Jenny and Barnum

by Roderick Thorp

  “More, yes, but by very little. You’re overlooking that Barnum’s fee covers all production expenses, advertising and publicity, musicians’ salaries, and all the rest—”

  “We really ought to have a look at his books,” Collins said. “You’re forgetting that you earn astronomically higher sums than the going average wage. The entire orchestra doesn’t cost one tenth of your guarantee. Barnum is still taking away 50 per cent more than you are—”

  “Mr. Barnum has earned his money.”

  “You’re the most important woman in the United States today,” Collins said. “If you toured on your own, you would make millions—”

  “Barnum made all that possible!” Jenny exclaimed. “It was even his idea that I come here, offering me more money than I thought possible.” She stood up. “Really, your continuing concern for my well-being is deeply appreciated, Mr. Collins. You may rest assured that I will tell Judge Munthe that you have attempted to fulfill the letter and spirit of your agreement with him. Now, however, if you don’t mind, I must begin to rest and prepare for this evening’s performance.”

  He was on his feet. “Do not hesitate to contact me on any matter whatsoever, Miss Lind.”

  “I understand. Thank you.”

  When the door was closed, she almost laughed aloud. Rest and prepare? No, for this was the hour of her appointment with Barnum. She had circles under her eyes and she had already received a report that Minelli had taken to his bed, wailing like a schoolgirl. But the fact of the matter was that she was so filled with a newfound joy, delight, and peace of mind that she had no patience with the obsessions of the rattling ghosts in the dungeon of her former life.

  So she stuck out her tongue at Otto and later ran off the stage to kiss Barnum briefly on the mouth before getting a coat to keep her from getting a chill during the ride to the Astor House for midnight supper and—love. Lovemaking. She was still having difficulty thinking about what she was doing in private with Barnum, thinking about it, imagining it, remembering it. She was in love. She knew. She accepted it, for she was full of acceptance, the word and its meaning. She was not powerless with him, but she was happy not asserting herself very much. A fat, ugly, old man, Barnum, in his often hilarious splendor, fascinated her. He was a tender, tactful, careful lover, even when he surprised her, even when he proved he was telling the truth when he said she made him feel nineteen years old.

  That happened at the Astor House, too, in Charlie’s suite, cluttered with his tiny furniture. Charlie had given Barnum a key. Tiptoeing unnoticed up the stairs, the two of them acted like children, giggling and poking at each other. She did not want to be kissed and fondled very much before making real love and he knew it. Ah, such tact—he had such understanding! And patience. Bless him. She loved him that way, bless him, happily praying for his soul before her own. She had resolved to put away her fears. If he understood that, he said nothing, or nothing very clear. He told her he loved her, and she had brought herself around to believing him without thinking for long on exactly what he meant.

  She was enthralled by him in ways that shocked, frightened, and even amused her. His business, for example: his madcap business. Lavinia was not happy with having to wait another year before finally getting married.

  “What I forgot,” Barnum told Jenny, “is that the little lady has been working on this project for three years already.”

  Still, he was going ahead with his plans, and he was beginning to get ideas about what the midgets’ wedding would look like. If there wasn’t a war, they could go on tour again together—after a suitable interval for the unnecessary honeymoon, of course.

  “The wedding is going to cost a lot of money,” he explained. “A tour is the only way I can get it back.”

  “Why spend it in the first place?” Jenny asked. “It’s their private business anyway.”

  Barnum was up, waving his hands. They were in his office, surrounded by his battered furniture, piles of yellowing newspapers, and on the walls, posters, advertising the bizarre work of his life. “Not at all! It’s not their private business at all! Millions love them! Tom Thumb is already an American legend. Books have been written about him, children’s stories about his wonderful adventures. He and Lavinia are part of the joy of America, the joy of being an American—”

  “Such nonsense. You say such things because it is good for your silly business.”

  “That’s true, too. Both things are true. That is my contribution to America and the world, silliness. A laugh. The captivating realization of a joke. That’s how I make my living, as no man ever did before. Let me show you something. Give me a dollar.”

  She found one, a great silver coin heavy as lead, and handed it over.

  “Thank you,” he said, putting it in his pocket.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “What about my dollar?”

  “My dollar.”

  “It’s not yours!”

  “Certainly it is. I said, ‘Give me a dollar,’ and you did. It’s mine.”

  “Barnum, you’re a villain!”

  His eyes were bland. “I showed you something, didn’t I?”

  She could not help laughing. “Yes, not to give you a dollar!”

  “And see how you enjoyed the lesson!”

  They left for Boston on a Thursday. Anna Swan had returned by then from her visit with the young giant from Maine, and Barnum said he thought that Anna and her suitor, if that was what he was, would make haste slowly. Speed, or the lack of it, seemed to be a function of size, he said.

  The state of Maine had something to do with it, too, Barnum was sure. Down East, it was called, he told Jenny, and the people were an obstinate lot. As Anna had told him, the young man from Maine had his doubts about the theatrical life, and going to a place like Russia—or “Rooshia,” as he pronounced—clearly terrified him. But Anna thought she had won him over—a bit.

  “It’s going to take time,” Barnum said as the train to Boston cleared the last of the wooden squatters’ shacks north of the city, and started across the marshes and lowlands of the area called Harlem, after the city in Holland. There were farms here, freshly sprouting fields gleaming in the gentle sun of the middle of May. “She’s going to have to write a lot of letters,” Barnum went on, but soon Jenny was no longer listening. She was hypnotized by the farms, by the farms and their tidy infant fields and the walls of trees standing on the slopes, all against a cottony cloud billowing above it all, blossoming in the sun. This was America, too—humanity eternally scraping its living out of the land. Beyond the river was the mainland, more farms and steeper hills, miles of woods just now speckled with bright, new green. Then a town, a cluster of white clapboard, a steeple at the center. The cycle of farms, woods, and towns repeated itself a dozen times more before Barnum pointed out the sign that needed no help from him, not now: CONNECTICUT. Barnum’s home. Jenny had been thinking about this for hours, if not days. This was where he lived with his aptly named wife, Charity. He had four grown daughters. It was all incomprehensible for Jenny, who found herself living as if her life began the moment she first saw him. She did not want to believe other real human beings were involved, but it was true. In moments like these, Jenny could see the futility of what she was doing—that it threatened to devour her.

  Barnum’s sense of theater never failed him, it seemed. Without other notice, suddenly he leaned over to her and whispered, “My home, Iranistan, will be coming up on your side next.”

  The utter shamelessness of the man! In his book he had written that he had built the structure—home hardly described it—near the railroad tracks so that passing travelers could gaze upon its splendor and the man who owned it and the impact of his life upon theirs.

  Iranistan, indeed! It was a great onyx box, encrusted with cupolas, turrets, and domes, trimmed with gold leaf—gilt, more likely—squatting in smug, majestic isolation. Quite possibly it was the ugliest building Jenny had ever seen. A woman living inside it had
to be a prisoner, a victim of some uncatalogued domestic crime, an atrocity both commonplace and sinister. There were no hills or trees for miles around, and Jenny could imagine the wind blowing around at night from the not-too-distant ocean. She was thinking exactly this when Barnum leaned over again. “Well? What do you think of it?”

  “Oh, I could never live in a house like that,” she blurted, and instantly covered her mouth with her hand.

  16.

  The first Boston concert almost ended in a riot before it even began. Barnum had given out the story that the demand for tickets had required him to shift Jenny’s performances from the 1,500-seat Tremont Auditorium to the 4,000-seat, wooden Congress Hall, causing confusion among the early ticket-holders. In the effort to keep them happy, the management issued too many replacement tickets; and then on the night of the concert itself, some overeager soul at the box office admitted too many of the disappointed to standing room at the back and the sides of the old room. The result—an estimated 5,700 people crushed together for the purpose of hearing the little Swedish Nightingale sing. The temperature and tempers began to rise at once, leading to a rhythmic clapping and stomping of feet so that the entire floor began to thrum in sympathetic vibration. An ominous groan was heard from one of the ceiling beams.

  “Run for your lives!” somone yelled. “The building’s about to collapse!”

  From his seat in the front row Barnum leaped up. “No!” he roared. “There is no danger! I want the police to arrest that man! He’s a spy working for one of my enemies—I’d recognize the fellow anywhere!” He was striding up the aisle, pointing out the culprit for Boston’s felt-hatted finest. “Be seated, I implore you,” he said to those nearby. “The concert will begin shortly. You are about to have the musical experience of a lifetime.”

  “Maybe our last, Barnum!”

  “Are you coming back, Barnum?”

  “Just as soon as I dispatch this sooundrel!”

  In the lobby, the man was terror-stricken. His jacket was already torn.

  “I’m not a spy!”

  Barnum peered. “So you’re not. You’re the wrong fellow, but a troublemaking son-of-a-bitch nevertheless. Deposit him on the sidewalk, boys—but be quick about it or you’ll miss the Nightingale’s first song.”

  The police threw the man down the dozen wooden stairs outside. For Barnum it was the best part of the evening, it turned out.

  The temperature remained much too high, the resulting muttering and shuffling made the poor sound quality of the hall even worse, and the musicians, having heard the commotion, were not at their best. That included Jenny, and she knew it. After the program, she was too upset to admit Barnum to her dressing room, although Otto and the Italian were in there with her, along with the two peasant women.

  Barnum left word that he was ready to do anything to make one and all more comfortable, and then he decided to make himself scarce. The press wanted to see him. It was another damned scandal, and he didn’t have a lot of time to get his story straight. More than that, he wanted to make sure that the journalists understood that Jenny Lind was in wonderful voice and in no way responsible for any inconvenience her audience had suffered. At least the gross was good, over fourteen thousand dollars. While Jenny liked to proclaim that she was not all that interested in money, the truth was that she counted the coins more carefully than a clergyman. Fourteen thousand dollars would take some of the sting out of her anger, Barnum thought miserably, climbing into bed alone that night.

  He slept badly, not really dozing off until near dawn. Because he had business appointments he had left a call for eight o’clock. He was still very groggy when he sat down to breakfast in the parlor alone twenty minutes after the boy poked his head into the bedroom to bellow the hour. Like a man with a hangover, Barnum was still remembering the worst details of the previous night’s fiasco, just beginning to wonder what the permanent damage would amount to, when someone knocked on the door.

  “Come in, if you want to joined the damned.”

  Jenny looked in. “What?”

  He stood up. “Gallows humor, my love. Have you had breakfast?”

  “I’m not hungry,” she said.

  He brought a chair up to the table for her. “Coffee? You don’t look like you slept very well.”

  “That’s true enough,” she said. “I shouldn’t have coffee, but I have to visit a school this morning. I don’t want to fall asleep, do I?” She looked up at him, losing her composure. “I can’t go on like this, Barnum.”

  “Tell me what you mean.” He sat down, giving her such close attention that he nearly put his elbow in his fried eggs. She saw and smiled, which made tears flow down her cheeks.

  “Barnum, I’m not your trained horse, or some frightful thing in a bottle!”

  “I know that. I still don’t know what you’re talking about. Try to calm yourself and relax. Whatever is disturbing you, I’ll put right. Haven’t I done that right along?”

  “You’re so clever with words,” she said. “I can’t tell people how to behave, Barnum. You don’t know how to behave! Every time I turn around, with every new opportunity, you’re at work on some trick. Last night was like trying to sing in a railroad station!” she shouted. “I will not tolerate it! I will not permit it! You will not defile my talent and my art!”

  “Jenny, I made a mistake! It won’t happen again, I promise you!”

  “It’s not the mistake that bothers me, you stupid man! It’s that you went behind my back to book the larger hall to sell the last possible grubby ticket!”

  “I swear on my honor that I did nothing underhanded or behind your back when I booked Congress Hall. The demand for tickets was that great, according to all the reports I’d received—”

  “You packed the standing room to the point of suffocation! There was the imminent threat of panic!”

  “Not at all,” he said. He was gaining control of the situation, he could see. “The people out front oversold the standing room on their own authority. If my agents hadn’t been in the box office watching the money being collected, it would have been stolen from us.” He patted her hand. “If there had been a panic, it would have been entirely the fault of that mealy-mouthed little weasel who started yelling.”

  “I felt the floor shaking. Everybody did.”

  “Wooden floors shake. There was no panic. The concert was a financial and critical success, and more of an artistic success than your desire for perfection will permit you to admit. The four-teen-thousand-dollar gross justifies the move I made to Congress Hall. I did not hide that move from you. Under the terms of our contract, the responsibility to provide the auditorium is entirely mine. Jenny, if I start telling you everything I do, there’ll be no end to it—you’ll be buried in the petty details of business. The programs cost five dollars and forty cents to print. Does that fact hold your attention? Do you want to concern yourself with such twaddle? If you do, if you allow yourself to surrender to your worst fears every time something goes awry, you will find it harder and harder to concentrate on your talent and your art—”

  “That is precisely what happened last night, Barnum, because of a situation you created!”

  “All right, Jenny, I made a mistake and I’ve said I’m sorry and given my word that it won’t happen again. What more would you have me do?”

  “How is it that Waldo Collins knew you had secured Congress Hall?”

  “That’s a question you’ll have to ask Waldo Collins,” Barnum said evenly. “If he told you in New York that I was acting against your best interests behind your back, I can see very easily how you would think what you did about last night. Jenny, I haven’t tried to interfere in your business and I’m not going to start now, but surely you will see if you review the record that I’ve worked hard to meet your needs in every way, because I’ve assumed that you knew what was best for you. I haven’t been trying to upset you at every turn with rumors and innuendoes—”

  “But you’ve upset me just the sam
e!”

  “That’s another matter.”

  “Is it? I can’t go on like this, Barnum, with this confusion and upset!”

  “When are you going to have some faith in me?”

  “You’re a married man! I know you promised me nothing and I have no right to expect anything, but you knew what kind of a woman I was before you kissed me. Oh, Barnum, I am in love with you and I am frightened and I cannot have peace of mind simply because you tell me to!”

  She broke down and wept, covering her face with her hands. For a moment he could not move, he was so sick with himself and filled with self-loathing. He had no one but himself to blame for what she was feeling. A younger man could plead innocence, or ignorance, but Barnum knew he was too old not to know the hopes in the heart of a girl. Even a girl of thirty, the most gallant and celebrated girl in the history of the world, whose voice still so clearly echoed the hope of her girlish heart. Still? Not last night. Barnum in his soul knew that his actions and inactions were inflicting grievous harm on her. She was no chorus cutie, or even some female hayseed like those Barnum had found so irresistible in his young manhood. That Jenny was who and what she was, the greatest singer of all time, the first people’s heroine, made his abuse of her not different, only worse, for she was what he told the world, the perfection of young womanhood. He had seen it in the daguerreotypes sent to him from Europe, perhaps his clearest insight of all, and now he was its worst and most deserving victim.