We reached Cheyenne, our first stop, almost exactly twenty-four hours after leaving Omaha and without having seen a single Indian, much to my disappointment. The manager of the theater there met us at the train and helped us load our belongings—trunks of costumes, trinkets and cartes de visites that we would sell, scenery and props—into a waiting Wells Fargo wagon; Charles and I climbed into our miniature carriage, while Rodney Nutt harnessed our two little ponies, who were restless from being cooped up, prancing mischievously against the bit. We hadn’t a chance to freshen up; my traveling dress was dirty and wrinkled beyond measure, and I felt as wilted as the feather in my bonnet. But straight to the theater we went, Charles and I waving to the townspeople who spied our carriage and followed out of curiosity; Minnie and Nutt accompanying the Bleekers in the wagon. As soon as we reached the theater—really a barn, barely swept, with rows of crude benches and hay bales upon which the audience sat—we tidied ourselves as best we could. Mr. Bleeker and our agent hastily set up their concession and box office, and soon we were onstage in front of an eager audience of prairie folk. We repeated our performance later in the evening, then collapsed in a canvas tent that served as the town’s hotel, before getting back on the train the next day.
This became our routine, then. Many of the hotels were merely tents. Other times we stayed in houses, usually the mayor’s own, or one of his relatives’. We never ordered a meal to our own choosing; we ate what was given to us in the hotel, boardinghouse, or private dining room. Privacy was at a premium; oftentimes the men were separated from the ladies by only a thin canvas flap.
Charles and I, and Mr. and Mrs. Bleeker, as the two married couples, were sometimes accorded some privacy, but I always made sure that Minnie was with Charles and me, as she was the only other female. I knew she was very homesick on this trip, much more than she had been in Europe when she had the various infants to occupy her time.
“Vinnie, what do you think Mama and Papa are doing right now?” she would ask me several times a day, and it became almost a game; often I would answer nonsense, just to make her laugh.
“I expect Papa is baking a cake right now, wearing Mama’s best apron, and Mama is sitting by the fire smoking a pipe,” I might say, casually—and be grateful for Minnie’s helpless giggles at the notion.
Or—
“It’s five o’clock; wouldn’t Papa be bringing in the cows from the pasture right now?” Minnie would muse, peeking out the canvas flap of our latest “theater,” as if she could see all the way back to Massachusetts.
“No, he’s just taking them out now; they like to spend the night outside, not in the barn, don’t you remember? So they can look at the stars and wish upon them!”
Minnie laughed at this notion; her dimple deepened, and her merry eyes sparkled under her dark, suspicious brows. She flung her arms around me and whispered, “I’m so glad I’m here with you—I’m so glad that you’re not lonely!”
“Lonely?” I laughed, holding her at arm’s length, looking into her sweet, sympathetic face. “What do you mean? I wouldn’t be lonely—I wouldn’t have the time!”
Minnie merely smiled and hugged me again; then she walked away with such a knowing, understanding look, a sudden, sharp blade of guilt knifed itself through my heart. Was it wicked to keep her with me just because I needed her? Just because I was afraid of being left too much alone with my husband?
And did she truly understand that she was the necessary glue that kept Charles and me together, that she alone made us a family? We both clung to her, in different ways. Charles loved her dearly, as she loved him; the two of them played together, lavishing affection upon every stray dog, cat, or even the occasional chicken that wandered into our hotel or theater. Or they made up games of their own device, games that they would not teach anyone else, acting exactly like two school chums who wanted to appear clannish.
With Minnie, the three of us together at table could always find something to chatter about; she loved to listen to Charles’s tales, and he was a wonderful storyteller when he had an eager audience, which I must admit I was not. On the rare occasions when it was just Charles and me, we exhausted conversation before the soup was gone.
“We’ll be in Utah in the morning. I’m anxious to see how the polygamists live, aren’t you? It seems more barbaric than the Indians,” I said one evening as we dined alone in our hotel room—a corner of a canvas structure; the proprietor had proudly offered Charles and me “a romantic dinner for two,” apart from the communal table set up in the middle of the tent. He had found a small table and two camp stools, and hung up a thin curtain to shield us from the others. Yet we were taunted by the merry dinner talk, the convivial clinking of glasses, on the other side of the curtain.
“Charles? Did you hear me?” I spoke louder, trying to drown out the guffaws accompanying Rodney Nutt as he told a story about a man who once raced a horse the wrong way around a track. “About the polygamists?”
“Oh, I’m—of course, of course, polygamists! Dreadful insects, aren’t they—always buzzing around your ears! My dear, did I ever tell you about the time that I swallowed a bug? I was onstage during a sweltering heat, and a fly was buzzing about, and just as I opened my mouth to sing ‘Yankee Doodle,’ that creature flew into it and down my windpipe! I tell you, I couldn’t sing a word after that! I coughed and coughed until …”
Smiling tightly, I nodded at Charles as he continued his story, and allowed my mind to wander elsewhere—along railroad tracks, over mountains, across oceans. Dear God, please don’t ever let the world stop expanding, stop sprouting new cities and railroads and passageways for me to visit, for me to dream about—I almost prayed it out loud.
It was in Ogden, Utah, that I had the opportunity to correct Charles’s impression about polygamy. For it was here that I first saw it in practice. Ogden was a town of about two thousand people; compared to the other communities along the Union Pacific, it was a model of cleanliness and order, and we could not help but attribute this to the fact that the Mormon bishop controlled the town. Neat clapboard buildings lined clean streets; there were none of the usual saloons and houses of ill repute that had followed the progression of the railroad in other villages.
The bishop offered us the use of their Tabernacle for our entertainment; I thought this very good of him, indeed, and quite surprising. I could not imagine any Baptist church doing the same! So my initial impression of the Mormons was quite favorable.
He asked that the first two rows be reserved for his family. Over fifty seats in all, and I was amused, thinking, logically, that there were far more seats than could be filled by one brood. Yet in a flash the bishop returned with his brother, followed by seven adult females and forty-two children varying in ages from three to fourteen years; then came three more females and twenty-two children, whom the bishop referred to, casually, as “my family”!
It may have been amusing at first, as we peered out from behind the curtain, sure that at any minute the endless parade of children would stop, but soon I ceased to find it so. During our entertainments, Mr. Bleeker always invited a dozen children, from the ages of three to ten, to stand with Minnie onstage to compare their height to hers. When the invitation was extended on this night, Bishop West immediately turned to his family and beckoned the requisite number to the platform. Mr. Bleeker placed the smallest of them nearest to Minnie and then requested the parents to give their ages. Pointing to the first child, Mr. Bleeker inquired, “What is this child’s age?”
“Four years,” replied the Bishop with a satisfied smile.
“And this?” Mr. Bleeker pointed to the next.
“Four years,” the Bishop answered placidly.
“They’re both your children?” Mr. Bleeker could not help himself from asking.
The Bishop nodded. A faint blush mottled his cheeks.
“How old is this one?” Mr. Bleeker pointed to the next largest.
“Four,” the Bishop said, his voice becoming a bit strangled.
“Yours, as well?”
The Bishop nodded.
“And this one?”
“Four.”
“Yours?”
“Yes.”
“And this—?”
“Stop!” I could not help myself; I raced forward to Mr. Bleeker, tugging at the bottom of his coat, imploring him to cease this disgraceful display. Startled, that poor man could do nothing but signal to me to keep quite, and indeed, I did not know what more I could say—I only felt such embarrassment for the children, for the wives, for us all. It was barbaric, that’s what it was, barbaric that all these children of the same age could be sired by one father in these modern times. I did not want to be here any longer; I could not wait to leave. Yet even when we returned to our hotel, I could not prevent myself from inquiring into the marital status of the proprietor, and nearly screamed when I was told that he had ten wives!
Ten! Those poor women, having to subject themselves to one man, having to share him with others, having to raise all these other children as their own, having to lie down with him whenever he desired, never able to refuse—
“I trust the pin money won’t bankrupt you!” My husband was laughing with the innkeeper, man to man, and I whirled about.
“Charles Stratton, how dare you? How dare you laugh with this man as if—as if—”
The entire company was staring at me, mouths open; they had never seen me act so strangely. I took a breath and tried to calm myself, but I could not dampen the fire of indignation that burned in my breast, searing my skin as if it had been branded from within. Why did these men disgust me so? Why could I not look any of their wives in the eye? I had seen natives by now, brown-skinned people who lived in squalor, whose men drank but whose women carried their children on their backs, proudly erect. I had not been disgusted by them. They were not God-fearing people, and so could live only as their instincts told them, and it was obvious their women were strong, stronger than their men.
But the Mormon women were different; there was something shameful and dejected about them. They did not seem to live in the same sphere as their men, except to serve and—I couldn’t prevent a shudder—have relations and bear endless children. It was the same way in Salt Lake City, where we journeyed by wagon, since there was no railroad yet built from Ogden. When we arrived we were treated like dignitaries and introduced to everyone of importance, including Brigham Young. These men were cordial enough, but we met their women only during mealtimes when they served at table, their heads bowed in submission. The obsessively clean appearance of the city in general attested to a feminine hand, yet it remained hidden, as if behind a curtain—or jail—of masculine design.
I could not get out of Utah fast enough.
Finally, we continued west, to Nevada. Leaving the railroad, we decided to travel by stage to a few places, such as Virginia City; progress upon these mountain roads was perilous, beset as it was by not only unpredictable weather, steep mountain drops, and Indians, but also highway robbers. Naturally, we attracted much attention wherever we went, and my jewels and fine clothes were well known, as was the fact that we had, by necessity, to travel with large amounts of money.
One evening, our last night in Virginia City, two strangers struck up a seemingly pleasant conversation with Mr. Bleeker at the hotel, during which they urged him to take several precautions with my jewels, the cash from the box office, and other valuables.
“Cut a lining in your hat, Sir; that’s always where I carry any gold,” one of the fellows said.
“That’s a good plan; those highway robbers always check your boots first,” said the other.
“Thank you, Sirs, for the excellent advice,” Mr. Bleeker said.
“You’re leaving on the regular stage, then?” the first man asked as Mr. Bleeker rose to leave.
“Yes, indeed.”
“Good thinking, for it has an excellent guard, always.”
Mr. Bleeker left these two “gentlemen” to smoke cigars in the lobby of the hotel; he then snuck out the back door and went straight to the Wells Fargo and Company office to arrange for two wagons. We left at seven the next morning, and when we reached Reno, we heard that the regular noon stage had been held up by two masked men who, while methodically relieving all the poor passengers of their valuables, kept muttering, “Tom Thumb! Where’s Tom Thumb? He’s supposed to be on this stage!”
Finally, we reached San Francisco. It was such a relief to be in a cultured metropolis once more, with paved roads and gaslights and hotels made of wood, not canvas. Triumphantly, Charles and I paraded through the streets in our miniature carriage, our ponies none the worse for the trip. Three times a day we filled Platt’s Hall, which held two thousand people, and were able to telegraph Mr. Barnum that the trip had been the “golden opportunity” he had envisioned, indeed.
We left San Francisco for Yokohama, Japan, on November 4, 1869; we would not return to the shores of this great country of ours until June 22, 1872. All in all, we traveled 55,487 miles (31,216 of them by sea) and gave 1,472 entertainments in 587 different cities and towns in all climates of the world without missing a single performance because of accident or illness.
We met the Viceroy of India, King Victor Emmanuele II of Italy, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, and assorted Maharajas and Shahs. We ate leechee nuts in China, chewed tea leaves in Ceylon, and consumed octopus in Japan. We saw the Pyramids, pilgrims on their way to Mecca, and sampans in Japan. The heat in Singapore was like being wrapped in a hot woolen blanket and set out in the noonday sun; the cold of the Australian desert at night made your bones cry. We saw women dressed scandalously, in nothing but scarves and jewels, in Madras; we observed entire families bathing together in the nude in Japan. Trains, when we could find them, were primitive: some with benches, with no backs, for seats; others simply cavernous cars in which you sat upon the floor. Ships were steamers, and often they were overcrowded, with poor people practically hanging off the deck rails. Often we would get to a destination with no clear idea how we would then travel on to the next place; maps were crude, unreadable, and unreliable.
Yet even in such places we would sometimes come across a reminder of home; of civilization. Minnie spied an 1862 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book in a fish market in Bombay, of all places; she eagerly begged the fishmonger to give it to her, instead of using it to wrap up his eels. Somehow he understood, and she carried it with her through the rest of the tour, reading and rereading it although the fashions, of course, were long out of style even before we left home. (Such wide skirts we used to wear! And those ridiculous, enormous-ribboned bonnets!)
And one evening in Ceylon, while I was trying to read by the weak oil light in the hotel parlor (there was no reading in the primitive bedrooms, as everything was encased with thick mosquito netting), Mr. Bleeker presented me with a tattered copy of the New York Herald Tribune. “Look at this,” he said with a sly grin. He pointed to an article with his bony finger.
“Barnum’s newest sensation,” I read aloud, and laughed. I checked the date of the paper; it was over a year old. But seeing Mr. Barnum’s name in print, so far away from him, after having been gone so long, made my heart leap unexpectedly, almost as if he himself had entered the room. We stayed in communication during the trip, of course, but mainly with telegrams, which were always so businesslike and addressed to the troupe in general, never to me personally. And if telegrams were sporadic in the places we were visiting, letters were even more so. So it was with a hunger I hadn’t even been aware was gnawing at me that I read his name.
“The old man has kept himself busy while we’re away,” Mr. Bleeker said with a chuckle, as he folded his long frame into an absurdly small, lacquered Oriental chair. He lit his pipe and puffed until he could get a good draw on it.
“Yes, it appears he has,” I said as I continued to read the article. Mr. Barnum had begun presenting a new discovery, an Admiral Dot. Admiral Dot was “a dwarf more diminutive in stature than General Tom Thumb
was when I found him,” Mr. Barnum had told the newspaper.
“You’ve got to admire him. He loses his museum, he builds another. He sends you all off to see the world—”
“And he replaces us with someone else.” Crumpling the newspaper, I tossed it on the floor. But Mr. Bleeker didn’t notice, as he finally had gotten his pipe burning to his satisfaction, and was stretching his long legs out in front of him.
“He just keeps on going. ‘Admiral Dot.’ He has a genius for naming things, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely. Almost God-like, naming all the animals.”
Mr. Bleeker must have finally noticed the sarcasm in my voice, for he peered at me through the pipe smoke, eyebrows raised. Then he saw the newspaper on the ground.
“What’s wrong, Vinnie? I thought you’d be happy to know that he’s carrying on, as usual.”
“Oh, I suppose I am, it’s just—never mind.” I picked up my book and tried to find my place, but suddenly Mr. Bleeker plucked it out of my hands.
“You’re not jealous of that Dot fellow, are you?”
“I have no need to be jealous of another performer—especially one so unproven—thank you very much. Now, will you please return my book?”
“But that’s just Barnum’s way! You know that! He knows what the public wants, and he gives it to them. Truth is, he usually tells them what they want, before they know it. So the public wants to see another little man. So? That has nothing to do with you. It’s not personal with him like that.”
The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb Page 26