CHAPTER VIII
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.”