Jenny and Barnum

by Roderick Thorp

  It was almost midnight when she directed the carriage driver to take her around to the rear entrance of the hotel. There was no crowd out front these days, even when the weather was fair, but she did not want to be seen or intercepted by anyone. Hannelore was up waiting for her, and Jenny had her wake Miss Holobaugh, put on some tea, and go to bed.

  Jenny had letters to write—just two. The first, to Barnum, went rather faster than she had imagined, and the second, to Waldo Collins, was more difficult to compose and set down. She put the letters in envelopes and sealed them with wax embossed with her monogram. She gave them to Miss Holobaugh.

  “Take these downstairs for delivery promptly in the morning. On the way back knock on Mr. Goldschmidt’s door and tell him I want to speak to him. I am going to change my plans, Miss Holobaugh. I have made up my mind.” She did not look up, afraid that Miss Holobaugh might be smiling—or worse, that she was not.

  IV

  18.

  Barnum cried.

  The letter gave itself away before he opened it. Why should she write to him? He locked the door before he broke her seal. She was making the mistake of her life, but there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He had seen it coming. He had been too cautious with her, too close-mouthed. Well, he had not known how to behave. As she had shown him so vividly, he had never been in love before. No. Not really. He had lived forty-six years without ever having been in love. He cried; he could not help himself. He wrote a letter to his lawyer listing the conditions he would accept to terminate Jenny Lind’s contract, and then he left instructions that people were to be told that he had gone to Cape May for a week’s rest. Finally he returned to the apartment on the top floor of the museum and locked the door again. People could think what they wanted, even that he was drinking again. But he wanted to be alone in familiar surroundings, the middle of his own little world.

  He could see right away that he would never be able to confirm his suspicion that Jenny had gone up to Connecticut to call on Charity. Upon his return to New York, Barnum had gone straightaway to the Irving House to find Jenny gone and Miss Holobaugh nervous and evasive. With the conclusion of such a visit completely predictable, the irony of the situation had become apparent at once. He had just told Charity that he was leaving her, that there was money to provide for her for years and more to come. He was prepared to sell the American Museum, then his contracts with his performers. Whatever it took. He had to do it. He could not imagine not doing it—until Jenny’s letter arrived.

  Barnum understood. Finally, a life with him was more than she had imagined. There were too many differences between them—culture, age, inclination. In self-defense he wanted to think that it had never been much more than an adventure for her, but he remembered far too much that told him otherwise. He loved her. Her character was not flawed. She was simply not perfect, which was something else again. He did not want her presence to recede from him, but he knew the natural process had to begin. He still did not know if she had honestly mistrusted him or had been overtaken by greed. He liked to say that there was no humility or gratitude, that they were figments of mankind’s more simpering imaginations. What John Hall Wilton had handed over to Judge Munthe was more money than any of them had ever seen in their lives, and Barnum’s preliminary calculations showed that Miss Jenny Lind, in the months she had been in America, had earned money at a rate four times the figure she had ever achieved before. Before deductions for the obligations she did not want to fulfill, Jenny had earned more than two hundred thousand dollars.

  There would be deductions. Barnum had instructed his lawyer to accept nothing less than full indemnifications for all the concerts she failed to perform. If there was a complaint from Waldo Collins, he was to be told that Barnum still had the alternative of sitting on what was due Jenny until such matters as return of her accompanists’ fees were settled—pure, nonsensical nitpicking meant to keep Waldo Collins from becoming too belligerent. Business was business, and the sooner performers learned that they would pay heavily for running out on contracts, the better. Jenny could go home to Europe, but Barnum had to stay behind and make his living—but not if he had the reputation of a producer who couldn’t put on a show.

  Waldo Collins settled on Barnum’s terms, probably drooling with anticipation of getting his hands on the Nightingale, or Golden Goose, or however Collins saw her. Barnum did not want to be bitter, and more important for business, he did not want to show bitterness. He had sold Jenny Lind to America as a creature all but living in a state of grace; anything but the best of fronts and the cheeriest of demeanors from Barnum now would only provoke the smart-asses of the press to ask what had gone wrong. Nothing! Nothing, boys, the world is still a terrific place.

  How could either of them complain anyway? Together they had grossed almost three-quarters of a million dollars, almost two hundred thousand for her, five hundred and thirty-five for him. He was out of debt and had a few dollars set aside. Not enough to last for long—that is, the length of the war that was coming now that Lincoln was to be President.

  Barnum stayed in New York, mostly in and around the museum. He had Charlie’s wedding to plan—early February seemed like a logical date, when the waiting for the new President had become so tedious that people were ready to forget about him. Charity wrote a note asking him to come home for Thanksgiving. She did not want to make trouble, and for that Barnum was more grateful than he could express, under the circumstances. On the preceding Sunday, the newspapers carried the story, given out by Waldo Collins, that Jenny Lind would begin a new tour of Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois before Christmas. All wrong—it was as if Collins had determined to do absolutely everything wrong, starting with issuing the story so that the newspapers had no choice but to bury it in their Sunday editions.

  The new President notwithstanding, there weren’t enough cultured individuals in the states Jenny planned to tour to fill a good-sized restaurant, much less the halls she would have to fill again and again in order to cover her expenses. What she did not know, or did not want to face, was that Barnum had picked those places clean on his own tour. Now that they had heard Jenny Lind, not all of the yokels would want to hear her again, preferring to go back to sleep with the hogs, or whatever it was that interested them. Culture was like cod liver oil to most of the rabble; they knew it was good for them, but they would just as soon live without it. Only people who thought they were perfect saw no need for self-improvement, but unhappily America was full of that kind. The people who thought Barnum a cynical manipulator themselves banned books and herded people into churches for the weekly looting, as if the God who had given the world Chang and Eng and Jo-Jo the Dog-faced Boy could be so easily placated—and understood. The yokel who looked at Anna Swan or the Bearded Lady and asked himself if the world just might be a madhouse was at the beginning of wisdom, and Barnum was pleased to stand humbly beside him. Barnum had just fallen in love, and now he still did not know how or why he and Jenny had failed. They had not deceived each other. They had believed in themselves at every moment from the beginning to the end. They still believed in themselves. She did not want to see him, she had written that Thursday night. It is better to stop it now while I still have my sanity. It would be cruel of you to try to see me, just as it would be cruel of me to say more than that I wish with all my heart that all God’s blessings shower upon you all the days of your life. All: she had written it three times. If she wanted him to have all, what did that leave for herself?

  In the end, Charlie and Lavinia took over the arrangements for their own wedding. They had already yielded to Barnum on the date. Barnum had always been pointing toward early February, hoping to catch the lull in the country’s interest in its new President in the long period before his inaugural in early March.

  Nothing like that occurred; there was no lull. In late December, when it was clear that the electors in the College were going to cast their ballots for Abraham Lincoln, South Carolina seceded from the union,
followed quickly by several more southern states.

  When Lavinia indicated that she wanted as much privacy as possible, Barnum had to be firm. He was still grieving, but he had not gone completely sappy. From a business point of view, the object of the exercise was to generate publicity, as much as possible, to remind the public that Barnum’s old gang was still providing the nation with laughter, gasps, and awe.

  Charlie struck the compromise, what he called the compromise, but what Barnum thought the little ham wanted for himself right along. The marriage would be performed in his own community, in its finest church, and the reception, which Barnum wanted seen as a feast, would take place at the American Museum. Lavinia wanted privacy, but Charlie wanted respectability, so the guest list for the reception, and then the wedding, grew and grew. Naturally Barnum put out the story that invitations were in great demand, which generated still more inquiries from the desirous, including many notables. Barnum had a bead drawn on the notables, whom he had always found the easiest of marks. Their presence on this occasion drew Barnum’s business deeper into the mainstream of the country, made it more respectable and thus more profitable; but for Charlie it was a rare, mouth-watering opportunity. Barnum only had to get the process started, and politicians, social leaders, and even Barnum’s competitors would stumble over each other to offer the most spectacular, noteworthy—and expensive—gifts to the happy couple. So Barnum announced a theme and stuffed explanations into the envelopes containing the invitations to the reception at the museum: Perfection in Miniature. At the outset Barnum thought he would have to employ a shill to come forward with a gift of appropriate cost, but almost immediately there arrived a Fabergé egg containing a wedding tableau, bride and groom at the altar before a cassocked preacher—if you wanted to believe it, the tiny principals looked very much like the real-life miniatures.

  The gift was from Miss Jenny Lind.

  She had been on Charlie and Lavinia’s first guest list, and Barnum, checking the names, had seen no reason to question her inclusion. As far as the public knew, the termination of her contract with Barnum had been totally amicable and strictly business. Rumors about them had circulated, but no one who had seen their midnight suppers or the stolen rides in the country chose to step forward and denounce them. With good reason, Barnum thought. They had been so full of joy together that everyone around them had been similarly transported. The gift reminded Barnum of what a good-hearted, generous, and joyful woman she was—in his own pain, Barnum had nearly lost sight of the fact that she was still the woman whose goodness generated better warmth than a hearth.

  And she was not doing all that well, either, Barnum had heard. Her tour was making some money, but nothing like what she had made with Barnum. Some nights she was earning less than she could have been making at home, for less trouble. Her nerves were frayed. The Springfield, Massachusetts, newspaper reported that while “Miss Lind sang as well as we had been led to believe, she displayed a surly temper and spoke sharply to her conductor, Mr. Goldberg, who accepted his public tongue-lashing with uncommon good grace.”

  With that, Barnum had stopped reading the clippings sent by far-flung, well-meaning friends. It was no use contemplating the state of Jenny’s mind; Barnum knew her well enough, he thought, to know that she would not, or could not, go back on a decision. And Barnum had no pity for Otto, who was still playing his waiting game, no matter what it took out of him. That no one seemed to be able to learn his last name was society’s final judgment of the man—the back of its hand.

  Jenny’s gift was so exquisitely right for Barnum’s purposes that he could not help wondering if she had somehow divined those purposes, and was trying to help. He hoped so, and that was the saddest, most poignant thought of all. As he called in the press to view the egg and to hear him announce that it and other gifts sent to the wedding couple would be on display at the American Museum in the weeks before the marriage, his voice broke and tears came to his eyes. He could see that more than a few of the journalists thought that they were countenancing more of his old humbug, but that was all right. Better they think that it was business as usual. The gifts came pouring in, silverware, china, cut glass, Persian carpets, a specially constructed half-size grandfather clock from President-elect and Mrs. Lincoln—a week before the wedding, with presents still arriving almost hourly, Barnum and Charlie figured they could sell the load of it, if they wanted, for more than a hundred thousand dollars.

  The wedding ceremony was performed at ten o’clock in the morning on Sunday, February 9, 1861, at Grace Episcopal Church on Franklin Avenue in Garden City, Long Island. It was a sunny, crisp, spectacular day, the bare trees shining with the first promise of spring. So many people wanted to make the journey out to the country to see the wedding that Barnum had to make arrangements with the ferry company and the railroad so that all could be accommodated. Charity did not come, writing to Charlie that her arthritis caused her too much pain. Barnum thought he might see Jenny—and Otto, too, for that matter—but in the church rectory Charlie told him that Jenny had sent her regrets.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Barnum,” the little man said. “I wanted to see her, but I guess she’s trying to do herself a favor.”

  “Me, too,” Barnum said. “She’s doing me a favor, too. This has been very difficult and painful for me.”

  “I have a small idea.”

  Barnum glared at him. “Charlie, all your ideas are small!”

  “That’s the way to begin a wedding,” Charlie said, “with a laugh.”

  The minister swept in, a cheerful, full-bellied old faker who introduced himself repeatedly and adeptly. Charlie had told Barnum that the minister, whom he called Al, was a regular fellow.

  “And you’re Barnum,” the Reverend A. T. Farrell said, grasping his hand. “You’re to be best man? Do you have my fee? Then we’re ready to create wedlock.”

  Charlie was grinning broadly. “See, Barnum? I told you Al was all right.”

  “A little too fast-talking for me,” Barnum said.

  The Reverend Farrell smiled. “I’m working up to a wedding of appropriate length. Perhaps you would like a longer one?”

  Barnum raised his hands. “Oh no, padre, not me.”

  “But you don’t object if I pray over these two, do you?”

  “Well, we’re all praying for Lavinia,” Barnum said.

  “You should, as long as shorty here keeps drawing to inside straights.”

  In another moment the ceremony began, before a capacity crowd, Barnum noted happily. There was more to Farrell than a pleasant line of patter, for the altar steps had been incorporated into a little platform covered with white silk, on which the two principals stood eye to eye with the Reverend Farrell, and in full view of the throng, some of whom had yet to pass their dukes over the tambourine. Charlie and Lavinia were going to do close to two hundred thousand for their trouble, bringing a smile to Barnum’s face that the Reverend Farrell took to mean some emotional surrender to the occasion, for the good fellow smiled in return.

  Farrell was terrific—brief and hammy. He presented a little homily on the importance of trust in love, emphasizing the positive and not being very specific. A perfect sermon, Barnum thought, adoze in a daydream while the actual marriage was performed. Charlie’s somewhat passionate kiss of his bride brought Barnum to his senses only a moment before he would have been startled out of his wits by the roof-rattling hurrah that erupted behind him.

  In his zeal to see that there were no lulls in this day of days, Barnum had hidden half a dozen cases of champagne and several pounds of caviar on the train aboard which they would return to Brooklyn, where they would board the ferry to the city. The party began at once, with great white spurts of champagne arcing over all.

  “Take a good look, Lavinia,” someone shouted. “You won’t see anything this good tonight.”

  She was on her feet on the seat, trying to see over the heads of the crowd. “The champagne’s spent in ten seconds, just li
ke you, you big jerk,” she answered. “With Charlie I can plan on a long night.”

  Barnum couldn’t help being curious about the Reverend Farrell’s reaction to such bawdiness, and he looked around. Farrell was sitting right behind him, champagne glass in hand. Next to him was a tall, striking woman with brown hair and marvelous blue eyes. “My alter-ego, Barnum, if you don’t mind a bad pun. This is Mrs. Farrell.”