SPECULATION
PEALE’S MUSEUM – MYSTERIOUS MESMERISM – YANKEE HILL – HENRY BENNETT – THE RIVAL MUSEUMS – THE ORPHEAN AND ORPHAN FAMILIES – THE FUDGEE MERMAID – BUYING OUT MY RIVAL – RUNNING OPPOSITION TO MYSELF – ABOLISHING THEATRICAL NUISANCES – NO CHECKS AND NO BAR – THE MUSEUM MY MANIA – MY FIRST INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES S. STRATTON – GENERAL TOM THUMB IN NEW YORK – RE-ENGAGEMENT – AN APT PUPIL – FREE FROM DEBT – THE PROFITS OF TWO YEARS – IN SEARCH OF A NEW FIELD – STARTING FOR LIVERPOOL – THE GOOD SHIP “YORKSHIRE” – MY PARTY – ESCORT TO SANDY HOOK – THE VOYAGE – A TOBACCO TRICK – A BRAGGING JOHN BULL OUTWITTED – ARRIVAL AT LIVERPOOL – A GENTLEMAN BEGGAR – MADAME CELESTE – CHEAP DWARFS – TWO-PENNY SHOWS – EXHIBITION OF GENERAL TOM THUMB IN LIVERPOOL – FIRST-CLASS ENGAGEMENT FOR LONDON.
THE president and directors of the “New York Museum Company” not only failed to buy the American Museum as they confidently expected to do, but, after my newspaper squib war and my purchase of the Museum, they found it utterly impossible to sell their stock. By some arrangement, the particulars of which I do not remember, if, indeed, I ever cared to know them, Mr. Peale was conducting Peale’s Museum which he claimed was a more “scientific” establishment than mine, and he pretended to appeal to a higher class of patrons. Mesmerism was one of his scientific attractions, and he had a subject upon whom he operated at times with the greatest seeming success, and fairly astonished his audiences. But there were times when the subject was wholly unimpressible and then those who had paid their money to see the woman put into the mesmeric state cried out “humbug,” and the reputation of the establishment seriously suffered.
It devolved upon me to open a rival mesmeric performance, and accordingly I engaged a bright little girl who was exceedingly susceptible to such mesmeric influences as I could induce. That is, she learned her lesson thoroughly, and when I had apparently put her to sleep with a few passes and stood behind her, she seemed to be duly “impressed” as I desired; raised her hands as I willed; fell from her chair to the floor; and if I put candy or tobacco into my mouth, she was duly delighted or disgusted. She never failed in these routine performances. Strange to say, believers in mesmerism used to witness her performances with the greatest pleasure and adduce them as positive proofs that there was something in mesmerism, and they applauded tremendously – up to a certain point.
That point was reached, when leaving the girl “asleep,” I called up some one in the audience, promising to put him “in the same state” within five minutes, or forfeit fifty dollars. Of course, all my “passes” would not put any man in the mesmeric state; at the end of three minutes he was as wide awake as ever.
“Never mind,” I would say, looking at my watch; “I have two minutes more, and meantime, to show that a person in this state is utterly insensible to pain, I propose to cut off one of the fingers of the little girl who is still asleep.” I would then take out my knife and feel of the edge, and when I turned around to the girl whom I left on the chair she had fled behind the scenes to the intense amusement of the greater part of the audience and to the amazement of the mesmerists who were present.
“Why! where’s my little girl?” I asked with feigned astonishment.
“Oh! she ran away when you began to talk about cutting off fingers.”
“Then she was wide awake, was she?”
“Of course she was, all the time.”
“I suppose so; and, my dear sir, I promised that you should be ‘in the same state’ at the end of five minutes, and as I believe you are so, I do not forfeit fifty dollars.”
I kept up this performance for several weeks, till I quite killed Peale’s “genuine” mesmerism in the rival establishment. After Peale, “Yankee” Hill undertook the management of that Museum, but in a little while he failed. It was then let to Henry Bennett, who reduced the entrance price to one shilling, – a half price which led me to characterize his concern as “cheap and nasty,” – and he began a serious rivalry with my Museum. His main reliances were burlesques and caricatures of whatever novelties I was exhibiting; thus, when I advertised an able company of vocalists, well-known as the Orphean Family, Bennett announced the “Orphan Family;” my Fejee Mermaid he offset with a figure made of a monkey and codfish joined together and called the “Fudg-ee Mermaid.” These things created some laughter at my expense, but they also served to advertise my Museum.
When the novelty of this opposition died away, Bennett did a decidedly losing business. I used to send a man with a shilling to his place every night and I knew exactly how much he was doing and what were his receipts. The holidays were coming and might tide him over a day or two, but he was at the very bottom and I said to him, one day:
“Bennett, if you can keep open one week after New Year’s I will give you a hundred dollars.”
He made every effort to win the money, and even went to the landlord and offered him the entire receipts for a week if he would only let him stay there; but he would not do it, and the day after New Year’s, January 2, 1843, Bennett shut up shop, having lost his last dollar and even failing to secure the handsome premium I offered him.
The entire collection fell into the hands of the landlord for arrearages of rent, and I privately purchased it for $7,000 cash, hired the building, and secretly engaged Bennett as my agent. We ran a very spirited opposition for a long time and abused each other terribly in public. It was very amusing when actors and performers failed to make terms with one of us and went to the other, carrying from one to the other the price each was willing to pay for an engagement. We thus used to hear extraordinary stories about each other’s “liberal terms,” but between the two we managed to secure such persons as we wanted at about the rates at which their services were really worth. While these people were thus running from one manager to the other, supposing we were rivals, Bennett said to me one day:
“You and I are like a pair of shears; we seem to cut each other, but we only cut what comes between.”
I ran my opposition long enough to beat myself. It answered every purpose, however, in awakening public attention to my Museum, and was an advantage in preventing others from starting a genuine opposition. At the end of six months, the whole establishment, including the splendid gallery of American portraits, was removed to the American Museum and I immediately advertised the great card of a “Double attraction” and “Two Museums in One,” without extra charge.
A Museum proper obviously depends for patronage largely upon country people who visit the city with a worthy curiosity to see the novelties of the town. As I had opened a dramatic entertainment in connection with my curiosities, it was clear that I must adapt my stage to the wants of my country customers. While I was disposed to amuse my provincial patrons, I was determined that there should be nothing in my establishment, where many of my visitors would derive their first impressions of city life, that could contaminate or corrupt them. At this period, it was customary to tolerate very considerable license on the stage. Things were said and done and permitted in theatres that elsewhere would have been pronounced highly improper. The public seemed to demand these things, and it is an axiom in political economy, that the demand must regulate the supply. But I determined, at the start, that, let the demand be what it might, the Museum dramatic entertainments should be unexceptionable on the score of morality.
I have already mentioned some of the immediate reforms I made in the abuses of the stage. I went farther, and, at the risk of some pecuniary sacrifice, I abolished what was common enough in other theatres, even the most “respectable,” and was generally known as the “third tier.” Nor was a bar permitted on my premises. To be sure, I had no power to prevent my patrons from going out between the acts and getting liquor if they chose to do so, and I gave checks, as is done in other theatres, and some of my city customers availed themselves of the opportunity to go out for drinks and return
