The greatest prankster of the nineteenth century, P.T. Barnum (1810-1891) was impresario, humbug, circus owner, lecturer, speculator, politician, and America’s greatest showman. For decades he reigned supreme as he presented one curiosity and extravaganza after another. “This Way to the Egress” wasn’t a new attraction but a bit of craftiness by Barnum, showing his customers the way out when his American Museum was too full for one more visitor.
He had a gift for entertaining and amusing the American public. Lessons learned from the great “moon hoax,” published in the New York Sun, during August 1835, propelled the young Barnum toward his professional humbug career, as he realized that “most people enjoy a harmless hoax,” and that a fortune might be made with a bit of good-natured deception. His first venture into popular exhibitions was the goldmine he found in the “161” year-old Joice Heth, who was proclaimed to be the world’s oldest woman, and the former nurse of the infant George Washington. Only after her death was it discovered that she was actually no older than eighty. Meanwhile, Barnum had raked in the money; the success of this exhibition and his subsequent itinerant traveling shows lay the groundwork for the purchase of Scudder’s Museum.
 |
| Cover: Candace Fleming, The Great and Only Barnum (2009) |
“When Barnum bought Scudders Museum [in 1841], he also bought the contents. But the old and dusty collections of shells and stuffed animals desperately needed some freshness and variety. So Barnum turned to Peale’s Museum in New York. Like Scudder’s Peale’s Museum had fallen on hard times, and the owners were eager to sell off its collection. In just weeks, Barnum added insect, fossil, and arrowhead collections, animal skeletons, mounted skins, and several paintings of famous Americans. There was also a great ball of hair that had been found in the belly of a sow, a living cow with five legs and two tails, and the preserved arm and hand of the pirate Tom Trouble. Throughout the next decade, Barnum would continue to buy the contents of other museums—the Baltimore Museum in 1845, New York City’s Chinese Museum in 1846, and finally Peale’s Philadelphia Museum in 1848, which landed him the country’s only mastodon skeleton.
“If Barnum could not get his hands on a genuine curiosity for his museum, he had no problem making one up. He often mislabeled displays, claiming that ordinary items were really historically important artifacts. Thus a wooden club was transformed into ‘the very one that killed the esteemed Captain Cook.’ A boat oar became ‘the very tool with which Miles Standish himself rowed his fellow pilgrims to our great American shores.’ And a deer antler became a ‘rare specimen of the horn of the mysterious elusive unicorn.’” --Candace Fleming, The Great and Only Barnum (2009)
Barnum’s celebrities included the curious Feejee Mermaid; General Tom Thumb, the Man in Miniature; the singer extraordinaire known as the Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind; conjoined twins Chang and Eng, Madame Josephine Clofulia, the Swiss Bearded Lady, and Jumbo the elephant.
“If Barnum could not get his hands on a genuine curiosity for his museum, he had no problem making one up. He often mislabeled displays, claiming that ordinary items were really historically important artifacts. Thus a wooden club was transformed into ‘the very one that killed the esteemed Captain Cook.’ A boat oar became ‘the very tool with which Miles Standish himself rowed his fellow pilgrims to our great American shores.’ And a deer antler became a ‘rare specimen of the horn of the mysterious elusive unicorn.’” --Candace Fleming, The Great and Only Barnum (2009)
Barnum’s celebrities included the curious Feejee Mermaid; General Tom Thumb, the Man in Miniature; the singer extraordinaire known as the Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind; conjoined twins Chang and Eng, Madame Josephine Clofulia, the Swiss Bearded Lady, and Jumbo the elephant.
 |
| Image: "An Elephants Tale" Susan Wilson, Tufts Magazine, Spring 2002 |
Want to read more about P.T. Barnum's colorful life and adventures? Here are just a few books to be found at your public library:
The Fabulous Showman; The Life and Times of P.T. Barnum by Irving Wallace (1959)
The Great and Only Barnum: the Tremendous, Stupendous Life of Showman P.T. Barnum by Candace Fleming (2009)
Jumbo: This Being the True Story of the Greatest Elephant in the World by Paul Chambers (2007)
P.T. Barnum: America's Greatest Showman by Philip B. Kunhardt (1995)
P.T. Barnum Presents Jenny Lind: The American Tour of the Swedish Nightingale by W. Porter Ware and Thaddeus C. Lockard, Jr. (1980)
Selected Letters of P.T. Barnum. Edited by A.H. Saxon (1983)
The Showman and the Slave by Benjamin Reiss (2001)
Struggles and Triumphs by P.T. Barnum (1873)
The Two: A Biography by Irving Wallace and Amy Wallace (1978)
You might also be interested in this video: "P.T. Barnum's City of Humbug," The New York Times, Nov. 8, 2007
SCOWAH Chronicles is a series of profiles featuring some of our favorite characters, based on The Objects of Our Affection: Wonderful Characters from the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor. Every year on April Fool's Day the San Francisco Public Library presents a themed exhibition celebrating this extraordinary collection. On view now in the Skylight Gallery through May 31.
Comments
Post a Comment