Chapter I: Why DID Jenny Lind Leave the Stage?

How many times has that question been asked! Who that has ever heard of her, has failed, at some moment or other of his interest in her story, to ask it?

And, indeed, it is no light question to ask; to answer it, one must go down to the very roots of her mental life. For it was, in her case, not merely the withdrawal of a great singer from the special field in which she had won her triumphs. Such an one might still have full opportunity of exercising her gift. Jenny Lind herself was to find a noble sphere in the concert-room, in the Oratorio; she never reaped a more amazing success, nor kindled a more rapturous emotion, than in that historic American tour which followed her withdrawal from the stage.

But she was not only a singer. She was a Dramatic genius of the first rank. It was the combination of this dramatic force with her wonderful song which constituted her unique preeminence. This was her natural vocation; it had been her familiar arena from early childhood. She had been bred up in it; she knew its innermost secrets. She possessed the genuine power of transposing her whole personality into a character. She had the magnetic influence which penetrated her audience through and through with her interpretation of the part which she was playing. And all this she sacrificed—sacrificed utterly and for ever, by her own act, her own solitary will, while yet a girl, at the supreme moment of her fame, in the teeth of plea and protest from a desperate public and imploring managers.

Why, then, was it? What were her motives?

At least, it is clear that it was due to no impatient impulse or wilful mood. It was the issue of a deliberate intention, slowly and steadily built up out of her experience, grounded upon her deepest personal conviction. It is this that we must first recognise; and to do so we must go back behind the actual date at which her story now stands, and dig out the earlier years of this her resolution. It will then be seen that the resolution grew parallel with the growth of her European fame. There appear to be no traces of it left in her written records, so long as she was winning her triumphs at home, in Stockholm, or in the neighbouring Copenhagen. In Paris, under Garcia, she was taking close and eager interest in her dramatic profession, watching the Parisian stage for hints and suggestions, noting and contrasting the acting capacities of Rachel and herself.[136] She spoke then of a strong desire to feel the boards again under her feet. Everything indicates that she was then looking forward to an Operatic career as her natural profession, and was spending pains upon her histrionic as well as upon her musical education. On her return, she threw herself into her parts with unhindered freedom; there is no hint of a recoil.

When, then, can this recoil from the stage be first detected? At a most remarkable moment. It is in the full swing of her first Continental successes: it is in the very heart of her intense enjoyment of the superb opportunities that were suddenly opening out before her. It is on the Rhine, in the September of that great year of her Berlin triumphs, 1845, that we, for the first time, encounter the motive to leave the stage in a positive shape; and, what is most noticeable, is that already, at this earliest manifestation of it, it has taken the form of a fixed and definite determination.

We hear of it from Mrs. Grote’s MS. _Memoir_, whom, it will be remembered, she met at Frankfort for the first time during that September. To her, she quietly confided her intention. She spoke of her intense dislike to the _entourage_ which a theatre necessitated; of the exhausting fatigue involved in dramatic singing; of the physical risks; and over against all this distracting environment, she set her own simple tastes and humble needs.

Mrs. Grote, as she listened to the tale of trouble, evidently felt that this intense distaste for the character of the life came from no superficial worry, but belonged both to the physical and spiritual realities of her nature. She sums up her conclusions in her private Note-book:—

“Owing to a highly excitable nervous temperament,” she writes, “she
appears to be ill-suited to the conflicts which attend a triumphant
career, and will, I fear, cut short her scenic life and retire to
Sweden to lead a quiet and tranquil existence as soon as she has the
means of doing so.”[137]

Evidently, the writer of these words was sure that this intention sprang out of no transitory mood of Jenny Lind. All its outlines are steadily fixed; and Mrs. Grote as she listens, sees reason to fear that it will most certainly be carried out.

And, moreover, Mrs. Grote recognises the reality of the reasons given. She evidently agrees that this nervous structure _is_ too excitable to bear the strain of a triumphant career. She fears for the loss to the stage of gifts so delicious; but she cannot deny or refute the cogency of the justification.

And, then, the reasons! They are suggested, here, in their most natural and most frequent form; and they well bear special notice, for they mean much. It is not the drama as such, which is condemned. She sees nothing wrong or disreputable in it. It is only the conditions which belong to a triumphant dramatic career which seem to her so intolerable, as she looks from out of the midst of the turmoil of a Continental tour back to quiet memories of her Swedish home. We can imagine what it would mean to her—this incessant irritation of the _entourage_, acting upon nerves that were already lacerated by exhaustion.

And then, is not the phrase in which Mrs. Grote sums up the significance of what she heard, full of obvious force? The European triumph had thrust her out into the public arena. She would now have to push her way forward in the very thick of that rough battle which the fierce competition of the theatrical world made inevitable. No wonder, that a profound recoil should have, now, taken place, as the full pressure of a Continental career broke out upon her! Who can fail to give intelligible meaning to the “conflicts that attend” on such a career? Who can doubt the strain that it would throw on her “nervous structure”? We have seen her temperament, we know its ideal cast, its lofty tone, its sacrificial flame, its haughty purity. How would it ever endure the fret, and the worry, the fever, and the sting, of those petty jealousies, those angry spites, those mean competitions which, by some sad fate, seem bound to swarm about the green-room of a theatre, and, perhaps with even special fury, beset the musical drama?

And, then, there is the wretched finance! This delicate, nervous artistic life of the drama is all netted in the meshes of mercantile speculation. It is being _exploité_; it must be made to pay. It is in the hands of those for whom it is a remunerative enterprise, a financial concern. Each individual gift has its price, each has to come into the market; each artist feels himself the prisoner, or the prey, of some commercial transaction. That which should be a temple of art is turned into a house of merchandise, even if it escapes becoming a “den of thieves.” Such a situation is inevitable to the theatrical career. But what a bitter warfare for such a one as Jenny Lind to find herself waging—she, who held her voice as a boon from God, endowing her with a prophetic mission! What fretful disputes! What weary wranglings! What pettiness of detail! How she would loathe it! Every fibre of her frame would repudiate these narrow and nasty necessities. Nor was she happy in her management of such affairs. As we have seen, in the Bunn incident, which was agitating her so profoundly at the very moment of her interview with Mrs. Grote, she was apt to hastily rush into a bond; and, then, at once, to regret it, and, perhaps, attempt to undo it. She would consult, and take advice, and be persuaded; and, then, react afterwards, and desert the advice which she had accepted. All this was natural enough for a young girl driven to fight for her own hand, amid the mob of managers, of strange tongues, and peoples, competing for the chance of driving a good bargain with her, of reaping a profit out of her. It was natural enough for a spiritual genius, beating about in unknown waters, tangled in alien winds. How could she comprehend the rigidities of business? But, natural and intelligible though it were, it was bound to bring her trouble which might well make her sicken of a career which involved matters so odious, and so disturbing.[138]

Moreover, she was already tired of the incessant strain involved in the very act of performing. She had been hard at it for so long. She had known all that its richest successes could bring her, ever since childhood: and the uproar of applause could throw no deceptive glamour over all the painful and exhausting fatigues, that are inevitable in a career which draws so desperately upon the emotional resources, and which must be subject to such violent recoils as the drained forces slowly recuperate themselves.

And then, in vivid antithesis to this warfare of a public career, there was the hope of tranquillity in Sweden. Here was a most forcible factor in the decision. Throughout all that period in Germany, we have heard notes of her home-sickness. Again and again, it comes over her, as we have seen, like a veritable illness.[139] She had nothing in her of the Bohemian. At the root of her innermost being, lay the domestic instinct— the craving for the security of fixed and sure family life. And how lonely, in contrast, was that restless pilgrimage over Europe which was the normal condition of her theatrical life! True, she had a wonderful way of winning admittance, at each city, into some private house, where she was surrounded with affection. But yet how transitory all such visits must be! Ever she must hurry on,—she and her one companion, to fulfil engagements in this strange place and in that; there was no rest for her feet; no constant refuge into which to retreat. All was in movement; nothing stood still. She was never more than a passing guest.

As we picture the dismal instability, the arid homelessness of such a wandering existence, we can hardly wonder that all the splendour of her triumphant career could never expel or stifle in her the passionate desire to escape and be at peace, in some tranquil harbour amid the home waters—some still and unchanging retreat nestling under the familiar pines.

This deep and passionate longing showed itself, during the very time of which we are now speaking, in two most remarkable letters, already quoted in this work, which will prove how deliberate her intention had become. In the letter written on November 24th, 1845, to Madame Erikson, it will be remembered that she says:

“I wonder if I dare let out that next autumn I shall come home quite
quietly, and settle down, caring nothing for the world. You will call
this a crime; but please reflect how difficult it is to stand all this
roving about, _alone, alone_,—ever to have to rely on my own judgment,
and, besides, so absorbed in my _rôles_. Oh, it is not easy!”[140]

And to Josephson she wrote on December 1st, 1845, in the very thrill of the joyful excitement at her growing powers, and at her frequent meetings with Mendelssohn:

“I have the old home-sickness all the same! And my only wish is to get
into quietude away from the stage. And a year hence I go home, and
remain at home, my friend! Ah! how I shall enjoy life! Ah! peace is
the best that there is!”

Always the moments of European success are those at which this note of home most emphatically occurs. Here, for instance, is an illustration— one more added to the many already familiar to us. It occurs in a beautiful letter of hers, written from London, in June, 1847, to a young friend in Sweden, Miss Behrens, now Madame Lamm, who had lived on the opposite side of the courtyard, in the Bonde Palace, when Jenny Lind lived there with the Lindblads. They used to talk to each other by the open windows: and, now, Miss Behrens has sent her a drawing of her old window in the courtyard. She writes in return, out of the very heart of her London triumphs:

“MY GOOD KIND FANNY,

“You must not conclude, from my long silence, that I have forgotten
you. I cannot do that, with any one to whom my heart has, at any time,
been drawn; nor could I become cold and indifferent towards them.

“Thanks, my good Fanny, for the dear little drawing you sent me. I
only wish I could fully express the pleasure it has given me....

“It appears to me to be a sacred act to stand in thought before that
window, where I have stood so often: and to go over, in spirit, all
that time I lived behind it. For the people with whom I lived then (I
mean, the Lindblads) are, and will remain for ever the dearest to me
on earth, and the best objects of all my thoughts!

“And you will now meet them soon!

“How are you, yourself? Are you still the same child as of yore? With
the laughter as then? And are you conscious of your good luck? Do you
know what it means to be ‘at home’?

“Thank God, I shall now soon come back to it; for where the heart is,
there the whole self yearns to be. I am right grateful to God for
having preserved in my breast this love for my native land; for it
might have happened that I never again should have wished for Sweden
after the heavenly—yes! the heavenly career which I have had. If you
knew, Fanny, what a sensation of the nearness of a higher power one
instinctively feels, when one is permitted to contribute to the good
of mankind, as I have done, and still do! Believe me, it is a great
gift of God’s mercy!

“I am in excellent health; and have been so ever since I set foot on
foreign soil; and this I look upon as the greatest of many gifts.

“But the paper is coming to an end—so I end also. Farewell, until we
meet again! and greet thy parents from yours affectionately,

“JENNY LIND.”

“Do you still have the same room?”

There is the secret of her heart laid open—its instinctive, its solemn, its religious hold on home-affections. This it is which does so much to create the passionate desire for withdrawal from that sad, lonely pilgrimage, as of a stranger and a sojourner, which the Drama necessitates.

We have sketched the inner temper with which she came to her determination. Let us now trace out, by more exact steps, the growth of the resolution to act.

The desire, then, was present in her, during the autumn of 1845. Already, by December, it had taken a fixed and deliberate form. We can pursue it unfailingly after this, point by point. Let us follow on its track.

On July 4th, 1846, she writes to her dear friend to whom she opened her soul so often, Madame Amalia Wichmann:

“I am fully determined, that next summer, or at the very latest, next
autumn, I will leave the stage. I will meanwhile make use of the
interval; and if I could, indeed, get things so arranged this spring,
it might be wiser to nurse up my powers for the approaching
winter....”

Here we have her resolutely scheming how to bring about her determination; she is engaged in fixing the dates. Everything is rapidly settling itself in her mind.

Again, we have already read a letter written on her birthday from Frankfort, to Madame Birch-Pfeiffer, which gives exact precision to her determination.

“I am longing to get away from the stage. I think, now, that I shall
be ready in six months. I cannot do otherwise: it is stronger than
I.”[141]

In the November that followed the writing of this letter, it would seem that her Berlin friends were alarmed at her resolution, and the result was a letter of strong appeal to her from the influential critic of the _Voss’che Zeitung_, Herr Rellstab, whose high opinion of her we already know. The letter is lost; but it was one that (she confesses) greatly pleased her: and it was, no doubt, one which put, in the most forcible and effective manner possible, the claim which the world had to enjoy the manifestation of dramatic gifts so special and so elevating as her own. But in a letter to Madame Wichmann, written on November 28th, from Carlsruhe, in which she mentions having received this appeal from Rellstab, she still says: “For all that, I am firm.” The considerations, then, so many and so strong, which should keep her on the stage, have already been laid before her, in as masterful and earnest a form, probably, as they could ever be thrown into; and, yet, though she has weighed them, she is not moved.

On January 20th, 1847, she writes a charming letter from Vienna, introducing Schumann and Madame Schumann, in the warmest terms, to the favour of the Wichmanns;[142] in which she ends—

“Yes! when shall I see you again! Ah! how this longing for peace grows
in me beyond all bounds! But time flies on fast: and, surely, no
creature were ever so utterly happy as I,—if only I were free!”

That longing, that was rising in her beyond all bounds, came, we must remember, in the very heart of one of her most bewildering hours of dramatic glory. The enthusiasm for her at Vienna rose even to frenzy. There was nothing that was not possible for her, there: everything was at her feet. But, for all that, it cannot check her deep desire for peace.

“Her life was turning, turning,
In mazes of heat and sound;
But for peace her soul was yearning,
And now, peace laps her round.”

Again from Vienna, on February 13th, came an eager, and indignant reassertion of her will. Madame Wichmann has heard a rumour that she is meditating an engagement at Paris; and the answer she gets is clear enough:

“MY VERY DEAREST!

“What is it that has come to you? _I_ go to Paris? Never, in my life!
Who can have told you this? And how should I ever have bound myself to
such a decision, without telling you!...

“They have, indeed, made me every kind of proposal from Paris—but not
for one second, did I ever think of it!

“From off the stage I go! I have no other want in the world than
that!”

Nothing, then, disturbs her intention. In 1847 it will be remembered, how strongly she asserts to Her Majesty, as she speaks with her after the private concert at Buckingham Palace, her resolution to leave the stage.[143] Evidently her London successes, happy as she was in them, had done nothing to shake her resolution.

In October when, as we know, she was singing at Berlin, it was with the clear and general understanding that it was the last time of her appearance on the stage there.[144]

On November 4th, Mendelssohn died. How much that meant to her, we know already. His purity, his exaltation, his fervour thrilled her into high response. And, then, his belief in her was a perpetual appeal to her to trust her great gift, to put out all its powers, to live for her Art, as in holy service. Through him, too, she had entered on those higher levels of the Oratorio, into which she could pour without hindrance her full spiritual force. But we cannot resist asking how this influence of his bore on her present intention. In pressing her to the work of Oratorio, was he consciously working for her withdrawal from the Opera? It would appear to have been wholly otherwise: for we have already seen that he was still, to the very end, possessed with the hope that he might achieve an Opera which she could interpret. So far was he, then, from fostering her determination to abandon the stage, that he had, it would seem, hoped for a development of her powers there, in which he might assist. What would have been the issue of such an attempt if it had succeeded? Would it have led further? No one can say. But, now, he is gone: and she looks out, from her old home, towards that Europe which is now empty for her of its mightiest presence, of its noblest life: and she finds herself strangely calm,—calm with the wonderful security and sweetness of home.

She is surprised, herself, at her own content. The suspicion that, after all the brilliant turmoil of Continental glory, it should seem tame and poor, disproves itself. She sees opportunities of work which will fully occupy her. All this had its effect in deepening her resolution, in confirming her desire for peace. And yet, the particular work itself which she chiefly “set herself to do,” was not quite what we might have expected. For was it not the endowment of the Theatre School? And how could this chime in with her purpose of leaving the stage? Here she is, bending her mind to the training of others for the career which she was herself longing to abandon. She is trying to save poor children from her own earlier experiences; but she is making their road smoother towards that life from which her own later experience was compelling her to recoil. How did she quite reconcile this double-mind?

Probably, the changes that came over this her scheme, as she worked it out, represent the gradual sense of this cross-purposing. But, at any rate, it remains absolutely certain that, at the time she purposed to assist the Theatre School, she had no moral reproach whatever to make against the drama itself: or against the profession of acting. This can have been, in no degree, the reason for her own withdrawal. It is important to keep her motives clear. She had a profound sense of its dangers—of the thorns that beset its roses: but she passes no condemnation on it itself.

There was, however, another circumstance, besides the interest of the Theatre School, which might have been expected to colour, to some degree, her decision about the stage. She had, as we already know, at the close of this season in Stockholm, become engaged to Herr Julius Günther.[145] This engagement meant a great deal to her. On her return to London, almost immediately after the exchange of rings, she spoke of it to Mrs. Grote with great enthusiasm; and, in the Note-book, in its record of a picnic at Wimbledon, Mrs. Grote writes: “Jenny talked with me for a whole hour about Günther.”

But Herr Günther was the tenor at the Theatre Royal. His whole life was cast with the Opera. Such an engagement must, at least, have suggested closer ties between herself and the theatrical world, which she was so bent on abandoning. And we cannot but wonder how such a marriage, if it had taken place, would have suited the resolution which it is our main object to discuss. The Theatre, and its interests, and its fortunes, would have been kept close at hand, encompassing her about with constant insistence. But, whatever the external likelihood of this, there is no sign that her gladness in the engagement produced any wavering in her will.

She passed through her second brilliant London season with the firm conviction that it was to be her last. And happy as that season was, there can be little doubt that, deep within her, the religious convictions, which her English surroundings fostered and developed, were steadily increasing their hold upon her: and, as their pressure grew, her repugnance to the theatrical mode of life, to the fever and restlessness of the dramatic career, grew also, and bred in her a yet deeper longing for the spiritual peace of privacy and home. All this would be continually backed by the encouragement of her new companion, Mdlle. Åhmansson, by whose strong piety she was much impressed, and who would always be throwing her influence into the scale against the Opera. So it worked: it began to tell deeply upon her thought, and feeling, and speech; and, as it did so, it began to disturb her hopes of the future. For it drew her on to ground with which Herr Günther, far away at Stockholm, had no familiarity, or sympathy. It is not for us to enter upon such private affairs. Enough to say that, throughout this period, the letters that passed between them seem to have revealed more and more divergence in spirit and in aim; until, by the autumn, it had become clear to both, that a union was becoming less and less possible. There was not sufficient harmony between them, as to the motives and principles by which life should be directed. And, at Dublin, which she reached, in her provincial tour, on October 8th, the crisis came: the engagement was broken off by the consent of both.

Here, then, ended the prospect of a marriage which, though it would never have broken her decision to leave the stage, would have, at any rate, linked her with its fortunes and surroundings. There could be no doubt, now, that when the separation came, it would be complete. And, by force of circumstance, it happened that the next pressure, which fell upon her from outside, tended to emphasise the completeness of this proposed separation. It came upon her in this fashion. During the provincial tour, recorded in Book VIII., Chap. V. (p. 338), she went to Newcastle, accompanied by Mrs. Grote; and stayed there, in the house of Mr. Joseph Grote, brother of the historian. Mr. Joseph Grote had a brother-in-law staying in the house, a young captain in the Indian army, called Claudius Harris, who was, entirely, mastered by the charm and the goodness of the wonderful singer, whom he found to be so startlingly unlike anything that he had been ever accustomed to associate with the stage. He followed her, with the enthusiasm of youth, to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin. But she was touched by finding that they had religious interests in common.

Later on, towards the winter, she was singing at Bath, which was his home: and she took the opportunity of calling upon his mother and sister, and of asking after him. He immediately rushed there from Mrs. Grote’s cottage at Burnham Beeches, where he was staying: saw her frequently: and, soon after, pressed his claim upon her affections. True to her Swedish training, she told him as soon as he made his offer, that “he must tell his mother;” and when he said, “Do not be angry with me: I have already talked to her about it,” she felt the true Swedish delight in this recognition of the parent’s authority.

Unluckily, this readiness to consult his mother had its dangers, as well as its gains, as she was, afterwards, to find to her cost.

For he had been brought up in a strict Evangelical system, which thrust the stage outside the pale of religion. His mother had a strong influence over him; and to her the drama itself was a thing to be condemned and avoided. “She detested,” we are told, “acting, actors, and actresses.” Thus Jenny Lind’s splendid dramatic powers wore to him, probably, the character of perilous temptations, rather than of gifts from God.

It was on this last point that collision was inevitable. It was one thing for her to find the conditions of theatrical life intolerable; it was quite another to have the moral rectitude of her entire career challenged in any way. And it is most important for us, in defining her motive in leaving the stage, to see how her happiness in this engagement was gone, so soon as it became clear to her that she was asked not merely to abandon her profession, but to be ashamed of it. At first, this difference of motive did not disclose itself. When she stayed at Norwich, in January, 1849, she spoke to Mrs. Stanley of the engagement with a quiet confidence in the prospect before her.

“I want a support. I am quite alone,” she said, “and just when I want help, the finger of God brings me this heart that can feel with me about all works of charity, just as I do. I never could marry any one who did not think with me about this: I should say to him ‘Good-bye! good-bye!’”

“We wish,” she said again, “to live quiet and uninterrupted somewhere. I want to be near trees; and water; and a cathedral. I am tired, body and soul; but my soul _most_! More my soul than my body! We are to be married on the 7th of March” (the anniversary of the _début_ as Agatha).

She was rejoicing in the feeling that the decision, which had been making for years, was now finally sealed. “She was free,” she kept repeating to Mrs. Stanley; she was never to sing on the stage again. Yet she was dreading how far she might be worked upon to save her old manager, and his people from ruin.

What had her Norwich friends to advise, at this crisis of her abandonment of the stage? It has been made absolutely clear, by what we have seen, that they had nothing whatever to do with initiating her intention. It stood firm, and decisive, long before she reached England, or knew them. Nor had they anything to do with bringing it to a head. The crisis with Her Majesty’s Theatre had already taken a violent stage before they learned it from her lips. Their conversation with her, at her earliest visit, had all turned on her power to purify the drama by her influence, and example. That was her hope. “_Voilà ce que j’espère!_” she had exclaimed; and they had strongly encouraged her in this high aim.[146] It had been all on a different tack, then; and her deep desire to leave the whole career behind sprang from sources utterly independent of the Norwich influence.

But now that the desire has issued in act, now that the resolution is taken, no doubt, the weight of the Stanleys’ inclinations would all go to back it. The Bishop had, indeed, bravely broken though the conventional scruples of religious people in receiving at his palace, as a friend, one fresh from the boards. Mrs. Stanley had a hearty, and intelligent appreciation of Jenny Lind’s dramatic powers, as she shows by a most sympathetic account of her acting in the _Sonnambula_. Nevertheless, the old Evangelical tradition was strong; it is felt even in the cordial records of the intimacy which sprang up between the whole family and Jenny Lind. When, then, she confided to them her resolution, they could not but sympathise, and approve. Thus, in her conflict with Lumley and his protestations, she would have behind her the full support of the Stanleys’ affectionate friendship.

So it stood. The situation might seem to be a clear one.

But, nevertheless, a storm of trouble fell upon her. The storm broke through the concerts which were to be her compensation to despairing Lumley.

We have heard already the story of the concerts: how the first fell so far short of its expected effect, that she was compelled to modify her resolution if she was ever to save Lumley’s finances; and how she, in order to redeem her pledge to him, offered him six last performances on the stage. It was this offer, which brought to the front the intense repugnance felt to the stage itself by Captain Harris and his relations, and she found herself forced to choose between her lover’s refusal to consent to these appearances, and her word given to Lumley. What was she to do?

Most providentially, at this critical juncture she suddenly won the help of a most wise and resolute adviser. Mr. Nassau Senior, the well-known writer, and at that time a Master in Chancery, and a close personal friend of Mrs. Grote’s, had been asked by that lady to put his legal knowledge at the service of Jenny Lind, in the anxious matter of marriage settlements. This he had already done in the month of February; and now, on the 16th of April, 1849, he found a letter from her, transmitted through Mrs. Grote, asking to see him. He went the next day to her cottage, and after she had walked up and down the room for some time without speaking, she sat down opposite him and fixed on him steadfastly for a minute or two “her wonderful grey eyes” (as he calls them), and at last asked him if he could stay a couple of hours. He stayed; and she poured out to him the whole story—how she was pressed by people who, according to her own graphic delineation, “think the theatre a temple of Satan, and all the actors priests of the Devil,” how they required of her “not only to abandon her profession, but to be ashamed of it,”—“to go down to Bath, among people who care for nothing but clergymen and sermons, as a sort of convert or penitent.” In the meantime “poor Lumley and my colleagues tell me that it is ungrateful in me, after having acquired such fame as an actress, to desert the stage as if it were a disgrace;—that if I do so, then, instead of raising the profession, as I had hoped to do, I shall sink it lower, as I shall seem to fly from it like a degradation.”

We see, in all this, how the artist, and the woman, were battling within her. Here was love brought very near to her; but yet the love clashed with every instinct that made her an artist. To follow it, was to turn her whole past history, into which she had herself thrown such lofty motives, such pure inspirations, such religious elevation, into a reproach, a scandal. It would make a breach in the continuity of her life; it would set her at war with herself. No wonder that she cried, “I see that, any way, all my happiness is gone for ever.”

But Mr. Nassau Senior brought to bear upon the situation the excellent experience of a wise lawyer. He was absolutely clear that, under the circumstances, her first duty was to fulfil her engagement to Lumley, and, if Captain Harris treated that as a sufficient reason for separation, then to break off the marriage, which was bound to be so obviously unsuitable.

She saw this to be the true course; and, she, finally, signed a letter, addressed to Mr. Senior, begging him to see Mrs. Harris, and to tell her that, after consulting her friends, she found that they considered her bound, in honour, to her profession, to the public, and to Mr. Lumley, to perform for a few nights at the Opera; that, if Mr. Harris considered his principles to be hurt or dishonoured by this,—then she could not be responsible for the consequences.

Even this letter did not quite end matters. Captain Harris after all persuaded himself to agree to the six performances; and Mr. Senior was called in, not to convey ultimatums, but to draw up settlements; the marriage itself was fixed for May 16—by special licence. But, then, with the settlements, the old bitter question reappeared. Though she was, herself, determined, as we well know, to leave the stage for ever, yet her adviser naturally refused to make this a legal condition of the settlement. His client ought _not_ to be fettered. As a woman with a profession, and owning money, she was bound to be left free; she must be given full liberty to use her vocal powers as she thinks fit. There could not be an express proviso against her ever acting. And moreover, it was also imperative that, apart from the question of the stage, she should have full power to make her own engagements to sing, and complete control over the disposition of her own earnings. This, as we know, was a vital matter, according to her mind. To her, her earnings were a sacred trust for which she was answerable. So her adviser insisted. Captain Harris could not agree to this. The freedom demanded for the wife, seemed to him “unscriptural.”

Mr. Senior was leaving for Paris on May 10th with Mrs. Grote; but, before going, he earnestly recommended Mdlle. Lind to allow no change in the settlements, out of which he had already expunged every word against which any complaint could be made; and he begged her, if all was broken off, to come, without a day’s delay, straight to Mrs. Grote at Paris, where she would find counsel and comfort, without which, in her loneliness, she could not stand.

Off to Paris, to Maison Fenci, in the Champs Elysées, he went with Mrs. Grote, to await anxiously the issue. Letters arrived on the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th, which, though full of fluctuations, and uncertainties, spoke of negotiations, conducted by Mrs. Stanley, which ended in a mutual release of both from the engagement.

But, even now, would she be firm in her promise to leave London, and come to Paris? Anyhow, a room was got ready; and, on the 16th itself, at about seven in the evening, when Mrs. Grote was sitting, with a headache, over the fire, there was a tap at the door, and in came Jenny Lind.

She had got her passport the moment after her decision had been taken, and had come as fast as steam could carry her. She was free; and free in a manner honourable to both. She seemed to pant chiefly for rest; she felt tired “to her very bones.”[147]