Word: barnumism
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Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, by Gladys Denny Schultz. Though the author oversentimentalizes her heroine and all but drowns her out with petty detail, this account of the cold, superbly gifted soprano who became P. T. Barnum's greatest exhibit is absorbing for its large store of remarkable anecdotes...
...attraction, the sideshow. Once a traveling chamber of biological horrors, it has now been tamed into a sort of Ed Sullivan variety show with cotton candy and Cracker Jack. Rationalizing the metamorphosis is Nate Eagle, 62, the corpulent, mustachioed talker and general manager of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey's sideshow. Says horn-voiced Eagle: "You don't find freaks in sideshows any more. You find strange people, odd people, unusual people-sword swallowers, tattooed people, strongmen, magicians, escape artists, ventriloquists, or men who can walk up a ladder of swords. But no freaks...
When Sweden's Jenny Lind entered New York Harbor on a paddle-wheel steamer in 1850, P.T. Barnum went out in a rowboat to greet her, carrying a spray of red roses in his arms. She was a plain young woman of 29, hair parted in the middle. Her nose was a Nordic spud. She had a wide mouth, and she wore no cosmetics. But she was the most celebrated operatic soprano in the world, and a few days later a man bid $225 to buy the first ticket to her first concert in America...
...Barnum was tone deaf, but he had brought Jenny Lind to America because he absurdly hoped to change his image. When people thought of Barnum, they thought of sheer bazazz, and he wanted them to think of fine arts and culture. This cost him a down payment of $187,500 before the singer would set foot on board ship. But his investment paid off in cash if not in permanent dignity, as Jenny Lind made a 12,000-mile, 165-concert sellout tour during which a single seat went for $653; another time, 1,000 standing-room tickets were sold...
Come & Hear. The press went completely insane, and every other line seemed to have been written by Barnum. "Sell your old clothes," said Holden's Magazine, "dispose of your antiquated boots, hypothecate your jewelry, come on the canal, work your passage, walk, take up a collection to pay expenses, raise money on a mortgage, sell 'Tom' into perpetual slavery, stop smoking for a year, give up tea, coffee and sugar, dispense with bread, meat, garden sass and such like luxuries-and then come and hear Jenny Lind." She sang Mozart, Weber, and Meyer beer, offset by such...