The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb - Melanie Benjamin [76]
Mr. Barnum brought his Royal protégée back home, and from that point on General Tom Thumb, as he was now universally called, was a household name, the top performer at the Museum (until Miss Jenny Lind came along), and a true friend of Mr. Barnum’s. He was also a miniature adult who had never been a little boy, and that was the part of him that always managed to touch me. The lost, sad part of Charlie, the part that caused him to say, so wistfully, whenever he saw a child absorbed in a toy, “Vinnie, I like to watch them play. You know I never had any childhood, any boy-life.”
This poor soul had been taught to take wine at dinner when only five, to smoke at seven, to chew tobacco at nine. Little wonder, then, that by the age of twenty-five, when we met, he was already showing signs of an overly indulgent lifestyle; he was growing portly, short of breath, and was much too fond of wine.
Charles Stratton told me all this about himself, and more; he was soon escorting me out to the lobby after my levees in the Lecture Hall, where he waited patiently and proudly for me to sign my photographs. The public saw this, saw his attention to me, and soon there were whispers and rumors of a romance. Whispers and rumors that Mr. Barnum did not appear to mind in the least. In fact, I suspect he planted more than one anonymous letter to a diminutive Cupid in the newspapers himself.
Commodore Nutt also saw this; he grumbled and tried to shoo Charles away, as if he were simply a pesky insect, and once the two even came to blows over who would escort me to my dressing room. Commodore Nutt continued to give me pathetic looks, spouting flowery paeans to Love. The public also became aware of this budding rivalry, and I didn’t have to wonder who was responsible for informing them.
“I blame you for all this mess,” I told Mr. Barnum curtly one evening after Nutt tried to read me a love poem, and Charles threatened to thrash him.
Mr. Barnum had offered to drive me back to my hotel himself, so for once neither of the two “rivals for the exquisitely manicured hand of the Queen of Lilliput,” as a newspaper article had tittered, was present. I felt a great relief, as if I had suddenly been released from a stifling, airless room; it was such bliss to speak my mind freely, to sit without fear of being clutched at or mooned over or scrutinized for my every gesture, look, or sigh.
“What mess?”
“Between Nutt and Stratton. Although Nutt is the worst. That boy is so maddening with his looks and sighs.”
“So you’ve made your mind up?”
“What do you mean?”
“Between the two. You’ve settled on Charles?”
“I’ve done no such thing!” I turned my head and, perched upon two velvet cushions as if I was an expensive bauble, gazed out the carriage window. We were rumbling over the cobblestones of Fifth Avenue, whose tall, imposing buildings were all dark and looming, while the round streetlights shone bright pools of light upon the clean sidewalks (relatively clean, that is, compared to the sidewalks in less desirable parts of town). The streets were quieter this time of night, but of course they were never completely free of carriages and wagons and carts; the rumbling of wheels upon cobblestones never ceased.
“Ah, Vinnie, what are you waiting for?” Mr. Barnum removed his spectacles and massaged the red indentation on the bridge of his nose; he looked weary, especially in the grainy shadows of the carriage. Weary and older, somehow; he was only in his early fifties, but he had lived more than one lifetime. Successes, bankruptcies, more successes: He had built palaces only to see them burnt to the ground. In