performances at Francisville, Louisiana, a man tried to pass me at the door of the tent, claiming that he had paid for admittance. I refused him entrance; and as he was slightly intoxicated he struck me with a slung shot, mashing my hat and grazing what phrenologists call “the organ of caution.” He went away and soon returned with a gang of armed and half-drunken companions who ordered us to pack up our “traps and plunder” and to get on board our steamboat within an hour. The big tent speedily came down. No one was permitted to help us, but the company worked with a will and within five minutes of the expiration of the hour we were on board and ready to leave. The scamps who had caused our departure escorted us and our last load, waving pine torches, and saluted us with a hurrah as we swung into the stream.
The New Orleans papers of March 19, 1838, announced the arrival of the “Steamer Ceres, Captain Barnum, with a theatrical company.” After a week’s performances, we started for the Attakapas country. At Opelousas we exchanged the steamer for sugar and molasses; our company was disbanded, and I started for home, arriving in New York, June 4, 1838.
CHAPTER VII.
AT THE FOOT OF THE LADDER
DISGUST AT THE TRAVELLING BUSINESS – ADVERTISING FOR AN ASSOCIATE – RUSH OF THE MILLION-MAKERS – COUNTERFEITERS, CHEATS AND QUACKS – A NEW BUSINESS – SWINDLED BY MY PARTNER – DIAMOND THE DANCER – A NEW COMPANY – DESERTIONS – SUCCESSES AT NEW ORLEANS – TYRONE POWER AND FANNY ELLSLER – IN JAIL AGAIN – BACK TO NEW YORK – ACTING AS A BOOK AGENT – LEASING VAUXHALL – FROM HAND TO MOUTH – DETERMINATION TO MAKE MONEY – FORTUNE OPENING HER DOOR – THE AMERICAN MUSEUM FOR SALE – NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE PURCHASE – HOPES AND DISAPPOINTMENTS – THE TRAIN LAID – SMASHING A RIVAL COMPANY.
I HAVE said that the show business has as many grades of dignity as trade, which ranges all the way from the mammoth wholesale establishment down to the corner stand. The itinerant amusement business is at the bottom of the ladder. I had begun there, but I had no wish to stay there; in fact, I was thoroughly disgusted with the trade of a travelling showman, and although I felt that I could succeed in that line, yet I always regarded it, not as an end, but as a means to something better.
Longing now for some permanent respectable business, I advertised for a partner, stating that I had $2,500 to invest and would add my unremitting personal attention to the capital and the business. This advertisement gave me an altogether new insight into human nature. Whoever wishes to know how some people live, or want to live, let him advertise for a partner, at the same time stating that he has a large or small capital to invest. I was flooded with answers to my advertisements and received no less than ninety-three different propositions for the use of my capital. Of these, at least one-third were from porter-house keepers. Brokers, pawnbrokers, lottery-policy dealers, patent medicine men, inventors, and others also made application. Some of my correspondents declined to specifically state the nature of their business, but they promised to open the door to untold wealth.
I had interviews with some of these mysterious million-makers. One of them was a counterfeiter, who, after much hesitation and pledges of secrecy showed me some counterfeit coin and bank notes; he wanted $2,500 to purchase paper and ink and to prepare new dies, and he actually proposed that I should join him in the business which promised, he declared, a safe and rich harvest. Another sedate individual, dressed in Quaker costume, wanted me to join him in an oat speculation. By buying a horse and wagon and by selling oats, bought at wholesale, in bags, he thought a good business could be done, especially as people would not be particular to measure after a Quaker.
“Do you mean to cheat in measuring your oats?” I asked.
“O, I should probably make them hold out,” he answered, with a leer.
One application came from a Pearl street wool merchant, who failed a month afterwards. Then came a “perpetual motion” man who had a fortune-making machine, in which I discovered a main-spring slyly hid in a hollow post, the spring making perpetual motion – till it ran down. Finally, I went into partnership with a German, named Proler, who was a manufacturer of paste-blacking, water-proof paste for leather, Cologne water and bear’s grease. We took the store No. 101½ Bowery, at a rent (including the dwelling) of $600 per annum, and opened a large manufactory of the above articles. Proler manufactured and sold the goods at wholesale in Boston, Charleston, Cleveland, and various other parts of the country. I kept the accounts, and attended to sales in the store, wholesale and retail. For a while the business seemed to prosper – at least till my capital was absorbed and notes for stock began to fall due, with nothing to meet them, since we had sold our goods on long credits. In January, 1840, I dissolved partnership with Proler, he buying the entire interest for $2,600 on credit, and then running away to Rotterdam without paying his note, and leaving me nothing but a few recipes. Proler was a good-looking, plausible, promising – scamp.
During my connection with Proler, I became acquainted with a remarkable young dancer named John Diamond. He was one of the first and best of the numerous negro and “break-down” dancers who have since surprised and amused the public, and I entered into an engagement with his father for his services, putting Diamond in the hands of an agent, as I did not wish to appear in the transaction. In the spring of 1840, I hired and opened the Vauxhall Garden saloon, in New York, and gave a variety of performances, including singing, dancing, Yankee stories, etc. In this saloon Miss Mary Taylor, afterwards so celebrated as an actress and singer, made her first appearance on the stage. The enterprise, however, did not meet my expectation and I relinquished it in August.
What was to be done next? I dreaded resuming the life of an itinerant showman, but funds were low, I had a family to care for, and as nothing better presented I made up my mind to endure the vexations and uncertainties of a tour in the West and South. I collected a company, consisting of Mr. C. D. Jenkins, an excellent singer and delineator of Yankee and other characters; Master John Diamond, the dancer; Francis Lynch, an orphan vagabond, fourteen years old, whom I picked up at Troy, and a fiddler. My brother-in-law, Mr. John Hallett, preceded us as agent and advertiser, and our route passed through Buffalo, Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, Ottawa, Springfield, the intermediate places, and St. Louis, where I took the steamboat for New Orleans with a company reduced by desertions to Master Diamond and the fiddler.
Arriving in New Orleans, January 2, 1841, I had but $100 in my purse, and I had started from New York four months before with quite as much in my pocket. Excepting some small remittances to my family I had made nothing more than current expenses; and, when I had been in New Orleans a fortnight, funds were so low that I was obliged to pledge my watch as security for my board bill. But on the 16th, I received from the St. Charles Theatre $500 as my half share of Diamond’s benefit; the next night I had $50; and the third night $479 was my share of the proceeds of a grand dancing match at the theatre between Diamond and a negro dancer from Kentucky. Subsequent engagements at Vicksburg and Jackson were not so successful, but returning to New Orleans we again succeeded admirably and afterwards at Mobile. Diamond, however, after extorting considerable sums of money from me, finally ran away, and, March 12th, I started homeward by way of the Mississippi and the Ohio.
While I was in New Orleans I made the acquaintance of that genial man, Tyrone Power, who was just concluding an engagement at the St. Charles Theatre. In bidding me farewell, he wished me every success and hoped we should meet again. Alas, poor Power! All the world knows how he set sail from our shores, and he and his ship were never seen again. Fanny Ellsler was also in New Orleans, and when I saw seats in the dress circle sold at an average of four dollars and one-half, I gave her agent, Chevalier Henry Wyckoff, great credit for exciting public enthusiasm to the highest pitch and I thought the prices enormous. I did not dream then that, within twelve years, I should be selling tickets in the same city for full five times that sum.
At Pittsburg, where I arrived March 30th, I learned that Jenkins, who had enticed Francis Lynch away from me at St. Louis, was exhibiting him at the Museum under the name of “Master Diamond,” and visiting the performance, the next day I wrote Jenkins an ironical review
