Page 180
“…juxtaposed with stalls…”
Barnum, P. T. (1855). The life of P.T. Barnum: Written by Himself, New York, Redfield, p. 332.
“Barnum himself was a freakish figure…”
Barnum, P. T. (1855). The life of P.T. Barnum: Written by Himself, New York, Redfield, frontispiece.
“…wholesale invention…”
Barnum had been informed from the start that Heth was born in Virginia. I am assuming, too, that he knew she was not 161 years old.
Barnum, P. T. (1855). The life of P.T. Barnum: Written by Himself, New York, Redfield, p. 332.
“…acknowledge the corn…”
Barnum would write this very line himself, just a few years later.
Barnum, P. T. (1855). The life of P.T. Barnum: Written by Himself, New York, Redfield, p. iv.
“…yanking out Heth’s teeth…”
Barnum initially acknowledged he extracted some or all of Heth’s teeth, though accounts vary as to how many teeth she subsequently had. In the autobiography that he was probably already composing at the time of his encounter with Sims, he left out the episode of the teeth, perhaps aware that with changing attitudes toward abolition it would be better to temper the story. I have him similarly softening the story in his exchange with Sims.
Reiss, B. (2010). The showman and the slave: Race, death, and memory in Barnum's America. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, p. 188.
Barnum, P. T. (1855). The life of P.T. Barnum: Written by Himself, New York, Redfield, p. 87.
“…by your own hand…”
Barnum was probably already writing his own autobiography, after many years of convincing journalists to write his story for him. Sims would go on to do the same thing—manipulate the press, and eventually write his own autobiography.
“His whole being as a showman…”
Barnum, P. T. (1855). The life of P.T. Barnum: Written by Himself, New York, Redfield, p. 176.
“Barnum waved a hand.”
No record survives of Sims’s encounter with Barnum (see “…he could book a room…,” above), but the advice Barnum offers Sims here is consistent with Barnum’s philosophy that telling a good story trumps all else, and Sims would go on to do everything Barnum here suggests: the story of his diarrhea became the narrative of a saint paying a price for his sanctity; he would consistently attribute his so-called innovations to a divine hand (leading some to conclude that he was more religious in nature than I believe he was); and he would, even by his champions’ accounts, cultivate a habit of dramatically exaggerating stories.
Barnum, P. T. (1855). The life of P.T. Barnum: Written by Himself, New York, Redfield, p. 84.