February 8, 1923
MUSICAL COURIER
6
LIND IN NEW YORK
By LEONIDAS WESTERVELT
JENNY
(Illustrations from the Author’s Collection)
Copyrighted, 1923, by The Musical Courier Company.
triumphant arches, on one of which was inscribed ‘Welcome Jenny Lind.’ The second bore the inscription ‘Welcome to America!’ Those decorations were not produced by magic and I do not know that I can reasonably find fault with those who suspect I had a hand in their erection. My private carriage was in waiting and Jenny Lind was escorted to it. Mounting the box at the driver’s side I directed him to the Irving House.” And then he naively explains, “I took that seat as a legitimate advertisement.”
We think he had earned it.
The hours that followed were busy ones for Jenny Lind. Within ten minutes after her arrival at the Irving House, on the corner of Broadway and Chambers street (where,
STEAMER ATLANTIC
on which Jenny Lind sailed for America, August 21, 1850.
according to Nathaniel Parker Willis, “she was lodged like a princess”) 20,000 persons had congregated. At midnight she was serenaded by 200 musicians from the New York Musical Fund Society; with them came an escort of 300 firemen “in their red shirts and bearing torches.”
Nor did the rain of attentions cease during succeeding days. In fact, Jenny was soon obliged to leave her comfortable quarters in the Irving House and seek lodgings in a more restful quarter of the city.
She was besieged by autograph hunters and beggars from high and low life. Young aspirants for the concert platform repeatedly knocked' at her door. “Have you seen the Nightingale?” became a constant query in Battery Park and along Broadway, while the Jenny Lind fever, the Jenny Lind crush and the Jenny Lind intoxication were
JiMY ill'll) YitJi?■
“I may as well state,” says the shrewd -showman in his memoirs, “that although I relied prominently upon Jenny Lind’s reputation as a great musical artist, I also took largely into my estimate of her success with all Classes of the American public, her character for extraordinary benevolence and generosity. Without this peculiarity in her disposition I never would have dared make the engagement which I did.”
Just before ratifying his agreement with Jenny Lind by cable, Mr. Barnum had the courage of his convictions put to quite a severe test. Anxious to learn how his proposed engagement of the Nightingale would appeal to the public mind, he quietly informed a certain train conductor whom he well knew of the project.
“Jenny Lind! Is she a dancer?” asked the conductor.
“I informed him who and what she was,” continues the disappointed P. T., “but his question had chilled me as if his words were ice! ... I then began to prepare the public mind,, through the newspapers, for the reception of the great songstress. How effectually this was done is still within the remembrance of the American public.”
That Jenny Lind was greatly impressed by the steamer Atlantic, in which she was to visit our shores for the first time, we may well believe. She writes her parents from Liverpool, on the eve of sailing :
“I have been to sée the steamer which will take us over to America and nothing grander of its kind I should think could be found in any country. The vessel is 300 feet by 80 and is decorated so magnificently that one can fancy oneself in a rich private house.”
We fear Jenny’s enthusiasm over the good ship Atlantic, “300 feet by 80,” must have been somewhat cooled before the eleven-day vog-
{4£-'iONGS, quadrilles and polkas were dedicated to ^ her and poets sang in her praise. We had Jenny ^ Lind gloves, Jenny Lind bonnets, Jenny Lind riding hats, Jenny Lind shawls, mantillas, robes, chairs, sofas,
pianos !
Thus, in 1850, writes the naive and effervescent P. T.
JENNY LIND
JENNY LIND, SIR JULES BENEDICT AND SIG. BELLETTI, shortly after landing.
age terminated; since in the log plainly stated, we find, “very severe weather.” Also, one of the flamboyant headings of the New York Herald, September 2, 1850, gives us a graphic hint of a very human side of the Nightingale:
“All about Jenny Lind—Land and Sea. Her embarkation—her seasickness—her dancing and her concert on board the Atlantic.■—Her arrival !”-
One of the prizes in the author’s collection of Lindiana is a four-page letter, dated September 3, 1850, and written by a little girl, Julia Knapp, who waited in the throng on the pier at Canal Street to see Jenny Lind arrive. She writes to Susan M. Knapp (evidently her elder sister), who is visiting “Aunt Charity” in Greenwich, Conn., and in her childish, natural way gives us some charming details of the important event:
“She was dressed with a pale blue silk hat, covered with lace, a slate-colored dress with a broadcloth cloak trimmed with velvet. As she was coming out of the Atlantic there was a mat thrown down from the vessel to the dock and evergreens and bouquets were scattered all over the mat.”
This must have been a pleasing welcome to the Singer from the .North and her fellow artists — Jules Benedict, conductor, and Signor Belletti, baritone. As for Mr. Barnum, the occasion was apparently a red letter day in his life.
“A bower of green trees, decorated with beautiful flags, was discovered on the wharf,” he bubbles, “together with two
Barnum, America’s greatest showman, shortly after he had succeeded in coaxing the celebrated Swedish prima donna to turn her back on adoring Europe and to risk an American concert tour under his astute management.
When we consider the enormous popularity Jenny Lind had achieved in England, Prussia, Austria, Sweden, and Denmark; how throngs followed her in London; how royalty received her; how at the opera house in Vienna students
P. T. BARNUM,
America’s greatest shoreman, who risked his entire fortune to bring Jenny Lind to New York.
unhitched the horses from her carriage and triumphantly drew her home; it seems almost incredible that in America she was practically unknown. In spite of this, Mr. Barnum had the temerity to guarantee the prima donna $187,500, a fortune in those days, before she would consent to sail for New York.