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

have some Latin and Greek.”
    â€œPrecious little. Books are too heavy for me anyway.”
    â€œWell, you have the money now to hire somebody to translate all the Greek and Latin you want,” Barnum said airily. “For that matter, he can even teach them to you, if that’s what you want—which I doubt, given your love of the pleasures of the flesh these days.”
    Tom Thumb was rocking with laughter. “I should take you into court. I should have you put in jail.”
    â€œWe have had fun,” Barnum mused. “We’re two of a kind. As young as you were, you knew that even before your mother left the yard to fetch the tea, and called your father to help her. From the letter she knew I wanted to have a moment with you alone, but more important, you knew it, too.”
    â€œBy the time we were sitting in the garden,” Tom Thumb said, “I knew you had all but made up your mind, even though I still didn’t know what was going to be expected of me.”
    â€œOur future depended on what I said to you next, and the way you responded to it. Do you remember? Can you possibly forget?”
    Tom Thumb laughed. “Yes and no. Yes, I remember; no, I can’t possibly forget.”
    Now, as if he wanted that moment to come alive again after so many years, as if he wanted to re-create it so he and his little General could live it again, Barnum came close and whispered, “Son, even though you’re half the size of other five-year-olds, most people are too stupid to be able to notice the difference. If we’re going to make any money together, you’re going to have to pretend you’re older. You’re going to have to say you’re nine years old and act accordingly. I’ll teach you what you need to know, but it will be up to you to make it work. Do you think you can make people believe you’re nine?”
    â€œI won’t be able to do the schoolwork,” Tom Thumb said, as he had years before.
    â€œYou won’t have to go to school,” Barnum said without emotion, forgetting how the child’s concerns had visibly dismayed him that afternoon in the Stratton back yard. As then, Tom Thumb rose to his feet. This time he was unsteady, swinging his arms for balance.
    â€œIf I’m nine,” he cried, “that means in November I’ll be ten! ”
    Barnum paused; his memory of the event was near-perfect. He sat back. “How old are you?”
    â€œNine!” Tom Thumb shrieked, like the child he had been.
    Barnum winked. “We’re going to be all right. Just don’t tell your mother what we just said.”
    Like a puppeteer, or some mischievous Olympian spirit, Barnum schemed and connived a whole new life for five-year-old Charlie Stratton. It began before that first week was out, eradicating that nasty little neighborhood and dark-spirited New England forever. Barnum named him for a character out of King Arthur, the thumb-sized son of a plowman swallowed whole by a cow, and prefixed “General” to add dimension and charm to the character. Barnum trained the little boy, patiently drilling him in his lines and steps, teaching him how to dress, walk, talk, bow, and acknowledge praise. In a matter of months the five-year-old became nine-year-old General Tom Thumb, whose first triumphal tour electrified America, took them both to the White House, to Queen Victoria, to the wonders of the Continent beyond …
    Tom Thumb had not lied to Jenny Lind: Barnum had invented him. Barnum was forty-six now, but already he had given the world the American Museum in New York, such wonders as Tom Thumb, Chang and Eng, the Siamese Twins, Anna Swan the Giantess, the Feegee Mermaid, and the Wild Men of Borneo. And if Jenny Lind could not see it, Barnum had changed for the better the lives of people who might have been made to suffer scorn, ridicule, and humiliation from childhood to the grave.
    People like Charlie