Anecdotes of Great Musicians/Anecdote 270
270.—JENNY LIND'S GENEROSITY.
During Jenny Lind's wonderful career, her name became a synonym for generosity. This most talented singer probably gave more money to the cause of charity than any other two singers on record, and the singers of all ages have been proverbially lavish with their gifts.
In 1849, while singing in Germany, she signed a contract with P. T. Barnum, the great showman, for a series of one hundred and fifty concerts in America, at a rate of one thousand dollars per night and all expenses. The tour was to begin the next year. The intervening time she spent in England and on the Continent, and the proceeds of all the concerts given that year she devoted to charitable uses.
When she arrived in New York in 1850, the people were crazy to see and hear this wonderful "Swedish Nightingale." Mr. Barnum had stirred up curiosity in the manner for which he was celebrated, and the "Lind fever" raged as strong in this country as it had previously in England. On her arrival she was greeted by a crowd of thirty thousand people and serenaded by a band of one hundred and fifty instruments. On the day of her first concert, five thousand people stood in the rain to buy tickets, and the first one was sold to an enterprising hatter for six hundred dollars. The proceeds of this first concert, which was attended by seven thousand people, were twenty-six thousand dollars. It is said that her share was ten thousand dollars, every cent of which she gave to benevolent societies of New York city. Her charitable gifts on this American tour were numerous, amounting to fifty thousand dollars. In Germany she had previously scattered thirty thousand florins and in England some sixty thousand pounds in charity.
Having a difficulty with Mr. Barnum, she paid a forfeit to him of thirty thousand dollars and gave the last sixty concerts of the series on her own management. In 1852, in the city of Boston, she was married to Otto Goldschmidt, her accompanist, and the same year they returned to England, where this famous singer retired to private life.
Besides the fifty thousand dollars given in charity, she had received in America one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and this latter sum she devoted to charities and educational uses in her native country of Sweden. The whole sum of her beneficences has been estimated at one hundred thousand pounds.