Jenny Lind Sang Here

Miss Lind Sang Here

By Susanne Dunlap

© April, 2007

Julie dropped the small valise, put her hands on her hips and surveyed the main room of the suite. The scent wafting from a bouquet of lilies on the dresser had not yet stifled the smells of furniture polish and bleach. In the middle of the room, right where it would be difficult to get around to the wardrobe and the chest of drawers to put everything away, the porter had dumped the heavy luggage in a disordered pile, and as she watched, the case containing all Miss Lind’s gloves slid from its precarious position and landed upside down on the wood floor. Damn. Julie bit her lip. There would be another dent in one of the brass corners. Mr. Barnum would dock her pay. Nothing to be done about it now, though.

Miss Lind was due to arrive later that day, on a train that moved slowly to allow adoring crowds to gather at each whistle stop along the way. They had crept along from Boston, where fans would hardly let the locomotive leave the station, to Worcester, then Ludlow, then Springfield, before beginning the northward leg through Holyoke, Chicopee, and finally Northampton. At each halt Julie feared that one of the rosy-faced men, women or children would be pushed far enough forward to fall onto the tracks and be killed, just for a glimpse of the legendary soprano rumored to have charmed emperors, kings and queens in Europe. Seeing her was all most folk could expect, however. Only the well-off could afford the price of a ticket to hear her. Mr. Barnum had auctioned the best seats for her debut American concert in New York. It was a charity benefit, but still they made an indecent amount of money then and had ever since.

Julie had not witnessed any of the crowds past Springfield. She only knew what they would be like from the countless others she had seen in the ten months since she had