Struggles and Triumphs · Appendix 1 (6/6)

Barnum, who long ago beat all creation, is now exhibiting his spoils at the Rink. Animated nature and animated art make a stunning combination, especially when the combination is all in active operation, as it generally is about two o’clock in the afternoon and eight o’clock in the evening. Then one can enjoy the howls of the animals, the rush and scurry of the arena, the rattlebang of the band, and the delight of ten thousand people, without stopping to discriminate. It is something for the veteran showman to say he has been able to stir the metropolis with his caravan as other and less indifferent villages are stirred by smaller shows. The combination, as shows are rated, is really an extraordinary one, and when it arrives at an average Western city it doubles the population for them, contributing of its own multitudinous teamsters, tricksters, and stirrers-up about three hundred people, with as many more ravening beasts thrown in.

The first living curiosity that one meets at the Rink is Barnum himself uncaged. He still holds to the notion that it is worth fifty cents to look at him, and one dollar to read his life; and as nearly everybody has looked at him and read his life, we presume the rest of the world agrees with him. Still it is curious to observe how the healthy and hearty world, thronging to see the monkeys and the mermaids, mingle awe with their admiration of the greatest curiosity of all. They are subdued by a sense of the showman’s power. They skirt carefully round the edges of his greatness, so as not to attract too much of his attention, for who could tell at what moment, if he so chose, he would exhibit them. We say the healthy and hearty world, for of course the unhealthy and deformed world, which we all know was made to be exhibited, throngs as of old in supplicating procession after him. Three-legged women and four-legged men, and double-headed children may be seen at all hours congregating on the Third avenue in the vicinity of the Rink, seeking audience of the great showman. Indeed, the observant traveller on this great thoroughfare will know, hours before he gets to the Rink, that he is approaching Barnum, by the strange monstrosities, woolly horses, Albino children, and living skeletons that will be observed wending their way from all parts of the world to the great show in hope of getting engagements. Of course, all this adds to the excitement and interest of the eager multitude. But the animals and curiosities inside constitute the real attraction to the public; and a very fine collection of animals it is. The eight or ten royal Abyssinian and Babylonian lions roar less like sucking doves than any that have had their jaws stretched among us since Van Amburgh’s time. As for the rhinoceros, he deserves especial attention, because, as the card on his cage informs us, he is the unicorn of Scripture. But he doesn’t look a bit like the agile fellow that fought for the crown on his hind legs, (ah, he was an artist,) for he eats too much hay, and nothing can be more absurd and contrary to the revolutionary character of the unicorn dear to heraldry than this ironclad monster eating hay with the demureness of a cow. Still there is danger in his cage, the keeper informs us, and he ought to know, for he probably lived there at some time with him in order to find him out. And he further assures us that the reason Mr. Barnum employs him to take care of the beast is that he is an old sailor, nobody else being able to go round his horn. Time, however would not suffice to relate the wonders of the yak and guayga and the wart hog, none of which are popular pets, nor to tell of the infinite variety of the feline tribe, from felis leo himself to the tiniest cougar. This collection of animals makes what is called the Zoological Garden, a distinct apartment of the show. There is a collection of camels⁠—about forty⁠—and several elephants, eating peanuts with singularly disproportioned taste, at the east end, and here, we observe, is the menagerie. The camels, each with his hump tastefully covered with a camel’s hair shawl, wait with meek patience for the ringmaster to call them, and they all slide out on their cushioned feet like dusty spectres. It would be well to visit the collection of wild animals after this, and then inspect the exhibition of animated nature, reserving the caravan till the last. But the conscientious visitor has the hippodrome, the hippotheatron, the circus, the arena and the ring to inspect, and unless he hurries up, he will not get through in time. We have found it in our experience that the best plan is to cut the arena, the hippodrome, and the hippotheatron, and stick to the circus. The circus will be found worthy of the carefulest study. It will be found to have a largeness that is new, and certainly it would be difficult to find more performers or have them do more. The Rink, thanks to Barnum, is a popular resort. We forget how many miles of promenade there are through the zoological department of the menagerie, but we know that thousands of people may be seen there of a pleasant afternoon, adding a biological interest to the zoological exhibit that is well worth noting.

The following is from the New York Daily Standard of Dec. 28, 1871:

Mr. P. T. Barnum is the only man in the show-business who thoroughly comprehends the demands of the public, and is willing to satisfy them at any expenditure of time and means. His projects are conceived on a gigantic scale, very far in advance of the conservatism so characteristic of even liberal managers. His expensive expeditions to Labrador, some years ago, to capture white whales for the American Museum, and another expedition to South Africa, in 1859, which secured the first and only living hippopotamus ever seen on this continent, involved an outlay sufficient to organize and completely furnish a first-class show. A third even more hazardous expedition was sent to the North Pacific to capture seals, sea lions, and other marine monsters, which were transported thousands of miles in immense water tanks. These are but a few in many instances of that large and comprehensive liberality that distinguishes all of Mr. Barnum’s enterprises, and is the source of his managerial triumphs and the foundation of his financial success. Obstacles, that to others seem insurmountable, only spur him on to greater effort. No article of real novelty or merit which will enhance the attractions of his exhibitions is suffered to escape for lack of energy, or for want of liberal expenditure of money. It is this spirit that has enabled Mr. Barnum to combine in one exhibition the most complete and colossal collection of animate and inanimate curiosities ever assembled in the world.

In the spring of 1871, when the great show was about to enter upon its first campaign, complete as it seemed to the manager and to other experts, Mr. Barnum thought a most valuable feature might be added. He telegraphed to the whaling ports of New England, and sent messages to San Francisco and Alaska, to know if a group of sea lions and other specimens of the phocine tribe could be secured. Finally, through his agents in San Francisco, he organized an expedition to Alaska. By the first of July, several fine specimens of seals and sea lions, some of the latter weighing more than 1,000 pounds each, were brought in tanks over the Union Pacific Railway, were safely landed at Bridgeport, and, thereafter, were forwarded to the show, then on its travels through New England. As these delicate animals are likely to die, arrangements have been made to keep good the supply, and December 16, 1871, Mr. Barnum received a telegram from San Francisco that six more sea lions had just arrived at that port for him. Two of these will be sent, by arrangement, to the Zoological Gardens, in Regent’s Park, London, and the rest, with several seals captured in the same expedition, will be added to Barnum’s show next spring.

Mr. Barnum’s active and enterprising agents are in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and elsewhere in the world, wherever anything rare and valuable⁠—bird, beast, reptile, or other animate or inanimate curiosity⁠—can be secured, which will add to the interest of the exhibition. In the menagerie, and the hippodrome also, experts are constantly engaged in training elephants, camels, performing horses, and other animals, and are thus preparing new and attractive features, some of which will be as novel to the show profession as they will be new and attractive to the public.

I might fill hundreds of pages with the notices of the New York papers during the protracted exhibition at the Empire Rink. Every day, almost, the journals had something new to say about the show, from the simple fact that nearly every day the addition of some new animal or attraction, or fresh features in the ring performances compelled new notices. The exhibition continued with unabated success and patronage till after the holidays, when necessary preparations for the spring campaign, including the repainting of all the wagons, compelled me to close.

I must make mention merely of two genuine curiosities from California⁠—the one a section of one of the big trees, and the other a bright young Digger Indian, who was my guide through the Yosemite Valley. I little thought when I saw the big trees that I should soon secure for exhibition in New York a gigantic section of one of them, with the bark, which, set up as it enclosed the tree, enclosed, on one occasion, at the Empire Rink, two hundred children from the Howard Mission. The Digger was equally a curiosity in his way. One day when the baboon escaped from his cage, and defied all the efforts of the keepers to capture him, my Digger Indian lassoed him, and brought him down with a run and a rope in less than no time. His services in, and with, this “line” on other occasions were more memorable.

I cannot close this additional narrative without warning my readers, and the public generally, that the enormous success of my great combination has stimulated unscrupulous smaller showmen to feeble imitations, which, in some instances, are, and are intended to be, downright frauds upon the public. Nearly every circus and menagerie in the country has lately added what is called a “museum,” and in some cases they have employed a man named, or supposed to be named, Barnum, intending to advertise under the title of “Barnum’s Show,” thereby deceiving and swindling the public. The trick is very transparent, and can be successful, if at all, only in very rural regions, where the newspapers fail to penetrate. The so-called “Museums” may embrace a stuffed animal or two, and a small show of waxworks. Indeed, some of these minor managers have bought cast-off curiosities from me, and cheap rubbish from old museums, with which to set up the “new features” in their circuses or menageries. The whole public knows that there is but one P. T. Barnum, and but one show in the country of sufficient importance to bear his name. I trust to my name and my long-worked-for and well-earned reputation to insure the public against imposition from the attempts of my imitators, who are as unprincipled as they will be unsuccessful in their efforts to defraud me and to delude the public.