Jenny and Barnum

by Roderick Thorp

  At least Wilton had provided champagne. Jenny Lind was in her compartment, with her maid and the secretary, an overweight, heavily accented woman who had found a kindred spirit in Hannelore—two peasant women on a great adventure, as John Wilton put it. The piano player was billeted with the Italian tenor, her other swain, whose name Tom Thumb could not remember and whom he had privately christened Moldini. He was vain and nervous, so thin he looked fragile, and he lacquered his nails—exactly the kind of man Barnum loved to hate, like the other one, the piano player Goldschmidt. The two apparently were going to share a suite of staterooms, like Tom Thumb and Gallagher, although, knowing Lavinia as he did, Tom Thumb did not expect to see much of Gallagher. Given Jenny Lind’s more bluenosed approach to living, the other two gentlemen’s situation was going to be more interesting, more the spectator sport. Even on a floating city like the Great Western, one could not have enough amusements to pass the time at sea.

  The Great Western was the greatest ship afloat, three years old, over four hundred feet long, with a beam of more than sixty feet. It carried 244 passengers and more than 60 crew. Under normal conditions a crowd came down to the docks to see her off or welcome her in, but the number of people in Liverpool gathered to cheer and wave good-by to Jenny Lind was positively frightening. At the top of the gangplank she turned and waved to them, and the crowd let out such a yell that a sailor in the pilothouse set off the steam whistle, a great baritone blast that echoed over the rooftops for minutes, it seemed. Everybody was deafened, and nobody heard the remarks of Captain MacDonald, who presented Jenny Lind with a great wreath of roses. John Hall Wilton was beaming like a bride’s father. If Barnum had given Wilton orders to see that Jenny Lind got a proper send-off, God knew what he was planning in New York. It was going to be good, he had promised in his message to Wilton. Tom Thumb did not know if he looked forward to it or not. Normally he loved sailing the ocean, but now he was so weighed down with his own misery that he could imagine nothing for two weeks but the complaints of Chang and Eng, and the suffering of Anna Swan. He knew he was just torturing himself. The Great Western was one of the wonders of the age, and MacDonald and his crew were not only the best sailors the world had ever known, but very nearly the best hotelkeepers, too.

  After the champagne and caviar laid on by Captain MacDonald to welcome Jenny Lind and his old friends from P. T. Barnum’s troupe, Wilton and Tom Thumb slipped down the passageway to Tom Thumb’s suite, opposite the Grand Saloon, which was over fifty feet long, the biggest single enclosed space ever to float in the history of the world. The sitting room of Tom Thumb’s suite, like the Grand Saloon, was paneled with scenes taken from the rapidly emerging world of steam-powered commerce and industry.

  “There was more in Barnum’s letter than I originally let on,” Wilton said when they were alone. “He didn’t want you burdened with it until absolutely necessary. Barnum thinks there’s going to be trouble down the line, from a man named Collins, who is a lawyer in New York. Judge Munthe has been corresponding with him since the start of the year, having gotten his name from a colleague in Stockholm who recommended Collins highly. Apparently Collins is going to function in Munthe’s capacity while Jenny Lind is in America.”

  Wilton told Tom Thumb that he had listened to this in all innocence early in March when Munthe made the voyage from Stockholm to accept Barnum’s $187,500 payment. The name Collins meant nothing to Wilton and he passed along the information to Barnum routinely. Barnum knew Collins, or of him; Collins was well known in the New York business community as a liar, a cheat, and a thief. He ruined people, turned them out on the streets; he was the kind of man who looked at every situation as an opportunity to take advantage of people who trusted him. But—Wilton said that this was his opinion now, not Barnum’s—it appeared that Munthe, on the strength of his colleague’s recommendation, had absolute faith in Collins, and had given Jenny Lind specific instructions to be in touch with Collins just as soon as she arrived in New York. Barnum wrote that he could see that his hands were tied, Wilton said; he could not possibly try to turn Jenny Lind against Collins when her guardian recommended him so strongly. Under the circumstances, however, it seemed clear that all involved in the project—Wilton said Barnum specifically named Tom Thumb—should do whatever was possible to ensure that Collins could do no damage to Barnum’s reputation or his relationship with Miss Lind once Collins could get her ear. In that regard, Barnum thought, it seemed appropriate for Tom Thumb to remind Jenny Lind somewhere along the line that she already had the $187,500—all the proof any reasonable person needed of Barnum’s good intentions.

  Tom Thumb listened to Wilton with care. If Barnum’s suggestion seemed crass, it had to be remembered that he almost never called a man a liar and a thief—and not because he was so often called those names himself. Barnum really did have the morals of a storekeeper, and for him to blacken a man’s business reputation was the equivalent of putting him out of work, like a butcher accused by housewives of shortweighting his scale. But Tom Thumb had had some contact of his own with characters like Collins, and while nothing anybody could say about them ever seemed to do any damage, they were quick to claim as much in court. Barnum knew that—but apparently he felt so threatened by Collins that he was willing to commit his thoughts to paper, where they were actionable.

  “I think Miss Lind already knows that I’m absolutely loyal to Barnum,” Tom Thumb said.

  “Barnum wanted me to make clear to you that he knew that,” Wilton said. “He wanted to be sure that you understood the value of keeping Chang and Eng away from her, for instance. Their complaining won’t help our situation.”

  “Once we’re out to sea, all they’ll be complaining about is the weather, the food, and themselves.”

  “The important thing is not to allow anything to cultivate distrust in her,” Wilton said.

  “How can she distrust him when she’s already got everything she’s asked for?” Tom Thumb demanded.

  Wilton smiled. “That’s not how the human mind works, and you know it as well as Barnum. What does he say? ‘There’s no such thing as gratitude’?”

  “‘There’s no such human emotion as gratitude or humility,’” Tom Thumb quoted. He eyed Wilton. “Surely he doesn’t believe that of Jenny Lind, does he?”

  “God, I hope not,” Wilton said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because in her case it’s not true,” Wilton said. “If it’s not true about anybody in this world, it’s not true about her.”

  Tom Thumb was trying to remember something else, but it stayed just beyond his grasp.

  The Great Western sailed at midnight, slipping out into the tide of the Mersey estuary under a waxing moon shining on a glassy, swelling sea. The two huge, side-mounted paddlewheels turned so slowly they seemed silent, and the surging pulse of the steam engine thumped smoothly, so that inexperienced passengers thought they had already encountered the long rolling waves of the open ocean.

  This was only the first night. At the end of the Grand Saloon a string quartet played Mozart, and in the dining room the famous Groaning Board offered supper—more caviar, sliced tongue, roast turkeys, several kinds of salad, cold pot roast and Sauce Albert, chilled German white wine, pastry, cake, ice cream, and fruit. This was all belowdecks, for the Great Western had no superstructure. The enormous, open boat deck was strung with swinging kerosene lanterns creating a festive display for late-night strollers. Inside the pilothouse could be seen the officers and men of this first watch of the grand voyage across the ocean, clean and crisp in their freshly laundered uniforms; while up in the spars were boys watching for sparks from the tall funnel amidships, from which black smoke boiled aft and spread finally almost motionless, a canopy over the vessel’s creamy phosphorescent wake.

  A million stars were twinkling. Out into the Irish Sea paddled the Great Western, the biggest ocean-going side-wheeler ever built, about to be consigned, everyone knew, to the bone yard of history by more efficient ships wit
h stern-mounted propellors. With the moon lighting the path to New York, the Great Western found the prevailing wind and unfurled sail. Passengers retired and the music stopped; wind made the rigging sing. The ship’s timbers groaned and creaked as if the whole invention were a living thing. The Great Western was making nine knots. It would arrive in New York in thirteen days.

  Jenny Lind loved it. She loved everything about the sea. It had to be her Viking blood, she was convinced. Hannelore was sick, and so were many of Barnum’s troupe, her friend Tom Thumb excepted. Jenny wanted to think of it as Tom Thumb’s troupe, because it was Tom Thumb with whom she identified it, not Barnum. Barnum was still a very shadowy figure to her, a great hulking thing, according to accounts. By eight o’clock the first morning the ship was far out in the Irish Sea, beyond sight of land, under an overcast sky, sail shortened, the steam engine running slow again, the bow meeting the immense waves almost head-on. Ireland was over the horizon on the starboard beam, but all Jenny could see—from various ports; passengers were being told not to go up on deck—was a wonderful new world of ocean and sky, blue-green, frothy waves, and low-boiling soft, gray-hued clouds.

  Jenny wanted to find her little friend Tom Thumb; last night at supper he reminded her that he was a sailor, too. She had come to the conclusion that Tom Thumb was the best of Barnum’s whole bizarre lot, the most civilized, the most cultivated. Her heart went out to all of them, but the Siamese Twins frightened and repelled her and the giant woman evoked so many unhappy emotions that Jenny wanted to stay away from her. The midget woman, Lavinia, disturbed Jenny, too. Jenny had watched her at last night’s supper with the other little fellow, Gallagher, who leered and drank too much. Lavinia was forward and aggressive, like a man—an American man, more precisely. Jenny Lind had not met that many American women, but none of them had conducted herself in such an immodest, unappealing fashion. Jenny had already decided that she would dislike America if she saw many more women drinking whiskey and smoking Russian cigarettes, like Lavinia Warren.

  Although he had been looking for her, Tom Thumb did not see Jenny Lind until luncheon. They were letting people up on the deck again, as rough as the sea was, and in the passageways you could hear talk of hardy souls making their way out to the fantail, which was known among the sailors as “taking a stroll in the country,” the ship was so large. On her maiden voyage stokers of the Great Western complained that they could not get the coal to the boilers fast enough to keep the fires going, and hand-powered conveyor belts had to be rigged for future voyages. On-deck signals fore and aft were delivered by semaphore, because the human voice could not carry the length of the ship over the roar of the open sea. The Great Western was the most wonderful transportation device ever constructed, capable of carrying by herself all the passengers presently crossing the Atlantic, so of course she was losing a fortune. Tom Thumb the capitalist and investor was watching that. Barnum had already lost a small bundle in these big steamships, but Tom Thumb thought their day was still ahead. The threat of war meant little in the long run; America was a big, empty country even with all the recent Scots-Irish and German immigration, and Europe—whether Americans liked it or not—still had millions more to send across the ocean. Because he was acquainted with owners of steamship companies and naval architects, Tom Thumb knew that on the boards were immense ships capable of carrying a thousand passengers, able to make the journey in ten days or less. Down the line the same ships would take freshly-minted Americans back to Europe on pleasure trips; a new day was dawning, so different from anything hitherto experienced by mankind that no one individual could imagine it all. Barnum had his glimpses, but so did his little friend Tom Thumb.

  As long as he was caught up in his daydreams and the wonder of the ship itself, Tom Thumb was not thinking of Lavinia. When he did, he became a sorry spectacle, exhausting himself with hurt, rage, and self-pity, in endless cycles.

  “General!” called Jenny Lind at lunch, sweeping up to his table, “permit me to join you, please.”

  He waved. “Excuse me for not getting up. Do sit down, please.” She took the chair on his right. He still had not seen so much of her that he knew all the ways she could wear her hair, or the kinds of clothes she would select. When she wanted, she really was a beautiful woman. Today her hair was parted in the center and tied in a bun in the back. She had wonderful eyes. Her dress was a pale lavender spring cotton that made her eyes look absolutely colorless.

  She wanted men to like her. She was a child in that regard—uncannily, she seemed like a child, a grown child, a child-woman. He knew she had strong opinions and spoke up quickly if the conversation was about to turn unpleasant or the language coarse. But she was a flirt who played mostly with her eyes, carefully, staring at a man until he could not resist the impulse to get closer to her. Tom Thumb thought she used a marvelous perfume. At last night’s midnight supper he found himself entertaining the most lascivious thoughts about her while she was telling him about the orphanage she was planning to build in Sweden. Of course he was thinking of what he had seen in the greenhouse after her party. Had it not been for the pain Lavinia had made him feel, he might have succumbed to Jenny Lind then and there. But then he recalled the moony, lost, defeated expression on the face of the piano player as she sent him on his way. Jenny Lind did it to everybody. Whether she was innocent of the effect she had on men or not, she did it to them all, and the realization made Tom Thumb cautious. This was what he had not been able to remember the last time he had seen John Hall Wilton, when the apple-cheeked Englishman had been insisting that Barnum’s rules of humanity did not apply to her. Like everyone else, Tom Thumb saw he was a little in love with her, but perhaps alone, he did not trust her. He did not believe her.

  “I thought I wouldn’t sleep last night,” she gushed. “After all the food and excitement, I thought I would be restless for hours, but I slept better than I have in years. Now I’m hungry again—so hungry! I ate well at breakfast. What should I eat? I don’t want to put on so much weight that no one will believe it’s Jenny Lind you’ve brought to America!”

  Tom Thumb was smiling. For all his reservations and dark thoughts about her true character, he found her enchanting. “The waiter and I are old friends, and he recommends the rabbit stew and the cold fillets of veal with tuna sauce.”

  “Vitello tonnato. You’re having the rabbit, I see.”

  “I love rabbit, and it’s not so good in America.”

  “Oh yes, I’ve been told that the food in America isn’t very good.”

  “Well, most of it is pretty plain,” he admitted. “In New York, Boston, and Philadelphia you’ll be all right, because all the best chefs are from Europe, but when you get to Washington, Pittsburgh, and places like that, you’ll have to forget about food as a source of pleasure.”

  The busboy filled her glass with ice water. “Why?” she asked.

  “It’s the way those people look at everything,” Tom Thumb explained. “Even the simplest pleasures are difficult to come by. In a lot of places you won’t even be able to get a glass of wine—”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “But that’s America,” he said. “In some parts of the country, it will probably be better for business if you don’t let people know that you’re in favor of a glass of wine at dinner or a bottle of champagne when the occasion warrants. In fact, many people will want you to take a stand against drink. You’ll never see Barnum or me in public with cigars, for instance. People expect us to set a good example.”

  “What foolishness!” The waiter appeared with a menu. “The vitello tonnato, please.”

  “Very good, Miss Lind. May I suggest a wine?”

  “Do you have an Italian wine called Est! Est! Est!?”

  The waiter nodded, bowed, and went away.

  “They have just about everything on board,” Tom Thumb assured her.

  “The ship has everything and the country has nothing!” Jenny Lind exclaimed. “America sounds like a nation of lunatics
!”

  “In some ways, it is—or has been. But it’s changing,” he assured her. “You’re part of that. You’re going to be good for America—”

  “More foolishness,” she said. “A singer is of no importance.”

  “Barnum disagrees with you completely, but I’ll leave it to him to tell you exactly why—”

  Someone was standing beside him. “Hello, Charlie.”

  Lavinia. He realized that there had been no movement in Jenny Lind’s eyes that would have allowed him to know that someone was coming up behind him. Jenny Lind did not like Lavinia? Apparently the feeling was returned, because Lavinia was looking directly at him, making sure she gave no hint of acknowledging the presence of the other woman.

  “Are you still talking to me, Charlie?”

  “Sure I am, Lavinia. Have you had lunch? Why don’t you join us?”

  “I just had some bouillon in my stateroom,” she said. “I thought I was going to be able to eat, but the smell of food has me queasy. I want to talk to you, Charlie. It’s important.”

  “Sure. Do you want me to come see you?”

  “If that’s what you want to do, fine. Maybe I’ll be in the lounge this afternoon.”

  “I’ll find you,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, turning away. She looked unhappy, but he knew what she was doing, seeing if he would interrupt his lunch with Jenny Lind to run after her.

  “What word is that?” Jenny Lind asked.

  “Which word?” He was still thinking of Lavinia’s unprofessionalism, among other things.

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “What does it mean?”

  “It means ‘all right,’ or ‘I agree.’ Haven’t you ever heard it before? I’ve been saying it all my life. If it isn’t an English word, I don’t know where it comes from.”