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

The devil a saint would be.
But when the devil got well,
The devil a saint was he.”

Granted, but, after all, the man who looks upon the loss of money as anything compared to the loss of honor, or health, or self-respect, or friends, – a man who can find no source of happiness except in riches, – is to be pitied for his blindness. I certainly feel that the loss of money, of home and my home comforts, is dreadful, – that to be driven again to find a resting-place away from those I love, and from where I had fondly supposed I was to end my days, and where I had lavished time, money, everything, to make my descent to the grave placid and pleasant, – is, indeed, a severe lesson; but, after all, I firmly believe it is for the best, and though my heart may break, I will not repine.

I regret, beyond expression, that any man should be a loser for having trusted to my name; it would not have been so, if I had not myself been deceived. As it is, I am gratified in knowing that all my individual obligations will be met. It would have been much better if clock creditors had accepted the best offer that it was in my power to make them; but it was not so to be. It is now too late, and as I willingly give up all I possess, I can do no more.

Wherever my future lot may be cast, I shall ever fondly cherish the kindness which I have always received from the citizens of Bridgeport.

    I am, my dear Sir, truly yours,
    P. T. BARNUM.

Shortly after this sympathetic meeting, a number of gentlemen in Bridgeport offered me a loan of $50,000 if that sum would be instrumental in extricating me from my entanglement. I could not say that this amount would meet the exigency; I could only say, “wait, wait, and hope.”

Meanwhile, my eyes were fully opened to the entire magnitude of the deception that had been practised upon my too confiding nature. I not only discovered that my notes had been used to five times the amount I stipulated or expected, but that they had been applied, not to relieving the company from temporary embarrassment after my connection with it, but almost wholly to the redemption of old and rotten claims of years and months gone by. To show the extent to which the fresh victim was deliberately bled, it may be stated that I was induced to become surety to one of the New Haven banks in the sum of $30,000 to indemnify the bank against future losses it might incur from the Jerome company after my connection with it, and by some legerdemain this bond was made to cover past obligations which were older even than my knowledge of the existence of the company. In every way it seemed as if I had been cruelly swindled and deliberately defrauded.

As the clock company had gone to pieces and was paying but from twelve to fifteen per cent for its paper, I sent two of my friends to New Haven to ask for a meeting of the creditors and I instructed them to say in substance for me as follows:

“Gentlemen: This is a capital practical joke! Before I negotiated with your clock company at all, I was assured by several of you, and particularly by a representative of the bank which was the largest creditor of the concern, that the Jerome company was eminently responsible and that the head of the same was uncommonly pious. On the strength of such representations solely, 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.”

Many of the old creditors favored this proposition; but it was found that the indebtedness was so scattered it would be impracticable to attempt a settlement by an unanimous compromise of the creditors. It was necessary to liquidation that my property should go into the hands of assignees; I therefore at once turned over my Bridgeport property to Connecticut assignees and I removed my family to New York, where I also made an assignment of all my real and personal estate, excepting what had already been transferred in Connecticut.

About this time I received a letter from Philadelphia proferring $500 in case my circumstances were such that I really stood in need of help. The very wording of the letter awakened the suspicion in my mind that it was a trick to ascertain whether I really had any property, for I knew that banks and brokers in that city held some of my Jerome paper which they refused to compound or compromise. So I at once wrote that I did need $500, and, as I expected, the money did not come, nor was my letter answered; but, as a natural consequence, the Philadelphia bankers who were holding the Jerome paper for a higher percentage at once acceded to the terms which I had announced myself able and willing to pay.

Every dollar which I honestly owed on my own account I had already paid in full or had satisfactorily arranged. For the liabilities incurred by the deliberate deception which had involved me I offered such a percentage as I thought my estate, when sold, would eventually pay; and my wife, from her own property, advanced from time to time money to take up such notes as could be secured upon these terms. It was, however, a slow process. More than one creditor would hold on to his note, which possibly he had “shaved” at the rate of two or three per cent a month, and say:

“Oh! you can’t keep Barnum down; he will dig out after a while; I shall never sell my claim for less than par and interest.”

Of course, I knew very well that if all the creditors took this view I should never get out of the entanglement in which I had been involved by the old creditors of the Jerome Company, who had so ingeniously managed to make me take their place. All I could do was to take a thorough survey of the situation, and consider, now that I was down, how I could get up again.

“Every cloud,” says the proverb, “has a silver lining,” and so I did not despair. “This blow,” I thought “may be beneficial to my children, if not to me.” They had been brought up in luxury; accustomed to call on servants to attend to every want; and almost unlimited in the expenditure of money. My daughter Helen, especially, was naturally extravagant. She was a warm-hearted, generous girl, who knew literally nothing of the value of money and the difficulty of acquiring it. At this time she was fifteen years old, and was attending a French boarding school in the City of Washington. A few days after the news of my failure was published in the papers, my friend, the Rev. Dr. E. H. Chapin, of New York, was at my house. He had long been intimate with my family, and was well acquainted with the extravagant ideas and ways of my daughter Helen. One morning, I received a letter from her, filled with sympathy and sorrow for my misfortunes. She told me how much shocked she was at hearing of my financial disasters, and added: “Do send for me immediately, for I cannot think of remaining here at an expense which my parents cannot afford. I have learned to play the piano well enough to be able to take some little girls as pupils, and in this way I can be of some assistance in supporting the family.”

On reading this I was deeply affected; and, handing the letter to Dr. Chapin, I said: “There, sir, is a letter which is worth ten thousand dollars.”

“Twenty thousand, at the least!” was the exclamation of the Doctor when he had read it.

We were now living in a very frugal manner in a hired furnished house in Eighth Street, near Sixth Avenue, in New York, and our landlady and her family boarded with us. At the age of forty-six, after the acquisition and the loss of a handsome fortune, I was once more nearly at the bottom of the ladder, and was about to begin the world again. The situation was disheartening, but I had energy, experience, health and hope.

CHAPTER XXVII.

REST, BUT NOT RUST

SALE OF THE MUSEUM COLLECTION – SUPPLEMENTARY PROCEEDINGS OF MY CREDITORS – EXAMINATIONS IN COURT – BARNUM AS A BAR TENDER – PERSECUTION – THE SUMMER SEASON ON LONG ISLAND – THE MUSEUM MAN ON SHOW – CHARLES HOWELL – A GREAT NATURAL CURIOSITY – VALUE OF A HONK – PROPOSING TO BUY IT – A BLACK WHALE PAYS MY SUMMER’S BOARD – A TURN IN THE TIDE – THE WHEELER AND WILSON SEWING MACHINE COMPANY – THEIR REMOVAL TO EAST BRIDGEPORT – THE TERRY AND BARNUM CLOCK FACTORY OCCUPIED – NEW CITY PROPERTY LOOKING UP – A LOAN OF $5,000 – THE CAUSE OF MY RUIN PROMISES TO BE MY REDEMPTION – SETTING SAIL FOR ENGLAND – GENERAL TOM THUMB – LITTLE CORDELIA HOWARD.

IN the summer of 1855, previous to my financial troubles, feeling that I was independent and could retire from active business, I sold the American Museum collection and good will to Messrs. John Greenwood, Junior, and Henry D. Butler. They paid me double the amount the collection had originally cost, giving me notes for nearly the entire amount secured by a chattel mortgage, and hired the premises from my wife, who owned the Museum property lease, and on which, by the agreement of Messrs. Greenwood and Butler, she realized a profit of $19,000 a year. The chattel mortgage of Messrs. Greenwood and Butler, was, of course, turned over to the New York assignee with the other property.

And now there came to me a new sensation which was at times terribly depressing and annoying. My wides-pread reputation for shrewdness as a showman had induced the general belief that my means were still ample, and certain outside creditors who had bought my clock notes at a tremendous discount and entirely on speculation, made up their minds that they must be paid at once without waiting for the slow process of the sale of my property by the assignees.

They therefore took what are termed “supplementary proceedings,” which enabled them to haul me any day before a judge for the purpose, as they phrased it, of “putting Barnum through a course of sprouts,” and which meant an examination of the debtor under oath, compelling him to disclose everything with regard to his property, his present means of living, and so on.

I repeatedly answered all questions on these points; and reports of the daily examinations were published. Still another and another, and yet another creditor would haul me up; and his attorney would ask me the same questions which had already been answered and published half a dozen times. This persistent and unnecessary annoyance created considerable sympathy for me, which was not only expressed by letters I received daily from various parts of the country, but the public press, with now and then an exception, took my part, and even the Judges, before whom I appeared, said to me on more than one occasion, that as men they sincerely pitied me, but as judges of course they must administer the law. After a while, however, the judges ruled that I need not answer any question propounded to me by an attorney, if I had already answered the same question to some other attorney in a previous examination in behalf of other creditors. In fact, one of the judges, on one occasion, said pretty sharply to an examining attorney:

“This, sir, has become simply a case of persecution. Mr. Barnum has many times answered every question that can properly be put to him to elicit the desired information; and I think it is time to stop these examinations. I advise him to not answer one interrogatory which he has replied to under any previous inquiries.”

These things gave me some heart, so that at last, I went up to the “sprouts” with less reluctance, and began to try to pay off my persecutors in their own coin.

On one occasion, a dwarfish little lawyer, who reminded me of “Quilp,” commenced his examination in behalf of a note-shaver who held a thousand dollar note, which it seemed he had bought for seven hundred dollars. After the oath had been administered the little “limb of the law” arranged his pen, ink and paper, and in a loud voice, and with a most peremptory and supercilious air, asked:

“What is your name, sir?”

I answered him, and his next question, given in a louder and more peremptory tone, was:

“What is your business?”

“Attending bar,” I meekly replied.

“Attending bar!” he echoed, with an appearance of much surprise; “Attending bar! Why, don’t you profess to be a temperance man – a teetotaler?”

“I do,” I replied.

“And yet, sir, do you have the audacity to assert that you peddle rum all day, and drink none yourself?”

“I doubt whether that is a relevant question,” I said in a low tone of voice.

“I will appeal to his honor the judge, if you don’t answer it instantly,” said Quilp in great glee.

“I attend bar, and yet never drink intoxicating liquors,” I replied.

“Where do you attend bar, and for whom?” was the next question.

“I attend the bar of this court, nearly every day, for the benefit of two-penny, would-be lawyers and their greedy clients,” I answered.

A loud tittering in the vicinity only added to the vexation which was already visible on the countenance of my interrogator, and he soon brought his examination to a close.

On another occasion, a young lawyer was pushing his inquiries to a great length, when, in a half laughing, apologetic tone, he said:

“You see, Mr. Barnum, I am searching after the small things; I am willing to take even the crumbs which fall from the rich man’s table!”

“Which are you, Lazarus, or one of the dogs?” I asked.

“I guess a blood-hound would not smell out much on this trail,” he said good-naturedly, adding that he had no more questions to ask.

I still continued to receive many offers of pecuniary assistance, which, whenever proposed in the form of a gift, I invariably refused. In a number of instances, personal friends tendered me their checks for $500, $1,000, and other sums, but I always responded in substance: “Oh, no, I thank you; I do not need it; my wife has considerable property, besides a large income from her Museum lease. I want for nothing; I do not owe a dollar for personal obligations that is not already secured, and when the clock creditors have fully investigated and thought over the matter, I think they will be content to divide my property among themselves and let me up.”

Just after my failure, and on account of the ill-health of my wife, I spent a portion of the summer with my family in the farmhouse of Mr. Charles Howell, at Westhampton, on Long Island. The place is a mile west of Quogue, and was then called “Ketchebonneck.” The thrifty and intelligent farmers of the neighborhood were in the habit of taking summer boarders, and the place had become a favorite resort. Mr. Howell’s farm lay close upon the ocean and I found the residence a cool and delightful one. Surf bathing, fishing, shooting and fine roads for driving made the season pass pleasantly and the respite from active life and immediate annoyance from my financial troubles was a very great benefit to me.

Our landlord was an eccentric character, who took great pleasure in showing me to his friends and neighbors as “the Museum man,” and consequently, as a great curiosity; for in his estimation, the American Museum was chief among the institutions of New York. He was in a habit of gathering shells and such rarities as came within his reach, which he took to the city and disposed of at the Museum. He often spoke of certain phenomena in his neighborhood, which he thought would take well with the public, if they were properly brought out. One day he said:

“Mr. Barnum, I am going to Moriches this morning, and I want you to go along with me and see a great curiosity there is there.”