Ten Girls from History

by Kate Dickinson Sweetser

"Am I then so incapable," she thought. Then glancing at her teacher she saw tears in the eyes of the older woman, who exclaimed:

"My child, I have nothing to teach you—do as nature tells you,"—and Jenny knew that her supreme effort had not been wasted.

It is said that she studied the part of Agatha with all the intensity of her enthusiastic nature and at the last rehearsal sang with such intense feeling and fire that the orchestra, to a man, laid down their instruments and applauded loudly. The next day, before the performance, she was very nervous and worried, but the moment she appeared on the stage every bit of apprehension vanished, and as Fredrika Bremer said, "She was fresh, bright and serene as a morning in May, peculiarly graceful and lovely in her whole appearance. She seemed to move, speak and sing without effort or art. Her singing was distinguished especially by its purity and the power of soul which seemed to swell in her tones." Jenny herself said afterwards, "I got up that morning one creature. I went to bed another creature. I had found my power."

During her entire after life she kept that anniversary, the seventh of March, in grateful remembrance of her triumph, as a sort of second birthday.

For the next year and a half she worked indefatigably, and her success as an operatic singer seemed assured; she became the star of the Stockholm opera, as well as the most popular singer in Sweden, and was called the "Swedish Nightingale."

After singing without rest for months, she was able to take a short holiday in the summer of 1839, and Fru Lind, who accompanied her, wrote back to her husband, "Our Jenny recruits herself daily, now in the hay-stacks, now on the sea, or in the swing, in perfect tranquillity, while the town people are said to be longing for her concert, and greatly wondering when it will come off. Once or twice she has been singing the divine air of Isabella from Robert le Diable. Nearly everybody was crying. One lady actually went into hysterics from sheer rapture. Yes, she captivates all, all! It is a great happiness to be a mother under such conditions!"

Poor Fru Lind was at last receiving her compensation for the hardships of her life!

But Jenny's trials were not yet over. Her voice, though pure and clear, was wanting in flexibility, and she could not easily hold a tone or sing even a slight cadence. These defects she worked constantly to overcome, but saw that she was not thrilling her audiences as before, and yet she was conscious of possessing a God-given power of which she must make the most. She felt sure that she needed teaching of a kind not to be gained in Sweden. In Paris was Manuel Garcia, the greatest singing teacher in the world, and to him she felt she must now go. But this could only be achieved by her own effort, as the trip and the teaching would necessitate spending a large sum of money.

At once, before her star had grown any less dim, the plucky girl persuaded her father to go with her on a concert tour of cities in Norway and Sweden. By this she earned the necessary amount, but the trip was very exhausting, including as it did, so much travelling, in all kinds of weather, and after singing twenty-three times in Lucia, fourteen times in Robert le Diable, nine times in Freischutz, seven times in Norma, not to mention other plays and concerts, also appearing for the four hundred and forty-seventh time at the Royal Theatre, where she had first played in the Polish Mine, as a child of ten, she was pretty well tired out. Two weeks later, however, she went to Paris and called on the great singing teacher, Signor Garcia. The opera she sang was Lucia, and she broke down before she was half way through the part, to her intense mortification. The great teacher, approaching the trembling girl, put a hand on her shoulder, saying brusquely, "It would be useless to teach you, Mademoiselle. You have no voice left. You are worn out. I advise you not to sing a note for six months. At the end of that time come to me and I will see what I can do for you."

Poor Jenny! The words were a death knell to her, and she said afterwards that what she suffered in that moment was beyond all the other agony of her life.