Struggles amd Triumphs: or, Forty Years' Recollections of P.T. Barnum

“Blast your quarter pennies! I am not going to count them! you chaps who haven’t bigger money can chuck your copper into my hat and walk in.”

At Cambridge, some of the under-graduates pretended to take offence because our check-taker would not permit them to smoke in the exhibition hall, and one of them managed to involve him in a quarrel which ended with a challenge from the student to the check-taker, who was sure he must fight a duel at sunrise the next morning, and as he expected to be shot, he suffered the greatest mental agony. About midnight, however, after he had been sufficiently scared, I brought him the gratifying intelligence that I had succeeded in settling the dispute. His gratitude at the relief thus afforded, knew no bounds.

Mr. Stratton was a genuine Yankee, and thoroughly conversant with the Yankee vernacular, which he used freely. In exhibiting the General, I often said to visitors, that Tom Thumb’s parents and the rest of the family were persons of the ordinary size, and that the gentleman who presided in the ticket-office was the General’s father. This made poor Stratton an object of no little curiosity, and he was pestered with all sorts of questions; on one occasion an old dowager said to him:

“Are you really the father of General Tom Thumb?”

“Wa’al,” replied Stratton, “I have to support him!”

This evasive method of answering is common enough in New England, but the literal dowager had her doubts, and promptly rejoined:

“I rather think he supports you!”

In my journeyings through England, I always tried to get back to London Saturday night, so as to pass Sunday with my family, and to meet the friends whom we invited to dine with us on the only day in the week when I could be at home. The railway facilities are so excellent in England, that, no matter how far I might be from London, I could generally reach that city by Sunday morning, and yet do a full week’s work in the provinces. This, however, necessitated travel Saturday night, and while I travelled I must sleep. Sleeping cars were, and, I believe, still are unknown in that country; but I travelled so much, and was, by this time, so well known to the guards on the leading lines, that I could generally secure one of the compartments in a first-class “coach” to myself, and my method for obtaining a good night’s sleep, was to lay the seat-cushions on the floor of the car, thus, with my blanket to cover me, making a tolerable bed.

On one of these Saturday night excursions, I lay down on my extemporized couch, with the expectation of arriving at London at five o’clock in the morning. When I awoke the car was standing still, and the sun was well up in the heavens. Thinking we were very much behind time, and wondering why the train did not go on, at last I got up and looked out of the window, and, to my utter amazement, I found my car locked up in a yard, surrounded by a high fence. Espying a man who seemed to have charge of the premises, I shouted to him to come and let me out of the car, which was also locked. It instantly flashed across my mind that at this station, the guard, seeing no person sitting on the seats in the car, and concluding that it was empty, had detached it from the train, and switched it off into the yard. The astonished man whom I summoned to my assistance, informed me that I was sixty miles from London, and that there would not be another train to the city till evening. It was ten o’clock, and I was to have been home at five. I raised a great row, and demanded as my right an extra train to carry me to London, to meet the friends whom it was all-important I should see that day. I had to wait, however, till evening, and I arrived home at seven or eight o’clock, long after my friends had gone, though to the great gratification of my family, who thought some serious accident must have happened to me.

It must not be supposed that during my protracted stay abroad I confined myself wholly to business or limited my circle of observation with a golden rim. To be sure, I ever had “an eye to business,” but I had also two eyes for observation and these were busily employed in leisure hours. I made the most of my opportunities and saw, hurriedly, it is true, nearly everything worth seeing in the various places which I visited. All Europe was a great curiosity shop to me and I willingly paid my money for the show.

While in London, my friend Albert Smith, a jolly companion, as well as a witty and sensible author, promised that when I reached Birmingham he would come and spend a day with me in “sight-seeing,” including a visit to the house in which Shakespeare was born.

Early one morning in the autumn of 1844, my friend Smith and myself took the box-seat of an English mail-coach, and were soon whirling at the rate of twelve miles an hour over the magnificent road leading from Birmingham to Stratford. The distance is thirty miles. At a little village four miles from Stratford, we found that the fame of the bard of Avon had travelled thus far, for we noticed a sign over a miserable barber’s shop, “Shakespeare hair-dressing – a good shave for a penny.” In twenty minutes more we were set down at the door of the Red Horse Hotel, in Stratford. The coachman and guard were each paid half a crown as their perquisites.

While breakfast was preparing, we called for a guide-book to the town, and the waiter brought in a book, saying that we should find in it the best description extant of the birth and burial place of Shakespeare. I was not a little proud to find this volume to be no other than the “Sketch-Book” of our illustrious countryman, Washington Irving; and in glancing over his humorous description of the place, I discovered that he had stopped at the same hotel where we were then awaiting breakfast.

After examining the Shakespeare House, as well as the tomb and the church in which all that is mortal of the great poet rests, we ordered a post-chaise for Warwick Castle. While the horses were harnessing, a stage-coach stopped at the hotel, and two gentlemen alighted. One was a sedate, sensible-looking man; the other an addle-headed fop. The former was mild and unassuming in his manners; the latter was all talk, without sense or meaning – in fact, a regular Charles Chatterbox. He evidently had a high opinion of himself, and was determined that all within hearing should understand that he was – somebody. Presently the sedate gentleman said:

“Edward, this is Stratford. Let us go and see the house where Shakespeare was born.”

“Who the devil is Shakespeare?” asked the sensible young gentleman.

Our post-chaise was at the door; we leaped into it, and were off, leaving the “nice young man” to enjoy a visit to the birth-place of an individual of whom he had never before heard. The distance to Warwick is fourteen miles. We went to the Castle, and approaching the door of the Great Hall, were informed by a well-dressed porter that the Earl of Warwick and family were absent, and that he was permitted to show the apartments to visitors. He introduced us successively into the “Red Drawing-Room,” “The Cedar Drawing-Room,” “The Gilt Room,” “The State Bed-Room,” “Lady Warwick’s Boudoir,” “The Compass Room,” “The Chapel,” and “The Great Dining-Room.” As we passed out of the Castle, the polite porter touched his head (he of course had no hat on it) in a style which spoke plainer than words, “Half a crown each, if you please, gentlemen.” We responded to the call, and were then placed in charge of another guide, who took us to the top of “Guy’s Tower,” at the bottom of which he touched his hat a shilling’s worth; and placing ourselves in charge of a third conductor, an old man of seventy, we proceeded to the Greenhouse to see the Warwick Vase – each guide announcing at the end of his short tour: “Gentlemen, I go no farther,” and indicating that the bill for his services was to be paid. The old gentleman mounted a rostrum at the side of the vase, and commenced a set speech, which we began to fear was interminable; so tossing him the usual fee, we left him in the middle of his oration.

Passing through the porter’s lodge on our way out, under the impression that we had seen all that was interesting, the old porter informed us that the most curious things connected with the Castle were to be seen in his lodge. Feeling for our coin, we bade him produce his relics, and he showed us a lot of trumpery, which, he gravely informed us, belonged to that hero of antiquity, Guy, Earl of Warwick. Among these were his sword, shield, helmet, breast-plate, walking-staff, and tilting-pole, each of enormous size – the horse armor nearly large enough for an elephant, a large pot which would hold seventy gallons, called “Guy’s Porridge Pot,” his flesh-fork, the size of a farmer’s hay-fork, his lady’s stirrups, the rib of a mastodon which the porter pretended belonged to the great “Dun Cow,” which, according to tradition, haunted a ditch near Coventry, and after doing injury to many persons, was slain by the valiant Guy. The sword weighed nearly 200 pounds, and the armor 400 pounds.

I told the old porter he was entitled to great credit for having concentrated more lies than I had ever before heard in so small a compass. He smiled, and evidently felt gratified by the compliment.

“I suppose,” I continued, “that you have told these marvellous stories so often, that you believe them yourself?”

“Almost!” replied the porter, with a grin of satisfaction that showed he was “up to snuff,” and had really earned two shillings.

“Come now, old fellow,” said I, “what will you take for the entire lot of those traps? I want them for my Museum in America.”

“No money would buy these valuable historical mementos of a by-gone age,” replied the old porter with a leer.

“Never mind,” I exclaimed; “I’ll have them duplicated for my Museum, so that Americans can see them and avoid the necessity of coming here, and in that way I’ll burst up your show.”

Albert Smith laughed immoderately at the astonishment of the porter when I made this threat, and I was greatly amused, some years afterwards, when Albert Smith became a successful showman and was exhibiting his “Mont Blanc” to delighted audiences in London, to discover that he had introduced this very incident into his lecture, of course, changing the names and locality. He often confessed that he derived his very first idea of becoming a showman from my talk about the business and my doings, on this charming day when we visited Warwick.

The “Warwick races” were coming off that day, within half a mile of the village, and we therefore went down and spent an hour with the multitude. There was very little excitement regarding the races, and we concluded to take a tour through the “penny shows,” the vans of which lined one side of the course for the distance of a quarter of a mile. On applying to enter one van, which had a large pictorial sign of giantesses, white negro, Albino girls, learned pig, big snakes, etc., the keeper exclaimed:

“Come, Mister, you is the man what hired Randall, the giant, for ‘Merika, and you shows Tom Thumb; now can you think of paying less than sixpence for going in here?”

The appeal was irresistible; so, satisfying his demands, we entered. Upon coming out, a whole bevy of showmen from that and neighboring vans surrounded me, and began descanting on the merits and demerits of General Tom Thumb.

“Oh,” says one, “I knows two dwarfs what is better ten times as Tom Thumb.”

“Yes,” says another, “there’s no use to talk about Tom Thumb while Melia Patton is above the ground.”

“Now, I’ve seen Tom Thumb,” added a third, “and he is a fine little squab, but the only ‘vantage he’s got is he can chaff so well. He chaffs like a man; but I can learn Dick Swift in two months, so that he can chaff Tom Thumb crazy.”

“Never mind,” added a fourth, “I’ve got a chap training what you none on you knows, what’ll beat all the ‘thumbs’ on your grapplers.”

“No, he can’t,” exclaimed a fifth, “for Tom Thumb has got the name, and you all know the name’s everything. Tom Thumb couldn’t never shine, even in my van, ‘long side of a dozen dwarfs I knows, if this Yankee hadn’t bamboozled our Queen, – God bless her – by getting him afore her half a dozen times.”

“Yes, yes, – that’s the ticket,” exclaimed another; “our Queen patronizes everything foreign, and yet she wouldn’t visit my beautiful wax-works to save the crown of Hingland.”

“Your beautiful wax-works!” they all exclaimed, with a hearty laugh.

“Yes, and who says they haint beautiful?” retorted the other; “they was made by the best Hitalian hartist in this country.”

“They was made by Jim Caul, and showed all over the country twenty years ago,” rejoined another; “and arter that they laid five years in pawn in old Moll Wiggin’s cellar, covered with mould and dust.”

“Well, that’s a good ’un, that is!” replied the proprietor of the beautiful wax-works, with a look of disdain.

I made a move to depart, when one of the head showmen exclaimed, “Come, Mister, don’t be shabby; can you think of going without standing treat all round?”

“Why should I stand treat?” I asked.

“ ‘Cause ’tain’t every day you can meet such a bloody lot of jolly brother-showmen,” replied Mr. Wax-works.

I handed out a crown, and left them to drink bad luck to the “foreign wagabonds what would bamboozle their Queen with inferior dwarfs, possessing no advantage over the ‘natyves’ but the power of chaffing.”

While in the showmen’s vans seeking for acquisitions to my Museum in America, I was struck with the tall appearance of a couple of females who exhibited as the “Canadian giantesses, each seven feet in height.” Suspecting that a cheat was hidden under their unfashionably long dresses, which reached to the floor and thus rendered their feet invisible, I attempted to solve the mystery by raising a foot or two of the superfluous covering. The strapping young lady, not relishing such liberties from a stranger, laid me flat upon the floor with a blow from her brawny hand. I was on my feet again in tolerably quick time, but not until I had discovered that she stood upon a pedestal at least eighteen inches high.

We returned to the hotel, took a post-chaise, and drove through decidedly the most lovely country I ever beheld. Since taking that tour, I have heard that two gentlemen once made a bet, each, that he could name the most delightful drive in England. Many persons were present, and the two gentlemen wrote on separate slips of paper the scene which he most admired. One gentleman wrote, “The road from Warwick to Coventry;” the other had written, “The road from Coventry to Warwick.”

In less than an hour we were set down at the outer walls of Kenilworth Castle, which Scott has greatly aided to immortalize in his celebrated novel of that name. This once noble and magnificent castle is now a stupendous ruin, which has been so often described that I think it unnecessary to say anything about it here. We spent half an hour in examining the interesting ruins, and then proceeded by post-chaise to Coventry, a distance of six or eight miles. Here we remained four hours, during which time we visited St. Mary’s Hall, which has attracted the notice of many antiquaries. We also took our own “peep” at the effigy of the celebrated “Peeping Tom,” after which we visited an exhibition called the “Happy Family,” consisting of about two hundred birds and animals of opposite natures and propensities, all living in harmony together in one cage. This exhibition was so remarkable that I bought it and hired the proprietor to accompany it to New York, and it became an attractive feature in my Museum.

We took the cars the same evening for Birmingham, where we arrived at ten o’clock, Albert Smith remarking, that never before in his life had he accomplished a day’s journey on the Yankee go-ahead principle. He afterwards published a chapter in Bentley’s Magazine entitled “A Day with Barnum,” in which he said we accomplished business with such rapidity, that when he attempted to write out the accounts of the day, he found the whole thing so confused in his brain that he came near locating “Peeping Tom” in the house of Shakespeare, while Guy of Warwick would stick his head above the ruins of Kenilworth, and the Warwick Vase appeared in Coventry.

CHAPTER XV.

RETURN TO AMERICA

THE WIZARD OF THE NORTH – A JUGGLER BEATEN AT HIS OWN TRICKS – SECOND VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES – REVEREND DOCTOR ROBERT BAIRD – CAPTAIN JUDKINS THREATENS TO PUT ME IN IRONS – VIEWS WITH REGARD TO SECTS – A WICKED WOMAN – THE SIMPSONS IN EUROPE – REMINISCENCES OF TRAVEL – SAUCE AND “SASS” – TEA TOO SWEET – A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE – ROAST DUCK – SNOW IN AUGUST – TALES OF TRAVELLERS – SIMPSON NOT TO BE TAKEN IN – HOLLANDERS IN BRUSSELS – WHERE ALL THE DUTCHMEN COME FROM – THREE YEARS IN EUROPE – WARM PERSONAL FRIENDS – DOCTOR C. S. BREWSTER – HENRY SUMNER – GEORGE SAND – LORENZO DRAPER – GEORGE P. PUTNAM – OUR LAST PERFORMANCE IN DUBLIN – DANIEL O’CONNELL – END OF OUR TOUR – DEPARTURE FOR AMERICA – ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK.

WHILE I was at Aberdeen, in Scotland, I met Anderson, the “Wizard of the North.” I had known him for a long time, and we were on familiar terms. The General’s exhibitions were to close on Saturday night, and Anderson was to open in the same hall on Monday evening. He came to our exhibition, and at the close we went to the hotel together to get a little supper. After supper we were having some fun and jokes together, when it occurred to Anderson to introduce me to several persons who were sitting in the room, as the “Wizard of the North,” at the same time asking me about my tricks and my forthcoming exhibition. He kept this up so persistently that some of our friends who were present, declared that Anderson was “too much for me,” and, meanwhile, fresh introductions to strangers who came in, had made me pretty generally known in that circle as the “Wizard of the North,” who was to astonish the town in the following week. I accepted the situation at last, and said: