Chapter I: Preface

P. T. Barnum wrote a voluminous autobiography, the many editions of which have long been out of print. This autobiography is one of the most ingenious and fascinating, and at the same time one of the most bombastic and verbose books in American literature. It will be discussed here in its proper place in detail, and it is mentioned in the very beginning because some explanation is necessary, besides the story of this extraordinary man, for telling it now. Barnum was taken for many years at his own valuation, by his friends and critics alike; those who admired him accepted him for what he himself always said he was, “The Prince of Humbugs,” and those who despised him admitted readily that he deserved that title. His autobiography was regarded during his lifetime as the perfect embodiment of the facts of that life and their interpretation, and no attempt has been made since to review one of America’s greatest shows. In the Preface to some of his editions of the _Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself_, and _Struggles and Triumphs, Forty Years’ Recollections of P. T. Barnum_, as it was sometimes called, Barnum wrote:

“There is an almost universal, and not unworthy curiosity to learn
the methods and measures, the ups and downs, the strifes and
victories, the mental and moral _personnel_ of those who have taken
an active and prominent part in human affairs. But an autobiography
has attractions and merits superior to those of a ‘Life’ written
by another, who, however intimate with its subject, cannot know
all that helps to give interest and accuracy to the narrative, or
completeness to the character. The story from the actor’s own lips
has always a charm it can never have when told by another.”

The story from the actor’s own lips is likely to be prejudiced in favor of the author who is also the hero. When Rudyard Kipling first toured the United States, he interviewed Mark Twain. Mark Twain told this young Anglo-Indian, who had visited the Hartford shrine to worship before an American whom he believed to be a master, something that applies to Barnum and his autobiography:

“Returning to the big chair, he [Mark Twain], speaking of truth and
the like in literature, said that an autobiography was the one work
in which a man, against his own will and in spite of his utmost
striving to the contrary, revealed himself in his true light to the
world....

“‘But in genuine autobiography, I believe it is impossible for a
man to tell the truth about himself or to avoid impressing the
reader with the truth about himself.... It is not in human nature
to write the truth about itself. None the less the reader gets
a general impression from an autobiography whether the man is a
fraud or a good man. The reader can’t give his reasons any more
than a man can explain why a woman struck him as being lovely when
he doesn’t remember her hair, eyes, teeth, or figure. And the
impression that the reader gets is a correct one.’

“‘Do you ever intend to write an autobiography?’ Kipling asked.

“‘If I do, it will be as other men have done--with the most earnest
desire to make myself out to be the better man in every little
business that has been to my discredit; and I shall fail, like the
others, to make my readers believe anything except the truth.’”[1]

Even so with Barnum: it is impossible for him to tell the truth about himself, and yet he does not avoid impressing the reader with the truth about himself. No one thanks P. T. Barnum more than I for publishing his voluminous autobiography, for without it this book would have been more difficult, and with it the task of interpreting the story and character of one of the most typical Americans was a business of checking the inaccuracies that necessarily follow from what Mark Twain called the earnest desire to make himself out to be the better man in every little business that has been to his discredit. There was also the work of coördinating the material found in the seven different editions of the autobiography, for Barnum continually found it necessary in later editions to suppress things contained in early editions which seemed unseemly after mature consideration, even though they happened to be the truth about himself. He also added appendices each year towards the end of his career that gave interesting information about his activities, so that in order to get a complete picture of the man from his autobiography it is necessary to read about ten different volumes. After these duties were finished, there remained only the larger task of ferreting out those things which the author of his own life always sees fit to omit entirely. Every eminent or notorious person should write his autobiography, if only to provide his future biographer with a skeleton to articulate.

Since Barnum’s death in 1891 there has been ample time to estimate accurately his influence and position in our life. It is my conviction that both of these were important. A distinguished American editor said recently that he considers Lincoln and Barnum the most typical American figures, and that he is rather afraid to think which is the more typical. William Roscoe Thayer wrote in _The Life of John Hay_: “If the question had been asked during the third quarter of the nineteenth century, ‘Who is the typical American of this period?’ a perspicacious observer might have replied, ‘Phineas T. Barnum.’” And it is because he was so typical and at the same time so unique that Barnum remains to-day one of the outstanding figures of our national life, for Barnum was a most typical American without ever becoming an average American. In newspapers, books, and magazines we frequently see the sentence, “P. T. Barnum was right.” There was a popular song beginning, “P. T. Barnum had the right idea.” But the people to-day who use these expressions are rather doubtful of the details of the showman’s social psychology, which made him successful, and therefore right. That social psychology is usually summed up popularly in the phrase attributed to him, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” But there was more to Barnum than that, and it is the purpose of this book to give an impression of that idea, or group of ideas, which has interested the world in Barnum since the year 1841, when Barnum’s American Museum opened its doors at Ann Street and Broadway.

The things that Barnum did were often so curious, sometimes so incredible, and always so picturesque, that the reader may be inclined to doubt their accuracy. I am not writing a romance, however, and there is ample authority for every statement and anecdote included in this book; the bibliography at the end indicates the sources of information. The footnote is one of the banes of a reader’s continued interest. If he is a curious reader, the footnote plagues him with the necessity to look at the bottom of the page; if he is a cursory reader, the footnote which he skips is always an annoyance because he is compelled to skip it. Therefore, I have omitted, at the risk of being called a romancer and in the hope of being more entertaining, all footnotes except those absolutely necessary to my reputation for veracity.

Many persons have aided me in the composition of this book. My thanks are especially due to Leonidas Westervelt, whose private collection of Barnum and Jenny Lind books, pamphlets, and letters, which is probably the largest in existence, he so kindly placed at my disposal; to C. Barnum Seeley, for information about his grandfather; to Harry Houdini, for permission to use pictures and showbills from his huge private collection of theatrical material; to Elizabeth Hall Dietz, for valuable assistance; and to the New York Public Library and the Harvard College Library.

M. R. W.

CONTENTS

PAGE
THE CONNECTICUT YANKEE 3

GROWING PAINS 24

BARNUM’S AMERICAN MUSEUM 43

TRAVELS WITH A MIDGET 77

HIS BROTHER’S KEEPER 103

JENNY LIND 114

THE SWEDISH NIGHTINGALE IN THE AMERICAN WOODS 140

SUNDRIES AND AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 198

HUMBUGGED AND BANKRUPT 218

“THE ART OF MONEY-GETTING” 228

THE DWARFS’ DUEL, OR THE MARRIAGE OF THE MIDGETS 253

THIS WORLD, AND THE NEXT 274

THE CIRCUS 306

OLD AGE 361

“NOT MY WILL, BUT THINE, BE DONE--” 370

BIBLIOGRAPHY 373

INDEX 377

BARNUM