Jenny and Barnum

by Roderick Thorp

  “Why?”

  “To me, a dog is as big as a horse. If he bit me, he’d tear off my arm. Besides, he used to stare at the audience—a real idiot. With an act like mine, you can’t have distractions.” If he saw that she wanted to laugh again, he ignored her. “Sometimes I do Marc Antony’s speech from Julius Caesar. One critic said if I was full-sized, I’d be working with the great English actors.” He stood at attention, his hands clasped over his tiny, baby-shaped stomach, and looked directly into her eyes. “I can hold an audience,” he said evenly. “I can make it do anything I want, laugh or cry, or both together.”

  “I believe you,” she said, afraid to look away, lest he not believe her.

  “At the end—when I’m working at home, that is—I have another costume change,” he said, “and I come out in red, white, and blue, which are the colors of the American flag, and I recite from our Declaration of Independence. Do you know what that is?”

  “It was part of your war against England,” she said.

  “The first one. We’ve had two. Who knows, maybe we’ll have more. They’d love to get the colonies back. The Declaration of Independence is the greatest human utterance since the Sermon on the Mount—”

  “Don’t blaspheme,” she warned.

  “I’m not! I know you’re a religious woman, Miss Lind. Jefferson wrote that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ What could be better than that?”

  “You Americans keep slaves,” she said.

  “Not for long. Anybody with a brain can see emancipation coming. I myself don’t know what we’re going to do with the darkies. Maybe they’ll want to go back to Africa.”

  “How does your Mr. Barnum—excuse me, Barnum—feel about slavery?”

  “He thinks it’s a sin. I’d tell you more, but there’s a lot of things about him that he doesn’t want widely known. He makes his living putting on entertainments for the public, and the way he does it, sometimes deliberately getting people mad at him, he has to be careful about a lot of the things he says.”

  “It may take me a while to consider his offer. How shall I contact you?”

  “We’re leaving Vienna tomorrow for Milan and Genoa, and after that, we’ll be in Spain for a month. Maybe we can get together in Paris afterward—”

  “I never perform in France,” she said.

  “You’ve never been in Paris?”

  “I lived in Paris for nearly a year, and it disgusted me in all its aspects.”

  General Thumb sat down with a bump in the middle of the desk and folded his legs like a child anticipating a bedtime story. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I take it you find Paris pleasant?”

  “Well, a fellow in my circumstance—a little person—has an easier time in Paris than most places. People there see so many different things, they’re more ready to accept someone like me. I feel better there. Sometimes I feel almost full-sized.”

  He was watching her carefully, and she hesitated before responding. She felt terribly uncomfortable and unhappy, and wondered fleetingly if her little visitor was shading the truth about his real activities in Paris to redeem himself with her. For her, Paris was a city of nauseating superficiality at best, secretly smirking in its love of sin.

  But at once she looked away. Her suspicions in themselves were shameful, as great a sin as anything she could imagine for this tiny, helpless creature so gifted and transparently eager to please. Her emotions welled up—she dared not speak, for fear that her anguish would pour forth. He would see the terrible things she had just been thinking about him.

  He cocked his head to catch her eye. A full-grown man would have been able to reach out and raise her chin so their eyes would meet. “Miss Lind, I’m sorry if I said anything to offend you—”

  “No, no. Forgive me, I am an emotional woman.” Jenny wanted to try a little lie. “I was thinking of what your Barnum’s offer could buy for so many of the needy.”

  “Barnum fully understands that you are a good, charitable, God-fearing woman, Miss Lind,” General Thumb said, very formally. “I suspect that that knowledge may have had some bearing on his decision on the magnitude of the offer he is making to you.”

  She flushed. Somehow he had seen through her, she was sure. “I will have questions. I will need certain assurances and guarantees.”

  “How can we be in touch with you?”

  “I will be traveling through Germany, Denmark, and Sweden for the next month. I live in England, you know—”

  “Yes.”

  “But I am still Swedish, protected by Swedish law. Until I marry, my business affairs are managed by my guardian, Herr Henric Munthe, Judge of the Second Instance, in Stockholm.”

  “Is that how I can reach him by telegraph?”

  “You Americans are so proud of your telegraph!” she scolded mockingly. “Now you talk about putting wires under the ocean itself!”

  “We will.”

  “The ocean? No! Never! The fish will eat your wires, wait and see!”

  He smiled. “Miss Lind, when you’ve been across the ocean as many times as I have, you’ll see that the plan is not impossible.”

  “I haven’t been across the ocean at all.”

  “I know. And all America is waiting to see you, to hear you sing. That’s over thirty million people, Miss Lind. That’s why Barnum has made his stupendous offer. Should you accept, you will bring to America a beauty and artistry it still waits to experience. You will make history. You will change history—for the good.”

  She stared. “You understand, I’m sure, that under the circumstances, your Barnum will have to put up the money—the entire amount—in advance.”

  The little man blinked.

  “It is a big ocean,” she said. “I cannot go sailing back and forth pursuing fees I’ve already earned.”

  He nodded. “Since I can’t very well fight people for what’s due me, I ought to be able to appreciate your concern. I’m sure Barnum will do everything in his power to accommodate you.”

  “I’ve never had any communication with America before,” she said. “How long does an exchange of letters take?”

  “A month, sometimes a little more.” He smiled. “You see, if we had the cable now, we could do it overnight.”

  “Nonsense.” She reddened self-consciously. “Someday, because of you Americans, only the telegraphers will be able to read and write. Everybody else will have to queue up in their offices to send messages to their friends and families. What are you looking at, if I may ask?”

  “You—forgive me. I know you were making a joke, which I enjoyed. But while you were talking, something about you changed. Forgive me, really, I don’t know how to express it. While you were making the joke, I saw an indescribable happiness—”

  “Everyone makes fun of the way I laugh, General. People used to tell me I never learned how.”

  “No, I meant no offense. In fact, you didn’t laugh—”

  Hannelore knocked on the door. “Now I must rest,” Jenny said. “In a day or two I will send to Judge Munthe a list of the questions your offer raises, and when you give him your location, he will forward them to you. How can we learn more of your Barnum—?”

  Hannelore had been peeking around the edge of the partly open door. “Miss Lind? The gentleman has brought a book. I have it out here.”

  “Barnum’s autobiography,” General Tom Thumb said. “He wanted you to have a copy.”

  “Autobiography?” Jenny asked. “How old is he?”

  “Well, I guess he’s forty-six now, but he wrote that book five years ago—”

  He stopped staring, because Jenny was laughing aloud. She could not control her laughter, which erupted in spasms out of her chest, ending in a series of high-pitched squeaks, which, if she was provoked, could last for many minutes. People had been making fun of the way she laughed ever since her apprenticeship at the Royal Theater, Stockholm, when she was nine years old. “America!” she said when s
he had caught her breath. “I must see this place! Men who haven’t lived half their lives write their autobiographies! What an amazing, staggering idea!”

  Hannelore glanced toward the mantel clock. “It’s growing late, Miss Lind.”

  “Yes, I know, I only want to delay a little longer.” She turned to General Tom Thumb. “I will read your Barnum’s book with great care, as quickly as I can.”

  Jenny looked to the clock herself: almost three o’clock, five hours to her performance. To prepare properly, she had to stop all other activities almost immediately. Singing exhausted her, sometimes bringing her, she suspected, to the edge of her sanity, if not life itself. For the next five hours, Jenny would have no existence of her own, yielding instead to a regimen so practiced and familiar that she could not think of it, it made her feel so much like a prisoner.

  General Tom Thumb moved to the edge of the desk. “I need your help, Miss Lind. Falling from here for me is the same as falling from a second-story window for someone full-sized.”

  “I beg your pardon. What should I do?”

  “Take me under the arms. I don’t weigh much.” His tiny arms extended toward her, like an infant’s, irresistible. Jenny could not help laughing at herself, even after her hands were on him, confirming what her eyes had told her earlier: if anything, his body was more knotted with muscle than that of a full-sized man. She wanted to see his reaction to being lifted by her, but as she looked up, he averted his eyes, the act of a gentleman—as if he could see more in her eyes than the other way around. She felt herself blushing—and she almost dropped him. He lunged forward, grabbed the sleeve of her sweater, and stepped onto her knee.

  “Queen Victoria did the same thing,” he said, steadying himself.

  “Which is how you got into her lap, little one?”

  “It was her idea! I wasn’t asking for help. She just reached out and I wasn’t ready for it.”

  Jenny giggled.

  “Then the princesses begged,” he said, “and I wound up in their laps, too.”

  She was delighted. They were face to face, no more than a foot apart. She held him tighter. He looked into her eyes, and now he was no longer a baby to be played with. “I want you to come to America, too, Miss Lind. That change in you I saw a moment ago, I just saw again. When I’m on stage, that’s what I work for, to hold people’s attention like that. With you, it comes to the surface naturally.”

  “I told you, people make fun of my laugh.”

  “Oh, sure, you laugh like a schoolgirl. It’s there, too, don’t let people kid you, something very fresh and beautiful.”

  She was reddening again.

  “Do come to America,” he said. “You’re a queen in your own right, more important than Victoria, and America is the only country in the world where your kind of royalty really reigns.”

  “I do have my questions,” she said, setting him down on the floor. His shoulders were as low as her knees. “Let me commit them to paper. But I must say, in all honesty, that you are a very persuasive little fellow.”

  He rose on tiptoe, took her hand, and kissed it with his baby lips. “America will love you. Rest well now, sing well tonight. I would be there, but I’m working, too. In fact, I’m going straight back to my hotel and take a nap myself.”

  He was heading for the door, walking in straight little steps, when she asked where he was performing.

  He stopped at the threshold. “The Schönbrunn.”

  “Why, that’s the zoo! You told me he didn’t put you in a cage!”

  “It’s also the palace,” he said flatly. “That’s why I asked you the Emperor’s name. You’ve got so many dumb kings and queens over here, I can’t keep them sorted out. Besides, who plays a zoo on a night in January? I’ll let Judge Munthe in Stockholm know how to contact me.”

  Jenny started up from her chair, but as the little man made his way out, Hannelore motioned to her to stay where she was. Able to see her mistress’ agony, Hannelore nevertheless pointed impatiently to the clock. It was now ten minutes after three. Jenny sat back as Hannelore closed the door. In the last moment of his interview the sweet little man had been insulted—humiliated—by his hostess’ stupidity and presumption. Why, that’s the zoo! She still could hear her juvenile thoughtlessness, and it made her want to close her eyes and weep with shame.

  But it was too late to dawdle—she could not afford the luxury of punishing herself. The little General had given her a proper comeuppance anyway. Tonight, while she sang at the Theater an der Wien, he would be performing for Franz Josef. She had not sung for the Emperor since her last performance in Vienna two years ago, and had wondered why he had chosen not to attend this concert—at least that mystery was solved. But why on earth would Franz Josef prefer to observe a troupe of freaks when he could hear the incomparable Jenny Lind?

  When she was sure Tom Thumb had left the suite, Jenny went out to the sitting room and found the book he had brought for her, wrapped in brown paper and tied with rough, unfamiliar string. The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself.

  Forty-one years old when he wrote it? Ridiculous. Barnum absolutely was a madman, a twopenny American Napoleon.

  Hannelore re-entered from the outer hall. “Excuse me, Miss Lind, but I wanted to be sure the little fellow was able to make his way down the stairs safely. I’ve already turned down your bed.”

  Jenny would sleep for an hour, bathe, “dine” on clear broth and tea, and then, with Hannelore’s help, dress and attend to her hair—all part of the five-hour, carefully paced preparation for tonight’s concert. The process was not designed merely to provide the physical rest the singer often did not need, but to create the long interval of relaxation permitting her to gather and focus her concentration.

  After five hours of unhurried, methodical getting-ready, her personal weaknesses, ignorance, and stupidity would be swept from her mind, and she would be able to think only of music—as her music.

  Jenny had been singing since the age of nine, and the ordinary pleasures of song had faded and vanished years ago. The sublime, rarefied pleasure she felt—when it came—occurred only on the stage itself, before an audience. All the rest was hateful struggle she endured because her art demanded no less. Critics hailed Jenny Lind’s voice as an effortless, natural miracle, even though most of them knew that, if she had not studied, trained, and worked for decades, they might not have been able to suffer through a single song. When other little girls were playing with dolls, nine-year-old Jenny was being trained ten hours a day in singing, dancing, and acting; and when those other girls were marrying and having real babies to hold and love, eighteen-year-old Jenny Lind, the young star of Stockholm’s Royal Theater, was in Paris learning to sing all over again. Her earlier training had been wrong and was destroying her voice; she’d had no choice but to go back to the beginning, and sing—scales.

  Jenny realized that her attention already was withdrawing from her surroundings. “How is General Thumb getting downstairs?”

  Hannelore, who was a peasant with blue eyes and gleaming apple cheeks, smiled. “On the shoulders of a passing bellman, riding like a tiny maharajah.”

  “How tall would you say he is?”

  “Two thirds of a meter, Miss Lind. I could not believe my eyes.”

  Jenny’s mind leaped to the little General’s next problem, and she hurriedly crossed the room. Standing in the shadow beside the window, she could see who came and went under the modest marquee shading the Hotel Sacher’s main entrance. Where was the little man going? How was he going to get there?

  At last he emerged, so tiny he seemed a quarter-mile away, and beckoned to a greatly oversized carriage with wide, heavy wheels. As it rolled under the window, unusual double doors swung open, and a hand appeared. At first Jenny thought that the hand seemed large because she had been just focusing on tiny Tom Thumb, but in fact the hand was large, larger than the seat of Jenny Lind’s chair. With the carriage still rolling, Tom Thumb wrapped his arms around the index fi
nger and swung himself into the palm. The hand cupped him gently and drew him into the carriage, which kept rolling out into the traffic and down the busy street. One final realization made Jenny Lind drop her book, The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself.

  The massive wrist to which the hand was attached had been trimmed with frilly, delicate, brilliant white lace.

  2.

  Tom Thumb was exactly twenty-five inches tall, and he weighed twenty-seven solid, muscle-packed pounds.

  The hand belonged to Anna Swan, member of Barnum’s “troupe,” a woman he advertised as a giantess nine feet six inches tall, an exaggeration that oppressed and angered her, as Tom Thumb and the rest of the troupe could well understand. Anna Swan was eight feet nine, and weighed over four hundred pounds, which was awful enough—requiring, among other things, the monstrous black carriage that Barnum had arranged to accompany his traveling show around Europe. Anna Swan would be able to see the sights, he had promised; but the carriage itself, specially built on steel rails to be as strong as a railway locomotive, attracted crowds wherever it went. Anna Swan could not step outside, having to keep the heavy black shades pulled down, able only to peep through the cracks at the castles and cathedrals of her half-forgotten childhood dreams.

  With the carriage rolling down the block away from the Hotel Sacher, General Tom Thumb, born Charles Stratton, of Bridgeport, Connecticut, stepped across Anna Swan’s thighs as if they were felled logs. He was navigating his way not only to the empty space beside her, but through a moment of conflicting sensitivities. She did not like the little people treating her like a female Gulliver: but at the same time he did not really enjoy being handled like a baby, whatever he had told Jenny Lind, and it was Anna Swan’s habit to pick up and move the midgets and dwarfs around as if they were her private collection of dolls.

  When the little people protested, she insisted she was trying to be helpful, and so there was no way to make her stop. In a group of people as difficult to live with as any on earth, Tom Thumb thought that at times Anna Swan was the most difficult of all, wailing and sobbing uncontrollably, as if she alone among them had problems she could not bear.