David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [125]
Crockett was fascinated by what he witnessed at Peale’s Museum of Curiosities and Freaks. He was mesmerized by the performance of a ventriloquist who also was an accomplished magician who made money disappear and then reappear—a feat that Crockett pointed out was best accomplished by Old Hickory.26 All of the eclectic collection of exhibits—most of which eventually ended up in the hands of showman P. T. Barnum—were on display for Crockett’s inspection. He had seen nothing like it ever before: copies of the works of Leonardo da Vinci and other old masters, collections of snuff boxes, medals, whales’ teeth, and Seneca Indians in traditional regalia. One of the featured freaks was a five-year-old-girl who weighed 250 pounds, the kind of display of human curiosities typical of the era. The menagerie also included a rhinoceros, a two-headed calf with six legs, and an assortment of live rattlesnakes, tigers, and, much to Crockett’s delight, bears.27 The curators breathed collective sighs of relief when assured that their famous guest was not armed.
Helen Chapman, a seventeen-year-old girl, also at the museum that afternoon, described her impression of Crockett in a letter to her mother:
I have seen a great man. No less of one than Col. Crockett. I . . . sat close by him so I had a good opportunity of observing his physiognomy…. he is wholly different from what I thought him. Tall in stature and large in frame, but quite thin, with black hair combed straight over his forehead, parted from the middle and his shirt collar turned negligently back over his coat. He has rather an indolent and careless appearance and looks not like a “go ahead” man.28
The rest of the tour became a blur for Crockett. He was ferried across the Hudson River to show off his marksmanship in a shooting match in Jersey City, and then took a steamship to Boston, by way of Newport and Providence, where large crowds waved and cheered. At one of the dinners in Boston, attended by 100 young Whigs, he tasted champagne for the first time and commented that it was like “supping [sic] fog out of speaking trumpets,” and a far cry from Tennessee sipping whiskey.29 Crockett declined an invitation to visit nearby Cambridge, fearful that the folks at Harvard University might try to give him an honorary degree. At Lowell, Massachusetts, a burgeoning New England labor city where the Industrial Revolution had already begun, a textile tycoon showed Crockett through his busy mill and presented him with a handsome woolen suit.
At tour’s end, he retraced his journey through Boston to New York and Philadelphia. The only hitch occurred during a brief speech stop in Camden, New Jersey, where a clever pickpocket victimized Crockett and some of his escorts. As usual, he was able to turn the incident into a political joke by speculating that the thief had to have been a Jackson man.30
On May 13, Crockett returned to Washington City and collapsed in his feather bed at the boardinghouse. The euphoria of his book tour was soon to wear off. All the adoring crowds and the compliments of self-serving Whigs had no currency in Congress. If anything, the attention was deemed inappropriate, with jealousy and political apprehension the underlying factors.
THIRTY-FOUR
GONE TO TEXAS
WHILE ON THE BOOK TOUR, as well as during his tenure in Congress, Crockett commissioned portrait artists to capture his likeness. Not a particularly vain man, Crockett certainly did not wish to be remembered as yet another dandified politician clad in a suit and high-collar shirt with a cravat around his neck. That was the Crockett portrayed in Chester Harding’s oil painting executed