Ole Bull: A Memoir

by Sara Chapman Thorp Bull

“For they who kept us captives bade us sing;
But how could we sing?”

In Norway, at present, steam draws a broad furrow across the land. It whistles on the railroad; it plies on the lakes; it knocks thrice at the mountain, and the mountain–king, opening his gate, admits the broad light of day, in which, according to the legends of old, he must die. Already the lovers of song complain of its retreat, and, following it to remote valleys, watch its dying lips to set it down in notes. But meanwhile a great representative of Nature’s music, of the people’s song, had gone forth to the wide world,—Ole Bull.

Uncle Jens played the violoncello well, and had a collection of instruments. He loved to amuse himself with little Ole’s extreme susceptibility to music. When he was three years old, Jens often put him in the violoncello case, and hired him with sweetmeats to stay there while he played. But the candy could not keep him quiet long. The eyes kindled, and the little feet began to beat time. At last his nervous excitement prevented his staying longer in the case. The music was dancing all through him, and he must give it utterance. Running home, he would seize the yard–stick, and, with another small stick for a bow, endeavor to imitate what his uncle had played. He heard it with his inward ear; but, for fear his parents were not so pervaded with the tune as he was, he would explain as he went along, telling how beautifully the bass came in at such and such a place. Seeing the child play this rustic and soundless fiddle, his uncle bought him, when he was five years old, a violin “as yellow as a lemon.” He used to tell, later, how he felt carried up to the third heaven when his own little hand first brought out a tune from that yellow violin. He loved it and kissed it; it seemed to him so beautiful, that little fiddle! To the surprise of the family, he played well on it from the first, though he had received no instruction. He would stand by his mother’s knee while she turned the screws, which would not yield to his little hand; and the tuning was not easily accomplished, since his ear made him very critical even at that age. His uncle taught him his notes at the same time that he was learning his primer.

His father would not permit him to play till study hours were over, and he could not practice regularly, but made the violin rather his recreation. Sometimes, however, he disobeyed, playing too much and missing his lessons, for which his back had to smart both in school and at home. It was a paternal rule that a whipping at school had to be repeated at home. Still he managed to get through his elementary studies, and when he reached the higher branches of knowledge he surprised everybody by his remarkable quickness and penetration. In mythology he had no peer in the school, and his imaginative, dreamy soul reveled in all the weird stories about Odin, Thor, Balder, Frey, and the whole race of gods, giants, norns, elves, and dwarfs that fill the old Valhalla of the Norsemen. He was never happier than when he could persuade his grandmothers to tell him strange ghost stories, and sing the wild songs of the peasantry. The creative and imaginative cast of his mind also gave him a profound sympathy with nature, and he was fortunate in having a home in the midst of grand scenery.

Prof. R. B. Anderson thus writes of Ole’s boyhood:—

I once asked Ole Bull what had inspired his weird and original melodies. His answer was that from his earliest childhood he had taken the profoundest delight in Norway’s natural scenery. He grew eloquent in his poetic description of the grand and picturesque flower–clad valleys, filled with soughing groves and singing birds; of the silver–crested mountains, from which the summer sun never departs; of the melodious brooks, babbling streams, and thundering rivers; of the blinking lakes that sink their deep thoughts to starlit skies; of the far–penetrating fjords and the many thousand islands on the coast. He spoke with especial emphasis of the eagerness with which he had devoured all myths, folk–tales, ballads, and popular melodies; and all these things, he said, “have made my music.” And we would emphasize the fact that these things made his music, not alone by their influence upon his mind, but also by the impression they had made upon several generations of his ancestors who had contemplated them. Ole Bull’s ancestors have, on both sides, been people of culture and refinement for many generations. When we see a beautiful and thoughtful face, we do not always consider how much the ancestors of that man or woman must have suffered and labored and thought before that beauty and intelligence became possible.

It happened that the hospitality of Ole’s father was the means of bringing the boy his first teacher. Herr Paulsen was a Dane, a good artist, a man of solid musical acquirements and knowledge, who could play the fiddle “as long as there was a drop in the decanter before him.” He chanced to meet Ole one day at the house of a more humble colleague, with whom he would condescend to take his schnapps, and began to visit the apothecary’s house, “to educate the little artist,” as he said. And he would sit and play till he had drained the last drop from the decanter, which the hospitality of the time could not deny him. So thoroughly had he enjoyed the social, and we may say convivial, life of Bergen—for the suppers were often more than social at that time—that he had delayed his return home from month to month, and stayed on indefinitely. When his clothes grew threadbare, his friends would give him a new suit and a benefit concert, from which he often received some hundreds of dollars.

Ole’s parents were not pleased with the neglect of his studies, caused by his fondness for the violin, and their intention of entirely forbidding him the instrument was hanging like a thunder–cloud above his head, when, on his eighth birthday, he gained a decisive victory.

One Tuesday evening Paulsen played, as usual, the first violin in Uncle Jens’s quartette. But when they left the supper–table he was hopelessly hors de combat. In this unfortunate dilemma good–natured Uncle Jens shouted, “Now, Ole, you shall play in Paulsen’s stead! Come, my boy, do your best, and you shall have a stick of candy!” at the same time handing him Paulsen’s violin. The half–serious, half–joking command Ole accepted in earnest. A quartette of Pleyel, which he had heard several times, was chosen, and his memory served him faithfully; to the astonishment of all, he played each movement correctly. He not only executed the difficult passages, but marked the rests,—in short, gave it as an artist should.

This was his first triumph, with all its train of consequences. His delighted uncle immediately had him elected an active member of the Tuesday club, of whose performances he had before been but a clandestine and often ingeniously hidden listener; and, through his mother’s intercession, it was arranged that Paulsen should give him lessons regularly.