"WA'AL, I'M BARNUM."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 224, 21 September 1935, Page 6 (Supplement)

"WA'AL, I'M BARNUM."

PHINEAS Taylor Barnnm—"P. T. Barnum" to the -world—born 125 years ago, on July 5, 1810, remains aa steadfast in the American legend as he was in his long and stentorian lifetime. The echoes of his stea.ni calliope die away, but the name of Barnum resounds—his reward for having been the world's greatest genjus at publicity (writes M. It. Werner in the New York "Times"). The scholarly Matthew Arnold spent a. night in the Barnum home, "Waklomere," at Bridgeport. Barnum had written, 'fYou and I, Mr. Arnold, ought to be acquainted. You are a celebrity, I am a notorioty." Notorious he was, and proud of it. Ho liked to engage strangers in conversation and tell them impressively at the close, "You have been talking with P. T.-Barnum." Toward the end of hie. life, when the Barnum and Bailey Circus was playing in London, an open carriage entered Olympia Hall every afternoon and evening and drove slowly around the arena, stopping the performance while its tall and portly old passenger, frock-coated and wearing a shirt with an Immense diamond stud and an extraordinary number of ruffles, removed his shiny top hat, bowed to the spectators and called out in a squeaky, decaying Yankee voice, "I suppose you all come to see Barnum. Wa-al, I'm Barnum." The English crowds cheered him, as all crowds cheered this ambassador of vast entertainment.

Never in our history has there heen a man more adroit •at making himself known in a way to capture tlie imagination of his contemporaries and the good will of posterity. Barnum's stock in trade was liia engaging personality and it was imperishable. lie sold it over and over again' with his inexhaustible wit—sold it to the plain people of two continents, to the leaders of America and to the crowned heads of Europe. Queen Victoria delighted in him and his tiny protege, General Tom Thumb, and received them twice at her palace, and Louis Phillippe at Paris made them guests of honour at his court. It is a toss-up whether it was the showman or the midget who was the major attraction. Press agent supreme, Barnum never needed a Press agent for himself.

Exceptional though he was, Barnum came a3 near, perhaps, as any other man to being "the typical American," for he embodied in full measure the acuteness, the daring, the perseverance and the rough humour that most Americans of his day admired. He left his name in the language as a word of unique meaning. Began Gropingly. It was not an easy success for Barnum, He began his career gropingly and he" met discouragement. He was a Connecticut Yankee, born at Bethel, his father a tailor, farmer, tavern keeper, livery stable proprietor and country store merchant and never prosperous. The boy was clever at using his head to save his back —"the laziest boy in town," people said. He earned money selling cherry rum to soldiers. At 12 he owned a sheep and a calf and had savings put away. Clerking in his father's store, he learned shrewdness. It was a far cry from that era to NEA. Sharp practice was the custom, the buyer had to beware and the man of most guile was the smart fellow. PJety ruled the vicinity on Sunday, but "dog eat dog" was the philosophy on week-days, and the practical joke was in high favour. "Such «a school," Barnum wrote afterward, "would 'cut eye teeth,' but if it did not cut conscience, morals and integrity all up by the roots, it would be becaiise the scholars quit before their * education was completed." In his youth Barnum did quit for a time, worked in. New York City as a bartender and got acquainted with the theatre. Back again in Connecticut after his father's death, he sold illustrated Bibles and lottery tickets, married the village dressmaker, ran a country newspaper, and landed in gaol for accusing a deacon of usury. All the while he heard New York calling him. With its 200,000 population it seemed to him the place for jin ambitious young man with ideas. He tried the big city again. In 1835 he was conducting a small grocery store here, Charity Barnum, his wife, was keeping boarders, and their prospects were not bright. Then a Mr. Bartram, of Redding, called at the store and mentioned that he had just sold an interest in a remarkable negress, one Joice Hetli, reputed to be 101 years old and the childhood nurse of George Washington; also that the man who now had her on his hands was no showman.

"In Fact, I Raised Him." Barnum went at bn'ce to Philadelphiato take a look at Joice Hetli. He found that she "might almost as well have been called a thousand years old as any other age." She wag blind and.toothless, with bushy, savage grey lifiir; she smoked a cob pipe, was garrulous, and could be made to speak of the Father of His Country as- "dear little George." She told' Barnum, "In fact, I 'i-aised him," and Barnum was not too inquisitive about that.

He sokl his store, borrdwed 500 dollars, and bought the negress for 1000 dollars. Exhibiting her in New York and New England, lie made liack the purchase price in a single week. Throughout that adventure he kept up a steady stream of publicity characteristic of his technique later oh. He created controversy over Joice, inviting conflicting opinions from physicians and the publicWhen receipts in Boston declined'ho had himself denounced in the newspapers as an impostor. Joice was declared- to be made of whalebone, rubber and hidden springs, and her exhibitor a ventriloquist. New crowds immediately hastened to see the rubber woman, and the old crowds returned to satisfy themeelves about her. When Joice died at hist Barnum provoked a dispute in the Press over her true ape and whether she was really dead. Such were Barnum's methods. His unuttered prayei; to the news writers was, "Mention me as a fake if you must, just so you mention me continually." He labelled himself "The Prince of Humbugs" and revelled in the title. When someone tried, to blackmail him with a ecurrilpus .pamphlet, ho offered to buy thousands of copies and distribute them. It Pfys To Advertise. Ho Jiad the gift of knowing what! owld interest. people, which, usually, was what iiit-rei'tcl him; and when he was not quite-pure he resorted to .ballyhoo and Ktiiiiulated a clamorous demand for the thing'he had to offer. He spent

Master Of Ballyhoo.

"THE PRINCE OF HUMBUGS."

six months in "building up" Jenny Lind for her ever-famous tour of the nation. Not many Americans knew of her and her success abroad—a train conductor whom he questioned thought she was a dancer. But so well did Barnum prepare the country for the singer from Europe that her tour brought in total receipts of more than £140,000. Especially well did he play up her charities. Ho let the newspapers say that she gave everything to charity, while he gave nothing. He was credited with the authorship of a popular conundrum of the time: "Why is it that Jenny Lind and Barnum will never fall out? Because lie is always for-getting and she is always for-giving." The truth was that Barnum was charitable; but he could enjoy in profitable silence what would have caused other men to write indignant letters to editors and start libel suits. "It pays to advertise" was his motto, and he wrote: "If a man has got goods for sale and ho doesn't advertise them in some way, the chances are that some day the sheriff will do it for him." To this day his Press work for the Swedish vocalist has its residual effect, for people who cannot name any other prima donna of ISSO know the name of Jenny Lind.

Barnum had plenty of versatility. He wrote and lectured earnestly for the temperance cause. He served several terms in the Connecticut Legislature. He built an ornate palace at Bridgeport, where the world, passing on the railroad, could marvel at its spires, minarets, conservatories and fountains. Visitors reported that its interior was "as elegant as a steamboat." For the further wonder of mankind, he used an elephant to do the ploughing in his fields hear the track. He was a champion of Unitarianism. He gave liberally to higher education. Happy Position in American Memory. In 1870, when he was CO, "his energies unassauged by travel and entertainment" in his retirement, he organised the first forerunner of his circus. The show opened on April 10, 1871, in Brooklyn, and won further riches —four millions, it was said. And he wrote a garrulous, amusing autobiography. His exploits were harmless, he was as genial a character as the world produced in his generation, and he could laugh at himself with the crowd—he liked to tell of hearing a small boy ask, at the circus, "Say, Pa, which cage is Barnum in?"* For those reasons chiefly, among the many possible to mention, Barnum to-day hold 3 his happy position in American memory, along with the mermaid and the woolly horse (of which ho was sotnewhat ashamed in after years), and along with Tom Thumb, Jenny Lind and, of course, Jumbo, the world's biggest elephant, who crossed the ocean at Bkrnum's expense only to perish in a head-on collision with a freight train. Near the end of his life he sighed to think that he would not get to see the accounts of his career' that would be published after he was gone. The "Sun," accordingly, after making sure of his approval, printed his obituary, four columns long, while he still lived, and when he had read it his health improved noticeably. He died on. April 7, 1801 and his last words were a request to hear wha't the receipts at the circus had been that day.