Mrs Phineas Barnum.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 998, 17 April 1891, Page 4

Mrs Phineas Barnum.

The cable items of last week contained the news that Phineas T. Barnum was dead. There ia little need to tell who Mr Barnum was. Every reader—and everyone reads now*a>days—has read or heard of Barnum the great showman, the king of entertainers, the man who took to Loudon last year the biggest circus arrangement ever seen in Europe. It is not my purpose to speak of Barnum, although I know him personally, and many a cheery chat I have had with that genial gentleman, for a true gentleman he was in more senses than one. Full of old-fashioned courtesy, gentle, kind, with a brave word to say to everyone, full of bright life and vigour, as chivalrous as any knight.errant of fiction where women were OOQcerned, he was id the strictest sense a grand old man. With a youthful complexion, bright soarkliog eyes, fall of latent humour, a total abstainer from intoxicating liquors, brimming over with quaint conceits, pilhy, raoy stories, he was the beau ideal of a brilliant conversationalist, and one of the m-’St amusing and interesting raconteurs I have ever met. But it is not of him I wish to write, but of his wife, a most charming woman. The late Mr Barnum had been twice married. Ido not know much of his first wi j e except that she was of great assistance to him in his dark days, as he playfully termed them ; the days w hen his museum in New York was burned down and he stood iu the streets penniless and almost despondent. He used to be proud of telling the story of how his wife helped him in those days. How she offered to go to work at house service or anything by which she could earn money, but his firm conviction and constant statement was that a man should never let his wife work if he could possibly prevent it. The first Mrs Barnum’s Christian name was Charity, and the genial old showman was for ever making puns f.'pon her name. One of his favourite joke's was, ‘I am Faith, my children are Hope (s), and rny wife is Charity ; so here yoi\ have the three graces.’ And then genuine laughter would shake him from heap to foot. Mrs Barnum died. I 'believe, somewheie about the early part o* 1873, leaving a family of several girls and boys who were married and comfortably settled in the world for themselves. Among *vir Barnum's many friends was Mr John F ish, a prosperous cotton manufactnrer of Manchester, who had a charming daughter, ohristened Nancy. Mr TLrnum first saw ‘Nauoy 1 pjj the occasion of a visit paid by k,et father aiis bergeJf to Bridgeport, in Oonueotiout, iu 1872, she at that .time being about 22 years of age and Mr Barnuoh bi. A great friendship was strnck between Mr Barnum and Nancy, so much so that they regularly corresponded ever afterwards. Upon the death of his first wife, one of the first messages of condolence was a long telegram from Miss Fish. It was not long before Mr Barnum felt very lonely after the death of his wife in 1873. His children had all left him, and in bis sorrow and loneliness his thoughts travelled with such persistency and effect to the bright youug English girl whom he had first met the year before, that iu the autumn of 1574 their marriage was solemnised by the Rev Dr Chapin at the Church of tho Divine Paternity, on Fifth Avenue, New York.

The present. Mrs Barnum is a well educated women, a brilliant conversationadst, a musician of gieat skill, and an able and writer. She has to an unusual degree a Inking for society and entertaining, which makes of her the most delightful of hostesses. Her dinners are famed, even in epicurean America as models, the easy grace and cordial hospitality of the hostess adding much to their enjoyment. Of a bright, genial, winning natnre, Mrs Barnum soon made capital friends with her step-children, most of them older than her. self. ‘My children,’ she says, ‘are disrespectful, most disrespectful, for they call me “ Nancy,” ani my grandchildren call me their ‘ Aunt Nancy.” ’ The great grandchildren, of whom there are now six, call her ‘grandma,’ and it is on them that Mrs Barnum lavishes her affection. * Ask my babies,’ she will say, ‘ whether I understand l’art d’etre or not.’ Mrs Bainum’s present home is a beautiful house, * Marina,’ whioh she planned and built for herself at Bridgeport, Connecticut. The house represents the fulfilled desire of Mrs Barnum, after fifteen years’occupancy of her late husband’s picturesque, but somewhat erratic, home ‘ Waldemere,’ so named by its frequent guest, Bayard Taylor. ‘ Marina ’ is a very comfortable home, built on a high bluff, from which there is an unobstructed view, across eighteen miles of salt water, of the faint coast line of Long Island. The house ia of red brick and stone, over which the English ivy grows abundantly, while the broad verandahs are draped and shaded by beautiful vines of honeysuckle. Couchant stone lions guard the entrance. Mrs Barnum’s pet hobby is the collection of brio-a-brac, of which she has one of the finest assortments in America. She is an Episcopalian in religion by preference, but since her marriage has aiways attended her late husband’s church, The Universalist. Iu appearanoe Mrs Barnum is a trifle under medium height, with a figure slightly inclined to matronly stoutness, which she carries with an ereotness aud poise gained from long years of physical culture. Her complexion is English iu its purity and beauty, her hair dark, aud her eyes gray. She possesses also 'that excellent thing in woman,’ a voice purely English in its sweetness and tone. Dora.