Jenny and Barnum (6 page)

“I won't be able to do the schoolwork,” Tom Thumb said, as he had years before.

“You won't have to go to school,” Barnum said without emotion, forgetting how the child's concerns had visibly dismayed him that afternoon in the Stratton back yard. As then, Tom Thumb rose to his feet. This time he was unsteady, swinging his arms for balance.

“If I'm nine,” he cried, “that means in November I'll be
ten!
”

Barnum paused; his memory of the event was near-perfect. He sat back. “How old are you?”

“Nine!” Tom Thumb shrieked, like the child he had been.

Barnum winked. “We're going to be all right. Just don't tell your mother what we just said.”

Like a puppeteer, or some mischievous Olympian spirit, Barnum schemed and connived a whole new life for five-year-old Charlie Stratton. It began before that first week was out, eradicating that nasty little neighborhood and dark-spirited New England forever. Barnum named him for a character out of King Arthur, the thumb-sized son of a plowman swallowed whole by a cow, and prefixed “General” to add dimension and charm to the character. Barnum trained the little boy, patiently drilling him in his lines and steps, teaching him how to dress, walk, talk, bow, and acknowledge praise. In a matter of months the five-year-old became nine-year-old General Tom Thumb, whose first triumphal tour electrified America, took them both to the White House, to Queen Victoria, to the wonders of the Continent beyond …

Tom Thumb had not lied to Jenny Lind: Barnum had invented him. Barnum was forty-six now, but already he had given the world the American Museum in New York, such wonders as Tom Thumb, Chang and Eng, the Siamese Twins, Anna Swan the Giantess, the Feegee Mermaid, and the Wild Men of Borneo. And if Jenny Lind could not see it, Barnum had changed for the better the lives of people who might have been made to suffer scorn, ridicule, and humiliation from childhood to the grave.

People like Charlie Stratton.

And Lavinia Warren.

But as Barnum gave, Barnum also could take away: into Charles Stratton's Eden Barnum had allowed to enter a real serpent.

Joe Gallagher—Commodore Nutt.

3.

The Viennese winter afternoon turned cold and overcast, but the little General did not nap. Assured that the mountain passes were clear and the seven o'clock train to Paris would get through on schedule, Tom Thumb knelt on the blotter on the desk in his room and with his specially designed pen wrote four densely packed pages to Barnum, describing Jenny Lind as he had found her, and stating his objections to going ahead with the project as clearly as he could.

Given Jenny Lind's personality, Tom Thumb was sure that her magic, whatever it was, would not work on Americans. Regardless of the causes, Lind's attitudes and opinions might be seen as too prissy and refined in rough-and-tumble America. In Europe she may have earned her sobriquet, The Swedish Nightingale, but Tom Thumb could imagine too readily some ill-educated, nose-picking American newspaper critic seeing just how drab she was, and making sure everybody knew it before she even had the chance to sing.

Worse, what if her voice turned out to be not the wonderful instrument European accounts had claimed? Even American critics had been known to fall victim to the mass hysteria that resulted in exactly the notices Jenny Lind had received—but Americans were not always ready to fall into line behind the Europeans in matters of art and culture. If American audiences felt they had been deceived by the Europeans, The Nightingale very easily could turn into The Swedish Duck. She would be laughed out of the country, and Barnum along with her. A lot of people hated Barnum and were itching for the chance to humiliate him. Tom Thumb was not privy to all of Barnum's financial dealings, but he was reasonably sure that such a fiasco would leave Barnum bankrupt. Tom Thumb stood to lose not just the twenty thousand dollars he had invested, he would lose a producer and a stage—Barnum's American Museum—as well. Tom Thumb wouldn't exactly be out of business, but his income would suffer badly. He might be able to mount his own show and organize a tour, but it would be a terrible amount of work, and the results would be nothing like what Barnum was able to achieve.

The truth was, while Jenny Lind had acted like a star this afternoon, while she had seemed to know how to make use of the prerogatives of stardom, Tom Thumb could not see how such a prematurely matronly little frump could hold the attention of an audience at even a small-town club musicale. He tried repeatedly to imagine her on a stage, but he just couldn't. He wanted to be fair to her, but the colorless, plain, introverted little creature simply did not belong in the limelight, before an audience of emperors and kings, leaving them breathless in their love for her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TO JENNY LIND

You sang—I listened, enchanted singer,

And yet my best song you will receive,

One forgets the artist for the woman;

I do not sing, my heart beats too strong
.

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

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

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

THE NIGHTINGALE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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