Jenny and Barnum

by Roderick Thorp

  Yet, if the accounts were to be believed, Tom Thumb kept reminding himself, that was exactly what happened every time she performed.

  Everything Tom Thumb had deduced about Jenny Lind from their meeting that January afternoon at the Hotel Sacher was true, and no one knew it better than Jenny herself. And nothing aroused the rage and shame it made her feel more than her relationship with the sweetest, gentlest—and perhaps most foolish—man she had ever known, the Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen.

  She was introduced to Andersen the first time she went down to Copenhagen, at the age of nineteen, with the Royal Theater of Stockholm. The famous Andersen was in the audience one night, and asked to be brought backstage to meet her.

  The sight of him made her wince. For years, secretly, she had wanted to meet the author of “The Ugly Duckling,” but as she took his hand, the thought went through her mind that his reason for writing the story was more than obvious. Taller than six feet, weighing less than one hundred thirty pounds, with matted hair, pocked skin, red-rimmed, lusterless eyes and a distracted clumsiness that made Jenny Lind wonder how often he knocked over tables and chairs, Hans Christian Andersen was the homeliest man she had ever seen. He smiled; even his teeth were chipped and discolored, like dishes left in the garden through the winter.

  “You are the soul of art,” he said. “You have shown me art in its true holiness.”

  “I am only a singer,” she said, wanting to withdraw. She was always uncomfortable with effusive praise, but from this gangling wraith she sensed something more, and much worse: he was falling in love with her.

  True, he was stricken. Next day, flowers filled her hotel room; by week’s end, all Copenhagen knew of his condition, so badly did he conceal it in a newspaper article he published in praise of her singing. By then she had received a dozen notes from him, asking and then begging for an appointment. And flowers. Candy. Danish butter cookies. The man was mad—out of control.

  She was singing the title role of Norma in Bellini’s opera of love, betrayal, and sacrifice, her first performance in the part away from Stockholm. There the previous winter, barely seventeen and free of her harridan mother at last, Jenny had achieved the first great recognition of her career. Her interpretation of Norma, the Druid princess in love with an unfaithful Roman proconsul, was new, daring, and brilliant, but it was also physically exhausting and emotionally draining. At seventeen Jenny sought out flirtation and romance as much as the next girl, but a year and a half later in Copenhagen, the agony of the year in Paris behind her, she was a different woman, her immense talent and artistry confirmed. She bore too much responsibility, and Andersen, whatever his accomplishments, was not the man to capture her imagination.

  Still, Jenny could not be rude. Even more, the directors of the Royal Theater urged her to be kind to the bizarre, beloved author of slyly pointed children’s tales—after all, no one who had met him could fail to recognize the heartbreaking source of “The Ugly Duckling.” If its author was ever to be seen as a swan, then it would be through his words, his enchantment of children, and the gently Christian messages his stories delivered to the children’s parents. The man himself was appalling to look at, difficult to deal with, and personally loathed children. But he was beloved, which gave him influence.

  “I love you, Jenny!” he swore on one knee, almost as soon as they were alone together, “I want you to be my wife!”

  She was horrified. “I do not want to marry anybody! I am only a child.”

  Shocked by her tone, he moved, whether toward her or away she later judged impossible to determine; whatever the case, she panicked, her foot came into contact with his neck, he wound up on his back on the floor, and both fled the room, running in opposite directions.

  Nor was that the end of it. It had to be said that he did not wait to learn if she had babbled the story of his “downfall,” for delivered to the hotel the next afternoon was a note asking her forgiveness, and containing a poem:

  TO JENNY LIND

  You sang—I listened, enchanted singer,

  And yet my best song you will receive,

  One forgets the artist for the woman;

  I do not sing, my heart beats too strong.

  She was appalled. She knew she shared the blame every step of the way. She returned his note with one more restrained, a correspondence followed, and she agreed to see him again the next time she was in Copenhagen.

  That was the following March. He was in better spirits, and the time she spent in his company was more enjoyable. She never thought she was misleading him. She was a young artist enjoying her first great successes; she wanted to learn from him, listen to his advice. At the end he pressed his case again, but as a gentleman. Perhaps her mistake in dealing with him was in explaining her position too carefully. She still felt bound by the requests of the directors of the Royal Theater in dealing with him, but really it was not in her heart to cause him any pain. Like a gentleman, he backed off. They were friends, or nearer the truth, she thought they were friends; later she realized that somehow she had managed to put her fears about him out of her mind. Without doubt, he did keep her amused—charmed sometimes, even enchanted—with one letter after another, some in verse, some telling complete short tales, and others filled with wonderfully malicious and unexpected gossip. It was his writing that made a place in her life; without it, she might have forgotten him altogether.

  But that summer, after Jenny was twenty, Hans Christian Andersen published a new story, and word that it was about her reached her before she knew anything else about it. It took days to get more information, days in which the reawakening of her worst memories of him triggered spasms of her own deepest anxieties. What could he have told the world about her? Having the details of her private life spread before an uncomprehending public could bring down upon her the scorn of the very people whose respect she wanted most. Andersen had violated her trust, no matter what he had written. When Jenny learned the title of his story, she was unconsolable, and it took her days to go near the copy that someone had sent to her. Her eyes glazed over when she tried to read it; she was in torment; she had never been so terrified in her life. Andersen had called the story,

  THE NIGHTINGALE

  It happened in China, he said, a long time ago. The Emperor lived in a porcelain palace surrounded by gardens so large he did not know where they ended, except that beyond them stood a forest that ran to the sea. There lived the nightingale, singing to only a few of the Emperor’s most lowly subjects and an occasional traveler or two.

  But at last the Emperor learned of the nightingale and its beautiful song. He sent for the bird, which came eagerly, because a summons from the Emperor was an honor, nothing less.

  When the little gray bird sang, tears ran down the Emperor’s cheeks, and all in his court were thrilled and enchanted. As a reward, the Emperor ordered that his golden slipper be hung around the nightingale’s neck. But the little bird declined.

  “I have seen the Emperor’s tears, and that is reward enough for me.” And then he sang another song.

  The Emperor ordered that the nightingale be given his own cage at court, be allowed to walk, although tethered, twice a day. The little bird was unhappy, but accepted his fate.

  Then one day there arrived from the Emperor of Japan a gift, a mechanical bird encrusted with gold and precious gems. When the Emperor wound it up, it sang a song as beautifully, everyone thought, as the real nightingale. It could sing only the one song, but because it was a complicated song and hard to learn, the Emperor and his court fell into debating the merits of the two birds. The real nightingale could sing an infinite number of songs with endless subtlety, but the mechanical bird was much prettier to look at, and the one song it sang was rendered just as beautifully as the real nightingale could do.

  While the Emperor and his court argued, the real nightingale flew out a window and escaped.

  The Emperor and the court contented themselves with the mechanical bird, but it beg
an to wear out; but so did the Emperor, taking to his bed, turning so pale and ill that Death came and sat on his chest, gathering around the bed all the good and evil deeds the Emperor had done. Soon the room was filled with their discordant cries as the deeds demanded the Emperor remember them. The Emperor shouted for the mechanical bird to sing, to drown their voices, but since there was no one to wind up its worn mechanism, it stayed silent.

  But suddenly the room was filled with beautiful song. It was the real nightingale, sitting in a tree outside the Emperor’s window. The beauty and poignancy of the little gray bird’s singing caused even Death itself to surrender to ecstasy. It promised to spare the Emperor’s life for just one more song, and when the song was done, Death withdrew.

  Feeling better already, the Emperor cried out his gratitude and insisted that the nightingale name his reward.

  “I have my reward,” the little bird said. “Your tears, the first time I sang for you. Let me come and sing for you again, of good things and bad, joy and suffering. Because a little bird flies everywhere, I see many things in your empire. Let me advise your heart with my songs. Keep this your secret, and it will serve you better.”

  In the morning the Emperor’s courtiers found him dressed in his imperial clothes and holding his imperial saber; more eager than ever to bring peace and justice to his Empire.

  Jenny hated the story. Did Andersen think she was stupid or uneducated? She hated everything about the story, every level, down to the central vision of its author.

  How dare he? The title identified her with the story—she had been called “The Swedish Nightingale” for more than two years now. Was she to be seen by the world as a plain, gray little bird, despicably called a “he” who found the meaning of his art only in the eyes of his audience? The story violated her privacy, was utterly contemptuous, and held her up to ridicule. Andersen had trafficked in their acquaintanceship, gratuitously hinting an intimacy that was not there. The thought that anyone would believe there was some private relationship between them simply made her shudder.

  What was the story supposed to mean anyway? With the word “nightingale” so closely linked to her, what was the meaning of making the bird a male besides insulting her? Was the story about her art or her plainness? Was he comparing her to more beautiful, less talented women by showing the Emperor pining away under the stultifying effects of the bejeweled mechanical bird’s one song? He was sitting in judgment of her on every level. Emperor, indeed! Andersen had abused her with his presumption; she felt scalded, trespassed upon, so shocked and hurt with his stupid incomprehension that she thought it would make her ill. His stories were gently Christian? Something about this tale told her that the man’s mind was a rank, stinking sewer. She had to put “The Nightingale” out of her mind.

  But long after her emotion had subsided, she could not stop thinking of the shallowness of Andersen’s intellect and his narrow concept of art itself. To think that once she had respected him and sought out his opinion! Andersen was saying that art had no reason for being without an audience. Was he also saying the song was somehow less because only the singer had heard it? Who understood the art of song better than the singer? To suggest the opposite as the opinion of a character identified with Jenny Lind was to libel her. Andersen was not content to insult her womanhood and her appearance by comparing her to a plain, gray, male bird; by suggesting that she sang only for the reward of her audience’s reaction did not just belittle her accomplishments, it denied the effort she had put into them. Her art took effort, intelligence, and sacrifice as well as God-given talent. If Hans Andersen, upon self-examination, found art to be a trivial, mewling attempt to curry the gratitude of ignorant strangers, that was his business; for her part, Jenny Lind felt degraded for having been, all unknowing, in the presence of such views.

  But Jenny was incapable of sustaining that sort of wrath for long. Less than a year later, again in Copenhagen, she received a note from Andersen asking permission to call upon her. At the time, her serious attention was elsewhere; she wanted to regard “The Nightingale” episode as an insignificant annoyance, finished and in the past. By messenger she let Andersen know that she was willing to see him for an hour late Sunday afternoon.

  He arrived early, homely and unkempt as ever, obviously overwrought and patting his brow with a threadbare handkerchief. It took her only a few moments to realize she had made a mistake in seeing him.

  “I have felt an emptiness every day since our last meeting,” Andersen whispered breathlessly. “You are everything I have ever aspired to be.”

  “Nonsense, Mr. Andersen. You have done very well in your own right.” She wanted to divert him. “I had hoped that you were bringing me the best of Copenhagen’s gossip, all the delicious secrets, and hints of unspeakable scandal. Come now, tell me what you know.”

  “What I know is that, because of you, I am Copenhagen’s biggest scandal, no secret, and the cause of most of the gossip.”

  “I do not want to hear of it,” Jenny said.

  “I’m afraid it will not fail to reach your ears.”

  “Respect my wishes, please.”

  “I want to please you—that is my wish,” Andersen said.

  And so it went, Andersen maddeningly turning her every phrase toward his childish lovesickness. Why could he not account for her feelings and wishes in the matter? Could he not see that he was being as thick-headed and self-centered as his silly Emperor? He wanted to possess her without giving a thought to who and what she was. Finally he was on his knees in front of her, almost crazed, his eyes wild, whimpering still another proposal of his idea of “marriage.” He was within an inch of clutching at her skirt, and her terror awakened the rage he had made her feel in the past.

  “I beg you, please, be my wife—”

  “Wife? You imbecilic giraffe, I do not want to be wife to anybody, least of all you!” Now she was the one who was out of control. She seized a hand mirror from the side table and thrust it toward his face, nearly hitting him with it. “Look at this, Andersen! Now do you understand my position?”

  He recoiled, stumbled to his feet, muttered something, turned abruptly, and walked out, his back straight and his fists clenched.

  She never saw him again.

  Her cruelty to him that day haunted her for years afterward. In interviews he still spoke of her glowingly, but apparently only when asked. She didn’t believe his statements anyway. In disgracing himself with her, he had exposed the most desperate feelings of an ugly, lonely man; in defending herself against his hapless attempt to overwhelm her, she had wounded him mortally. She remembered the clenched fists. Whether he knew it or not, some small part of him hated her. It was in him forever, like a cancer, like death.

  A letter from Jenny Lind was waiting for Tom Thumb at the desk of his Vienna hotel when he came downstairs alone in the darkness at six-thirty the next morning. The quickness of her response and deviation from her own plan involving Judge Munthe meant the best or the worst, in Tom Thumb’s experience—acceptance of Barnum’s offer as tendered, or rejection out-of-hand—the latter devoutly to be wished, from the little General’s point of view. He had awakened this morning more convinced than ever that Barnum’s scheme would fail. All concerned would be better served if contact could be broken off. This morning Tom Thumb had had a new thought: even if America did respond to glum and prissy Jenny Lind, then Jenny Lind would positively loathe America. This Europe was too tame and orderly, too civilized, for Tom Thumb and his colleagues. Wouldn’t she react in the opposite way to America? Hadn’t she suggested as much, with her questions about slavery? And her assumption that Barnum exhibited human beings in cages? Of course she had. Her projected tour of America already contained all the elements of disaster.

  Tom Thumb put the letter in his pocket to read after breakfast. He was up and about so early because he wanted to be sure that all the baggage and equipment (from Anna Swan’s carriage already on a flat car down at the station, to his own dining room s
eat cushions, not yet packed) were properly collected and assembled before they were packed off to the railroad station. Traveling in Europe really was no better than in America. Matters such as people’s clothing and costumes could not be left to the near-morons normally put in charge of them. Tom Thumb and Barnum had learned the lesson in America on their very first tour, only to have to learn it all over again on their way to be presented to Queen Victoria when their trunks were lost somewhere between the docks of Liverpool and the hotel in London.

  These days in America Barnum hired men he elegantly called traveling secretaries to look after the baggage, pay the bills, confirm the next reservations, and so forth—in all, a terrible load of work. But it was Barnum’s nature to be capriciously and often insultingly tightfisted and before this European tour he’d cried poverty and asked Tom Thumb “to look after that end—you know, the way we used to do for ourselves. I’ll pay you for it, of course.”

  In fact, Barnum only wanted to save the round-trip passage, hotel charges, and meals another employee would incur. Tom Thumb knew that to be true because he worked it out, knowing for a week before sailing the dollars and cents involved, during which time Barnum never mentioned actually how much he planned to pay his little partner for what was, unarguably, a hellishly difficult job even for someone with nothing else to do.

  Tom Thumb waited until the morning the Great Western was ready to sail before confronting the big humbug. The Great Western’s tall stack was billowing smoke thick enough to darken the blue Hudson, and the hissing of steam smothered the gabble of voices from the crowd on the pier, the gangplanks, and the majestic ship itself. Sailors and stevedores were carrying aboard the last barrels of wine, shouldering them through the crowd with hearty shouts, not even the dank river breeze able to carry off the odors of wine-soaked wood and workingmen’s sweat. It was a grand moment, with Tom Thumb in his Napoleon getup standing on a hatch, even with Barnum’s chest, an expectant crowd gaping and hanging on every high-pitched, faint little word.