THENEWYORKER,AUGUST 5 &12, 2019 65
Barnum believed the public was willing—even eager—to be conned, provided there was entertainment in the process.
THE CRITICS
BOOKS
YOU CAN’T MAKE IT UP
What P. T. Barnum understood about America.
BY ELIZABETH KOLBERT
PHOTOGRAPH: PICTORIAL PRESS LTD/ALAMY (MAN)
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTIAN NORTHEAST
I
n 1842, P. T. Barnum met a mermaid.
She was just under three feet tall, with
leathery skin, sharp teeth, and pendulous
breasts. The mermaid had purportedly
been caught by a fisherman off the coast
of Japan. Mummified, she’d then been
sold to an American sea captain. The
sea captain tried to recoup the purchase
price—roughly a hundred and thirty
thousand dollars in today’s money—by
exhibiting her in London, but the En-
glish papers were unkind. Soon the mer-
maid was second-billed to a “Learned
Pig” named Toby. She fell into obscu-
rity and then, eventually, into the hands
of a Boston impresario.
When the mermaid was presented
to Barnum, he was immediately taken
with the shrivelled creature. The year
before, he’d bought the American Mu-
seum, an establishment in lower Man-
hattan. It housed an eclectic collection
of wax figures, statues, paintings, and an-
imals both living and stuffed. Barnum’s
chief interest in the venture lay, by his
own account, in the “opportunities it
afforded for rapidly making money,” and
