Kriyßamum
AS THE MOST FAMOUS GOMMEHTATORS
OF RADIO RECALL HIM.. .... .TODAY
iINITEO ARTfSTS COR POR ATl'ON~—
n.T WOULD be just as easy 10 portray r. 1. Jiaruum as
saint or sinner, exemplar of scoundrelism or success. He
was as proud to be called “Prince of Humbugs” as
“Prince of Showmen” and his delight in catching those suckers
of whom one is born every minute was never clouded by a
meticulous conscience. Yet his fervent devotion to the Uni
versalist Church and to the cause of temperance, were ju
as sincere as his conviction that people love to be humbugged
He prefaced his revealing autobiography with two quotation
one from Shakespeare, the other from P. T. Barnum who sr
“The noblest art is that of making others happy.”
One wonders which phase of this
Janus-faced American’s life and
personality will be emphasized in
the Twentieth Century production,
“The Mighty Barnum”. Perhaps
author, actor and director of this
forthcoming picture will be unable
or unwilling to agree. Then we
will see two or three Barnums in
stead of a single, unified, consistent
personality. If the screen should
give us this impression it might be
nearer the truth than in trying to
make this “moot typical American
better or worse then he wae in real
life* .-i »•
His contemporaries certainly dis
agreed about Mm from the time be
began playing boyish pranks on his
Connecticut neighbors until bis
death in 1891, as the worlds great
est showman. Throughout the 81
years of his life people argued
about him and his doings. While it
may be true that his enemies were
more respectable than his friends,
both were fervent in debating the
eternal question, “Is Barnum a
fraud?” This led a poetic admirer
of Bridgeport’s most notorious citi
zen to write:
“Os all demnition wonderments that
swell his fame and pelf,
There never wos a demder one
than Barnum is himself.
The debate on Barnum’s charac
ter began long before he became a
showman. It followed him through
his early career as boy trader,
country store clerk, lottery ticket
salesman, book auctioneer, country
editor and boarding house keeper.
It was in 1835 while Barnum was i
running his New York boarding
house at 52 Frankfort Street that j
Lady Luck guided his entry into
the business that was to become his
life work.
New England Tip
A Connecticut guest, one Coley
Bartram, told his twenty-five year
old host quite casually about selling
his interest in an old negro woman
—slavery was still an honored
American institution —named Joice
Heth. He showed Barnum the
clipping of an advertisement in the
Pennsylvania Inquirer of July 15,
1935. The curious thing about this
advertisement, the text of which is
preserved for us only by Barnum
himself in liis autobiography, is that
the style and manner of the text
resembles no one’s if not Showman
Barnum’s. On# may be permitted
to wonder whether it was not cre
ated by the fertile imagination of
the master showman. Here it is:
“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.: JOICE HETH, a negress,
aged 161 years, who formerly be
longed to the father of General ■
Washington. She has been a mem
ber of the Baptist Church, one hun
dred and sixteen years, and can re
hearse many hymns, and sing them
according to former custom. She .
was born near the old Potomac
River in Virginia, and has for nine
ty or one hundred years lived in
Paris, Kentucky, with the Bowling
family.”
Bartram told Barnum that he bad
sold out his interest in this curi
osity to his partner who was also
anxious to sell out and return to
his Kentucky home. Now let u:
hear Barnum tell what he found
when, his showman’s blood and
Yankee thirst for profit stirred by
opportunity, he went to Philadel
phia to see the 161 year old negress.
A Real Curiosity
“Joipe Heth was certainly a re
markable 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 pe
tition; she could move one arm at
will, but her lower Umbo 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 nearly
to dose it, and were fixed; the nails
on that hand wore almost four todi
es long and extended above her
wrist; the nails on her large toes
had grown to the thickness of a
quarter of an inch; her head was
covered with a thick bush of grey
HAVE YOU ANYTHING LYING AROUND THE HOUSE THAT’S
NOTOFANYUSE? IF SO, TRY A WANT AD IN THE CHOWAN
HERALD. THE COST IS SMALL AND YOU’LL BE SURPRIS-
A; j . . j • .
hair; but she was toothless and to
tally blind, and her eyes had sunk
so deeply in the sockets as to have
disappeared nltog - ’•"r.”
It all sournh convincing as
the great P. T uum knew how
to make things sound. “The evi
dence seemed autnentic,” he tells
us, and in answer to the inquiry
(presumably made by the sceptical
Yankee from Connecticut) why so
remarkable a discovery had not
been made before, explanation was
given that she had been carried
from Virginia to Kentucky, had
been on the plantation of John S.
Bowling so long that no one knew
or cared how old she was, and
only recently the accidental discov
ery by Mr. Bowling’s son of the old
bill of sale in the Record Office in
Virginia had led to the identifica
tion of this negro woman as ‘the
nurse of Washington.
“Everything seemed so straight
forward,” says Barnum, that he de
termined to buy Joice Heth and be
come a showman. He had already
learned how to bay and quickly
beat down the price from $3,000
to SI,OOO. Even this was high for
a young married man who only had
SSOO, but Barn inn never lacked
courage when it came to backing
bis judgment on a money-making
venture. He was by nature a gam
bler in any game where he could
both deal the cards and play the
band. He borrowed SSOO and
launched upon the career that made
him famous.
Keen Nose for News
What distinguished Barnum from
his predecessors in the show busi
ness was his keen sense of publi
city. He knew as no one before
him that “it pays to advertise.” In
stinctively he sensed it was not so
important that Joice Heth should
be all that was claimed if only those
claims aroneed the curiosity of a
sufficient number of prospective cus
tomers. “At the outset of my ca
reer,” says Barnum, “I saw that
everything depended upon getting
the people to think and talk and
JnSV'.'£& Wlaw If I /
Trlffrmrr'
Joice Heath brought Barnum SISOO in a week.
oecome curious and excited over and
about ‘the rare spectacle’.”
It was in behalf of Joice Heth
that he first produced those as
tounding handbills, posters, trans
parencies, banners, advertisements
and newspaper puff paragraphs that
ereuted a new era in amusement
advertising. It was as though Barn
um had said: “It’a not what you
have—it's what people think you
have that counts.” Joice Heth her
self worked valiantly for her em
ployer by singing old hymns and
talking about playing with “baby
George.”
Barnum sensed instinctively the
publicity value of controversy.
When the first interest in Joice
Heth died down he wrote an anony
mous letter to the. newspaper#
charging that the old woman was
only an ingeniously constructed au
tomaton made of whalebone, robber
and springs which only talked
throngh n ventriloquist. That
brought people hack for a second
visit.
Joice Heth brought her owner as
much aa $1,500 in a single week,
laid the foundation for his first for
THE CHOWAN HERALD. EDENTON, N. C., THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1935.
tun*, and taught him that he had
found his true vocation.
Not Proven Fake
Was she really 161 years old?
Medical evidence says no. She died
in 1836 and the autopsy indicated
that she might have been little
over eighty. But the doctors dis
agreed so Barnum felt he was just
ified in accepting the claims that
had led him to invest his entire for
tune in this living mummy. In his
autobiography Barnum frankly says
he does not know whether the old
woman was a conscious or uncon
scious impostor. “I taught her
none of these things,” he adds.
Alexander Hertzen, a Russian
novelist and journalist living in
London, published in 1856 a scath
ing analysis of Barnum’s character
and methods. Basing his con elu
sions entirely on what he read in
the uncensored first edition of
Barnum’s autobiography, he sum-:
marizes the Joice Heth episode as
follows:
“Barnum, incidentally, found an
old, broken-down, half-demented
woman who was continually mum- .
bling some incomprehensible non-;
sense. He conceived on the Bpot ,
that it would be a good idea to ex- i
bibit the old woman as the nnrse I
of George Washington. What is
there to require lengthy reflection? 1
Posters—and the thing was settled.
He carried her from town to town,
and wherever he went with her,
everybody said it was a humbug, an
imposition, and an absurdity; that
Washington’s nurse would be, if
living, at least one hundred and
fifty years old. Everybody was in
a hurry to satisfy his or her curi
osity, and ran to see the old woman.
One crowd left with loud laughter,
and another entered the booth.
Both are sure that it is all a hum
bug and nonsense, and meanwhile
Barnum pockets thousands upon
thousands.
“After he had everywhere exhib
ited his siren, Tom Thumb, the
false nurse of George Washington,
and the true Jenny Lind, Barnum
shuffled into high honesty. He was
the chairman of many charitable
societies and gave fatherly advice
to those who were just beginning to
make a place for themselves in the
world. From the middle-class view
point, the 1 past does not affect a
million in the safe. A million cov
ers a multitude of sins.”
Barnum Criticised
This kind of criticism followed
Barnum throughout his life. In the
eyes of his contemporaries, he was
Janus-faced, looking out on the
world with both the benignant smile
of religious peace and the crafty
sneer of commercial war. One
thinks of the self-advertising an
tics of Huey Long as presenting a
modern version of one side of the
great showman’s personality. Per
haps, when the Louisiana Senator is
twenty years older, he, too, will
become the benignant patriarch who
gives an eager world moral counsel
on how to live wisely and achieve
success. Perhaps, too, since we all
prefer to be charitable, it would
be well to remember a few homely
lilies addressed to Barnum which
appeared in the Boston “Saturday
Evening Gaßette”:
• ■ ■
“You humbugged as—that we have
seen.
We got our money's worth, old fel
low.
And though you thought our aiiada
were groan,
We never thought your heart was
yallow!”
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PAGE SEVEN