GROWING PAINS
I
The New York to which Barnum emigrated late in the winter of 1834 is
a New York with which we must become acquainted. Its population was
slightly more than 200,000, and Mrs. Martha J. Lamb in her _History of
the City of New York_ deplored the overcrowding: “New York City by this
time appeared like a youth much overgrown for his years. It had shot up
with a rapidity that defied calculation. Wealth was increasing faster
than sobriety was inclined to measure. Swarming multitudes from every
quarter of the globe were rendering the community in a certain sense
unformed.” In contrast to this picture of wild growth we can record
that stage coaches were the only means of public conveyance, and the
newfangled horse car was forcing its clattering way up one street on a
single-tracked line, in spite of the opposition of the large majority,
who preferred their safe and sure stage coaches. Broadway, according
to Charles Dickens, who visited New York a few years after Barnum
became a resident, was “a wide and bustling street, which, from the
Battery Gardens to its opposite termination in a country road, may be
four miles long,” and in Mrs. Lamb’s opinion “Washington Square was
quite a long distance from the city.” The number of omnibuses surprised
Dickens--“half-a-dozen have gone by within as many minutes”--and he was
also impressed by the large-wheeled tilburies, the gigs, the phaetons,
and the hackney coaches, by which the upper classes were carried about
the city. But when Dickens crossed the wide and bustling street called
Broadway, he found it necessary to look out for the pigs, who trotted
clumsily behind the carriages and acted as the city scavengers.
The dress of the ladies interested Dickens just as much as it has
interested visiting authors since. “Heaven save the ladies, how they
dress!” he wrote. “We have seen more colors in these ten minutes than
we should have seen elsewhere in as many days. What various parasols!
what rainbow silks and satins! what pinking of thin stockings, and
pinching of thin shoes, and fluttering of ribbons and silk tassels,
and display of rich cloaks with gaudy hoods and linings!” Here was a
community apparently awaiting a Barnum. The gaudy hoods and linings,
the fluttering ribbons and rainbow silks and satins indicate a certain
wealth and a taste for the gay and amusing. Barnum must have been
conscious here in New York as he walked the streets and pondered how
to support his wife and baby, of an atmosphere more favorable to his
talents and their expression than the New England which he had just
left, where the “pinking of thin stockings, and pinching of thin shoes”
would have been punished by means of the whipping post, or at least
with the jealous and shocked disdain of neighbors and the exclamatory
menaces of the town clergyman. In the New York of 1835 to adorn the
body and to divert the mind were not crimes, and a corresponding share
of the trade and industry of the city were devoted to the satisfaction
of those ends. Broadway had shops that were handsome enough to impress
Mrs. Trollope, who found most of America new, brazen, and boring when
it was not offensive. She also admired the uniform houses in the
residential sections of the city where neat iron railings and pretty
green blinds gave an impression of ease and luxury that she found
nowhere else in the United States.
That New Yorkers of 1835 could be unrestrained in their enjoyments
when the occasion was presented we know from the many accounts of the
nature of New Year celebrations. James Gordon Bennett, the elder, wrote
in the _New York Herald_: “We were sorry to see so much intoxication
in our streets ... and it even extended into the Mayor’s office. In
consequence of the improper behavior of many of his visitors, by which
the carpets were completely ruined, he was compelled to close up and go
home at one o’clock, and deprived many of the pleasure of seeing him.”
Soon after Barnum arrived in New York the city was almost destroyed
by the largest fire in its early history. The fire started on a cold
day, December 16, 1835, and burned steadily for three days because
there was no efficient water supply, and the water available froze in
the pipes. More than seven hundred buildings were turned to ruins,
and almost all the insurance companies went into bankruptcy. Many
mercantile establishments were forced out of business, and the banks
suspended payment. It was during this fire that the _New York Herald_,
founded in that same year by James Gordon Bennett, became popular.
Cross-eyed James Gordon Bennett, owner, editor, and reporter for his
new enterprise, went through the ruins of the fire with a note-book and
gave New York its only vivid account of the results and causes of the
disaster. This kept the _Herald_, which both in friendship and enmity
was such a potent advertising medium for Barnum for many years, from
almost certain bankruptcy, because the demand for the paper during the
fire did not fall off afterwards, and a large advertising contract from
Dr. Brandreth’s pills kept it alive. Times were hard, but the fire made
them worse, and during the first five years of Barnum’s residence in
New York the city, as well as the rest of the country, suffered great
financial distress. President Jackson’s famous “specie circular” caused
the government treasury to gather in all the gold of the country, and
the result was a drastic panic, from which Barnum’s efforts must have
suffered a severe check. In April, 1837, more than two hundred and
fifty large New York business houses suspended payments, and every bank
in the city did the same.
II
Barnum had no money worth mentioning when he arrived in New York. In
Connecticut he had made large sums of money for his age and for his
environment, but he had also spent large sums without any anxiety
about his ability to continue to earn then. He sought in New York for
an opportunity with a business organization, where he could share in
the profits rather than work for a fixed salary. Business was bad,
opportunities were limited, and Barnum found nothing to his taste. His
money began to disappear, and his family was in ill health; in order
to relieve immediate needs, he became a “drummer” in a cap store and
watched the “Want” advertisements in _The Sun_. In his mind was the
fixed idea that if he could get something to exhibit to the New York
amusement-loving public, he would succeed. But, meanwhile, he answered
advertisements of inventors and adventurers, always to discover that
they wanted money immediately in order to produce it in the future.
Barnum’s present was immediate in its demands, and he could not afford
to consider a vague future, but his self-confidence in the face of
hardship was great enough to enable him to refuse to bind himself for
three years when he applied to William Niblo, proprietor of Niblo’s
Garden, for the position as bartender at that establishment. Barnum did
not get the position, for William Niblo, who was later one of Barnum’s
good friends, insisted that his bartender must contract for three
years of service. During the entire winter of 1834 he could find no
work, except as commission agent for the cap store, which was not very
profitable. In the spring of 1835 he received several hundred dollars
of the debts owed to him in Bethel for groceries and lottery tickets,
and with the money he opened a private boarding house at 52 Frankfort
Street. The Connecticut transients stopped at Barnum’s when in New
York, and soon Barnum and his wife had enough trade to enable him to
capitalize his spare time by purchasing an interest in a grocery store.
Mr. Coley Bartram, of Redding, Connecticut, called at Barnum’s grocery
store in July, 1835. He mentioned to Barnum that he had just sold
his interest in an extraordinary negress, and he handed him a copy
of _The Pennsylvania Inquirer_ for July 15, 1835, with the following
advertisement:
“CURIOSITY.--The citizens of Philadelphia and its vicinity have
an opportunity of witnessing at the Masonic Hall, one of the
greatest natural curiosities ever witnessed, viz., JOICE HETH, a
negress aged 161 years, who formerly belonged to the father of
Gen. Washington. She has been a member of the Baptist Church one
hundred and sixteen years, and can rehearse many hymns, and sing
them according to former custom. She was born near the old Potomac
River in Virginia, and has for ninety or one hundred years lived in
Paris, Kentucky, with the Bowling family.
“All who have seen this extraordinary woman are satisfied of the
truth of the account of her age. The evidence of the Bowling
family, which is respectable, is strong, but the original bill of
sale of Augustine Washington, in his own handwriting, and other
evidence which the proprietor has in his possession, will satisfy
even the most incredulous.
“A lady will attend at the hall during the afternoon and evening
for the accommodation of those ladies who may call.”
Mr. Coley Bartram told Barnum that this extraordinary slave was now
owned by R. W. Lindsay, who was exhibiting her in Philadelphia, but who
did not have much ability as a showman and was therefore anxious to
sell his purchase and return to his home in Jefferson County, Kentucky.
Barnum was excited. He had read short paragraphs about this negress in
the New York newspapers, and he had been interested, but this detailed
description of her superb qualifications for his purposes enthralled
him. He hurried to Philadelphia to look at Joice Heth, and he was
“favorably impressed with the appearance of the old woman,” who “might
almost as well have been called a thousand years old as any other age.”
She was lying on a lounge, her lower extremities doubled up. She could
move one of her arms, but the other was stiffly clasped to her breast,
and both legs were completely beyond her control and could not be
straightened. She was blind, and she had no teeth. Thick, bushy, savage
gray hair added to her value as a monstrosity. The nails of her left
hand, which lay immovable across her breast, were four inches long,
and as the fingers were helplessly turned down, the nails extended
above the wrist; her toe nails were equally large.
Joice Heth was sociable, and she could talk intelligibly with any one
who would talk with her. She referred to George Washington as “dear
little George,” swore that she was present at his birth, and that
she was the first person to put clothes on the future father of his
country. “In fact,” she told Barnum, and it was one of her favorite
expressions, “I raised him.” Mr. Lindsay showed Barnum the bill of sale
from Augustine Washington, George Washington’s father, dated February
5, 1727, by which Augustine Washington deeded to his sister-in-law and
neighbor, Elizabeth Atwood, “one negro woman, named Joice Heth, aged
fifty-four years, for and in consideration of the sum of thirty-three
pounds lawful money of Virginia.” Five years later, when George
Washington was born, Joice Heth, being an old family nurse, was called
in to assist at his arrival and in his subsequent education, according
to her story.
All this seemed plausible to Barnum, and the bill of sale did look
creased, fragile, and old. Barnum asked how such an old woman with
such historic associations had only then come to the public attention,
why she had never aroused the curiosity of showmen and audiences
before; but when it appeared that she had lived in an outhouse on
the Kentucky estate of the Bowling family, the respectable family of
the advertisement, Barnum was contented that she was authentic. The
discovery of the bill of sale in the Virginia record office by one of
the Bowling sons made the family realize the value of its property,
Barnum was told. He asked how much a piece of property like Joice
Heth might be worth, and the answer was three thousand dollars. At
the time he possessed five hundred dollars of his own. He persuaded
Lindsay that one thousand dollars was enough, and, returning to New
York, he borrowed an additional five hundred dollars and sold his
interest in the grocery store. By his contract with Lindsay Barnum
came into “the possession of the person of the African woman, Joice
Heth,” and Lindsay offered to continue his exhibitions in Philadelphia
while Barnum made preparations for her reception in New York. He
called upon William Niblo, who did not recognize him as the young man
who a few months before had applied for the position of bartender at
Niblo’s Garden. Niblo agreed for one-half the receipts of Joice Heth’s
exhibition to allow Barnum the use of a room near his saloon, and also
paid the expense of whatever printing and advertising was necessary.
Levi Lyman, whom he characterized as a “shrewd, sociable, and somewhat
indolent Yankee” lawyer of Penn Yan, New York, was engaged by Barnum
as his assistant. Lyman wrote a memoir of Joice Heth, and Barnum
distributed throughout the city small handbills and posters announcing
his phenomenon. The newspapers printed advertisements on the day of
her début, written by Barnum, and containing the following partial
descriptions of her attractions:
“She is cheerful and healthy, although she weighs but forty-nine
pounds. She relates many anecdotes of her young master; she speaks also
of the red-coats during the Revolutionary War, but does not appear
to hold them in high estimation. She has been visited by crowds of
ladies and gentlemen, among whom were many clergymen and physicians,
who have pronounced her the most ancient specimen of mortality the
oldest of them has ever seen or heard of, and consider her a very
great curiosity.” And again: “Joice Heth is unquestionably the most
astonishing and interesting curiosity in the world. She was the slave
of Augustine Washington (the father of George Washington), and was
the first person _who put clothes on the unconscious infant_ who was
destined in after days to lead our heroic fathers to glory, to victory,
and to freedom. To use her own language when speaking of her young
master, George Washington, ‘she raised him.’” (Italics are _always_
Barnum’s.)
The newspapers took up Joice Heth readily. The _New York Evening Star_
wrote: “Her appearance is much like an Egyptian mummy just escaped from
its sarcophagus.” And the _New York Daily Advertiser_ said of her:
“Ancient or modern times furnish no parallel to the great age of this
woman. Methuselah was 969 years old when he died, but nothing is said
of the age of his wife. Adam attained nearly the age of his antiquated
descendant. It is not unlikely that the sex in the olden time were like
the daughters at the present day--unwilling to tell their age. Joice
Heth is an exception; she comes out boldly, and says she is rising
160.” Joice Heth was an habitual smoker of a corn cob pipe, and when
a reporter of the _Evening Star_ asked her how long she had smoked
a pipe, she answered glibly, “One hundred and twenty years.” Barnum
acknowledged in his autobiography that Joice Heth taught him many facts
about the Washington family which he never knew before.
The gross receipts in New York for the Joice Heth exhibition were
$1,500 each week. Visitors continued for some weeks to come to Niblo’s
Garden, asked her questions about the Washington family, listened to
her sing hymns and discuss theology, and departed satisfied as to her
age and previous condition of servitude. After the New York public had
paid all the tribute it was likely to pay, Barnum toured New England
with his slave, exhibiting at Providence, Boston, and other large
cities. In Boston he met Maelzel, who was then exhibiting his automaton
chess-player. Barnum enjoyed many conversations with this inventor and
showman, whom he regarded as the father of public entertainers. Maelzel
told Barnum that he would succeed as a showman, “because you understand
the value of the press, and that is the great thing. Nothing helps the
showman like the types and the ink.” “When your old woman dies,” he
added, “you come to me, and I will make your fortune.”
Barnum kept up a steady stream of publicity concerning Joice Heth,
and when the Boston audiences began to decrease in numbers, a notice
appeared in one of the newspapers signed, “A Visitor,” in which it
was stated that Joice Heth was a humbug, that she was made of india
rubber, whalebone, and hidden springs, and that the exhibitor was a
ventriloquist, which accounted for her powers of conversation. The
presence of Maelzel’s automaton in the same city, in fact, in the same
hall, made this announcement more interesting to the public. Those
who had not seen Joice Heth went to see the ingenious mechanism, and
those who had seen her went again to satisfy themselves that she was
not alive. Barnum thus created controversy, which he realized from the
beginning of his career was the life of trade in the show business.
While he was exhibiting Joice Heth in Albany, New York, Barnum met a
“Signor Antonio,” who balanced crockery and guns with bayonets on his
nose, a feat which was a novelty in this country at the time. Signor
Antonio told Barnum that he was an Italian by birth, that he had sailed
from England to Canada, and that Albany was the first city in the
United States where he had ever exhibited his talents in public. Barnum
engaged him for one year to perform anywhere in the United States at
a salary of $12 per week and his expenses. When Antonio, Joice Heth,
Levi Lyman, and Barnum returned to New York, Barnum insisted that
Antonio submit to two indignities: first, he must be thoroughly washed,
and secondly, he must change his name to Signor Vivalla. A notice
soon afterwards appeared in the newspapers that Signor Vivalla, who
could do wonders with his nose and on stilts, had just arrived from
Italy, and Barnum sent copies of these notices to all the theatrical
managers in New York City. The manager of the Franklin Theater called
and was favorably impressed with the artist Mr. Barnum said he had
just imported from Italy, and a contract was made for the performances
of Signor Vivalla in the Franklin Theater at $50 per week. Although
Vivalla had spent much time in England, Barnum always refused to allow
him to speak English and accompanied him upon the stage to assist him
and to explain the tricks to the audience, this being Barnum’s first
appearance on any stage. During the second week of Signor Vivalla at
the Franklin Theater, he was so popular that Barnum received $150 for
his services, and he then took his juggler and balancer to Boston and
Washington. Meanwhile, Levi Lyman was exhibiting Joice Heth in New
England for Barnum. A snow storm caused bad business for Vivalla’s
exhibitions in Washington, and Barnum was forced to pawn his watch and
chain for thirty-five dollars in order to get money enough to proceed
to Philadelphia. By arousing a controversy there concerning Signor
Vivalla’s ability, and by organizing a defiant contest with another
performer, whom he paid, Barnum created enough excitement to yield
large profits.
In February, 1836, Barnum’s brother sent a message to the boarding
house in New York, which Mrs. Barnum was still operating, that Joice
Heth, who had been resting at Bethel after an illness, was dead. The
body was sent to Barnum in New York. He called upon a well-known New
York surgeon, who had once expressed a desire to hold a post-mortem
examination of Joice Heth, if she should not prove to be immortal. The
body was dissected before a large and distinguished company of doctors,
clergymen, and editors, and the operating surgeon found an absence of
ossification of the arteries in the region of the heart, leading him to
the opinion, he told Barnum and Levi Lyman privately, that Joice Heth
was probably not more than eighty years old. Thus with a few strokes
of a surgeon’s knife were dispelled all the eye-witness stories of the
birth and youth of George Washington, and apparently the surgeon did
not keep his opinion private, for _The Sun_ on the day following the
operation printed the story of the dissection and accused Barnum of
fraud in Joice Heth’s age. Levi Lyman, interested in playing jokes on
editors, then called upon James Gordon Bennett, and told him that as
a matter of fact Joice Heth had never died, that she was still living
in Connecticut, and that the dissection had been performed on the
body of an old Harlem negress. Bennett was thankful for the story and
printed these revelations in full. When his story was emphatically
denied by the surgeon, Levi Lyman offered to give the editor the real
inside history of Joice Heth. He told Bennett that Barnum had invented
Joice Heth’s background and had taught her the hymns and instructed
her in the George Washington family history. Bennett printed this
account, and that story was generally accepted thereafter as the
truth about Joice Heth. Barnum himself never denied any of these
stories until twenty years later, when in his first autobiography he
told the facts as they have been presented here. Barnum inaugurated
then a policy which he maintained throughout his long public career,
namely, never to contradict any implication, nor to protest against
any epithet. When people read that Joice Heth was a fraud perpetrated
upon their credulity by Barnum, what must have impressed them most in
the controversy was Barnum’s cleverness, and it was for the general
propagation of this impression that he was striving always. “... Never,
until the present writing,” he said in his autobiography, “have I said
or written a word by way of contradiction or correction. Newspaper
and social controversy on the subject (and seldom have vastly more
important matters been so largely discussed) served my purpose as ‘a
showman’ by keeping my name before the public.” Joice Heth was buried
respectably at Bethel, Connecticut. She must be regarded as one of
the most interesting of Barnum’s ventures, not only because she was
the first of her kind, but because of his unique exploitation of
her repulsive qualities, even though in the fullness of his mature
notoriety he grew to be ashamed of her and of his own lowly origin in
the field of showmanship; he referred to her in the last edition of his
autobiography as “the least deserving of all my efforts in the show
line....”
Some years after the death of Joice Heth, R. W. Lindsay, who sold
Barnum the negress, lost all his money and became ill. Barnum wrote the
following letter, which throws interesting light upon the Joice Heth
episode, and still more interesting light on Barnum’s character:
“MR. BAKER:
“Dear Sir.--Yours of the 3rd inst. has been forwarded to me.
Please read and then seal the enclosed to Lindsay. I send along
$100, which I wish you to use in the best possible manner for _his
benefit_. I really expect that if he had the money himself, he
would lay it out foolishly, and that if a little pains was taken
to get him into a Hospital in Boston or elsewhere that money, or
less, would procure for him a _permanent cure_ and then leave him
in health to look out for himself. If he is allowed to _live out_
this $100 in food and clothing he will soon be begging again and
the relief will be but _temporary_. I earnestly trust that you
will try to have this prove a _real_ benefit to him. On reflection
perhaps he had better not receive my letter, nor know that you
have got my check, until you have got it cashed, and looked about
and determined how it is best to use it. His assertions that I
understand he has made to others that I am under obligations to
him are _ridiculously false_. I never had anything to do with
him except to buy from him in _perfect good faith_ and pay him
the money for an old _negress_, which he falsely represented as
the ‘Nurse of Washington’ and which he imposed on me as such,
by aid of a _forged Bill of Sale_ purporting to have been made
by the _father_ of George Washington. I honestly _believed_ all
this and exhibited accordingly as Lindsay had done for months
previous--finally she died and the imposition became manifest,
and _I_ have ever since borne the stigma of _originating_ that
imposture. I never denied it before--but I might have done so
truly. This is all the ‘obligation’ I am under to Lindsay, but he
is a poor devil, and I hope to see him recover. Please take his
receipt or some acknowledgment when he receives the benefit of this
sum if convenient--if not--no matter. I would be pleased to hear
from you at Charleston, S. C. Truly yours,
“P. T. BARNUM.”[2]
If Barnum would have us believe that he bought Joice Heth “in _perfect
good faith_,” that he “_believed_ all this,” he must convince us that
suddenly at the age of twenty-five his mind developed an artlessness
and gullibility which it had never had even during his boyhood, and
which it did not manifest during his later career.
III
Barnum and his Italian continued to travel about New England, New
York, and New Jersey, but with poor success, for juggling, balancing
crockery, and walking on stilts were as nothing compared to just being
161 years old, and the public were more interested in the family
history of George Washington than in feats of skill and accuracy; there
is also reason to believe that Signor Vivalla’s skill was not vastly
entertaining.
In April of 1836 Barnum met Aaron Turner, one of the early circus
proprietors of America. They formed a partnership by which Barnum
became ticket-seller, secretary, and treasurer of Turner’s traveling
circus at $30 per month and twenty per cent. of the net receipts. He
was also to receive $50 per month for the services of Signor Vivalla.
Charity and their small daughter Caroline returned to Bethel, and
Barnum toured the country with Turner’s circus, traveling in New
England, the middle Atlantic states, and some of the South.
Turner may be regarded as one of Barnum’s masters, in so far as he
had any at all. Barnum listened with approval as Turner told him and
the rest of the company that any man of health with common sense was
capable of making a fortune. “Who am I?” he used to say. “I don’t know
who I am, or where I came from. I never had father or mother that I
know of.... What little I can read I picked up myself after I was
eighteen years old; and as for writing I used at first to make my mark,
but being a poor devil I had to give my note so often that I finally
learned to write my name.”
Turner was another active practical joker, and Barnum once more found
himself in an atmosphere where that type of humor won great applause.
Upon one occasion a joke of Turner’s endangered Barnum’s life. The
company was in Annapolis, Maryland. The murder in Rhode Island of a
Miss Cornell had aroused the entire population of the eastern states
against the accused, the Rev. Ephraim K. Avery, who had been acquitted
in the face of general conviction of his guilt. Turner pointed out
Barnum to some of the loungers in the bar-room of the Annapolis hotel
as the Rev. Ephraim K. Avery, incognito. The bar-room was quickly
emptied as the righteous Maryland townsmen started after Barnum with
the intention of taking the Rhode Island law into their own hands. He
was roughly seized and informed of the intention of the mob to tar and
feather him, which process was to be followed by a regulation lynching.
When Barnum protested that he was Barnum, the name being then unknown,
the outraged citizens refused to listen. It was only with great
difficulty that he persuaded these enraged advocates of direct action
to return with him to the hotel and confront Aaron Turner with his own
hoax. Turner told the mob, which had been increased by fifty or sixty
persons as Barnum was marched up the main street to the hotel, that
“he believed there was some mistake about it. The fact is my friend
Barnum has a new suit of black clothes on, and it makes him look so
much like a priest I concluded it must be Avery.” The mob, appreciative
of Turner’s joke, dispersed, but Barnum was left with his new coat torn
off his back and his other clothes damaged from the rolling in the dirt
which he had received at the hands of the mob. When he became angry
with Turner, the showman said: “My dear Barnum, it was all for our
good. Remember, all we need to insure success is _notoriety_. You will
see that the whole town will be talking about the trick played by one
of the circus managers on the other, and our pavilion will be crammed
to-morrow night.” The pavilion was crammed the next night, but Barnum
was incapable of considering impersonally the value of such dangerous
personal publicity.
The character of Aaron Turner was the most important early influence
that shaped Barnum’s own methods, excepting his own boyhood environment
in Connecticut. Turner’s procedure in the face of difficulties, his
insane love of a practical joke, his insistence upon notoriety at any
cost, gave Barnum the first lessons in the school of which he himself
was to become the master. Upon one occasion the company arrived at
Hanover Court House, near Richmond, Virginia, during a storm. It
was impossible to give the show, and Turner purposed to move on to
Richmond, but the landlord at Hanover Court House insisted that since
an agent of the circus had engaged rooms and three meals for the entire
company of thirty-six, he must be paid for those conveniences whether
or not they were used. This argument arose just before the noon meal.
Turner tried persuasion, but the landlord was firm. He therefore
ordered dinner, which was promptly eaten by the whole company. As
soon as the table was cleared, supper for thirty-six was ordered for
half-after noon. After the thirty-six had eaten as much as possible
of the supper, Turner ordered lighted candles for every member of the
company, and directed that they all go to their rooms and get into bed
at one o’clock in the afternoon. Half an hour later they dressed and
went down to breakfast, which Turner had ordered for two o’clock sharp.
They ate as much as possible under the circumstances, and at half-past
two the company left for Richmond. Turner insisted upon carrying
out this program with due solemnity in spite of the protests of the
landlord and the convulsive mirth of his own performers.
Barnum, having received $1,200 as his share of the profits, separated
from his partner after a few months, and organized his own traveling
circus, consisting of Vivalla, musicians, and a negro singer and
dancer. With these performers, his horses and wagons and a small canvas
tent, Barnum started on a tour of the South. On this tour he exhibited
a personal versatility that is interesting in the light of the later
triumph of his personality. When his company reached Rocky Mount Falls,
North Carolina, on a Sunday, Barnum delivered an inspiring sermon
before the population of the town, after its regular clergyman had
finished his services. He assured the congregation, “We cannot violate
the laws of God with impunity, and he will not keep back the wages of
well-doing.... Diamonds may glitter on a vicious breast, but the soul’s
calm sunshine and the heartfelt joy is virtue’s prize.” In Camden,
South Carolina, the negro singer, Sandford, left Barnum without notice,
just before the show. The audience must not be disappointed, and so the
Barnum who had played the clergyman the previous Sunday blacked his
face thoroughly and sang the songs advertised, including “Zip Coon,”
“The Raccoon Hunt, or Sitting on a Rail,” and “Gittin’ Up Stairs.” Many
of the congregation came up after the prayer meeting to congratulate
the impromptu preacher, some even to take down his name; and the coon
songs were encored vigorously.
Aaron Turner disbanded his circus soon after Barnum left him, and
Barnum bought some of its equipment for his own show. He also hired
another negro singer to relieve him of the part, which he had taken
every day since the departure of the original, giving the impression
successfully to most of his audiences in Southern territory that he
was a real negro. Barnum added Joe Pentland, clown, ventriloquist,
comic singer, and legerdemain artist, to his company, and the enlarged
show was known as “Barnum’s Grand Scientific and Musical Theater,”
the first traveling show to carry the name of P. T. Barnum. In May,
1837, Barnum’s company disbanded at Nashville, Tennessee, because of
poor business. After a short trip to New York, he took his circus
into Kentucky and down the Mississippi, to New Orleans, where it was
finally disbanded; Barnum returned to New York, disgusted at the lack
of opportunities to make money with a traveling show.
IV
Barnum advertised in the New York newspapers that he had $2,500 to
invest in a reliable business and wanted a partner with such an
organized business. He received ninety-three answers, one third from
saloonkeepers and the rest from interesting miscellaneous promoters.
One man was a counterfeiter and needed Barnum’s $2,500, he admitted,
to purchase paper, ink, and new dies. Finally Barnum entered into
partnership with Proler, a German manufacturer of water-proof blacking
for boots, Cologne water, and bear’s grease. Proler took charge of the
factory, and Barnum opened a store on the Bowery, where he sold the
products of the factory. Their capital, that is, Barnum’s money, was
soon absorbed, and Barnum sold his interest to his partner, taking
Proler’s note for $2,600. Before his note came due, Proler sailed for
Rotterdam, and Barnum was left with nothing for his $2,500 but four
recipes, one for bear’s grease, which grew hair on a bald head, one for
Cologne water, one for blacking, and one for water-proof paste.[3]
Without money again, Barnum was also without employment in the spring
of 1840. He hired the saloon of Vauxhall Garden in New York and offered
a variety performance, in which Mary Taylor, later one of the country’s
favorites, first appeared in New York. Jack Diamond, the first, and for
a long time the most popular, dancer of negro dances in this country,
also performed under Barnum’s management. But the Vauxhall Garden
venture did not make money, and after less than two months Barnum was
forced to close his show. He hated the thought of once more becoming
a traveling showman, separated from family, but he had just enough
money left for one more trial at this business, and he took Master Jack
Diamond, the dancer, a fiddler, and a delineator of Yankee characters
on a tour of Canada, New York State, and the Northwest. They finally
reached New Orleans, and Barnum had $100. He had left New York with
that amount, so that his four months’ tour had yielded nothing but
expenses. In New Orleans the receipts were good, but Master Diamond,
who had borrowed large sums from Barnum, absconded, and Barnum returned
to New York in April, 1841, determined never to leave it again in the
capacity of traveling showman.
He was thirty-one years old, and had had varied experiences, but no
success. The foundation of his subsequent career was being laid, but up
to this time the small accident which starts one on the way to partial
realization of dreams had not yet happened to him. Barnum had tried
vigorously to contribute by his enterprise to his success, but the
financial depression that reigned throughout the country during this
period, together with losses sustained by the duplicity of a partner,
or the state of the weather, caused him to find himself at the age of
thirty-one in the same financial position he had occupied upon his
arrival in New York five years before.
On his way back to New York Barnum read in a Pittsburg newspaper an
advertisement for _Sears’ Pictorial Illustrations of The Bible_, and
three days after his return to the city he called upon Robert Sears,
its publisher. For $500 Barnum received 500 copies of the book and
received the agency for its sale in the United States. He opened an
office in New York, advertised widely, and in six months he had sold
several thousand copies of the book; but he had appointed agents and
sub-agents in other cities, who cheated him of all his profits and
also of his capital. For the third time he was swindled because of his
trust in other people. Only after serious financial losses, and not
until late in life, did Barnum learn to question the integrity of those
he was forced to trust. It is doubtful if he ever gave up an implicit
faith in man’s innate righteousness, for a skeptical opinion of
mankind, although it might be justified by his continual experiences,
would clash with his sincere piety, and his earnest belief that the
dead shall be raised. Virtue, to him, undoubtedly bore its own reward,
and he seldom guarded against the attempt to cheat him out of it.
Soon his funds were completely exhausted, and Barnum sought any
kind of employment and found none that was lucrative. At the age of
thirty-one, with a wife and two daughters to support, and a third
daughter in prospect, he was compelled to grasp at straws, and he
wrote advertisements for the Bowery Amphitheater at four dollars per
week. He added to this by means of occasional articles which he wrote
for the Sunday newspapers. Heretofore theatrical managers had most
of them contented themselves with announcements in the newspapers
of the names of their plays and the names of their performers, and
Barnum was one of the first men in the United States to realize the
power of the paid adjective in advertising theatrical attractions.
Adjectives were lavished at this time on patent medicines, and the
advertising columns in the newspapers of the day were made up largely
of extravagant praise of pills by their makers. Theaters were sparing
in their advertisements. His daily visits to the newspaper offices for
the purpose of inserting his advertisements made him acquainted at this
time with those persons who were to contribute so much to his success
during the rest of his life by advertising his wares, not least of
which was his personality.