Jack Kelly writer
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
A GLIMPSE OF BARNUM
(AmericanHeritage.com)
In September 1850 Phineas Taylor Barnum brought Jenny
Lind, “The Swedish Nightingale,” across the Atlantic to tour
America. Barnum risked everything, even mortgaging his
home, to guarantee the golden-throated soprano an
extraordinary $150,000. Determined to turn a profit, he
generated a perfect storm of publicity. To fuel the hysteria,
he made sure the crowd that greeted her at the New York
dock was salted with a small army of his own men. Another
twenty thousand curious onlookers gathered outside her
hotel; city firemen paraded past her window.
Some thought it crass when Barnum auctioned the first ticket
for her concerts to the highest bidder. Hat maker John Genin
shelled out $225 to buy the first ticket in New York and
cleaned up when his hats became the rage across the
country. In other cities, entertainers and businessmen outbid
each other to buy the first ticket and bask in the resulting
notoriety. Here was the essence of Barnum: a mixture of high
and low culture, relentless publicity, instant celebrity, a
profitable dash of controversy, and a good time had by all.
Often dismissed as a hoaxer and a huckster, Barnum was
not only the most successful promoter in American history
and one of the country’s first millionaires, he was also a
pioneer at turning spectacle into profit. He was one of the
first to use the term “show business,” and he attended the
birth of what has become an important part of our economy
and our culture.
Artifacts of the great showman’s life have been collected at
the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut, his adopted
home town (he was born in 1810 in Bethel, Connecticut). A
visit offers an intriguing glimpse of Barnum’s life and era.
Barnum left $100,000 for the construction of the exotic stone
and terra cotta building, one of Bridgeport’s architectural
landmarks. Completed in 1893, two years after Barnum’s
death, The Barnum Institute of Science and History originally
housed the Bridgeport Scientific Society and the Fairfield
County Historical Society and included artifacts left by
Barnum and his wife. When those organizations failed during
the 1930s, the City of Bridgeport took over the building and
for several decades used it for city offices. The Barnum
Museum opened at the site in 1968.
Displays on three floors highlight the social and industrial
history of Bridgeport as well as the accomplishments of the
city’s most famous citizen. They include a recreation of
Barnum’s library and an elaborate 1,000-square-foot scale
model of a five-ring circus with 3,000 carved figures.
Barnum’s name has long been linked to the Barnum & Bailey
Circus, which later merged with Ringling Brothers and still
touts itself as “The Greatest Show On Earth” (a phrase
Barnum coined). In fact, Barnum didn’t get involved with the
circus until the 1870s, when he was over 60. Most of his life
was devoted to museums and promotions.
As a youth, Barnum worked as a storekeeper, lottery
salesman, and newspaper publisher. In 1835 he chanced
upon an opportunity to acquire the right to display Joice
Heth, an African-American woman who was being promoted
as the 161-year-old nurse of George Washington. The
promotion turned a handsome profit. When attendance
began to flag, Barnum sent an anonymous letter to a
newspaper claiming Heth was a fake, an ingenious
automaton. The curious flocked back to see if this could be
true. Barnum had found his calling.
One of the exhibits in The Barnum Museum is a replica of
the mermaid that Barnum used to draw customers to his own
New York City museum in 1842. An amalgam of fish,
orangutan and baboon, the shriveled specimen in no way
resembled the lovely fin-tailed maidens on the advertising
posters. Such obvious fakes were cited during Barnum’s
lifetime and after as evidence that he was a cheat, a
“humbug.”
He himself saw his mission “to arrest public attention; to
startle, to make people talk and wonder.” He wanted patrons
to appreciate the variety and fascination of the natural and
human world. Science, natural history, human oddities, all
were grist for his mill. He gleefully lumped together displays
of rare bird specimens, Indian chiefs, jugglers, serpent
charmers, ropedancers, glassblowers, a dog who could
operate a knitting machine, and “the great Paganini whistler.”
The mermaid and similar fabrications were “skyrockets” to
get people into his Museum, his “wilderness of realities.” The
tactic was legitimate, he held, “provided that when customers
are once attracted they never fail to get their money’s worth.”
One of the keys to Barnum’s success was his partnership
with Bridgeport native Charles Stratton, better known as
General Tom Thumb. Barnum put the famous midget on
display in 1842 when Stratton was four (Barnum claimed he
was eleven and had been brought from Europe at
“extraordinary expense”). He and Barnum became close
friends and the impresario’s expert management yielded
years of mutually profitable collaboration. Tom Thumb
exhibits at the museum include his lilliputian carriage, boots
and top hat.
In the lobby of the Museum is a stuffed baby elephant
named Bridgeport, who was the second elephant ever born
in captivity. He’s emblematic of another of Barnum’s
passions. Among the many elephants Barnum owned was a 6
½-ton pachyderm named “Jumbo,” whom he imported in
1882 for display in his circus. He generated a “Jumbo-mania”
so widespread that the animal’s name became a permanent
epithet for something very large.
Also featured at the museum is a lesser known side of
Barnum’s long and varied life. “It always seems to me,” he
wrote, “that a man who ‘takes no interest in politics’ is unfit to
live in a land where the government is in the hand of the
people.” Barnum was elected to the Connecticut legislature
in 1865. He struggled against Cornelius Vanderbilt’s
commuter railroad monopoly and pushed for ratification of
the thirteenth amendment barring slavery. He ran for
Congress in 1867 as a Republican, but The Nation blasted
him as the personification of “a certain low kind of humbug”
marked by “intense and concentrated vulgarity.” He lost the
election and expressed his disgust with politics.
But the urge to contribute to his community gripped him
again in 1875, when he won a term as mayor of Bridgeport.
During his tenure in office he improved the city water supply,
contracted for the installation of gas street lighting, and
supported the right of black citizens to enter trade unions. He
had already played an important role in developing East
Bridgeport into a major industrial hub and would continue to
contribute to public improvements in the city. In 1888, at age
78, he seriously considered running for president.
Bridgeport has followed the pattern of many cities in the
Northeast -- its prosperity evaporated in the second half of
the twentieth century with the disappearance of
manufacturing enterprises. The museum highlights some of
the bygone industries of the city, which was once a leader at
making sewing machines, guns, corsets and electrical
devices.
A walk around the neighborhoods near the museum reveals
a mixture of preservation, decay and renewal. The nearby
Barnum-Palliser Historic District, which Barnum helped
develop, displays the baroque elegance of Victorian
architecture. Barnum was the chief sponsor and benefactor
of Seaside Park, the first urban waterfront park in the nation.
The extensive stretch of land bordering Long Island Sound
features a larger-than-life-sized statue of the great promoter.
In the decades after Barnum’s death in 1891, high and low
culture largely parted ways. Museums promulgated dusty
scientific and historical knowledge; show business was exiled
to the carnival and theater. The Barnum approach would not
return until later in the twentieth century when television
offered a similar potpourri of high and low. Today many
museum directors are again spicing their attractions with a
dash of Barnum ballyhoo to bring in the crowds.
The Barnum Museum at 820 Main Street in Bridgeport is
open 10 til 4:30 Tuesday through Saturday, 12 til 4:30 on
Sunday. Information is available at www.barnum-museum.org
or 203.331.1104.
* * *