Struggles and Triumphs · Chapter 47 (2/2)

For, at my time of life, and especially for a man who has had so much to do with the metropolitan million as I have done, I am convinced that the city is the most congenial residence during the cooler season of the year. No matter how active may have been one’s life, as a man grows older, if he does not become a little lazy, he at least learns to crave for comfortable ease and seeks for quiet. To such a man, the city in winter extends numberless pleasures. There is a sense of satisfaction even in the well-cleared sidewalks after a snowstorm, and an almost selfish happiness in looking out upon a storm from a well-warmed library or parlor window. One loves to find the morning papers, fresh from the press, lying upon the breakfast-table; and the city is the center of attractions in the way of operas, concerts, picture-galleries, libraries, the best music, the best preaching, the best of everything in aesthetical enjoyments. Having made up my mind to spend seven months of every year in the city, in the summer of 1867 I purchased the elegant and most eligibly situated mansion, No. 438 Fifth Avenue, corner of Thirty-ninth Street, at the crowning point of Murray Hill, in New York, and moved into it in November. My residence therein in the winter season has fully confirmed my impressions in its favor. The house is replete with all that can constitute a pleasant home, and the location is so near to Central Park that we spend hours of every fine day in that great pleasure-ground. While I am in town, it is scarcely more than once or twice a week that I take pains to ascertain by personal observation that I am living on the edge of a toiling, excited city of a million inhabitants. My pecuniary interests in Connecticut and in New York occupy my attention sufficiently to keep me from ennui, and an extended correspondence⁠—for which I do not yet feel the need of a private secretary⁠—employs an hour or more of every day. I have had letters from New Zealand, and other remote quarters of the globe, respecting curiosities, and addressed simply to “Mr. Barnum, America,” and the post-office officials, knowing of no other Barnum who would be likely to receive letters from such out-of-the-way places, regularly put these vaguely addressed letters in my New York box.

Yet I suppose that not less than two-thirds of all the letters I receive are earnest petitions for pecuniary aid. This begging-letter business began to persecute me as long ago as the time of the Jenny Lind engagement, and even before. Many of these letters ask money as a free gift, and some of them demand assistance; while others request temporary loans, or invite me to furnish the capital for enterprises which are certain to bring the richest returns to all concerned therein. When I was travelling with Jenny Lind, I received a letter from a woman in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, who informed me that she had named her just-born boy-and-girl twins “P. T. Barnum” and “Jenny Lind,” coolly adding that we might send $5,000 for their immediate wants, and make such provision for their future education and support as might be determined upon at the proper time! In some of these letters, the amusement afforded by the orthography and grammar was almost a compensation for the annoyance and impudence of the requests. One very bad speller, referring me to a former employer of the letter-writer, wrote: “I Can rePhurr you too Him”; another, urging his petition, declared; “god Nose I am Poore”; and not long ago I received a communication from an old man who claimed to be too decrepid to earn a support, but he urged that he was a religious man, and added: “I tak grait pleshur in Readin my bibel, speshily the Proffits”; and it did look a little as if he had a sharp eye to the “Proffits.”

I have said but little in these pages of the immediate circle which is nearest and dearest to me. My wife, with whom I have lived so many happy years, and who has been my support in adversity and my solace in prosperity, still survives. Our children are all daughters: Caroline C., the eldest, was married to Mr. David W. Thompson, October 19, 1852; Helen M., my second daughter, was married to Mr. Samuel H. Hurd, October 20, 1857; Frances J., the third daughter, was born May 1, 1842, and died April 11, 1844; and Pauline T., the fourth daughter, was married on her birthday, March 1, 1866, to Mr. Nathan Seeley. For my eldest daughter I built and furnished a beautiful house on ground near Iranistan, and she moved into it immediately after her marriage, though of late years she has resided in New-York in winter and in Bridgeport in summer. For Helen and Pauline, I bought and furnished handsome houses in Lexington Avenue, in New-York, within a short distance of my own city residence in Fifth Avenue. A fine young rising generation of my grandchildren is growing up around them and me.

I have written as little as might be, too, about my religious principles and profession, because I agree with the man who, in answer to the pressing inquiry, declared that he had “no religion to speak of”; and I believe with him that true religion is more a matter of work than of words. When I am in the city, I regularly attend the services and preaching of the Rev. Dr. E. H. Chapin, and I usually go to the meetings of the same denomination in Bridgeport. “He builds too low who builds beneath the skies”; and I can truly say that I have always felt my entire dependence upon Him who is the dispenser of all adversity, as well as the giver of all good. With a natural proclivity to look upon the bright side of things, I am sure that under some of the burdens⁠—the Jerome entanglement, for instance⁠—which have borne so heavily upon me, I should have been tempted, as others have been, to suicide, if I had supposed that my troubles were brought upon me by mere blind chance. I knew that I deserved what I received; I had placed too much confidence in mere money and my own personal efforts; I was too much concerned in material prosperity; and I felt that the blow was wisely intended for my ultimate benefit⁠—a chastening, which, like the husks to the prodigal son, should cause me to “come to myself,” and teach me the lesson that there is something infinitely better than money or position or worldly prosperity in our “Father’s house.”

And I should be ungrateful indeed, if on my birthday, this fifth of July, 1869, when I enter upon my sixtieth year in full health and vigor, with the possibility of many happy days to come, I did not reverently recognize the beneficent Hand that has crowned me with so many comforts, and surrounded me with so many blessings. It is on this day, in my own beautiful home of Waldemere, that I write these concluding lines, which record a long and busy career, with the sincere hope that my experiences, if not my example, will benefit my fellow-men.