USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Romantic days in old Boston : the story of the city and of its people during the nineteenth century > Part 17
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Mlle. Lind's early history was accordingly told and retold: the poverty; the tribulations; the childish singing-days in the streets for coppers; her exquisite voice, which so moved a benevolent lady that she " took her up " and
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gave her lessons under Garcia; then years of careful training for the opera and preparations for a public début. Finally, all the great capitals of Europe are at Jenny's feet; in one the police were not able to control the crowds who wished to hear her and the infantry had to be called out! Yet, after six years of this, said the press- notices, Jenny Lind came suddenly to the conclusion that she must not longer mingle with theatre folk. Fortuitously, it was mentioned that oratorio was her best medium and that she was now giving away all her money to the poor.
Never before in the world's history had such talent been united with so many virtues and such great benevolence! So skilfully was the public assured of this by Barnum that, when Jenny Lind's steamer arrived in New York, enthusiasm was actually boundless. Twenty thousand people surrounded her hotel until midnight, serenading her with a band of two hundred pieces and hoarsely shouting her name. Not until Barnum had led her out on the balcony to bow her thanks, would the crowd disperse. Mlle. Lind was now a mania just as her manager had meant she should be.
But could she sing ? you ask. Hear what Thomas Ryan, an accomplished musician, and for many years a member of the famous Men- delssohn Quintet Club of Boston, has to say on
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this score: " She deserved all that was claimed for her, - unmusical nonsensical stories ex- cepted. Her voice was of extensive range, reaching easily to D. in alt, - a voice of veiled quality with something of the essence of a tear in it. She had almost unlimited execution, sang with great earnestness, and did everything in a highly finished broad style. Such pieces as 'On Mighty Pens ' from the Creation, and 'I know that My Redeemer Liveth ' she sang with so devotional a sentiment that she really seemed like some inspired priestess proclaiming her faith. Doubtless many people in Boston will remember that, when she had reached the end of the last-named song and made her bow, Daniel Webster, who was a listener, arose from his seat in the audience and, with great dignity, returned the bow.
" Her intonation was perfect. Benedict had written for her a very long cadenza to fit the end of a cavatina from 'Beatrice de Tenda.' The cadenza was sung without accompaniment; it covered two pages of music paper and was written in a style suited to an instrumental concerto. Towards the end there was a sequence of ascending and descending arpeggios of di- minished sevenths which flowed into a scale of trills from a low note to one of her highest; then, dwelling very long on that note and trilling on it, she gradually, tranquilly, returned to
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the theme of the cavatina, when it was perceived that her wonderfully fine musical ear had un- erringly guided her through the mazes of the long cadenza and brought her to the tonic note of the piece with surprising correctness of intona- tion. I think she was not overrated when called a ' great singer.' "
As soon as Barnum saw what his " Nightin- gale " could do he offered to share with her all the proceeds above $5500 a night and pay her her stipulated $1000 a night beside. In this way her receipts from the tour which he man- aged for her were over $175,000 and his over $530,000. Nearly all her share she gave, as she gave practically all her money, to charity. Yet there was a close approach to a riot, - glass being smashed and many ladies fainting because of the great showman's bad faith, - at the Fitchburg Depot concert, and if "P. T." had not fled by carriage from his quarters at the Revere House and boarded the night train to New York from the suburbs he would have been roughly handled by the indignant mob whose money he had taken for standing room that didn't exist.
The house in quaint Louisburg Square where Jenny Lind married her accompanist, Otto Goldschmidt, is still standing. It was then the home of Samuel G. Ward, a well known Bos- tonian who was the local agent of Baring
d
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Brothers, the London bankers of that era, and the house with which the "Swedish Nightin- gale " did her business. In the Boston Courier of February 6, 1853, appears this brief notice of the wedding:
" Although St. Valentine's Day has not quite reached us, yet the 'first bird of the season ' has already chosen her mate. The queen of song has committed matrimony. Jenny Lind is Jenny Lind no longer, but Mrs. Goldschmidt. In plain English, the following record was made yesterday on the books of the Boston city registrar:
"' Married in this city, at the residence of Mr. S. G. Ward, by Rev. Charles Mason, as- sisted by Rev. Dr. Wainwright of New York, the Swedish consul, Hon. Edward Everett, Mr. and Mrs. T. W. Ward, Mr. N. I. Bowditch, her legal adviser, and other friends, Otto Goldschmidt of Hamburg to Mlle. Jenny Lind of Stockholm, Sweden.'
" Mr. Goldschmidt has attended Jenny as her pianist for many months past. The match has taken everybody by surprise, though we must say that we were struck with something con- foundedly arch and roguish in the twinkle of her eye when she sang 'John Anderson, My Jo,' the last time she appeared in public in this city. Such, however, has been the discretion of the parties that it may have been a ' foregone
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conclusion ' for years. The next song of the nightingale will, of course, be 'Home, Sweet Home.' May she live a thousand years and sing it every day."
For one of her tours Jenny Lind engaged the orchestral services of the Germania Society, an organization which first came to this country in April, 1848, and in which William Schultze was long first violin and Carl Zerrahn first flute. This organization soon put in a whole season in Boston, giving twenty-four Saturday evening concerts and the same number of public rehearsals on Wednesday afternoons. It appears to have been the precursor of the Boston Symphony orchestra which for many years was generously maintained by Mr. Henry L. Higginson. It was with the Germania that the famous girl violinist, Camilla Urso, of whom a competent critic has said that she was one of the few young wonders who developed into great artists at maturity, travelled as a star.
The red-letter musical event in the Boston of this period was the Peace Jubilee of 1869, organized and conducted by Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, Carl Zerrahn acting as general musical director, Ole Bull and Carl Rosa playing first violin in an orchestra numbering one thousand pieces(!) the great singer, Parepa-Rosa, doing the soprano solo parts and Adelaide Phillips
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the contralto ones. Gilmore had himself been in the Civil War and the impulse to celebrate in festive fashion peace and the gathering of the Southern States back into the fold seems to have been a genuine one with him. But besides being a loyal Unionist and a respectable musi- cian he possessed great executive ability and so was able to inspire a large number of people with such belief in the success of his undertaking that they were willing to become its financial guarantors. Accordingly, a wooden building of good acoustic properties was erected about where the Copley Plaza now stands, - a building capable of holding fifty thousand persons, in- cluding a chorus of ten thousand and the great orchestra already mentioned !
The first question which arises in connection with this "monster" festival is - where did the ten thousand trained chorus singers come from? The answer is "from all over New England." This was the era of the "Yankee singing school" and of the so-called "musical conventions." On these latter occasions famous oratorios were usually given, and young singers like Annie Louise Cary, - who died only lately, - found a favorable opportunity to begin their solo career. Nearly every oratorio worthy of mention was thus known, either entire or in part, to music lovers throughout New England. And nearly all these people were ready and
CARL AND PAREPA ROSA. Page 295.
CAMILLA URSO.
ADELAIDE PHILLIPS.
Page 295.
Page 302.
From photographs in the possession of Mrs. Martha Lana Shepard, Boston.
CARL ZERRAHN AS DIRECTOR OF THE PEACE JUBILEE.
ANNIE LOUISE CARY.
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glad, after being carefully drilled by Mr. Zerrahn and his assistants in their home-towns, to come to Boston and help Mr. Gilmore make a Peace Festival. Of course real critics, like John S. Dwight, loathed the whole thing and said so. (Dwight absolutely refused to endorse the Jubilee in the columns of his Journal of Music even when requested to do so by Oliver Ditson, his publisher. And he is said to have spent the whole week at Nahant, where the strident echoes of the affair could not reach him.) But several good men had a hand in the celebration none the less: J. K. Paine and Dudley Buck directed their own compositions; Eben Tourjee led, when " Nearer, My God, to Thee " and other hymns were sung, and Julius Eichberg wrote for this occasion his tuneful " To Thee, O Country " which has since be- come popular.
The most marvellous thing about the whole Festival was that, although it cost $283,000 it paid for itself and showed a balance of nearly ten thousand dollars on the right side of the ledger! This, too, in spite of the fact that real cannon with artillery-men to set them off were used in the national airs, one hundred red-shirted firemen were drafted to bring out the staccato parts of the " Anvil Chorus," and all the professionals were paid for their services. Mrs. Abba Goold Woolson, who went to the
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Festival on one of its big days, sent back to the Concord, N. H., Monitor a sprightly account of this experience by means of which all who cared to might go with her " into the big tent." Here are some bits of her article:
" Keeping fast hold of our checks, we walk down the broad, empty aisle to the balcony's edge, and look over into the parquet. What an immense expanse of people and benches spread below us; what a vast, lofty roof above, all awave with gay banners! Up there, at the right, is the organ, and the big drum, large and thin, towers before it - ' Let Us Have Peace,' on its head plainly visible. On the left of these sits the chorus - all men; on the right, a brighter throng - the women. Faces there
are indistinguishable, of course. It might
be called, indeed, a sea of humanity. Down again, go our glances, into the parquet. How quietly the people have poured in; and how small they look! Among them all we noticed a large woman, escorted up the aisle. Her shawl of pale blue crêpe, wrought with white flowers, her large bonnet, and her breadth of shoulders make us single her out from the throng. She turns into her seat; a glass shows the ruddy face of Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis, the city's guest. . . . There comes Gilmore himself forward to his position. How they applaud him! One glimpse of the red
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rose in his coat and his energetic bow, and he has whisked about on his stand, and his white gloves and baton are beating the air. Here comes the music. But we are not stunned. No louder than that? Now it bursts out strong enough. Still we are alive and still able to look about us calmly again when the piece is finished. The voices are full and rich and strong, but blent into strange softness, like the sound from the myriad waves of a distant sea. The Judgment Hymn and Janotti's Grand March, the first original music produced, rouse us more. The house is liberal with applause.
" But now everybody begins to look for Parepa. She seems the chief attraction of the whole festival. They say, around us, that she is to come up the stairway, behind the great drum. All are watching. The applause starts up, there is a gleam of yellow silk, and the queenly woman appears, following her escort down through the narrow aisles to Gilmore's stand. At every step the enthusiastic welcome grows and rolls in a stormy tide to her feet. See, the conquering singer comes! She stands one step below Mr. Gilmore, drops her bouquet, adjusts her music, and is ready. We take note of the gorgeous yellow tunic, deeply flounced with black lace, the light, flowing skirt, and her superb physique, and noble head - when hark! here come the notes, beginning the song from
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' Robert.' We wonder that we can hear them, how sweet, how soft, how clear, yet, too, how far off! The homage is wild when it is through. She sails out behind the drum again, in spite of it all, but it is of no use, she has to return, amid greater enthusiasm; but only to bow, she will not sing.
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" Now that Anvil Chorus is to come. The red-shirted firemen, who have been for the last half hour moving up and down the aisles, are all in their places, extending back on each side of the leader, fifty in a row. The music begins. Their hammers are held in air ready. but we see no anvils. Clang, comes the stroke, Gilmore's arms swing alternately up and down, and they obey them instantly, and cease in- stantly when he flings them back. Crash, the guns thunder over our heads. How it starts us all! The music pours out; the band, drums, bells and the chorus, the anvils and guns, all rolling multitudinously, make us wild. Hand- kerchiefs are in air, waving frantically. Hands clap and feet stamp, and canes pound the floor. Still the billows of melody roll on. It is almost too much to bear. We shiver as with cold, and feel like bursting into a torrent of tears. But we wink them back, and keep on waving fiercely. Over our heads, through the roof windows, pours the sulphurous smoke from the guns outside, and the roof shakes and jars.
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The plaudits are still more tempestuous when ; through. The proud firemen evidently think themselves the chief element of the suc- cess, and they attract all eyes from their pic- turesque look. It is all gone over again, and the audience seem to wish it might never cease. . . Those artillerymen out there must be kept busy loading their twelve guns. They are two hundred feet off; yet we wish they were a little farther, for there is a reverberation against the roof, a jar of the building which is not pleasant.
" When the national song is concluded, inother storm of plaudits sets in, like that after he Anvil Chorus. All of us are insane again, and this time more so. We can scarcely keep from springing upon our seats and cheering. The men, here and there, do throw up their hats, and all break into an audible - what shall ke call it? - not a cheer, but a groan of delight What runs around the house. What a proud noment for Parepa, surely the proudest in er life. As this is her last song, she has taken a hair, and intends to spend the rest of the fternoon with us. Now she is bending over, of alking to her husband, Carl Rosa, who sits mong the violins on her right. Of course he has to rise and repeat, and now her last note ies away. After that Arbuckle's trumpet, and le applauded him heartily with her white kids.
S e S
the
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"' The Harp that once through Tara's halls' is sung by everybody and everything there, and is unspeakably sweet and satisfying. We hope the soul of Tom Moore is present to hear. But the audience are now tired of applauding. We all rise, as requested, at the last, for the Hun- dredth Psalm, but nobody seems to sing; all want to hear the chorus.
" Then comes the end. Every note has died away along the pennoned rafters, and the breezes only are swaying the sunlit ban- ners. . "
The second Jubilee, held in June, 1872, was to celebrate the World's Peace, - the Franco- Prussian War being then just over - and the thing " featured " was the band-work of various European nations. On this occasion Strauss, the composer, conducted his own waltzes and Madame Rudersdorf, a splendid singer of broad. classic, oratorio style, sang a number of solos w This Peace Jubilee did not pay but left a financial deficit which the sturdy Boston guarantoren promptly made up with such grace as they coulch command.
I have said that Jenny Lind gave away nearly a all the money that she earned while in America. One favorite form of giving with her was towards the musical education of young girls who had talent. Among the beneficiaries of her kind heart was Adelaide Phillips, who had
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already been doing things in a singing way on the Museum stage for some years but who was desirous of pursuing her musical studies further and whom Jenny Lind graciously fitted out with a check for a thousand dollars and a letter of warm recommendation to her own instructor, Emanuel Garcia. ---
Additional help being given to Miss Phillips by that "grand, upright and square " man, Jonas Chickering, she left home (in 1852) with her father for England, where for two years she studied with Garcia, a brother of the immortal Malibran, and possessed, like his sister, of much magnetism and power. Before returning to the great success which awaited her in Boston Miss Phillips had a triumphal season in Italy, her wonderful voice, sympathetic acting and charm- ing presence uniting to bring her great applause wherever she was heard. But by 1855 she was back in her home city and, the following spring, she appeared with great success in Italian opera in Philadelphia and in New York. Her great rôle at this time was as Azucena in " Il Trova- tore," then a new opera, in which Mlle. Fillippi, as she was called, was obliged to create the part. She made this gypsy mother a tragic heroine, just as Charlotte Cushman did with Meg Merrilies, and her rendering of the character has remained the standard ever since.
In oratorio Miss Phillips was no less successful
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than on the lyric stage. That was a great occasion when, on December 30, 1860, she made her first appearance before the Boston Handel and Haydn Society in the Messiah. " Her rendering of the impressive Aria, 'He was despised,' came not only with artistic power but from a devotional nature." Miss Phillips' last appearance with the Handel and Haydn Society was on November 24, 1878. She then sang, very appropriately, as it turned out, Verdi's "Requiem Mass." Two years later, she purchased the farm in Marshfield with which her name is now so touchingly associated and there, in 1882, she died, after a long struggle - against ill health - to keep up her work in the Ideal Opera Company, of which she was an important member. Like Charlotte Cush- man, with whom her career has several parallels, she was buried from King's Chapel, all Boston agreeing that " her private life was as pure and blameless as her works were grand and en- nobling."
Ole Bull, whose widow, a charming American, long made her home in Cambridge, was a very gifted violinist and a highly picturesque figure. Even in his old age his hair was heavy and long, and when he had finished playing it was always in artistic disarray. He was born in Bergen, Norway, just a hundred years ago, and he died, at the summer residence he had
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there set up, at the ripe age of seventy. Ole Bull seems to have possessed one quality very rare among musicians, - real delight in giving pleasure through his art. "It was not neces- sary," records Mrs. James T. Fields, " when he was to give his friends the favor of a visit, to suggest that he should bring his violin. He never failed to remember that he could find his fullest expression through that medium and when the proper moment arrived was always ready to contribute his large share to the pleasure of the time. There was a generosity about bestowing himself in private for others which was delightful. He was proud to give what he possessed. His friends cannot forget his manner of going and standing with his violin in the corner of the library, where, drawing up his fine figure to its full height and throwing back his head, he would stand silent until he was prompted to begin." It has been said in all seriousness that it was an impossibility for " the heroic Bull " to sit down and play.
CHAPTER X
SOCIAL QUEENS AND THE WORLD THEY RULED
I T is a striking coincidence that three wives of Boston Otises should have been social queens in the real meaning of that word. The first Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis, who was described and pictured in the book preceding this one 1 occupied a prominent place in the republican court circles of her day as well as in Boston; for her husband succeeded Fisher Ames in Congress twenty years before he took up his duties as second Mayor of Boston. By the time Mr. Otis came to occupy the Boston position, indeed, his wife was in rather poor health, so that it was upon his young daughter- in-law, who had been born Emily Marshall, and had married his son, William Foster Otis, that the social duties of his home devolved. Of her charm and. exquisite beauty mention was made in the earlier pages of the present volume. She died in the summer of 1836.
Then, speedily, another Mrs. Otis, born Elizabeth Boardman, came to the front in 1 See Old Boston Days and Ways, p. 402.
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Boston society. This young woman had been a famous beauty and belle even before she married the young son and namesake of the then Mayor of Boston. She had received the most careful education and the finest culture that the best masters could give, and she had had the advantage of life in one of those Boston homes made luxurious and beautiful by the East India trade. So though the Otis family stood among the highest in the land, it hon- ored itself by an alliance with Elizabeth Board- man.
Very early she was left a widow. And she seems for a time to have fulfilled the lively traditions of that state. According to the gossips of the day she numbered among her admirers men like Daniel Webster and Henry Clay as well as many others of less renown.
Samuel Breck, who was in Mrs. Otis's own set, by birth, appears not to have approved of her at all. One finds among his notes (April 12, 1832) this reference to her: "This lady, a widow and mother of five children and already of a certain age, has been displaying and flirting 'during the winter in Philadelphia and Wash- ington, giving the tone and assuming the lead. At Mrs. Lloyd's (Breck's Philadelphia sister) she found fault with the rooms; they were too small; she must have spacious parlors; her friends in Boston told her she must go home
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and build, and when she does broad and lofty rooms will gratify her vanity.
" This lady-traveller," continues Breck tartly, " inherited about one hundred and fifty thou- sand dollars from her father, and is, for the rest, a light-hearted woman, not destitute of wit and smartness, and has been much attended to by the fashionable circles of our city. She is a little of a virago, too. It is said that in Boston she frequently visited on foot in the evening, always trusting to an Irish servant for protection on her return home, and of course declining the escort of the beaux who offered their services. Some of these were miffed at her refusal, and one evening waylaid her and her Irish squire in order to frighten them. She, seeing a man approach saucily, turned to the servant. 'John,' said she, 'knock that man down;' upon which John knocked him down. This rough hint left her ever after un- molested." 1
Boston at this time was much too petty a place to suit Mrs. Otis, it is clear. She must have been very glad to sail off to Europe, in 1835, and busy herself there with the education of her young sons and with her own further development along congenial lines. She was absent for about five years and when she came back, thrilling in every nerve with the joy of
1 Recollections of Samuel Breck, p. 285.
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life and with desire to make herself felt in her native city, she found that she had quite a task ahead of her. For the social machinery of the time was exceedingly ponderous. And Boston loved its own limitations.
An Englishman who was a resident in the town just before the middle of the nineteenth century has declared that everything essential to the most agreeable society existed there " with one exception and that is the spirit of sociability." Eating was the chief business of all gatherings, and Charles Dickens, who was here in 1842, observed, with thinly-veiled dis- gust, that at every dinner there was an enormous amount of poultry on the table " and at every supper, at least two mighty bowls of hot stewed oysters, in any one of which a half grown Duke of Clarence might be smothered easily."
The Boston notion of cordial hospitality, in the forties, seems to have been inviting the stranger within their gates to occupy a place in the family pew at church. "I am afraid to say," says Dickens, " how many offers of pews and seats in church were made to us by formal notes of invitation that morning of my arrival (which was on Sunday) . but at least as many sittings as would have accom- modated a score or two of grown up families!" Not that Bostonians did not know how to be excellent hosts, when the spirit moved, or were
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