HIS BROTHER’S KEEPER
I
Upon his return to New York from Europe, Barnum found that he had many
new friends. “I could hardly credit my senses,” he wrote in a newspaper
article at the time, “when I discovered so many wealthy men extending
their hands to me and expressing their delight at seeing me again, who
before I left New York would have looked down on me with disdain had
I presumed to speak to them. I really forgot, until they forced the
truth upon my mind, that since I left them I had accumulated a few more
dirty dollars, and that now therefore we stood on equal ground! On the
other hand, I met some honest friends in humble circumstances, who
approached me with diffidence never before exhibited--and then again
I felt ashamed of human nature. What a pitiful state of society it is
which elevates a booby or a tyrant to its summit, provided he has more
gold than others--while a good heart or a wise head is contemptuously
disregarded if their owner happens to be poor.
“This coat, I am sorry to say, will fit many of my acquaintances in New
York. I beg them, for their own sakes and for mine, to wear it. I wish
_them_ and all the world to know that my father was a _tailor_, and
that I am ‘_a showman_’ by profession, and all _the gilding_ shall make
nothing else of me....”
This is the first proud public utterance of an attitude Barnum seems
to have retained fervently throughout life; he was ostentatiously
unpretentious. This sort of speech, and the continual parade of one’s
lack of pride, was likely to appeal strongly to the great public whose
motto was “I’m as good as him, and better”; it was not an attitude
that could have hurt Barnum’s business, for his public was the large
public, whose great pride was its mediocrity. But Barnum meant what
he wrote; it was his sincere belief that all men are created equal, a
misconception that he shared with some of the more distinguished and
less disinterested demagogues of his period. Barnum merely failed to
appreciate what he should have accepted as a commonplace: that there
are levels which we cannot bridge, and which must be recognized. In
simple fashion he grandly denies the existence of differences, but
he himself would not have found much in common with Edgar Allan Poe,
one of his most distinguished contemporaries, or, on the other hand,
with the bartender across the way from the Museum. Barnum would have
been at a bewildering loss to understand Poe’s melancholy outlook and
cynical distrust of a world that had not trusted in his ability; and
his temperance views, which will be discussed in this chapter, would
have separated him to some extent from sympathetic association with a
bartender. The social levels which Barnum wished to remove with one
glorious gesture of democracy save most people much valuable time by
relieving them of the necessity for establishing a minute and general
interest in all the various specimens of mankind. But it was just
that interest, curiosity, and concern in the welfare of his fellowmen
that always entertained Barnum, for he had something in his character
of the Y. M. C. A. worker, but not enough to mar his appreciation of
the desires of a vast proportion of his prospective patrons. He never
catered down to a particular public, nor, except in some things that
were most dear to his deepest convictions, did he try to raise them up.
His was the curiosity of most of his patrons, and he had in his own
mind an almost infallible test of what his public would want. But there
is such a thing as being proud of one’s lack of pride, and it was this
type of militant modesty which Barnum possessed.
II
In 1846 Barnum found that his personal fortune was large. What it
amounted to he does not say, contenting himself with the statement in
his autobiography that fortune continued to smile upon him. Five years
of sensational popularity had turned the Museum into a gold mine, and
the Tom Thumb tour had yielded a large capital both to General Tom
Thumb and to his promoter. The time had come for Barnum to choose a
residence, where at some time in the near future he could live in the
bosom of his family and forget the details of showmanship forever. It
was always Barnum’s intention to retire, and almost his last words as
he lay dying were an inquiry about the day’s receipts at the circus.
Retirement to such a character, fed on notoriety, was as impossible as
it would have been for Hercules to settle down as the instructor of a
gymnasium.
Barnum and Mrs. Barnum selected Bridgeport, Connecticut, as a place
to live, for Bridgeport is on Long Island Sound, which gives it an
expansive view across the waters, is in the state of their nativity,
and is only a short distance from New York City, where Barnum’s
activities were always centered. He purchased seventeen acres of land
one mile from the center of Bridgeport and prepared to build.
When he was in England, Barnum visited Brighton and was impressed by
the Brighton Pavilion, the gorgeous memorial to his extravagance built
by Queen Victoria’s wicked uncle, George IV. This was one of the first
examples of Oriental architecture in England, and one of the most
hideously uncomfortable buildings of which any king could boast. Barnum
engaged a London architect to furnish him with plans and drawings in
the style of the Brighton Pavilion; its spires and minarets appealed to
his spectacular imagination.
On one of his short trips to this country from England, he began
negotiations with architects for the erection of such a building on his
Bridgeport property, and while he was touring the United States with
General Tom Thumb, “Iranistan,” the name he gave his Oriental palace,
was completed. It was a combination of Byzantine, Moorish, and Turkish
architectures. There were three stories, with broad piazzas, and large
arched window-ways. Minarets and spires stood up all over the building
in logical but profuse style, and domed conservatories bulged at either
end. A large iron fence enclosed the extensive grounds, and fountains
were scattered lavishly about. Reindeer and elk pranced through the
park. The whole, Barnum assures us, was built regardless of expense,
and he had no desire to ascertain the cost. He had his money’s worth
in detail, at least, and it was undoubtedly satisfying for him to live
in a house that must have been constantly mistaken for the Museum.
He admitted that in deciding upon the type of home he needed, he
considered convenience and comfort and had no desire for style, but he
felt that it must at the same time be unique; in this he had an eye
for business, “for I thought that a pile of buildings of a novel order
might indirectly serve as an advertisement of my various enterprises.”
His purpose was eminently successful; no one could pass “Iranistan” in
the train without, at least, inquiring what it was.
The interior was correspondingly ornate. A large winding staircase,
probably something in the style of those staircases in the mansion
of Baroness Rothschild and the palace of Queen Victoria, led up from
the main hall, and along its luxurious way marble statuary abounded.
The panels of the drawing-room walls represented the four seasons,
and the ceiling was white and gold. Pier glasses and mirrored folding
doors added to the drawing-room’s glamor. The dining-room walls were
richly paneled with figures representing Music, Painting, and Poetry. A
Chinese library with Chinese landscapes in oils and Chinese furniture,
where there was a tortoise-shell table with brass trimmings, adjoined
the dining-room. The walls in Barnum’s private study were brocaded
with rich orange satin, and adjoining the study was a bathroom, with
a shower of hot and cold water. An enthusiastic New York visitor to
“Iranistan” said that inside it was “as elegant as a steamboat.”
In November, 1848, the family moved in, and a housewarming at which
one thousand guests participated took place soon afterwards. Barnum
stocked “Iranistan” with fancy poultry and varied live stock, and in
1848 he was elected president of the Fairfield County Agricultural
Society, where he often made homely speeches. Soon afterwards he was
chosen president of the Pequennock Bank, and his prosperity became an
established and recognized part of his fame. In 1849 Barnum extended
his activities to Philadelphia, where he opened another museum.
III
When he first built “Iranistan” Barnum was proud of his wine cellars,
but it was not long before he was ashamed of them. In the fall of 1847
he visited Saratoga Springs with General Tom Thumb. The New York State
Fair was in progress, and Barnum saw so much intoxication among men
of wealth and distinction that he was constrained to think about his
own soul. Seldom do we find a prohibitionist so frank and naïve in his
objection to spirits as was Barnum. He wrote in his autobiography: “I
saw so much intoxication among men of wealth and intellect, filling the
highest positions in society, that I began to ask myself the question,
What guarantee is there that _I_ may not become a drunkard? I reflected
that many wiser and better men than myself had fallen victims to
intemperance; and although I was not in the habit of partaking often
of strong drink, I was liable to do so whenever I met friends, which
in my travels occurred every day. Hence I resolved to fly the danger,
and I pledged myself at that time never again to partake of any kind of
spirituous liquors as a beverage.”
Barnum kept his pledge, which did not include light wines and beer,
and he felt himself out of danger. He went about among his friends and
urged them to follow his example, to give up whisky. Later he arranged
public lectures in Bridgeport, and his friend, the Rev. E. H. Chapin,
one of the leading temperance orators of the country, spoke in the
Bridgeport Baptist Church at Barnum’s request.
The Rev. Mr. Chapin dwelt on the risks which moderate drinkers imposed
upon themselves, and the moderate drinker’s evil influence upon the
community, for it is the example of the man who knows when he has had
enough that the young man emulates when he first takes up a glass of
liquor. “If you say that you can drink or let it alone, that you can
quit it forever without considering it a self-denial, then I appeal to
you as a man, to do it for the sake of your suffering fellow-beings,”
was Mr. Chapin’s exhortation. If a man was a public character, he
said, this act of self-denial was a duty, and Barnum felt that he was
assuredly a public character, an example of success. Another of Mr.
Chapin’s arguments that appealed strongly to Barnum, perhaps more even
than the first, was this: “If, on the other hand, you say that you
like to indulge moderately in the use of intoxicating drinks, and that
it would be a self-denial on your part to abandon the practice, then,
sir, I warn you in the light of all human experience, that you are
_in danger_, and should give it up _for your own sake_. When appetite
has so far got its hold upon you as to make the thought of abandoning
strong drink uncomfortable, I tell you that the chances are strongly
in favor of your dying a drunkard, unless you renounce the use of
intoxicating beverages altogether.”
It was the force of this possibility that he would die a drunkard
which worried Barnum most. He returned home from the lecture terribly
impressed and went to bed, but not to sleep. He was awfully conscious
of having throughout his life pursued a course of wrongdoing,
pernicious in its effect not only on himself but also on the community.
“I arose from my bed,” he wrote afterwards, “and feeling that as a man
I could not persist in a practice which I could not conscientiously
and logically defend, I took my champagne bottles, knocked off their
heads, and poured their contents upon the ground. I then called upon
Mr. Chapin, asked him for the teetotal pledge, and signed it.”
After he returned from his wine cellar, having knocked the heads off
his champagne bottles, Barnum informed his wife of what he had done.
The tears streamed down Charity’s face. Many weary nights of weeping
had she spent, she said, in fear for his strength of character and
powers of resistance to the temptation constantly offered to the
moderate drinker to become an habitual drunkard. Barnum reproached her
for not telling him of her fears, but she replied that she also feared
her warnings would be received in anger. Barnum’s was a frank admission
of the personal lack of self-control which drinking men have often
charged against prohibitionists, and he was human enough to confess
the personal element in his attempted conversion of mankind. For he
did not rest with himself. “I now felt I had a great duty to perform,”
he wrote. “I had been groping in darkness, was rescued, and I knew it
was my duty to try and save others. The morning I signed the pledge I
obtained over twenty signatures in Bridgeport.” He talked temperance
wherever he went, and toured New England with a lecture on the subject.
Soon what had at first appealed to him as a personal concern became a
national issue, a cause, and his most significant admission of this
process of thought was his statement: “We had become convinced that it
was a matter of life and death; that we must _kill_ Alcohol, or Alcohol
would kill _us_; or our friends.”
From an advocate of personal redemption and a propagandist in fear
of his soul, Barnum soon became a temperance orator extraordinary,
and he was able in his pseudo-public capacity to contribute largely
to the cause. Before long he must have been a crank on the subject,
for he never missed an opportunity to urge temperance in his personal
conversations, and he was always ready to deliver a lecture on the
subject. A deep sense of mankind’s obligation to him and a just
satisfaction in his accomplishment caused Barnum to tell in his
autobiography of the people he saved from themselves and their ruin. In
Philadelphia a man came to him to offer thanks for his salvation and
brought his partner along. “This gentleman,” said the convert, pointing
to his partner, “is my partner in business, and I know that he is glad
I have signed the pledge to-night.” “Yes, indeed, I am, George, and it
is the best thing you ever did,” replied the frank partner, “if you’ll
only stick to it.” “That will I do till the day of my death; and won’t
my dear little wife Mary cry for joy to-night when I tell her what I
have done!” “At that moment,” wrote Barnum, “he was a happy man--but he
could not have been more so than I was.”
Soon after he was convinced of the advantage of temperance, Barnum
became a prohibitionist and advocated prohibiting by law the sale of
liquor. In 1853 the _New York Illustrated News_, a weekly newspaper in
which Barnum owned a third of the stock, reported the following meeting:
“P. T. Barnum, Esq., lately addressed a very large Temperance
meeting at Metropolitan Hall, New York. In the course of his
speech, he said that Intemperance was the cause of an annual
expenditure or loss of two hundred and fifty millions of dollars in
this nation. In this city he estimated that there were 7,000 grog
shops, and allowing that the expenditure in each averaged $10 per
day, the aggregate in one year’s time would be $25,550,000 besides
the wholesale business. He offered, if the city would give him
that sum and stop liquor-selling for one year, to pay all the city
taxes, amounting to about four millions, send every child to a good
school, present every family with a library of one hundred good
books, three barrels of flour, and a silk dress to every female,
old or young, a suit of broadcloth to every male citizen, old or
young, and an admission to each to the Museum.”
Barnum never forgot to advertise the Museum.
And the Museum was also devoted to Temperance. A pamphlet called
_Sights and Wonders of New York, including a description of the
miracles, marvels, phenomena, curiosities, and nondescripts, contained
in that great Congress of Wonders, Barnum’s Museum_, which is an
account of the trip of a supposititious uncle and his nephews through
the Museum, gave the following evidence of the extension of Barnum’s
temperance activities to the Museum:
“Mrs. Pelby’s celebrated groups of wax figures then came in for a
share of deep and thoughtful consideration by the whole party.
“And first, the Intemperate Family. The group composes one family:
the old man at the table, with the bottle in his pocket, is the
father of the dying man; both are drunkards. The fruits of the
poisonous bottle are too clearly depictured in the misery, poverty,
and wretchedness, around the unfortunate group. ‘Look well, my
boys, on that picture of woe--remember an uncle warns you--see
that you touch not, taste not, handle not, the contents of the
intoxicating bottle, lest your condition should be as unfortunate
as the one you are now gazing upon.’ They shuddered, and passed on
to the other side, to the groups representing the last Supper of
our Lord with the disciples.
“Uncle Find-out informed his nephews that the moment selected by
the artist was where Jesus says--‘One of you shall betray me.’ He
then drew their attention to the countenances of the disciples, and
requested them to point out the one that appeared the most faithful
delineation of the betrayer of Jesus. In a few minutes the two
boys recognized Judas, and each exclaimed, ‘That, uncle, is the
man!’--and he quietly nodding assent, they pressed on to the groups
representing the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate.... Here
Uncle Find-out purchased for six cents a pamphlet describing all
the wax statuary, and also containing a copy of the Death Warrant
of Our Saviour.”
For many hundreds of performances Barnum presented in his Moral Lecture
Room, “The Moral, Domestic Drama of The Drunkard, or the Fallen Saved.”
In the first act of this drama, which was more popular than any play
Barnum ever presented in the Museum, we see The Moderate Drinker. “In
the second act we have his progress, step by step, to ruin,” read the
newspaper advertisement, “his increased appetite for strong drink; the
distress of his relations; the embarrassments of himself and family.
In the third act we have his Drunken orgies in Broadway, his bar-room
debauchery, the degradation of himself and vileness of his associates,
loss of time, &c. In the fourth act we have Despair and Attempted
Suicide, and in the fifth act his restitution to sobriety and society
by the aid of a Temperance Philanthropist.” There is no record that
Barnum took the last part himself. The advertisements said, “It is a
most thrilling and affecting performance. The whole drama is relieved
with lively sparks of wit and humor, and the comic characters, funny
scenes, country dances, songs, choruses, &c., serve to render the piece
as _amusing_ as it is instructive.”
After performances of “The Drunkard” it was announced from the stage
that all those who wished to sign the teetotal pledge could do so at
the box office. Barnum wrote that “almost every hour during the day and
evening women could be seen bringing their husbands to the Museum to
sign the pledge.” No bar was allowed on the Museum premises, and when
Barnum discovered that men were in the habit of going out for a drink
between the acts of “The Drunkard” he refused to give return checks.
“The Loan of a Lover” was the attraction in the Lecture Room during the
afternoon, while “The Drunkard” was performed at night.
Horace Greeley’s _Tribune_ was delighted with the success of Barnum’s
“Drunkard.” Horace Greeley probably wrote the editorial himself which
said: “When Barnum presents his reformatory piece of ‘The Drunkard’
night after night to two or three thousand persons at a time; when we
hear his stage manager, as in his speech Monday evening, speak of his
‘present proud position’ as Director of Amusements, tending, not to
debase, but to elevate the moral tone of the community; when we see
three Theaters in this vicinity, and Theaters in other places, dropping
their customary performances, and hastily getting up this same drama of
‘The Drunkard’ and boasting of its wholesome effects, we may think what
we please of the inconsistency of these copyists, and admire, if we
choose, the course of the original, but we _must_ feel gratified at the
evidences which all present of the emancipation of the public mind from
the shackles of prejudice and its restoration to a sound and promising
condition of moral healthfulness on the subject of Temperance.” And the
_Tribune_ continued: “When the Theater,--which for years has attracted
by its artful disguise of vice the youthful mind, has excited by its
_double entendres_ and indelicate allusions, the youthful mind, then
tempted by its showy bar-rooms to a grosser abandonment, and completed
by its third tier its course of iniquitous fascinations,--when the
Theater really commences to hold the mirror up to nature, and paint the
blackness of that very vice a taste for which it has ever done so much
to cultivate, we may hope for reform indeed.” It is doubtful whether
there is reason in such acclaim of the substitution of slush for smut.
It is still a question, awaiting scientific research, whether in both
the long and the short run, tawdry, false, and stultifying intellectual
sentiments passed out over the stage are more harmful to the formation
of the mind of the race than obscenities which assuredly seem to wear
off sooner.
Barnum became by his success with “The Drunkard” something of a
dictator of public amusements, as well as a caterer. But he would not
have been permitted to exercise any autocratic powers. “The Drunkard”
was successful, in fact, it became a mania, because it satisfied a need
of the moment, and Barnum had been the first to recognize that vice
dramatized in lurid enough colors could support a very thick coating of
moralic acid.