“Thank you for welcoming me so warmly to New York and your wonderful country,” she said to the audience, which cheered again. To Barnum her speaking voice seemed alarmingly small, barely reaching the first rows of the dress circle and the balcony. In the rear someone yelled for silence. Jenny appeared confused suddenly, as if no one in her previous audiences had ever expressed himself before. But then there was quiet again.
“Perhaps it would be happier if we changed the program,” she said. “With your permission, we will forego the intermission, and I will begin my portion of the program with the ‘Casta diva’ from Norma. Signore Minelli will return for our duet—”
The rest of her words were lost, for the audience had risen again to cheer, louder than before. She turned to Minelli to speak to him briefly, then kissed him on the cheek. Minelli came offstage, in Barnum’s direction. He did not look unhappy.
“What could we do?” he asked Barnum, taking a position beside him. “They are in a frenzy for her.”
“Has this ever happened before?”
“Never—but you must understand, you Americans do not know how to behave in a theater.”
Barnum smiled benignly. “If that is true, signore, perhaps you should be grateful that the audience did not react badly to your work.”
If Minelli’s reaction showed any terror, Barnum didn’t see it, for his attention was drawn to the stage, where Jenny nodded to Goldschmidt, who raised his baton. The crowd was still not settled. Jenny waited; Goldschmidt waited. At last people grew still. There was silence. The orchestra began to play.
The “Casta diva” was a prayer for peace, a supplication to the goddess of the moon for the tranquillity reigning in heaven. Of course Barnum thought that the aria fit this situation neatly enough, but now he wondered if the long, mood-setting introduction—which would have set her on the stage alone after her originally scheduled duet with Minelli—might prove wrong now. No. The attention of the audience, like his own, was on the young woman on the stage still finding her own mood in the swaying of the violins behind her, an oboe leading her as if through the woods in which the scene was set. She was Norma. And she sang.
Barnum understood the mystery from the first sound. Her voice was so gorgeously pure and clear, so perfectly controlled, so brilliant it seemed to sparkle, that it filled not only the great round hall of Castle Garden, it physically penetrated every living being inside it. She knew it—she was a consummate artist with years of study and practice behind her. She meant to do this, however inadequately she understood it. Everyone was simply helpless to do anything but listen to the perfection of her singing.
There was no doubt that she felt the effects of it herself. Her face was radiant, transformed: she and the audience were bound together in an incomparable physical experience. Barnum knew why writers did not seem to like her. They could not describe an art that was felt, not merely heard, felt, ever more deliciously, throughout the body, down the spine, ever more intensely downward, until the legs weakened and the knees buckled so that even Barnum—already called by many the Master Showman because he knew his suckers so well (knew them because in his heart he knew he was one of them, through and through)—Barnum, the great Barnum himself, thought he would faint.
Jenny Lind was a virgin, to be sure. Her beauty, the beauty that surfaced in her singing even though she was almost thirty, was the beauty of the unknowing, of not knowing the last still-disappointing secret of the bad bargain that was life. At thirty or thereabouts, she was still sweet and believing. Every man listening to her carried the full crushing weight of her purity.
Art? Study and practice? Oh yes. Even the most heavily burdened, those who thought they alone could see into her soul, were fully aware that her control—mastery: mastery in fact—of her voice, of her material and its meaning, was absolute, and as responsible as any other factor for their squirming and woe.
Nightingale? Barnum thought that demeaned her. He thought she could sing better, more pleasingly, more interestingly, than any bird that had ever lived. The aria could have been written for her, although that had not been the case—Barnum knew the story of her brilliant reinterpretation (at the age of seventeen) of the role of the Durid priestess, Norma. “Casta diva” meant Chaste Goddess, and Jenny had fashioned Norma’s character after the character of the goddess herself. Jenny was Norma, the goddess and the poor illegitimate from Stockholm devoted to her own God all at once. She made that very plain—Jenny Lind stood before her audience as she had done so many times before, made herself vulnerable, and allowed her audience to enter the soul of her art, her humanity and womanhood, the last two still unrealized—she knew it all, and she let the audience see that, too. The effect finally was innocence, and innocently the betrayed youthful priestess sang:
“Chaste goddess, who dost bathe in silver light
These ancient, hallowed trees,
Turn thy fair face upon us,
Unveiled and unclouded.
Temper thou the burning hearts,
The excessive zeal of thy people.
Enfold the earth in that sweet peace
Which, through thee, reigns in heaven.”
That Jenny was singing in Italian was inconsequential; knowing from her own experience the price of war, hatred, and deceit, Norma was pleading piteously for peace, surrendering herself faithfully to the will of a higher power. A girl, singing, her arms outstretched, her expression enchantingly pure, her perfect soprano rising and falling so clearly and forthrightly that one feared for her—Jenny was fearless, subjecting herself to the most complicated trills and shakes, her voice itself never faltering, so clear it shattered the imagination, each note more vivid and penetrating than the last. Tears streamed down Barnum’s cheeks from an ecstasy so intense he would not have wished it for himself. Every man was in tears—and the few women in Barnum’s view as well. With the last suddenly dying note the audience erupted in a great, galvanic shout, and Barnum was capable only of joining the throng. He knew he could not talk. She was beyond any reasonable expectation—a miracle, a wonder of the age. She shyly nodded her gratitude as the flowers again began to pour onto the stage.
Her conquest of the audience continued. She had told Barnum she would sing well, and now she wanted to go on singing. At the end of each song the crowd rose to cheer. Minelli came out for his postponed duet, and he was cheered. And when Jenny was on the stage alone again, the cheering went on so long that Barnum had to wonder if the audience would let the concert finish.
Her finale was the unpleasant and prize-winning “Ode to America” that Goldschmidt had only finished putting to music late that afternoon. Somehow he had fashioned a decent song of a thoroughly wretched exercise—at least, a vehicle that allowed Jenny to thrill the audience once more. Barnum loved her, he could not help himself. After her final ovation he went on stage with the list of charities to benefit from this, her first, concert in America. He called the mayor from the audience, and together they read the list, starting with the Orphans’ Home and the Colored Orphans’ Home and working down to the tree-planting societies. Everyone was standing, weeping unashamedly. Everyone loved her. Tom Thumb, in a white suit again, came down from his seat in the dress circle and presented Jenny with a dozen white roses. Now all words were lost as the cheering erupted again. Charlie began doing cartwheels and handwalks around the befuddled mayor. Minelli came out and took his place beside Goldschmidt, who held Jenny’s left hand. Barnum was on her right, and it was his hand she was squeezing significantly. After a first glance, he dared not look at her again, the love-light in their eyes seemed so obvious to him. The thousands at her feet noticed nothing, they were so enraptured with her. Barnum was at one with them, and like a boy in his first long pants, he found her interest in him the most astonishing thing of all. When he squeezed her hand, she held onto him ever more tightly. As he wrote that night, alone with his fantasies, still enraptured, more in love with her than ever, her triumph was complete.
13.
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nbsp; In the morning, Jenny’s concert was the only subject anyone in the city wanted to talk about, and even Barnum’s competitors and critics were forced to admit that he had scored an unprecedented coup. Privately, two Wall Street syndicates sent Barnum word that they were interested in buying Jenny Lind’s contract. But it was nothing doing, as he told Jenny before leaving for the train for Bridgeport, Connecticut.
This new scene was played on the sofa in Jenny’s suite in the Irving House, accompanied by much sweet, passionate kissing. Here was a man! She knew she had said that far too many times in the past, about Lindblad, Mendelssohn, and even her English officer, but it applied to Barnum more than it had ever applied to any of the others. Barnum was quick-witted and charming; he made her laugh. He did not moon or mope or press his case even when she was most eager for him to do so, always making a game of their feelings for each other. Without doubt he knew he was intensifying those feelings. He acted as if she was as mature as he was, as experienced, but she knew she was not, and she kept to herself her deeper confusion and distress.
She was intoxicated with him, him married with four grown daughters—married twenty-eight years! The marriage was dead, if his book was to be believed. He had installed his wife in one elaborate Connecticut mansion after another, each one reflecting his increased—or reduced—circumstances, all the while conducting his business, and keeping himself, mostly in New York. Signore Minelli had told her that there had been rumors about Barnum and other women, although nothing had ever been proved; but now that she had been with Barnum, and experienced the subtlety of his kisses, Jenny knew that those rumors were true.
On Friday night she went with Otto back to Delmonico’s, where she was now willing to say the food was very good even by the standards of one who had dined at practically all of Europe’s royal courts. The season was still too young for most fresh vegetables, but peas were available, along with an Indian concoction called “succotash.” But Delmonico’s had spring lamb, and wonderful seafood from the local waters; from Virginia came a tangy cured ham and a curious mulled wine, sweet and thick as a syrup. She wanted to try other American wines, but the waiter, who was an Italian, one of the few in America, apparently, advised against it. Delmonico’s had no Est! Est! Est!, a wine he knew, but there were some wonderful white Burgundies, as well as some fine German wines.
Thoughts of Tom Thumb had made her remember Est! Est! Est! She was only beginning to understand how Barnum had changed the little man’s life—saved it, in fact. Tom Thumb’s current troubles were partly the result of Barnum’s carelessness or callousness or both, but Jenny could not see how or why Barnum should be held responsible for the behavior of others. How much did he owe these people anyway? More likely, the moral balances tilted in the other direction. Barnum was such a powerful figure in his originality that her confusion compounded itself. All she could see was a series of riddles, paradoxes, and unanswered questions.
It was not the happiest of dinners. Otto knew her too well for her to be able to conceal her feelings from him. After Mendelssohn’s death she had not sung his music for years: it had been Otto who had led her out of her grief. Otto and Jenny understood each other. He tolerated Minelli because she was not serious about him. But Jenny knew Otto well enough to want to leave the subject of Barnum alone. There were times, Otto had told her, when he could not bear to think of what she was doing to herself. Afterward he would have some comment, of course, often insightful but occasionally annoying. No matter: she had observed, not unnaturally, that Otto experienced his times of shock and withdrawal from her when she started giving evidence of interest in another man. So the conversation this night after a night of nights, when it wasn’t about the food, was about the restaurant, or their hotel. They forced themselves to talk about their impressions of America, but they were so distant from each other emotionally that they were afraid that even the most civilized conversation would degenerate into an argument.
The truth was, when Barnum wasn’t around, Jenny Lind hated America. She felt at the edge of civilization, with unimaginable evils howling just outside. There was absolutely nothing here that justified the natives’ enthusiasm for the place.
Her second concert was on Saturday night, but her schedule from early morning on was far from normal for a day of a performance. Usually she reserved her free days for charity events, but the demand for her and her services was so great that she really had no choice but to make herself available. This she did on her own, without Barnum’s help—not that she would have needed it, or paid attention to him if he had some objection; but in fact he had none, he had told her.
He thought it was a wonderful thing. All the Americans did, which for her was the most uncomfortable aspect of the whole procedure. Charity was an inseparable part of Christianity, she thought, and it deserved no special attention. She had learned to keep her mouth shut about that, however. Years ago, whenever she tried to explain that she thought her audiences could better spend their time doing their own charitable work rather than wasting time and money coming to hear her sing, she got into trouble with the public and especially the press. But being a conduit for basic human decency gave her no pleasure, either—no, if she thought too deeply about it, it filled her with an agony of despair.
So on Saturday morning, before eight o’clock, she slipped out through the delivery entrance of the hotel, for there was still a crowd out front, its madness whipped to a froth by hawkers selling her portrait, drinking mugs bearing her likeness, and other disgusting trinkets. The mass insanity here was worse than anything she had ever seen in Europe, and she was thankful simply for the chance to get away from the noise of it. In spite of her several destinations, various institutions for society’s helpless, Jenny was looking forward to seeing another part of the city, and perhaps getting an opportunity to glimpse the America that lay beyond, still mysterious and menacing.
But here at the edge of a new world mankind had built the worst slums Jenny had ever seen, worse than St. Petersburg, Liverpool, or the cities of Italy. Apparently the human race was incapable of starting over; progress, if there was such a thing, was going to be slow, infinitely slow. For mile after mile the carriage passed rotting, dilapidated wooden shacks giving off a hundred different foul odors. There were streetwalkers everywhere, and thousands of children in rags, clearly homeless, some of them near starvation. Jenny had had no idea—in Europe one heard all kinds of stories about America, but not even the bad ones—that American textile mill owners wanted immigrants only to run their inhuman machines—could have prepared her for the shattering reality. There was no beauty in New York, no joy—what good was America’s so-called freedom, if the air was not fit to breathe.
In that ugly mood Jenny plunged into more ugliness still—her first stop was at a poorhouse, where many of the bedridden aged were too far gone to hear her name, much less recognize it. She had given this sour-stinking place five hundred dollars, and the directors were eager to show gratitude. In a dark, undersized dayroom were crammed as many of their charges as could move, or would fit—the scene was all too desperate. A local minister “led” the group in prayer, a generalized mumbling, and then Jenny sang one song accompanied by a fat woman playing an out-of-tune upright piano. Most of the audience nodded their heads in enfeebled accompaniment, but one woman down front decided to sing along with her, mouthing the words—no greater distraction for a singer, but over the years Jenny had taught herself to look over and beyond such pests. This morning, however, Jenny was so vexed that the old woman’s moving lips almost derailed her concentration and rhythm.
Her next stop, in Corlear’s Hook, on the unfashionable far east side of the island, was an orphanage. Jenny had hoped that the youth of the inmates would brighten her mood, but no, for these children were more poorly dressed and fed than those she had been seeing on the streets. Rotten teeth! What kind of place was this which allowed children’s teeth to rot in their heads? Some children were clothed so poorly that Jenny could easily see thei
r protruding ribs. If she had not been so angry, she would have cried. She sang for them, too, children’s songs. Next she was going to a colored orphanage; she wondered if she would be right singing the same songs again. For all she knew about the Negro race, the music she sang might not be pleasing to them at all. Given what she knew about America’s treatment of Africans, all she could expect was that their orphans’ lot would be worse than that of the whites.
When she was leaving for that appointment, someone handed her a note that had been delivered to the door. The note was from Barnum: he was back in New York, and was inviting her for a personally conducted tour of his American Museum at two o’clock. On the other side of the paper she wrote that she would be pleased to accept his invitation, on condition that she be permitted to return to the Irving House by three-thirty, so she could prepare for the evening’s performance.
Her spirits started rising. Riding to the second orphanage, she could feel the shocks to which she had been subjected slipping beyond her concern. No doubt, Jenny thought, she was in love again, in love with Barnum, in love with no one like her handsome, gallant, dumb English officer—the opposite, in fact, a baldish, overweight, merry conniver who kissed far more sweetly than any army officer—or composer, singer, or piano player, too! How was it that some men knew exactly how to hold and kiss a woman, and others were so inept that an embrace was as much an ordeal for the woman as making her way through the dirty mobs of London’s Covent Garden?
Jenny’s last stop was the worst of all, leaving her trembling and breathless in her anguish. Negro children, many of them naked, several of them blind with monstrous milky cataracts covering their eyes—malnutrition, she was told—all of the children dirty as well as underfed: a horror! A horror! Some were so underdeveloped that, even at the ages of five and six, they had not yet attained the power of speech. Someone led a prayer, and there was an attempt to make the children sing a song of welcome, but it was a shambles. Jenny was too choked with emotion to cry, much less sing. She could not sing. Was there no way these poor wretches were not cursed? She had not given this institution as much money as the others; now she had to reverse that injustice. And there were so many more children here than in the white foundlings’ home. Jenny had heard that the Negroes were distinctly in the minority in this country, perhaps the most important factor contributing to their lowly situation, but apparently there were even more of them than whites at life’s abyss. Beneath her anguish was the vast terror aroused by the meaning of those last thoughts—that God very possibly did not intend to treat all human beings equally on Judgment Day, that there were marks that set us in the order of his preference. If black skin could be one of those marks, as so many people said—as they said about dwarfism and giantism, too—then what of illegitimacy, being the issue of sin? So many people were marked one way or another. One little chocolate-colored boy seemed to sense her distress more than anyone else in the room, for he kept staring at her, his eyes as big as a fawn’s. When she got up to leave, she could not resist the temptation to look back and find him in the crowd, to see what he was thinking as she swept out of his life as imperiously as she had swept in. He was about four years old. He was smiling. He waved, waggling his fingers as babies do. At twenty feet she could see the holes in his teeth.
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