Chapter VII: The Swedish Nightingale in the American Woods (1)

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.)”

Engraving from a daguerreotype

_Houdini Collection_]

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.”