Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous Part 18

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.

Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier was born at Lyons, in 1811. His early life was pa.s.sed in poverty so grinding that the great artist never speaks of it, and in such obscurity that scarcely anything is known of his boyhood. At nineteen he came to Paris to try his fate in one of the great centres of the world. He, of course, found no open doors, n.o.body standing ready to a.s.sist genius. Genius must ever open doors for itself.

The lad was a close observer, and had learned to draw accurately. He could give every variety of costume, and express almost any emotion in the face of his subject. But he was unknown. He might do good work, but n.o.body wanted it. He used to paint by the side of Daubigny in the Louvre, it is said, for one dollar a yard. Now his "Amateurs in Painting," a chef-d'oeuvre of six inches in size, is bought by Leon Say for six thousand dollars. Such is fame.

Time was so necessary in this struggle for bread, that he could sleep only every other night; and for six months his finances were so low, it is stated, that he existed on ten cents a week! No wonder that the sorrows of those days are never mentioned.

His earliest work was painting the tops of bon-bon boxes, and fans. Once he grew brave enough to take four little sepia drawings to an editor to ill.u.s.trate a fairy tale in a magazine for children. The editor said the drawings were charming, but he could not afford to have them engraved, and so "returned them with thanks."

His first ill.u.s.trations in some unknown journal were scenes from the life of "The Old Bachelor." In the first picture he is represented making his toilet before the mirror, his wig spread out on the table; in the second, dining with two friends; in the third, being abused by his housekeeper; in the fourth, on his death-bed, surrounded by greedy relations; and in the fifth, the servants ransacking the death-chamber for the property.

For a universal history he drew figures of Isaiah, St. Paul, and Charlemagne, besides almost numberless ornamental letters and headings of chapters. Of course he longed for more remunerative work, for fame; but he must plod on for months yet. He worked conscientiously, taking the greatest pains with every detail.

His first picture, exhibited in 1833, when he was twenty-two, called "The Visitors," an interior view of a house, with an old gentleman receiving two visitors, all dressed in the costume of James I., admirable for its light and shade, was bought by the Society of the Friends of Art, for twenty dollars. Two years later he made ill.u.s.trations for the Bible of the Sieur Raymond, of Holofernes invading Judea, and Judith appearing before Holofernes. For "Paul and Virginia"

he made forty-three beautiful landscapes. "They contain evidence of long and careful work in the hot-houses of the 'Jardin des Plantes,' and in front of the old bric-a-brac dealer's stalls, which used to stand about the entrance to the Louvre. And how admirably, with the help of these slowly and scrupulously finished studies, he could reproduce, in an ornamental letter or floral ornament, a lily broken by the storm, or a sheaf of Indian arms and musical instruments."

In 1836, his "Chess Players," two men watching intently the moves of chess, and "The Little Messenger," attracted a crowd of admirers. Each sold for twenty dollars. He had now struggled for six years in Paris. It was high time that his unremitting and patient work should find approval. The people were amazed at so vast an amount of labor in so small a s.p.a.ce. They looked with their magnifying gla.s.ses, and found the work exquisite in detail. They had been accustomed to great canvases, glowing colors, and heroic or romantic sentiments; but here there was wonderful workmans.h.i.+p.

When the people began to admire, critics began to criticize. They said "Meissonier can depict homelike or ordinary scenes, but not historic."

He said nothing, but soon brought out "Diderot" among the philosophers, Grimm, D'Alembert, Baron Holbach, and others in the seventeenth century.

Then they said he can draw interiors only, and "on a canvas not much larger than his thumb-nail." He soon produced the "Portrait of the Sergeant," "one of the most daring experiments in the painting of light, in modern art. The man stands out there in the open by himself, literally bathed in light, and he makes a perfect picture." Then they were sure that he could not paint movement. He replied by painting "Rixe," two ruffians who are striving to fight, but are withheld by friends. This was given by Louis Napoleon to the Prince Consort.

Meissonier also showed that he could depict grand scenes, by "Moreau and Dessoles on the eve of the battle of Hohenlinden," the "Retreat from Russia," and the "Emperor at Solferino." Into these he put his admiration for Napoleon the Great, and his adoration for his defeated country. In the former picture, the two generals are standing on a precipice, surveying the snow-covered battle-field with a gla.s.s; the trees are bending under a strong wind, and the cloaks of the generals are fluttering behind them. One feels the power of this picture.

In painting the "Retreat from Russia," the artist borrowed the identical coat worn by Napoleon, and had it copied, crease for crease, and b.u.t.ton for b.u.t.ton. "When I painted that picture," he said, "I executed a great portion of it out of doors. It was midwinter, and the ground was covered with snow. Sometimes I sat at my easel for five or six hours together, endeavoring to seize the exact aspect of the winter atmosphere. My servant placed a hot foot-stove under my feet, which he renewed from time to time, but I used to get half-frozen and terribly tired."

He had a wooden horse made in imitation of the white charger of the Emperor; and seating himself on this, he studied his own figure in a mirror. His studies for this picture were almost numberless,--a horse's head, an uplifted leg, cuira.s.ses, helmets, models of horses in red wax, etc. He also prepared a miniature landscape, strewn with white powder resembling snow, with models of heavy wheels running through it, that he might study the furrow made in that terrible march home from burning Moscow. All this was work,--hard, patient, exacting work.

It had now become evident to the world, and to the critics as well, that Meissonier was a master; that he was not confined to small canvases nor home scenes.

In 1855 he received the grand medal; in 1856 he was made an officer of the Legion of Honor; in 1861, a member of the Inst.i.tute; and in 1867, at the International Exhibition, he received the grand medal again. When the prizes were given by the Emperor, the "Battle of Solferino" was placed in the centre of the s.p.a.ce cleared for the ceremony, with the works of Reimers, the Russian painter, Knaus of Prussia, Rousseau, the French landscape-painter, and others. This painting represents Napoleon III. in front of his staff, looking upon the battle "as a cool player studies a chess-board. On the right, in the foreground, some artillery-men are manoeuvring their guns. The corpses of a French soldier and two white Austrians, torn to rags by some explosion, show where the battle had pa.s.sed by."

Meissonier's paintings now brought enormous prices. His "Marshal Saxe and his Staff" brought eight thousand six hundred dollars in New York; the "Soldiers at Cards," in 1876, in the same city, eleven thousand five hundred dollars; in 1867, his "Cavalry Charge" was sold to Mr. Probasco of Cincinnati, for thirty thousand dollars; and the "Battle of Friedland," upon which he is said to have worked fifteen years, to A. T.

Stewart, of New York, for sixty thousand dollars. Every figure in this was drawn from life, and the horses moulded in wax. It represents Napoleon on horseback, on a slight elevation, his marshals grouped around him, holding aloft his c.o.c.ked hat in salutation, as the soldiers pa.s.s hurriedly before him.

Edmund About once wrote, "To cover M. Meissonier's pictures with gold pieces simply would be to buy them for nothing; and the practice has now been established of covering them with bank notes."

"The Blacksmith," shoeing a patient old cart-horse, perfect in anatomy; "La Halte," some soldiers at an inn, now in Hertford House gallery; and "La Barricade," a souvenir of the civil war, are among the favorite pictures of this famous man. And yet as one looks at some of the exquisite work about a convivial scene, the words of the great Boston painter, William Hunt, come to mind. Being shown a picture, very fine in technique, by a Munich artist, of a drunken man, holding a half-filled gla.s.s of wine, he said, "It's skilfully done, but _what is_ the _use_ of _doing_ it! The subject isn't worthy of the painter."

Rarely does a woman appear in Meissonier's pictures. He has done nothing to deprave morals, which is more than can be said of some French art.

His portrait of Madame Henri Thenard was greatly admired, while that of Mrs. Mackay was not satisfactory, and was said to have been destroyed by her. Few persons, however, can afford to destroy a Meissonier. When told once that "he was a fortunate man, as he could possess as many Meissoniers as he pleased," he replied, "No, no, I cannot; that would ruin me. They are a great deal too dear."

He lives in the Boulevard Malesherbes, near the lovely Parc Monceau, in the heart of the artists' quarter in Paris. His handsome home, designed by himself in every detail, is in the Italian Renaissance style. He has two studies,--one a quiet nook, where he can escape interruptions; and one very large, where are gathered masterpieces from every part of the world. Here is "a courtyard of the time of Louis XIII., brilliantly crowded with figures in gala dress; a bride of the same period, stepping into an elegant carriage of a crimson color, for which Meissonier had a miniature model built by a coach-maker, to study from; a superb work of t.i.tian,--a figure of an Italian woman in a robe of green velvet, the cla.s.sic outline of her head shown against a crimson velvet curtain in the background; a sketch of Bonaparte on horseback, at the head of his picturesquely dressed staff, reviewing the young conscripts of the army of Italy, who are cheering as he pa.s.ses;" and many more valuable pictures. Here, too, are bridles of black leather, with silver ornaments, once the property of Murat.