Struggles and Triumphs P. T. Barnum (the beginning after the end read novel .TXT) 📖

“O! for a profit,” replied the actor.

“Prophet, prophet!” exclaimed Bennett, “patriarch, you mean!”

With all his waggery he was subject at times to moods of the deepest despondency, bordering on insanity. Madness ran in his family. His brother, in a fit of frenzy, had blown his brains out. Henry himself had twice attempted his own life while in my employ in New York. Some time after our present journey to Havana, I sent him to London. He conducted my business precisely as I directed, writing up his account with me correctly to a penny. Then handing it to a mutual friend with directions to give it to me when I arrived in London the following week, he went to his lodgings and committed suicide.

While we were in Havana, Bennett was so despondent at times that we were obliged to watch him carefully, lest he should do some damage to himself or others. When we left Havana for New Orleans, on board the steamer Falcon, Mr. James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald, and his wife were also passengers. After permitting one favorable notice in his paper, Bennett had turned around, as usual, and had abused Jenny Lind and bitterly attacked me. There was an estrangement, no new thing, between the editor and myself. The Herald, in its desire to excite attention, has a habit of attacking public men and I had not escaped. I was always glad to get such notices, for they served as inexpensive advertisements to my Museum, and brought custom to me free of charge.

Ticket-taker Bennett, however, took much to heart the attacks of Editor Bennett upon Jenny Lind, and while in New York he threatened to cowhide his namesake, as so many men have actually done in days gone by, but I restrained him. When Editor Bennett came on board the Falcon, he had in his arms a small pet monkey belonging to his wife, and the animal was placed in a safe place on the forward deck. When Henry Bennett saw the editor he said to a bystander:

“I would willingly be drowned if I could see that old scoundrel go to the bottom of the sea.”

Several of our party overheard the remark and I turned laughingly to Bennett and said: “Nonsense; he can’t harm anyone and there is an old proverb about the impossibility of drowning those who are born to another fate.”

That very night, however, as I stood near the cabin door, conversing with my treasurer and other members of my company, Henry Bennett came up to me with a wild air, and hoarsely whispered:

“Old Bennett has gone forward alone in the dark to feed his monkey, and d⁠⸺⁠n him, I am going to throw him overboard.”

We were all startled, for we knew the man and he seemed terribly in earnest. Knowing how most effectively to address him at such times, I exclaimed.

“Ridiculous! you would not do such a thing.”

“I swear I will,” was his savage reply. I expostulated with him, and several of our party joined me.

“Nobody will know it,” muttered the maniac, “and I shall be doing the world a favor.”

I endeavored to awaken him to a sense of the crime he contemplated, assuring him that it could not possibly benefit anyone, and that from the fact of the relations existing between the editor and myself, I should be the first to be accused of his murder. I implored him to go to his stateroom, and he finally did so, accompanied by some of the gentlemen of our party. I took pains to see that he was carefully watched that night, and, indeed, for several days, till he became calm again. He was a large, athletic man, quite able to pick up his namesake and drop him overboard. The matter was too serious for a joke, and we made little mention of it; but more than one of my party said then, and has said since, what I really believe to be true, that “James Gordon Bennett would have been drowned that night had it not been for P. T. Barnum.”

This incident has long been known to several of my intimate friends, and when Mr. Bennett learns the fact from this volume, he may possibly be somewhat mollified over his payment to me, fifteen years later, of $200,000 for the unexpired lease of my Museum, concerning which some particulars will be given anon.

In New Orleans the wharf was crowded by a great concourse of persons, as the steamer Falcon approached. Jenny Lind had enjoyed a month of quiet, and dreaded the excitement which she must now again encounter.

“Mr. Barnum, I am sure I can never get through that crowd,” said she, in despair.

“Leave that to me. Remain quiet for ten minutes, and there shall be no crowd here,” I replied.

Taking my daughter on my arm, she threw her veil over her face, and we descended the gangway to the dock. The crowd pressed around. I had beckoned for a carriage before leaving the ship.

“That’s Barnum, I know him,” called out several persons at the top of their voices.

“Open the way, if you please, for Mr. Barnum and Miss Lind!” cried Le Grand Smith over the railing of the ship, the deck of which he had just reached from the wharf.

“Don’t crowd her, if you please, gentlemen,” I exclaimed, and by dint of pushing, squeezing and coaxing, we reached the carriage, and drove for the Montalba buildings, where Miss Lind’s apartments had been prepared, and the whole crowd came following at our heels. In a few minutes afterwards, Jenny and her companion came quietly in a carriage, and were in the house before the ruse was discovered. In answer to incessant calls, she appeared a moment upon the balcony, waved her handkerchief, received three hearty cheers, and the crowd dispersed.

A poor blind boy, residing in the interior of Mississippi, a flute-player, and an ardent lover of music, visited