Struggles and Triumphs - P. T. Barnum (top 20 books to read txt) 📗

that insatiate want of human nature⁠—the love of amusement; that I was to make a sensation on two continents; and that fame and fortune awaited me so soon as I should appear before the public in the character of a showman. These things I had not foreseen. I did not seek the position or the character. The business finally came in my way; I fell into the occupation, and far beyond any of my predecessors on this continent, I have succeeded.

The show business has all phases and grades of dignity, from the exhibition of a monkey to the exposition of that highest art in music or the drama, which entrances empires and secures for the gifted artist a worldwide fame which princes well might envy. Such art is merchantable, and so with the whole range of amusements, from the highest to the lowest. The old word “trade” as it applies to buying cheap and selling at a profit, is as manifest here as it is in the dealings at a street-comer stand or in Stewart’s store covering a whole square. This is a trading world, and men, women and children, who cannot live on gravity alone, need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is in a business established by the Author of our nature. If he worthily fulfils his mission, and amuses without corrupting, he need never feel that he has lived in vain.

Whether I may claim a preeminence of grandeur in my career as a dispenser of entertainment for mankind, I may not say. I have sometimes been weak enough to think so, but let others judge; and whether I may assume that on the whole, I have sought to make amusement harmless, and have succeeded to a very great degree, in eliminating from public entertainments certain corruptions which have made so many theatrical “sensations” positively shameful, may safely be left, I think, to the thousands upon thousands who have known me and the character of my amusement so long and so well.

But I shall by no means claim entire faultlessness in my history as a showman. I confess that I have not always been strong enough to rise out of the exceptional ways which characterize the art of amusing⁠—not more, however, than any other art of trade. When, in beginning business under my own name in Bethel, in 1831, I advertised that I would sell goods “25 percent cheaper” than any of my neighbors, I was guilty of a trick of trade, but so common a trick, that very few who saw my promise were struck with a sense of any particular enormity therein, while, doubtless, a good many, who claim to be specially exemplary, thought they were reading one of their own advertisements. And in the show business I was never guilty of a greater sin than this against truthfulness and fair dealing.

The least deserving of all my efforts in the show line was the one which introduced me to the business; a scheme in no sense of my own devising; one which had been sometime before the public and which had so many vouchers for its genuineness that at the time of taking possession of it I honestly believed it to be genuine; something, too, which, as I have said, I did not seek, but which by accident came in my way and seemed almost to compel my agency⁠—such was the “Joice Heth” exhibition which first brought me forward as a showman.

In the summer of 1835, Mr. Coley Bartram, of Reading, Connecticut, informed me that he had owned an interest in a remarkable negro woman whom he believed to be one hundred and sixty-one years old, and whom he also believed to have been the nurse of General Washington. He then showed me a copy of the following advertisement in the Pennsylvania Inquirer, of July 15, 1835:

Curiosity.⁠—The citizens of Philadelphia and its vicinity have an opportunity of witnessing at the Masonic Hall, one of the greatest natural curiosities ever witnessed, viz: Joyce Heth, a negress, aged 161 years, who formerly belonged to the father of General Washington. She has been a member of the Baptist Church one hundred and sixteen years, and can rehearse many hymns, and sing them according to former custom. She was born near the old Potomac River in Virginia, and has for ninety or one hundred years lived in Paris, Kentucky, with the Bowling family.

All who have seen this extraordinary woman are satisfied of the truth of the account of her age. The evidence of the Bowling family, which is respectable, is strong, but the original bill of sale of Augustine Washington, in his own handwriting, and other evidences which the proprietor has in his possession, will satisfy even the most incredulous.

A lady will attend at the hall during the afternoon and evening for the accommodation of those ladies who may call.

Mr. Bartram further stated that he had sold out his interest to his partner, R. W. Lindsay, of Jefferson County, Kentucky, who was then exhibiting Joice Heth in Philadelphia, but was anxious to sell out and go home⁠—the alleged reason being that he had very little tact as a showman. As the New York papers had also contained some account of Joice Heth, I went on to Philadelphia to see Mr. Lindsay and his exhibition.

Joice Heth was certainly a remarkable curiosity, and she looked as if she might have been far older than her age as advertised. She was apparently in good health and spirits, but from age or disease, or both, was unable to change her position; she could move one arm at will, but her lower limbs could not be straightened; her left arm lay across her breast and she could not remove it; the fingers of her left hand were drawn down so as nearly to close it, and were fixed; the nails on that hand were almost four inches long and extended above her wrist;