Struggles and Triumphs · Chapter 14 (2/2)

Our post-chaise was at the door; we leaped into it, and were off, leaving the “nice young man” to enjoy a visit to the birthplace of an individual of whom he had never before heard. The distance to Warwick is fourteen miles. We went to the Castle, and approaching the door of the Great Hall, were informed by a well-dressed porter that the Earl of Warwick and family were absent, and that he was permitted to show the apartments to visitors. He introduced us successively into the “Red Drawing-Room,” “The Cedar Drawing-Room,” “The Gilt Room,” “The State Bedroom,” “Lady Warwick’s Boudoir,” “The Compass Room,” “The Chapel,” and “The Great Dining-Room.” As we passed out of the Castle, the polite porter touched his head (he of course had no hat on it) in a style which spoke plainer than words, “Half a crown each, if you please, gentlemen.” We responded to the call, and were then placed in charge of another guide, who took us to the top of “Guy’s Tower,” at the bottom of which he touched his hat a shilling’s worth; and placing ourselves in charge of a third conductor, an old man of seventy, we proceeded to the Greenhouse to see the Warwick Vase⁠—each guide announcing at the end of his short tour: “Gentlemen, I go no farther,” and indicating that the bill for his services was to be paid. The old gentleman mounted a rostrum at the side of the vase, and commenced a set speech, which we began to fear was interminable; so tossing him the usual fee, we left him in the middle of his oration.

Passing through the porter’s lodge on our way out, under the impression that we had seen all that was interesting, the old porter informed us that the most curious things connected with the Castle were to be seen in his lodge. Feeling for our coin, we bade him produce his relics, and he showed us a lot of trumpery, which, he gravely informed us, belonged to that hero of antiquity, Guy, Earl of Warwick. Among these were his sword, shield, helmet, breastplate, walking-staff, and tilting-pole, each of enormous size⁠—the horse armor nearly large enough for an elephant, a large pot which would hold seventy gallons, called “Guy’s Porridge Pot,” his flesh-fork, the size of a farmer’s hayfork, his lady’s stirrups, the rib of a mastodon which the porter pretended belonged to the great “Dun Cow,” which, according to tradition, haunted a ditch near Coventry, and after doing injury to many persons, was slain by the valiant Guy. The sword weighed nearly 200 pounds, and the armor 400 pounds.

I told the old porter he was entitled to great credit for having concentrated more lies than I had ever before heard in so small a compass. He smiled, and evidently felt gratified by the compliment.

“I suppose,” I continued, “that you have told these marvellous stories so often, that you believe them yourself?”

“Almost!” replied the porter, with a grin of satisfaction that showed he was “up to snuff,” and had really earned two shillings.

“Come now, old fellow,” said I, “what will you take for the entire lot of those traps? I want them for my Museum in America.”

“No money would buy these valuable historical mementos of a bygone age,” replied the old porter with a leer.

“Never mind,” I exclaimed; “I’ll have them duplicated for my Museum, so that Americans can see them and avoid the necessity of coming here, and in that way I’ll burst up your show.”

Albert Smith laughed immoderately at the astonishment of the porter when I made this threat, and I was greatly amused, some years afterwards, when Albert Smith became a successful showman and was exhibiting his “Mont Blanc” to delighted audiences in London, to discover that he had introduced this very incident into his lecture, of course, changing the names and locality. He often confessed that he derived his very first idea of becoming a showman from my talk about the business and my doings, on this charming day when we visited Warwick.

The “Warwick races” were coming off that day, within half a mile of the village, and we therefore went down and spent an hour with the multitude. There was very little excitement regarding the races, and we concluded to take a tour through the “penny shows,” the vans of which lined one side of the course for the distance of a quarter of a mile. On applying to enter one van, which had a large pictorial sign of giantesses, white negro, Albino girls, learned pig, big snakes, etc., the keeper exclaimed:

“Come, Mister, you is the man what hired Randall, the giant, for ’Merika, and you shows Tom Thumb; now can you think of paying less than sixpence for going in here?”

The appeal was irresistible; so, satisfying his demands, we entered. Upon coming out, a whole bevy of showmen from that and neighboring vans surrounded me, and began descanting on the merits and demerits of General Tom Thumb.

“Oh,” says one, “I knows two dwarfs what is better ten times as Tom Thumb.”

“Yes,” says another, “there’s no use to talk about Tom Thumb while Melia Patton is above the ground.”

“Now, I’ve seen Tom Thumb,” added a third, “and he is a fine little squab, but the only ’vantage he’s got is he can chaff so well. He chaffs like a man; but I can learn Dick Swift in two months, so that he can chaff Tom Thumb crazy.”

“Never mind,” added a fourth, “I’ve got a chap training what you none on you knows, what’ll beat all the ‘thumbs’ on your grapplers.”

“No, he can’t,” exclaimed a fifth, “for Tom Thumb has got the name, and you all know the name’s everything. Tom Thumb couldn’t never shine, even in my van, ’long side of a dozen dwarfs I knows, if this Yankee hadn’t bamboozled our Queen⁠—God bless her⁠—by getting him afore her half a dozen times.”

“Yes, yes⁠—that’s the ticket,” exclaimed another; “our Queen patronizes everything foreign, and yet she wouldn’t visit my beautiful waxworks to save the crown of Hingland.”

“Your beautiful waxworks!” they all exclaimed, with a hearty laugh.

“Yes, and who says they haint beautiful?” retorted the other; “they was made by the best Hitalian hartist in this country.”

“They was made by Jim Caul, and showed all over the country twenty years ago,” rejoined another; “and arter that they laid five years in pawn in old Moll Wiggin’s cellar, covered with mould and dust.”

“Well, that’s a good ’un, that is!” replied the proprietor of the beautiful waxworks, with a look of disdain.

I made a move to depart, when one of the head showmen exclaimed, “Come, Mister, don’t be shabby; can you think of going without standing treat all round?”

“Why should I stand treat?” I asked.

“ ’Cause ’tain’t every day you can meet such a bloody lot of jolly brother-showmen,” replied Mr. Waxworks.

I handed out a crown, and left them to drink bad luck to the “foreign wagabonds what would bamboozle their Queen with inferior dwarfs, possessing no advantage over the ‘natyves’ but the power of chaffing.”

While in the showmen’s vans seeking for acquisitions to my Museum in America, I was struck with the tall appearance of a couple of females who exhibited as the “Canadian giantesses, each seven feet in height.” Suspecting that a cheat was hidden under their unfashionably long dresses, which reached to the floor and thus rendered their feet invisible, I attempted to solve the mystery by raising a foot or two of the superfluous covering. The strapping young lady, not relishing such liberties from a stranger, laid me flat upon the floor with a blow from her brawny hand. I was on my feet again in tolerably quick time, but not until I had discovered that she stood upon a pedestal at least eighteen inches high.

We returned to the hotel, took a post-chaise, and drove through decidedly the most lovely country I ever beheld. Since taking that tour, I have heard that two gentlemen once made a bet, each, that he could name the most delightful drive in England. Many persons were present, and the two gentlemen wrote on separate slips of paper the scene which he most admired. One gentleman wrote, “The road from Warwick to Coventry;” the other had written, “The road from Coventry to Warwick.”

In less than an hour we were set down at the outer walls of Kenilworth Castle, which Scott has greatly aided to immortalize in his celebrated novel of that name. This once noble and magnificent castle is now a stupendous ruin, which has been so often described that I think it unnecessary to say anything about it here. We spent half an hour in examining the interesting ruins, and then proceeded by post-chaise to Coventry, a distance of six or eight miles. Here we remained four hours, during which time we visited St. Mary’s Hall, which has attracted the notice of many antiquaries. We also took our own “peep” at the effigy of the celebrated “Peeping Tom,” after which we visited an exhibition called the “Happy Family,” consisting of about two hundred birds and animals of opposite natures and propensities, all living in harmony together in one cage. This exhibition was so remarkable that I bought it and hired the proprietor to accompany it to New York, and it became an attractive feature in my Museum.

We took the cars the same evening for Birmingham, where we arrived at ten o’clock, Albert Smith remarking, that never before in his life had he accomplished a day’s journey on the Yankee go-ahead principle. He afterwards published a chapter in Bentley’s Magazine entitled “A Day with Barnum,” in which he said we accomplished business with such rapidity, that when he attempted to write out the accounts of the day, he found the whole thing so confused in his brain that he came near locating “Peeping Tom” in the house of Shakespeare, while Guy of Warwick would stick his head above the ruins of Kenilworth, and the Warwick Vase appeared in Coventry.