The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb - Melanie Benjamin [33]
It may have been only a photograph, but it was necessary fuel to that fire I was determined to nurture or else I would be lost, or else I would be forgotten, just a nameless memory in the minds of some rough folk who lived along a river. “Remember, Ma, remember, Pa,” I could imagine them saying to each other years from now. “Remember that dwarf woman we saw? Wasn’t she something?”
“She sure was,” it would be agreed. And that would be all.
No, I couldn’t allow that to happen. And this photograph of General Tom Thumb in an outlandish costume—perhaps it could be my ticket out of here, away from such a sad, anonymous fate.
It could also be my ticket to somewhere: to New York, and the Great Barnum himself, who was fast becoming, in my mind, the only person who could repair my dignity and give me the career I so desired. Perhaps he could be persuaded to buy my contract from Colonel Wood.
But first, of course, he would have to know about me. A photograph would be the perfect introduction. And I imagined that I would take a very nice photograph, indeed.
INTERMISSION
From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 14, 1855
The Syracuse Standard says a healthy lady with four babies, all born at once, passed through that city and took dinner at the St. Charles Hotel yesterday. The children are three boys and one girl, and were born in Tompkins County. They are a trifle over seven weeks old, and are represented to be very hearty and handsome children, and so much alike that it is impossible to tell “t’other from which.” They were bound for the Boston Baby Show. Physically, the lady may be healthy, but morally and mentally she cannot be, for no sane or modest lady would make a “show” of herself. To sit in a public place, courting the notoriety of having produced an unusual number of children is neither ennobling nor modest.
From The New York Times, November 30, 1859
THE NORTH AND SOUTH
We are in the receipt of numerous communications concerning the Harpers Ferry affair, and the various topics connected with it. They are from all quarters, and on all sides,—some defending the North, assailing Slavery, urging the policy of not hanging John Brown, etc., and others presenting the gloomiest pictures of the state of public feeling at the South, and insisting on the necessity of some immediate step to avert the disastrous political crisis which seems to be impending.
We must decline to publish them all,—simply because we see no possible good which they could accomplish.
[ FOUR ]
In Which Our Heroine Nearly Comes to Ruin
INTO EACH LIFE SOME RAIN MUST FALL,” MR. LONGFELLOW wrote, and thus far, I fear I have done an excellent job recounting the rain that fell upon my life on the river. It is time to remember something another great man once said.
“Every crowd has a silver lining,” Mr. Barnum told me once as I recounted to him some woe or another. I laughed, as he intended, but have never forgotten it. Now I shall attempt to recount the silver linings among the clouds—as well as the crowds.
Life on the Mississippi: How romantic it sounds, still, especially to those familiar with the novels of Mr. Twain! Long before anyone had ever heard of their adventures, I passed by Cairo, Illinois, where Huck and Jim were bound; I saw the sleepy streets of Hannibal, Missouri, where Tom Sawyer whitewashed his fence; I passed scores of mysterious islands, any one of which could have been Injun Joe’s hideout.
The scenery truly was thrilling, especially to one reared in the snug, protective hills of New England. The wild islands appearing, as if conjured, in the middle of the widest parts of the river. The high, rocky bluffs in Minnesota, just as Colonel Wood had described, where I saw my first bald eagle, that soaring symbol of our Grand Republic! The bustling docks of St. Louis, rows of boats and barges lined up, like floating dominoes, with exotic names such as La Belle du Jour and El Caballo del Mar. I was introduced to my first Negro there, a man with skin so dark his eyes popped blinding white;