The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb (25 page)

C
HARLES
S
TRATTON WAS BORN IN 1838 NEAR
B
RIDGEPORT
, Connecticut, where Mr. Barnum had not yet made his home but soon would. It was there, in 1842 while visiting his brother, that Mr. Barnum heard of this remarkable child who was barely two feet tall, even though the lad was nearly four years old.

Phineas Taylor Barnum was still in the early stages of his career as a showman; he had already come to some fame by exhibiting Joice Heth and the Feejee mermaid. But he was looking for something even more remarkable, and the moment he discovered this tiny child, he realized he had found it.

Convincing the child’s parents—whom I never did like, finding them coarse and vulgar and, worse, stupid—to entrust little Charlie into his care, Mr. Barnum began to teach him how to sing, to dance, and to do popular impressions of the day. (“Yankee Doodle” became his best known.) He clothed him in miniature
uniforms, increased his age from five to eleven (in order to play up his diminutive form), and began to exhibit him, to mild acclaim, in the United States as Tom Thumb. However, he soon decided to take little Charlie overseas, where he was an instant sensation and received the best publicity possible by being asked to perform for Queen Victoria. It was the young Queen who gave Charles his title of “General,” as well as a miniature blue carriage, matching miniature Shetland ponies, and the right to call himself a Royal favorite.

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 the 1850s, he even temporarily lost ownership of his American Museum. It was then that Charles Stratton had volunteered to go out on tour again, bringing in enough money that Mr. Barnum was able to buy it back.

I often forgot this part of his life, this rocky, unsettled business of buying and selling and betting on the taste of the public. He put on such a good face, even to me. But sometimes he dropped that mask to reveal his uncertainty and weariness; those were the moments I most cherished.

I frowned; he did not look at all well. “Are you eating properly? Getting exercise?”

“Yes, m’dear, I am.”

“I don’t believe you. Is Charity taking care of you? How is she these days?” I still had not met his wife.

“She is as usual. You realize I have three daughters to fuss and fidget over me; I don’t need a fourth, Vinnie.” He said it kindly, but there was a hint of frost in his voice, in his gaze; it was a warning.

“I assure you, I have no desire to be thought of as one of your daughters,” I replied with my own chilly attitude.

There was an uncomfortable pause, which he broke first; he always did. Mr. Barnum could not long stand silence.

“All right, then. Now, about your future—”

“What about it? You’re not thinking of kicking me out of the Museum already, are you?”

“Heavens, no—the very idea! Tell me, Vinnie, how old are you? Twenty-one?” Now he sounded very much like a father, and
I did not like it. But I nodded, my cheeks burning, as any lady’s would at the mention of her age.

“I know things seem as if they’ve just begun for you, and of course you want to enjoy them, but you cannot ignore the fact that you have two highly eligible suitors vying for your hand. It’s cruel to allow them to go on in this way.”

I shook my head, closed my eyes, and sank against the plush cushioned seat; how romantic, how sweet—how very
ordinary—
it sounded when put that way! How unlike my life, the life with which I was so acquainted, the life that Mama had wept over, late at night, as I lay sleeping with my sister.

“They are simply two ridiculous, spoiled boys playing a game, and I happen to be the prize. Yet no one has asked what I want.” I opened my eyes, considering Mr. Barnum. He was my confidante, my mentor; he was the person I thought of when I went to bed, and the person I looked forward to seeing when I opened my eyes, eager to begin the day. How quickly he had assumed that place in my life!

“What do you want, Vinnie?” He smiled down at me; in the carriage, we could not sit knee to knee.

“I—I want—” What did I want? Oh, so many things; what
didn’t
I want? What didn’t I desire? It was because I wanted that I had left home in the first place, shunning the simple life my family so happily led.

Yet there was one thing—one simple,
ordinary
thing—that I did desire; I hadn’t known it until recently.

I wanted, to my great astonishment, to be loved. I wanted to be cared for, desired, not desiring; I wanted to be cherished not for my size, not for anything other than for my heart, my mind—just like any woman.

But I wanted these things not from any man; I wanted them from a great man, a man worthy of me. And this was the one thing
I knew that I could never have—a great love. I must settle for something else—
someone
less, in every way. I must settle for a love in miniature. I did not quite know how to do that—settle; it was not a lesson I had ever bothered to learn.

“You’ve orchestrated this whole thing!” I burst out, tears suddenly in my eyes, my anger at what I could not have lashing out at the one thing I wanted. “You brought Charles Stratton to New York, filling his head with that business nonsense!
You
egged on poor Nutt. You’ve thrown me in the company of these two time and again, encouraged them both, planted items in the paper—oh, don’t try to pretend that you haven’t! And you’ve played with us, as if we were your own personal set of marionettes. You know,” I said, struggling to sort through my various emotions, all jumbled up like a ball of twine, “I was once nearly sold to a man. In New Orleans. Colonel Wood was offered five hundred dollars to give me to him. So he could do whatever he pleased with me.
Whatever!
It did not matter to him;
I
did not matter! Only the money that he could receive for it mattered to him.”

“Vinnie, that’s—that’s—”

But I would not listen to his protests. “That’s what? Appalling? Immoral? Illegal? Yet what you are proposing isn’t that very far off, is it?
Is it?
” I wrapped my arms about my shoulders, rocking myself, suddenly desperate for an answer, and not just any answer. The
correct
answer. I needed to know he was not like Colonel Wood, after all.

“Vinnie, excuse me for speaking plainly, but I sometimes forget that you have a heart. Now, don’t take offense!” Mr. Barnum raised his hand, anticipating my horrified protest. “I mean that as a compliment. Your mind is so sharp, you’re so terrifyingly intelligent and driven—well, you’re a lot like me, I like to think, which is why we get along so well. So please accept my apology, for I have no wish to cause you distress or pain; I’m not like that
cousin of yours, who ought to be taken out and shot for the scoundrel that he is. We’ll not discuss the matter further. I truly believed you were enjoying the situation, the attention.”

Sniffing—trying to dab the cursed tears from my eyes, for, perversely, I had an intense desire for him
not
to see me as just another woman—I turned and stared out the window. He did the same thing, and we rode along in silence for a few minutes.

“I’ve seen it, too, you know,” I said at last, my voice thick with swallowed tears—and pride.

“Seen what?”

“I’ve seen the way people look at me when I’m with those two. I’ve seen the glances, heard the whispers, the ridiculous romantic sighs. Individually, we will all do well. But matched up, there is the possibility of something beyond what any of us have ever imagined. I’m not wrong, am I?” Finally I turned to face him, once again feeling composed, rational—
just like him
.

Mr. Barnum regarded me levelly. “No, Vinnie, you are not wrong. I’m very glad you understand this. I don’t believe either of the other two does, however, and that’s not a bad thing. They are both truly smitten with you; please don’t forget that—please don’t forget that you have a great deal of feminine charm. I may be good at selling, but I have yet to find a way to sell the heart on something it truly doesn’t want. I wish to goodness I had,” he grumbled, a sudden sadness in his voice. And I knew he was thinking of someone else; I knew, too, whom that someone was. I’d only ever seen him look so appealingly sad at one other person—

Jenny Lind, whose portrait he kept in his library, whose photograph he kept on his desk at the Museum. I turned away, sickened by my insight; oh, what good was a brain like mine if it didn’t allow me to have any illusions? For I knew he would never, ever look at me in this way. Yet—

Charles Stratton did.

“Charles and Nutt are smitten with me because neither has ever seen an attractive woman his own size before,” I muttered sourly.

“Again, Vinnie, don’t disparage yourself. Could it possibly be that they both simply enjoy being with you—as do I?” Mr. Barnum smiled at me, but there was no trace of longing or regret in it, and I decided, right then, never to look for that trace again. I was a busy woman; I had no time to keep looking for something I would never find.

“Very few people marry whom they truly want, do they?” I looked at him levelly. He did not contradict me.

Instead, he asked, “And so you do wish to marry?”

“I can see the benefits of a marriage like this, for a life such as I have chosen. It is a difficult life for a woman alone, even under your management.” I thought of how it had felt to have someone beside me as I signed my photographs and met notable strangers; I had felt a measure of safety that I had never experienced before. Also a measure of respectability: I would never again have to fear the likes of the anonymous man in New Orleans, if I were a married woman. “I think I could make it work,” I continued boldly, but couldn’t bring myself to look at him. “We all have to settle for something—less, eventually. Don’t we?”

There was a silence. A long, ponderous silence that told me all I needed to hear.

“So.” I cleared my throat and nodded decisively. “We compensate with other things. I will expect the biggest wedding New York has ever seen. And I choose Charles Stratton, for your information. Nutt is a posturing little boy, but that is all.”

Mr. Barnum had laughed when I mentioned my ambitions for the wedding, but he turned very serious when he heard my choice. “Vinnie, I feel I must ask if you are at least fond of him. For
Charlie is my friend. I’ll not have you hurting him by being cruel or indifferent.”

“Have you asked him the same thing about me?”

“No. But Charlie isn’t like us; he’s all heart, and he needs genuine affection. As smitten as he is with you, I give you my word—I’ll not condone this thing if I think, for one moment, that you’ll be cruel to him.” Mr. Barnum spoke so quietly, so plainly, that I was startled; I hadn’t realized how devoted he was to Charles. It touched me; it touched my heart, which was in danger of icing over, so much was I determined to neglect it for other, more practical matters.