BARNUM, P.T. | Struggles and Triumphs
Buffalo, NY: Warren, Johnson & Co., 1874.
8vo.; 870 pages; frontispiece; black-and-white engravings throughout; red marbled endpapers; marbled edges; quarter-bound in black leather over red marbled boards; decorated spine stamped in gilt; spine rubbed at top and tail; bumped; mild edgewear. In custom red cloth slip case with leather spine stamped in gilt.
Author’s Edition. A presentation copy, inscribed by P. T. Barnum to Mark Twain: “To Saml L. Clemens Esq / With kind regards of the author / P. T. Barnum / Waldemere June 21st 1875”.
P. T. Barnum [1810–91], the self-proclaimed “Prince of Humbugs,” was one of the greatest entertainment entrepreneurs in history. His traveling shows, museums, and world-famous circus helped him amass a multimillion-dollar fortune on his way to becoming personal friends with such iconic figures as Abraham Lincoln, Queen Victoria, and Mark Twain. His inventive marketing campaigns solidified his standing as the father of modern advertising and showmanship. Working in an age when religiously mandated laws restricted socially acceptable forms of entertainment, Barnum provided amusement and wonder to the masses. He sought out attractions from around the globe that he used to exploit the public’s curiosity and desire for the thrilling and the risque. His biographer Irving Wallace noted that, as a showman, Barnum gave “New York, and then America, and finally the world, the gift of enjoyment.”
In 1841, Barnum learned that Scudder’s American Museum, a collection of $50,000 worth of “relics and rare curiosities” located in New York City on lower Broadway, was for sale. His purchase and grand reopening of the attraction as “Barnum’s American Museum” was what he called “the ladder” by which he rose to his fortune. Barnum was relentless both in tracking down oddities and in promoting his museum. He set powerful Drummond floodlights and giant flowing banners atop his building. He advertised free roof-top concerts and then supplied the worst musicians he could find in hopes of driving crowds away from the noise and into the relative peace of the museum. Once inside, patrons were treated to a spectacle of “giants,” Native Americans, dog shows, a working replica of Niagara Falls, and even the famous Feejee Mermaid (later revealed to be a monkey torso and fish tail meticulously joined together). Barnum later claimed that the public’s need for amusement justified his hoaxes. While there is no record of him ever saying, “There is a sucker born every minute,” Wallace wrote that he did say “the American people liked to be humbugged.”
After managing a 150-concert tour for the most famous female singer of the 19th century, the “Swedish Nightingale” Jenny Lind—a tour that brought him to new peaks of fame in the early 1850s—Barnum settled into the first of several uneasy retirements. He spent time with his wife and three daughters in his Bridgeport mansion, which he had named “Iranistan.” There, in his elaborate Moorish-style mansion, he wrote a controversial autobiography, The Life of P.T. Barnum, Written by Himself [New-York: Redfield, 1855], that detailed the degree to which he had duped audiences while accumulating his fortune. The backlash from its release was severe, and readers felt betrayed and swindled by Barnum’s deceitful practices. The New York Times accused Barnum of obtaining success through “the systematic, adroit, and persevering plan of obtaining money under false pretenses from the public at large.”
Following a series of poor financial decisions, including an investment in the bankrupt Jerome Clock Company of New Haven, Barnum went broke and was forced to go back out on the road. In 1858, he gave a series of lectures around London entitled, ironically, “The Art of Money-Getting, or Success in Life,” that were very popular. He also lectured widely on temperance. These speaking-circuit tours helped revitalize Barnum’s popularity, which eventually encouraged him to run for public office. “It always seemed to me,” he wrote “that a man who ‘takes no interest in politics’ is unfit to live in a land where the government rests in the hands of people” [The Fabulous Showman: The Life and Times of P. T. Barnum, New York: Alfred A Knopf 1959]. Taking this philosophy to heart, Barnum won election to the Connecticut Legislature from the town of Fairfield in 1865. He fought for the citizenship of black men and women as proposed in the Fourteenth Amendment (“A human soul, that God has created and Christ died for, is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hottentot—it is still an immortal spirit.") and worked to limit the power of the New York and New Haven Railroad lobby.
Barnum did not enter the circus business for which he is best known until he was 60 years old. He established “P. T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome” in Delavan, Wisconsin, in 1870 with William Cameron Coup. It was a traveling circus, menagerie and museum of “freaks” that assumed various names: “P. T. Barnum's Travelling World's Fair, Great Roman Hippodrome and Greatest Show on Earth,” and “P. T. Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth, and the Great London Circus, Sanger’s Royal British Menagerie and the Grand International Allied Shows United” after an 1881 merger with James Bailey and James L. Hutchinson, soon shortened to “Barnum & Bailey's.” It was the first circus to display three rings and still exists today as “Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s.”
First published in 1871, Struggles and Triumphs is an expanded version of Barnum’s autobiography and delves deeper into the complex life of the famous showman, offering a richer perspective on his public and personal battles. After losing his fortune, Barnum did not retreat from public life. Instead, he worked tirelessly to pay off his debts, eventually regaining his wealth and reputation through lectures, entertainment ventures, and his unrelenting entrepreneurial spirit. He recounts how he successfully relaunched his career by reopening his American Museum following a devastating 1865 fire and, later, introducing his famed “Greatest Show on Earth.” The book also explores Barnum’s personal triumphs beyond the financial realm, including his contributions to public life as a philanthropist and politician. He proudly discusses his role in promoting temperance, his work in the Connecticut legislature, and his philanthropic efforts, particularly his support for institutions like Tufts University. Barnum portrays these activities as an extension of his belief in progress and self-improvement, themes that run throughout the book.
This copy of the 1874 Author’s Edition [expanded from the 1871 first edition] of Struggles and Triumphs is warmly inscribed to Barnum’s dear friend Mark Twain, once justifiably dubbed the source of all modern American literature by Ernest Hemingway and perhaps Barnum’s only rival for national celebrity in the Reconstruction Era. Their relationship, which began some time in the early 1870s, was marked by admiration, and a shared fascination with human nature. Though they projected different public personas—Barnum as the larger-than-life carnival barker and impresario and Twain as the sharp-tongued writer—each saw something of value in the other’s work. According to Barnum’s recollections, Twain was often a guest at Barnum’s home Waldemere in Bridgeport Connecticut. A letter dated May 24, 1875, from Twain to Barnum captures the great affection they had for each other:
I was delighted yesterday morning at breakfast to learn that Mr. Barnum was in the library. When I got there, it was Mr. Barnard – a stranger who had cause to put in his time and put out mine. I ought to have killed him, but as it was Sunday, I let him go. Many thanks for the last installment of letters. I am learning to play the pig-tail whistle.
Twain had first encountered Barnum’s world as a young man, visiting the American Museum, which he later dismissed as “one vast peanut stand” [“‘Mark Twain’ in New York,” Daily Alta California, March 28, 1867]. Yet, his opinion evolved over time, and by 1875, when Barnum opened the Hippodrome, Twain expressed awe at the scope of the project, saying, “I hardly know which to wonder at most—its stupendousness, or the pluck of the man who has dared to venture upon so vast an enterprise. I mean to come to see the show,— but to me you are the biggest marvel connected with it” [Mark Twain to P. T. Barnum, February 3, 1875]. This statement encapsulates the complicated dynamic between the two men—Twain was simultaneously amused by and impressed with Barnum’s audacity.
Their respect extended beyond public compliments. Barnum often sent Twain letters he received from strangers hoping to join his circus, seeing these odd missives as material that might amuse or inspire Twain. Twain, in turn, urged Barnum to save such “queer literature,” viewing it as a glimpse into the eccentricities of human nature. Barnum once remarked that he had “destroyed bushels of curious begging letters” but promised Twain he would save them in the future. One such letter was a solicitation from M. L. Badger, a lonely housekeeper, in Worcester, Massachusetts. She asks Barnum if he might introduce her to a “travling Gentelman that wantes a companion for the winter,” saying she will be “verry devoted to any one that will be kinde to me.” Barnum sent Twain the 1876 letter with a note: “You are the only ‘travling Gentelman’ whom I know.”
Twain and Barnum’s friendship was sometimes punctuated by playful rivalry. Twain had even satirized Barnum in his essay “Barnum’s First Speech in Congress” [The New York Saturday Evening Express, March 5, 1867], which portrays the showman as a ruthless exploiter, yet this didn’t seem to affect their rapport. Barnum was no stranger to public scrutiny and took Twain’s sharp jabs in stride. Their bond, strengthened by a shared appreciation for the absurdities of life, remained intact throughout the years. Twain’s character Hank Morgan in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court [New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1889] was partly inspired by Barnum. Beyond their professional camaraderie, their wives also developed a friendship. According to a New York World interview, Livy Clemens, Twain’s wife, and Nancy Fish, Barnum’s second wife, became close.
Longtime correspondents, Twain and Barnum also exchanged their own books. Although this copy of Struggles and Triumphs is not mentioned inThe New York Times report on Twain’s estate sale, the article notes that a presentation copy of Barnum’s Dollars and Sense, or How to Get On [New York: Henry S. Allen, 1890], with nearly the exact same inscription—“To Samuel L. Clemens, Esq., with kind regards of P. T. Barnum, Bridgeport, Conn., Oct. 16, 1890”—sold for $9.50 [“Twain Manuscripts Sold,” February 8, 1911]. Similarly, copies of Twain’s work inscribed to the Barnums have sometimes come to market, notably an early printing of Roughing It [Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1874] and Innocents Abroad [Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1874], both presented to Nancy Fish. Though their planned collaboration on peculiar postal entreaties never came to fruition, the friendship between Twain and Barnum stands as a testament to their mutual esteem.