Ole Bull: A Memoir

by Sara Chapman Thorp Bull

FROM REV. DR. BARTOL’S MEMORIAL SERMON, OCTOBER 10, 1880.

“I have raised up one from the North.” Isaiah, xli. 25.—It is a curious case of the truth of the old Bible to nature, or rather of the coincidence of the two, that both make more physical and moral account of the north point of the compass than of the south. “Fair weather,” saith the book of Job, “cometh out of the north;” and thence, too, in all ages, has come the clearing of the social sky. All the old prophets and modern geographical scientists, like Mr. Buckle, agree. The south, says the old writ, is “invaded” with “whirlwinds” and armed men. The upper strong Barbarians fall upon to purge the dissolute empire of Rome. From high latitudes come the Scandinavian rovers to be converted into English lords. From Norway, the north way, comes Leif Ericson before Columbus to discover America and have his monument, let us trust, in these last days; and more than forty years ago, yet in the memory of many that hear me, Ole Bull, whom his friend and compeer of kindred genius, the poet and novelist now among us, Björnstjerne Björnson, calls “our greatest citizen,” at his burial in the land where seventy years ago he was born, dying in his own house on the Isle of Light or Lysö of a malignant disease, yet with little pain and in full possession of his powers till within a half hour of his expiring breath....

I must not omit my thanks for the delight Ole Bull gave with his violin at his first coming to this country more than forty years ago. From the touch of his bow, as if Neptune were speaking to the sea, a wave swept over the land from that ocean of harmony that slumbers in the human soul. Out of the same deeps came a second wave at the voice, much later among us, of Jenny Lind. Technical criticism cannot countervail much when a man has just wrought a miracle on the spot, and the United States rose to this as, in the same calling, never to any other man. Young and green then, as respects concord and melody, we may have been. The matchless personal grace of the musician, alike at thirty and three–score, may have had its part in the effect. Who that saw it does not remember the appearance that, as Björnson says, made it here, as well as in Norway on his return, “a feast to look at him;” the supple sway that was rhythm in his frame, so tall, with its breadth of shoulder and tapering waist, the firm feet which the broad platform seemed not worthy to be a stool for, the arms of wrought steel, more flexible than willow wands, the face in which, as much as in any countenance we ever beheld, the smile was a benediction, and the hair that was tossed about his brow as if inspired with the unison of the strings; and had he spoken on the stage where he stood, the whole audience would have known as well as some of us in private soon did, that the violin was not, and no instrument made with hands could be, so sweet as the voice. He was embodied beauty and an incarnate hymn—a mesmeric, irresistible man....

His speech, of which I shall give some samples as I close, like Anton Rubinstein’s, was as rare and original as his notes. He was not, like some people I have known, marvelous in a performance as of a sermon or a tune, and, on leaving desk or orchestra, with nought of interest left, the whole man gone, spent, exploded in what had been sounded or said. To be a true artist is a wonderful thing. But into the artist the whole of him, as of none truly great or good, could not be put....

But musical was with him largely a form of patriotic feeling, and for love of liberty for himself and all men he was a living flame. He respected more the nobility of nature than of political schemes. The pretensions of barons and earls in England or elsewhere, not backed up by personal merit, were nought to him, mere ciphers, deriving all their value from their situation in a column. In the honest but reactionary King of Norway he had a social friend; but, in pushing the right assumed of veto against laws of the Norwegian parliament, this little potentate of two or three millions of subjects became his diplomatic foe; and Ole Bull represented the peasant population of the kingdom. It was natural he should sympathize strongly with us against secession and slavery in our civil war, and he maintained our cause abroad as warmly as he did in our midst. Like David, he declared God’s statute of freedom, “speaking of his testimonies before kings and was not ashamed.”...

It remains to consider Ole Bull not only as an artist and patriot, but man; for, beyond all else, he was humane, cosmopolite, a citizen of the world, and did not distinguish himself, save by genius which he could not help, from other men, but was in union and close communion with all; and detract as we may from a man’s talents, or criticise as we will his accomplishments, the fact of a great wide and common love for him and from him cannot be set aside. He was a magnet. Living nearer to the North Pole, had he borrowed a bit of the lodestone that poises the planet? His attraction was as constant and inexhaustible for the world. A young man, a natural player, from our rough Cape Ann yonder, seeks him abroad to get lessons, and Ole welcomes him at once. “How did you like him?” the young man was asked. “Like him? I cannot say enough to tell you.” Money went from him, as it came, like wind or water. Being unpractical if not careless almost to a fault, he was imposed upon by a false title of land for a Norwegian colony in Pennsylvania; charges for litigation were added; he had intended to buy a ship to transport the colonists at his own expense,—and out of pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars, he became poor, sick, and subject to arrest. He said, “I shall pursue the swindlers;” then, reflecting, he remarked: “That is not according to the Master’s precept, but if I kiss my enemy what have I left for my friend?” “My friends,” he said, “will never defraud me, for they know I am theirs.” “I am not content,” he told me, “with the golden rule, for I cannot expect others to do to me as I do to them.” He was not a professor of Christianity or of religion in any form. He informed me he got such a shock and revulsion from the doctrines he heard preached in his youth that he was permanently alienated from going to church; but so much the worse for the Christians if they reject and excommunicate him. He said to me: “They showed me so many statues and images, coarse or blood–colored, in Italy, it made me sick and I wanted to see a cow!” Why, I inquired of him, do the manufacturers of violins not illustrate the law of evolution, and make as good instruments at least as Stradivarius, Amati, and Gaspar da Salo? “Because,” he answered, “they do not consider it a holy mission.” Earnest in his nature, like the hot geysers of the North, he was as winsome in his manners as any prince of the East; and, I doubt not, a true test would detect blood of the Orient in his veins, as he said he learned from Italy what it is to sing. Yet Norway, says Björnson, gave to his music its theme or ground, and well does Henrik Wergeland make Norway herself sing to him.

We must, he one day told me, see our fellow’s errors and sins, but often “not say what we see,” putting his long forefinger on his lips as he spoke. He graciously insinuated, rather than bluntly asserted, what he thought. At the Chestnut Street club he made a marvelous speech, in which he praised the curvilinear instead of direct style of the Spanish tongue. He preferred suggestion to proposition, as do all the likewise finely–strung. But, although he had no dogmas to offer, never lived one who accredited more the being of God and immortality of the soul, and the immense superiority of unseen supernal forces to the seen. Thus he lived an ideal life, free from mercenary aims, so charming and enchanting men that his name became a household word, and the great manager in any city had to spend little time or means advertising him, if it were in the air that the magician would come....

Honor, then, in this sacred place, to the man and artist, Ole Bull. He held a sublime and tricksy, yet utterly simple bow. If he lifted us, round after round, to heaven, he could lower us, too, with his art, gently and safely to the ground.... He displayed wondrous tone–gyrations, and never, as with a wooden rule, drew mechanical parallel lines. He was a troubadour with his shell. When, like a merryman, he made us laugh, the expression of his face showed his soul still aloft. He was no materialist or sensualist, but a spiritualist in the deepest sense. I judge of men by their treatment of women; and how refined and grand his bearing was to the sex is well known in every country our strange and singular fascinator visited....

I have missed the portrait, I meant, if a facsimile could be furnished of it for any other man. We sometimes say of a man he was a paragon, gem, “one entire and perfect chrysolite.” Jean Paul Richter the only, the Germans say. My subject to–day is unique. There never on earth will be another Ole Bull. He was the diamond called solitaire. The Jews were mistaken when, in the new teacher, they thought Elias or one of the old prophets had come again. God does not repeat himself; genius is a fresh revelation, and never, in just the same form, descends. Speaking as in the presence of those to whom companionship, country, and kindred blood endeared this man of transcendent stature, yet with none of our occidental stiffness, so lowly and familiar that he wanted once with a friend to leave the chairs and get down on the floor to converse, I should be bankrupt if at least in this paper money I did not try to pay my debt. Seventy years of age; the Scripture term was his prime. He died young in heart and hope, and friend and housemate declare they cannot think and do not know him dead, as the tropical sun, suddenly setting, is not quenched, though leaving all dark behind. Aspiring and proceeding, despite his gray locks, he seemed an undeveloped child. Nothing in his mental constitution was fixed or had grown hard. He had not subsided from the gush and sparkle of life into the sediment of a form or stalagmite of a creed. The crystallization went on unfinished in the upper chambers of his soul, and had no cavern like the stalactites of the mine in which to drop. No decay gave hint of an end. There is sickness, death, but no end. He grew, advanced, never stopped, nor did the sutures, even at seventy, quite close over that busy brain. “To have to work so at my age!” said the French painter, Thomas Couture; but Ole Bull said, “I should vegetate without new engagements to fulfill.” He so lived, therefore, as to convince us of immortality. I know not of what sovereign or captain from the North, the hill–country of Judæa, Isaiah wrote; but when I think how majestic and gentle was this head man and leader from our modern Norway, I give him the tribute of my text, as one might salute a born deliverer and true king.