declared that he was “all right,” and I led him behind the scenes, where I waited with considerable trepidation to watch his movements on the stage. He began by saying:
“Ladies and gentlemen: I will now give you an imitation of Mr. Booth, the eminent tragedian.”
His tongue was thick, his language somewhat incoherent, and I had great misgivings as he proceeded; but as no token of disapprobation came from the audience, I began to hope he would go through with his parts without exciting suspicion of his condition. But before he had half finished his representation of Booth, in the soliloquy in the opening act of Richard III., the house discovered that he was very drunk, and began to hiss. This only seemed to stimulate him to make an effort to appear sober, which, as is usual in such cases, only made matters worse, and the hissing increased. I lost all patience, and going on the stage and taking the drunken fellow by the collar, I apologized to the audience, assuring them that he should not appear before them again. I was about to march him off, when he stepped to the front, and said:
“Ladies and gentlemen: Mr. Booth often appeared on the stage in a state of inebriety, and I was simply giving you a truthful representation of him on such occasions. I beg to be permitted to proceed with my imitations.”
The audience at once supposed it was all right, and cried out, “go on, go on”; which he did, and at every imitation of Booth, whether as Richard, Shylock, or Sir Giles Overreach, he received a hearty round of applause. I was quite delighted with his success; but when he came to imitate Forrest and Hamblin, necessarily representing them as drunk also, the audience could be no longer deluded; the hissing was almost deafening, and I was forced to lead the actor off. It was his last appearance on my stage.
From the first, it was my study to give my patrons a superfluity of novelties, and for this I make no special claim to generosity, for it was strictly a business transaction. To send away my visitors more than doubly satisfied, was to induce them to come again and to bring their friends. I meant to make people talk about my Museum; to exclaim over its wonders; to have men and women all over the country say: “There is not another place in the United States where so much can be seen for twenty-five cents as in Barnum’s American Museum.” It was the best advertisement I could possibly have, and one for which I could afford to pay. I knew, too, that it was an honorable advertisement, because it was as deserved as it was spontaneous. And so, in addition to the permanent collection and the ordinary attractions of the stage, I labored to keep the Museum well supplied with transient novelties; I exhibited such living curiosities as a rhinoceros, giraffes, grizzly bears, ourang-outangs, great serpents, and whatever else of the kind money would buy or enterprise secure.
Knowing that a visit to my varied attractions and genuine curiosities was well worth to any one three times the amount asked as an entrance fee, I confess that I was not so scrupulous, as possibly I should have been, about the methods used to call public attention to my establishment. The one end aimed at was to make men and women think and talk and wonder, and, as a practical result, go to the Museum. This was my constant study and occupation.
It was the world’s way then, as it is now, to excite the community with flaming posters, promising almost everything for next to nothing. I confess that I took no pains to set my enterprising fellow-citizens a better example. I fell in with the world’s way; and if my “puffing” was more persistent, my advertising more audacious, my posters more glaring, my pictures more exaggerated, my flags more patriotic and my transparencies more brilliant than they would have been under the management of my neighbors, it was not because I had less scruple than they, but more energy, far more ingenuity, and a better foundation for such promises. In all this, if I cannot be justified, I at least find palliation in the fact that I presented a wilderness of wonderful, instructive and amusing realities of such evident and marked merit that I have yet to learn of a single instance where a visitor went away from the Museum complaining that he had been defrauded of his money. Surely this is an offset to any eccentricities to which I may have resorted to make my establishment widely known.
Very soon after introducing my extra exhibitions, I purchased for $200, a curiosity which had much merit and some absurdity. It was a model of Niagara Falls, in which the merit was that the proportions of the great cataract, the trees, rocks, and buildings in the vicinity were mathematically given, while the absurdity was in introducing “real water” to represent the falls. Yet the model served a purpose in making “a good line in the bill” – an end in view which was never neglected – and it helped to give the Museum notoriety. One day I was summoned to appear before the Board of Croton Water Commissioners, and was informed that as I paid only $25 per annum for water at the Museum, I must pay a large extra compensation for the supply for my Niagara Falls. I begged the board not to believe all that appeared in the papers, nor to interpret my show-bills too literally, and assured them that a single barrel of water, if my pump was in good order, would furnish my falls for a month.
It was even so, for the water flowed into a reservoir behind the scenes, and was forced back with a pump over the falls. On one occasion, Mr. Louis Gaylord Clark, the editor of the Knickerbocker, came to view my museum, and introduced himself to me. As I was quite anxious that my establishment should receive a first-rate notice at his hands, I took pains to show him everything of interest, except the Niagara Falls, which I feared would prejudice him against my entire show. But as we passed the room the pump was at work, warning me that the great cataract was in full operation, and Clark, to my dismay, insisted upon seeing it.
“Well, Barnum, I declare, this is quite a new idea; I never saw the like before.”
“No?” I faintly inquired, with something like reviving hope.
“No,” said Clark, “and I hope, with all my heart, I never shall again.”
But the Knickerbocker spoke kindly of me, and refrained from all allusions to “the Cataract of Niagara, with real water.” Some months after, Clark came in breathless one day, and asked me if I had the club with which Captain Cook was killed? As I had a lot of Indian war clubs in the collection of aboriginal curiosities, and owing Clark something on the old Niagara Falls account, I told him I had the veritable club with documents which placed its identity beyond question, and I showed him the warlike weapon.
“Poor Cook! poor Cook!” said Clark, musingly. “Well, Mr. Barnum,” he continued, with great gravity, at the same time extending his hand and giving mine a hearty shake, “I am really very much obliged to you for your kindness. I had an irrepressible desire to see the club that killed Captain Cook, and I felt quite confident you could accommodate me. I have been in half a dozen smaller museums, and as they all had it, I was sure a large establishment like yours would not be without it.”
A few weeks afterwards, I wrote to Clark that if he would come to my office I was anxious to consult him on a matter of great importance. He came, and I said:
“Now, I don’t want any of your nonsense, but I want your sober advice.”
He assured me that he would serve me in any way in his power, and I proceeded to tell him about a wonderful fish from the Nile, offered to me for exhibition at $100 a week, the owner of which was willing to forfeit $5,000, if, within six weeks, this fish did not pass through a transformation in which the tail would disappear and the fish would then have legs.
“Is it possible!” asked the astonished Clark.
I assured him that there was no doubt of it.
Thereupon he advised me to engage the wonder at any price; that it would startle the naturalists, wake up the whole scientific world, draw in the masses, and make $20,000 for the Museum. I told him that I thought well of the speculation, only I did not like the name of the fish.
“That makes no difference whatever,” said Clark; “what is the name of the fish?”
“Tadpole,” I replied with becoming gravity, “but it is vulgarly called ‘pollywog.’ ”
“Sold, by thunder!” exclaimed Clark, and he left.
A curiosity, which in an extraordinary degree served my ever-present object of extending the notoriety of the Museum was the so-called “Fejee Mermaid.” It has been supposed that this mermaid was manufactured by my order, but such is not the fact.