit and anxious to make publicity even at the expense of other persons’ anxiety or false hopes. In his early circus days Aaron Turner had played the same kind of trick on him, and he forgot how angry he had been at this type of practical joke.
In Cincinnati the crowd on the wharf was so large that once more Jenny Lind was distressed. The news of how Barnum kept the crowds from Jenny Lind in New Orleans had spread, and it was impossible for him to repeat the trick at Cincinnati. Therefore, this time he took Jenny Lind’s arm. She was heavily veiled. Le Grand Smith shouted from the deck of the ship, “That’s no go, Mr. Barnum, you can’t pass your daughter off for Jenny Lind this time.” The crowd backed away from the couple of celebrities and jeered wisely at Barnum, assuring him that he could fool New Orleans, but not Cincinnati. In five minutes Jenny Lind was in her rooms, and the crowd persisted for an hour on the wharf.
In May, 1851, Barnum and Jenny Lind returned to New York, where she gave fourteen concerts with great success. Then they went to Philadelphia, where three concerts were scheduled, but when Jenny Lind arrived there, she discovered that Barnum had hired the National Theater, which had been used for a circus only a short time before. The dressing room smelled like a stable, and Jenny Lind assured Barnum indignantly that she was not a horse. This disagreement brought to a head other causes of dissatisfaction. Barnum said many times in his autobiography that Jenny Lind’s advisers, and particularly John Jay, who had succeeded his partner, Maunsell B. Field, as Jenny Lind’s legal representative, plagued him continually during the tour. They poured into Jenny Lind’s ears the suggestion that while she was getting large sums of money from Barnum, he was making much more out of her talents. Her secretary, who was anxious to become her manager, used this argument whenever the opportunity presented itself. Also, at this time, Otto Goldschmidt, a young German whom Jenny Lind had known in Europe, joined the party to take the place of Julius Benedict, whose ill health made it necessary for him to return home. This serious student and frigid musician, whose Teutonic personality as gleaned from the few stories about him, leads to the impression that he was more precise than he was interesting, would not have been attracted either by Barnum’s character or his methods.[11] And Jenny Lind, as we shall see, paid special attention to the opinions of Otto Goldschmidt.
Matters reached a crisis after the first of the additional Philadelphia concerts. The latest contract provided that after one hundred concerts either party could terminate the agreement with the consent of the other party. Ninety-three concerts had been given, and Barnum and Jenny Lind agreed to abrogate the contract forthwith. She paid him $1,000 for each of the remaining seven concerts, and the $25,000 agreed upon as the forfeit to be paid for the termination of the contract.
Barnum’s management of the Jenny Lind tour had been successful, but not easy. Besides the constant necessity of keeping up a steady stream of publicity, which was a burden as well as a delight to Barnum, he had to contend with dissatisfied newspapers, beggars, and the dignity of Jenny Lind’s friends, who kept assuring her that after all Barnum was a showman and not an impresario. At the end of the nine months of work and anxiety Barnum was tired of the bickerings and the misunderstandings and the clashes of different temperaments, even if he was not weary of the vanity, the notoriety and the little pleasantries which always characterized his enterprises; so that he was glad to retire for a rest under the gilded domes and shining minarets of “Iranistan,” while Jenny Lind continued to give concerts under her own management.
The ninety-three concerts under Barnum’s management had yielded a total of $712,161.34 in a period of nine months. Of this amount Jenny Lind received from Barnum, besides all her expenses, $208,675.09 as her share of the proceeds, including her guaranteed stipend of $1,000 per concert. She refunded to Barnum $32,000 to break the contract after the ninety-three concerts, so that her net profit from the tour totaled $176,675.09. Barnum’s gross receipts, after paying Jenny Lind her share, were $535,486.25. He never printed what proportion of this was net profit, but his expenses probably reached $350,000.
The Jenny Lind tour, besides the financial profit to the two principals and the beneficial effect on Barnum’s prestige and Jenny Lind’s popularity, had an effect of great importance on the history of music in the United States. No star in her ascendancy had ventured into the barbarous American woods in search of gold, but the success of Jenny Lind, which was so much greater financially and emotionally than any of her European triumphs, opened the eyes of other musical celebrities to possibilities in an American tour; it also awakened American impresarios to the opportunities in this country. Grisi and Mario, who were Europe’s favorites before the Jenny Lind vogue, made plans to visit the United States, and Johanna Wagner at one time entertained that intention. Henriette Sontag visited New York when Jenny Lind was preparing to leave. She enjoyed some success here, due in part to her beauty and charming manner, as well as to her voice, but she did not create a Jenny Lind furor. At the time when Mme. Sontag visited the United States, Von Bülow called her in compliment to her beauty, “a forty-eight-year-old soubrette.” She had many admirers in Europe, and some of these were personal. Lord Clanwilliam, British Ambassador at Berlin, was so persistent in his unwelcome attentions to Mme. Sontag that he was called “Lord Montag following Sontag.” After Barnum retired, Le Grand Smith became an impresario in his own name and brought Mme. Alboni to this country in 1852. Neither of these stars enjoyed the success of Jenny Lind, for, aside from any difference in the qualities of their voices, it was well known that young men in Europe drank champagne from Henriette Sontag’s slipper, and Alboni’s lovers were almost as many as Jenny Lind’s charities: church has always been more popular in America than burlesque.
In 1855 Thalberg came to the United States and was received by appreciative audiences. Barnum imported an Englishwoman, Catherine Hayes, who gave concerts in California, where gold was being discovered. Julien presented a successful series of operas in many large cities. New musical halls were built in New York, Philadelphia, and other populous cities. Less than one year after Jenny Lind left this country, J. S. Dwight, editor of the _Boston Journal of Music_, wrote in his magazine: “Verily, we need not go abroad for music. The last ten days at home have been rich with musical events.... There has been the oratorio of Beethoven, and there has been the Mendelssohn Festival; and there has been another of the choicest and purest kind of Chamber Concerts; and there have been three or four nights of Alboni’s opera; and last, but not the least significant as a sign of the times, the two weekly afternoon orchestra ‘rehearsals,’ both (as usual) largely attended, and one inordinately crowded--either of these were text enough for quite as long a disquisition as could be profitable for one week. We can only take them in their order and pass lightly over topics, any one of which would be a perfect God-send and meat for weeks of gossip and excitement at almost any other time--_as times were once_.”
Credit must be given to Barnum for the impetus to musical enterprise in the United States, even though his intentions were not purely educational or philanthropic. “It is a mistake,” he told a reporter in 1890, “to say the fame of Jenny Lind rests solely upon her ability to sing. She was a woman who would have been adored if she had had the voice of a crow.” It would be a mistake to say that music in America depended for its success on Barnum, but it was his ability as a publicity entrepreneur that caused thousands to realize for the first time what pleasure they had been missing in their ignorance of music. He created a large scale demand, the satisfaction of which was carried out by men of superior musical judgment, but music in the United States was advanced many years in its progress by Barnum’s daring importation and unique exploitation of Jenny Lind.
VI
Jenny Lind continued to give concerts after she and Barnum separated, but her success was not so great as that she had enjoyed under his management. This was due in some measure, and probably very largely, to the absence of Barnum, who was always resourceful in the face of public indifference, which he combated with new inducements. But it was also due to the fact that her novelty was wearing off, and even a public that adored a heroine in white was beginning to find unrelieved perfection dull. A French writer has set it down, “Pretend to a fault if you haven’t one, for the one thing the world never forgives is perfection,” and Jenny Lind had not even a fault she could pretend to. Disraeli once said of Gladstone that he was “a man without a single redeeming vice,” and the characterization fits perfectly the public side of Jenny Lind’s personality. Barnum had succeeded admirably in keeping her perfection a source of delight to the public. His manager, Le Grand Smith, remarked, “Well, Mr. Barnum, you have managed wonderfully in always keeping Jenny’s ‘angel’ side outside with the public.” This accomplishment was admired by showmen and theatrical agents throughout this country and England, and it increased Barnum’s reputation among impresarios as much as the successful management of the concerts raised his esteem with the general public.
It was only after Barnum and Jenny Lind severed their connection that the public began to find fault. Possibly this equivocal perfection would have been penetrated finally, even under Barnum’s management, but while he was her manager he strove energetically to maintain it, and afterwards there was no one capable of taking his place. For almost a year Jenny Lind had been a Dickens heroine in the hearts of Americans, a David Copperfield doll wife to the great sentimental public, and the first intense ardors of love were beginning to relax into the type of criticism in which every husband sooner or later indulges. Behind the crinolines people began to look for humanity and did not rest until they found satisfactory flaws. It was inevitable that this should happen, for, as Fielding has pointed out, characters of angelic perfection in a story are discouraging to the reader, since he must accept “a pattern of excellence which he may reasonably despair of ever arriving at.” The Jenny Lind of public repute represents a character of angelic perfection and a pattern of excellence it would be difficult to emulate; and it was more than likely that there were few who would have cared to make the attempt. While Barnum, another public character, was in the play there was a villain to whom the audience could fasten whatever of pique or dissatisfaction assailed them. Almost as soon as he left the scene, the heroine fell from her pedestal. The newspapers found in Jenny Lind’s actions signs and portents of temperament and irritability, stubbornness and irrationality. In the flood tide of its eulogy the _New York Herald_ had written: “If Jenny Lind has faults, they are like spots on the sun, swallowed up and lost in the glorious effulgence of the luminary of the world.” The spots on the sun were beginning to be faintly discernible, and some newspapers even used telescopes in their efforts to find them. They discovered that she had a strong will, which on occasion could be described as pig-headedness, that when she felt uneasy she was cold and irritable, but instead of loving these imperfections as part of the character of a human being, those newspapers which brought them to light used them iconoclastically to prove that the idol they had set up before their eyes was not pure gold.
When Otto Goldschmidt joined the concert party, he did not add to her popularity. Jenny Lind had first met him in England, where she was attracted to him from the fact that he was a pupil of her friend, Mendelssohn, and because of his ability as a pianist. He played at one of her concerts for charity in England, and he also played solos at several of her provincial concerts. He came to America, and at her suggestion took Julius Benedict’s place. Soon he fell in love with her, or she fell in love with him; there is no record. But eventually they fell in love with each other. There had been rumors of Jenny Lind’s engagement to many persons while she was in this country. Once she told Barnum that she had just heard a rumor that he and she were to be married and asked him how he supposed that had ever originated. “Probably from the fact that we are engaged,” he answered. According to Maunsell B. Field’s book, Signor Belletti was frantically in love with Jenny Lind. Field wrote that “the baritone of the troupe which accompanied her, who was in the same house [The New York Hotel], was madly in love with her, and he used to lie in bed all day, weeping and howling over his unrequited affection.” Before Otto Goldschmidt joined the party at Niagara Falls, where Jenny Lind was resting, she had seemed to show interest in Belletti. She invariably selected him as a companion in her walks, and she appealed to him for advice on all subjects. But the serious young German, who was eight years younger than she was, soon became the dominating force in her life. Belletti despaired and left the company soon after Otto Goldschmidt arrived.
Whenever Otto Goldschmidt played piano solos at her concerts, Jenny Lind sat near him on the stage and fixed her attention on the player. The audience took the hint and applauded his playing,--or possibly her presence. Goldschmidt was apparently a good musician, but there is plenty of newspaper evidence that the public found him dull, and that Jenny Lind found it necessary to force her friend upon her audiences. In Philadelphia he was led to foreshorten his performances on the program because of the excess of obviously ironical applause, but Jenny Lind met him as he came off the stage and defiantly shook his hand in public.
They were married at Boston in February, 1852, and lived quietly for several months at Northampton, Massachusetts. Jenny Lind had never had congenial home life, and she always enjoyed the happy surface surroundings of the families she visited in Germany. There was in her character from the beginning of her womanhood a tendency to shrink from the world, with its dangers, into the arms of a protecting husband, whose intimacy would be a refuge from the distrust she always felt for strangers.
After her marriage Jenny Lind gave a few concerts, and the advertisements always read “Madame Otto Goldschmidt (late Mlle. Jenny Lind).” But she was tired of public life, and although Otto Goldschmidt was in favor of a few more profitable concerts, she was anxious to return to Europe as soon as possible. This decision was wise, if we can judge from a Philadelphia newspaper of December 19, 1851:
“Jenny Lind has resolved to give no more concerts in Philadelphia; few persons will regret her determination, unless she should be able to better suppress the evidences of ill temper and vexation than she did on Tuesday evening last. She looked as stingey as a hive of wasps, and as black as a thunder-cloud, and all because the house was not crowded. The fact is that Jenny Lind’s attractions were not strong enough to counteract the dullness of Goldschmidt’s piano playing, or the merely mediocre ability of Burke on the violin. The absence too of orchestra was a disgusting exhibition of parsimony, and a determination to make the most money she possibly could. Miss Lind has never succeeded since she left the guardianship of Mr. Barnum; and then she has had poor advisers, and has been in ill humor when even the homage paid to her talent was not manifested with the greatest enthusiasm. The nightingale has feathered her nest well in our country, and she can go back to her Swedish home where we wish her long health, a better disposition and a good husband to cheer her declining years.”
Barnum saw her several times after the end of their agreement, for they were still very friendly to each other. She told him that she found it annoying to give concerts under her own management, because people were constantly cheating her.
Madame Otto Goldschmidt (late Mlle. Jenny Lind) announced her farewell concert at Castle Garden for Monday, May 24, 1852. The concert was well attended, but not crowded. It rained heavily on May 24, 1852, and that may have been one reason for the moderate attendance, but one cannot believe that Barnum would have allowed rain to interfere with the positively last appearance in America of The Swedish Nightingale. It was estimated by a newspaper that the receipts for the last concert were $7,000; the receipts of the first concert under Barnum’s management had been $17,864.05, and none of his concerts held in Castle Garden yielded less than $10,000.
Jenny Lind sang a “Farewell to America,” the words of which were written specially for her use by C. P. Cranch, but it did not cause enthusiasm. The _New York Herald_, her erstwhile champion, and many of the other New York newspapers, did not trouble to review her farewell concert, contenting their readers with short notes concerning it. The _Herald_ that had called Jenny Lind the most popular woman the world had ever known, the same _Herald_ that had compared her genius to that of Raphael, Shakespeare, Columbus, Eli Whitney, Napoleon, Bacon, Dante and Michael Angelo, sent her from America with these words: “There has been very little of the classic or pure artistic in her concerts; and she has been applauded not as an artist, but as a clever vocalist.” That sun, whose spots the _Herald_ said were “swallowed up and lost in the glorious effulgence,” was setting more rapidly, perhaps, than a real sun should, and the _Herald_ itself with characteristic inconsistency would doubtless have admitted that possibly it was only a sky rocket.
Barnum visited Jenny Lind in her dressing room after her last concert. She told him that she would never sing in public again, but he reminded her that her voice was a gift Providence had invested in her for the edification and delight of her fellow men, and that she owed it to God and man to devote that voice to charity and mankind’s enjoyment, if she herself no longer needed money. “Ah! Mr. Barnum,” she answered, “that is very true, and it would be ungrateful in me to not continue to use for the benefit of the poor and lowly that gift which our kind Heavenly Father has so graciously bestowed upon me. Yes, I will continue to sing so long as my voice lasts, but it will be mostly for charitable objects, for I am thankful to say I have all the money which I shall ever need.” The New Messiah and her advance agent in pious obeisance paid tribute to their idea of a beneficent Providence, whose all-seeing eye watches over both a Swedish Nightingale and a Connecticut Yankee.
At one o’clock of the morning of Jenny Lind’s departure, only a few hundred people gathered for a farewell serenade. The hour, and the fact that it was still raining, undoubtedly prevented a larger attendance, but the conviction that she was no longer a goddess contributed somewhat to the neglect. The firemen were her only faithful admirers. In gratitude for her donations they presented her with a copy of Audubon’s _Birds and Quadrupeds of America_ in a rosewood case, and also with a gold box, seven inches by three inches, the largest gold box made in America up to that time, they said. The Musical Society was not present at the serenade, but the same number of firemen, three hundred, with their red shirts and their lighted torches, waited in the rain under her window.
“Jenny Lind O! Jenny Lind O! Come to the window!”
But in spite of the cries of several hundred admirers, Madame Otto Goldschmidt and her husband refused to appear on the balcony.
At the dock when her ship left two thousand people gathered to make a noise, in contrast to the thirty thousand who had shoved their way to greet her. The _Herald_ on the morning of her departure gave her this parting thrust: “She has been principally engaged in singing pieces of operas and catches of all kinds, which were considerably more of the clap-trap style than in accordance with the rigid rules of classical music. When she returns to London and makes her reappearance in opera, she will have to prune away a great deal of her _ad libitum_ redundancies in which she indulged during her career in this land.” This was the same woman whose song seemed to the _Herald_ of a little more than a year before to be “melting into the song of the seraphim” until it was “lost in eternity.”
After her return to England, where she and her husband settled eventually, Jenny Lind was rarely heard in public. She and Otto Goldschmidt lived at Malvern Hills, where near by there are the three things she admired most, “trees, water, and a cathedral.” She gave a few oratorio concerts in England and several concerts for charity on the Continent, but after her marriage her retirement was practically complete. It is significant of her character that without a pang of regret she could still her voice as soon as she changed her name from Jenny Lind to Madame Otto Goldschmidt. After 1863 she was seldom heard in public, even for charity, although she was only forty-three years old. Her last appearance took place in 1883, and in 1887 she died at Malvern Hills, England, after suffering from complete paralysis for five weeks.
At one time Jenny Lind intended to write an autobiography, but when the public did not receive Carlyle’s _Reminiscences_ with the applause she thought it deserved, she abandoned her idea with the comment, “No! let the waves of oblivion pass over my poor little life!” There must have been moments in those later years of uninterrupted existence along common family lines when Jenny Lind was restless--for what, she did not know; but, unfortunately for the development of her talents, in such moments she could always take quick refuge in God. Some pagan influences might have made her a great woman, for the God she adored had done all he could in the way of native gifts. If she had listened to the dictates of her emotions with half the unresisting attention she paid to the Bishop of Norwich and Josephine Åhmansson, the world to-day would know of Jenny Lind as something more than the spiritual toy of its grandfathers. The development of her talents and personality into genius was thwarted by suppression of the ordinary aims and aspirations of men. She smothered her desire for money by an inordinate indulgence in charity; a more natural appetite for worldly possessions might have led to artistic tastes, of which there is absolutely no indication beyond the technical development of her voice. Even in music there is no important discrimination and no predilection for the great, and of literature and art she knew nothing, because she did not allow herself even the little mental freedom necessary for their wide acquaintance. The desire for fame was lost in a constant consideration of God, making man’s aspirations unimportant in her mind. She could write to a young boy who was just entering the University of Heidelberg, when she herself was still under thirty: “You are just going to begin life, dear Rudolph; and life has quite as much joy as it has sorrow: but I, for my part, prefer the sorrow: for there is something exalted about it, whenever one’s heart is full of pain: for then it is that we first feel how poor we are on earth, how rich in heaven.” Any tendency towards intellectual supremacy through the agency of her great natural voice was thwarted by her weak dependence upon the advice of others, leading eventually to the retirement of marriage.
It was rumored that Jenny Lind’s last years were unhappy, that she was treated with indifference by her husband, and that her grave in 1890 had fallen into neglect. This story, printed in a London newspaper and reprinted by the _New York Tribune_, was denied vigorously by Barnum. He said that he had visited Otto Goldschmidt in London, and that he happened to know that Jenny Lind’s husband sent fresh flowers to her grave every day. The London newspaper had printed that she died broken-hearted, but Barnum declared confidently, “Her whole life was a song, and her last days were spent in singing for indigent clergymen.”
In their introduction Jenny Lind’s biographers wrote: “And, certainly, the tale of Jenny Lind may well be told for the sake of bearing splendid witness, to all those who feel themselves stirred by some inherent native power, of the unconquerable force with which a pure and strong individuality, if it be true to the inner light and loyal to the outward call, can dominate circumstances, however harsh and rude, and can, with a single eye on the far goal of artistic perfection, and upheld by faith in God, move straight to its aim with an unswerving and irresistible security, shaping its passage, amid pitfalls and snares, over this perilous earth with a motion as free and sure and faithful as a star that passes, in unhindered obedience, over the steady face of heaven.” This is not, to my mind, the main interest of Jenny Lind’s life. In her existence and triumphs lies a tale wherein is contained the extraordinary circumstances by which a mädchen who wanted most to be a hausfrau attained by means of a sweet and charitable disposition and a superb voice to a celebrity as well, and failed to become a great artist because she succeeded so well in becoming a hausfrau.