PHINEAS T. BARNUM

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29336, 15 October 1960, Page 3

PHINEAS T. BARNUM

The Fabulous Showman. By Irving Wallace. Hutchinson. 236 pp. Mr Wallace is an author who will be well-known to readers ot the more popular American magazines—the "Saturday Evening Post,” the "Cosmopolitan,” and “Colliers.” In Phineas T. Barnum he has a subject that is unusual to the point of oddity; and in consequence “The Fabulous Showman” should be of interest to all students of human nature, whether they are serious or not.

Barnum grew up in a harsh, restricted setting; but deeply ingrained in his disposition was the desire to amuse and to be amused. In addition, he came to feel that entertainment, even entertainment of a sensational kind, was.something the State or society owed to the masses. After all, there was so much that was drab in the ordinary life of the urban poor. When people criticised him. Barnum was in the habit of putting forward arguments of that kind as his defence. Until he was 25, Barnum was unknown. "He had been jack of all trades but master of none. He had served as a clerk in several retail stores, had conducted legal lotteries, had been proprietor of his own fruit shop, had edited a liberal weekly, had sold hats and caps on commission, and finally had opened a small grocery business in New York, supplementing this income by running a boarding-house with his wife.” In July, 1836, he heard that the citizens of Philadelphia were deeply interested in one Joice Heth, a negress supposed to be 161 years old. Furthermore, she had been a slave in the Washington household, and had actually been George Washington’s nursemaid. Barnum went to see her for himself. He was fascinated, and as Mr Wallace writes, “Not until his discovery of Joice Heth had he found, himself. But in his flamboyant exhibition of this wizened and repulsive nursemaid he would later admit: ‘I had at last found my true vocation’.’’ He acquired Joice for 1000 dollars, and she was a great success with the public. Barnum was now in the snow business for better or for worse. He had his ups and downs for a year or two; but when in the autumn of 1841 he acquired a collection of curiosities called “Scudder’s American Museum” his fortunes really began to look up. “ “The American Museum,” he said later, “was the ladder by which I rose to prosperity.”

The collection was extensive, but at first rather dreary. In a few weeks Barnum transformed it. He had a working model of Niagara Falls with real water, a Quaker colossus Robert Hales, seven foot six inches in height, weighing 4621 b. He even bought a tribe of Sioux Indians from the Middle West.

Nevertheless his greatest early sensation was the “Feejee Mermaid.” a peculiar object “said to

have been created by a Japanese fisherman who United the upper half of a monkey to the lower half of a fish, so neatly as to defy ordinary inspection." Then in Bidgeport, Connecticut, Barnum discovered a living curiosity in Charles Stratton, who at five years was 25 inches high and weighed 151 b. Stratton was soon transformed into General Tom Thumb, and, as Mr Wallace puts it, “With this midget, Phineas T. Barnum became a giant.” He took his new attraction to Europe, and had great success everywhere. General Tom Thumb was even received by Queen Victoria.

Back in New York, Barnum next acquired the original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng. He showed woolly horses, cherry coloured cats, real buffaloes, and a fossil

figure made from a block ot gypsum, called “the Cardiff Giant." It was 10ft 4Jin high. But Barnum tired of such easy victories. He was the greatest showman in the world, but he decided to be something more. He would become an impressario. In 1850 he brought the celebrated soprano, Jenny Lind, “the Swedish Nightingale,” to the United .States. It was said that “never in the history of music or entertainment in America was the advent of a 'foreign artist hailed with so much enthusiasm.” Her takings, under Barnum’s management, were three-quarters of a. million dollars in nine months, and “above all, because of Barnum, the path was open for the kind of progress to be made later on by Melba, Patti, Paderewski, Caruso, Kreisler and Schumann-Heink.” This was probably the highwater mark of Barnum's career. He went into business later in other ways and was unsuccessful. Then he promoted menageries and circus companies and became a millionaire. He was world-famous. “An envelope postmarked Bombay and addressed’ only to ‘Mr Barnum, America,’ was promptly delivered to him.” It is strange to realise that in his last years he was affilicted with claustrophobia. On his death, “The Times,” of London, rose to the occasion. “When, in 1889, the veteran brought over his shipload of giants and dwarfs, chariots and waxworks, spangles and circus riders, to entertain the people of London, one wanted a Carlyle to come forward with a discourse upon ‘The Hero as Showman’.”