Читать книгу Becoming Tom Thumb - Eric D. Lehman - Страница 10

THE BOY FROM BRIDGEPORT

When Charles Stratton was born in 1838, Bridgeport, Connecticut had been an official reality for less than two years. Wedged between the successful colonial boroughs of Fairfield and Stratford, the small village of Stratfield had hugged the shore of a shallow bay, hemmed in by a triangular island and a reef. It was not nearly as desirable for large ships as the protected bays elsewhere along the coast of Long Island Sound, and boasted no other obvious geographical advantages. Its inhabitants gathered around the small Congregational church, farmed the broad flat meadows and gentle hills, and built wharves to run a limited coastal trade. Then, when Fairfield was burned by the British in 1779, the untouched town of Stratfield took up some of its trade. Thus began the transformation from a small Puritan community into the commercial powerhouse of Connecticut.

For the first few decades of the nineteenth century, the borough technically remained part of Stratford, alternately called Bridgeport or Newfield by its inhabitants. It grew more quickly than any other community in the state, from two hundred settlers to a few thousand, while the small village center became a small business district, complete with modest hotels and dry goods stores. But it was still far behind its neighbors in some ways. Muddy streets and gravel sidewalks ran with sewage during rainstorms and cows roamed the streets freely. Travelers from New York often passed quickly through, heading east from the border of Fairfield past straggling houses to the bustling downtown by the bay, then turning north along the Pequonnock River to avoid the salt marshes, through open farmland and forest up to the giant elm tree on Old Mill Green. From here they could turn southeast toward Stratford and the coast or northeast to Hartford and Boston. A large arrowhead peninsula south of this road had escaped colonial settlement for the most part, until in 1835 a toll bridge was built from the business district near the wharves to this marsh-hemmed farmland.

By now all the townsfolk called their community of a few thousand “Bridgeport,” and that was the official name when the state of Connecticut granted their borough its own charter in 1836. Despite protests from the turnpike companies, the Housatonic Railroad was chartered that same year to build a railway from the docks north along the river valley. By 1840 the line reached to New Milford, and the first train, garlanded with flags, left Bridgeport Station at 9:00 a.m. to a rousing performance by the local brass band. The schedule was coordinated with the ferries to New York, making the growing city an important junction on the way to the mines and factories of western Massachusetts.

Charles’s grandfather, Seth Sherwood Stratton, was born in the wilds of North Stratford in 1782, to a family that had settled in Connecticut a hundred years earlier. He moved south to the growing village of Bridgeport, and married Amy Sharp of Oxford. Their son, Sherwood Edwards Stratton, was born in 1811, and he married Cynthia Thompson of West Haven, bringing her to Bridgeport and living in a two-chimney house at the intersection of Main and Arch Streets, on the edge of the village two blocks from the Pequonnock River. The black-bearded Sherwood served as a private in the 2nd company, 4th regiment, of the Light Artillery of Bridgeport and worked as a local carpenter, and apparently was less affluent than his brother Samuel or the rest of the Stratton clan. Cynthia seems to have worked part-time as a cleaning woman at Daniel Sterling’s hotel a few blocks away at Main and Wall Streets. In their plain salt-box home they had three children who lived past childhood, two girls, Frances Jane and Mary Elizabeth, and one boy, Charles.¹

The latter was born on January 4, 1838, and baptized at the nearby St. John’s Episcopal church. He was a large baby, as he joked years later: “I weighed nine pounds when I was born, within half a pound of one of my sisters, who has since attained a weight in the neighborhood of two hundred pounds; so you can see how the gap has widened between us.”² At five months old he stopped growing, lingering for years at the same weight and height, and even his feet, for example, remained only three inches long. His pituitary gland rather than bone dysplasia or other issues caused his growth problems, though this was long before the discovery of those connections. At the time, his doctor, David Nash, a graduate of New Haven Medical College, could not figure out the reason for the lack of growth, but seems to have at least assured Cynthia that it was not due to her grief over a departed family dog during the pregnancy.³

This 1845 map of Bridgeport shows the pre-industrial town along the Pequonnock River where Charles grew up. Eventually the town expanded west to Ash Creek, taking territory from Fairfield, as well as to the north and east. Detail of original from the Library of Congress.

Charles’s siblings were all of average height, and in fact he seems to have been notable as the only “dwarf” in town. Later accounts by Bridgeporters mention memories of the small boy at this time, sitting on the wagon with the local “Dutch Baker,” Henry Seltsem, on his route selling buns, or accompanying his mother to the Daniel Sterling House while she cleaned. As his first four years of life passed, he remained the same height and weight, though he grew more mobile and more intelligent, learning to speak and walk, to jump and play. He was not yet five years old, when in November 1842, he met the man who would change his life.

Born on July 5, 1810, north of Bridgeport in Bethel, Phineas Taylor Barnum spent his childhood on the family farm, but soon after decided to get out of this line of work. Taking a job as a clerk in a country store, he quickly moved on to lottery promotion. When he found himself alone when his father died in 1825, he moved to New York to work, and then returned to Bethel to open a fruit and confectionery store with his grandfather. He ran more lotteries, and at age nineteen married a twenty-one-year-old-year-old tailoress named Charity Hallett. He started a newspaper, the Herald of Freedom, and was jailed briefly for libel. According to Barnum himself, it was his triumphant victory over his accusers and the resulting parade with supporters that clued him in to the power of pageantry.⁴

Barnum’s first experience as an entertainment impresario came with Joice Heth, an aged, blind slave who claimed (or was claimed) to be one hundred and sixty-one years old, and the nurse of a young George Washington. She was terribly thin and frail but a great talker, and could discourse of “dear little George” and sing archaic hymns. Barnum asked for proof of her age, and was given amongst other evidence an ancient bill of sale from 1727, at which time “Joice Heth” was stated to be fifty-four years old. No doubt Barnum knew this was all a deceit, but the evidence would be enough for the audience only to briefly hesitate in disbelief. He sold his interest in his grocery store, bought the woman’s contract, advertised her throughout New York, and made a healthy profit. They toured New England until she died in February, 1836, at which time a doctor pronounced her no more than eighty years old. The New York Sun declared the whole thing “one of the most precious humbugs that ever was imposed upon a credulous community.”⁵

Barnum left plenty of room for doubt in the public’s minds, though, with the very logical statement, “If Joice Heth was an imposter, who taught her these things? And how happened it that she was so familiar, not only with ancient psalmody, but also with the minute details of the Washington family?” He had found his calling, and over the next few years managed an amazing juggler named “Signor Antonio,” promoted a blackface dancer named John Diamond, hawked a balding cure, and acted as a ticket-seller, treasurer, and secretary for the Old Columbian Circus.⁶

But perhaps his most memorable humbug came with the “Fejee Mermaid,” a strange half-fish, half-monkey cobbled together in a taxidermy shop. In the summer of 1842 Barnum rented this Fejee Mermaid from Moses Kimball of Boston and perpetuated an elaborate hoax in the papers in which he built up the public’s appetite for weeks to see this “mermaid,” fooling newspapers into promoting this curiosity in an elaborate ruse worthy of the most cunning media manipulators.⁷ This trickery would become a fundamental element of the popular entertainment industry in later years, used in magic acts, circus sideshows, photographs, and films. But it was not ignorance that brought spectators into the seats; it was the very question of authenticity itself. People consistently questioned if these exhibitions were indeed humbugs, and if so, how they were achieved.⁸ Barnum had already become a master of creating these questions for a curious public, and was simultaneously creating the market for them. He also knew how to promote the unusual and the bizarre. So, when the Hudson River froze over in November 1842, and he was forced to take the rattling Housatonic Railroad down to Bridgeport, he was very interested to meet the miniature boy everyone was talking about.

In later years, various people claimed to have a part in this historic meeting. The wife of the tavern-keeper at the Daniel Sterling House, Theodosia Fairchild, professed to have known Charles and Cynthia well, and been instrumental in bringing them to the world’s attention. According to her, she had been at choir practice and heard the rumor that Barnum was in town, though he was hardly so famous at this point that it would have stirred gossip. She says that she encouraged Cynthia, who worked with her, to allow “Charlie” to meet the showman, and that the boy even wore a blue velvet suit she had made for him. In her version, she acted as a mediator with the showman’s half-brother Philo Fairchild Barnum, the proprietor of the Franklin House, a rival hotel. Philo came to the Stratton’s house on Main Street, though apparently he had never seen Charles before, unlikely in such a small town. Cynthia needed to be convinced, but both she and Sherwood finally went over to the Franklin House to meet P. T.⁹ However, Theodosia was not the only one who made a claim to arranging the famous meeting. Three years after Charles’s death, a New Yorker named Henry Folsom claimed to have been drinking buddies with Sherwood Stratton, and also acquainted with the showman and his brother Philo. Acting as a go-between he told Barnum of this small boy not “bigger than a pint of cider,” who would be perfect for the new museum. According to him, Barnum took his advice and went up to see the child.¹⁰ Others made similar claims, all no doubt wanting to be part of the incredible story of Tom Thumb, and no doubt many had a grain of truth in them.

Barnum himself credited his older half-brother exclusively. Philo’s claim is supported by the fact that he solicited or perhaps threatened Barnum that he was owed “half the money” for introducing him to Charles, or more specifically to his profitable abilities. Later, this uncomfortable family situation would nearly prevent the showman from settling in Bridgeport, despite his wife’s wishes.¹¹ Whatever the case, P. T. Barnum and Charles Stratton met in the smoky dining room at the Franklin House, and the showman was suitably impressed. The small boy had dark, twinkling eyes, framed with “light hair and ruddy cheeks.” His voice was a “piping” treble.” Though not yet five years old, he seemed intelligent and ate heartily. At first he seemed bashful around this stranger, but after encouragement talked enough to convince the showman that he was not dim-witted.¹²

Barnum already knew that physical oddities could sell tickets for the New York museum he had recently purchased, and that “giants and dwarfs” who were otherwise suitably proportioned were amongst the biggest draws. However, he noted that “I felt that the venture was only an experiment, and I engaged him for four weeks at three dollars a week.”¹³ Barnum also knew from bitter experience with performer John Diamond that no matter what the “drawing” power of any given live display, the success depended not only on the act, but on the personality and the temperament of the performer.

The Stratton house where Charles was born stood on Main Street near the center of Bridgeport, at a time when it was a small village. Drawing by Rudolph Pirhala. Courtesy of the Bridgeport History Center.

Charles was hardly the first little person to perform on the American scene. However, in the 1700s none became famous beyond limited regions, except one “dwarf child” also renamed Tom Thumb. This child, whose real name was Calvin Phillips, toured New England and New York from 1798 to at least 1801. Calvin was advertised in much the same way as Charles, as “handsome, and well proportioned,” but unfortunately for him was not taught more than “childish amusements.” A duo that became somewhat well known, the “Clarke Dwarfs,” Caroline and Edward, were thirty-six inches high and accomplished singers. However, like Calvin Phillips, spectators found them to be “infantile.” Joseph Stevens, also called Tom Thumb or “Major” Stevens, achieved minor fame in the northeast during the 1830s, though he was a full four feet high.¹⁴ He was still working part-time at the New York museums when Charles Stratton arrived in the city and took his job and name in dramatic fashion.

The first steamboat to connect Bridgeport and New York had been the Fulton in 1815, replaced seven years later by the General Lafayette, named in honor of the Marquis’s visit to the city. By 1842 the Nimrod was one of several ships steaming through Long Island Sound, and Barnum and the Strattons boarded it for New York in early December. They were about to put a diminutive four-year-old child on display in the largest city in America. This could easily be seen as the basest form of exploitation, though for his age more than his size. His parents wanted money, yes, but the pay was not so great at the beginning that they would have been swayed solely by that. The options for a “dwarf” in the mid-nineteenth century were limited, and perhaps they thought they were doing something that would help him survive. Nevertheless, as a child he was being “put” on display, rather than choosing to do so himself, as he would later in life.

His wife said in later years that “He [Charles] had often remarked that he never remembered having been a child, being placed on exhibition when he was but four years of age, and was then educated to act the part of a man and put childish things away.”¹⁵ This assertion was supported by others, like the Reverend W. H. Adams, who says that in conversation Charles expressed regret “that he had never known childhood.”¹⁶ Child stars have dealt with this issue throughout the ages, and this small boy from Bridgeport was no exception.

New York must have seemed a strange country to little Charles, who had never seen anything but the dirt roads and ramshackle houses of provincial Bridgeport. British author Charles Dickens had visited New York shortly before the Strattons arrived, and his account gives a good idea of what they would have seen. Dickens found Broadway a “wide and bustling street, which, from the Battery Gardens to its opposite termination in a country road, may be four miles long … Was there ever such a sunny street as this Broadway! The pavement stones are polished with the tread of feet until they shine again; the red bricks of the houses might be yet in the dry, hot kilns; and the roofs of those omnibuses look as though, if water were poured on them, they would hiss and smoke and smell like half-quenched fires.” Hackney cabs, coaches, phaetons, tilburies, and carriages swelled the streets. Beggars collected in areas like Five Points, where “narrow ways” reeked of “dirt and filth.” He found “leprous houses,” “miserable rooms,” and “wolfish dens.” But he also noticed “singularly beautiful” women in “rainbow silks and satins” with “gaudy hoods and linings” walked with whiskered gentleman who turned down their shirt-collars. On Wall Street where the “houses and tables are elegant,” merchants “locked up money in their strongboxes,” and by the waterside “bowsprits of ships stretch across the footway, and almost thrust themselves into the windows.” The streets and shops were gas-lit by night, and in the “rakish” bars with their prints of George Washington and the American Eagle, men hammered blocks of ice for drinks.¹⁷

Upon his arrival, Barnum covered the city in broadsides advertising “Tom Thumb,” a designation his brother Philo often took credit for, but one that was of course already popular for any little person of the time. This much-used name originally came from the first fairy tale printed in the English language, in 1621, in which a boy no larger than his father’s thumb fights dragons and giants, and becomes a knight in King Arthur’s court. Perhaps drawing on this English background, Barnum’s first broadside read: “P.T. Barnum of the American Museum, Broadway at Ann Street, is proud to announce that he has imported from London to add to his collection of extraordinary curiosities from all over the world, the rarest, the tiniest, the most diminutive dwarf imaginable—Tom Thumb, Eleven Years Old and Only Twenty Five Inches High, Just Arrived From England.” If Cynthia was surprised by the name change, as Barnum claimed, she was even more confused about the mention of England in this advertisement. But the showman’s rationale for this change was simple: the foreign and exotic sold more tickets than the domestic and common. The age change was based on the idea that a four-year-old of that height would not be seen as so extraordinary as would an older child. Without this, and other promotional methods, he said, “it would have been impossible to excite the interest or awake the curiosity of the public.”¹⁸

Another of those early advertisements was underplayed, as if Barnum didn’t quite yet know how good he had it. “The Manager is happy to announce that he has at an extraordinary expense engaged General TOM THUMB. Jr. The most wonderful Dwarf in the World. He is but one foot and ten inches high, and weighs only fifteen pounds. That being precisely his weight when three months old. He is lively and talkative, of fine symmetrical proportions, and is unquestionably the greatest living curiosity in the world.”¹⁹ Apparently Barnum added the “General” to “Tom Thumb” almost immediately. Charles told a different story later, and his wife repeated it in her autobiography, saying that Queen Victoria had a part in naming him. However, this is misremembered childhood talking; there are numerous references and advertisements that name him “General” before he left for England, including this one.

The “Jr.” in these early advertisements made him sound even smaller, and was probably essential because Charles’s predecessor “Major Stevens” was sometimes called Tom Thumb, and Barnum wanted to distinguish the two performers. The success that was about to come for Charles Stratton, though, would put all the others “in the shade,” and there would then be no need for this kind of distinction. His small size had launched him into the world of entertainment. His talent, intelligence, and skill would keep him there.