One prefers to write to those for whom one has the most to tell, and I have an ink-stand full of gossip about the great Jenny, which, though it might hardly be news to those who have the run of the sidewalk, may possibly be interesting where the grass grows. Nothing else is talked of, and now and then a thing is said which escapes the omniverous traps of the daily papers. Upon the faint chance of telling you something which you might not otherwise hear without coming to town, I put my ink-stand into the clairvoyant state, and choose you for the listener with whom to put it “in communication.”
Jenny has an imperfection—which I hasten to record. That she might turn out to be quite too perfect for human sympathy, has been the rock ahead in her navigation of popularity. “Pretend to a fault if you haven’t one,” says a shrewd old writer, “for, the one thing the world never forgives is perfection.” There was really a gloomy probability that Jenny would turn out to be that hateful monstrosity—a woman without a fault—but the suspense is over. She cannot mount on horseback without a chair! No lady who is common-place enough to love, and marry, and give her money to her husband, ever climbed more awkwardly into a side-saddle than Jenny Lind. The necessity of finding something in which she was surpassed by somebody, has been so painfully felt, “up town,” that this discovery was circulated, within an hour after it was observed, to every corner of the fashionable part of the city. She occupies the private wing of the New-York Hotel, on the more secluded side of Washington Place, and a lady eating an ice at the confectioner’s opposite, was the fortunate witness of this her first authenticated human weakness. Fly she may! (is the feeling now,) for, to birds and angels it comes easy enough—but she is no horsewoman! Fanny Kemble, whom we know to be human, beats her at that!
Another liability of the divine Jenny has come to my knowledge, though I should not mention it as a weakness without some clearer light as to the susceptibilities of the angelic nature. It was mentioned to a lady-friend of mine, that, on reading some malicious insinuations as to the motives of her charities, published a few days since in one of the daily papers of this city, she wept bitterly. Now, though we mourn that the world holds a man who would so groundlessly belie the acts of a ministering angel, there is still a certain pleasure in knowing that she, too, is subject to tears. We love her more—almost as much more as if tears were human only—because injustice can reach and move so pure a creature, as it can us. God forbid that such sublime benevolence, as this munificent singing girl’s, should be maligned again—but so might Christ’s motive in raising Lazarus have been misinterpreted, and we can scarce regret that it has once happened, for, we know, now, that she is within the circle in which we feel and suffer. Sweet, tearful Jenny! She is one of us—God bless her!—subject to the cruel misinterpretation of the vile, and with a heart in her angelic bosom, that, like other human hearts, needs and pleads to be believed in!
I made one of the seven thousand who formed her audience on Saturday night; and, when I noticed how the best music she gave forth during the evening was least applauded—the Hon. Public evidently not knowing the difference between Jenny Lind’s singing and Mrs. Bochsa Bishop’s, nor between Benedict’s composition and Bellini’s—I fell to musing on the secret of her charm over four thousand of those present—(allowing one thousand to be appreciators of her voice and skill, and two thousand to be honest lovers of her goodness, and the remaining four thousand, who were also buyers of five-dollar tickets, constituting my little problem.)
I fancy, the great charm of Jenny Lind, to those who think little, is, that she stands before them as an angel in possession of a gift which is usually entrusted only to sinners. That God has not made her a wonderful singer and there left her, is the curious exception she forms to common human allotment. To give away more money in charity than any other mortal and still be the first of primas donnas! To be an irreproachably modest girl, and still be the first of primas donnas! To be humble, simple, genial, and unassuming, and still be the first of primas donnas! To have begun as a beggar-child, and risen to receive more adulation than any Queen, and still be the first of primas donnas! To be unquestionably the most admired and distinguished woman on earth, doing the most good and exercising the most power, and still be a prima donna that can be applauded and encored! It is the combination, of superiorities and interests, that makes the wonder—it is the concentrating of the stuff for half-a-dozen heroines in one simple girl, and that girl a candidate for applause—that so vehemently stimulates the curiosity. We are not sufficiently aware, I have long thought, that the world is getting tired of single-barrelled greatness. You must be two things or more—a revolver of genius—to be much thought of, now. There was very much such a period in Roman history. Nero found it by no means enough to be an Emperor. He went on the stage as a singer. With the world to kill if he chose, he must also have the world’s willing admiration. He slept with a plate of lead on his stomach, abstained from all fruits and other food that would affect his voice, poisoned Britannicus because he sang better than himself, and was more delighted when encored than when crowned. So sighed the Emperor Commodus for a two-story place in history, and went on the stage as a dancer and gladiator. Does any one suppose that Queen Victoria has not envied Jenny Lind? Does Washington Irving, as he sits at Sunnyside, and watches the sloops beating up against the wind, feel no discontent that he is immortal only on one tack? No! no! And it is in America that the atmosphere is found (Oh prophetic e pluribus unum!) for this plurality of greatness. Europe, in bigotry of respect for precedent, forgets what the times may be ready for. Jenny Lind, when she gets to the prompt, un-crusted and foreshadowing West of this country, will find her six-barrelled greatness for the first time subject to a single trigger of appreciation. Queens may have given her lap-dogs, and Kings may have clasped bracelets on her plump arms, but she will prize more the admiration for the whole of her, felt here by a whole people. It will have been the first time in her career, (if one may speak like a schoolmaster,) that the heaven-written philactery of her worth will have been read without stopping to parse it. Never before has she received homage so impulsive and universal—better than that, indeed, for like Le Verrier’s planet, she was recognised, and this far-away world was vibrating to her influence, long before she was seen.
One wonders, as one looks upon her soft eyes, and her affectionate profusion of sunny hair, what Jenny’s heart can be doing, all this time? Is fame a substitute for the tender passion? She must have been desperately loved, in her varied and bright path. I saw a student at Leipsic, who, after making great sacrifices and efforts to get a ticket to her last concert at that place, gave it away, and went to stroll out the evening in the lonely Rosenthal, because he felt his happiness at stake, and could not bear the fascination that she exercised upon him. Or, is her rocket of devotion divided up into many and more manageable little crackers of friendship? Even that most impassioned of women, Madam George Sand, says:—“Si l’on rencontrait une amitié parfaite dans toute sa vie, on pourrait presque se passer d’amour.” Do the devoted friendships, that Jenny Lind inspires, make love seem to her but like the performance, to one listener, of a concert, the main portion of whose programme has hitherto been sufficient for so many? We would not be disrespectful with these speculations. To see such a heaven as her heart untenanted, one longs to write its advertisement of “To Let.” Yet it would take polygamy to match her; for, half-a-dozen poets, two Mexican heroes, several dry-goods merchants, and a rising politician, would hardly “boil down” into a man of gifts enough to be worthy of her. The truth is, that all “institutions” should be so modified as not to interfere with the rights of the world at large; and, matrimony of the ordinary kind—(which would bestow her voice like a sun dial in a grave)—would rob the Public of its natural property in Jenny Lind. But an “arrangement” could be managed with no unreasonable impoverishment of her husband; for, a month of her time being equal to a year of other people’s, her marriage contract might be graduated accordingly—eleven months reserved to celibacy and fame. It is a “Procrustes bed,” which cuts all love of the same length, and what “committee of reference” would not award a twelfth of Jenny Lind as an equivalent consideration for the whole of an average husband?
Doubting whether I should ever venture upon so delicate a subject again, I will make a good round transgression of it, by recording a little bit of gossip, to show you that the fond Public is capable of its little jealousy, like other lovers. There is a Swedish settlement in Michigan, which, on Jenny’s arrival, sent a committee of one—a young Swedish officer who had given up his epaulettes for the plough—to ask a contribution for the building of a church. Jenny promptly gave five hundred dollars, and the deputation was very contented with that—but added the trifling request for a doxology in the shape of a Daguerreotype of the donor. Willing as a child to give pleasure to the good, the sweet nightingale drove straight to Brady’s, allowed the happy sun to take her portrait, and gave it to her countryman. But now comes the part of it which the enamoured Public does not like—for, the Committee stays on! Instead of going home to set those carpenters to work, he is seen waiting to help Jenny into her carriage after the concerts, and, in the comments made upon this, his looks are pulled to pieces in a way that shows how any approach to a monopoly of her is jealously resented. Fancy the possibility of a small settlement in Michigan having such a “new settler” as Jenny Lind!
There is an indication that Providence intended this remarkable woman for a citizen of no one country, in the peculiar talent she possesses as a linguist. A gentleman who resided in Germany when she was there, told me yesterday that one of the delights the Germans found, in her singing and in her society, was the wonderful beauty of her pronunciation of their language. It was a common remark that she spoke it “better than a German,” for, with her keen perception and fine taste, she threw out the local abbreviations and corruptions of the familiar dialect, and, with her mastery of sound, she gave every syllable its just fulness and proportion. She is perfect mistress of French, and speaks English very sweetly, every day making rapid advance in the knowledge of it.
Several of our fashionable people are preparing to give large parties, as soon as the fair Swede is willing to honor them with her company, but she is so beset, at present, that she needs the invisible ring of Gyges even to get a look at the weather without having “an audience” thrown in. She can scarce tell, of course, what civilities to accept, or who calls to honor her or who to beg charity, but her unconquerable simplicity and directness serve to evade much that would annoy other people.