Struggles and Triumphs · Chapter 26 (2/2)

Meanwhile, my eyes were fully opened to the entire magnitude of the deception that had been practised upon my too confiding nature. I not only discovered that my notes had been used to five times the amount I stipulated or expected, but that they had been applied, not to relieving the company from temporary embarrassment after my connection with it, but almost wholly to the redemption of old and rotten claims of years and months gone by. To show the extent to which the fresh victim was deliberately bled, it may be stated that I was induced to become surety to one of the New Haven banks in the sum of $30,000 to indemnify the bank against future losses it might incur from the Jerome company after my connection with it, and by some legerdemain this bond was made to cover past obligations which were older even than my knowledge of the existence of the company. In every way it seemed as if I had been cruelly swindled and deliberately defrauded.

As the clock company had gone to pieces and was paying but from twelve to fifteen percent for its paper, I sent two of my friends to New Haven to ask for a meeting of the creditors and I instructed them to say in substance for me as follows:

“Gentlemen: This is a capital practical joke! Before I negotiated with your clock company at all, I was assured by several of you, and particularly by a representative of the bank which was the largest creditor of the concern, that the Jerome company was eminently responsible and that the head of the same was uncommonly pious. On the strength of such representations solely, I was induced to agree to endorse and accept paper for that company to the extent of $110,000⁠—no more. That sum I am now willing to pay for my own verdancy, with an additional sum of $40,000 for your ’cuteness, making a total of $150,000, which you can have if you cry quits with the fleeced showman and let him off.”

Many of the old creditors favored this proposition; but it was found that the indebtedness was so scattered it would be impracticable to attempt a settlement by an unanimous compromise of the creditors. It was necessary to liquidation that my property should go into the hands of assignees; I therefore at once turned over my Bridgeport property to Connecticut assignees and I removed my family to New York, where I also made an assignment of all my real and personal estate, excepting what had already been transferred in Connecticut.

About this time I received a letter from Philadelphia proferring $500 in case my circumstances were such that I really stood in need of help. The very wording of the letter awakened the suspicion in my mind that it was a trick to ascertain whether I really had any property, for I knew that banks and brokers in that city held some of my Jerome paper which they refused to compound or compromise. So I at once wrote that I did need $500, and, as I expected, the money did not come, nor was my letter answered; but, as a natural consequence, the Philadelphia bankers who were holding the Jerome paper for a higher percentage at once acceded to the terms which I had announced myself able and willing to pay.

Every dollar which I honestly owed on my own account I had already paid in full or had satisfactorily arranged. For the liabilities incurred by the deliberate deception which had involved me I offered such a percentage as I thought my estate, when sold, would eventually pay; and my wife, from her own property, advanced from time to time money to take up such notes as could be secured upon these terms. It was, however, a slow process. More than one creditor would hold on to his note, which possibly he had “shaved” at the rate of two or three percent a month, and say:

“Oh! you can’t keep Barnum down; he will dig out after a while; I shall never sell my claim for less than par and interest.”

Of course, I knew very well that if all the creditors took this view I should never get out of the entanglement in which I had been involved by the old creditors of the Jerome Company, who had so ingeniously managed to make me take their place. All I could do was to take a thorough survey of the situation, and consider, now that I was down, how I could get up again.

“Every cloud,” says the proverb, “has a silver lining,” and so I did not despair. “This blow,” I thought “may be beneficial to my children, if not to me.” They had been brought up in luxury; accustomed to call on servants to attend to every want; and almost unlimited in the expenditure of money. My daughter Helen, especially, was naturally extravagant. She was a warmhearted, generous girl, who knew literally nothing of the value of money and the difficulty of acquiring it. At this time she was fifteen years old, and was attending a French boarding school in the City of Washington. A few days after the news of my failure was published in the papers, my friend, the Rev. Dr. E. H. Chapin, of New York, was at my house. He had long been intimate with my family, and was well acquainted with the extravagant ideas and ways of my daughter Helen. One morning, I received a letter from her, filled with sympathy and sorrow for my misfortunes. She told me how much shocked she was at hearing of my financial disasters, and added: “Do send for me immediately, for I cannot think of remaining here at an expense which my parents cannot afford. I have learned to play the piano well enough to be able to take some little girls as pupils, and in this way I can be of some assistance in supporting the family.”

On reading this I was deeply affected; and, handing the letter to Dr. Chapin, I said: “There, sir, is a letter which is worth ten thousand dollars.”

“Twenty thousand, at the least!” was the exclamation of the Doctor when he had read it.

We were now living in a very frugal manner in a hired furnished house in Eighth Street, near Sixth Avenue, in New York, and our landlady and her family boarded with us. At the age of forty-six, after the acquisition and the loss of a handsome fortune, I was once more nearly at the bottom of the ladder, and was about to begin the world again. The situation was disheartening, but I had energy, experience, health and hope.