Ole Bull: A Memoir

by Sara Chapman Thorp Bull

September found Ole Bull again in Norway; and a friend wrote thus of his return:—

Feeling as if the very soil of Europe had repelled him, he returned to Christiania. It was a wet autumn evening, and he went to the theatre, the musical direction of which he had given up. While standing there in a dark corner, he was soon recognized, and it was whispered through the house, “Ole Bull has returned;” then, the whisper rising into a loud cry, the violinist was called to the direction of the orchestra; and on his taking the bâton the audience called for the national anthem, thus welcoming him as with the heart of the nation.

To go to Paris, to hear De Beriot, Baillot, and Berlioz, now became his absorbing plan. In the summer of 1830 he visited Trondhjem and Bergen, and gave three concerts, from which he made five hundred dollars. In August, 1831, he went by sea to Ostend, and thence directly to Paris. Seven years passed before he saw Norway again, but good reports soon came from him, and these grew in number and frequency. When he finally came himself, his reputation was made.

His stay in Paris was a venture which brought him many hardships, but which ended like a fairy–tale in a piece of good fortune. His recommendations from home opened no serviceable doors to him, and to his violin no one seemed willing to listen. A passer–by might stop for a moment and ask, “Who lives here? He plays well.” A grisette might open her window across the street, and look at “le pauvre jeune homme la.” A melancholy acquaintance among the German musicians might sit down before him in unavailing admiration. But no lessons from Baillot, no engagement at the Grand Opéra, and every day the purse growing leaner and leaner. The cholera was raging terribly in Paris during that winter of 1831. The Revolution of the previous July was still a vivid memory, and under the feverish excitement of danger and death the pulse of life beat with double rapidity in the great city. Madame Malibran was singing at the Opéra, and the house was crowded nightly by the enthusiastic Parisians. In the topmost gallery, in one of the cheapest seats, might be seen a tall young man with feverish eyes, drinking in those tones with his whole soul.

He had still sufficient means to carry him through the winter; but an elderly gentleman who lived in the same house, and who, with a shrewd mingling of cordiality and dignity, played the part of a fatherly friend, contrived to win his confidence, and persuaded him that, in the disturbed state of financial affairs, his money was not safe where he had deposited it. He therefore drew it from the bank. The following morning found him robbed of everything but an old suit of clothes, and his paternal friend gone. He was now reduced to extreme want; but an acquaintance, accidentally meeting him, recommended him to Madame Charon, with whom he himself boarded, and who kept a house patronized chiefly by German music teachers and scholars. She offered to receive Ole Bull until he could hear from home, his friend giving security for sixty francs a month, which provided the young man with black bread for breakfast, and, towards evening, with a dinner of two slices of meat, the first course of soup being much like that which made the sailor boy exclaim, “This is very good; I have found one pea!”

As time went on Madame began to look suspicious, and his friend’s manner grew cold. One morning at breakfast, a stranger appeared, who at once attracted his attention. He had black, rough hair, his complexion was olive, his eyes black, large, and penetrating. His expression was cynical, but refined; his conversation cold and ironical; his figure thin and wasted; in short, he looked quite a Mephistopheles. He made a bad impression on young Bull. When told by his friend that the man was a detective, he said that he had suspected as much, which was overheard, and at first made the stranger very angry, but when Ole replied in a calm, manly way his bearing suddenly changed to one of kindly interest in the violinist. “May I trouble you a moment, sir?” Mephistopheles said; “I have something to tell you. Not far from here, in the Rue Vaugirard, is an estaminet where we shall be undisturbed;” and thither they went. It was one of those public houses where the lamp is kept burning all day, and young men, who look as if they had not slept at night, move round the billiard–tables in their shirt–sleeves, pipes in their mouths, and glasses filled with eau de vie on the window–seats and the chimney–pieces.

“Listen,” said the stranger. “I know you are in want; but follow my advice; you must try your luck at play.” “But I have no money.” “You must manage to get five francs; then go to–night, between ten and eleven o’clock, not earlier, to Frascati’s, in the Boulevard Montmartre. Mount the stairs, ring the bell, and give your hat boldly to the liveried servant in attendance; enter the hall, go straight to the table, put your five francs on the red, and let it remain there.”

The young man ran home, raised the five francs, and was on the spot at the appointed hour. He made his way to the green table, surrounded by ladies and gentlemen playing at trente et quarante. He placed his five francs on the red, but through his awkwardness it rolled over to the black, and was lost. He stood as if struck by lightning, without a sous in his pocket. He came to himself on hearing, “Messieurs, faites vos jeux.” He called, “Cinq francs,” but his foreign accent made it sound like “Cent francs,” and one hundred francs were shoved over to him as his winnings. He stands pale for a moment, unable to speak or move; then places his money on the red, and wins once, again, and yet again, until, at last, eight hundred francs in gold lie in a heap before him. “I was in a fever,” he said, when relating the adventure later; “I acted as if possessed by a spirit not my own. No one can understand my feelings who has not been so tried, left alone in the world, as if on the extreme verge of existence, with the abyss yawning beneath, and at the same time feeling something within that might merit a saving hand at the last moment.” Suddenly, from amid the crowd surrounding the table, a delicate hand, gleaming with diamonds, glided over the golden pile; but the iron hand of the Norwegian grasped the little white one. A woman’s shriek was heard; several voices called out, “À la porte! à la porte!” But a man near Ole Bull, in a calm, clear voice that seemed to command all in the room, said: “Madame, leave this gold alone;” and to Bull: “Monsieur, take your money, if you please.” It was his strange friend, who, as he afterwards learned, was none other than Vidocq, the famous Parisian chief of police. All give way, the lady turns pale, and Ole Bull mechanically seizes the gold, but, riveted to the spot, sees red winning till the end of the taille. Had he had the courage, and left his money there, he would that very night have won a small fortune. Meanwhile, he had the eight hundred francs in his pocket; but it was only on reaching his room and drawing them out, and hearing the metallic clink and seeing the glitter, that he convinced himself he was not dreaming. “What a hideous joy I felt,” he said; “what a horrid pleasure to hold in the hand one’s own soul saved by the spoil of others!” Singularly enough, he never saw Vidocq again. He soon learned that a man could not be true to his art or himself who yielded to the insane excitement of the then polite recreation of gambling.

The artist’s note–book, written in pencil, tells us that a house to which he removed through the aid of the Swedish ambassador, Count Lovenhjelm, was soon after invaded by cholera, which was then epidemic in Paris, and that he walked the deserted streets many a night, listening to the moans of the dying in the infected houses, hastening his steps past doors which opened for the egress of those bearing the dead.

He was again reduced to want and almost hopeless. The waters of the Seine had an alluring sound as they murmured between the stone piers of the bridges, while the noise and glare of the Parisian streets, muffled or diminished by the influence of the pest, seemed to him peculiarly repulsive and disheartening. The idea of suicide, however, it was easy to keep down; but how subdue the fever which, from the despair of the moment and the natural excitement of his nervous system, began to affect his brain?