THE AMERICAN MUSEUM.
A TRAP SET FOR ME--I CATCH THE TRAPPERS--I BECOME PROPRIETOR OF THE
AMERICAN MUSEUM--HISTORY OF THE ESTABLISHMENT--HARD WORK AND COLD
DINNERS--ADDITIONS TO THE MUSEUM--EXTRAORDINARY
ADVERTISING--BARNUM’S BRICK-MAN--EXCITING PUBLIC
CURIOSITY--INCIDENTS AND ANECDOTES--A DRUNKEN ACTOR--IMITATIONS OF
THE ELDER BOOTH--PLEASING MY PATRONS--SECURING TRANSIENT
NOVELTIES--LIVING CURIOSITIES--MAKING PEOPLE TALK--A WILDERNESS OF
WONDERS--NIAGARA FALLS WITH REAL WATER--THE CLUB THAT KILLED
COOK--SELLING LOUIS GAYLORD CLARK--THE FISH WITH LEGS--THE FEJEE
MERMAID--HOW IT CAME INTO MY POSSESSION--THE TRUE STORY OF THAT
CURIOSITY--JAPANESE MANUFACTURE OF FABULOUS ANIMALS--THE USE I MADE
OF THE MERMAID--WHOLESALE ADVERTISING AGAIN--THE BALCONY
BAND--DRUMMOND LIGHTS.
My newspaper squib war against the Peale combination was vigorously kept
up; when one morning, about the first of December, I received a letter
from the Secretary of that company (now calling itself the “New York
Museum Company,”) requesting me to meet the directors at the Museum on
the following Monday morning. I went, and found the directors in
session. The venerable president of the board, who was also the
ex-president of a broken bank, blandly proposed to hire me to manage the
united museums, and though I saw that he merely meant to buy my silence,
I professed to entertain the proposition, and in reply to an inquiry as
to what salary I should expect, I specified the sum of $3,000 a year.
This was at once acceded to, the salary to begin January 1, 1842, and
after complimenting me on my ability, the president remarked: “Of
course, Mr. Barnum, we shall have no more of your squibs through the
newspapers”--to which I replied that I should “ever try to serve the
interests of my employers,” and I took my leave.
It was as clear to me as noonday that after buying my silence so as to
appreciate their stock, these directors meant to sell out to whom they
could, leaving me to look to future stockholders for my salary. They
thought, no doubt, that they had nicely entrapped me, but I knew I had
caught them.
For, supposing me to be out of the way, and having no other rival
purchaser, these directors postponed the advertisement of their stock to
give people time to forget the attacks I had made on it, and they also
took their own time for paying the money promised to Mr. Heath, December
26th--indeed, they did not even call on him at the appointed time. But
on the following morning, as agreed, I was promptly and hopefully at Mr.
Olmstead’s apartments with my legal adviser, at half-past nine o’clock;
Mr. Heath came with his lawyer at ten, and before two o’clock that day I
was in formal possession of the American Museum. My first managerial act
was to write and despatch the following complimentary note:
AMERICAN MUSEUM, NEW YORK, Dec. 27, 1841.
_To the President and Directors of the New York Museum:_
GENTLEMEN:--It gives me great pleasure to inform you that you are
placed upon the Free List of this establishment until further
notice.
P. T. BARNUM, _Proprietor_.
It is unnecessary to say that the “President of the New York Museum” was
astounded, and when he called upon Mr. Heath, and learned that I had
bought and was really in possession of the American Museum, he was
indignant. He talked of prosecution, and demanded the $1,000 paid on
his agreement, but he did not prosecute, and he justly forfeited his
deposit money.
And now that I was proprietor and manager of the American Museum I had
reached a new epoch in my career which I felt was the beginning of
better days, though the full significance of this important step I did
not see. I was still in the show business, but in a settled, substantial
phase of it, that invited industry and enterprise, and called for ever
earnest and ever heroic endeavor. Whether I should sink or swim depended
wholly upon my own energy. I must pay for the establishment within a
stipulated time, or forfeit it with whatever I had paid on account. I
meant to make it my own, and brains, hands and every effort were devoted
to the interests of the Museum.
The nucleus of this establishment, Scudder’s Museum, was formed in 1810,
the year in which I was born. It was begun in Chatham Street, and was
afterwards transferred to the old City Hall, and from small beginnings,
by purchases, and to a considerable degree by presents, it had grown to
be a large and valuable collection. People in all parts of the country
had sent in relics and rare curiosities; sea captains, for years, had
brought and deposited strange things from foreign lands; and besides all
these gifts, I have no doubt that the previous proprietor had actually
expended, as was stated, $50,000 in making the collection. No one could
go through the halls, as they were when they came under my
proprietorship, and see one-half there was worth seeing in a single day;
and then, as I always justly boasted afterwards, no one could visit my
Museum and go away without feeling that he had received the full worth
of his money. In looking over the immense collection, the accumulation
of so many years, I saw that it was only necessary to properly present
its merits to the public, to make it the most attractive and popular
place of resort and entertainment in the United States.
Valuable as the collection was when I bought it, it was only the
beginning of the American Museum as I made it. In my long proprietorship
I considerably more than doubled the permanent attractions and
curiosities of the establishment. In 1842, I bought and added to my
collection the entire contents of Peale’s Museum; in 1850, I purchased
the large Peale collection in Philadelphia; and year after year, I
bought genuine curiosities, regardless of cost, wherever I could find
them, in Europe or America.
At the very outset, I was determined to deserve success. My plan of
economy included the intention to support my family in New York on $600
a year, and my treasure of a wife not only gladly assented, but was
willing to reduce the sum to $400, if necessary. Some six months after I
had bought the Museum, Mr. Olmsted happened in at my ticket-office at
noon and found me eating a frugal dinner of cold corned beef and bread,
which I had brought from home.
“Is this the way you eat your dinner?” he asked.
“I have not eaten a warm dinner, except on Sundays,” I replied, “since I
bought the Museum, and I never intend to, on a week day, till I am out
of debt.”
“Ah!” said he, clapping me on the shoulder, “you are safe, and will pay
for the Museum before the year is out.”
And he was right, for within twelve months I was in full possession of
the property as my own and it was entirely paid for from the profits of
the business.
In 1865, the space occupied for my Museum purposes was more than double
what it was in 1842. The Lecture Room, originally narrow, ill-contrived
and inconvenient, was so enlarged and improved that it became one of the
most commodious and beautiful amusement halls in the City of New York.
At first, my attractions and inducements were merely the collection of
curiosities by day, and an evening entertainment, consisting of such
variety performances as were current in ordinary shows. Then Saturday
afternoons, and, soon afterwards, Wednesday afternoons were devoted to
entertainments and the popularity of the Museum grew so rapidly that I
presently found it expedient and profitable to open the great Lecture
Room every afternoon, as well as every evening, on every week-day in the
year. The first experiments in this direction, more than justified my
expectations, for the day exhibitions were always more thronged than
those of the evening. Of course I made the most of the holidays,
advertising extensively and presenting extra inducements; nor did
attractions elsewhere seem to keep the crowd from coming to the Museum.
On great holidays, I gave as many as twelve performances to as many
different audiences.
By degrees the character of the stage performances was changed. The
transient attractions of the Museum were constantly diversified, and
educated dogs, industrious fleas, automatons, jugglers, ventriloquists,
living statuary, tableaux, gipsies, Albinoes, fat boys, giants, dwarfs,
rope-dancers, live “Yankees,” pantomime, instrumental music, singing and
dancing in great variety, dioramas, panoramas, models of Niagara,
Dublin, Paris, and Jerusalem; Hannington’s dioramas of the Creation,
the Deluge, Fairy Grotto, Storm at Sea; the first English Punch and Judy
in this country, Italian Fantoccini, mechanical figures, fancy
glass-blowing, knitting machines and other triumphs in the mechanical
arts; dissolving views, American Indians, who enacted their warlike and
religious ceremonies on the stage,--these, among others, were all
exceedingly successful.
I thoroughly understood the art of advertising, not merely by means of
printer’s ink, which I have always used freely, and to which I confess
myself so much indebted for my success, but by turning every possible
circumstance to my account. It was my monomania to make the Museum the
town wonder and town talk. I often seized upon an opportunity by
instinct, even before I had a very definite conception as to how it
should be used, and it seemed, somehow, to mature itself and serve my
purpose. As an illustration, one morning a stout, hearty-looking man,
came into my ticket-office and begged some money. I asked him why he did
not work and earn his living? He replied that he could get nothing to do
and that he would be glad of any job at a dollar a day. I handed him a
quarter of a dollar, told him to go and get his breakfast and return,
and I would employ him at light labor at a dollar and a half a day. When
he returned I gave him five common bricks.
“Now,” said I, “go and lay a brick on the sidewalk at the corner of
Broadway and Ann Street; another close by the Museum; a third diagonally
across the way at the corner of Broadway and Vesey Street, by the Astor
House: put down the fourth on the sidewalk in front of St Paul’s Church,
opposite; then, with the fifth brick in hand, take up a rapid march
from one point to the other, making the circuit, exchanging your brick
at every point, and say nothing to any one.”
“What is the object of this?” inquired the man.
“No matter,” I replied; “all you need to know is that it brings you
fifteen cents wages per hour. It is a bit of my fun, and to assist me
properly you must seem to be as deaf as a post; wear a serious
countenance; answer no questions; pay no attention to any one; but
attend faithfully to the work and at the end of every hour by St. Paul’s
clock show this ticket at the Museum door; enter, walking solemnly
through every hall in the building; pass out, and resumé your work.”
With the remark that it was “all one to him, so long as he could earn
his living,” the man placed his bricks and began his round. Half an hour
afterwards, at least five hundred people were watching his mysterious
movements. He had assumed a military step and bearing, and looking as
sober as a judge, he made no response whatever to the constant inquiries
as to the object of his singular conduct. At the end of the first hour,
the sidewalks in the vicinity were packed with people all anxious to
solve the mystery. The man, as directed, then went into the Museum,
devoting fifteen minutes to a solemn survey of the halls, and afterwards
returning to his round. This was repeated every hour till sundown and
whenever the man went into the Museum a dozen or more persons would buy
tickets and follow him, hoping to gratify their curiosity in regard to
the purpose of his movements. This was continued for several days--the
curious people who followed the man into the Museum considerably more
than paying his wages--till finally the policeman, to whom I had
imparted my object, complained that the obstruction of the sidewalk by
crowds had become so serious that I must call in my “brick man.” This
trivial incident excited considerable talk and amusement; it advertised
me; and it materially advanced my purpose of making a lively corner near
the Museum.
I am tempted to relate some of the incidents and anecdotes which
attended my career as owner and manager of the Museum. The stories
illustrating merely my introduction of novelties would more than fill
this book, but I must make room for a few of them.
An actor, named La Rue, presented himself as an imitator of celebrated
histrionic personages, including Macready, Forrest, Kemble, the elder
Booth, Kean, Hamblin, and others. Taking him into the green-room for a
private rehearsal, and finding his imitations excellent, I engaged him.
For three nights he gave great satisfaction, but early in the fourth
evening he staggered into the Museum so drunk that he could hardly
stand, and in half an hour he must be on the stage! Calling an
assistant, we took La Rue between us, and marched him up Broadway as far
as Chambers Street, and back to the lower end of the Park, hoping to
sober him. At this point we put his head under a pump, and gave him a
good ducking, with visible beneficial effect,--then a walk around the
Park, and another ducking,--when he assured me that he should be able to
give his imitations “to a charm.”
“You drunken brute,” said I, “if you fail, and disappoint my audience, I
will throw you out of the window.”
He declared that he was “all right,” and I led him behind the scenes,
where I waited with considerable trepidation to watch his movements on
the stage. He began by saying:
“Ladies and gentlemen: I will now give you an imitation of Mr. Booth,
the eminent tragedian.”
His tongue was thick, his language somewhat incoherent, and I had great
misgivings as he proceeded; but as no token of disapprobation came from
the audience, I began to hope he would go through with his parts without
exciting suspicion of his condition. But before he had half finished his
representation of Booth, in the soliloquy in the opening act of Richard
III., the house discovered that he was very drunk, and began to hiss.
This only seemed to stimulate him to make an effort to appear sober,
which, as is usual in such cases, only made matters worse, and the
hissing increased. I lost all patience, and going on the stage and
taking the drunken fellow by the collar, I apologized to the audience,
assuring them that he should not appear before them again. I was about
to march him off, when he stepped to the front, and said:
“Ladies and gentlemen: Mr. Booth often appeared on the stage in a state
of inebriety, and I was simply giving you a truthful representation of
him on such occasions. I beg to be permitted to proceed with my
imitations.”
The audience at once supposed it was all right, and cried out, “go on,
go on”; which he did, and at every imitation of Booth, whether as
Richard, Shylock, or Sir Giles Overreach, he received a hearty round of
applause. I was quite delighted with his success; but when he came to
imitate Forrest and Hamblin, necessarily representing them as drunk
also, the audience could be no longer deluded; the hissing was almost
deafening, and I was forced to lead the actor off. It was his last
appearance on my stage.
From the first, it was my study to give my patrons a superfluity of
novelties, and for this I make no special claim to generosity, for it
was strictly a business transaction. To send away my visitors more than
doubly satisfied, was to induce them to come again and to bring their
friends. I meant to make people talk about my Museum; to exclaim over
its wonders; to have men and women all over the country say: “There is
not another place in the United States where so much can be seen for
twenty-five cents as in Barnum’s American Museum.” It was the best
advertisement I could possibly have, and one for which I could afford to
pay. I knew, too, that it was an honorable advertisement, because it was
as deserved as it was spontaneous. And so, in addition to the permanent
collection and the ordinary attractions of the stage, I labored to keep
the Museum well supplied with transient novelties; I exhibited such
living curiosities as a rhinoceros, giraffes, grizzly bears,
ourang-outangs, great serpents, and whatever else of the kind money
would buy or enterprise secure.
Knowing that a visit to my varied attractions and genuine curiosities
was well worth to any one three times the amount asked as an entrance
fee, I confess that I was not so scrupulous, as possibly I should have
been, about the methods used to call public attention to my
establishment. The one end aimed at was to make men and women think and
talk and wonder, and, as a practical result, go to the Museum. This was
my constant study and occupation.
It was the world’s way then, as it is now, to excite the community with
flaming posters, promising almost everything for next to nothing. I
confess that I took no pains to set my enterprising fellow-citizens a
better example. I fell in with the world’s way; and if my “puffing” was
more persistent, my advertising more audacious, my posters more glaring,
my pictures more exaggerated, my flags more patriotic and my
transparencies more brilliant than they would have been under the
management of my neighbors, it was not because I had less scruple than
they, but more energy, far more ingenuity, and a better foundation for
such promises. In all this, if I cannot be justified, I at least find
palliation in the fact that I presented a wilderness of wonderful,
instructive and amusing realities of such evident and marked merit that
I have yet to learn of a single instance where a visitor went away from
the Museum complaining that he had been defrauded of his money. Surely
this is an offset to any eccentricities to which I may have resorted to
make my establishment widely known.
Very soon after introducing my extra exhibitions, I purchased for $200,
a curiosity which had much merit and some absurdity. It was a model of
Niagara Falls, in which the merit was that the proportions of the great
cataract, the trees, rocks, and buildings in the vicinity were
mathematically given, while the absurdity was in introducing “real
water” to represent the falls. Yet the model served a purpose in making
“a good line in the bill”--an end in view which was never neglected--and
it helped to give the Museum notoriety. One day I was summoned to appear
before the Board of Croton Water Commissioners, and was informed that as
I paid only $25 per annum for water at the Museum, I must pay a large
extra compensation for the supply for my Niagara Falls. I begged the
board not to believe all that appeared in the papers, nor to interpret
my show-bills too literally, and assured them that a single barrel of
water, if my pump was in good order, would furnish my falls for a month.
It was even so, for the water flowed into a reservoir behind the scenes,
and was forced back with a pump over the falls. On one occasion, Mr.
Louis Gaylord Clark, the editor of the _Knickerbocker_, came to view my
museum, and introduced himself to me. As I was quite anxious that my
establishment should receive a first-rate notice at his hands, I took
pains to show him everything of interest, except the Niagara Falls,
which I feared would prejudice him against my entire show. But as we
passed the room the pump was at work, warning me that the great cataract
was in full operation, and Clark, to my dismay, insisted upon seeing it.
“Well, Barnum, I declare, this is quite a new idea; I never saw the like
before.”
“No?” I faintly inquired, with something like reviving hope.
“No,” said Clark, “and I hope, with all my heart, I never shall again.”
But the _Knickerbocker_ spoke kindly of me, and refrained from all
allusions to “the Cataract of Niagara, with real water.” Some months
after, Clark came in breathless one day, and asked me if I had the club
with which Captain Cook was killed? As I had a lot of Indian war clubs
in the collection of aboriginal curiosities, and owing Clark something
on the old Niagara Falls account, I told him I had the veritable club
with documents which placed its identity beyond question, and I showed
him the warlike weapon.
“Poor Cook! poor Cook!” said Clark, musingly. “Well, Mr. Barnum,” he
continued, with great gravity, at the same time extending his hand and
giving mine a hearty shake, “I am really very much obliged to you for
your kindness. I had an irrepressible desire to see the club that killed
Captain Cook, and I felt quite confident you could accommodate me. I
have been in half a dozen smaller museums, and as they all had it, I was
sure a large establishment like yours would not be without it.”
A few weeks afterwards, I wrote to Clark that if he would come to my
office I was anxious to consult him on a matter of great importance. He
came, and I said:
“Now, I don’t want any of your nonsense, but I want your sober advice.”
He assured me that he would serve me in any way in his power, and I
proceeded to tell him about a wonderful fish from the Nile, offered to
me for exhibition at $100 a week, the owner of which was willing to
forfeit $5,000, if, within six weeks, this fish did not pass through a
transformation in which the tail would disappear and the fish would then
have legs.
“Is it possible!” asked the astonished Clark.
I assured him that there was no doubt of it.
Thereupon he advised me to engage the wonder at any price; that it would
startle the naturalists, wake up the whole scientific world, draw in the
masses, and make $20,000 for the Museum. I told him that I thought well
of the speculation, only I did not like the name of the fish.
“That makes no difference whatever,” said Clark; “what is the name of
the fish?”
“Tadpole,” I replied with becoming gravity, “but it is vulgarly called
‘pollywog.’”
“Sold, by thunder!” exclaimed Clark, and he left.
A curiosity, which in an extraordinary degree served my ever-present
object of extending the notoriety of the Museum was the so-called “Fejee
Mermaid.” It has been supposed that this mermaid was manufactured by my
order, but such is not the fact. I was known as a successful showman,
and strange things of every sort were brought to me from all quarters
for sale or exhibition. In the summer of 1842, Mr. Moses Kimball, of the
Boston Museum, came to New York and showed me what purported to be a
mermaid. He had bought it from a sailor whose father, a sea captain, had
purchased it in Calcutta, in 1822, from some Japanese sailors. I may
mention here that this identical preserved specimen was exhibited in
London in 1822, as I fully verified in my visit to that city in 1858,
for I found an advertisement of it in an old file of the London _Times_,
and a friend gave me a copy of the _Mirror_, published by J. Limbird,
335 Strand, November 9, 1822, containing a cut of this same creature and
two pages of letter-press describing it, together with an account of
other mermaids said to have been captured in different parts of the
world. The _Mirror_ stated that this specimen was “the great source of
attraction in the British metropolis, and three to four hundred people
every day pay their shilling to see it.”
This was the curiosity which had fallen into Mr. Kimball’s hands. I
requested my naturalist’s opinion of the genuineness of the animal and
he said he could not conceive how it could have been manufactured, for
he never saw a monkey with such peculiar teeth, arms, hands, etc., and
he never saw a fish with such peculiar fins; but he did not believe in
mermaids. Nevertheless, I concluded to hire this curiosity and to
modify the general incredulity as to the possibility of the existence of
mermaids, and to awaken curiosity to see and examine the specimen, I
invoked the potent power of printer’s ink.
Since Japan has been opened to the outer world it has been discovered
that certain “artists” in that country manufacture a great variety of
fabulous animals, with an ingenuity and mechanical perfection well
calculated to deceive. No doubt my mermaid was a specimen of this
curious manufacture. I used it mainly to advertise the regular business
of the Museum, and this effective indirect advertising is the only
feature I can commend, in a special show of which, I confess, I am not
proud. I might have published columns in the newspapers, presenting and
praising the great collection of genuine specimens of natural history in
my exhibition, and they would not have attracted nearly so much
attention as did a few paragraphs about the mermaid which was only a
small part of my show. Newspapers throughout the country copied the
mermaid notices, for they were novel and caught the attention of
readers. Thus was the fame of the Museum, as well as the mermaid, wafted
from one end of the land to the other. I was careful to keep up the
excitement, for I knew that every dollar sown in advertising would
return in tens, and perhaps hundreds, in a future harvest, and after
obtaining all the notoriety possible by advertising and by exhibiting
the mermaid at the Museum, I sent the curiosity throughout the country,
directing my agent to everywhere advertise it as “From Barnum’s Great
American Museum, New York.” The effect was immediately felt; money
flowed in rapidly and was readily expended in more advertising.
While I expended money liberally for attractions for the inside of my
Museum, and bought or hired everything curious or rare which was offered
or could be found, I was prodigal in my outlays to arrest or arouse
public attention. When I became proprietor of the establishment, there
were only the words: “American Museum,” to indicate the character of the
concern; there was no bustle or activity about the place; no posters to
announce what was to be seen;--the whole exterior was as dead as the
skeletons and stuffed skins within. My experiences had taught me the
advantages of advertising. I printed whole columns in the papers,
setting forth the wonders of my establishment. Old “fogies” opened their
eyes in amazement at a man who could expend hundreds of dollars in
announcing a show of “stuffed monkey skins”; but these same old fogies
paid their quarters, nevertheless, and when they saw the curiosities and
novelties in the Museum halls, they, like all other visitors, were
astonished as well as pleased, and went home and told their friends and
neighbors and thus assisted in advertising my business.
For other and not less effective advertising,--flags and banners, began
to adorn the exterior of the building. I kept a band of music on the
front balcony and announced “Free Music for the Million.” People said,
“Well, that Barnum is a liberal fellow to give us music for nothing,”
and they flocked down to hear my outdoor free concerts. But I took pains
to select and maintain the poorest band I could find--one whose
discordant notes would drive the crowd into the Museum, out of earshot
of my outside orchestra. Of course, the music was poor. When people
expect to get “something for nothing” they are sure to be cheated, and
generally deserve to be, and so, no doubt, some of my out-door patrons
were sorely disappointed; but when they came inside and paid to be
amused and instructed, I took care to see that they not only received
the full worth of their money, but were more than satisfied. Powerful
Drummond lights were placed at the top of the Museum, which, in the
darkest night, threw a flood of light up and down Broadway, from the
Battery to Niblo’s, that would enable one to read a newspaper in the
street. These were the first Drummond lights ever seen in New York, and
they made people talk, and so advertise my Museum.