ABBREVIATIONS USED IN NOTES
Kunhardts: |
Kunhardt, Philip B., Jr., Philip B. Kunhardt III, and Peter W. Kunhardt. P. T. Barnum: America’s Greatest Showman. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. |
Life of PTB: |
Barnum, P. T. The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself. New York: Redfield, 1855. |
PTB:1 |
Saxon, A. H. P. T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. |
SL:1 |
Saxon, A. H., ed. Selected Letters of P. T. Barnum. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. |
S&T: |
Barnum, P. T. Struggles and Triumphs, or, The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself. Ed. George S. Bryan, 2 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927. |
INTRODUCTION: "DO YOU KNOW BARNUM?"
1. Barnum tells the mermaid story well in his autobiography, Life of PTB, pp. 231–42.
2. Barnum, Funny Stories, p. 361.
3. Barnum, The Humbugs of the World, pp. 20, 24.
4. SL, p. 103, letter to Messrs. R. Griffin & Co., Jan. 27, 1860.
5. The publisher’s note to Barnum’s The Humbugs of the World quotes the New York Sun: “In his breadth of views, his profound knowledge of mankind, his courage under reverses, his indomitable perseverance, his ready eloquence, and his admirable business tact, we recognize the elements that are conducive to success. . . . More than almost any other living man, Barnum may be said to be a representative type of the American mind” (p. iv).
ONE: THE RICHEST CHILD IN TOWN
1. Life of PTB, p. 105.
2. Ibid., p. 10.
3. Ibid., p. 13.
4. Ibid., p. 11.
5. S&T, p. 749.
6. Bailey, History of Danbury, pp. 540–46; Life of PTB, p. 13.
7. S&T, p. 4.
8. Life of PTB, p. 20.
9. Ibid., pp. 4–10.
10. Ibid., p. 28.
11. Ibid., pp. 28, 39.
12. S&T, pp. 13–19.
13. PTB, p. 48. From a speech Barnum gave in 1886 at a Universalist convention in Bridgeport, Connecticut, published in the Christian Leader, Sept. 23, 1886, referenced by Saxon.
14. Life of PTB, pp. 91–92.
15. S&T, pp. 52–56.
16. Life of PTB, p. 99.
17. Bailey, History of Danbury, pp. 541–46.
18. S&T, pp. 66–68.
19. Life of PTB, pp. 108–9; S&T, p. 68.
20. Ibid., pp. 69–71; PTB, 350n37.
21. S&T, pp. 56–57; Life of PTB, pp. 98, 108.
22. S&T, pp. 77, 85–86.
23. Ibid., p. 87; Kunhardts, p. 16; PTB, pp. 40–41.
24. S&T, pp. 84–85.
25. Ibid., pp. 88–89. Saxon notes that Barnum’s apparent religious and political differences with Uncle Alanson could not have helped their business partnership at the Yellow Store (PTB, p. 41).
26. Howe, What Hath God Wrought, p. 228: “It did not require much capital to publish one of the small papers typical of the day. Even a limited circulation made the enterprise viable, and papers often catered to a specific audience.”
27. The letter was to Gideon Welles, editor of the Hartford (CT) Times, who would later serve as secretary of the navy under Lincoln. SL, p. 2, PTB to Gideon Welles, Oct. 7, 1832; PTB, pp. 42, 351n49; S&T, p. 90.
28. SL, p. 2, PTB to Gideon Welles, Oct. 7, 1832; PTB, pp. 42, 351n49; S&T, p. 90. Seelye married a Taylor; one of his sons became the president of Amherst College and a U.S. congressman, and another became the first president of Smith College.
29. On the day of his release, the Herald of Freedom contained a note saying in part, “We embrace the first opportunity to tender our warmest thanks to Mr. Crofut, (the Jailer), and his family, for their untiring exertions to render our stay with them as agreeable as the circumstances would permit.” Song lyrics: “Notated Music: Image 2 of Strike the Cymbal!,” Library of Congress, 1821, https://www.loc.gov/resource/sm1821.360050.0/?sp=2. S&T, p. 92; PTB, p. 44.
30. Herald of Freedom, Dec. 5, 1832.
TWO: THE NURSEMAID
1. PTB, p. 45; Life of PTB, pp. 141–42.
2. S&T, pp. 97, 99.
3. Ibid., pp. 102–3.
4. Ibid., pp. 103–4; J. David Hacker, “Decennial Tables for the White Population of the United States, 1790–1900,” Historical Methods 43, no. 2 (2010): 45–79.
5. Thompson, The Mystery and Lore of Monsters, p. 17. Thompson begins his study, “From the earliest period of the world’s history abnormal creatures or monstrosities, both human and animal, have existed from time to time and excited the wonder of mankind.”
6. Leslie A. Fiedler, “From Freaks,” in Donley and Buckley, The Tyranny of the Normal, pp. 11–25. S&T, pp. 104–5.
7. Ibid., pp. 105–6; SL, p. 8, letter to “Mr. Baker,” c. Mar. 1853; PTB, pp. 68–69. Saxon identifies William P. Saunders, whose name appears on the written agreement between Barnum and Lindsay but is then scratched out, as the likely source of the borrowed $500.
8. S&T, pp. 107–8.
9. New York Evening Star, Aug. 7, 1835; S&T, pp. 108–9.
10. “The Joice Heth Hoax,” New York Herald, Sept. 24, 1836.
11. Kunhardts, p. 20.
12. S&T, p. 112.
13. Ibid., p. 111. Reiss, The Showman and the Slave, pp. 30–43 discusses the freak show and racist qualities of the exhibition and reception of Joice Heth. The entire book focuses on the Heth affair, providing a great deal of context for it. Still, his harsh judgment of Barnum comes at least in part from his own reluctance to see Barnum in the context of his times, and Reiss tends to read Barnum’s fictional or satirical writings as pure fact.
14. Reiss, The Showman and the Slave, pp. 90–91; S&T, p. 113.
15. Edgar Allan Poe, “Maelzel’s Chess-Player,” American Studies at the University of Virginia, http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/maelzel.html; Goodman, The Sun and the Moon, pp. 248–51.
16. S&T, p. 114; Reiss, The Showman and the Slave, p. 116. The gist of the story is true, but it may not have happened in Boston, and not for several more months. According to Reiss, “numerous details about the humbug are either misremembered or fabricated,” and once the automaton story did come out, Barnum was no longer touring with Heth, who was being shepherded by Lyman. But Reiss’s evidence proves only that the automaton allegation happened elsewhere, not that it didn’t happen in Boston as well.
17. Life of PTB, p. 171.
18. Reiss, The Showman and the Slave, pp. 135–36.
19. Richard Adams Locke was well known for an infamous hoax from the previous year. The Sun’s “Moon Hoax” claimed that John Herschel, the famous British astronomer, had built a telescope powerful enough to see creatures on the Moon, including bat-people and unicorns. Goodman’s The Sun and the Moon covers the hoax comprehensively.
20. The bet was for $350. Sun (New York), Mar. 1, 1836.
21. Life of PTB, p. 176.
22. Saxon, who has lived not far from Bethel for decades, continues to this day to search for any record of her burial or sign of her gravesite, without luck. Personal communication with author.
THREE: ON BROADWAY
1. Life of PTB, pp. 160, 171.
2. Ibid., p. 207.
3. Ibid., p. 193.
4. Ibid., pp. 187–88.
5. Ibid., pp. 208–9.
6. Ibid., p. 209.
7. Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, p. 640.
8. Nichols, Forty Years of American Life, pp. 231–32; Life of PTB, p. 211.
9. Ludlow, Dramatic Life as I Found It, p. 533, cited in PTB, p. 81.
10. Life of PTB, p. 215.
11. Saxon calls Adventures of an Adventurer “almost” a rehearsal for the autobiography (PTB, p. 88). That some contemporary scholars have read the work largely as a confession shows just how ambiguous a work it is and perhaps also says something about our eagerness to misread historical figures who embody times whose values do not live up to our own.
12. Life of PTB, pp. 215–16; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, pp. 316, 320.
13. Loyd Haberly, “The American Museum from Baker to Barnum,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly 43, no. 3 (July 1959): 272–87, http://nyheritage.nnyln.net/cdm/pageflip/collection/NYHSR01/id/12552/type/compoundobject/show/12443/cpdtype/monograph/pftype/image#page/4/mode/2up; Orosz, Curators and Culture, pp. 132–33.
14. Haberly, “The American Museum from Baker to Barnum,” p. 287.
15. Life of PTB, p. 216.
16. Ibid., pp. 216–22.
17. At the end of the decade, the journalist George C. Foster said the light sent “a livid, ghastly glare for a mile up the street, and pushing the shadows of the omnibuses well nigh to Niblo’s. . . . That untiring chromatic wheel goes ever round and round, twining and untwining its blue, red and yellow wreaths of light in unvarying variety” (New York by Gas-Light, p. 71).
18. Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation, p. 216.
19. PTB, p. 93.
20. Doesticks and Philander, Doesticks, p. 47.
21. Life of PTB, p. 225. Barnum removed this passage from Struggles and Triumphs, the 1869 version of his autobiography, where he is more defensive, justifying his more extreme efforts to publicize his public entertainments by saying such things were generally done, even if he did them with “more energy, far more ingenuity, and a better foundation for such promises” (S&T, p. 198).
22. Life of PTB, p. 223.
FOUR: THE MERMAID
1. New York Herald, June 24, 1841, and Sept. 25, 1841.
2. Life of PTB, pp. 234–36.
3. Ibid., p. 231.
4. Bondeson, The Feejee Mermaid, pp. 36–48. William Clift no longer felt bound by his agreement to be silent about his findings when Captain Eades falsely advertised that he had vouched for the mermaid’s authenticity.
5. Life of PTB, p. 232.
6. Ibid., pp. 238–41.
7. Ibid., pp. 238–39. “The public appeared to be satisfied, but as some persons always will take things literally, and make no allowance for poetic license even in mermaids, an occasional visitor . . . would be slightly surprised.”
8. As late as 1845, Lyman asked Kimball if he could resume the role of Dr. Griffin and take the Fejee Mermaid on tour, so he didn’t rush off to Nauvoo. PTB, p. 123.
9. S&T, pp. 207–12.
10. Letter from PTB to MK, Feb. 5, 1843, Boston Athenaeum.
11. Ibid.
12. Harris, Humbug. Harris describes the controversy in Charleston in detail (pp. 64–67). Letters quoted are cited by Harris from Charleston Mercury, Jan. 21, 1843, and Feb. 5, 1843.
13. Letters from PTB to MK, Feb. 10 and 13, 1843, Boston Athenaeum.
14. Ibid., Feb. 21, Mar. 3 and 20, Apr. 4 and 8, 1843.
15. Ibid., Jan. 30, Feb. 10, Mar. 8, 1843.
16. Ibid., Oct. 4, 1843.
17. Ibid., Mar. 8, 1843.
18. Ibid., Mar. 22 and 29, Apr. 4, 1843.
FIVE: THE GENERAL
1. Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, pp. 10–15.
2. Life of PTB, p. 243.
3. Ibid., p. 244.
4. The History of Tom Thumb, published in 1621, was the first fairy tale to appear in print in English; Henry Fielding wrote a play called The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great, published in 1731.
5. The Diaries of Julia Lawrence Hasbrouck, “December 8, 1842—‘Thanksgiving Day,’ ” https://frommypenandpower.wordpress.com/2014/12/08/december-8-1842-thanksgiving-day/.
6. Cook, The Colossal P. T. Barnum Reader, p. 119. If it was indeed a Thanksgiving Day turkey, Webb does not say so.
7. Kunhardts, p. 48; Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, p. 23; Wallace, The Fabulous Showman, p. 74; Life of PTB, p. 244.
8. New York Herald, Dec. 9, 1842. Napoleon has been unfairly characterized as short. He was five-foot-seven, which would not have been considered short in his time.
9. Omaha Bee, Feb. 6, 1883, cited in Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, p. 24; Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, p. 23.
10. Life of PTB, p. 245.
11. SL, pp. 13–14, PTB to MK, Jan. 30, 1843.
12. Life of PTB, p. 393; PTB, p. 125. Saxon found information about Hitchcock in Universalist Church archives, including records showing that he returned to preaching for the last two decades of his life, after working on and off for Barnum for more than twenty years. Saxon notes that Hitchcock’s church obituary in 1883 says of this long connection with the showman only that the reverend, “for a number of years, was engaged in secular life.”
13. All from Boston Athenaeum.
14. New York Herald, Dec. 1, 1843.
15. Daily ads in Jan. 1844 in the New York Herald, Tribune, and Commercial Advertiser. Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 18, 1844; (Washington) National Intelligencer, Jan. 22 and 30, 1844.
16. New York Herald, Jan. 19, 1844; Kunhardts, p. 53.
17. National Intelligencer, Jan. 22, 1844.
18. Life of PTB, pp. 246–47; New York Atlas, Mar. 17, 1844, cited in Cook, The Colossal P. T. Barnum Reader, p. 60.
19. New York Atlas, Mar. 17, 1844, cited in Cook, The Colossal P. T. Barnum Reader, p. 60; S&T, pp. 242–43.
20. In the 1855 autobiography he changes the order to “regret and joy,” and in the 1869 version he does not characterize the tears at all.
SIX: THE QUEEN
1. Life of PTB, pp. 249–50.
2. Ibid., pp. 252–53.
3. Fitzsimons, Barnum in London, pp. 72–73.
4. Ibid., p. 73; James Stonehouse, New and Complete Hand Book for the Stranger in Liverpool (Liverpool: Henry Lacey, 1844), p. 184.
5. Fitzsimons, Barnum in London, pp. 74, 78–79; Illustrated London News, Feb. 24, 1844.
6. Robert D. Richardson Jr., Emerson: The Mind on Fire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 13.
7. Life of PTB, pp. 255–56. In a letter to the New York Atlas (Mar. 31, 1844) cited in Cook, The Colossal P. T. Barnum Reader, p. 61, Barnum writes that the purse contained twenty gold sovereigns, worth twenty pounds sterling.
8. New York Atlas, Apr. 24, 1844; Fitzsimons, Barnum in London, pp. 87–88; Catalogue of Catlin’s Indian Gallery (New York, 1837), p. 35; A Descriptive Catalogue of Catlin’s Indian Gallery (New York, 1845), p. 3. Catlin catalogues from Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art.
9. George Catlin, Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium (London: Self-published, 1852); PTB to MK, July 29–Aug. 1, 1844, Boston Athenaeum.
10. Life of PTB, p. 56.
11. Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, p. 3.
12. The offending dog was likely not a poodle but one of the queen’s collies, named Sharp, which was well known for its bad temperament. Helen Rappaport, Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003), p. 36.
13. Barnum’s anecdote about the first visit to Buckingham Palace: New York Atlas, June 9, 1844. Life of PTB, pp. 256–59; S&T, pp. 250–53.
14. PTB, p. 132; SL, pp. 24–25, PTB to Edward Everett, Mar. 23, 1844.
15. Times (London), Apr. 7, 1844.
16. Life of PTB, p. 263.
SEVEN: THE CONTINENT
1. Morna Daniels, “Paris National and International Exhibitions from 1798 to 1900: A Finding-List of British Library Holdings,” 2013, Electronic British Library Journal, http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2013articles/article6.html. Barnum writes in the later version of his autobiography that during this visit he also often watched Robert-Houdin perform his magic act at the Palais Royal, but those performances did not begin until the following year, so Barnum must have seen him on a subsequent visit to Paris (S&T, p. 260). Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, Memoirs (London: Chapman and Hall, 1860), pp. 148–50, 173, 184.
2. New York Atlas, Aug. 18, 1844; Hector Berlioz Website, “Berlioz in Paris,” http://www.hberlioz.com/Paris/BPOlympique.html.
3. Life of PTB, p. 264; S&T, p. 291.
4. Smith, “A Go-Ahead Day with Barnum,” pp. 86–101.
5. Irving, Washington Irving’s Sketch-Book, p. 273.
6. Smith, “A Go-Ahead Day with Barnum,” pp. 91–92.
7. S&T, p. 294.
8. New York Atlas, June 16, 1844.
9. PTB, pp. 137–38; New York Atlas, Dec. 29, 1844.
10. New York Atlas, Nov. 24, 1844; PTB, pp. 37–38.
11. New York Atlas, Jan. 5, 1845, in Cook, The Colossal P. T. Barnum Reader, p. 76. “Codfish aristocracy” has its origins as a description of people in Massachusetts who got rich quick from commercial fishing. A more general meaning refers to anyone with recently acquired wealth.
12. Ibid., July 21, 1844; Feb. 16, 1845; Apr. 20, 1845.
13. PTB, p. 223.
14. Illustrated London News, Apr. 26, 1845, p. 258. The report mistakenly says that Queen Victoria had given Tom the watch.
15. S&T, pp. 262–64.
16. Ibid., p. 264.
17. Illustrated London News, May 24, 1845, p. 334.
18. PTB to “Friend Risley,” Aug. 8, 1845, “Document: P. T. Barnum Letter Copybook, 1845–1846,” Barnum Museum, http://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/object/60002%3A185#page/1/mode/2u; S&T, pp. 268–69; PTB, p. 148.
19. PTB to “Friend Stratton,” Aug. 6, 1845, Barnum Museum; SL, pp. 32, 34, PTB to Moses Kimball, Apr. 30 and Aug. 26, 1845. New York Atlas, Jan. 18, 1846, cited in PTB, p. 147.
20. Hone, The Diary of Philip Hone, vol. 2, p. 795; S&T, pp. 303, 307; Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, p. 154.
21. PTB to MK, Jan. 4, 1847, Boston Athenaeum.
EIGHT: AT HOME
1. PTB to “Mrs. B,” Aug. 13, 1845, Barnum Museum.
2. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 25, 1846; Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America, p. 114.
3. Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, p. 64; PTB, p. 148.
4. SL, p. 35, PTB to MK, Aug. 18, 1846.
5. PTB, p. 150; SL, pp. 35–37, PTB to MK, Aug. 18, 1846, and Mar. 30, 1847. The Great Western, the steamship on which he had returned to New York in April, was one he would often take to cross the Atlantic, in spite of having bad relations with its captain, who at one point threatened to place Barnum in irons for too strenuously arguing about who should be conducting Sunday services on the ship.
6. PTB to MK, Jan. 4, 1847, Boston Athenaeum.
7. PTB, p. 150; Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, p. 71; PTB to MK, Jan. 4, 1847, Boston Athenaeum.
8. Hone, The Diary of Philip Hone, p. 795, cited in Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, p. 73.
9. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan. 29, 1849.
10. SL, pp. 37–38, PTB to MK, Mar. 30, 1847.
11. PTB, p. 372n4; Life of PTB, pp. 401–3.
12. Boston Daily Atlas, Nov. 2, 1846; S&T, p. 309.
13. PTB, p. 372n7; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Aug. 31, 1848.
14. S&T, p. 311.
15. Caroline Barnum, “Diary, July 5–Aug. 11, 1848,” Bridgeport Public Library, cited in PTB, pp. 153–54 and Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, pp. 79–80.
16. A. H. Saxon, ed., Tom Thumb Performs in Danbury (Extracts from the Oak Cottage Diary of James White Nichols) (Fairfield, CT: Jumbo’s Press, 2010), pp. xxiv–xxviii.
17. Life of PTB, pp. 366–78.
18. S&T, p. 313. A newspaper story at the time reported that Barnum and Kimball spent only $3,500 for the museum and that “both of them had long been in treaty for it, and but for a compromise between them, it would probably have brought from 30 to $40,000” (Boston Courier, Dec. 3, 1849).
19. Life of PTB, pp. 109, 359–62.
20. Sun (New York), Jan. 13, 1884, cited in P. T. Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs; or, Fifty Years’ Recollections of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself, author’s edition (Buffalo, NY: Courier, 1884), Hathi Trust Digital Library, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015005687804;view=1up;seq=411.
21. Ibid.
22. Life of PTB, pp. 349–51.
23. Daily National Whig (Washington), Mar. 26, 1849, reprinting an item from the Newark, N. J., Advertiser. A good brief description of the expedition is in Tom Chaffin, Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire (New York: Hill & Wang, 2002), pp. 396–404. Chaffin writes that Kit Carson said of the guide who led the relief detail, “In starving times no man who knew him ever walked in front of Bill Williams” (p. 402).
24. New York Herald, Apr. 18, 1849.
NINE: THE VOICE
1. Shultz, Jenny Lind, pp. 117–18; “Jenny Lind,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://archive.org/stream/encyclopaediabri16chisrich#page/716/mode/2up/search/Lind; Times (London), May 5, 1847.
2. Bulman, Jenny Lind, pp. 158, 164.
3. New York Herald, July 25, 1847.
4. S&T, pp. 215–16.
5. Bulman, Jenny Lind, p. 20.
6. Life of PTB, pp. 296–97.
7. Times (London), May 11, 1849.
8. Bulman, Jenny Lind, pp. 195–219; Shultz, Jenny Lind, pp. 131–44.
9. Bulman, Jenny Lind, pp. 220–21, 225.
10. Shultz, Jenny Lind, pp. 147–48.
11. Ibid., pp. 152–55; Leech, Reveille in Washington, pp. 290–91.
12. Life of PTB, pp. 298–304.
13. Shultz, Jenny Lind, p. 154.
14. Life of PTB, pp. 302–6.
15. Boston Daily Atlas, Feb. 21, 1850; S&T, p. 327.
16. North Star (Rochester, NY), Feb. 22, 1850.
17. New York Express, cited in Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, Aug. 20, 1850; Life of PTB, p. 309.
18. Life of PTB, p. 306; Shultz, Jenny Lind, p. 161; Times (London), Aug. 21, 1850.
19. Holland and Rockstro, Memoir of Madame Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt, vol. 2, p. 411.
20. Life of PTB, p. 307.
21. New-York Daily Tribune, Sept. 2, 1850.
22. Life of PTB, pp. 307–8.
23. The kingdoms of Sweden and Norway were united under the Swedish crown for much of the nineteenth century, and the kingdoms had a united flag as well as individual flags. The Herald reported that in this instance the united flag of Sweden and Norway was flown.
24. New York Herald, Sept. 2, 1850.
TEN: TEMPLES OF ENTERTAINMENT
1. New York Herald, June 16, 1850.
2. The availability of ice water and good ventilation mattered on summer days in New York. Barnum and the owners of other theaters promoted in their ads both fresh air and ease of escape in case of fire. See the Bowery Theatre ad in New York Herald, July 4, 1850.
3. Barnum’s American Museum Illustrated (New York: William Van Norden & Frank Leslie, 1850), p. 2.
4. The Nation, Aug. 10, 1865, cited in PTB, pp. 107, 362n52; PTB, p. 105.
5. Speculation has it that a Boston Unitarian minister, Rev. John Pierpont, wrote the original story but remained anonymous because of the low reputation of theater (Uncle Tom’s Cabin & American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive, “The Drunkard,” http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/sentimnt/drunkardhp.html); SL, p. 39, PTB to MK, Feb. 2, 1848; SL, p. 42, circular letter, June 1850. Adams, E Pluribus Barnum, p. 119, points out that the play also appeared at the National and Bowery theaters at the same time.
6. New-York Daily Tribune, June 19, 1850.
7. J. B. Pond, Eccentricities of Genius: Memories of Famous Men and Women of the Platform and Stage (London: Chatto & Windus, 1901), pp. 350–51, cited in PTB, p. 334.
8. National Park Service, “Castle Clinton,” https://www.nps.gov/cacl/learn/historyculture/index.htm; National Park Service, Manhattan Historic Sites Archive, “Castle Clinton National Monument,” http://www.mhsarchive.org/castle-clinton.aspx?dir=cacl.
9. New-York Daily Tribune, Sept. 12, 1850.
10. New York Herald, Sept. 12, 1850; Shultz, Jenny Lind, pp. 194–95.
11. S&T, p. 341; PTB, pp. 174–75; Adams, E Pluribus Barnum, pp. 43–44; Shultz, Jenny Lind, p. 202. Shultz writes that the proprietor of the New York Hotel claimed to have paid Barnum $1,000 a day if Lind stayed there, and that Barnum repeated this sort of arrangement throughout her tour.
12. New-York Daily Tribune, Sept. 23, 1850; Bulman, Jenny Lind, p. 254.
13. As Saxon points out, it is odd that this second friend did not see the publicity value in bidding for the first ticket. He was the patent-medicine purveyor Benjamin Brandreth, a household name for decades in the nineteenth century, famous from the mass advertising of his products, and as one of the pioneers of mass advertising, an early model for Barnum (PTB, pp. 76, 169). Rosenberg, Jenny Lind in America, pp. 44–45, says that Colonel Ross did attend each of the Lind concerts in Havana the next spring. Lind’s comment: Field, Memories of Many Men, p. 220.
14. Rosenberg, Jenny Lind in America, pp. 44–49.
15. New York Herald, Oct. 14, 1850.
16. Ibid.; Rosenberg, Jenny Lind in America, pp. 57–64.
ELEVEN: BEFORE THE FALL
1. Letter from Lind to Judge Henric Munthe, Oct. 2, 1850, in Holland and Rockstro, Memoir of Madame Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt, vol. 2, p. 420; New York Herald, Oct. 15, 1850.
2. Life of PTB, p. 319; Shultz, Jenny Lind, p. 223.
3. Letter from Lind to Amalia Wichmann, Dec. 5, 1850, in Holland and Rockstro, Memoir of Madame Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt, p. 423.
4. Field, Memories of Many Men, pp. 216–19.
5. SL, pp. 50–51, PTB to Joshua Bates, Oct. 23, 1850.
6. Smith, The Theatrical Journey-Work, p. 7; S&T, pp. 378–79.
7. Barnum had hoped to present Lind to America in what would have been called Jenny Lind Hall, which at a cost of $100,000 was being built and decorated on Broadway at the foot of Bond Street. The hall, which Barnum expected to seat 5,600, would be one of the largest theaters in New York, but it was not ready until October, by which time Lind had left the city on her nationwide tour. So it was instead named Tripler Hall for the two Tripler brothers who had built it. Barnum implied in advertisements that the hall was his project, and it’s possible he invested in it, but the Tripler brothers were at least temporarily its owners. Lind did appear there in late October. By her final performance in the hall in 1852, and her penultimate one in America, it was under new management, as was Lind herself. New York Herald, Oct. 15 and Oct. 25, 1850.
8. The Republic (Washington), Dec. 18, 1850.
9. Daily Union (Washington), Dec. 18, 1850; Field, Memories of Many Men, p. 220.
10. S&T, pp. 356–57.
11. Life of PTB, pp. 327–28.
12. Field, Memories of Many Men, p. 219. He writes of Belletti, “The barytone of the troupe which accompanied her . . . was madly in love with her, and he used to lie in bed all day, weeping and howling over his unrequited affection.” Kunhardts, p. 91; Life of PTB, p. 326.
13. SL, p. 56, PTB to Moses S. and Alfred Ely Beach, Feb. 10, 1851.
14. Life of PTB, pp. 342–43.
15. Ibid., p. 341.
TWELVE: PUTTING OUT FIRES
1. Life of PTB, p. 348; William L. Slout, Olympians of the Sawdust Circle: A Biographical Dictionary of the Nineteenth Century American Circus (Rockville, MD: Wildside Press, 1998), p. 136.
2. Life of PTB, pp. 348–49; advertisement in Hartford (CT) Weekly Times, May 24, 1851, reproduced in S&T after p. 390.
3. S&T, pp. 410–12.
4. New York Herald, Dec. 19, 1851; New-York Daily Tribune, Dec. 19, 1851; Southern Press (Washington, D.C.), Dec. 20, 1851; George P. Little, The Fireman’s Own Book: Containing Accounts of Fires throughout the United States as Well as Other Countries (New York: Self-published, 1860), p. 283.
5. S&T, pp. 415, 417.
6. SL, pp. 61–62, PTB to William Makepeace Thackeray, Nov. 29, 1852; pp. 63–64, PTB to Edward Everett, Feb. 7, 1852.
7. S&T, pp. 412–13; Leland, Memoirs, pp. 200–211.
8. S&T, pp. 412–14.
9. SL, p. 80, PTB to MK, Sept. 4, 1854.
10. SL, p. 81, PTB to MK, Sept. 6, 1854. Redfield apparently rushed it out for the holiday gift season, and this version of the book is generally described as the 1855 edition.
11. PTB, p. 19.
12. SL, p. 83, two letters to various editors, copies of which were written both in his hand and by others. See, for example, The Jeffersonian, Oct. 26, 1854, which published an anecdote about one of his brothers, “From the Autobiography of P. T. Barnum.”
13. If there had been hard feelings between Barnum and Redfield that fall, they might have been attributed to Barnum’s having sold European rights to the book without letting Redfield know. Evening Star (Washington), Nov. 13, 1854.
14. PTB, p. 9. See also Saxon, Barnumiana (1995), p. 15.
15. New-York Times, Dec. 12 and Dec. 16, 1854; New York Herald, Dec. 12, 1854; PTB, p. 12.
16. Trumpet and Universalist Magazine, Mar. 10, 1855; “Revelations of a Showman,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Feb. 1855, pp. 187–201; Punch, Sept. 1, 1855, p. 89, all cited in Harris, Humbug, p. 228. In fact there was a minor push to offer Barnum as a candidate for U.S. president in 1888, but nothing came of it.
17. Trumpet and Universalist Magazine, Mar. 24, 1855, cited in PTB, p. 14.
THIRTEEN: A RUINED MAN
1. Life of PTB, pp. 383–85; PTB, pp. 192–93. Timothy Dwight IV was a former president of Yale College; quoted from his Travels in New-England and New-York (London: William Baynes and Son, 1828). S&T, p. 421. William Noble would go on to form the first regiment of Connecticut Volunteers during the Civil War. He was seriously wounded at Chancellorsville and spent a month in Bridgeport recuperating sufficiently to lead what was left of his regiment into Gettysburg after the Confederates had been driven out. Still later in the war he was captured and sent to the infamous Andersonville prison in Georgia, as a colonel the highest-ranking Union officer sent there, and after four months was released in a prisoner exchange. Bridgeport History Center, Lehman, Eric D., “General William Henry Noble.” https://bportlibrary.org/hc/barnum-and-related-items/general-william-henry-noble/.
2. Life of PTB, p. 385.
3. S&T, pp. 423–26; Chauncey Jerome, History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years (New Haven, CT: F. C. Dayton Jr., 1860), pp. 106–16.
4. S&T, p. 426.
5. Ibid., p. 441.
6. PTB, p. 198; SL, p. 91, PTB to “My dear Doctor,” Feb. 2, 1856.
7. New York Post, Feb. 14, 1856; S&T, p. 440.
8. S&T, pp. 427; SL, pp. 91, 93, PTB to unidentified correspondent, Feb. 2, 1856 and to William H. Noble, Apr. 24, 1856.
9. SL, p. 92; S&T, pp. 445–47.
10. Ralph L. Rusk, ed., The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), vol. 4, p. 541, letter to Lidian Emerson, Dec. 30, 1855; Kunhardts, p. 123; Daily Dispatch (Richmond, VA), Feb. 19, 1856.
11. S&T, pp. 434–37.
12. S&T, p. 429; New-York Daily Tribune, June 4, 1856; New York Herald, June 5, 1856.
13. S&T, p. 431; New-York Daily Tribune, June 4, 1856.
14. Lewis, Across the Atlantic, pp. 24–25.
15. SL, pp. 95–96, PTB to Benjamin Webster, Dec. 20, 1856; S&T, p. 450.
16. S&T, pp. 458, 454–57; SL, p. 97, PTB to Rev. Abel C. Thomas, Mar. 9, 1857.
17. S&T, pp. 460–65, 469–70.
18. Ibid., pp. 474–75.
19. Ibid., pp. 475–76; Grantham Journal, Oct. 29, 1859.
20. S&T, pp. 477–79; Freedley, A Practical Treatise on Business, pp. 306–12.
21. S&T, pp. 831–36.
22. Ibid., p. 478.
23. Times (London), Dec. 30, 1858. A recent example of a historian repeating the squeaky voice myth is Edwin G. Burrows in his 2017 book, The Finest Building in America (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 147.
24. S&T, p. 479.
25. Saxon says that about sixty of these one hundred speeches were given outside of London (PTB, p. 202). Birmingham (U.K.) Daily Post, Jan. 27, 1859; Cambridge (U.K.) Independent Press, Feb. 26, 1859.
26. S&T, pp. 481–83.
27. SL, p. 102, PTB to MK, June 25, 1859.
28. New York Herald, Oct. 11, 1859. Numerous ads appear in newspapers in New York, Baltimore, Washington, and elsewhere in late 1859 and 1860. SL, p. 104, PTB to Sol Smith, Apr., 4, 1860; S&T, p. 493.
29. S&T, pp. 494–99.
30. New York Herald, Mar. 27, 1860.
31. S&T, pp. 519, 669–70; PTB, p. 214.
FOURTEEN: THE WAR AND A WEDDING
1. New-York Tribune, Mar. 27, 1860.
2. Strong, Diary, vol. 3, p. 12, Mar. 2, 1860, cited in PTB, p. 99; Kunhardts, p. 149.
3. New York Clipper, cited in Adams, E Pluribus Barnum, p. 158; New-York Tribune, Mar. 1 and Mar. 30, 1860; Cook, The Colossal P. T. Barnum Reader, p. 135; SL, p. 35, PTB to MK, Aug. 18, 1846.
4. PTB, p. 98; Times (London), Aug. 29, 1846; Life of PTB, p. 346.
5. PTB, p. 99; Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 141. Bogdan, a sociologist, claims, “No scientist or [mental health] professional of the nineteenth century is on record as calling any freak show distasteful.”
6. The New-York Times ran more than two hundred stories about the prince’s visit to North America. For his visit to New York, the Times, Herald, Tribune, and Harper’s Weekly, Nov. 3, 1860.
7. S&T, pp. 514–15.
8. New-York Times, Oct. 14, 1860; S&T, p. 516.
9. S&T, p. 517.
10. New-York Daily Tribune, Feb. 27, 1860; Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
11. New York Herald, Feb. 21, 1861.
12. S&T, p. 566.
13. Ibid., pp. 567–69. Barnum quotes at length from W. A. Croffut and John M. Morris, The Military and Civil History of Connecticut During the War of 1861–65 (New York: Ledyard Bill, 1868), pp. 107–9; New-York Daily Tribune, Aug. 25, 1861.
14. SL, p. 113, PTB to Abraham Lincoln, Aug. 30, 1861.
15. SL, pp. 86–87, PTB to Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, c. Apr. 1855.
16. PTB, p. 217.
17. S&T, p. 570.
18. Ibid., pp. 531–32. See, for example, New York Herald, Jan. 21, 1862.
19. S&T, p. 534; Leech, Reveille in Washington, p. 222.
20. Evening Star (Washington), Oct. 21, 1862; S&T, pp. 535–36.
21. Robert Wilson, Mathew Brady: Portraits of a Nation (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 137.
22. S&T, pp. 541, 543; New-York Tribune, Jan. 13, 1863.
23. Stratton, Sketch of the Life, p. 9; S&T, pp. 541–57; New-York Tribune, Jan. 5 and Jan. 13, 1863.
24. S&T, pp. 557–62; New-York Times, Feb. 11, 1863.
25. Evening Star (Washington), Feb. 12, 13, and 14, 1863; Grace Greenwood, from Abraham Lincoln: Tributes from His Associates (New York: Clarke Sales Co., 1895), p. 111; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, Mar. 7, 1863.
26. PTB, p. 209; Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, pp. 154–57.
1. New York Herald, Nov. 27, 1864; Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, p. 903; Evening Star (Washington), Nov. 26, 1864; National Intelligencer, Dec. 1, 1864.
2. “On This Day,” New-York Times, May 27, 2001.
3. New-York Times, July 14, 1865.
4. S&T, pp. 589–91; New York Herald, July 15, 1865. As it happened, Union general Joseph Hooker had watched the fire from the Astor House, where he had been staying.
5. New York Herald, July 16, 1865.
6. Kunhardts, p. 190; New-York Times, July 14, 1865.
7. S&T, pp. 575–88; SL, p. 133, PTB to Theodore Tilton, May 29, 1865.
8. Hartford (CT) Courant, May 4, 2015.
9. S&T, pp. 607–8.
10. William H. Barnum would become most famous, or infamous, for his long tenure as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, during which in the 1880 presidential election he distributed a letter he knew to be fraudulent in which Republican candidate James A. Garfield purportedly wrote that he was in favor of Chinese immigration, an unpopular stance. The letter was a major “October surprise” that, although false, nearly cost Garfield the election. Cousin Barnum in 1876 earned the sobriquet “Seven Mule” for having used those words as a code in a telegram instructing its recipient to take $7,000 from a secret presidential campaign fund. For his actions in both of these presidential elections he was widely mocked as the worst kind of unprincipled political hack. Stan M. Haynes, President-Making in the Gilded Age: The Nominating Conventions of 1876–1900 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016), p. 106.
11. “The Two Hundred Thousand and First Curiosity in Congress,” The Nation, Mar. 7, 1867, pp. 190–92.
12. New York Evening Express, Mar. 5, 1867, reprinted in Twain, Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays, pp. 210–13. As it happens, in November 1880, Twain would give a speech and dedicate a satirical poem making fun of “Bill [i.e., William H.] Barnum” (Twain Quotes, “Mark Twain Takes a Swipe at ‘Seven Mule’ Barnum,” November 6, 1880, http://www.twainquotes.com/BillBarnum.html).
13. Hawley was breveted as a major general after the war before returning to civilian life. Letter from Joseph Roswell Hawley to Richard Henry Dana Jr., Apr. 2, 1867, cited in PTB, pp. 223–24.
14. S&T, pp. 609–10.
15. New York Herald, July 22, 1865.
16. Sun (New York), Sept. 6, 1865. The official opening did not come until November 13. Once the tours were given, Barnum had the curtain raised, exposing tables of food and drink on the stage. The showman invited his guests up, asking them to be actors in “a very clever gastronomical performance,” as the Sun reporter put it.
17. S&T, pp. 615–24.
18. Ibid., pp. 638–39, 643–45.
19. Ibid., p. 673.
20. Emerson, “The Barnums.”
21. S&T, p. 645.
22. Ibid., p. 647; New-York Tribune, March 3, 1868.
23. S&T, p. 646.
24. New York Herald, Mar. 3, 1868; S&T, p. 646; New-York Tribune, Mar. 4, 1868; Emerson, “The Barnums.”
SIXTEEN: SHOW FEVER
1. S&T, p. 651.
2. New York Herald, Aug. 31, 1868; New-York Tribune, Sept. 1, 1868.
3. S&T, chapters 45 and 46, pp. 660–74, are titled “Sea-side Park” and “Waldemere”; the quote beginning “a regiment” is on p. 671.
4. Ibid., p. 672.
5. PTB to George H. Emerson, May 23, 1868, and to Whitelaw Reid, May 20, 1869, cited in PTB, p. 19. Whitelaw Reid would also serve as U.S. ambassador to France and to the Court of St. James’s, and in 1892 would run unsuccessfully for vice president of the United States on the ticket of incumbent president Benjamin Harrison. Reid was still settling in at the Trib at the time Barnum approached him for advice and was having the usual newspaperman’s doubts about whether he should be doing something else: “I am sometimes haunted by my old feeling,” he wrote to his friend the future president James A. Garfield, “that I might better be at magazine or book work, if I could afford it.” The work with Barnum, then, would have been a short respite during which he could scratch that itch. Royal Cortissoz, The Life of Whitelaw Reid, Vol. 1 (London: Thornton, 1921), p. 146.
6. Sun (New York), Sept. 24, 1869; Bellows Falls (VT) Times, Nov. 19, 1869.
7. Barnum, The Humbugs of the World, p. 20.
8. PTB, p. 160.
9. Barnum, Funny Stories, pp. 332–35.
10. Clemens, Mark Twain’s Sketches, pp. 215–21.
11. S&T, pp. 484–87, 676–79; PTB, p. 227.
12. PTB, p. 232. Castello’s last name was often spelled Costello.
13. Coup, Sawdust & Spangles, foreword; SL, pp. 162, 163, 165, PTB to W. C. Coup, Oct. 8, 1870, and to Moses Kimball, Nov. 22, 1870, and Feb. 18, 1871.
14. S&T (1872 ed.), pp. 856–57.
15. S&T, p. 681.
16. S&T, p. 682; S&T (1872 ed.), pp. 861–64; Sun (New York), Nov. 11, 1871.
17. S&T, pp. 683–84; S&T (1873 ed.), pp. 762–63; PTB, p. 239.
18. S&T (1873 ed.), p. 766.
19. S&T, p. 685; PTB, pp. 228–29.
20. S&T, pp. 686–87; S&T (1873 ed.), pp. 769–74.
SEVENTEEN: MARRIAGE BONDS
1. Emerson, “The Barnums,” p. 219.
2. S&T (1873 ed.), pp. 841–43; PTB, pp. 228, 249, 393n10; SL, pp. 178–79, PTB to John Greenwood Jr. (?), Dec. 19, 1873, and to George H. Emerson, Feb. 21, 1874.
3. Emerson, “The Barnums,” pp. 215–20; quote beginning “perhaps causing her to exaggerate” is on p. 219.
4. Kunhardts, pp. 238–39. The Kunhardts say that Mary K. Witkowski, then of the Bridgeport Public Library, told them of a conversation she had with a cousin of Nancy’s that led them to discover the marriage certificate in London (348n).
5. S&T (1875 ed.), pp. 850–64. In 1870 parts of Fairfield, including Mountain Grove Cemetery, much of Seaside Park, and the properties where Barnum’s mansions were, had been, or would be, were annexed by the city of Bridgeport.
6. Ibid., pp. 851, 863, 867; New York Herald, Sept. 17, 1874; PTB, p. 253; New-York Tribune, Sept. 17, 1874.
EIGHTEEN: EXCITEMENT, PEPPER, & MUSTARD
1. S&T, pp. 697–98; S&T (1875 ed.), pp. 849–50.
2. New York Herald, April 26, 1874; New-York Tribune, May 30, 1874.
3. SL, p. 180, PTB to Mrs. Abel C. Thomas, May 22, 1874.
4. Andrew Hoffman, Inventing Mark Twain (New York: William Morrow, 1997), p. 496.
5. New-York Tribune, Feb. 5, 1872.
6. Twain, Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays, pp. 573–77.
7. SL, pp. 182–83, PTB to Samuel L. Clemens, July 16, 1874, and July 31, 1874.
8. Ibid., pp. 193 and 195, PTB to Samuel L. Clemens, Mar. 24, 1875, and Oct. 2, 1875.
9. See, for example, SL, pp. 188–91, 196–98, PTB to Samuel L. Clemens, Jan. 19, 1875, and Mar. 20, 1876.
10. SL, pp. 202, 204, 205, PTB to Samuel L. Clemens, Oct. 10, 1877, Jan. 10, 1878, and Jan. 14, 1878.
11. PTB, p. 251.
12. S&T, pp. 710–23; PTB, pp. 263–65.
13. S&T, p. 720.
14. Ibid., pp. 727–30.
15. Ibid., pp. 725–26.
16. PTB, p. 32.
17. S&T, pp. 731–34; PTB, pp. 270–73; SL, pp. 203, 214–15, PTB to Whitelaw Reid, Jan. 10, 1878, and to Joseph Roswell Hawley, Nov. 9, [1880].
18. S&T, pp. 736–40; PTB, pp. 235–37; Edward O’Reilly, “Henry Bergh: Angel in Top Hat or the Great Meddler?,” From the Stacks (blog), New-York Historical Society, Mar. 21, 2012, http://blog.nyhistory.org/henry-bergh-angel-in-top-hat-or-the-great-meddler/.
19. S&T, p. 737; PTB, p. 238; New-York Times, Mar. 17, 1888.
20. The Kunhardts, p. 269, quote Bergh as saying, “Whether . . . it is humane and praiseworthy to rescue . . . rare animals from the . . . jungle . . . and drag them through Christian lands to have peanuts and tobacco thrown at them by gaping crowds and then perish as they mostly do . . . drowned, shot, or burned—is at least open to question.”
NINETEEN: AND BAILEY
1. S&T, p. 741, n2.
2. New-York Times, Apr. 19, 1891.
3. S&T, pp. 742–43; PTB, pp. 285–86.
4. New-York Tribune, Nov. 24, 1880; New-York Times, Dec. 14, 1880; PTB, p. 273; S&T, pp. 743–44.
5. New-York Tribune, Mar. 27 and 29, 1881; New York Herald, Mar. 29, 1881; S&T, p. 745.
6. SL, p. 217, PTB to James A. Garfield, Mar. 12, 1881; S&T, pp. 747–48.
7. S&T, pp. 748, 753; PTB, p. 275.
8. PTB, pp. 276, 285.
9. Conklin, The Ways of the Circus, pp. 295–97; Richard E. Conover, The Affairs of James A. Bailey: New Revelations on the Career of the World’s Most Successful Showman, pamphlet (Xenia, OH: Self-published, 1957), pp. 1–3, 17.
10. Conklin, The Ways of the Circus, p. 299.
11. SL, pp. 297–98, PTB to James A. Bailey, July 5, 1888.
12. SL, p. 264, PTB to Mrs. James A. Bailey, July 5, 1885. Bailey married Ruth Louisa McCaddon of Zanesville, Ohio, in 1868.
13. Bartlett, Wild Animals in Captivity, pp. 45–49; S&T, pp. 756–57; PTB, pp. 291–92. In an article that appeared shortly after Barnum’s death, Bailey, or perhaps a circus publicity agent speaking for him, took credit for having found and purchased Jumbo. A publicity effort was made after Barnum’s death to downplay his role in Barnum & Bailey (New-York Times, Apr. 19, 1891).
14. Ruskin, The Works of John Ruskin, vol. 34, p. 561.
15. S&T, pp. 757–58; New-York Tribune, Mar. 11, 1882.
16. S&T, p. 759.
17. Sun (New York), Apr. 10, 1882.
18. Ibid. The distance between the park and the docks is just over four miles.
19. New-York Tribune, Apr. 10, 1882.
20. New-York Tribune, Apr. 9, 10, and 11, 1882.
21. S&T, p. 760, and image of an ad between pp. 758 and 759.
22. New-York Times, Apr. 19, 1891; Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), Sept. 19, 1885; S&T, pp. 785–86.
23. New-York Tribune, Sept. 17, 1885; SL, pp. 241, 265, letter and telegram to Henry A. Ward, Oct. 9, 1883, and Sept. 17, 1885.
24. Kunhardts, p. 301. A team led by David Attenborough for a BBC documentary studied the skeleton and concluded that Jumbo had been only 10.5 feet tall and that his bones showed the ill effects of carrying so many children on his back—often eight or nine at a time (Sun [U.K.], Dec. 10, 2017).
25. SL, p. 271, PTB to James A. Bailey, Oct. 12, 1885.
26. S&T, pp. 787–90; PTB, p. 312.
TWENTY: LAST YEARS
1. S&T, pp. 799–801; SL, p. 311, PTB to James A. Bailey, Apr. 14, 1889.
2. S&T, pp. 744, 764, 790; New-York Tribune, July 20, 1883; Sun (New York), July 23, 1883; Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, pp. 208–9.
3. SL, p. 311, PTB to James A. Bailey, Apr. 14, 1889.
4. SL, p. 328, PTB to James A. Bailey, Aug. 24, 1890; PTB, p. 115; Barnum, Funny Stories, p. 359.
5. PTB, pp. 281–82.
6. Ibid., pp. 289–90.
7. Ibid., 254–55.
8. SL, pp. 225, 279, 284, 288, 292, PTB to Carrie Bailey, Apr. 24, 1882; Lucy A. Thomas, July 10, 1886; Henry Rennell, Mar. 1, July 27, and Sept. 12, 1887.
9. PTB, pp. 316–17.
10. Ibid., pp. 279–80, 325.
11. Barnum also gave much smaller amounts to St. Lawrence University in upstate New York and Lombard College in Ohio. PTB, pp. 53–54, 57–58; SL, pp. 251–52, PTB to Rev. E. H. Capen, June 12, 1884.
12. Sun (New York), cited in Indianapolis Journal, Oct. 14, 1889.
13. Barnum, Funny Stories, p. 359.
14. Conklin, The Ways of the Circus, p. 253.
15. Nancy Barnum, S&T, p. 817.
16. Barnum, Funny Stories, pp. 366–67.
17. Sporting Times (London), Dec. 14, 1889.
18. Licensed Victuallers’ Mirror (London), Dec. 31, 1889.
19. Barnum, Funny Stories, p. 367.
20. Ibid., p. v.
21. New-York Tribune, Mar. 15, 1891; SL, pp. 319–21, PTB to James A. Bailey, Feb. 22 and 26, 1890; S&T, pp. 817–18. At Barnum’s request, Nancy wrote “Last Chapter” for his autobiography after his death.
22. S&T, pp. 811–12; Kunhardts, p. 328.
23. S&T, p. 818.
24. Ibid., pp. 818–19.
25. Ibid., pp. 819, 821; PTB, pp. 325–26.
26. New-York Tribune, Mar. 15, 1891; Newtown (CT) Bee, Apr. 10, 1891.
27. S&T, pp. 821–22.
28. New-York Times, Apr. 8, 1891; Times (London), Apr. 8, 1891.
29. Newtown (CT) Bee, Apr. 10, 1891; Sun (New York), Apr. 10 and 11, 1891.
30. New-York Tribune, Apr. 11, 1891.