Barnum

by Robert Wilson

  Soon after the new museum opened, Barnum went into business with a lion tamer, animal trainer, and menagerie owner named Isaac Van Amburgh, who had been established in the Broadway building that Barnum had rehabbed, exhibiting his menagerie there when not touring. Thus the seal Ned was joined by an African elephant, the country’s only giraffe, lions and tigers, and “every description of wild animal.” Under the new arrangement, the menagerie would continue to travel in the warm months and be on exhibit in the museum in the cold months. The Barnum and Van Amburgh Museum and Menagerie Company also bought thirty acres of land in Bridgeport, suitable for breeding and training animals for exhibition. Part of the deal in creating the new company was that Barnum would now be the museum’s general manager in name only and could spend more time at home or traveling, visiting the museum only once a week when he was nearby.

  He soon signed on for a lecture tour in the Midwest (then called the West), giving a talk called “Success, or the Art of Money-Getting,” while also continuing his long habit of lecturing on temperance. During this time, he worked on an ambitious plan to start a free national museum and managed to enlist in the effort a number of prominent men, including the president himself. Andrew Johnson signed a proclamation urging “our Ministers, Consuls, and commercial agents” to assist Barnum in acquiring throughout the world exhibits for the new project. Following up in Washington, Barnum met with both the sitting president and a future one, Ulysses S. Grant, who gave him for exhibition a hat he had worn during the war.18

  The summer following the congressional elections in April 1867, the Barnums sold Lindencroft, their large house in Fairfield, and moved for the season into a farmhouse on the shore of Long Island Sound, where the sea breezes were thought to be better for Charity’s health. All three of Barnum’s daughters now lived in New York City with their husbands, so that same summer he and Charity bought an impressive town house at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-Ninth Street, “at the crowning point of Murray Hill,” to be close to his family for the seven colder months of the year. He and Charity moved into the house in November. In his 1869 autobiography, he sang the praises of city life for a man his age: “One loves to find the morning papers, fresh from the press, lying upon the breakfast-table; and the city is the centre of attractions in the way of operas, concerts, picture-galleries, libraries, the best music, the best preaching, the best of everything in aesthetical enjoyments.” In addition to these benefits, the Barnums were close enough to Central Park to “spend hours of every fine day in that great pleasure-ground.”19

  Having a mansion in town also made it possible to express the generosity he so often showed his friends. Two of them, a Universalist minister named George Emerson, who spent two nights a week with the Barnums for several years, and Greeley, the eminent if somewhat scatterbrained newspaper editor, were given keys to the house and an open invitation, such as this one from Charity to Emerson: “Come now as often as you can and stay as long as you can; only, remember, you are not company.” Greeley sometimes did dwell with them for weeks on end, with Barnum often offering him such domestic comforts as slippers or a robe. Many other friends also enjoyed the hospitality of the household when they were in town. The Barnum dinner table might feature Tom Thumb and his troupe on one night and the latest fashionable author on another. Always, George Emerson reminisced about Barnum, “the incorrigible humorist at the head of the table, ready to gush at any time, seemed to have no power to keep the jokes back when knife and fork were at play.”20

  The preacher also recalled one of Barnum’s many acts of charity, when he gave an organ to Emerson’s church. Barnum urged his friend not to publicize the fact so that others who needed something would not besiege him. But Emerson noted that Barnum was routinely besieged anyway, his meals often interrupted by a solicitation at the door, so Barnum must simply have preferred not to take credit for this unprofitable act of philanthropy.

  Other friends included the Reverends Edwin H. Chapin and Abel C. Thomas and a literary set he would see at the Sunday evening salon of the poets Alice and Phoebe Cary. There, on Twentieth Street, Barnum and Greeley might mingle with the latter’s Tribune protégé Whitelaw Reid, the violinist Ole Bull, or the feminists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. The poet John Greenleaf Whittier also attended the soirees, but he and Barnum apparently never crossed paths. Phoebe Cary especially attracted Barnum for her spontaneous wit, and the two would sometimes go for carriage rides together in Central Park.

  This life of urban leisure did not last untroubled for long. On the bitter cold, snowy morning of March 3, 1868, Barnum was enjoying those fresh-pressed newspapers at his breakfast table with Charity and Louise Thomas, the wife of Reverend Thomas, when he came upon an item on a late-closing page of the Tribune headlined, “Barnum’s Museum Burned: The Building and Menagerie Totally Destroyed.” He claims to have calmly read these words aloud to the two women, his tone so matter-of-fact that both took it as a joke. Only as he continued reading them the report, which said the fire had started at 12:30 that very morning, did Mrs. Thomas look over his shoulder to see that it was indeed true.21

  If it seems odd that the newspaper should have reached him before anyone from his company did, consider that the fire had started in the throes of a huge snowstorm, the winds of which had pushed up large drifts in the streets, making public transportation problematic. The same drifts had allowed the fire to grow beyond containment. After the first alarm, it had taken the firemen half an hour to reach the museum, because they were fighting a blaze in a toy store on Spring Street. Although they sprayed the flames in the museum and then its ruins for hours, creating a picturesque “palace of ice” in the bitter cold, the fire could not be managed until it had done its worst. Barnum related that it started with “a defective flue in a restaurant in the basement of the building,” Charles Swift’s oyster saloon. The Circassian beauty Zalumma Agra, who, along with several others, slept in the building, had wakened from a restless sleep and looked out her window on Broadway to see flames pouring from a window on a floor below. Her cry of “Fire!” roused Anna Swan, who was already awake, listening to the stirrings from the menagerie, where the lions and a gray wolf had been exchanging growls and then howls. The reality of the second blaze then clicked into place, and all of the humans were able to escape the conflagration.22

  Ned the Learned Seal was not so lucky. Although he died in the fire, more animals were saved than in the first blaze, including “one young elephant,” a giraffe, three kangaroos, a leopard, two camels, three llamas, and a variety of smaller animals and birds. Once again many other animals were lost, including a number of monkeys and a tiger that managed to escape the building, frightening the many spectators watching even in the middle of the night, until “an intrepid policeman with revolver . . . fired shot after shot,” killing it. In describing this fire, Barnum paused in his autobiography to express regret for the fate of the animals. “The loss was a large one, and the complete frustration of our plans for the future was a serious consideration. But worse than all were the sufferings of the poor wild animals which were burned to death in their cages.”23

  Barnum’s immediate public response was noticeably different from that after the first fire. A brief notice sent to the Tribune reported that his company would not rebuild the museum on the spot of its ruins and took the opportunity to announce that “the six lots on which the Museum stood are for sale”—seventy-five feet of street front on both Broadway and Mercer, the depth of the block being two hundred feet. He sold the lots in June for $432,000, which made a nice dent in his losses. Still, he estimated that both museum fires and the one at Iranistan had cost him more than a million dollars, and he decided now that his long museum-keeping career was at an end. George Emerson reported that the liveliest evening he ever spent at Barnum’s table happened the day after the showman’s second Broadway museum burned to the ground. Greeley had suggested to his friend after the first museum burned that he should “take this fire as
a notice to quit, and go a-fishing.” Now Barnum was ready to abide by that advice.24

  SIXTEEN

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  SHOW FEVER

  In the weeks after the second museum fire, Barnum did find “a way open through which I could retire to a more quiet and tranquil mode of life.” But what he would soon learn about himself was that retirement, even if it represented a slowing down from what had come before, was for him life lived at a more industrious pace than most people ever achieve. Once he had separated himself from the remains of the company that he and Van Amburgh had started, he did take part of the summer off. He could be found lolling in the White Mountains of New Hampshire or in a house he had built on speculation in Bridgeport, but even then he was not fully disconnected.

  He was regularly corresponding with his friend George Wood in New York, who was starting a museum and theater in the Barnum mode at Broadway and Thirtieth Street. Wood induced Barnum to sign on as a close advisor and as someone who would not compete with him, sharing in 3 percent of the receipts for his involvement and for allowing Wood to advertise as Barnum’s successor. Barnum liked the freedom from responsibility this arrangement would give him and the freedom to “go when and where I chose”: “My mind especially would be employed in matters with which I was familiar, [and] I should not rust out. . . . The new museum would afford me a pleasant place to drop into when I felt inclined to do so.”1

  When at the end of August 1868 all was ready for Wood’s museum to admit the public, its proprietor sent Barnum a telegram saying “he could not consider his list of curiosities complete unless I would consent to be present at the opening.” Not only did Barnum eagerly leave his White Mountains vacation and hustle down to New York; he even gave the inaugural address before the first matinee performance at Wood’s Museum and Metropolitan Theatre. The speech, which was printed in the next day’s Tribune, praised Wood for his “remarkable degree of Yankee go-aheadativeness and reckless expenditure” in collecting curiosities from throughout the world, making ample use of Barnum’s former agents. Barnum promised that he himself would often be available at Wood’s museum “to greet my old friends and the public at large.”2

  Barnum had also continued to invest in real estate in Bridgeport and in that part of Fairfield near the Bridgeport line. Working with a small group of city fathers over a period of years, he had spearheaded the creation of Seaside Park. They had persuaded landowners along Long Island Sound to give or sell enough property to create a truly impressive public space, replete with a promenade along the shore, wide boulevards for walking and driving, a covered music stand, and new shade trees to augment those preserved on the land. A horse-drawn railway spur opened to serve the park, which soon became a favorite place for residents of Bridgeport and Fairfield to enjoy the views and catch the sea breezes. Barnum had himself purchased a thirty-acre farm and donated part of it to complete the sweep of park along the shore, and he later bought and donated several more acres to the western end of the park. The city recognized his role in the park’s creation by asking him to name it. In the summer of 1868, he decided to build a new residence on the remaining acres of the farm, on a rise that would catch those breezes and look down to the water. Ground was broken and the first stone in the foundation placed in October 1868, and with the help of “a regiment of faithful laborers and mechanics, and a very considerable expenditure of money,” the house was completed in eight months and ready for habitation for the 1869 summer season.3

  Once again, Barnum hoped to build a house with all the modern conveniences for comfortable living, and he included a number of rooms for guests, each with its own dressing room and bathroom. In addition to the Victorian structure, featuring a large turret, wide porches, and a bakery’s worth of gingerbread, there would be two guest cottages, one of which would shelter his eldest and youngest daughters and their families during the summers. Perhaps to satisfy the ailing Charity, who continued to be prescribed as much fresh air as possible, the kitchen was semidetached in order to keep cooking smells at bay, and the stable was situated across an avenue. Lawns stretched out in three directions from the house, which featured the usual plantings of mature trees, in addition to a “large and beautiful hickory grove” Barnum had recently purchased, and gardens, flower beds, walks, and drives.

  The main house was called Waldemere, a nod to that hickory grove overlooking the sea, and the cottages were called Wavewood and Petrel’s Nest. All three structures shared a view, owing to Barnum’s profitable philanthropy, of the happy pleasure ground of Seaside Park and the Sound beyond. His farm on the outskirts of Bridgeport, which he had owned for many years, had been the scene of a famous joke of his, putting an elephant to work plowing and replowing the same patch of ground each time a passenger train went by on a track adjacent to his fields, implying the unlikely notion that elephants made a good substitute for mules. Now this farm, minus its pachyderm, kept his “table constantly supplied with fresh fruits and vegetables, poultry, and that choicest of country luxuries, pure cream.” Barnum would live at Waldemere for two decades, enlarging and prettifying it from time to time. During those years many friends passed through his rooms. Mark Twain, who would become a friendly acquaintance if not quite a friend, and his wife would visit from nearby Hartford, and Horace Greeley would stay at Waldemere so often that one of the bedrooms was named for him.4

  As his new house was being built—and as he was lecturing on either business success or temperance, consulting with Wood’s Museum, overseeing his real-estate investments, and tending to his wide circle of friends—Barnum also began rewriting and significantly expanding his autobiography. The decade and a half since The Life of P. T. Barnum had appeared provided him with a second lifetime’s worth of new anecdotes and cracker-barrel philosophizing. His narrative of this part of his life followed the sine curve of his fall from riches to bankruptcy and back to financial success, with the three major fires and his recovery from them part of the pattern. The new book’s title would reflect the cyclical nature of these years: he called it Struggles and Triumphs. The revision and expansion, however, did not go at the breakneck pace that had produced the first autobiography.

  In late May 1868 he wrote to his friend George Emerson, “My life is dragging slowly so far as writing it is concerned.” Almost exactly a year later he would write to Whitelaw Reid that he was hoping to finish the book during the first part of the summer and wanted his help getting the manuscript ready for publication. Would Reid come to Waldemere for at least a week in July “to see what is needful to be done & what it is worth”? A well-known Civil War reporter and author who went to work for Greeley in 1868, Reid would take over the Tribune after Greeley’s death and run it until his own death many years later.5

  Struggles and Triumphs or Forty Years’ Reflections of P. T. Barnum appeared in the fall of 1869. At nearly eight hundred pages, and including thirty-three engravings, it was almost exactly twice as long as the earlier edition. It would be sold through subscription agents hired by his Hartford publisher J. B. Burr. The reviews included one in the Sun, which called the book “interesting and conceited,” citing as an example of the latter quality Barnum’s quoting Thackeray saying, “MR. BARNUM, I admire you more than ever!” At the other extreme was the Bellows Falls Times of Vermont:

  Barnum’s style is racy. He knows how to “point a period,” and tells a story inimitably. The lovers of fun will be delighted by the accessions which this work brings to their stock of humor; and they who care only for facts and practical good sense, will be equally grateful to Barnum for his autobiography.6

  Perhaps because the book was not entirely new, it got far fewer reviews than the 1855 edition, and perhaps because some of the more indefensible episodes from the early part of his career had been softened, there were fewer expressions of shock that Barnum shamelessly owned up to his humbugs and the profits he made from them. The parts of the book that were entirely new were devoted more to sharing the wisdom he had
acquired as a businessman and less to his pursuit of humbuggery.

  In truth, he had lately been more attentive to the exposure of humbugs than to the creation of them, having written articles on the subject for the New York Weekly Mercury that were gathered into a book called The Humbugs of the World: An Account of Humbugs, Delusions, Impositions, Quackeries, Deceits and Deceivers Generally, in All Ages, which had been published in late 1865. The subjects ranged from personal anecdotes to historical sketches. A well-polished example of the former described Grizzly Adams’s last days, when Barnum agreed to loan him an expensive new beaver-skin outfit he had had made, to be returned, Adams promised, when he was done with it. When Adams had himself buried in it, he took both the suit and the satisfaction of having humbugged Barnum to the grave. Historical chapters considered such episodes as the Dutch tulip mania and the more recent Moon Hoax. Barnum took special interest in spiritual hoaxes such as spirit-photos that pretended to show the ghosts of the dead in the background of photos of the living.