Chapter VII: The Swedish Nightingale in the American Woods (2)

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.