Part 18 (1/2)
In London, from three to seven thousand persons crowded to hear him. The ”Times” said, ”His command of the instrument, from the top to the bottom of the scale--and he has a scale of his own of three complete octaves on each string--is absolutely perfect.” At Liverpool he received four thousand dollars for a single night, taking the place of Malibran, who had brought on a hemorrhage resulting in death, by forcing a tone, and holding it so long that the audience were astonished. Ole Bull came near sharing her fate. In playing ”Polacca,” the hall being large and the orchestra too strong, he ruptured a blood vessel, and his coat had to be cut from him.
In sixteen months he gave two hundred and seventy-four concerts in the United Kingdom. Afterwards, at St. Petersburg, he played to five thousand persons, the Emperor sending him an autograph letter of affection, and the Empress an emerald ring set with one hundred and forty diamonds. Shortly after this his father died, speaking with pride of Ole, and thinking he heard divine music.
On his return to Norway, at the request of the King, he gave five concerts at Stockholm, the last netting him five thousand dollars. So moved was the King when Ole Bull played before him at the palace, that he rose and stood till the ”Polacca” was finished. He presented the artist with the Order of Vasa, set in brilliants.
In Christiana, the students gave him a public dinner, and crowned him with laurel. He often played for the peasants here and in Bergen, and was beloved by the poor as by the rich. At Copenhagen he was presented at Court, the King giving him a snuff-box set in diamonds. Hans Andersen became his devoted friend, as did Thorwaldsen while he was in Rome. He now went to Ca.s.sell, and Spohr hastened to show him every attention, as though to make amends for the coldness when Ole Bull was poor and unknown. At Salzburg he invited the wife of Mozart to his concerts. For her husband he had surpa.s.sing admiration. He used to say that no mortal could write Mozart's ”Requiem” and live.
While in Hungary, his first child, Ole, died. He wrote his wife, ”G.o.d knows how much I have suffered! I still hope and work, not for myself,--for you, my family, my country, my Norway, of which I am proud.”
All this time he was working very hard. He said, ”I must correspond with the directors of the theatres; must obtain information regarding the people with whom I am to deal; I must make my appointments for concerts and rehearsals; have my music copied, correct the scores, compose, play, travel nights. I am always cheated, and in everlasting trouble. I reproach myself when everything does not turn out for the best, and am consumed with grief. I really believe I should succ.u.mb to all these demands and fatigues if it were not for my drinking cold water, and bathing in it every morning and evening.”
In November, 1843, urged by f.a.n.n.y Elssler, he visited America. At first, in New York, some of the prominent violinists opposed him; but he steadily made his way. When Mr. James Gordon Bennett offered him the columns of the ”Herald,” that he might reply to those who were a.s.sailing him, he said in his broken English, ”I tink, Mr. Bennett, it is best tey writes against me, and I plays against tem.” Of his playing in New York, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child wrote, ”His bow touched the strings as if in sport, and brought forth light leaps of sound, with electric rapidity, yet clear in their distinctness. He played on four strings at once, and produced the rich harmony of four instruments. While he was playing, the rustling of a leaf might have been heard; and when he closed, the tremendous bursts of applause told how the hearts of thousands leaped like one. His first audience were beside themselves with delight, and the orchestra threw down their instruments in ecstatic wonder.”
From New York he took a successful trip South. That he was not effeminate while deeply poetic, a single incident will show. After a concert, a man came to him and said he wished the diamond in his violin bow, given him by the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re. Ole Bull replied that as it was a gift, he could neither sell it nor give it away.
”But I am going to have that stone!” said the man as he drew a bowie knife from his coat. In an instant Ole Bull had felled the man to the floor with the edge of his hand across his throat. ”The next time I would kill you,” said the musician, with his foot on the man's chest; ”but you may go now.” So much did the ruffian admire the muscle and skill of the artist, that he begged him to accept the knife which he had intended to use upon him.
During this visit to America he gave two hundred concerts, netting him, said the ”New York Herald,” fully eighty thousand dollars, besides twenty thousand given to charitable a.s.sociations, and fifteen thousand paid to a.s.sistant artists. ”No artist has ever visited our country and received so many honors. Poems by the hundreds have been written to him; gold vases, pencils, medals, have been presented to him by various corporations. His whole remarkable appearance in this country is really unexampled in glory and fame,” said the same newspaper. Ole Bull was kindness itself to the sick or afflicted. Now he played for Alice and Phoebe Carey, when unable to leave their home, and now for insane and blind asylums and at hospitals. He loved America, and called himself ”her adopted son.”
On his return to Norway, after great success in Spain, the Queen bestowing upon him the order of Charles III. and the Portuguese order of Christus, he determined to build a National Theatre in Bergen, his birthplace, for the advancement of his nation in the drama and in music.
By great energy, and the bestowal of a large sum of money, the place was opened in 1850, Ole Bull leading the orchestra. But the Storthing, or Parliament, declined to give it a yearly appropriation,--perhaps the development of home talent tended too strongly toward republicanism. The burden was too great for one man to carry, and the project did not prove a success.
The next plan of the philanthropist-musician was to buy one hundred and twenty-five thousand acres of land on the Susquehanna River, in Pennsylvania, and ”found a New Norway, consecrated to liberty, baptized with independence, and protected by the Union's mighty flag.” Soon three hundred houses were built, a country inn, store, and church, erected by the founder. To pay the thousands needed for this enterprise he worked constantly at concert-giving, taking scarcely time to eat his meals. He laid out five new villages, made arrangements with the government to cast cannon for her fortresses, and took out patents for a new smelting-furnace.
While in California, where he was ill with yellow fever, a crus.h.i.+ng blow fell upon him. He learned that he had purchased the land through a swindling company, his t.i.tle was invalid, and his fortune was lost. He could only buy enough land to protect those who had already come from Norway, and had settled there, and soon became deeply involved in lawsuits. Hon. E. W. Stoughton of New York, who had never met Ole Bull personally, volunteered to a.s.sist him, and a few thousands were wrested from the defrauding agent.
On his return to Norway he was accused of speculating with the funds of his countrymen, which cut him to the heart. A little later, in 1862, his wife died, worn with ill health, and with her husband's misfortunes, and his son Thorvald fell from the mast of a sailing-vessel in the Mediterranean, and was killed.
In the autumn of 1868 he returned to America, and nearly lost his life in a steamboat collision on the Ohio. He swam to land, saving also his precious violin. Two years afterward he was married to Miss Thorp of Madison, Wis., an accomplished lady much his junior in years, who has lived to write an admirable life of her ill.u.s.trious husband. A daughter, Olea, came to gladden his home two years later. When he was sixty-six years old, he celebrated his birthday by playing his violin on the top of the great pyramid, Cheops, at the suggestion of King Oscar of Norway and Sweden.
In the Centennial year he returned to America, and made his home at Cambridge, in the house of James Russell Lowell, while he was Minister to England. Here he enjoyed the friends.h.i.+p of such as Longfellow, who says of him in his ”Tales of a Wayside Inn”:--
”The angel with the violin, Painted by Raphael, he seemed,
And when he played, the atmosphere Was filled with magic, and the ear Caught echoes of that Harp of Gold, Whose music had so weird a sound, The hunted stag forgot to bound, The leaping rivulet backward rolled, The birds came down from bush and tree, The dead came from beneath the sea, The maiden to the harper's knee!”
The friend of the highest, he never forgot the lowest. When a colored barber in Hartford, a lad who was himself a good fiddler, heard Ole Bull play, the latter having sent him a ticket to his concert, he said, ”Mister, can't you come down to the shop to-morrow to get shaved, and show me those tricks? I feel powerful bad.”
And Ole Bull went to the shop, and showed him how the wonderful playing was accomplished.
In 1880 Ole Bull sailed, for the last time, to Europe, to his lovely home at Lyso, an island in the sea, eighteen miles from Bergen. Ill on the voyage, he was thankful to reach the cherished place. Here, planned by his own hand, was his elegant home overlooking the ocean; here his choice music-room upheld by delicate columns and curiously wrought arches; here the sh.e.l.l-roads he had built; and here the flower-beds he had planted. The end came soon, on a beautiful day full of suns.h.i.+ne.
The body lay in state in the great music-room till a larger steamer came to bear it to Bergen. This was met by a convoy of sixteen steamers ranged on either side; and as the fleet approached the city, all flags were at half-mast, and guns were fired, which re-echoed through the mountains. The quay was covered with juniper, and the whole front festooned with green. As the boat touched the sh.o.r.e, one of Ole Bull's inimitable melodies was played. Young girls dressed in black bore the trophies of his success, and distinguished men carried his gold crown and order, in the procession. The streets were strewn with flowers, and showered upon the coffin. When the service had been read at the grave by the pastor, Bjornson, the famous author, gave an address. After the coffin had been lowered and the mourners had departed, hundreds of peasants came, bringing a green bough, a sprig of fern, or a flower, and quite filled the grave. Beautiful tribute to a beautiful life!
[Ill.u.s.tration: MEISSONIER.]
MEISSONIER.
The old maxim, that ”the G.o.ds reward all things to labor,” has had fit ill.u.s.tration in Meissonier. His has been a life of constant, unvaried toil. He came to Paris a poor, unknown boy, and has worked over fifty years, till he stands a master in French art.