The Great Pretender

Antonio Melechi reveals how PT Barnum – the brains behind General Tom Thumb, the Feejee Mermaid and a wildly successful circus – turned a flair for outrageous stunts and hoaxes into a multi-million dollar concern

- Antonio Melechi

BRITISH travellers to 19th-century America were taken aback by the go-getting commercialism of their Atlantic cousins. In 1834, during a long visit to the eastern states, the economist Harriet Martineau saw that in “a country where the whole course is open to everyone,” the appetite for success led to reckless and ill-considered enterprise. For Martineau, the wildfire culture of self-improvement was tethered to a deep-seated conformism, “a fear of singularity” evident in the tendency to offer indiscriminate praise. “Every book that comes out is exalted to the skies. The public orators flatter the people; the people flatter the orators. The clergymen praise their flocks; and the flocks stand amazed at the excellence of their clergymen.”

When Phineas Taylor Barnum made his first trip to England in 1844, as promoter to General Tom Thumb, the star-spangled showman was every inch the caricature of Martineau’s glibtongued Yankee. Wherever he went, Barnum had one hand on his wallet, ready to “do business.” In London, he made a beeline for Madame Tussauds waxworks, offering top dollar to buy the collection outright. At Lord Byron’s ancestral home, he tried to negotiate a price for a tree upon which the poet had etched his name. And during a lightning tour of Stratford, Barnum made a shameless bid to purchase Shakespeare’s one-time home, prompting Punch magazine to commence a series of drolleries that lampooned his crass speculations.