SUNDRIES AND AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I
Barnum wrote that he “did not know a waking moment that was entirely
free from anxiety” during the nine months of the Jenny Lind tour;
but, despite the labor and annoyances of that enterprise, it was not
his only occupation during the period. Barnum’s American Museum was
still flourishing, and it received additional patronage because of the
national advertising that Barnum gave Jenny Lind, and which Jenny Lind
gave Barnum. Always mindful of the success of his Museum, Barnum sold
the tickets for Jenny Lind concerts in New York at the Museum, in the
expectation, which was usually gratified, that those who came to buy
Jenny Lind tickets would stay to look at the diorama of Napoleon’s
funeral.
But Jenny Lind and his Museum were not enough for the Barnum who had
capital to invest. In 1849 he and Sherwood E. Stratton, General Tom
Thumb’s father, organized “Barnum’s Great Asiatic Caravan, Museum,
and Menagerie.” They chartered a ship which was sent to Ceylon in
May, 1850, to bring back twelve or more live elephants, and any other
available wild animals. On the Island of St. Helena the ship left
five hundred tons of hay to be used for feeding the beasts on the
return trip. The ship arrived in New York with its extraordinary cargo
in 1851, and ten of the elephants, harnessed in pairs to a chariot,
paraded up Broadway and were reviewed by Jenny Lind from the Irving
House.
“Barnum’s Great Asiatic Caravan, Museum, and Menagerie,” including
General Tom Thumb, traveled the country for four years, yielding large
profits to its owners. After four years all the equipment was sold,
except one elephant, which Barnum retained for his personal use. In
charge of a keeper the elephant was sent to Bridgeport, and on Barnum’s
farming land adjoining “Iranistan” both were put to new uses. The
keeper was dressed in Oriental costume of silken breeches, turban,
and yellow silk tunic. A six-acre field, facing the railroad tracks
of the New York & New Haven Railroad, was set aside for the exclusive
use of the elephant. Barnum gave the keeper a railroad time table,
and whenever a passenger train came into sight the elephant busily
plowed the land, the keeper goading him on and leading him as close as
possible to the railroad tracks, so that he who rode might see. This
publicity plan was arranged by Barnum for the benefit of his American
Museum.
The newspapers of this country and Europe printed accounts of the
phenomenon, and everywhere it soon became known that “P. T. Barnum,
proprietor of the American Museum in New York,” had been the first man
in the world to make use of the elephant as an agricultural animal.
Many people visited Bridgeport especially to watch the elephant in
action, and hundreds of letters came to Barnum from agricultural
societies. In his autobiography he summed up the questions asked, as
follows:
1. Is the elephant a profitable agricultural animal?
2. How much can an elephant plow in a day?
3. How much can he draw?
4. How much does he eat?
5. Will elephants make themselves generally useful on a farm?
6. What is the price of an elephant?
7. Where can elephants be purchased?
Concerning, “Will elephants make themselves generally useful on a
farm?” Barnum said, “I suppose some of my inquirers thought the
elephant would pick up chips, or even pins as they have been taught
to do, and would rock the baby and do all the chores, including the
occasional carrying of a trunk, other than his own, to the depot.” The
elephant’s trunk was an inexhaustible source of puns to Barnum. Some
anxious farmers asked whether an elephant would quarrel with a cow,
if it was possible to breed elephants on the farm, and how old calf
elephants must be before they would begin to earn their own living.
The number of letters he received, written with a serious inquiring
purpose, caused Barnum to fear that some farmers would buy elephants,
and he printed a form letter, headed “Strictly Confidential.” In this
letter, a copy of which was sent to each of his correspondents, Barnum
said that to him the elephant was a profitable agricultural animal
because he advertised the Museum, but that other farmers might find the
animal a burden. The original cost of an elephant, Barnum pointed out,
was from $3,000 to $10,000. In cold weather the animal would not work
at all; and in any weather he could not earn his keep, since every year
he would eat up the value of his head, trunk, and body. He concluded by
asking his correspondents to keep these facts secret, so that each of
the hundreds felt himself in the confidence of a great man.
The newspapers worked Barnum’s elephant for all he was worth. Reporters
made special trips to Bridgeport from distant points to write of the
scene accurately. Some of their stories said that Barnum’s elephant
built a stone wall around the farm, planted corn with his trunk,
washed the windows of “Iranistan,” and sprinkled the walks and lawns
by inhaling water into his trunk and using that instrument as a garden
hose. The elephant was also credited with feeding the pigs and picking
the fruit, and one writer had the audacity to print that since he was a
male elephant he carried Barnum’s letters to and from the post office.
Millions of readers throughout the country saw pictures of Barnum’s
elephant, and after the six-acre field had been plowed more than fifty
times, the animal was sold to Van Amburgh’s Menagerie.
For several years at this period Barnum was president of the Fairfield
County Agricultural Society, although his practical knowledge of
farming was nothing. But he proved useful as manager of the county
fairs of the society. His knowledge of showmanship was exhibited in
this capacity with great effect in at least one instance. At one of
the last sessions of Barnum’s last fair a pickpocket was caught.
Pickpockets visited the fair annually and usually came away with large
profits, and this particular pickpocket had a reputation for that
work both here and in England. The day after his arrest was the last
day of the fair, and Barnum anticipated light receipts. He therefore
obtained permission from the sheriff to exhibit the pickpocket at the
agricultural fair, for the purpose, he urged the sheriff, of giving
those who had been robbed an opportunity to identify him. Barnum issued
handbills announcing that for the last day of the fair the management
had obtained an unusual attraction, “a live pickpocket,” who would
be exhibited, safely handcuffed, without extra charge. Some farmers
brought their children ten miles to see the extraordinary sight.
Barnum was now recognized by his fellow citizens as a superior
organizer of large-scale entertainment. When the New York Crystal
Palace was in financial difficulties, he was asked to become president.
By means of Julien’s concerts and a celebration of the Independence of
the United States, he tried to save it from bankruptcy, but he came
to the conclusion after three months’ work that “the dead could not
be raised,” and when he discovered that the creditors of the Crystal
Palace expected him personally to pay all its debts he resigned.
Demands were continually made upon Barnum’s time and his money at
this period. Men with inventions visited him almost daily, offering
him the opportunity to make a profit of never less than $100,000 and
often as high as $1,000,000 in a remarkably short time. He was offered
thousands of acres of land if he would lend his name to the sale of
many more acres by stock companies, and impromptu miners offered
similar inducements for the use of his notoriety. These adventurers
in finance, Barnum tells us, usually began their conversations with,
“Mr. Barnum, I know you are always ready to join in anything that
will make money on a large scale.” Barnum’s answer usually was: “You
are much mistaken in supposing that I am so ready or anxious to make
money. On the contrary, there is but one thing in the world that I
desire--that is, tranquillity. I am quite certain your project will
not give me that, for you probably would not have called upon me if
you did not wish to draw upon my brains or my purse--very likely on
both. Now of the first, I have none to spare. Of the second, what I
have is invested, and I have no desire to disturb it.” The schemer
usually protested that his plan only required a stock company for its
promotion, and that Barnum would not be bothered with details. “If you
should propose to get up a stock company for converting paving stones
into diamonds, with a prospect of my making a million a year, I would
not join you,” Barnum tells us he always replied. When he was assailed
with the glittering prospects of money to be made, he answered: “I do
not want to make any money, sir; I have sufficient already to spoil
my children.” But these answers did not turn away the pests. A man in
Nashville, Tennessee, begged Barnum to join him in a project for a
cemetery in that city, and when Barnum doubted whether people would
die fast enough to make it profitable, the prospector answered, “Oh,
the money is not to be made out of the necessities of the dead, but
from the pride of the living.” Another man planned to carry passengers
overland to California on camels, and Barnum told him he thought asses
preferable, but he did not wish to be one of them. Professor Gardner,
the New England soap manufacturer, wrote to Barnum:
“Barnum:--I never saw you, nor you me, yet we are not strangers.
You have soaped the community, and so have I. You are rich, I am
not. I have a plan to add half a million to your wealth, and many
laurels to your brow. I manufacture by far the best soap ever
known, as a million of gentlemen, and three millions of God’s
greatest work, beautiful women, will testify. I send you a sample
to prove the truth of my words. Try it, and when you find that I
state FACTS, put $10,000 in the soap business, join me as an equal
partner, and we will thoroughly soap the American Continent in
three years, at a profit of a million dollars.
“By doing this, sir, you will erect a monument in the hearts of
the people worthy of your name! You will have the satisfaction
of knowing that you have conferred a boon upon your countrymen.
Cleanliness is next to godliness. You, sir, can aid in cleaning
and purifying at least ten millions of your dirty fellow-citizens.
It is a duty you owe to them and yourself. Look at my portrait on
the soap wrapper, and you will see the face of an honest man. Send
me your check next week for $5,000, and the week after for $5,000
more. This additional capital will enable me to supply the demand
for my unrivaled soap, and I will send you quarterly returns of
profits. Come, old fellow, fork over, and no grumbling! You will
thus become a public benefactor, and unwashed millions shall chant
your name in praise.
“My soap makes soft hands and cures soft heads. It removes paint
and grease, is unsurpassed for shaving, cures chaps on hands or
face, and is death on foul teeth. It cures eruptions to a charm. I
have no doubt that a sufficient quantity, properly applied, would
cure the eruption of Vesuvius.
“Address me immediately at Providence, Rhode Island.
“Yours, etc.,
“PROFESSOR GARDNER,
“Known as the New England Soap Man.”
That Barnum declined the offer is strange, for, undoubtedly, he
believed that cleanliness is next to godliness. But he tried the cake
of soap and found it to be excellent.
Barnum did put money into many schemes and business enterprises, and
almost always it was lost. Phillips’s Fire Annihilator, an English
patent; the steamship _North America_, designed to carry immigrants and
freight from Ireland to New York; and the _Illustrated News_, a weekly
illustrated newspaper published in New York in 1853, were a few of his
investments. The Fire Annihilator refused to put out fire; the _North
America_ could not find enough Irish freight, and the _Illustrated
News_ was abandoned after one year because Barnum’s partners did not
know enough about the issue of a newspaper. Throughout his career
whenever he turned from pure showmanship to trade, he usually lost
money.
II
While indulging moderately in sundry enterprises, Barnum kept careful
control of the Museum. He visited New York only one or two days each
week, spending the rest of his time at “Iranistan,” but he transacted
business for the Museum at his home, and he continued his efforts to
make the collection larger and better. Any curiosity that happened to
be passing through New York was requisitioned for the Museum. Miss
Pwan Tekow, a Chinese lady, arrived in New York in April, 1850, and
Barnum exhibited her at the Chinese Museum, a collection he purchased
at this time and operated separately from Barnum’s American Museum. The
advertisement for Miss Pwan Tekow read: “She is such a curiosity! The
women admire her tiny feet, the men her pretty face, plump figure, and
both the air of high breeding and education she exhibits. Surrounded
by the immense Chinese collection she fancies herself in the Flowery
Nation, and laughs and talks with all the spirit and vivacity of our
own beauties. This is the first time that a Chinese lady of consequence
has ever been seen by the eyes of ‘barbarians.’” The Chinese Museum
brought in revenue while the American Museum was being enlarged, so
that business literally continued while alterations were going on.
In August of 1850 a negro came to New York who claimed to have
discovered a weed that would turn negroes white. Barnum exhibited him
at the Museum. He hailed this negro and his weed as the solution of
the slavery problem, contending in his advertisements that if all the
negroes could be turned white the problem of slavery would disappear
with their color. The newspapers reported daily the progress of the
negro’s change in color.
A Gallery of Beauty, a contest in which two hundred prizes were offered
to “the handsomest women in America, the Public to be the Judges” from
daguerreotypes sent to the Museum, created a sensation, and another
Baby Show added greatly to the popularity of the Museum. Barnum wrote
to his friend Ballou, of _Ballou’s Pictorial_:
“FRIEND BALLOU.
“Dear Sir: We gave Mr. French to-day our advertisement of the Baby
Show--I send here a circular of particulars which I hope you will
notice.
“Two triplets and one Quartern are already engaged, and we expect
the woman from Ohio who has _five_ (at a birth).
“In a few days we shall have the Giant Woman from Maine, said to
be a very tall curiosity. I guess our Museum can sometimes furnish
as good things for you to illustrate as you can pick up elsewhere,
and I will occasionally pay for engraving special curiosities such
as giant, etc., if you will publish them. Of course I don’t expect
or wish you to publish anything that is not of itself full of
_interest_ to the public.
“Our Baby Show will make a grand scene for illustration.
“Yours very truly,
“P. T. BARNUM.”[12]
In July, 1853, The Bearded Lady was exhibited at the Museum, and she
caused Barnum trouble of the kind he liked most. The Bearded Lady,
according to a pamphlet she sold when she was exhibited, was born in
Versoix, Switzerland, March 25, 1831. Her parents noticed a slight
down on her face when she was a baby, and at the age of eight she had
a beard two inches long, which grew to be five inches long by the
time she was fourteen years old. Physicians in Geneva advised against
cutting the beard, for fear it would become hard in texture. In 1849 a
French showman offered the parents attractive terms for the right to
exhibit their child, and she consented. Her popularity in Europe was
great; Louis Napoleon was interested in her and presented her with
many gifts. In London it was said that she was visited by more than
800,000 persons. She married a French artist, M. Clofullia, and gave
birth to a boy, whose face was covered with hair at his birth. Barnum
met the woman and her son, Esau, in New York in 1853 and engaged them
for the Museum, where they attracted large crowds.
One William Charr made a complaint against The Bearded Lady, and she
was brought to the Tombs Court. Charr had visited the Museum at a
cost of twenty-five cents and after looking at The Bearded Lady came
to the conclusion that he had been humbugged out of his money. He
expressed the belief in court that said lady was “nothing more nor
less than a dressed-up man,” and further, “that she and Mr. Barnum
were humbugs and ought to be ‘dealt with according to law.’” Barnum
appeared in court to defend the character of his curiosity and his own
reputation. He presented for the consideration of the court a letter
and certificate from three physicians that such a hirsute growth was
possible, and that Madame Clofullia’s was natural. M. Clofullia, the
husband of The Bearded Lady, being duly sworn, insisted that he was the
legal husband of Madame, that they had been married for three years,
and that she was the mother of two children, one of whom was alive in
the presence of Esau, the Hairy Boy. Jacques Boisdechene, being duly
sworn, said that he was the father of the woman known as The Bearded
Lady, that M. Clofullia was her husband, and that she had borne two
children, one of whom was alive. Phineas T. Barnum, being duly sworn,
said that to the best of his knowledge the woman in question was a
woman, that she had been examined by Dr. Valentine Mott, Dr. John W.
Francis, and Dr. Alexander B. Mott, and that they had all come to the
same conclusion. Dr. Covil, of the Tombs Prison, also made an affidavit
to the effect that in collaboration with the matron of the prison he
“had an interview with the lady in question, and both are perfectly
convinced that, in spite of her beard, she is a woman.” The magistrate
was satisfied that Barnum had proved his innocence of humbug, and the
case was dismissed. Barnum and The Bearded Lady left the court-room,
followed by a large crowd.[13]
This episode was probably a piece of Barnum’s planned publicity. It
would seem offhand as if he could readily have proved out of court to
the complete satisfaction of William Charr that The Bearded Lady was a
woman. But “a large crowd of spectators, whom the novelty of the case
had collected,” said the _Tribune_, followed them out of court, and
that could not have been accomplished out of court.
Barnum, having passed the first ten years of his notorious career, was
now known the world over as a consumer of curiosities. He had first
choice on all the monstrosities in the world, because he paid more
for them than anybody else. Men, women and children wrote to him,
telegraphed him, and called with varied products for his inspection.
Ossified men, all bone, india-rubber men, with no bones, three-legged
men, and men without legs were brought to his attention. Often Barnum
must have felt like the Creator in the presence of His mistakes.
Upon one occasion a man rushed into the Museum office and asked how
much Barnum would pay for the greatest curiosity ever exhibited
anywhere by anybody. Barnum asked for particulars. The curiosity was
a man, but this man had two heads, with two distinct faces, both
handsome. His two mouths spoke Spanish, French, and English; they could
carry on a dialogue with each other, sing duets, one mouth singing in
English and one in Spanish, or vice versa, including French, and the
two mouths could converse at the same time with Spanish, French and
English gentlemen. The discoverer of this unique man wanted only a
price and traveling expenses to transport his man from Mexico. Barnum
said: “Why, let me see. There’s no use specifying a particular sum, or
standing upon trifles in an affair of such importance, and I’ll tell
you what I will do. As soon as you bring your curiosity to me, and I
find that the man is, and can do, what you say, you may hire a wagon,
and the stoutest cart horse you can find in New York, and I will go
with you to the United States Sub-Treasury building at the corner of
Wall and Nassau Street, and load on all the silver coin the wagon can
carry and the horse can drag. That is merely your commission as agent.
I will make terms with the curiosity afterwards.” The agent never
appeared again.
While some people thought that they could make Barnum believe in
anything, others sincerely believed that anything was a valuable
curiosity. He received a telegram from Baltimore, Maryland: “To P. T.
Barnum: I have a four-legged chicken. Come quick.”
Sometimes when Barnum could not get exactly what he wanted for his
Museum, he stooped to deception of a kind that might be characterized
as both fraudulent and damaging to the interests of other entertainers.
Alexander, the Conjurer, known as Alexander, the Great, who in the
middle period of the nineteenth century was the most famous of all
magicians, told Houdini, the magician, when the latter visited him in
Germany some years ago, that when he was in New York Barnum offered him
an engagement at the American Museum. Alexander refused, because at the
time he was exhibiting his art for an admission fee of fifty cents, and
he was afraid to lose caste if he were to exhibit at Barnum’s, where
admission was only twenty-five cents. Barnum promptly hired an unknown
magician and advertised him widely as Alexander, the Great.
Barnum was now forty years old. In 1841 he was living on cold dinners,
and Charity Barnum was hostess of a boarding house in Frankfort
Street. In 1851 his wife entertained in a palatial example of Oriental
architecture, and Barnum was president of a bank, with a general
reputation as the most delightfully crafty man in the United States.
The first decade of Barnum’s extraordinary career was summed up in the
following verses published in 1851 in the _Albany Argus_:
THE GREATEST MAN
What man, of all the nation’s host,
Now fills the public eye the most,
By ever being at his post?
Why, Barnum!
Who is the man beyond all doubt,
Who always knows what he’s about?
Whose mother always “knows he’s out”?
That Barnum!
Who lines his pockets first with gold,
By many a speculation bold,
And levies on the young and old?
Paul Barnum.
Who carried round old, old “Joice Heth”
Till she had neither life nor breath,
And never gave her up till death?
O! Barnum.
Who told us she was “George’s nurse,
Full three half centuries old or worse,”
And stopped with rum her muttered curse?
Didn’t Barnum?
Who made a man of Tommy Thumb,
Who though a little man was “_some_”
And quickly brought a handsome “_plum_”
For Barnum!
And who but Barnum would have thought
A “_Woolly Horse_” by Frémont caught
Could such a host of money ’ve brought!
But Barnum?
But not a _horse_ alone was _wooled_;
For that same stuff was often _pulled_
O’er many eyes, and all got fooled
By Barnum!
A Mermaid rare--a curious bird,
A five-legged cat that never stirred
Bring gold, as we have often heard,
To Barnum.
But Barnum, though he’s always _bold_,
Is also _shrewd_, as we are told,
He’s often _bought_ but never _sold_,
Not Barnum!
But all his speculations past
Compare at nothing to the last;
This made the people stand aghast
At Barnum!
An angel’s voice was heard afar
Eclipsing every former “_star_”
And in a twinkling, Barnum’s “_thar_”
Was Barnum!
Yes, Barnum’s offered her a “_pile_”
Some thought him crazy all the while,
But now he “does it up in style”
Does Barnum.
III
In 1854, sitting under the weird, gilded minarets and Persian domes of
his replica of the George IV. Pavilion, in his private study, where
the walls were brocaded with rich orange satin, Barnum composed his
first autobiography. He was forty-four years old. General Tom Thumb,
The Fejee Mermaid and The Woolly Horse, The Swedish Nightingale and
The Bearded Lady, had made his fortune, and, taking his ease at his
“Iranistan,” the promoter of these works told the world how to do it,
or at least how he thought he did it.
The book is an extraordinary one; in the large library of theatrical
memories and books of actors’ and managers’ reminiscences it stands
out as highly exceptional both in quality and quantity. From the year
1855, when Barnum first issued the _Life of P. T. Barnum Written by
Himself_, until 1891, when he died, there were seven different editions
of this book under that and other titles. The story is that a lady who
bought all the successive editions of the _Life of P. T. Barnum Written
by Himself_, and _Struggles and Triumphs, or Forty Years’ Recollections
of P. T. Barnum Written by Himself_, as it was sometimes called, said
to Barnum: “You know, Mr. Barnum, I am continually busy with your
‘Life.’ You have no idea how much I enjoy reading it.” “My dear madam,”
said Barnum, “that is nothing to the way I enjoy living it.” He should
have added, “and writing it,” for, every year after the first revised
edition was issued in 1869, Barnum added an appendix, telling in detail
what had happened to him of interest to the world during the past
year. He developed his autobiography, which was sold in large numbers
first at the Museum and later at the Circus, into an annual message
to the American people, a periodical repetition of the details of his
lively achievement. The appendix usually told how much the Circus had
earned during the past year, what cities Barnum had visited and who
had visited him at Bridgeport; if he chanced to move his residence,
there was a new, pretty description of his latest house. He also gave
thanks that he was still alive, and expressed appropriate humility
before God and his readiness at any time to proceed to heaven, should
the necessity arise. There is so much solemn reiteration of the fact
that “all of that which we now prize highly (except our love to God and
our affections for humanity), shall dwindle into insignificance,” that
one suspects Barnum of an obsession in the nature of regret that the
Greatest Show on Earth could not by any known means be transported to
heaven.
The first edition of the book in 1855 bore the dedication: “To the
Universal Yankee Nation, of Which I Am Proud to Be One, I Dedicate
These Pages, Dating Them from the American Museum, Where the Public
First Smiled Upon Me, and Where Henceforth My Personal Exertions Will
Be Devoted to Its Entertainment.” The book caused a storm of protest
on the literary side and enjoyed a popular success almost immediately.
Many of the editors who reviewed Barnum’s book were shocked, and
England was especially mortified. The élite, the classes, had taken up
Barnum, called madly for General Tom Thumb for their week-end parties
and evening fêtes, rushed after Jenny Lind, and now Barnum had the
audacity and the bad taste to take his machine apart and show those who
had watched it eagerly how it turned the wheels of their fatuity. They
recognized their folly,--and blamed him for it. _Blackwood’s Magazine_,
_Fraser’s Magazine_, _Tait’s Edinburgh Review_ in Great Britain,
and the _Southern Literary Messenger_ in the United States, among
others, wrote ten page reviews of the _Life of P. T. Barnum Written by
Himself_. They recalled the shades of Cagliostro and other famous and
comparative rascals and impostors to prove that Barnum was the present
world’s worst woe. The editors were very angry, and through the pages
of their reviews one can hear the sounds of their gasps of perturbation
in their too apparent determination to finish this charlatan once for
all by a mighty stroke of a thundering pen, wielded for the common
good. The burden of their complaints was that Barnum had deceived the
world by his brazen curiosities: Joice Heth, he admitted, may not have
been 161 years old; General Tom Thumb was born in Bridgeport, not
imported from England, and was five years old, not eleven: The Woolly
Horse and Colonel Frémont were strangers. And Barnum boldly admitted
his deceptions in his book. It was immoral, said the editors. No one
of them had had the perspicacity to doubt Barnum’s integrity when his
ventures were presented for admiration. The editors, along with their
wives and children, had screamed their delight. It took Barnum himself
to tell them the secret that they had been humbugged, and they never
forgave his lack of editorial ethics. To have whispered privately in
an editor’s ear that he was only spoofing him would have been taken in
confidence and with dignity, for the editor could then have bragged
about it from his club chair. But to take in the public and the editor
too was unpardonable sin, and the man who did it was a scoundrel, and
no mistake. One New York newspaper writer was also shocked by Barnum’s
admission that he did good for his own profit: that was a radical and
cynical principle of ethics, which turned slightly sour the milk of
human kindness.
The popular journals and Barnum’s host of patrons accepted his book
as the greatest curiosity of all, and half a million copies were
sold, according to his estimates. His was the virtue of success, and
the large majority, who bowed down in what William James called “the
exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS,” accepted Barnum’s
autobiography as a handbook. It had the advantage over all other such
manuals, that it was witty. Mark Twain “sat up nights to absorb it,
and woke early and lighted the lamp to follow the career of the great
showman,” according to Albert Bigelow Paine, his biographer. Mrs.
Clemens could not understand, did not at all approve of her husband’s
interest in Barnum and Barnum’s methods. “She did not realize then,”
wrote Mr. Paine, “his vast interest in the study of human nature, or
that such a book contained what Mr. Howells calls ‘the root of the
human matter,’ the inner revelation of the human being at first hand.”
She also did not realize then, or ever, that there was much of Colonel
Sellers in Samuel L. Clemens, and that her husband was compelled by
circumstances to make a fortune first, and immortality afterwards. It
is natural that Mark Twain should have found worth reading by early
morning lamplight the chronicle of an adventurer who had carved out of
the world a fortune for himself.
Barnum also admired Mark Twain. He tried persistently to harness his
friend’s literary ability and popularity to his own enterprises.
Whenever Mark Twain spent a night in Barnum’s home at Bridgeport the
greatest showman on earth tried very hard to get the highest paid
writer in the country to write a piece about the circus.
The book itself undoubtedly contains “the root of the human matter,”
and it is so fascinating because Barnum succeeds in concealing nothing
except certain facts. He attempted to paint himself in angel white,
with a dash of coloring in the cheeks to make the picture popular, but
his very strivings after sainthood reveal his mind and character too
plainly, and whenever he tries most to deceive the reader, he succeeds
only in enlightening him. The book is well written, if we consider
that the man who wrote it left school when he was twelve years old and
found little leisure for study in composition after that period. Of
course, the subject was one that always delighted the author, and his
inspiration was therefore ever with him.
Barnum wrote as he talked, grandly, sonorously and wittily, but he
is often exceedingly dull. What he never learned was the art of
concentrating his material. He was himself Boswell to his own Dr.
Johnson, and he wrote with even less critical perspective than the
illustrious Scotch _raconteur_. Almost anything that happened to
him seemed to him fit for publication, unless it was obscene or
self-damaging. When he gave a relative money, it was set down with
unction in the current edition of the autobiography. When he bought a
sister’s son a farm in Wisconsin, so that the boy might spend the rest
of his days in honest toil and healthy happiness, it was set down in
the autobiography, with the notation that it is always admirable to
help those who will help themselves. Barnum labored under the delusion
for the most part of his career, at least so far as his literary
expression was concerned, that everything he did was both important and
interesting; that is why one quarter of the autobiography is soporific.
There is nothing so tiresome for continued reading as a joke book, and
Barnum was unsparing in his rambling anecdotes cheap-jack chronicles,
and tales of country yokelry. Indiscriminately, promiscuously, without
connection or reason, he poured forth jokes on or by his friends and
neighbors and himself, in a barber shop, in a church, on his father’s
farm, in the Museum, at “Iranistan.” Some of the anecdotes are
interesting, and some are revelatory, but even these lose their effect
in the jumble of their dreary companions. In the later editions he, or
an adviser, had enough judgment to omit some of the extraneous boyhood
anecdotes that fill many pages in the first edition, but too many are
retained, and after a period with the books the reader must conclude
that the charm of many of his stories probably lay in the way he told
them rather than in the stories. Barnum as a wag in print was inferior
to Barnum as a manipulator of choice pieces of waggery gathered from
the ends of the earth, or at least from Bridgeport, Connecticut.
“The idea haunts one like a presence,” wrote the editor of the
_Christian Review_ concerning the autobiography, “that having sold the
public in so many nice tricks, he may have sold it again in explaining
how they were done.” This is fair criticism, for while reading Barnum
there is always a suspicion that he is not telling the truth even now
when he thinks it can be told, a suspicion confirmed often by other
men’s books.
Whether or not he told the truth, he struck a note that found large
sympathy among his contemporaries. The American people were looking for
a philosophy of Success, and Barnum combined for them “There’s a sucker
born every minute,” with “Honesty is the Best Policy.” These truths,
neither imposing in itself, taken together, as Barnum took them, formed
the metaphysics of business, whose Aristotle was Barnum.
It is easy to believe that his book sold half a million copies, for
Barnum’s influence contributed profoundly to the life of his period,
and has lapped over into our own time. His success was so much admired,
envied, and emulated, that to-day we have a host of advertising
and publicity experts, who owe more for their facility than they
realize to the way which Barnum paved. It would be absurd to make
Barnum responsible for the crimes and follies of publicity that have
since his time become common, but since he was clearly the father
of publicity, which has developed into unquestioned and legitimate
misrepresentation on a large scale, he must acknowledge his child, and
must also be held responsible in some measure for its antics, but only
in so far as any father may be said to be responsible for the actions
of his child. The effect alone of the statement attributed to Barnum,
which he made in a speech, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” is
incalculable, but the persistency with which it has worked its way
into the body of American proverbs until it stands as one of the few
distinctive proverbs of the country indicates its prestige. This
simple sentence of Barnum’s has done more than any other one thing to
crystallize the American preference for bluff rather than scientific
thoroughness: the implication of “There’s a sucker born every minute”
is “Catch him, or you’re a sucker of the worst order,” and it
unconsciously converts the Golden Rule into “Do the other fellow, or
he’ll do you.”
While a few editors roared and the people bought his book, Barnum
sat in his study at “Iranistan” and laughed. All he usually asked of
any one was, “Mention my name.” If people called him a scoundrel in
print, it was good; for to call him a scoundrel in print they had to
say, “P. T. Barnum, of the American Museum, is a scoundrel,” and their
diatribes soon made it unnecessary to add, “of the American Museum.”
The more people who read of Barnum’s rascality, the more people bought
the _Life of P. T. Barnum Written by Himself_ and dated from the
American Museum. And those who read the _Life of P. T. Barnum Written
by Himself_ visited Barnum’s American Museum. There was not more than
a loud minority of censure. Even the pious portion of the community
recommended Barnum. He had so cleverly and sincerely mixed his own
earnest piety with his large-scale deception that clergymen were
known to recommend his book to the young. Henry Hilgert, a preacher
in Baltimore, said from his pulpit: “I pray you to recommend the good
citizen, Phineas Taylor Barnum, to your children as an exemplary
man. When you give one of your daughters away in matrimony, advise
her to imitate Charity Barnum; when your son leaves home to try his
luck upon the ocean of life, give him Barnum for a guide; when you
yourself are in trouble and misery, and near desperation, take from
Barnum’s life and teachings consolation and new courage.” Barnum never
neglected to include this reference in the subsequent editions of the
autobiography. And Mr. Hilgert was not alone. The clergy followed close
behind the business community, taking him into the fold, with frequent
and familiar public references to their good fellow citizen, “Brother
Barnum.”