Oddlet: Jenny Lind · 1 min read
Jun 6, 2026
The Affectionate Sister
He was too shy to say it aloud, so he pressed the proposal into her hand as the train pulled away — what did she write back?
Jenny Lind, the Swedish soprano whose voice Mendelssohn called the greatest he had known, had a problem named Hans Christian Andersen.
He met her in 1840 and found her ordinary. By the autumn of 1843 he was beside her almost every day, both privately and at her performances. After Danish students serenaded her with torches, he watched her hasten into the darkest corner and weep. He wrote 'The Nightingale' in a single feverish evening. He gave her the nickname before he gave her the letter.
The letter came in 1844, on a Copenhagen train platform. He was too shy to speak it, so he pressed it into her hand as she boarded. She read his marriage proposal after the train had pulled away.
Her reply called him brother. 'God bless and protect my brother,' she wrote, 'is the sincere wish of his affectionate sister.' That same year he published 'The Snow Queen,' about a boy with a shard of mirror lodged in his heart that turns it to ice. What he made of her answer is on every shelf.
The next Christmas Eve she found out he had sat alone in a Berlin hotel calling the stars his Christmas tree. She arranged a private New Year's do-over: a decorated tree, presents addressed only to him, Swedish songs sung for an audience of one.
Then she sailed for America as the Swedish Nightingale.
It was the only thing of his she kept.
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- Wikipedia — Jenny Lind — Comprehensive biography covering birth/death dates, family, vocal teachers, opera debut and roles, the 10 May 1849 final opera performance in Robert le diable, retirement mystery, marriage to Otto Goldschmidt (5 February 1852, Boston), settlement in England, Royal College of Music professorship (1883), burial at Great Malvern Cemetery with Chopin's Funeral March, Westminster Abbey memorial, and the 50-krona banknote portraits (1996, 2006).
- Wikipedia — Jenny Lind tour of America, 1850–52 — Detailed source for the Barnum tour: 93 concerts, $1,000/night guarantee, $187,500 initial commitment, ~$350,000 in Lind's earnings, the 1851 amicable termination because Lind found Barnum's promotion 'distasteful,' and specific charitable gifts.
- Encyclopedia Britannica — Jenny Lind — Confirms biographical basics: born 6 October 1820, died 2 November 1887; debut in Der Freischütz (1838); London debut 4 May 1847; vocal range B below middle C to high G; Royal College of Music teaching 1883–1886.
- Classic FM — Who was Jenny Lind — Documents her religious convictions and the clergyman who told her opera was 'evil,' the Andersen inspiration for The Nightingale, her marriage to Goldschmidt, and her teaching at the Royal College of Music.
- Historic Geneva — Jenny Lind
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