Jenny and Barnum (25 page)

As usual, Barnum had had to do practically everything single-handed. He could be grateful that the volunteer fire departments were wise enough to the system to know what his donations were
for
—if the city started burning down, then they would be permitted to pull out of the parade. The carriage was ebony because no one had a satisfactory
white
coach, making him promise himself to have one built when he had the wherewithal.

So everything was ready; now all he had to do—but not the only reason he had taken the pilot boat out to the
Great Western
—was to bribe the captain to follow the lead of the officials at Ellis Island, who would release the ship to take Miss Jenny Lind across the bay for her welcome at noon. All the captain had to do was order his men to do the work, returning the ship in the afternoon to Ellis Island for the rest of the passengers, by then having passed through the ordeal of Customs and Immigration. All it took was money.

And Barnum was broke—flat-out penniless. But John Hall Wilton had promised to entrust Barnum's share of the European receipts to the captain. Whatever was in the good man's safe was all the cash Barnum could lay hands on in the world, his credit exhausted and short-term notes coming due on the fifteenth of the month. If the money wasn't sufficient, all Barnum would be able to do was shepherd Jenny Lind around the ordeal of Ellis Island and act like he was glad to see her, instead of staring into the skull's eyes of bankruptcy.

And the parade would be a joke. Who would wait until dusk for a parade? The money already paid out for it would be wasted—$125 for the three fire companies, for instance, which Barnum thought simply outrageous.

At least he had won this initial skirmish with the lawyer Waldo Collins, who had begun to make a pest of himself as soon as he had learned Jenny Lind would be in his “care.” Collins had tried to force Barnum to make him a member of the welcoming entourage—or what he thought was the entourage assembling on the far side of the floral arches tomorrow. Barnum had ignored every message, knowing full well that ended the pussyfooting between Collins and him, as good as an open declaration of war, but the nature of the other developments of this opening phase of the Lind tour made overt action, even a daring strike, absolutely necessary.

The developments taken together meant only one thing:

Barnum had done it.

In the few months available to him, Barnum had put Jenny land's name on the lips of every man and woman in America, her image before their eyes, the noble story of her early suffering and wonderful success so deeply rooted in American brains, that:

—twenty thousand poets contributed verses to Barnum's Jenny Lind “Ode to America” song contest;

—a crowd of eight thousand appeared at Barnum's auction of tickets to Jenny Lind's first American concert, at Castle Garden;

—the six thousand seats were sold in ninety minutes for an average price of thirty-five dollars apiece;

—the first ticket was sold for two hundred and fifteen dollars, a sum so incredible that the news went out on the wires all the way to St. Louis;

—and the other eleven dates of the first New York stop were now completely subscribed, if not actually paid up (far from it, in fact);

so that the entire accumulation of effects, ramifications, results, resonances, broadcasts, publicity, and the like, was far more than anything Barnum alone could have devised, whatever his own massive, intensive, and desperate efforts may have been.

The entire atmosphere had filled with exactly what John Hall Wilton had promised:

LINDOMANIA!

People just
loved
her! Without having heard a single song, without so much as the warbling of a solo warm-up note, the public had decided that she really
was
the flower of young womanhood, that her story was so true to what they wanted to believe of life—why, she was Cinderella incarnate, wasn't she? Like a true princess, she gave to the poor, to orphanages, to old age homes, to the ill and mentally infirm. Wilton had supplied Barnum with all that information, and Barnum had worked it up into the great Jenny Lind epic, rewritten and reprinted from his dispatches from atop the American Museum on Broadway, the likeness of her submitted by Wilton taken to an artist capable of keeping a secret for a little revising—sweetening, as it were, removing the Scandinavian gloom from her brow, the spinster's glare from her eyes. Oddly, the mouth needed no work at all, it was so full and perfectly shaped, her lips apparently very light-colored. Barnum had not forgotten what Tom Thumb had written from Vienna about her laugh, or, for that matter, his initially negative impression of her. (Barnum already had spent more than a little of his time trying to devise defensive strategies to obscure her defects.) Her picture, like her story, was everywhere—on souvenir saucers, ladies' fans, tins of chocolates. In his wilder moments Barnum believed that America was prepared to love Jenny Lind if she couldn't sing the scales, if her first act upon setting foot in America was to step on a banana peel and fall on her backside, and even if she said, “Oh, shit!” immediately afterward.

Naturally it was part of his plan to make sure that Jenny Lind saw these developments in true perspective, not commercial exploitations of her fame and likeness at all, but rather spontaneous evidences of American exuberance and affection for her. Spontaneous they were, for no amount of legal action could suppress the fly-by-nighters springing up on every street corner to cash in on the Jenny Lind craze. At least Barnum's records would demonstrate to her that he was not profiting from the gimcracks and paraphernalia, but that he had sent lawyers into courts as far away as Mahwah, New Jersey, to suppress the traffic. Mahwah, New Jersey, was no bigger than a mouse's penis and had even less impact on the life of the nation, but Jenny Lind would not know that. At least, Barnum hoped she didn't. Barnum had made such a comedic spectacle of his inept prosecutions of obscure, low-budget infringements on his Jenny Lind rights that it was obvious that he was really encouraging the bigger boys to go out and do their best—and worst. For Barnum, all of the souvenirs, lithographs, dishes, and what-not were good, even if he wasn't getting what he thought was his fair share—he
was
taking the risk, wasn't he?—for they were good for business:
his
business, ticket sales and twirling turnstiles. He had more than two hundred thousand dollars sunk in this venture, but he was beginning to believe he was going to double his money—not bad for a Yankee trader living by his wits, and if it took others making a dollar, too, then so be it.

And if that took getting to Jenny Lind before some shyster lawyer, and making sure she saw things Barnum's way before Waldo Collins started buzzing in her ear for
his
purposes, then Barnum could live with that as well. As much as he tried to control himself, business brought out the ferocity in Barnum. When he had his wits about him, he was able to remind himself that he really was not doing badly, and that every lick of trouble business gave him was—after the issue was settled, naturally—a whole lot of fun.

He followed the pilot in the pre-dawn darkness across the deck of the
Great Western
to the pilothouse, where Captain MacDonald turned and, in his surprise at seeing Barnum, almost dropped his bouillon down the front of his brushed serge blazer.

“I have a package for you down in my cabin,” MacDonald said.

“I'm relieved to hear that,” Barnum answered, beaming. “I have a proposition for you, too. How are all my people? How did they stand up to the trip?”

“Do you mean Jenny Lind, too—or should I include her in separate report?”

Barnum was startled. “Has anything gone wrong? Is she all right?”

The captain laughed. “Yes, she's fine. She was just up on deck a few minutes ago. Our mutual small friend General Tom Thumb hasn't done quite so well, I'm afraid. One too many drinks last Thursday night, and he had to be put to bed. This he did in Jenny Lind's presence. Haven't seen him since, although his steward says he didn't suffer abnormally. Of course, his life seems to have taken a change since I saw him last fall. His little girl friend has thrown him over for the other fellow.”

Now Barnum was thoroughly alarmed. Tom Thumb had gotten
drunk
in Jenny Lind's company? He was so unhappy with his own situation that he forgot about
business?
That wasn't like him. Tom Thumb drank, but he was never out of control.

“Is there anything else you might want to tell me?”

MacDonald laughed again. “No—and don't think what I told you is all that serious, Barnum. The General just had himself a bad night, and his absence these last days is only a measure of his embarrassment. Funny thing about you, Barnum, I can read you like a book. Well, I don't think you have to worry about your investment. She sang for the entire ship's company Saturday night, and her voice is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard in my life.”

Barnum was not assuaged. John Hall Wilton had passed along the story of Lind's father's despicable drinking history. The woman apparently was not afraid of an occasional glass of wine, but Barnum had no idea what she thought of someone losing control. Barnum had given Wilton specific instructions to alert Tom Thumb to the threat posed by the shyster Collins. Normally no one took care of business better than Tom Thumb. Barnum was going to have to keep himself under control, lest a false step with Jenny Lind
or
Tom Thumb create a situation worse than the one that presently existed—whatever that was.

“If I may see you in your quarters, Captain, I'll outline the proposition I have for you.”

MacDonald was still smiling. “You ought to brighten your expression, Barnum. The woman is going to make you a fortune—or a larger one than you have already.”

“You think it's going to be that easy, eh?”

“I wouldn't know about the ease of it,” MacDonald allowed.

Ten minutes later, he was smiling again, a bit richer himself, and enjoying Barnum's joke about the ease with which he had just acquired a new, very young fortune. There would be no problem steaming over to New York from Ellis Island. MacDonald hoped Barnum appreciated that no such service was possible before steam, for a clipper ship could only go when the wind blew.

Barnum's thoughts were elsewhere. His pockets were stuffed with cash now, greenbacks and sterling. The sky was growing lighter; the pilot would begin to move the
Great Western
as soon as he felt it was safe. Whether Barnum wanted to face it or not, the fate of the Jenny Lind tour was now in the hands of the gods—the general public, the fickle American public. With war imminent, no one could say that people would reach into their pockets to pay for tickets to hear a simple maiden's singing. In spite of all the work that had been done, everything that had been accomplished already, the project still could fail; and although it might be no one's fault, the onus of failure, harder to bear than the massive indebtedness that would accompany it, would be placed squarely on Barnum.

It was a risk that went along with what he had made of himself. There was no one like him in the whole country, only pale, lukewarm copies of the original, and other men were not only in awe of him, they were envious and jealous of him, too. Spite and contempt were bad disguises, and people wanted to see him fail because he
dared
—that's all, he simply dared. He was unafraid because he had realized long ago that there was nothing to be afraid of, and people hated him for it. They were small, miserable people who had turned their own lives into a curse they would inflict on others before they would own up to the lie of it; and Barnum, Barnum dancing his way to the grave as if the entire universe existed to serve his pleasure, was a menace to them and the grubby security of their compromised lives.

But Barnum was almost forty-seven years old now, and if he didn't like the aches, pains, and general discomfort that went with the age, he had to be grateful for the intellectual and spiritual balance and depth that seemed to be the attendant compensations. He had the capacity to turn his thoughts away from his enemies as well as his troubles, and he had the distance from the daily hubbub to allow him to savor more of the pleasures of every passing moment.

Forty-seven. John Hall Wilton had told him that Jenny Lind was acutely aware of her own next birthday, her thirtieth. Thirty was only the first hint, soon forgotten, of what was to come, the constant sense of time narrowing and shriveling and contracting—strangely, days, weeks, whole months disappeared in an ever-quickening flight. She was disturbed by her age? Barnum could tell her that she had not even begun to live. Even if everything he had heard about her was false, that much was true, because it was true of life. Thirty was no age at all. Life, if it was to be genuinely, thrillingly lived, had to go on for many more years than that.

By five-thirty Barnum figured he could wait no longer, and proceeded below to talk to Tom Thumb.

He knocked on the door for five full minutes before going off to find a steward with a key. Charlie was apparently sleeping soundly. There were lots of reasons for sleeping soundly, and most of them, in Barnum's experience, were bad.

Barnum loved Tom Thumb. He knew that he had made the General into the son he had never had, but there was nothing wrong with that. In the twenty-two years they had known each other, they had made fortunes together, coming to the profound understandings of each other that only making fortunes together could provide. They had
suffered
together—seen each other's weaknesses. Barnum knew that Tom Thumb was still young; he wondered if Tom Thumb could really grasp that Barnum was as proud of what they had accomplished together as anything else in his life.

The steward asked if he wanted breakfast served in the stateroom. Barnum said no. He had other plans for breakfast—that is, if Jenny Lind's late-night deck sojourn had not left her too tired for a business meeting.