A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career: Life of Hon. Phineas T. BarnumBenton, Joel
History
A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career: Life of Hon. Phineas T. Barnum
Benton, Joel
Barnum's American Museum; Barnum, P. T. (Phineas Taylor), 1810-1891; Circus owners -- United States -- Biography
"You may remember that in this city (St. Louis), I acted in one
instance as your 'legal adviser,' and as such, necessarily became
acquainted with all the particulars of your contract with the
so-called Swedish Nightingale, as well as the various
modifications claimed by that charitable lady, and submitted to
by you after her arrival in this country; which modifications (I
suppose it need no longer be a secret) secured to her--besides
the original stipulation of one thousand dollars for every
concert, attendants, carriages, assistant artists, and a pompous
and extravagant retinue, fit (only) for a European
princess--one-half of the profits of each performance. You may
also remember the legal advice I gave you on the occasion
referred to, and the salutary effect of your following it. You
must remember the extravagant joy you felt afterwards, in
Philadelphia, when the 'Angel' made up her mind to avail herself
of one of the stipulations in her contract, to break off at the
end of a hundred nights, and even bought out seven of that
hundred--supposing that she could go on without your aid as well
as with it. And you cannot but remember, how, like a rocket-stick
she dropped, when your business connection with her ended, and
how she 'fizzed out' the remainder of her concert nights in this
part of the world, and soon afterwards retired to her domestic
blissitude in Sweden.
"You know, Mr. Barnum, if you would only tell, which of the two
it was that was 'for-getting,' and which 'for-giving;' and you
also know who actually gave the larger portion of those sums
which you heralded to the world as the sole gifts of the 'divine
Jenny.'
"Of all your speculations--from the negro centenarian, who didn't
nurse General Washington, down to the Bearded Woman of
Genoa--there was not one which required the exercise of so much
humbuggery as the Jenny Lind concerts; and I verily believe there
is no man living, other than yourself, who could, or would, have
risked the enormous expenditure of money necessary to carry them
through successfully--travelling, with sixty artists; four
thousand miles, and giving ninety-three concerts, at an actual
cost of forty-five hundred dollars each, is what no other man
would have undertaken --you accomplished this, and pocketed by
the operation but little less than two hundred thousand dollars!
Mr. Barnum, you are yourself, alone!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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