Jenny and Barnum

by Roderick Thorp

  One of the results was that the good people of Stockholm still had little idea of the treasure coming to maturity at the Royal Theater. When journalists mentioned her in their reviews, it was only in the middle or the bottom of their columns, and never more than the common perfunctory comment accorded those performers who have played small parts unobtrusively. Aficionados knew she was the youngest of the troupe and that she sang with a rare purity, but that was all. Her timidity made her seem without personality.

  The truth was that she was still putting all her effort into her work. She knew she had no aptitude for dancing and her acting needed work—work that was within her capacity, however. She was a soprano, with a range of slightly more than two octaves. Her voice was not strong, but she had perfect pitch. She was absolutely confident in her singing. When she sang, she tried to tell Herr Berg, it was as if time itself slowed, creating a world that she understood instinctively but could not explain. Berg needed no explanation. He had heard it before, but never from an artist so young. Of course everything was new to her, but that did not alter the fact that she knew—like an artist years her senior, years more practiced—that she was in control of her art. The knowledge gave her pleasure and a wonderful sense of power. To Berg she was like a young goddess playing with lightning bolts, the way a baby on a kitchen floor rattles and hammers her mother’s pots and spoons.

  Anne-Marie was not finished. Jenny’s fourteenth birthday and the renegotiation of her contract was her mother’s last chance to feather her own nest, as Herr Tengmark and others of the Royal Theater saw it. At eighteen Jenny would be free to choose her own guardian, one who could be called to account publicly for the great sums Jenny was expected to earn. As his appointment with Anne-Marie to discuss the terms of her daughter’s continued employment approached, Tengmark could only hope that the woman’s demands would not put Jenny beyond the Royal Theater’s reach.

  Tengmark should not have concerned himself. This was Anne-Marie’s last chance, to be sure, and for a long time Tengmark, Berg, and their associates did not understand her objectives, but at last she made them come clear: Anne-Marie wanted respectability and acceptance. Anne-Marie Fellborg wanted recognition.

  What confused Tengmark and Berg at first was the sequence in which Anne-Marie arranged events. Whatever she intended, it was excruciatingly obvious that in the process she meant to humiliate Jenny as badly as possible. It was as if the woman wanted to crush her daughter for even the little recognition Jenny already had been able to achieve.

  Anne-Marie had finally browbeaten Niclas Lind into marrying her. Apparently it was to be a large wedding, judging by the number of invitations sent to members of the Royal Theater. Everyone from stagehands and carpenters to the stars of the company was invited; it was a wonder that the royal family, patrons of the theater, had not been summoned. Herr Tengmark was not the only person to appreciate the exquisite revenge against Jenny that the vulgar display incorporated: the date of the wedding was Jenny’s fourteenth birthday. Tengmark quietly passed word that the Royal Theater’s only interest in the matter was the well-being of Jenny Lind, soprano, member of the company.

  Tengmark, Berg, Jenny’s teachers and classmates attended the wedding, while the rest of the company sent token gifts. Tengmark had never seen Lind before, and came away with the impression that the man had something ugly in him under the alcoholic buffoonery. There was no telling where or how genius would emerge from humanity’s trash! To Tengmark it seemed that Jenny understood this part of her life least of all, as if nature was somehow protecting its finest flower. She was in agony during the ceremony, commanded by her mother to sit in the first seat of the first pew, where everyone could see her. When it was over Tengmark set the example for the rest of the company to follow by quickly congratulating the couple, kissing Jenny’s cheek, and then exiting into the early Stockholm twilight.

  What the new Frau Lind wanted for herself in the actual contract negotiation was a position with the Royal Theater as a dormitory matron—specifically, Jenny’s dormitory matron. She wanted the ground-floor apartment so her family could be together, she said—a patent fiction intended to obscure the fact that she wanted Jenny under her control again. Once more she claimed that she was troubled by the cloud that hung over the moral reputations of theater people.

  To Tengmark Anne-Marie’s real objective was quite clear: to get as close to Jenny and her career as humanly, or even physically, possible. At every turn she would be wrapped in her own “morality,” asserting she was in the right, that her only purpose was moral. The woman was a troublemaker, pure and simple, and the prospect of having to deal with her for another four years—and risking the ruin of Jenny’s talent in the bargain, through the pressure Anne-Marie would put on the girl—was enough to make Tengmark examine carefully the consequences of terminating Jenny’s contract then and there. But the worst of those consequences—the possibility that Jenny Lind would never develop her immense gifts—was intolerable.

  “You can have the position and the apartment, but Jenny herself continues her dormitory living. It is part of her education—I insist!”

  He could see the glitter in Anne-Marie’s eye. Being in the same building would be enough, she was thinking. Tengmark wasn’t disturbed. She wouldn’t be able to resist meddling with Jenny more and more, until she broke the terms of this understanding. Once he had her signature on the contract, Tengmark knew she would never be able to get Jenny away from the Royal Theater. He had already made his peace with the fact that he would have to contend with Anne-Marie in one way or another until Jenny was eighteen. This was the best arrangement he could get.

  Anne-Marie, her indolent older daughter Amalia, and the often-drunk Niclas moved into the dormitory in June, and by November it was clear that they would have to be gone as quickly as it could be arranged. If the girthy Amalia and sometimes-roaring, sometimes-snoozing Niclas were not disruptive enough, Anne-Marie had appointed herself the Napoleon and Grand Inquisitor of all the girls in the floors above. They did not pray enough, they used too much lip rouge, they were too frivolous, noisy at night—the list was becoming endless. The woman was a shrew determined to sow misery. One sixteen-year-old had already developed a stammer. Another had been so bold as to complain to Tengmark himself. The worst of it was that the girls were turning on Jenny—the favored treatment she had been getting for years had finally brought this on them.

  The matter was settled before Christmas. Anne-Marie insisted on cooking a big dinner for all the girls before they went home for the holiday with their parents—visits necessarily brief, because the girls had to be back at the theater on the twenty-seventh, for the resumption of holiday performances. The schedule was so tight that Anne-Marie’s scheme was an imposition on everyone, but she let it be known that she really was doing it to give Jenny “a special holiday”—Tengmark, at least, could see the undercurrent of resentment of Jenny in everything Anne-Marie did. But by now he could see how far she was going to take her hare-brained schemes—all of it was suicidal. The girls hated her so much that they were almost in open revolt. So it was just a matter of time, Tengmark thought, before he would have to step in and point out that, for the good of the theater, it would be better if Anne-Marie and her tribe took themselves elsewhere, and left the miracle with whom they had been blessed, Jenny, to those who would serve her best.

  Tengmark had overlooked Niclas Lind and his feelings for Anne-Marie. Her dinner was the perfect opportunity for him to avenge himself for fifteen years of hounding and woe. In Tengmark’s opinion, Lind was just a common drunk, not a true musician, a pleasure-lover who had no real character. There was no doubt that he was drunk when he arrived at the dormitory just minutes before the “feast” was to begin. Tengmark made a show afterward of taking testimony in case Anne-Marie decided to take her claim to court; but the truth was that he was ready to throw them all out into the street bodily, by himself if necessary, from the moment he heard the first words of the first account of what happen
ed. The outrage! The unspeakable disgusting scandal! Tengmark’s first thought was that if Jenny was damaged permanently in any way he would kill them all. It was hard to imagine that such garbage shared the same air with Jenny Lind, much less had brought her into the world.

  In spite of Niclas Lind’s lurching, drunken garrulousness, Anne-Marie insisted on going on with her dinner fiasco, assembling sixteen girls, including her own two, at the table, and bringing out the Christmas goose. Lind heaved himself to the head of the table, tried to pick up the carving fork, and dropped it on the floor. Anne-Marie was sitting on his right, Amalia on his left.

  “Can’t you do anything right?” Anne-Marie shrieked. “Couldn’t you show me the courtesy of corning to my table sober?”

  “You shut up, you stringy old hen!” he roared. “It should be you on the table, under the knife!”

  “Oh, stop your whining and pick up the fork and get on with it!”

  He stared at her for a moment, then ducked under the table. When he came up again, the innocent girls did not immediately realize what he had done. It was not his thumb or an oversized finger protruding from his pants. He waved it at Anne-Marie and shouted something that could not be heard over the screams of the suddenly-awakening girls as he began to splash urine all over the roasted bird before him.

  An hour later Tengmark found the goose exactly as it had been defiled, Lind asleep in the chair, and Anne-Marie ready to begin some kind of story—the very idea of a story made Tengmark lose all control. Lind, Anne-Marie, and Amalia were on the street by midnight, just hours before Christmas, and Jenny was removed to the Tengmark household, where Frau Tengmark and their maids restored Jenny from the trembling shock to which her family had finally reduced her. It was clear that she did not want to cry, or discuss the matter, or in any way be reminded of her family. Tengmark was helpless—she wanted it that way, he could see. He was frightened for her, but he hoped he was also seeing her coming to an understanding of her own power and stature as an artist. She was deciding how she wanted the incident handled even if she could not say so out loud. Tengmark wanted to cater to her. If nothing else, he had been given an incident in which he could teach her that it was appropriate for people to defer to her, to see that she was left undisturbed to concentrate on her singing.

  Tengmark suppressed the story, threatening to dismiss the man or woman who spoke of it to anyone, anywhere. Just the thought of the incident made Tengmark shudder with revulsion. It was impossible to tell if Jenny—or any of the other girls, for that matter—had sustained any permanent damage. For days afterward she seemed to slip away, distant. Tengmark told her she was to sing at his annual New Year’s Eve private recital and after a moment’s hesitation she nodded assent. Everyone attended, including a few who had not been invited, like old Herr Craelius, her first singing teacher, who bowed low to his host, tears streaming down his cheeks. Whatever he had heard it was enough to make him come out in the cold to show his love for Jenny. As soon as she began to sing, it became a wonderful party. She sang with perfect, shattering sweetness, and the audience shouted and cheered. She turned to the pianist and indicated she wanted to sing another song. There was no smile. No one saw a trace of emotion. She sang for an hour, until everyone, like Craelius, was in tears. Tengmark could see what she was doing. This was the person she wanted to be. It was an act of will so intense it made Tengmark afraid for her.

  Bellini’s opera Norma, in which Jenny Lind achieved her first great success, tells the story of a Druid princess at the time of Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. Betrayed by her proconsul lover, the priestess Norma declares all-out war against the invaders, but in the end gives her life attempting to save that of the unfaithful Roman.

  What Jenny brought to the role of Norma was a new, hitherto-unsuspected interpretation. Previous sopranos had played the part like a fierce, avenging woman in her maturity, like Medea. Obviously Jenny was inappropriate for anything like that. Her interpretation, suggested by her student reading of the great aria, “Casta diva,” in which Norma prays that her lover be returned to her, completely reinvented the character and changed and deepened the meaning of the opera. Her Norma was concerned for the children she had borne her unfaithful lover, and was stricken by remorse by her betrayal of her people, her vows as a priestess, and herself. Jenny Lind made Norma a tragic victim of her own human weakness. The audience stood up and roared its approval, and Stockholm’s critics correctly reported that a new day was dawning in the history of opera.

  Jenny Lind was seventeen years old, and she understood perfectly what she had accomplished. In her diary the next day she wrote that she now had two birthdays, for on the day before she had awakened as one person, and gone to bed another. The trouble she was to have with her throat and the retraining she would have to endure were still ahead of her, although already it had been seen that occasionally she had difficulty sustaining high notes, and too much singing made her hoarse. Still, her career was launched; her reputation spread and soon she was in demand all over Europe. She visited her parents, wrote to them faithfully, and had Judge Munthe attend to their needs, but otherwise she tried to keep a distance from their unending difficulties. She gave herself unreservedly to charity; it unsettled her to know that she could open people’s purses wider with one song than all the churches could do in a year of begging. And she met men, scores of them—hundreds. Older, established, adult men attracted her, but too often they were married, or quickly dissolved into lovesickness like their younger counterparts. Her English officer wanted her to give up singing, and for a while she went along with him, but at the last minute she came to her senses and broke off the engagement.

  Jenny Lind had become the first great international singing star in the history of the world. People stopped traffic and smashed windows to get a glimpse of her. Her devotees stood in the hundreds beneath her windows until authorities begged that she dismiss them with a wave of her hand. On the eve of her journey to America, she had earned two million dollars, and had given one and a half away to charities. For all of that, she was able to support her parents and her own home in Kensington. By 1860 her position in the firmament of nineteenth century genius remained unique, her reputation studded by triumphs everywhere. Everyone knew her story, her parents, the men in her life, her flashes of temperament—but none of that mattered. Just the sight of her made grown men weep for joy. She was beloved.

  8.

  According to John Hall Wilton—if he could be believed at all—the news from America was good. On the Monday after Jenny Lind’s party Tom Thumb was suffering the worst hangover of his life, his agony doubled by the long all-night trek back to Claridge’s. Wilton had rushed over to the hotel at two in the afternoon, having just received in the afternoon post, he said, one last message from Barnum in New York.

  Barnum wanted to assure the entire company, and especially Tom Thumb, that everything was going far better than anyone anticipated. More than that Barnum did not have time to say, except that the troupe should prepare itself for anything once the Great Western approached New York. Whatever else happened, Jenny Lind’s welcome was going to be the biggest event in the history of the city.

  Tom Thumb gave it all as careful a listen as he could. His hangover was relentless; his brain felt as if someone had tried to pry it loose with a grapefruit knife. Two similar images, one observed, the other not, flashed through Tom Thumb’s tortured brain, triggering entirely dissimilar reactions.

  He remembered Jenny Lind naked to the waist in the arms of her piano player; but then immediately he remembered that last night was the first chance Lavinia and the again-healthy Gallagher had had to be together—and realized that he had not seen them at the Kensington party at all. He groaned as the second image became enhanced in his mind by the first, made more intimate and all too vivid. Wilton prattled on, saying he would go over it all again tomorrow night aboard the Great Western in Liverpool. Liverpool! Tom Thumb still had to be sure the last of the troupe’s special equipmen
t got on the train, then off at the other end to be stowed on board the ship. He had Anna Swan to deal with, and Chang and Eng …

  “I was hoping you’d be able to join me for a farewell dinner tonight, General,” Wilton said.

  “No,” Tom Thumb said, leaving the hurt and dumbfounded Wilton staring at him speechless.

  Happily, Wilton’s transportation arrangements to Liverpool were comfortable and comprehensive. For all he did not know about the meaning and value of publicity, he seemed to have been able to get the crowds out. Tom Thumb was feeling better physically, however unnerved the sight of Lavinia and Gallagher together made him. There was no doubt any more about the magnitude of Jenny Lind’s appeal with the common people on this side of the ocean. There were crowds at the railroad station, crowds on the overpasses, and all along the right of way, all for her. People carried placards and pennants bearing her name and proclaiming their love. Tom Thumb could not help pondering her “greatness,” if that was what it was, the immensity of her following, the depth of feeling she evoked, the rapture with which her adherents made legend of her accomplishments. The country was at her feet. All that Barnum had told him months ago about Jenny Lind did not amount to a fraction of the real situation. If this tide of love could do it, Jenny Lind would be swept to immortality.

  Yet she really was a modest woman, and a bit of a joyless prig. She did not approve of the fuss made over her, and there were stories that she had her qualms about the money and time people spent on her singing itself. That such opinions came from the woman Tom Thumb observed battling her passion with the piano player gave the little man a moment of pleasure, perspective, and a sense of his own civilization just when it was clear he needed it most. No one was immune from the troubles of life. Lavinia and Gallagher had reserved a compartment for themselves, while Tom Thumb stared at Chang and Eng and wondered if doubled-up Anna Swan at his side was going to lose her balance and roll over on him.