Jenny and Barnum by Roderick Thorp Read Free Book Online Page A

one to support her claim, although he had not been willing to swear out an affadavit on the matter. Barnum maintained he had only repeated what the other two had told him—and what crime was that? If people had been duped, he had been the biggest victim of all.
    Laughing along with the crowd, he demanded to be told what was wrong with his logic. It didn’t matter in any case, he said, because he was well satisfied with the exhibition of Joice Heth. If she hadn’t been George Washington’s mammy, she certainly had looked old enough to have been that person, and therefore the point was well made.
    â€œWhat was the point, Barnum?” someone yelled over the laughter.
    â€œThat George Washington’s mammy, if she had lived, would look very old,” Barnum was alleged to have answered, to the shouts, hoots, and cheers of the crowd.
    Joice Heth had made Barnum’s reputation in New York. He was a merry rogue, a character, an actor who had somehow stepped off a stage to play his part in real life. And in New England, Barnum’s home, where the whole story had spread, where among its devotees the practical joke was a matter of regional pride if not outright legend, Barnum was a hero.
    At his mother’s instruction, little Charlie Stratton was at the door to welcome the great man. Barnum swept him up and set him on his shoulder. “Stay close to me, boy, you’re the one I came to see. Speak up, I want to hear you speak up.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œI had to take the chance of scaring you,” Barnum explained that bleary night in his New York office years later. “If you were going to turn into stone on me, nothing in the world was going to make you fit for performing, and the sooner I knew it, the better. The carriage was costing me a fortune. Fortunately, you chirped right up. It was as sweet as hearing a chipmunk nicker, and you were sitting on my shoulder. You were present in that scabrous back yard for my discussion with your parents, so you should remember every word. What you don’t know is that I had five hundred dollars in my pocket—not all I could get my hands on, mind you, but close to it. I was terribly broke in those days, but I had to be ready to put a binder on any deal I was going to be able to make with your parents. When I spoke, I made sure to look your mother’s way every once in a while, not too often, but regularly enough to make her believe I knew she was going to have plenty to say in any decision to be made about the matter. New England breeds people like her, rabbits, but it breeds foxes like me, too. God rest her soul, her piety and social ambition only made a hassenpfeffer of her for me. Dark, cold climates make for dark, cold people, Charlie. The witless yearning that infests us all takes sinister forms where life is hard. Even now, with New York turning into another Paris, New England is filled with people believing that only God can save them from their frostbitten, overcast gloom. Even a dog knows enough to come out of the rain, Charlie.”
    â€œGod helps those who help themselves,” Tom Thumb said, toasting Barnum with his tiny glass.
    Barnum returned the toast. “Just make sure people are looking the other way when you’re helping yourself, however, and don’t stuff your pockets too full. In any event, after promising to put money in escrow—I had to mortgage my house for that—and guaranteeing your parents a minimum payment every month, as well as swearing that you would have the finest of English tutors—”
    Tom Thumb squealed with laughter. “I never saw one! ”
    â€œYour parents didn’t care in the first place,” Barnum replied, a little put off. “Wasn’t I a good teacher? Haven’t I seen you myself standing over your newspaper, morning after morning, turning it like bed sheets, while you read every column, every word? God knows you can do your sums. You even