Jenny and Barnum

by Roderick Thorp

  Perhaps she could get away with it. Her position could be that strong. But in Tom Thumb’s experience Barnum was not that simple—life around Barnum was never simple—and Jenny Lind was doing herself a disservice by not learning all she could about the man who was going to introduce her to the other half of the civilized world.

  A note from Wilton was waiting for Tom Thumb when he arrived at Claridge’s:

  General—

  I hope this finds you well, or at least on the mend. Let me know when I can pop around to discuss several matters of importance.

  Yours, etc.,

  John Wilton

  It did not seem promising. Tom Thumb wrote that he could come by that afternoon, sending the message down to the hotel desk for delivery. Here as in New York there were always plenty of urchins in the streets outside, waiting for the opportunity to be useful.

  When Wilton arrived at the hotel after two o’clock he found Tom Thumb in bed, the pillows propped up, a waiter serving him a late lunch, which included a chilled white wine. Tom Thumb had decided on this show after thinking about what Wilton could have in mind. Wilton’s eagerness to accommodate him now promised that the ultimate result would probably be far from accommodating. Tom Thumb had figured to start fighting back now. He had forgotten that the wine would get him drunk.

  “Are you all right, General?”

  “I’m a little weak. Want some herring? Fish is supposed to be good for you.”

  “Ah, no. I just had lunch. I don’t want to tire you. The last message I had from Barnum indicated that you can expect an arrival in New York unlike anything since Christopher Columbus sailed into the harbor—”

  “That was Henry Hudson,” Tom Thumb said disgustedly.

  Wilton smiled. “I knew I hadn’t gotten it right.”

  “Yeah, well, what does Barnum have planned?”

  “He didn’t say. You’re not to worry about anything, however. He says that everything is well in hand.”

  Without the money to hire a hall, Tom Thumb thought, that was some trick. “You didn’t come all the way over here to tell me this,” Tom Thumb said.

  “No,” said Wilton, glancing at the waiter.

  “You want him out of here?”

  “There’s no point,” Wilton said. “It’s about your Commodore Nutt. Since he’s been a resident here, I don’t suppose there are any secrets about him at Claridge’s.”

  The waiter didn’t blink.

  “Go ahead,” Tom Thumb said. “I think you could probably set the guy on fire before you’d get a rise out of him.”

  “According to the gossip of London, that’s the way you Americans like it,” Wilton said. “In any event, Gallagher has been a problem here in town. He’s spent an extraordinary amount of money here at the hotel—”

  “Has he been running girls in here?”

  Wilton studied him. “I was going to say, ‘and elsewhere.’ He’s been reasonably discreet. Barnum tells me that New York is a city that caters to the private needs of men, too.”

  “You should have shut him down,” Tom Thumb said.

  “He wrote the checks anyway,” Wilton protested. “I had the choice of honoring them or triggering a scandal. Jenny Lind would not want to be associated with this sort of thing. Gallagher is a clever fellow, apparently. He could very well be taking advantage of the situation.”

  “And Jenny Lind already has Barnum’s money,” Tom Thumb finished.

  “Yes, exactly. It would be delicate. She’s very sensitive to that sort of behavior.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Wilton sat back. “There isn’t a lot that you can do, I’m afraid. On Sunday evening Jenny Lind is giving a reception for the Barnum troupe—that includes me, I’m pleased to add—and it might be a good idea to keep an eye on Mr. Gallagher.”

  “If he shows up at all.” Tom Thumb was thinking of Lavinia.

  “He must come,” Wilton said. “Don’t misunderstand. Being invited to Miss Lind’s home is a coup, and not to be trifled with.”

  Tom Thumb was thinking of how well she guarded the prerogatives of her position. He waggled his glass at the waiter for more wine. “What do all you guys see in her? The tenor’s in love with her, the conductor’s in love with her. You sound like you wouldn’t mind taking a flyer yourself.”

  “I daresay that most men have thought of it. There never has been anyone like her. Never.”

  “I met her. I didn’t think anything of her.”

  Wilton laughed. “General, you’re in love!”

  Tom Thumb stared. He decided not to say, “I was.”

  The waiter said, “Miss Jenny Lind is all that is pure and good in the world.”

  Tom Thumb was still thinking of Lavinia and Joe Gallagher and something not so pure.

  “There,” said Wilton, not so lost in himself that he was not astonished by the waiter’s behavior.

  Tom Thumb spent the next days in his room. He didn’t see Gallagher, Lavinia—anybody. He wrote little notes to everyone in the troupe, repeating what Wilton had said about the importance of the invitation. The way Tom Thumb was feeling, he would just as soon have Gallagher make a perfect ass of himself, louse up the Lind deal for good, and then take his punishment from Barnum. And if that involved Lavinia, too, then Tom Thumb was not going to interfere. The worst punishment Tom Thumb could imagine was banishment. Obscurity. Back to Ohio, back to San Francisco. Like back to Connecticut. Nothingness. Tom Thumb wanted both of them out of his life.

  Wilton arranged for the transportation for the troupe to and from Jenny Lind’s Sunday soirée. Wilton fancied himself a budding English Barnum, but he had run afoul by attempting to make a show of the troupe’s arrival while forgetting about Anna Swan’s special requirements. Wilton had brought around matching carriages, any of which Anna would have turned to splinters, if she had tried to board it.

  After a fuss and a half-hour wasted, a largish open carriage was found, and they were off. Wilton had arranged for Tom Thumb and Lavinia to ride with him, and he was surprised to see Lavinia squeeze in with Gallagher and Chang and Eng. If Wilton was not Barnum, at least he was discreet, and left Tom Thumb to stare silently out the window. Lind’s house was in Kensington, a long enough ride in the rapidly waning daylight. Tom Thumb expected something like a near-riot—what else, with maniacs like Chang and Eng in attendance? Tom Thumb could not imagine what the woman had in mind, or what the rest of her guest list looked like. Wilton had said this was important? Now Wilton looked like he wished he were somewhere else.

  Wilton had made the arrangements for both parties—the Barnum troupe and the Lind entourage—to travel to Liverpool together. That was on Tuesday. He had hired a special train, passenger and freight cars combined, and had a sign painter doing up banners that would be tied to the sides of the cars. Evidently he was quite proud of what he had done so far.

  “Did you tell the newspapers?”

  Wilton blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “There’s no point in doing all that stuff unless you tell the newspapers so they can get the people out to see it. Even then you have to get the people out yourself. Go to a couple of orphanages, make a contribution, and tell the boss where you want the kids—”

  “A scandalous idea, General.”

  “Barnum does it all the time. It’s important that you say things right, too. You tell the boss that your train is passing the school and you want the kiddies to have the chance to see all these wonderful people.”

  Wilton smiled. “You Americans are terrifying.”

  “That’s only part of it,” Tom Thumb said. “Nothing happens by accident. You have to tell people what you’re going to do, do it, then tell people what you’ve done. That makes three newspaper stories right there. And every one of them will let the people know where the show is going to be and how much the tickets are going to cost.”

  “Do you like the idea of the train, though?”

  “If anybody sees it, you mean. Sure, but Barnum’
s done it for years, and he says he stole it from the gypsies. You always know when the gypsies are passing through, don’t you? And they always had their hands out as they went by.”

  “Judge Munthe was surprised to read how many of Barnum’s schemes actually came from other sources.”

  Tom Thumb remembered the meeting in Wilton’s offices. “You mean like shaving the ministers? Barnum’s grandfather did that with a bunch of drummers in Bethel, Connecticut, when Barnum was a kid. The old man had to drop the razors down a well.”

  “The judge thought Barnum’s ego would have prevented him from crediting others,” Wilton said.

  “The judge doesn’t understand what Barnum is doing,” Tom Thumb said. “With his grandfather, there’s another factor. In New England years ago Phineas Taylor was famous as one of the great practical jokers. Even my folks had heard of him.”

  “Practical jokers sound cruel,” Wilton said.

  “It was the way people were allowed to make each other laugh in New England in those days. First, Barnum believes in the laughter.”

  Tom Thumb stopped talking and looked out the window. His mood had drawn him into thinking about the original subject of the conversation, travel. Barnum believed in the laughter, but Tom Thumb was beginning to wonder if Barnum really understood the cost. The worst thing about this business was the traveling. Tom Thumb loved to sail and most trains were as luxurious as the best hotels, but none of the joy and the pleasure reduced the toll exacted by every mile—and Tom Thumb reckoned he had traveled more than a million. Most of them wasted, too. He had no idea of the number of times he had been in London, Paris, and Vienna, yet he would be lost in any of the three, he knew, if he took the wrong turn around the corner from his hotel. The same was true with Cleveland and Cincinnati. Now, on Tuesday, like it or not, the train to Liverpool; and Wednesday, with the tide, slipping out of Liverpool harbor on the Great Western and nearly two weeks’ sail to New York.

  Jenny Lind’s party was terrible. Tom Thumb should have expected no less. It was a party given by a woman who really did not know how to give a party, and who had invited too many people who really did not know how to enjoy parties, either.

  Her house was little more than a cottage, brick, with a red tile roof in the English style, surrounded by fruit trees and a seven-foot brick wall. Lanterns were strung through the trees, but it was already too cool for the outdoors by the time the troupe arrived.

  In the front room Tom Thumb counted half a dozen clergymen and twice as many overweight women, one of whom collapsed when she saw Chang and Eng walking in lock step toward her. There were show people, too, recognizable the world over, the tense young men, the overpainted, too eager young women. And the gentry, titled and untitled, some of whom Tom Thumb recognized, pasty-faced, chinless wonders grumbling through their noses, mostly on the subject of money. The group Tom Thumb really feared was the clergy, who usually seemed to consider him the illustration of some theological principle or other. Fortunately, the party was large enough to fill all the public rooms and, for the sake of appearances, the clergy thought it wise to keep a distance from the dining room punch bowl, where the maid—Hannelore, Tom Thumb remembered—also was serving champagne. With a crowd gathered around him, but standing well back, to give him air, Tom Thumb pulled Hannelore’s apron string like a bellrope. When she turned around she nearly stepped on him, and the crowd squealed.

  “What do you say, kid? Let me have a glass of the good stuff.”

  “Oh, General! What? Hello!”

  The crowd laughed at her. “Give him champagne,” someone said.

  “I can’t,” she said in her broad German accent. “He’s too little!” And everybody laughed again.

  “Give it to him!” a girl cried.

  “Miss Lind will be so angry,” Hannelore said.

  “What for? I’m almost as old as she is! Where is she anyway?”

  “Mr. Goldschmidt is playing the piano.”

  Tom Thumb got his champagne. Someone wanted to toast his health. Off the back of the house was some kind of greenhouse, from which the sound of a piano emanated, but only faintly. If Tom Thumb was supposed to know who Goldschmidt was, then asking the question was exactly the wrong thing to do. Lavinia and Gallagher, if they were even in the building, had headed in another direction. Maybe Lavinia had recognized the commotion in here as that which usually surrounded Tom Thumb, and decided to keep Gallagher clear to avoid trouble. Tom Thumb did not want to see them anyway. For that matter, he did not want to see his hostess, either. Tom Thumb motioned to a big, skinny fellow with slicked-down brown hair. When the fellow bent over, he looked like he was folding in half.

  “Get the maid to give you another champagne for me,” Tom Thumb said.

  “Yes, of course. I’ll get you all you want.”

  More people arrived in the next few minutes, someone nearly stepped on him, and champagne spilled all over Jenny Lind’s carpet. Men were already using the carpet for their cigar ashes. Tom Thumb had the tall character get him a third, or second, champagne. It was a very large party, attended by more than a hundred people. Wilton swam into view, looking pleased with himself. He had something to say, too, but Tom Thumb couldn’t make it out in the roar of other voices. Hannelore gave him another champagne. In self-defense Tom Thumb climbed to the top of a sofa, and from there to the top of a bookcase, where he began to hold court. He knew he was on his way to a splendid drunk. Jenny Lind never appeared. He could have been on the bookcase an hour before asking someone to help him down. Hannelore gave him another champagne and he wandered toward the back of the house. It seemed as if hours had passed since he’d had his last thought of Lavinia. Now he was lost. He had to pee. No one was around. Tom Thumb lurched into a dark corner and wet down Jenny Lind’s rubber plant. The next thing he knew, he was under a wicker love seat, looking into the face of a cat, which was looking back at him.

  It was not dark. He could see the light of an oil lamp on a table. His head hurt, and he felt sick. The party was over—he could hear a single voice, a room or two away.

  It was Jenny Lind, speaking in German. Hannelore answered. Jenny Lind spoke again, and then Tom Thumb heard a male voice. Tom Thumb’s head was splitting, and he had to relieve himself again. He pushed at the cat, which ignored him. He pushed again. The cat clawed him, then crawled out from under the love seat. It wasn’t going to be so simple for Tom Thumb. How had he gotten under here in the first place? All he had to do was get out from under and stroll out, bidding the hostess good night as he passed her.

  He must have gotten under here from the back. In the corner was a suspiciously familiar-looking rubber plant. Tom Thumb remembered, and wondered if he had disgraced himself in other ways. Now Jenny Lind came into the room, followed by a slight, thin young man with a full mustache. Tom Thumb was crouching behind an end table, in the shadows. He remembered the young man now, too, the piano player, Otto Goldschmidt. When Tom Thumb had been told that Goldschmidt was going to be Lind’s American conductor, the pieces had clicked together: Goldschmidt was one of the two men she was taking to America for—company.

  But suddenly this was no time for Tom Thumb to declare his presence, for now Otto Goldschmidt took Jenny Lind’s arm and turned her around to him and kissed her on the mouth. They were the same height; because he was so slight, she looked bigger than he did. She was wearing a white dress that exposed her plump, smooth shoulders. There was nothing frail about her, but Goldschmidt was not timid or tentative with her, kissing her neck and shoulder. Her arms were at her sides. Tom Thumb knew he should not be seeing this, but in his terror of being discovered, he dared not look away. She moaned and tilted her head back, offering herself. Goldschmidt undid the clasps at the back of her dress and pulled it down to her waist and kissed her breasts. She held him against her a moment, then pushed him away.

  “Go home.”

  Goldschmidt looked like he was about to cry.

  “Go home, Otto. You know I love you. Go home.”

/>   Goldschmidt watched her adjust her dress. Tom Thumb’s heart pounded in his chest. She was in complete control of Goldschmidt, and it was easy for Tom Thumb to understand why. She was a passionate and spectacularly beautiful woman when she wanted to be, a far more beautiful woman than Tom Thumb had seen in Vienna. Tom Thumb felt ashamed of himself. Now the full-sized couple left, leaving him in the darkness, still afraid to move. He wished he hadn’t seen them. She was a great woman, and he had violated her privacy. Tom Thumb really had not been wrong about her in Vienna, but he had underestimated her nevertheless. She was not as vulnerable as Goldschmidt obviously believed, but Goldschmidt was a fool and Jenny Lind did not love him, no matter what she said. Tom Thumb wished he had not seen any of it. He was going to forget it. He was going to forget everything that had happened.

  But first he was going to get out of here—and undetected. If they found him, they would know where he had been, what he had seen. He could still hear them at the door, Goldschmidt trying for a last kiss. Tom Thumb realized he could picture the full-bosomed, undressed-to-the-waist Jenny Lind far too easily. Finally the door closed on Goldschmidt and the house began to grow quiet.

  Tom Thumb waited for what he thought was an hour, his head aching. He had a pocket watch, but he could not read it in the darkness. There was a cat around—he wasn’t going to forget that. Better to get out of the house as quickly as possible.

  The back door was open. Tom Thumb kept close to the shrubs bordering the house, and made his way around to the front, where he slipped between the bars of the front gate.

  Kensington. It would take him hours to walk back to Claridge’s, if he could even find it. This was Sunday night, and on Tuesday he was supposed to travel to Liverpool. And he had a hangover. And he was still not completely recovered from his grippe.

  Chances were he wouldn’t be able to hail down a cab even if he saw one. He had to be doubly careful after dark, doubly careful when he was traveling alone—oh, he was alone now. He would have to hurry across every street—and with so many of them ahead of him, what kind of energy would he have near dawn, when he still might have another whole mile to go?