After the failure of the Jerome Clock Company, Barnum took stock of his position. He had paid all his personal debts, but he still owed a half-million dollars on notes bearing his signature. The Clock Company was paying fifteen cents on the dollar to creditors. Barnum decided to pay thirty-three cents on the dollar for the sums that were his responsibility.
He sent the following word to a conclave of creditors in New Haven: "I was induced to agree to indorse and accept paper for that company to the extent of $110,000—no more. That sum I am now willing to pay for my own verdancy, with an additional sum of $40,000 for your cuteness, making a total of $150,000, which you can have if you cry 'quits' with the fleeced showman and let him off."
Most creditors, apparently, agreed to let Barnum off with this compromise. But others wanted their notes settled in full, and some sold their notes at reduced prices to speculators. At any rate, Barnum's total indebtedness was soon fixed in his mind, and he knew what he must earn to stand independently on his feet again.
Even as he determined to fight back, and searched his weary brain for a means of squaring himself, large numbers of persons rallied to his support. In June 1856, a letter signed by one thousand prominent New Yorkers was sent to Barnum. The letter stated: "The financial ruin of a man of acknowledged energy and enterprise is a public calamity. The sudden blow, therefore, that has swept away, from a man like yourself, the accumulated wealth of years, justifies we think, the public sympathy." The one thousand signers offered "a series of benefits." From Bridgeport a group of businessmen begged Barnum to accept a loan of $50,000. And dozens of people in show business, from Laura Keene, the actress, to William Niblo, proprietor of the Garden, suggested "receipts of their theatres for one evening."
Barnum was deeply moved. "While my enemies and a few envious persons and misguided moralists were abusing and traducing me," he said, "my very misfortunes revealed to me hosts of hitherto unknown friends who tendered to me something more than mere sympathy. Funds were offered to me in unbounded quantity for the support of my family and to re-establish me in business." These offers, one and all, Barnum gratefully declined. "I declined these tenders because, on principle, I never accepted a money favor. . . ."
Among the many offers of assistance that he received, one touched and interested the showman most of all. Written on the stationery of the Jones' Hotel in Philadelphia, it was signed by General Tom Thumb:
"My Dear Mr. Barnum,—I understand your friends (and that means 'all creation') intend to get up some benefits for your family. Now, my dear sir, just be good enough to remember that I belong to that mighty crowd, and I must have a finger (or at least a 'thumb') in that pie. . . . I have just started out on my western tour, and have my carriage, ponies and assistants all here, but I am ready to go on to New York, bag and baggage, and remain at Mrs. Barnum's service as long as I, in my small way, can be useful. Put me into any 'heavy' work, if you like. Perhaps I cannot lift as much as some other folks, but just take your pencil in hand and you will see I can draw a tremendous load. I drew two hundred tons at a single pull today, embracing two thousand persons, whom I hauled up safely and satisfactorily to all parties, at one exhibition. Hoping that you will be able to fix up a lot of magnets that will attract all New York, and volunteering to sit on any part of the loadstone, I am, as ever, your little but sympathizing friend. . . ."
At first, Barnum refused his onetime miniature partner. And Tom Thumb, under his own management, continued west. Barnum, who still had hopes for East Bridgeport, occupied himself with persuading the prosperous Wheeler and Wilson Sewing Machine Company to take over an empty factory. When the move was made, Barnum finally agreed to borrow $5,000, without security, from the Sewing Machine Company. Adding this to his wife's private savings, Barnum bought back many undeveloped acres of his East Bridgeport property which were being sold at public auction by his creditors. Though the investment gave him no immediate relief, he admitted that eventually it put "more money into my pocket than the Jerome complication had taken out."
Meanwhile, less than a year later, Tom Thumb had concluded his western tour and again offered himself to his discoverer. This time, determined to return to show business, Barnum accepted. But he wanted another novelty to bolster Tom Thumb. He did not have to search far.
At the time, the nine-year-old Cordelia Howard was scoring a hit as Little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin. When Mrs. Stowe's novel had first appeared, Cordelia's father, who managed a stock company, had learned that the dramatic rights were not reserved. He assigned an actor in his troupe, his cousin George L. Aikin, to convert the novel into a play. The entire Howard family—father, mother, and five-year-old Cordelia as Little Eva—opened in the play in July 1853, and were soon on the road to riches. They had been performing Uncle Tom's Cabin for four years when Barnum signed the company for his European tour. Now, in 1857, Cordelia was one of Barnum's hopes. Satisfied with his prodigy and his midget, Barnum sailed for England. (Shortly after returning from abroad, at the age of twelve, blonde Cordelia retired from the stage; eight years later, she married a Cambridge bookbinder. She died in 1941, at ninety-three.)
The publication of his autobiography and news of his business failure made Barnum uncertain of the reception that awaited him in London. But his mind was soon put at ease. An old friend, Dr. Albert Smith, a former dentist and author now successfully presenting melodramatic lectures on his conquest of Mont Blanc in 1851, welcomed Barnum with open arms and invited him time and again to the Garrick Club. Sir Julius Benedict and Giovanni Belletti came calling with invitations to dinner. Otto Goldschmidt, on behalf of Jenny Lind and himself, appeared and proffered financial aid. Joshua Bates, of Baring Brothers and Company, and George Sala, a foreign correspondent who had worked for Dickens, feted Barnum at their homes.
Best of all, the forty-six-year-old William Makepeace Thackeray, whose Vanity Fair was running monthly in Punch, and who was making a losing attempt to be elected to the House of Commons, renewed his acquaintance with Barnum. They had first met five years before. According to Barnum: "He called on me at the Museum with a letter of introduction from our mutual friend Albert Smith. He spent an hour with me, mainly for the purpose of asking my advice in regard to the management of the course of lectures on 'The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century,' which he proposed to deliver, as he did afterwards, with very great success, in the principal cities of the Union. I gave him the best advice I could as to management, and the cities he ought to visit, for which he was very grateful." However, according to Eyre Crowe, Thackeray's secretary and business manager, Barnum heard that the novelist was in New York and sent for him. When they met, Barnum asked Thackeray to write a series of articles on his impressions of the United States for the Illustrated News, which the showman was preparing to publish with Griswold and Leland. Barnum also hinted at other collaborative ventures, but Thackeray replied that he preferred to go it alone.
Now, in London, Thackeray greeted Barnum with warmth. "Mr. Barnum," he said, shaking his hand, "I admire you more than ever. I have read the accounts in the papers of the examinations you underwent in the New York courts, and the positive pluck you exhibit under your pecuniary embarrassments is worthy of all praise. You would never have received credit for the philosophy you manifest, if these financial misfortunes had not overtaken you." Barnum interrupted to express his thanks, but Thackeray went on. "Tell me, Barnum, are you really in need of present assistance? For if you are, you must be helped."
Barnum laughed. "Not in the least," he said. "I need more money in order to get out of bankruptcy and I intend to earn it; but so far as daily bread is concerned, I am quite at ease, for my wife is worth 30,000 to 40,000 pounds."
Thackeray was wide-eyed and impressed. "Is it possible? Well, now, you have lost all my sympathy. Why, that is more than I ever expect to be worth; I shall be sorry for you no more."
Nor had anyone any need to be sorry for Barnum. At work again, bombarding the press with publicity, inundating the city with provocative posters and handbills, Barnum knew that he still had the magic touch. For many weeks, the return of Tom Thumb was welcomed by increasing audiences, and Corcielia Howard as Little Eva was an immediate hit. Barnum thrived.
He moved his troupe to an engagement in Paris, and then to a stand in Strasbourg. In the German city, somewhat apologetically, he went to see a clock. "One would suppose that by this time I had had enough to do with clocks to last me my lifetime, but. . . I did not forget or fail to witness the great church clock which is nearly as famous as the cathedral itself. At noon precisely a mechanical cock crows; the bell strikes; figures of the twelve apostles appear and walk in procession." Next followed visits to Baden-Baden, Ems, Homburg, Wiesbaden, and Frankfurt. "These exhibitions were among the most profitable that had ever been given," said Barnum, "and I was able to remit thousands of dollars to my agents in the United States to aid in repurchasing my real estate and to assist in taking up such clock notes as were offered for sale."
Though his attractions were less successful in Amsterdam and Rotterdam—"the people are too frugal to spend much money for amusement"—Barnum enjoyed Holland more than any other foreign country he had ever visited, excepting England. He delighted in the cleanliness, industry, and sobriety in evidence everywhere. When he attended a country fair, his old showmanship instinct was again aroused by sight of an albino family, Rudolph Lucasie and his wife and son, all white and pink, though born of Negro parents. He hired them at once, with an eye to the near future.
Returning to New York late in 1857, Barnum learned that he had made inroads on his huge indebtedness. But still more money was needed. So, after Iranistan went up in flames, he decided on a tour of Scotland and Wales with Tom Thumb. As this tour progressed, Barnum realized that the midget did not require his close attention and management. Consequently, he turned Tom Thumb over to several assistants, and, to increase his income, undertook to convert himself into a public exhibit.
At the suggestion of several American friends in London, Barnum agreed to present a series of paid lectures on "The Art of Money-Getting." At first, still licking his clock wounds, he ruefully remarked that the lectures should be entitled, "The Art of Money-Losing." But his friends reminded him that he could not have lost a half million dollars if first he had not earned it.
His debut took place in spacious St. James's Hall, and it was widely advertised for the evening of December 29, 1858. Three thousand English folk paid from fifty to seventy-five cents each to attend, and there was standing room only. Encouraged by the turnout, and the many familiar faces, Barnum was at his best.
"In the United States, where we have more land than people," he began, "it is not at all difficult for persons in good health to make money." Mingling clichés with original humor, making frequent allusions to Benjamin Franklin, Micawber, Madame Tussaud, Henry Ward Beecher, Solomon, Cromwell, Rothschild, Goethe, John Jacob Astor, and Genin the hatter, Barnum sang out for concentration, organization, moderation, advertising, and integrity. Time and again he drew upon his past. "I was born in the blue-law State of Connecticut," he said, "where the old Puritans had laws so rigid that it was said they fined a man for kissing his wife on Sunday. Yet these rich old Puritans would have thousands of dollars at interest, and on Saturday night would be worth a certain amount. . . . On waking up on Monday morning, they would find themselves considerably richer than the Saturday night previous, simply because their money placed at interest had worked faithfully for them all day Sunday, according to law!" Yet, there were pitfalls. "Money is in some respects like fire—it is a very excellent servant but a terrible master." John Randolph, the Virginia eccentric, had the right idea. He had told Congress: "Mr. Speaker, I have discovered the philosopher's stone: pay as you go."
Barnum gave an emphatic warning born of a recent experience. "Don't indorse without security. I hold that no man ought ever to indorse a note or become security for any man, be it his father or brother, to a greater extent than he can afford to lose and care nothing about, without taking good security." And finally: "To all men and women, therefore, do I conscientiously say, make money honestly, and not otherwise, for Shakespeare has truly said, 'He that wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends."'
The lecture was well received. Nine major London newspapers praised it. The Times considered Barnum "one of the most entertaining lecturers that ever addressed an audience on a theme universally intelligible" and approved of his "dry humor," his "sonorous voice," his "admirably clear delivery." Buoyed up by this approval, Barnum delivered the same lecture almost one hundred times throughout England, including riotous appearances at Cambridge and Oxford. He refused $6,000 from a London publisher for the speech, but later included it in his autobiography and in a specially printed pamphlet. He enjoyed lecturing, and in his lifetime addressed an estimated 1,300,000 persons. Leaving England with Tom Thumb, considerably enriched, Barnum was satisfied: "The lecture itself was an admirable illustration of 'The Art of Money-Getting."
In New York again, having acquired his collection of curiosities from Greenwood and Butler, Barnum announced that he was back in business. Screaming posters shouted to the populace from every street corner: "Barnum on his feet again!" And in the New York Herald an advertisement promised that on the night of March 24, 1860, Barnum would appear on the platform of the Lecture Hall and formally take over the premises. "Between the first and second acts Mr. P. T. Barnum will appear and give a brief history of his Adventures as a Clock maker, showing how the clock ran down and how it was wound up. . . ."
A capacity crowd awaited him. Instead of appearing between acts, Barnum ascended the stage before the morality play commenced. He was met with an ovation greater than any he had ever experienced. He stood facing the deafening applause, tears streaming down his cheeks. At last, with a tremor, he began to speak.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said. "I should be more or less than human, if I could meet this unexpected and overwhelming testimonial at your hands, without the deepest emotion. My own personal connection with the Museum is now resumed, and I avail myself of the circumstance to say why it is so. Never did I feel stronger in my worldly prosperity than in September, 1855. Three months later, I was so deeply embarrassed that I felt certain of nothing, except the uncertainty of everything. A combination of singular efforts and circumstances tempted me to put faith in a certain clock manufacturing company, and I placed my signature to papers which ultimately broke me down. After nearly five years of hard struggle to keep my head above water, I have touched bottom at last, and here, tonight, I am happy to announce that I have waded ashore. Every clock debt of which I have any knowledge has been provided for."
The announcement of his solvency and resumption in show business was met with thunderous applause by the assembly, and with mingled congratulations and doubts by the press. As if in answer to his skeptical critics, Barnum resumed management of the Museum with a new vigor, Only fifty years of age—"scarcely old enough to be embalmed and put in a glass case in the Museum," he stated—Barnum was out to prove to the world that he was better than ever.
After a week of renovation, the Museum reopened under Barnum's banners and flags and to the accompaniment of his erratic musical band. From the start it was plain that his genius for showmanship had not left him. Newer and more startling novelties, animate and inanimate, were introduced and then whisked off, to be replaced by others. In short months, the daily attendance of the Museum doubled.
Even as Barnum improved his collection, he kept his eye open for outside enterprises. A month after he had resumed business, one such appeared. He was a gray-haired, weather-worn, gnarled, and white-bearded old western hunter attired in a cap made of a wolf's head and a buckskin suit trimmed with animal tails. He introduced himself as James C. Adams, known to most of the west as "Grizzly" Adams.
He told his story as Barnum listened, entranced. For years Adams had defied all dangers to hunt and trap in the Sierra Nevada mountains. He caught the wildest animals, and though much buffeted about by them, had trained them as pets. Now, at last, seeking security for his long-neglected wife and his daughter, he had brought a menagerie of California beasts on the clipper Golden Fleece around Cape Horn. He had imported from twenty to thirty huge grizzly bears—their leader he named Old Sampson, and their most delinquent he named General Frémont—as well as six other species of bears, and an assortment of wolves, lions, tigers, buffalo, and elk, and a massive sea lion answering to the name of Old Neptune.
While explaining to Barnum the difficulties involved in domesticating these animals, Adams pulled off his wolf's cap and revealed the top of his head. The skull was badly smashed and, as Barnum observed, his brain exposed "so that its workings were plainly visible." (Modern medical opinion agrees that Barnum may not have been exaggerating when he said "Grizzly" Adams's brain was visible, for, most likely, it was covered by the galea or thick, transparent healing tissue that contains the spinal fluid.) As Barnum studied the gaping wound with morbid fascination, Adams described how the injury had come about. Whenever he trained the bears, they delighted in playfully bashing him on the head. Thus, it had been broken in and healed many times. Recently, the bear known as General Frémont had struck him, and his head had cracked open like an eggshell.
Barnum remarked that it appeared to be "a dangerous wound and might possibly prove fatal." Adams nodded complacently. "Yes, that will fix me out. It had nearly healed; but Old Frémont opened it for me, for the third or fourth time, before I left California, and he did his business so thoroughly, I'm a used-up man. However, I reckon I may live six months or a year yet."
Barnum wondered if he was not worried, in this condition, about undertaking a public appearance with the grizzly bears.
The hunter signified that, worried or not, he had no choice. "Mr. Barnum, I am not the man I was five years ago. Then I felt able to stand the hug of any grizzly living, and was always glad to encounter, single-handed, any sort of an animal that dared present himself. But I have been beaten to a jelly, torn almost limb from limb, and nearly chawed up and spit out by these treacherous grizzly bears. However, I am good for a few months yet, and by that time I hope we shall gain enough to make my old woman comfortable for I have been absent from her some years."
Barnum readily agreed to present the California Menagerie on an equal-partnership basis. He would publicize and manage the show; Adams would put the animals through their paces. Learning that Adams's wife lived in Massachusetts, Barnum brought her to New York to nurse him. He also brought in his physician, who examined the head wound and was appalled. The physician prophesied that Adams would be in his grave within a few weeks, but the battered patient laughed off the prediction.
Taking the physician's words to heart, Barnum hurried to get the show before the public. He threw up a canvas tent on a vacant lot at the corner of Broadway and Thirteenth Street. Then, after a shower of publicity, he inaugurated what may have been the first large circus parade in history. On the morning of the opening, multitudes of spectators gathered on Broadway to view with astonishment James C. Adams, in his bizarre costume, astride the surprisingly docile General Frémont, both being drawn by a wagon. Preceded by a blaring band, followed by cage after cage of animals not familiar to the East, Adams made his way to the show tent.
Daily, though staggering under his infirmity, the hunter lashed the beasts through their acts as thousands watched with awe. After six weeks of performances, the weakened Adams gave in to Barnum's physician. He agreed to quit and sold out to the showman. But when Adams learned that Barnum intended to exhibit the menagerie through Connecticut and Massachusetts using a German trainer named Driesback in his stead, he protested. The animals would trust no one but himself. Moreover, he wanted every penny he could earn. He would handle the traveling zoo, he said, for sixty dollars a week and expenses for his wife and himself. Barnum did not think that he could survive such a tour. Adams snorted. "What will you give me extra if I will travel and exhibit the bears every day for ten weeks?" Barnum laughed. "Five hundred dollars," he said cheerfully. "Done!" exclaimed Adams.
Grimly determined to have his bonus from Barnum, Adams went on the tour, which became a race against death. After five weeks, Barnum visited the hunter in New Bedford. His eyes were glazed, his rough hands trembling, and he complained of the heat. Barnum begged him to quit, and offered him $250 if he would go home. But Adams rejected any compromise. He went on and on with the bears, scarcely able to lift an arm, until the tenth week had ended. Then, with exclamations of triumph, he accepted the $500.
Before retiring to Neponset, Massachusetts, with his wife, Adams spied a new beaver-hunting suit Barnum had ordered for the German trainer. Adams asked to borrow it. Barnum agreed, if it would be returned to him. "Yes," Adams said, "when I have done with it." He accompanied his wife to Neponset, where his daughter waited, went immediately to bed, and never left it alive. In five days, he was dead. His last request was to be buried in the new beaver-hunting suit—for he was not done with it, and would never be, and it would be a capital joke on Barnum. He was laid to rest in the beaver suit, and Barnum grieved his passing.
The grizzly bears, twenty or thirty of them, and the other beasts became permanent attractions of the Museum. Later, Barnum sold all but Old Neptune, the sea lion, who was pampered in a large tank of salt water.
Casting about for further sensations, Barnum proved again that he had lost none of his old cunning. In 1864 he read that a dozen long-feared Indian chiefs, representing four tribes, had been induced to visit Washington, D.C., and parley with President Lincoln. The most prominent member of the delegation was White Bull, nephew of Sitting Bull and high-ranking in his tribe's hierarchy. With him were Yellow Bear, fresh from the Wichita Mountains, and Yellow Buffalo, both Kiowas. Then there was War Bonnet, who, with Black Kettle, had dominated Colorado, and Lean Bear and Hand-in-the-Water, all Cheyennes. At once, Barnum had an inspiration. He met with the Indians' interpreter, and offered him a liberal bribe to bring them to New York to visit the Museum. The interpreter accepted the bribe and agreed to deliver them, but could not promise for what length of time. "You can only keep them just so long as they suppose all your patrons come to pay them visits of honor," he told Barnum. "If they suspected that your Museum was a place where people paid for entertaining, you could not keep them a moment after the discovery."
Presently the dozen chiefs arrived in New York. Barnum was introduced as their host. For several days he guided them about the Museum, always winding up with them on the stage of the Lecture Hall at the hour the performance was to begin. When there was nothing more to see in the Museum, the Indians accompanied Barnum in carriages to meet the Mayor, to visit public schools, to ride in Central Park—returning, at day's end, to the stage of the Museum, where they thought that they were being honored by streams of distinguished visitors.
When on the stage, the Indian chiefs would sit in a row while Barnum went down the line announcing each one's name and giving his background to the packed auditorium. Whenever he reached Yellow Bear, whom he despised for his record of butchery, Barnum would pat him on the shoulder and, in return, be stroked affectionately on the arm by the chief. Knowing that neither Yellow Bear nor his colleagues understood a word of English, Barnum pretended to compliment him. But, as he smiled and patted him, Barnum would tell the audience: "This little Indian, ladies and gentlemen, is Yellow Bear, chief of the Kiowas. He has killed, no doubt, scores of white persons, and he is probably the meanest blackhearted rascal that lives in the far West." At this point Barnum would pat Yellow Bear on the head, and Yellow Bear would stroke his arm, pleased to have a champion. Then Barnum would resume: "If the bloodthirsty little villain understood what I was saying, he would kill me in a moment; but as he thinks I am complimenting him, I can safely state the truth to you, that he is a lying, thieving, treacherous, murderous monster. He has tortured to death poor, unprotected women, murdered their husbands, brained their helpless little ones; and he would gladly do the same to you or me, if he thought he could escape punishment. This is but a faint description of the character of Yellow Bear." Here, again, Barnum would pat the redskin on the head, and the Indian would rise and bow to the laughter and applause.
To preserve the good temper of his attractions, Barnum tried to satisfy all their whims. When they saw rare shells or relics, they begged for them. "This cost me many valuable specimens," Barnum complained, though he was making a fortune on them at only the price of a bribe. One chief demanded an ancient mail breastplate. It had cost Barnum several hundred dollars, and he resisted. The chief explained that he needed it to fight the Utes when he returned to the Rocky Mountains. Now he was prepared to trade his newest buckskin suit for the armor; Barnum was forced to give in.
After a week, a more inquisitive member of the Indian peace party learned that an entrance fee was being charged to the Museum and realized that he was being used as a lowly curiosity. In great anger, he passed the word to all the chiefs. Insulted, they made after Barnum with "wild, flashing eyes." Discretion being the better part of valor and survival, the showman made himself unavailable. Their nervous interpreter hastily returned the chiefs to Washington the following day.
Two of these same chiefs, shortly after departing from Barnum's stage, became involved in two of the bloodiest massacres of the Far West. When War Bonnet left the American Museum after his pleasant week with the albino family, the giantess, and the living skeleton, he returned to his slumbering village at the bend of Sand Creek in Colorado. There, in November 1864, Colonel J. M. Chivington, a former Methodist preacher, on some minor provocation, led his Second Colorado Cavalry in a savage charge on the peaceful redskins. Three hundred unarmed Indians were killed, and Chivington was officially censured.
As a result of Sand Creek, another veteran of Barnum's Museum was eventually engaged in an act of vengeance. In June 1876, a large horde of Indians engaged Major General George Custer and five companies of the Seventh Cavalry at Little Big Horn. In less than half an hour, Custer and his two hundred and seven men were annihilated. The hero of this greatest of Indian victories was none other than White Bull, who captured twelve cavalry horses, seven cavalrymen's scalps, and shot down two soldiers, one of them possibly Custer himself. Incredibly, White Bull managed to survive the vindictiveness of his paleface pursuers, and died of natural causes in 1947, eighty-three years after treating with Lincoln and performing for Barnum.
In 1861, Herman Melville's Moby Dick: or The White Whale had been before the public ten years, and, though much discussed in literary circles, had not sold well even at a dollar and fifty cents a copy. Melville, in ill health, was eking out a livelihood lecturing in the west. But if his whale had not profited him, it gave Barnum the idea for one of his most popular attractions.
Reading that a live white whale had been captured by fishermen at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, Barnum was fascinated by the knowledge that Moby Dick existed. He determined to have himself a white whale—two white whales, male and female, for exhibition. To this end, he constructed in the Museum basement a brick and cement tank eighteen feet wide and fifty feet long. This done, he personally set off, like Captain Ahab, in quest of his white whales.
Taking a train from New York to Quebec, and thence going by rail and boat to Hazel Island in the St. Lawrence, he hired twenty-four French Canadian fishermen. He placed them on a daily retainer, with a sizable bonus promised if they caught two living white whales. The fishermen built a kraal in the river—stakes driven into the mud in the shape of a V—and then they waited for two white whales to swim into the V, which they planned to close quickly with their boats.
For dreary days, Barnum watched spouting whales gambol about the kraal but fail to enter it. At last, disheartened, he returned to Quebec. No sooner had he arrived there than he was informed that two white whales had been trapped—they had swum into the kraal, had been closed inside it, left high and dry by the receding tide, and then had been dragged to seaweed-lined boxes by ropes attached to their tails.
Hastily, Barnum arranged for a private freight car to transport his mammals during the five-day journey to New York. Each white whale reposed uncomfortably in a crate partially filled with salt water and seaweed, where it was attended by a Barnum employee who continually moistened its mouth and spout with a sponge dipped in salt water.
Barnum drummed the progress of the whales into the ears of waiting New York on a ceaseless beat of publicity. Every stop, every depot, from Quebec to New York, was thronged by alerted natives. Hourly dispatches were fed to the press, and a stream of bulletins was posted before the Museum. Finally the mammals arrived and were lowered into the basement tank filled with fresh water artificially salted, real salt water not being immediately available. "Anxious thousands literally rushed to see the strangest curiosities ever exhibited in New York," Barnum said with satisfaction. "Thus was my first whaling expedition a great success; but I did not know how to feed or to take care of the monsters, and, moreover, they were in fresh water, and this, with the bad air in the basement may have hastened their death, which occurred a few days after their arrival, but not before thousands of people had seen them."
Tempted by the challenge and the rewards, Barnum prepared to have two more living white whales caught and delivered. This time he planned more carefully for their longevity. Even as his St. Lawrence fishermen kept watch about their kraal, Barnum, at a cost of $4,000, constructed a new tank on the second floor of the Museum. This aquarium was twenty-four-feet square, with a floor of slate, and sides made of imported French glass one-inch thick. An iron pipe projecting under the street to the bay supplied a steady stream of real salt water. In a short time, two more white whales were there. "It was a very great sensation," said Barnum, "and it added thousands of dollars to my treasury. The whales, however, soon died—their sudden and immense popularity was too much for them."
Undiscouraged, Barnum ordered a third pair. The mammals were duly caught by thirty-five men, and delivered by rail after an expenditure of $10,000. Barnum's advertisements almost matched his marine attractions in size. "I am highly gratified," he announced at the conclusion of one notice, "in being able to assure the public that they have arrived safe and well, a MALE and FEMALE, from 15 to 20 feet long, and are now swimming in the miniature ocean in my Museum, to the delight of visitors. As it is very doubtful whether these wonderful creatures can be kept alive more than a few days, the public will see the importance of seizing the first moment to see them."
A reporter from Greeley's Tribune observed them in the seven feet of salt water and gave them much of a column. "Their form and motion are graceful, and their silver backs and bellies show brightly through the water. A long-continued intimacy has endeared them to each other, and they go about quite like a pair of whispering lovers, blowing off their mutual admiration in a very emphatic manner. . . . Here is a real sensation. We do not believe the enterprise of Mr. Barnum will stop at white whales. It will embrace sperm whales and mermaids, and all strange things that swim or fly or crawl, until the Museum will become one vast microism [sic] of the animal creation. A quarter seems positively contemptible weighed against such a treat."
When cynics labeled the whales as fakes, as being porpoises really, and aired their doubts, Barnum indignantly sent to Harvard University for the eminent Professor Louis Agassiz, the Swiss naturalist whose geological studies of the shores of Lake Superior, Florida, California, and Brazil had made him world famous. Agassiz stood before the tank, peered through the French glass, and announced that the suspect sea monsters were, indeed, genuine whales. Elated, Barnum had the Professor sign a certificate of authenticity, which he then published far and wide.
But the Museum, apparently, was no just habitat for Moby Dick. First one whale died, and then the other. The Tribune, blaming the catastrophe on the foul scent of a resentful grizzly bear, ran a lengthy obituary. "The blow is a severe one. To Mr. Barnum it must be a shocking reminder of the emptiness of all human plans. Enterprise, liberal expenditure, courage—what are they all before the fell destroyer. Even whales have their time to sink and rise no more."
The great tank was not vacant long. A three-year-old hippopotamus from Africa supplanted the whales, to be followed, in turn by sharks, sea horses, angel fish, and at last porpoises.
The white whales, the grizzly bears, the untamed Indian chiefs were Barnum's valediction to two decades of pioneer showmanship. In June 1865, the American Museum was an ash heap, and with its destruction Barnum's decade of disaster reached its end.
Having disregarded Greeley's advice that he retire to rod and stream, Barnum leased an old building on the west side of Broadway between Spring Street and Prince Street, known as the Chinese Museum. After four intense months of directing carpentry and painting, he filled it with a stock of curiosities purchased from several hundred small collections and exhibits. Quickly he installed his freaks and his old troupe of thespians, and on November 13, 1865, Barnum's New American Museum was open for business.
The one shortcoming was the lack of relics, many irreplaceable ones having been lost in the fire. To acquire more, he obtained passage for $1,200 for John Greenwood, Jr., again his assistant, on an 1,800-ton steamer, Quaker City, which was taking sixty-six passengers on the first American Mediterranean cruise in June 1867 and climaxing its grand tour with a pilgrimage through the Holy Land.
On the steamer, Greenwood joined Moses Sperry Beach, proprietor of the Sun, whose father had vouched for Barnum when the showman had first tried to buy the Museum, Bloodgood Cutter, the eccentric Long Island poet, and the thirty-two-year-old Mark Twain, as yet known only for The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. This pleasant excursion—"Three-fourths of the Quaker City's passengers were between forty and seventy years of age! There was a picnic crowd for you!" Mark Twain wrote—took the weary travelers to Gibraltar, Morocco, France, Italy, Greece, and Palestine. The five-month cruise was celebrated by Mark Twain in his enduring best-seller The Innocents Abroad, and valued by Barnum for the great number of relics Greenwood brought back from the Holy Land.
With his collection of bric-a-brac improved, Barnum concentrated on making his menageries the most populous in America. There were lions and tigers in abundance, the only giraffe in the nation, and the smallest elephant found in Africa. Finally, in partnership with the Van Amburgh Menagerie Company, there was that animal which Barnum desired most of all, a huge, ferocious African gorilla.
Though Barnum wrote that the gorilla was so strong that he "bent the heavy iron bars of his cage" and once grabbed a poker thrust at him and "twisted it as if it had been a bit of wire," other eyewitnesses saw the gorilla in a different light. One of these, Matthew Hale Smith, writing in 1869, saw the beast as being "as ferocious as a small-sized kitten." Large crowds were attracted by the supposedly wild gorilla. A Smithsonian Institution professor visited the exhibit and asked to see Barnum.
"He is a very fine specimen of a baboon—but he is no gorilla," the professor told Barnum.
"What's the reason that he is not a gorilla?" the showman inquired.
The professor explained that real gorillas had no tails.
"I know that ordinary gorillas have no tails," replied Barnum, "but mine has, and that makes the specimen more remarkable."
Later, in his own version, Barnum stated that his agents had been duped into taking a baboon for a gorilla, and that he knew instantly that the animal was only a baboon. Although continuing to advertise the beast as a gorilla, Barnum realized that he would soon be exposed. To anticipate this, he wrote a chiding, humorous letter to Paul du Chaillu, who had first told the world of pygmies and gorillas after his African explorations, saying that "since he had only killed gorillas . . . we had secured a living one, and brought the monster safely from Africa to America. I informed him, moreover, that all the gorillas he had seen and described were tailless, while our far more remarkable specimen had a tail full four feet long!"
Again Barnum fared well. His New Museum was more successful than Niblo's Garden or Wallack's Theater. Casting about for another enterprise, he was not long in finding one. Isaac A. Van Amburgh, a nearsighted lion tamer whose traveling menagerie featured the largest band wagon in the country, had recently died, and his partners needed someone to replace him. Barnum stepped into the breach, and soon his $2,000,000 Van Amburgh menagerie was a successful drawing card on the road. The nightmare of the Jerome Clock Company receded into a memory. The "butterfly friends" were back. Barnum's popularity was restored. But a hard-bitten few still remained his enemies.
James Gordon Bennett was a perpetual adversary. Perhaps Bennett recognized in Barnum something of his own coarser self, that defect of character which he exploited yet despised the most, and perhaps his hate was self-hate. Barnum did not seem to mind the attacks of his publishing foe. "I always found Bennett's abuse far more remunerative than his praise," Barnum wrote, "even if I could have the praise at the same price, that is for nothing. Especially was it profitable to me when I could be the subject of scores of lines of his scolding editorials free of charge, instead of paying him forty cents a line for advertisements, which would not attract a tenth part so much attention. Bennett had tried abusing me, off and on, for twenty years, on one occasion refusing my advertisement altogether for the space of about a year; but I always managed to be the gainer by his course."
Bennett's feud with Barnum reached its climax shortly after the old Museum burned down. Barnum retained a real estate agent, one Homer Morgan, to dispose of the eleven years remaining of his lease of the property. Bennett was eager to have the land for a larger newspaper building. He asked the showman his price. Barnum said that the lease was worth $275,000 but that he would sell it to Bennett for $200,000. Bennett, after too brief a consideration, agreed, and gave Barnum his check on the Chemical Bank for $200,000. Then, for $500,000 more, he purchased the land itself.
No sooner had Bennett concluded his deals than he read in rival newspapers "that the sum which he had paid for a piece of land measuring only fifty-six by one hundred feet was more than was ever before paid in any city in the world for a tract of that size." Not only did Bennett suddenly feel that he had been swindled, but also his deeply ingrained Scotch sense of thrift was shaken. He decided that Barnum had falsely assessed the property. He sent his attorney to the showman with a request that the $200,000 be returned. Barnum refused. "I don't make child's bargains," he said.
The following day the advertisements for the New American Museum were dropped from the New York Herald. Unable to get satisfaction from Bennett, Barnum lodged protest with the New York Managers' Association. At once every major theater and entertainment center in the metropolis boycotted Bennett's daily. Bennett continued to print the advertisements of Niblo's Garden and Wallack's Theater free of charge, trying to woo them from the league against him, whereupon Niblo and others headed their advertisements in rival newspapers with the legend: "This Establishment does not advertise in the New York Herald."
In a fury, Bennett proceeded to abuse and attack every offending manager, as well as actors, singers, and dancers. To Bennett's astonishment, the bad publicity increased theatrical business everywhere. In his two-year feud with Barnum, the publisher lost $200,000 in advertising and job-printing contracts, and a considerable amount of circulation, especially among readers who wished daily notices of amusements. At last the feud was resolved, and advertising was restored to the Herald by all except Barnum, who saw that the Herald was not necessary to him, and decided that advertising in it was not worth the price.
A friendlier enemy was the tall, funereal, frock-coated Henry Bergh, friend of all animals, enemy of some men, and founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The long-standing feud between Bergh and Barnum had overtones of comic opera.
Bergh, a wealthy graduate of Columbia University, had served as a diplomat in Russia before he became possessed by an obsession to protect all dumb beasts. When he was forty-five, he started his Society. A year later, in 1866, with the support of Horace Greeley, of the rich merchant, Alexander Stewart, and of the slaughterer of fur-bearers, John Jacob Astor, he succeeded in forcing through a law in New York State allowing the Society to make arrests in all cases of cruelty to animals. When he saw live turtles in the market, their flippers tied together, he took the proprietors to court. When he saw emaciated horses pulling streetcars, he stopped the vehicles. He interfered in cock fights and dog fights, and he replaced live pigeons with clay birds in all shooting games. The upper classes supported him until the day when he tried to eliminate fox-hunting.
Barnum, America's foremost importer of animals, was Bergh's natural prey. When the showman exhibited a rhinoceros, Bergh demanded that it be given a tank of water to swim in. Barnum had to prove that the rhino was not an amphibian. When the showman kept his snakes alive by feeding them toads and lizards, Bergh's pained outcry shook the Museum. Barnum had to prove that without toads the snakes would perish. When the showman fed his boa constrictors live birds and small mammals, Bergh called him a "semi-barbarian" and warned him: "On the next occurrence of this cruel exhibition this society will take legal measures to punish the perpetrator of it." In desperation, Barnum appealed to the reliable Professor Agassiz, and the noble naturalist replied: "I do not know of any way to induce snakes to eat their food otherwise than in their natural manner—that is alive. . . . The society of which you speak is, as I understand, for the prevention of unnecessary cruelty to animals. It is a most praiseworthy object, but I do not think the most active members of the society would object to eating lobster salad because the lobster was boiled alive. . . ." Before such august authority, Bergh retreated.
The final duel occurred in 1880 over a new act Barnum had publicized widely. A trained horse, Salamander, was to leap through a fiery hoop. Bergh protested "on the grounds of cruelty to the animal." Barnum challenged Bergh to witness the act. Instead, Bergh sent an assistant, Hatfield, and seven aides, as well as twenty policemen. While thousands of spectators sat in tense expectation, Salamander was led into the ring and the fire hoops lighted. In a grand gesture of disdain, Barnum, hat in hand, calmly walked through one of the burning hoops without singeing a hair. He was followed by ten clowns, and then by Salamander. Next, Barnum invited Bergh's assistant to test the "cruelty" of the flaming hoop. Hatfield obliged, emerged untoasted, and sheepishly apologized for Bergh.
Despite the annoyance caused by this fanatical gadfly, Barnum had respect and affection for Bergh and his crusade. In his will, Barnum left $1,000 for the erection of a statue in Bridgeport honoring Bergh. But Bergh's real monument was this: at the beginning of his career, no state or territory had a law against cruelty to animals; at his death in 1888, thirty-nine states had such laws in their statute books.
Barnum's comeback in public life—evidence that his popularity had reached its highest peak—was dramatized by his entrance into politics. In 1852 he had declined the Democratic nomination for governor of Connecticut. In 1888 he rejected the idea of running for president of the United States on the Prohibition ticket. Yet, he firmly believed in active political participation. "It always seemed to me," he wrote, "that a man who 'takes no interest in politics' is unfit to live in a land where the government rests in the hands of people."
In 1865, as a Republican, Barnum was elected to the Connecticut state legislature from the town of Fairfield. At Hartford, Barnum immediately made his presence felt. Two candidates were up for the job of speaker. One was supported by the railroad lobby. Barnum joined the opposition to him, and for the first time, the previously invincible railroad monopoly was defeated.
When the Fourteenth Amendment to abolish slavery came up for ratification, Barnum supported it vocally and with his vote. "The word 'white' in the Constitution cannot be strictly and literally construed," he stated in a speech. "The opposition express great love for white blood. Will they let a mulatto vote half the time, a quadroon three-fourths, and an octoroon seven-eighths of the time? If not, why not? Will they enslave seven-eighths of a white man because one-eighth is not Caucasian? Is this democratic? Shall not the majority seven control the minority one? Out on such 'democracy'!"
When a Representative from Milford feared that passage of the Amendment would encourage interracial marriages, Barnum replied: "The gentleman may remember that when his sons propose to marry with negroes, the black girls may have a word to say in objection to such a proposition. It is a matter of taste, and the tastes of the colored women may not be found sympathetic."
His continuing fight against the New York and New Haven Railroad lobby was watched throughout the state. He strongly opposed a bill to raise commutation rates. And he introduced several bills of his own, including one to do away with capital punishment. His liberality and obvious sincerity won many neutral newspapers to his side. One of them wrote approvingly: "The people of Connecticut are under great obligations to him for breaking down the railroad combinations which have so long infested the legislature and sought in various ways to control it. When the members of the House return to their homes it will be with more exalted ideas of P. T. Barnum and his character for frankness, intelligence, and uprightness. . . ."
So satisfactory was Barnum's record, that a year later he was re-elected to the legislature. In 1867, aspiring higher, he ran as Republican candidate from the Fourth District for the House of Representatives in Washington. Although he disliked "the dirty work" of politics—"to shake hands with those whom I despise, and to kiss the dirty babies of those whose votes were courted" —he was attracted to the important office and campaigned with energy against the local political boss, who was his opponent.
The Nation, in its issue of March 7, 1867, came out against Barnum. The Democrats, said the periodical's editors, already had disgraced the country by electing to Congress from the Fifth New York District—"by the votes of the ignorant foreigners"—that Irish-born, wealthy gambler and ex-pugilist, John Morrissey, who had flattened John C. Heenan in eleven rounds to win the American heavyweight championship, and now the Republicans were no better. Barnum, the editors said, "is the personification —and so far from concealing or denying it, he boasts of it—of a certain low kind of humbug. . . . If it be honorable or instructive to go and see strange or queer things, it is honorable to collect and exhibit them; and if Barnum had confined himself to this, though we might not select him as a legislator or like to see him sent to Congress by a New England State, we should not accuse him as we now do, of having been for twenty or thirty years a depraving and demoralizing influence."
But the Nation need not have worried. A Democratic landslide was in the making, and it swept across Connecticut. Barnum was buried under it. His backers shouted fraud, arguing that voters had been bribed and transported from other states, but no fraud was proved, and the election stood. Not until 1877 did Barnum hold another state office, and then he was elected from Bridgeport to the Connecticut general assembly; he was re-elected the year following.
The political venture that gave him the most satisfaction was his election on April 5, 1875, by a margin of one hundred and forty-one votes, as Mayor of Bridgeport. He served one busy, hectic year. The Farmer, a Democratic sheet complained: "His forte has been buffoonery and the undignified, unparliamentary, improper interjecting of personal remarks into the debates." But his constituents enjoyed him. Mayor Barnum opposed liquor licenses and enforced the closing of saloons on Sundays. He came out for lower utility rates. He advocated a better water supply and drainage system, and pleaded for public baths. He arranged to have fruit sold by weight instead of measure. He attacked trade-union discrimination against Negroes. He tried to check unemployment by convincing the populace that any work was better than time-wasting devotion to baseball and billiards. "There are too many soft hands (and heads) waiting for light work and heavy pay," he said.
Barnum's fiercest crusade as mayor was against the local houses of prostitution. Peremptorily he ordered his chief of police to shut down all Bridgeport brothels within twenty-four hours. If the chief displayed any hesitancy, Barnum promised to close the houses himself. Plainly irked, the chief visited two of the houses, read Barnum's order aloud, and received the pledge of both madams that their "boarders" would be dismissed at once. However, when the chief's supporters asserted in print that Mayor Barnum himself had owned three houses in New York "which were rented for disreputable purposes," His Honor was enraged. Barnum loudly denied ownership of any brothels, and abruptly turned to other municipal matters. It is to be presumed that the "boarders" of Bridgeport returned to their houses.
At his last council meeting, Mayor Barnum ended his term of office on a characteristic note. "Gentlemen," he said, "as we are about to close our labors in a harmonious spirit and bid each other friendly farewell, we have, like the Arabs, only to 'fold our tents and silently steal away,' congratulating ourselves that this is the only stealing which has been performed by this honorable body."
Ever since his recovery of position and wealth, Barnum had dreamed of reviving the glory that was Iranistan. At last, in 1860, just five hundred yards west of the old grounds where his Oriental palace had stood, he built his new dwelling. At the suggestion of his friend Bayard Taylor, the "delightful place" was named Lindencroft. Compared with what he had known in the past, it was relatively small and conservative. Even though he proudly pointed out that "elegance, pure and simple, predominated," it was plain that his heart was not in this home.
Meanwhile he sought a residence in New York. He preferred to spend his winters in the city. "There is a sense of satisfaction," he said, "even in the well-cleared sidewalks after a snow-storm, and an almost selfish happiness in looking out upon a storm from a well-warmed library or parlor window. 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. . . ." To satisfy this need, Barnum spent $80,000 to purchase a brownstone on Fifth Avenue at Thirty-ninth Street.
Soon, Lindencroft was abandoned altogether. Charity's health remained poor, and her physician suggested that she live nearer the water. With delight, Barnum disposed of Lindencroft and planned a mansion more representative of his tastes. In 1869, at Seaside Park, a 210-acre suburb of Bridgeport (Barnum had donated a small portion of it to the city four years before), the sprawling, ornate, gingerbread castle, Waldemere—"Woods-by-the-Sea" —was born.
Waldemere was a product of love. The statue of a pacified Indian met visitors at the outer gate. Beyond the spraying fountain, and between the groves of hickory trees and numerous flower beds, rose the spired, domed building, which resembled a Saratoga hotel.
An Englishman who was a guest at Waldemere in 1877 published his impressions in the London World: "The house itself is not easily described, being a curious but pleasant mélange of Gothic, Italian and French architecture and decoration, presenting a front a hundred and sixty feet long to the water, whereby most of the rooms command a very charming view. On entering one is pleasantly struck by the spaciousness of halls and rooms. One can breathe as freely indoors as out. Nothing is small or contracted. . . . Pictures of high merit hang on tinted walls and stand on easels. Chinese vases of quaint and wonderful design guard the fireplaces; busts and statuettes fill nooks and corners; capacious bookcases fail to hold the latest works; while mantels and étagères hold costly bric-a-brac in artistic confusion. . . . On a pedestal in a place of honor, stands a marble bust of Jenny Lind. . . . A corner bracket in a cosy sitting-room holds a small Parian Bacchus—a Christmas gift from the Swedish Nightingale to Mr. Barnum, in good-natured ridicule of his firm temperance principles and practice. In an étagère in this same pleasant room lie dimpled marble models of Tom Thumb's hand and foot taken when his size was smallest and his fame greatest. . . . The mansion is intersected with a very network of waterpipes—there being scarcely a room that has not its bathroom and lavatory attached."
The guest rooms seemed endless, and many were named after their most frequent occupants. One of the most comfortable was the "Greeley room." Horace Greeley came visiting often, and Barnum was much devoted to him. "He once told me," Joel Benton said, "that it pained him to see Mr. Greeley omit those little cares for himself in later life to which he was surely entitled, and so, when he was his guest for many days together, he took care to provide him with a loose morning coat and comfortable slippers, and would not have him drop in any ordinary chair by accident, but secured for him the easiest one."
The kitchen stood outside so that odors might be kept from the house. Walks led to the specially built cottage, "Petrel's Nest," where Caroline and Thompson resided, and to "Wavewood," the home of Pauline and Seeley. Daughter Helen alone resisted feudal living. A private gasworks supplied illumination to the cottages and the main house. In the barns were cattle shipped from Holland, and in the stables, horses of blood. Magnetic burglar alarms surrounded the property, and there was a direct telephone wire to the police. Like his friend Mark Twain, who was the first author to use a typewriter, Barnum was quick to adopt every modern invention. He had lost no time in installing one of the earliest telephones in America. When the host was at home, a white silk flag bearing the initials "P.T.B." fluttered from the flagpole above the glass cupola.
All was serenity at Waldemere until the morning of March 3, 1868. Barnum was reading the newspaper at breakfast, half-listening to his wife and her female guest across the table. Suddenly, eyes still on the paper, he spoke aloud. "Hallo!" he exclaimed. "Barnum's Museum is burned."
It was true. In the night—a winter night so cold that water from the firehoses froze as it splattered against the granite walls of the city showplace—the New American Museum had gone the way of the old. When the flames were finished, the Museum was a hollow shell of charcoal and icicles. Most of the valuable animals were dead and the collection of curiosities was gone forever. The collection had been worth $288,000. The insurance was $160,000.
No longer did Barnum wish to tempt fate. He was fifty-eight and a millionaire. He decided at last to accept Horace Greeley's earlier advice "and go a-fishing." Short weeks after the Museum loss, he announced his retirement. It would have amazed him to know that ahead waited the final adventure—the one that would make his name immortal in show business.