Chapter I: In Paris

On Thursday, the first of July, 1841, Mdlle. Lind embarked, on the steamship _Gauthiod_, for Lübeck; attended by a trusty female companion, recommended to her by Madame von Koch.

“The dear little girl,” wrote Madame Lindblad, “was almost crushed. I never thought that it would cost her so much. On the last night she never slept, but wrote letters the whole night through, coming occasionally into our rooms to have a good cry. On the first of July she left, at 11 o’clock, A.M.”

After a few days of rest and enjoyment, she proceeded with her companion to Hâvre by the steamboat; and thence, by diligence, to Paris.

To a nature so sensitive, the change from the natural simplicity of domestic life in Sweden, to the restless activity of the French capital, with its crowded streets, its ceaseless craving for pleasure and excitement, its passion for amusement, its caprices of fashion, and above all, its splendid theatres, its art-collections, and priceless opportunities for mental cultivation and improvement—to such a nature, all this, so new, so unexpected, and, in many respects, so strangely incomprehensible, must have been fraught with an all-absorbing interest.

And we must not forget, that the Paris of fifty years ago was a city, very different from, and, in many respects, very much more interesting than, that in which it delights us to spend our holidays to-day—an older Paris, as different from the Paris of to-day, as the Hamburg of to-day is, from the Hamburg that suffered in the conflagration of 1842.

It was to this older Paris that Mdlle. Lind repaired, in the summer of the year 1841, in the hope of perfecting herself in the technicalities of the Art she so dearly loved—that Art of Singing, of whose mysteries she knew so little, and longed to know so much; and the details of which she found it so impossible to acquire satisfactorily in Stockholm.

For her advancement in Dramatic Art, she trusted to herself alone. No one could teach her to act, and she sought no teacher, for her method was part of herself; she needed no help for this. But her need of a competent _Maestro di Canto_ was a very pressing one, indeed; and she had long been convinced that one, and one only, could teach her what she so much desired to know. But it will be readily understood that the assistance and hearty co-operation of such a master as she needed were not to be had for the mere asking; and some little time elapsed before her desire was accomplished.

On first reaching Paris, she found a comfortable home with a family named Ruffiaques, who kept a boarding-house, in a street near the Rue Neuve des Augustins.

Here, she was visited by Madame Berg, the wife of her former singing-master, who was then staying in Paris, with her little invalid son, Albert; and, also, by Herr Blumm, a Swedish gentleman of kindliest disposition and infinite _bonhomie_, who held the appointment of _Chancelier_ to the Swedish Legation, in the Rue d’Anjou, and to whom she was indebted for innumerable acts of courtesy and kindness, during the period of her residence in Paris.

On leaving Sweden, she had brought with her letters of introduction from Queen Desideria,[10] to her relative, the Duchesse de Dalmatie (Madame la Maréchale Soult); and, soon after her arrival in Paris, she was invited by this lady to an afternoon reception. It was understood that she would be asked to sing: and, by invitation of the Duchesse, Signor Manuel Garcia, the brother of Madame Malibran and Madame Viardot, and the most renowned _Maestro di Canto_ in Europe, came to hear her.

She sang some Swedish songs, accompanying herself on the pianoforte; but, either through nervousness, or fatigue, she does not appear to have done herself justice, and her singing seems to have produced no very favourable effect upon the assembled guests. Her voice was worn, not only from over-exertion, but from want of that careful management which can only be acquired by long training under a thoroughly competent master. Such training she had never had. She had formed her own ideal of the difficult _rôles_ that had been entrusted to her at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm, and had tried to reach that ideal by the only means she knew of—means, very pernicious indeed. The result was, that the voice had been very cruelly injured. The mischief had been seriously aggravated by the fatigue consequent upon her long and arduous provincial tour; and the effect was a chronic hoarseness, painful enough to produce marked symptoms of deterioration upon the fresh young voice, which had never been taught either the method of production, or the cultivation of style necessary for the development of its natural charm.

Signor Garcia was not slow to perceive all this; and he afterwards told a lady, who questioned him upon the subject, that Mdlle. Lind was, at that time, altogether wanting in the qualities needed for presentation before a highly-cultivated audience.

Soon after this, Mdlle. Lind called, by appointment, upon Signor Garcia, who then occupied a pleasant _deuxième étage_, in a large block of houses in the Square d’Orléans, near the Rue Saint Lazare. As, on this occasion, she formally requested the great _Maestro_ to receive her as a pupil, he felt it his duty to examine her voice more carefully than he had been able to do at Madame Soult’s afternoon party; and, after making her sing through the usual scales, and forming his own opinion of the power and compass of the vocal registers, he asked her to sing the well-known scena from _Lucia di Lammermoor_—“_Perche non ho_.” In this, unhappily, she broke completely down—in all probability, through nervousness, for she had appeared in the part of “Lucia,” at the Stockholm Theatre, no less than thirty-nine times only the year before, and the music must, therefore, have been more than familiar to her. However, let the cause have been what it might, the failure was complete; and, upon the strength of it, the Maestro pronounced his terrible verdict—“It would be useless to teach you, Mademoiselle; you have no voice left”—“_Mademoiselle, vous n’avez plus de voix_.”[11]

The effect of this sentence of hopeless condemnation upon an organisation so highly strung as that of Mdlle. Lind may be easily conceived. But her courage was equal to the occasion, though she told Mendelssohn, years afterwards, that the anguish of that moment exceeded all that she had ever suffered in her whole life. Yet, her faith in her own powers never wavered for an instant. There was a fire within her that no amount of discouragement could ever quench.

Instead, therefore, of accepting his verdict as a final one, she asked, with tears in her eyes, what she was to do. Her trust in the _Maestro’s_ judgment was no less firm than that which she felt in the reality of her own vocation. In the full conviction that, if she could only persuade him to advise her, his counsel would prove invaluable, she did not hesitate to make the attempt; and the result fully justified the soundness of her conclusions. Moved by her evident distress, he recommended her to give her voice six weeks of perfect rest; to abstain, during the whole of that time, from singing even so much as one single note; and to speak as little as possible. And, upon condition that she strictly carried out these injunctions, he gave her permission to come to him again, when the period of probation was ended, in order that he might then see whether anything could be done for her.

To any really earnest aspirant, six weeks of enforced idleness would have been a martyrdom. For Mdlle. Lind, such a period of inaction was simply impossible. Disobedience to the _Maestro’s_ orders was, of course, out of the question. But, if she was forbidden to sing, or to speak, she was, at least, permitted to read, and write. Never doubting, for a moment, of her ultimate success, she knew that she would, one day, have to sing in Italian, and possibly, also, in French. She therefore spent the six weary weeks in the diligent study of those languages; and there are actually in existence, at this moment, no less than sixty-one large foolscap pages, in her own handwriting, closely filled with exercises in Italian grammar, and twenty-three similar pages in French, the greater part of which appear to have been completed during this trying period; not mere scattered memoranda, but systematic work, genders of nouns, conjugations of irregular verbs, long lists of exceptions, and other like matters, such as would have been executed by an industrious student on the eve of a severe critical examination.

But, the time was a weary one, nevertheless. Her nerves were excited to the last degree of tension, and never did she forget the exasperating effect of the cries which, day after day, reached her, from the street, as the long dull hours dragged on. Two of these she imitated, sometimes, when speaking of her Paris life, in the presence of her daughter, who thus noted down the “words and music.”

Haricots, haricots verts!
Ah! le vitrier!
]

The first of these street-melodies speaks for itself. The second is the cry of a wandering glazier; and may still be heard, in the poorer streets of Paris, sung by men who carry panes of glass on their backs, to mend broken windows.

Intense indeed must have been the relief, when the time of probation expired, at last. Once more, Mdlle. Lind sought an interview with the master; and, this time, her hopes were crowned with success. Signor Garcia found the voice so far re-established, by rest, that he was able to give good hope of its complete restoration, provided that the faulty method of production which had so nearly resulted in its destruction was abandoned; and, with the view of attaining this important end, he agreed to give her two lessons, regularly, every week—an arrangement which set all her anxieties at rest, and for which she was deeply grateful, to the end of her life.[12]

The delight of the artist, at being once more permitted to sing, may be readily imagined. Though discouraged, sometimes, by the immense amount she had to learn—and, with still greater difficulty, to unlearn—she never lost heart; and so rapidly did the vocal organs recover from the exhaustion from which they had been suffering, that, before long, she was able to practise her scales and exercises for many hours daily.

The lessons appear to have begun about the twenty-fifth, or twenty-sixth of August; and to have been continued, twice a week, from that period, until the month of July, 1842.

Mdlle. Lind thus describes her first introduction to the new system, in a letter to her friend, Fröken Marie Ruckman:—

“Paris, Sept. 10, 1841.

“I have already had five lessons from Signor Garcia, the brother of
Madame Malibran. I have to begin again, from the beginning; to sing
scales, up and down, slowly, and with great care; then, to practise
the shake—awfully slowly; and, to try to get rid of the hoarseness, if
possible. Moreover, he is very particular about the breathing. I trust
I have made a happy choice. Anyhow, he is the best master; and,
expensive enough—twenty francs for an hour. But, what does that
signify, if only he can teach me to sing? Mdlle. Nissen has been his
pupil, now, for two years, and has made immense progress.”

A fortnight later, she writes to Madame Lindblad:—

“I am well satisfied with my singing-master. With regard to my weak
points, especially, he is excellent. I think it very fortunate for me
that there exists a Garcia. And I believe him, also, to be a very good
man. If he takes but little notice of us, apart from his lessons—
well!—that cannot be helped; but I am very much pleased, nay!
enchanted with him as a teacher.”[13]

And, again, to Herr Expeditionschef Forsberg:—

“Paris, February 1, 1842.

“Garcia’s method is the best, of our time; and the one which all here
are striving to follow.”

And, it is pleasant to know that the _Maestro_ was equally well pleased with his pupil, who, in a still later letter, writes:—

“Paris, March 7, 1842.

“You know, to-day, four years ago, I made my _début_ in _Der
Freischütz_.—No! five years ago, I mean. No! it is four, I think.—
Well! yes! I do not know.—Anyhow, it was on the 7th of March.[14]

“My singing is getting on quite satisfactorily, now. I rejoice
heartily in my voice; it is clear, and sonorous, with more firmness,
and much greater agility. A great, great deal still remains to be
done; but the worst is over. Garcia is satisfied with me.”

The teaching she now received was, evidently, the exact thing Mdlle. Lind needed. Of the management of the breath, the production of the voice, the blending of its registers, and other technical details upon which the most perfect of singers depends, in great measure, for success, she knew nothing—and, but for Signor Garcia, in all probability never would have known anything. But, of that which concerned the higher life of her art, neither Signor Garcia nor any one else could teach her anything at all. She evidently felt this, herself; for, long years afterwards, she wrote:—

“The greater part of what I can do in my Art, I have myself acquired,
by incredible labour, in spite of astonishing difficulties. By Garcia
alone have I been taught some few important things. God had so plainly
written within me what I had to study; my ideal was, and is, so high,
that I could find no mortal who could in the least degree satisfy my
demands. Therefore I sing after no one’s method—only, as far as I am
able, after that of the birds; for, their Master was the only one who
came up to my demands for truth, clearness, and expression.”[15]

But, though thus dependent upon her own natural genius for the high qualities which placed her above the greatest of her contemporaries in everything which concerned her loftiest aspirations in the realm of Art, she was none the less grateful to Signor Garcia for the “few important things” which gave her her first practical insight into the _technique_ of singing—an insight, without which, as she herself felt, she would never have been able to bring her own great artistic ideal to perfection.