On arriving at Liverpool, I found that my old friends, Mr. and Mrs. Lynn, of the Waterloo Hotel, had changed very little during my ten years’ absence from England. Even the servants in the hotel were mainly those whom I left there when I last went away from Liverpool—which illustrates, in a small way, how much less changeable, and more “conservative” the English people are than we are. The old headwaiter, Thomas, was still headwaiter, as he had been for full twenty years. His hair was more silvered, his gait was slower, his shoulders had rounded, but he was as ready to receive, as I was to repeat, the first order I ever gave him, to wit: “Fried soles and shrimp sauce.”
And among my many friends in Liverpool and London, but one death had occurred, and with only two exceptions they all lived in the same buildings, and pursued the same vocations as when I left them in 1847. When I reached London, I found one of these exceptions to be Mr. Albert Smith, who, when I first knew him, was a dentist, a literary hack, a contributor to Punch, and a writer for the magazines—and who was now transformed to a first-class showman in the full tide of success, in my own old exhibition quarters in Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly.
A year or two before, he had succeeded in reaching the top of Mont Blanc, and after publishing a most interesting account, which was republished and translated into several languages, the whole world over, he concluded to make further use of his expedition by adapting it to a popular entertainment. He therefore illustrated his ascent by means of a finely painted and accurate panorama, and he accompanied the exhibition with a descriptive lecture full of amusing and interesting incidents, illustrative of his remarkable experiences in accomplishing the difficult ascent. He also gave a highly-colored and exciting narrative of his entire journey from London to Switzerland, and back again, including his trip up and down the Rhine, and introducing the many peculiar characters of both sexes, he claimed to have met at different points during his tour. These he imitated and presented in so lifelike a manner, as to fairly captivate and convulse his audiences.
It was one of the most pleasing and popular entertainments ever presented in London, and was immensely remunerative to the projector—resulting, indeed, in a very handsome fortune. The entertainments were patronized by the most cultivated classes, for information was blended with amusement, and in no exhibition then in London was there so much genuine fun. Two or three times Albert Smith was commanded to appear before the Queen at Buckingham Palace, and at Windsor, and as he gave his entertainment with great success on these occasions, spite of the fact that he could not take his panorama with him, it can readily be imagined that the frame was quite as good as the picture, and that the lecture as compared with the panorama, admirable as both were, was by no means the least part of the “show.”
Calling upon Albert Smith, I found him the same kind, cordial friend as ever, and he at once put me on the free list at his entertainment, and insisted upon my dining frequently with him at his favorite club, the Garrick.
The first time I witnessed his exhibition he gave me a sly wink from the stage at the moment of his describing a scene in the golden chamber of St. Ursula’s church in Cologne, where the old sexton was narrating the story of the ashes and bones of the eleven thousand innocent virgins who, according to tradition, were sacrificed on a certain occasion. One of the characters whom he pretended to have met several times on his trip to Mont Blanc, was a Yankee, whom he named “Phineas Cutecraft.” The wink came at the time he introduced Phineas in the Cologne Church, and made him say at the end of the sexton’s story about the Virgins’ bones:
“Old fellow, what will you take for that hull lot of bones? I want them for my Museum in America!”
When the question had been interpreted to the old German, he exclaimed in horror, according to Albert Smith:
“Mine Gott! it is impossible! We will never sell the Virgins’ bones!”
“Never mind,” replied Phineas Cutecraft, “I’ll send another lot of bones to my Museum, swear mine are the real bones of the Virgins of Cologne, and burst up your show!”
This always excited the heartiest laughter; but Mr. Smith knew very well that I would at once recognize it as a paraphrase of the scene wherein he had figured with me in 1844 at the porter’s lodge of Warwick Castle. In the course of the entertainment, I found he had woven in numerous anecdotes I had told him at that time, and many incidents of our excursion were also travestied and made to contribute to the interest of his description of the ascent of Mont Blanc.
When we went to the Garrick club that day, Albert Smith introduced me to several of his acquaintances as his “teacher in the show business.” As we were quietly dining together, he remarked that I must have recognized several old acquaintances in the anecdotes at his entertainment. Upon my answering that I did, “indeed,” he remarked, “you are too old a showman not to know that in order to be popular, we must snap up and localize all the good things which we come across.” By thus engrafting his various experiences upon this Mont Blanc entertainment, Albert Smith succeeded in serving up a salmagundi feast, which was relished alike by royal and less distinguished palates.
At one of the Egyptian Hall matinees, Albert Smith, espying me in the audience, sent an usher to me with a note of invitation to dine with him and a number of friends immediately after the close of the entertainment. To this invitation he added the request that as soon as he concluded his lecture I should at once come to him through the small door under the stage at the end of the orchestra, and by thus getting ahead of the large crowd of ladies and gentlemen composing the audience we should save time and reach the club at an hour for an early dinner.
As soon as he uttered the last word of his lecture, I pushed for the little door, the highly distinguished audience, which on this occasion was mainly made up of ladies, meanwhile slowly progressing towards the exits, while the orchestra was “playing them out” with selections of popular music. Closing the stage door behind me, I instantly found myself enveloped in that Egyptian darkness which was peculiar, I suppose, if not appropriate, to that part of Egyptian Hall. I could hear Smith and his assistants walking on the stage over my head, but I dare not call out lest some nervous Duchess or Countess should faint under the apprehension that the hall was on fire, or that some other severe disaster threatened.
Groping my way blindly and hitting my head several times against sundry beams, at last, to my joy, I reached the knob of the door which led me into this hole, but to my dismay it had been locked from the outside! In feeling about, however, I discovered a couple of bell pulls, both of which I desperately jerked and heard a faint tinkling in two opposite directions. Next, I heard the heavy canvas drop-curtain roll down rapidly till it struck the stage with a thud. Then the music in the orchestra suddenly ceased, and I could readily understand by the shrieks of the women and the loud protestations of masculine voices that the gas had been turned off and the whole house left in darkness. This was followed by hurried and heavy footsteps on the stage, the imprecations of stage carpenters and gasmen, jargon of foreign musicians in the orchestra, and the earnest voice of my friend Smith excitedly exclaiming: “Who rung those bells? why are we all left in the dark? Light up here at once; bless my soul! what does all this mean?”
I was amazed, yet amused and half alarmed. What to do, I did not know, so I sat still on a box which I had stumbled over, as well as upon, afraid to move or put out my hand lest I might touch some machinery which would give the signal for thunder and lightning, or an earthquake, or more likely, a Mont Blanc avalanche. Restored tranquillity overhead assured me that the gas had been relighted. I knew Smith must be anxiously awaiting me, for he was not a man to be behind time when so important a matter as dinner was the motive of the appointment. Something desperate must be done; so I carefully groped my way to the stage door again and with a strong effort managed to wrench it open. Covered with dust and perspiration I followed behind the rear of the outgoing audience and found Smith, to whom I narrated my underground experiences.
Brushes, water and towels soon put me once more in presentable condition and we went to the Garrick Club where we dined with several gentlemen of note. Smith could not refrain from relating my mishaps and their consequences in my search for him under difficulties, and worse yet, under his stage, and great was the merriment over the idea that an old manager like myself should so lose his reckoning in a place with which he might well be supposed to be perfectly familiar.
When the late William M. Thackeray made his first visit to the United States, I think in 1852, he called on me at the Museum with a letter of introduction from our mutual friend Albert Smith. He spent an hour with me, mainly for the purpose of asking my advice in regard to the management of the course of lectures on “The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century,” which he proposed to deliver, as he did afterwards, with very great success, in the principal cities of the Union. I gave him the best advice I could as to management, and the cities he ought to visit, for which he was very grateful and he called on me whenever he was in New York. I also saw him repeatedly when he came to America the second time with his admirable lectures on “The Four Georges,” which, it will be remembered he delivered in the United States in the season of 1855–56, before he read these lectures to audiences in Great Britain. My relations with this great novelist, I am proud to say, were cordial and intimate; and now, when I called upon him, in 1857, at his own house he grasped me heartily by the hand and said:
“Mr. Barnum, I admire you more than ever. I have read the accounts in the papers of the examinations you underwent in the New York courts, and the positive pluck you exhibit under your pecuniary embarrassments is worthy of all praise. You would never have received credit for the philosophy you manifest, if these financial misfortunes had not overtaken you.”
I thanked him for his compliment, and he continued:
“But tell me, Barnum, are you really in need of present assistance? for if you are you must be helped.”
“Not in the least,” I replied, laughing; “I need more money in order to get out of bankruptcy and I intend to earn it; but so far as daily bread is concerned, I am quite at ease, for my wife is worth £30,000 or £40,000.”
“Is it possible?” he exclaimed, with evident delight; “well, now, you have lost all my sympathy; why, that is more than I ever expect to be worth; I shall be sorry for you no more.”
During my stay in London, I met Thackeray several times, and on one occasion I dined with him. He was a most genial, noble-hearted gentleman. In our conversations he spoke with the warmest appreciation of America, and of his numerous friends in this country, and he repeatedly expressed his obligations to me for the advice and assistance I had given him on the occasion of his first lecturing visit to the United States.
The late Charles Kean, then manager of the Princess’s Theater, in London, was also exceedingly polite and friendly to me. He placed a box at my disposal at all times, and took me through his theater to show me the stage, dressing rooms, and particularly the valuable “properties” he had collected. Among other things, he had twenty or more complete suits of real armor and other costumes and appointments essential to the production of historical plays, in the most complete and authentic manner. In the mere matter of stage-setting, Charles Kean has never been surpassed.
Otto Goldschmidt, the husband of Jenny Lind, also called on me in London. He and his wife were then living in Dresden, and he said the first thing his wife desired him to ask me was, whether I was in want. I assured him that I was not, although I was managing to live in an economical way and my family would soon come over to reside in London. He then advised me to take them to Dresden, saying that living was very cheap there; and, he added, “my wife will gladly look up a proper house for you to live in.” I thankfully declined his proffered kindness, as Dresden was too far away from my business. A year subsequent to this, a letter was generally published in the American papers, purporting to have been written to me by Jenny Lind, and proffering me a large sum of money. I immediately pronounced the letter a forgery, and I soon afterwards received a communication from a young reporter in Philadelphia acknowledging himself as the author, and saying that he wrote it from a good motive, hoping it would benefit me. On the contrary it annoyed me exceedingly.
My old friends Julius Benedict and Giovanni Belletti, called on me and we had some very pleasant dinners together, when we talked over incidents of their travels in America. Among the gentlemen whom I met in London, some of them quite frequently at dinners, were Mr. George Augustus Sala, Mr. Edmund Yates, Mr. Horace Mayhew, Mr. Alfred Bunn, Mr. Lumley, of Her Majesty’s Theater, Mr. Buckstone, of the Haymarket, Mr. Charles Kean, our princely countrymen Mr. George Peabody, Mr. J. M. Morris, the manager, Mr. Bates, of Baring, Brothers & Co., Mr. Oxenford, dramatic critic of the London Times, Dr. Ballard, the American dentist, and many other eminent persons.
I had numerous offers from professional friends on both sides of the Atlantic who supposed me to be in need of employment. Mr. Barney Williams, who had not then acted in England, proposed in the kindest manner to make me his agent for a tour through Great Britain, and to give me one-third of the profits which he and Mrs. Williams might make by their acting. Mr. S. M. Pettengill, of New York, the newspaper advertising agent, offered me the fine salary of $10,000 a year to transact business for him in Great Britain. He wrote to me: “when you failed in consequence of the Jerome clock notes, I felt that your creditors were dealing hard with you; that they should have let you up and give you a chance, and they would have fared better and I wish I was a creditor so as to show what I would do.” These offers, both from Mr. Williams and Mr. Pettengill, I was obliged to decline.
Mr. Lumley, manager of Pier Majesty’s Theater, used to send me an order for a private box for every opera night, and I frequently availed myself of his courtesy. I had an idea that much money might be made by transferring his entire opera company, which then included Piccolomini and Titjiens to New York for a short season. The plan included the charter of a special steamer for the company and the conveyance of the entire troup, including the orchestra, with their instruments, and the chorus, costumes, scores, and properties of the company. It was a gigantic scheme, which would no doubt have been pecuniarily successful, and Mr. Lumley and I went so far as to draw up the preliminaries of an arrangement, in which I was to share a due proportion of the profits for my assistance in the management; but after a while, and to the evident regret of Mr. Lumley, the scheme was given up.
Meanwhile, I was by no means idle. Cordelia Howard as “Little Eva,” with her mother as the inimitable “Topsy,” were highly successful in London and other large cities, while General Tom Thumb, returning after so long an absence, drew crowded houses wherever he went. These were strong spokes in the wheel that was moving slowly but surely in the effort to get me out of debt, and, if possible, to save some portion of my real estate. Of course, it was not generally known that I had any interest whatever in either of these exhibitions; if it had been, possibly some of the clock creditors would have annoyed me; but I busied myself in these and in other ways, working industriously and making much money, which I constantly remitted to my trusty agent at home.