Barnum tried to negotiate
a price for a tree upon
which Lord Byron had
etched his name. He also put
in a shameless bid to buy
Shakespeare’s homeJune 2017 81Antonio Melechi reveals how PT Barnum – the brains behind General Tom
Thumb, the Feejee Mermaid and a wildly successful circus – turned a flair for
outrageous stunts and hoaxes into a multi-million dollar concern
B
RITISH travellers to
19th-century America were
taken aback by the go-getting
commercialism of their
Atlantic cousins. In 1834,
during a long visit to the eastern states,
the economist Harriet Martineau saw
that in “a country where the whole
course is open to everyone,” the appetite
for success led to reckless and ill-
considered enterprise. For Martineau,
the wildfire culture of self-improvement
was tethered to a deep-seated conformism,
“a fear of singularity” evident in the
tendency to offer indiscriminate praise.
“Every book that comes out is exalted
to the skies. The public orators flatter
the people; the people flatter the orators.
The clergymen praise their flocks;
and the flocks stand amazed at the
excellence of their clergymen.”
When Phineas Taylor Barnum made
his first trip to England in 1844, as
promoter to General Tom Thumb,
the star-spangled showman was every
inch the caricature of Martineau’s glib-
tongued Yankee. Wherever he went,
Barnum had one hand on his wallet, ready
to “do business.” In London, he made a
beeline for Madame Tussauds waxworks,
offering top dollar to buy the collection
outright. At Lord Byron’s ancestral home,
he tried to negotiate a price for a tree
upon which the poet had etched his name.
And during a lightning tour of Stratford,
Barnum made a shameless bid to purchase
Shakespeare’s one-time home, prompting
Punch magazine to commence a series
of drolleries that lampooned his
crass speculations.
A native of Bethel, Connecticut,
Barnum had tried his hand at all kindsof work, from encyclopaedia salesman to
editor of an abolitionist newspaper, before
finding his true metier. In 1835, not long
after taking on a grocery store in
New York, the 25-year-old caught wind
of some intriguing news. A friend had
recently sold his interest in an Afro-
American slave by the name of Joice Heth,
purportedly 161 years of age and the one-
time nurse of George Washington.
Sensing an opportunity to break into New
York’s entertainment business, Barnum
made his way to Philadelphia’s Masonic
Hall, where the ‘wonderful negress’ was
regaling visitors with recollections of
‘dear old George’, with tearful memories
of her Virginia childhood, and a medley
of impromptu hymns.The Great
Pretender
PT Barnum is depicted as a wily old fox preying on people’s
“phrenological bump of credulity” in a cartoon from Punch in- The press didn’t share the public’s enthusiasm for the
showman’s hoaxes
Barnum was impressed. As “far as
outward indications were concerned,
she might almost have been called 1,000
years old.” Better still, Heth’s current
owner was prepared to do a deal:
for $1,000 the supercentenarian nurse
was his. Returning to New York, Barnum
quickly penned a shower of breathless
adverts for his “ancient lady.” Within
weeks of showing Heth at Niblo’s Garden
saloon, the grocer-turned-showman was
counting weekly receipts of $750, and
already considering what curiosity he
might next purchase.Entertainment business
At first, Barnum struggled to replicate
the success he achieved with Joice Heth.
Briefly abandoning the entertainment
business, he squandered much of his
earnings on a failed cologne and boot-
blacking business, enduring a short
stint as sales agent for Sears’ Pictorial
Illustrations of the Bible.
Then, late in 1841, after dabbling with
journalism and copywriting, he succeeded
in acquiring Scudder’s American Museum,
the beleaguered home to an extensive
collection of automata, dioramas and
human oddities. Looking to turn the
museum into Broadway’s premier
attraction – and believing that “the only