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ability to play two melodies simultaneously while singing a third, and his imitations on the piano of various natural and mechanical sounds. On June 9, 1860, when Tom was eleven years old, he gave a private performance in Washington, D.C., for the first Japanese delegation to the U.S., and was reportedtohavegivenacommandperformanceforPresidentBuchanan.Shortly afterward,TomappearedinBaltimoreonJune18,adatechosenbyOlivertocoincide with the Democratic National Convention. The Baltimore shows were well attended, and one drew more than a thousand black audience members. It was duringthisvisitthatH.J.WieselwashiredbyOlivertocometoTom’shotelroom and transcribe two dance tunes, “The Oliver Gallop” and “The Virginia Polka,” that would be the first of Tom’s many published compositions. Wiesel reported tocuriousreportersthatTomtraveledwithhisownservantandamusicteacher. The Northern press had been publishing notices of Tom’s performances since his appearance in New Orleans. Oliver was eager to take Tom through the North, despite the national crisis then deepening in the wake of Lincoln’s election . In early 1861, Tom and Oliver arrived in New York on a steamer from Savannah. Tom gave an invitation-only recital at their hotel, and Oliver secured an agent and rented a hall. On January 19, Georgia seceded from the Union, and threedayslaterNewYorkpoliceseizedashipmentofgunsenroutetoSavannah. Oliver,apprehensivethatabolitionistswoulddisruptTom’sperformancesoreven attempt to kidnap him, canceled the appearances and hastened South. WarhadalreadybrokenoutwhenOlivertookTomtoSt.LouisinMay.Asfederal troops battled state militia outside the city, Tom entertained his “decidedly fashionable” audience not only with a musical program but also with a verbatim recitation of a speech he had heard Stephen Douglas deliver, even re-creating Douglas’s accent and intonation. For the next four years, Tom would perform only within the Confederacy, and much of the income he generated would go to support its war effort. In February of 1862, he played an extended engagement in the Confederate capital, andtheRichmondDispatchreportedthat“therehadnotbeensuchamaniaamong thepeopleforhearingamusicalcelebrity(JennyLindnotexcepted).”Olivertook Tomononemoreextendedtourinthespringof1862.Withinweeks,NewOrleans surrendered and Savannah was threatened by the capture of Fort Pulaski a few milessouthofthecity.TheU.S.NavywasrapidlydiminishingthenumberofvenuesopentoPerryOliver .Furthermore,Confederatemoneywasrapidlydecreasinginvalue ,andmoreandmoreofitwasexpectedtobedirectedtowardthewar. Oliver’s golden days with Blind Tom were over. In October, he and General Bethune canceled the final year of their contract, and Tom returned to the General’s direct control. All of General Bethune’s sons and sons-in-law were officers in the ConfederateArmy,andtheGeneraldidhispartforthecausebykeepingupTom’s BOOK OF GREAT MUSIC WRITING 53 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 53 benefitperformancesacrossthesteadilyshrinkingterritoryoftheConfederacy. On a tour of Alabama in the spring of 1864, Tom first performed what would become his best-known composition, “The Battle of Manassas.” One of General Bethune’s sons, in Columbus on furlough, had described the battle to the household , inspiring Tom to write a piece that blended “Dixie,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “La Marseillaise,” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” with the sounds of drums,fifes,cannons,hoofbeats,andthearrivaloftrainsbringingreinforcements. Northern interest in Blind Tom continued unabated during the war. In 1862, Rebecca Blaise Harding Davis published an article on Tom in The Atlantic Monthly that provoked harsh criticism from John Sullivan Dwight in his Journal of Music. DwightexpressedskepticismaboutTom’sabilitytoplaylong,complexpiecesafter asinglehearingandobjectedstronglytoDavis’sdescriptionofTomasagenius:“A mere morbid, brainless memory, a freak of idiotism, is not genius.” He concluded by saying that Tom could have gained fame only in the “semi-barbarous” South. Among those responding to Dwight’s article were a “Musical Lady,” who considered it “an injustice to the Black race to let Tom pass as a musical phenomenon,” anda“Spiritualist”fromBoston,thefirstofmanytoascribeTom’sabilitiestosupernaturalagency . Praise for Tom as a musician was almost inevitably qualified with the blunt wordidiot.Tom’smentalfunctionswerenotnormal,buthewasfarfromtheuntutored musical automaton portrayed in the press. He was able not only to reproduce but also to improvise and compose, and as in “The Battle of Manassas,” he wasclearlyawareoftheextra-musicalsignificanceofthepopularmusicheincorporated into his compositions. The strongest case against Tom’s “idiocy” is the musicalinstructionhereceivedthroughouthischildhoodandyouth,instruction arranged by General Bethune and Oliver even as they promoted Tom as an untaught child of nature. But Tom Wiggins’s peculiarities were many. Onstage he assumed odd postures and made spasmodic gestures, and his facial muscles would often go slack as he hunched gracelessly over the piano. At the end of a piece he would lead the applause himself and introduce the next piece, always referring to himself in the thirdperson.Outofthepubliceye,hisbehaviorwaslikewiseeccentric,governed byinflexiblehabitsandvehementprotestsatdeviationsfromroutine.Heatewith his hands and smelled all his food carefully for the least trace of butter, which he loathed.Whennotatthepiano,heoftenrepeatedphrasesoverandover,andfrequentlydugandgougedviolentlyathiseyes .Inatimewhenclassificationofmentaldisordersdidlittlemorethandifferentiatebetween “idiots”and“maniacs,”it isnotsurprisingthatTomshouldhavebeenlabeled“idiotic.”Heplainlydisplayed allsymptomsofadisorderthathadnonameuntilthirty-fiveyearsafterhisdeath: classical autistic syndrome. As Oliver Sacks first pointed out in his essay “Prodigies,” Tom’s idiosyncratic speech, intense and odd response to sensory 54 THE...

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