JENNY LIND'S MAD LOVER.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue XII, 17 September 1898, Page 383

JENNY LIND'S MAD LOVER.

‘Boot’ Van Steenburgh, a poor mad hermit, known throughout New York State for years as the hermit lover of Jenny Lind, the famous songstress, is dead. For 47 years the love-lorn recluse had treasured the memory’ of Jenny’ Lind, the ‘Swedish Nightingale,’ and a faded photograph of the dead songstress, framed in pine cones, yet hangs upon the wall of his wretched hovel. ‘Boot’ Van Steenburgh was buried the other day.and kindly hands laid upon his breast the old weatherstained and time-worn portrait of Jenny Lind, whom during life he had so affectionately but hopelessly loved. It is a sad story, the story’ of his life. For 47 years he has been insane, losing his mind by reason of a practical joke. The man’s history’ is full of such incidents as your true practical joker can enjoy. During his life he did all manner of grotesque things. He suffered unmeasurable ridicule and injury. Uncomplainingly he l>ore his lot. Rare, indeed, is the joke that can compare with this one in the quality and extent of the real human misery resulting from it. Early’ in the fifties, when Jenny Lind was creating a mad furore in New York by’ her wonderful singing, there lived in Kingston a young carpenter named Tobias Van Steenburgh. He never had a very strong mind, but was a good and steady workman, thrifty’ and prosperous. He had accumulated several hundred dollars in the savings bank and had built himself a good house. He was not the sort of man to make an enemy, but he was as good a mark for a practical joke as a jester could hope to find. Several young lawyers in Kingston had noted Van Steenburgh ’s peculiarities, and had made him the butt of their jests. They* gave him the nickname of ‘Boot.’ One day he was seen looking earnestly at a cheap cut of Jenny Lind in one of the shop windows, and the young lawyers saw an opportunity’ for a practical joke: so they began to talk to him about Jenny Lind, and soon made him think she was in love with him. They’ afterwards managed to have letters sent to him from New York, inviting him to visit the great singer in the city. He at once drew his money from the bank. and. disposing of his property’, started for New York ci tv.

As soon as he reached the city, poor ‘Root’ began to haunt the hall where the famous singer was apjjearing, and to follow her carriage in the street. At one of her public receptions at the Revere House he declared his love before the crowd present, and said he had come to New York to marry her, and ended by’ grovelling on the floor at her feet. She had never seen the man before, and of course had him ejected from her apartments. He then began to haunt the hotel lobby and attempt to speak to her as she passed out of the hotel, until the proprietors of the house had him put into the street. His next move was to place himself where he could watch the singer’s windows, and he would not move from his post for hours at a time. Later on he seemed to have had an idea that Miss Lind would love him better if he was a musician, and then he appeared in front of the hotel with a hand organ, which he would grind for hours at a time. He soon became a public nuisance, and was arrested and taken to prison. His friends in Kingston were informed, and came and took him home. ‘Boot’ was brought back to Kingston. but his mind was destroyed, and he would do nothing but wanderabout grinding his hand organ. He soon became such a plague to his native town and to his own family’ that one of his brothers smashed the machine. Hr then settled down into a state of harmless lunacy* until the war broke out. when he became imbued with the idea that he was a general, and l>egan to organise the boys of the town into a company’ of soldiers. After the war was over and the troops had disappeared he Im*gan to show signs of violence, and was sent to the madhouse attached to the county poorhouse. Hr was released from there after a few months, and instead of returning home he went into one of the county towns and built himself a shanty, where he continued to live.

From there he wandered all over the river counties, from Lake George to New York, and further south its far as Atlantic City, in New Jersey. He carried with him wherever he went a

paint jx>t and brush, with whieh he covered the rocks and walls with strange and weird characters whieh he called •inscriptions.’ His inseparable companions were an old market basket, an old Bible, and card bearing a Scriptural passage. The shanty where ‘Boot’ lived is like a museum of antiquities. Everything that a crazy man would be expected to pick up can be found within. It is lined with shelves, on whieh stand hundreds of tin fruit cans and bottles filled with pebbles, leaves, pieces of rock, old buttons, and what not. His bed was a box of rags, and the ornaments of his shanty were pictures cut from illustrated papers of so long ago that they are forgotten. Among the pictures plastered up in the interior of his cabin are several of Jenny Lind.

He was wont to tell how on the first night he saw Jenny Lind he bought one hundred tickets to the concert and took that number of people,whom he picked up on the sidewalk, in to hear the great singer. This is said to be a fact, and when it. was brought to the attention of Miss Lind she is said to have sent a substantial cheque to his parents. ‘Boot’ talked about Jenny Lind with a volubility that was surprising, but when Herr Goldschmidt, who married the great singer, was mentioned he scowled and clenched his fists threateningly. The outside of the shanty where this strange being lived is laced from all directions with pieces of twine, whieh be said were telephone wires to the White House at Washington. ‘Boot,’ when he died, was over 70 years old. The young lawyers whose practical joke upset, this man’s reason all lived to become distinguished men. They are. all dead now, and the victim of their pleasantries is now dead also.