The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb - Melanie Benjamin [170]
Lavinia died on November 25, 1919; she was buried next to her first husband in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Despite her second marriage, she signed her name, until the end of her life, as “Mrs. General Tom Thumb.”
Yet when she was asked, after Charles Stratton’s death, if she was preparing his biography, she answered no. However, she assured the questioner, she was confident that “My own autobiography I hope to have published and put out to the public before long.”
In some way, I hope I have fulfilled that ambition; I can’t help but think Vinnie would be pleased to see her name in print, once more.
To Dennis, without whom
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
One of the delights of telling Vinnie’s story was learning not only about her life and that of P. T. Barnum, but also about a colorful, exciting period in our nation’s history. Some of the most helpful books I read were The Lives of Dwarfs by Betty M. Adelson; The Life of P. T. Barnum by P. T. Barnum; P. T. Barnum, the Legend and the Man by A. H. Saxon; Freak Show by Robert Bogdan; Barnum Presents General Tom Thumb by Alice Curtis Desmond; General Tom Thumb’s Three Years Tour Around the World by Sylvester Bleeker; and, of course, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb (Some of My Life Experiences) by Countess M. Lavinia Magri, formerly Mrs. General Tom Thumb, with the assistance of Sylvester Bleeker, edited by A. H. Saxon.
There is a delightful website called The Lost Museum, which reconstructs Barnum’s American Museum in an interactive fashion, and also provides much history about Barnum and his various performers: www.lostmuseum.cuny.edu/intro.html. Another website, The Disability History Museum (www.disabilitymuseum.org), introduced me to Lavinia Stratton’s autobiographical essays published in the New York Tribune Sunday Magazine in 1906.
Two sites were very helpful in providing color commentary on the period: www.sonofthesouth.net is a wonderful resource for Harper’s Weekly magazines of the Civil War period, and Cornell University Library’s “Making of America” website is a treasure trove of nineteenth-century periodicals: dlxs2.library.cornell.edu/m/moa/.
I am indebted, as always, to Laura Langlie for her insight, support, and savvy. Thanks, of course, to everyone at Random House: Kate Miciak, my wonderful editor; Gina Centrello, Libby McGuire, Jane von Mehren; Susan Corcoran and the tireless publicity team; Sanyu Dillon and the amazing marketing team; Robbin Schiff for her brilliant cover art; and Denise Cronin, Rachel Kind, and Donna Duverglas. Much gratitude to Randall Klein for answering my endless questions, and Loyale Coles.
And as always, I could not have done this without the support of my family, especially Dennis, Alec, and Ben Hauser.
A CONVERSATION WITH MELANIE BENJAMIN
Q: Tell us about how you first discovered Vinnie.
I first heard about her—or, rather, read about her—in the pages of E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime. She had a brief scene with Harry Houdini, a major character in the book. She was feisty, even in that!
Fast forward and I’m halfway through my next book for Random House when I realize that I can’t finish it. It just wasn’t interesting to me, and, of course, how can an author then expect the reader to be interested? But I knew that before I told my wonderful editor I couldn’t finish, I needed to have a couple of preliminary chapters of something else. So I did what I always do—I spent long hours reading histories and timelines, Googling, anything that might spur my interest. This involves looking through a lot of lists, too. I knew the era about which I wanted to write, and I also knew that this time I wanted to write an American story (since Alice I Have Been was set in England). On one of these lists, the name “Lavinia Warren Stratton—AKA Mrs. Tom Thumb” came up, and I remembered that scene in Ragtime. So I did a quick Google search on her name, and was