Becoming Tom Thumb. Eric D. Lehman
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for three shillings, and some ladies apparently took advantage and came back day after day, gathering his “stamped receipts,” or kisses that he gave out when you bought a souvenir. Students at a military school in Chelsea talked about the Yankee celebrity so much that finally the schoolmasters marched the three hundred boys through the cobbled streets of London to see him at the Hall.8 The boys formed a “hollow square” around the four sides of the room, and sang “God Save the Queen,” a recital which Charles pronounced “first rate.” Then Charles sang his own songs, and this fascinating exchange thrilled everyone. Rumors and tales about him flew around the city. The newspapers even reported his elopement with a “lady.”9 However, some visitors were beginning to suspect his true age, and so advertisements of the time made sure to declare things like “The General shed his first set of teeth several years since; and his enormous strength, his firm and manly gait, establish his age beyond all dispute.”10
In June, Barnum left the day-to-day management of Charles’s exhibitions to H. G. Sherman, and visited Paris to sightsee. When he returned, the “Tom Thumb Troupe” toured England as their contract with Egyptian Hall had expired. They took the miniature carriage along with them, and used it to great effect, setting it up outside each community and riding in to the amusement of surprised townspeople. But it was the full-sized carriage that almost led to Charles’s death. In August, while Charles and H. G. Sherman were sitting on the driver’s box, the horse ran down a steep hill, breaking its neck and smashing the carriage on a stone wall. A shaken Barnum emerged from inside the coach, expecting to see them dead. But Sherman had heroically grabbed Charles and leapt over the wall as the carriage crashed, landing in a soft green field without injury to either.11
In October Barnum suddenly left Europe, while H. G. Sherman continued to manage the troupe. He had already sent “Tom Thumb’s Court dress” back to New York to be put on display at the American Museum, along with one of Queen Victoria’s dresses.12 It did not quite have the same effect as being able to see “The General” in person, but it reminded everyone of last year’s triumph, and gave them hope that the little fellow would return. Still, the museum languished without its owner, and Fordyce Hitchcock was no doubt glad to have his boss back, however briefly. Barnum returned to England with his family after only three weeks and rejoined Charles in Scotland. The Scottish officials in Glasgow tried to levy a tax on Barnum and Charles, but were ignored. They followed the troupe to Dublin, Ireland, calling for £729 of income tax. Barnum wriggled out of it, despite making more money than he ever had in his life.13 On one day in Dublin 4,421 people attended his afternoon performances, and the combination of receipts and purchases totaled an equivalent of $1,343, a staggering sum at the time for one day’s work.14
The first signs of trouble between the showman and Charles’s parents had become evident by this time. Cynthia “began to be too inquisitive about the business & to say that she thought expences were too high.” Barnum told her that he was the manager, and that “unless the whole was left to my direction I would not stay a single day,” calling them “blockheads and brutes” to his friend Moses Kimball.15 This threat to quit worked, because the Strattons seemed to know they would be at sea without Barnum. Money was not the issue between them, since Charles’s salary had increased to $25 a week, and when that contract expired, it increased to $50 plus expenses.16 The Strattons were also making good money on the merchandising of souvenirs. Then, on January 1, 1845, they began to earn half the proceeds, making Sherwood and Cynthia some of the richest people in Bridgeport. One newspaper reported that, excluding Barnum’s profits, the Strattons’ takings equaled more than £150,000, at that time about a half-million dollars American.17 And though Charles was doing almost all the work, like all child stars, his parents and Barnum reaped the benefits. However, the conflict between the two controlling parties remained, and would escalate as their tour continued.
This oil painting by Ramsay Richard Reinagle from 1844 shows Charles exhibiting at London’s Egyptian Hall. Photo by Paul Mutino. Collection of The Barnum Museum, Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Barnum’s wife Charity and children Caroline and Helen joined them on the tour of Great Britain, and then followed the troupe to Paris on March 18, enjoying the metropolitan paradise it offered. They rented rooms at a hotel on the Rue de Rivoli and began performing at the three-thousand-seat Salle de Concert on the rue Vivienne. Paris of the mid-nineteenth century was just as incongruous a place as London, maybe more so, with what James Fenimore Cooper had described as “dirt and gilding … bedbugs and laces.” The aromas of coffee and baking bread wafted across the unswept streets every morning, and domes and spires of palaces and churches rose above noisy, labyrinthine streets lined with grime-walled houses. People of all classes strolled along the chestnut-lined avenues or through the Garden of the Tuileries, and sat on the terraces of cafes to sip wine together.18
There were few Americans in the city at this time, and since Benjamin Franklin had walked these streets in the 1770s and 1780s, none had drawn the often indifferent attention of the French so much as Charles Stratton. The daughters of the French king, Louis Philippe, had seen Charles perform in London, and “General Tom Pouce” was immediately invited to the Tuileries Palace. Louis Philippe was a progressive king who had to, as Victor Hugo put it in Les Miserables, “bear in his own person the contradiction of the Restoration and the Revolution, to have that disquieting side of the revolutionary which becomes reassuring in governing power … He had lived by his own labor. In Switzerland, this heir to the richest princely domains in France had sold an old horse in order to obtain bread.” He had also been to the United States, and was a huge fan of the American “go-ahead” mentality that Barnum and Charles represented to Europe.
The French court asked questions of the two Americans, and Louis Philippe reminisced about his exile there. “What can you say in French?” he asked Charles. “Vive le Roi,” Charles replied cheekily.19 The editor of Journal des Débats was also present and reported the next day: “General Tom Thumb accompanied by his guide, Mr. Barnum, has had the high honor of being received at the palace of the Tuileries, by their Majesties the King and Queen of the French, who condescendingly personally addressed the General several questions respecting his birth, parentage and career. … The King presented this courteous and fantastic little man with a splendid pin, set in brilliants, but it had the convenience of being out of proportion to his height and size. It might answer for his sword. …”
Charles danced for the king, and the Journal reported his “extraordinary lightness and nimbleness, even as a dwarf.” He had reached the point where he could improvise with dancing as well as humor, because “he executed an original dance, which was neither the polka, nor the mazurka, nor indeed anything known.” However, it was apparently not very well received, since the paper joked that “no one will ever venture to try it after him.”20
More significantly, an important part of Charles’s repertoire needed to be left at the border. The Journal des Débats warned, “We will not mention a celebrated uniform which he wore in London, and which was amazingly successful with our overseas neighbors. General Tom Thumb had too much good taste to take the costume to the Tuileries. We hope, then, as he possesses such fine feelings, that while he sojourns in Paris, he will leave it at the bottom of his portmanteau.”21 The Journal was of course referring to the Napoleon costume he wore for Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington.22 Despite this admonishment, Barnum claimed that Louis Philippe asked for the Bonaparte character “on the sly”—no doubt what would have been offensive to the populace was quite funny to this heir of the Bourbons.23
Barnum also asked the King for permission to take part in the Longchamps celebration. Once an annual religious ceremony, this was now a display of pomp and wealth on the glamorous Champs Elysses and in the green fields of the Bois de Boulogne. The king instructed the prefect of police to give Barnum a permit. The tiny carriage had been shipped across the Channel and took its place in the parades along the crowded boulevards. The French people cheered their new celebrity: “Vive Le General Tom Pouce!” Barnum had once again arranged free advertising, and the later exhibition