Struggles & Triumphs: A Memoir. P. T. Barnum
a bet and so win a treat for the company. He made several ineffectual attempts upon me, and at last, one evening, Darrow, who stuttered, made a final trial as follows: “Come, Barnum, I’ll make you another proposition; I’ll bet you hain’t got a whole shirt on your back.” The catch consists in the fact that generally only one-half of that convenient garment is on the back; but I had anticipated the proposition—in fact I had induced a friend, Mr. Hough, to put Darrow up to the trick,—and had folded a shirt nicely upon my back, securing it there with my suspenders. The bar-room was crowded with customers who thought that if I made the bet I should be nicely caught, and I made pretence of playing off and at the same time stimulated Darrow to press the bet by saying:
“That is a foolish bet to make; I am sure my shirt is whole because it is nearly new; but I don’t like to bet on such a subject.”
“A good reason why,” said Darrow, in great glee; “it’s ragged. Come, I’ll bet you a treat for the whole company you hain’t got a whole shirt on your b-b-b-back!”
“I’ll bet my shirt is cleaner than yours,” I replied.
“That’s nothing to do w-w-with the case; it’s ragged, and y-y-you know it.”
“I know it is not,” I replied, with pretended anger, which caused the crowd to laugh heartily.
“You poor ragged f-f-fellow, come down here from D-D-Danbury, I’m sorry for you,” said Darrow tantalizingly.
“You would not pay if you lost,” I remarked.
“Here’s f-f-five dollars I’ll put in Captain Hinman’s (the landlord’s) hands. Now b-b-bet if you dare, you ragged c-c-creature, you.”
I put five dollars in Captain Hinman’s hands, and told him to treat the company from it if I lost the bet.
“Remember,” said Darrow, “I b-b-bet you hain’t got a whole shirt on your b-b-back!”
“All right,” said I, taking off my coat and commencing to unbutton my vest. The whole company, feeling sure that I was caught, began to laugh heartily. Old Darrow fairly danced with delight, and as I laid my coat on a chair he came running up in front of me, and slapping his hands together, exclaimed:
“You needn’t t-t-take off any more c-c-c-clothes, for if it ain’t all on your b-b-back, you’ve lost it.”
“If it is, I suppose you have!” I replied, pulling the whole shirt from off my back!
Such a shriek of laughter as burst forth from the crowd I scarcely ever heard, and certainly such a blank countenance as old Darrow exhibited it would be hard to conceive. Seeing that he was most incontinently “done for,” and perceiving that his neighbor Hough had helped to do it, he ran up to him in great anger, and shaking his fist in his face, exclaimed:
“H-H-Hough, you infernal r-r-rascal, to go against your own n-n-neighbor in favor of a D-D-Danbury man. I’ll pay you for that some time, you see if I d-d-don’t.”
All hands went up to the bar and drank with a hearty good will, for it was seldom that Darrow got taken in, and he was such an inveterate joker they liked to see him paid in his own coin. Never till the day of his death did he hear the last of the “whole shirt.”
CHAPTER V.
MY START AS A SHOWMAN.
THE AMUSEMENT BUSINESS—DIFFERENT GRADES—CATERING FOR THE PUBLIC—MY CLAIMS, AIMS AND EFFORTS—JOICE HETH—APPARENT GENUINENESS OF HER VOUCHERS—BEGINNING LIFE AS A SHOWMAN—SUCCESS OF MY FIRST EXHIBITION—SECOND STEP IN THE SHOW LINE—SIGNOR VIVALLA—MY FIRST APPEARANCE ON ANY STAGE—AT WASHINGTON—ANNE ROYALL—STIMULATING THE PUBLIC—CONTESTS BETWEEN VIVALLA AND ROBERTS—EXCITEMENT AT FEVER HEAT—CONNECTING MYSELF WITH A CIRCUS—BREAD AND BUTTER DINNER FOR THE WHOLE COMPANY—NARROW ESCAPE FROM SUFFOCATION—LECTURING AN ABUSIVE CLERGYMAN—AARON TURNER—A TERRIBLE PRACTICAL JOKE—I AM REPRESENTED TO BE A MURDERER—RAILS AND LYNCH LAW—NOVEL MEANS FOR SECURING NOTORIETY.
By this time it was clear to my mind that my proper position in this busy world was not yet reached. I had displayed the faculty of getting money, as well as getting rid of it; but the business for which I was destined, and, I believe, made, had not yet come to me; or rather, I had not found that I was to cater for 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 world-wide 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 pre-eminence 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 per cent 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