Struggles and Triumphs · Chapter 39 (1/3)

On the thirteenth day of July, 1865, I was speaking in the Connecticut Legislature, in session at Hartford, against the railroad schemes, when a telegram was handed to me from my son-in-law, S. H. Hurd, my assistant manager in New York, stating that the American Museum was in flames and that its total destruction was certain. I glanced over the despatch, folded it, laid it on my desk, and calmly continued my speech as if nothing had happened. At the conclusion of my remarks, the bill I had been advocating was carried, and the House adjourned. I then handed the telegram, announcing my great loss in New York, to my friend and fellow-laborer, Mr. William G. Coe, of Winsted, who immediately communicated the intelligence to several members. Warm sympathizers at once crowded around me, and Mr. Henry B. Harrison, of New Haven, my strongest railroad opponent, pushing forward, seized me by the hand, and said:

“Mr. Barnum, I am really very sorry to hear of your great misfortune.”

“Sorry,” I replied, “why, my dear sir, I shall not have time to be ‘sorry’ in a week! It will take me that length of time before I can get over laughing at having whipped you all so nicely in this attempted railroad imposition.”

The Speaker of the House and my fellow-members all testified that neither my face nor my manner betrayed the slightest intimation when I read the telegram that I had received unpleasant intelligence. One of the local journals, speaking of this incident, two days after the fire, said:

In the midst of Mr. Barnum’s speech a telegram was handed to him, announcing that his Museum was in flames, with no hope of saving any portion of his cherished establishment. Without the slightest evidence of agitation, he laid the telegram upon his desk and finished his speech. When he went next day to New York he saw only a pile of black, smouldering ruins.

Immediately after adjournment that afternoon, I took the cars for Bridgeport, spending the night quietly at home, and the following morning I went to New York to see the ruins of my Museum, and to learn the full extent of the disaster. When I arrived at the scene of the calamity and saw nothing but the smouldering debris of what a few hours before was the American Museum, the sight was sad indeed. Here were destroyed, almost in a breath, the accumulated results of many years of incessant toil, my own and my predecessors, in gathering from every quarter of the globe myriads of curious productions of nature and art⁠—an assemblage of rarities which a half million of dollars could not restore, and a quarter of a century could not collect. In addition to these there were many Revolutionary relics and other links in our national history which never could be duplicated. Not a thousand dollars worth of the entire property was saved; the destruction was complete; the loss was irreparable, and the total amount of insurance was but forty thousand dollars.

The fire probably originated in the engine room, where steam was constantly kept up to pump fresh air into the water of the aquaria and to propel the immense fans for cooling the atmosphere of the halls. The flames burst through into the manager’s office, and rapidly extended to all parts of the building. The desk of my son-in-law, Mr. Hurd, was already in flames when he opened it and took out several thousands of dollars in bank bills, and reflecting upon the risk he might incur in carrying it through the surging crowd outside, with remarkable presence of mind, and faith in Herring’s safes, he hastily thrust this money with the account books into my safe, which already held many thousand dollars, and locking the door, left the whole with entire confidence to the flames. Buttoning his coat, he safely made his way out of the burning building and through the excited throng in the streets.

Mr. Hurd’s faith in Herring was well founded; for, when the safe was recovered from the ruins, its contents were discovered to be in perfect preservation. Of the curiosities and other contents of the establishment nothing was saved. When I first gazed upon the ruins, I saw, down in the depths, the remains of the two white whales, which had arrived only a week before, and which were swimming in the great glass tank when the fire broke out. I had never seen these monsters alive, but the half-consumed carcasses presented to my mind the worst specimens of baked and boiled fish that could be conceived of. All the New York newspapers made a great “sensation” of the fire, and the full particulars were copied in journals throughout the country. A facetious reporter, Mr. Nathan D. Urner, of the Tribune, wrote the following amusing account, which appeared in that journal, July 14, 1865, and was very generally quoted from and copied by provincial papers many of whose readers accepted every line of the glowing narrative as “gospel truth”: