#137 P.T. Barnum

**David Senra** (0:00)
The actual arc of Barnum's life is much more interesting and much more consequential than his present day reputation suggests. He may have begun his career as a promoter of sketchy acts in a business that was often considered less than respectable, but he changed both himself and the business over the decades, earning the respect of Americans of every station. Because he had so determinedly placed himself in the public eye, people knew all about his early missteps, as well as his early successes, his struggles and his triumphs.
He did not hesitate to show his flaws, but he would also reveal in time that he was that rare thing, a man who was steered by his ideals, becoming a better person as he navigated a long lifetime. Over many years, Barnum became a steady, civic minded, fun loving man who cultivated a close relationship with his audience, and embodied many of the best aspects of the American character.
He eventually won over the public with his unflagging energy, his wit and his buoyant good humor, his patriotic zeal for the Union side in the Civil War, and his commitment to charitable causes, good government and his faith.
He is known today primarily for his connection to the circus, but that only came in the last quarter of his life.
His principal occupation before that was running the American Museum.
Less well known today is that he was also a best-selling author, an inspirational lecturer on temperance and on success in business, a real estate developer, a builder, a banker, a state legislator, and the mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut. In all of these endeavors, he was a promoter and self-promoter without peer, a relentless advertiser, and an unfailingly imaginative concocter of events or exhibits to draw the interest of potential patrons.
By the end of his life, he was admired and respected not only in the United States, but also across much of the globe. He had become as close to a global celebrity as a person could be at that time. After Ulysses S. Grant's second term as president, the great general made a two-year tour around the world, promoting the United States.
Upon his return, Barnum said to him, General, I think you were the best known American living. To which Grant replied, By no means. You beat me sky high. For wherever I went, the constant inquiry was, Do you know Barnum? Barnum, who was born ten years into the century and died nine years before its end, embodied the period's great narrative of breaking social boundaries.
Americans often saw him as an exemplar of what it meant to be one of them.
Europeans saw him as a representative of the American character.
He was born into a family that had to hustle in its small Connecticut village to stay solvent. Through hard work, a lot of brass, and a genius for exploiting the new technologies related to communication and transportation, he became world famous and wealthy beyond his dreams. And he did it all by appealing to popular tastes and interests. He understood what ordinary Americans wanted. Barnum embodied some of America's worst impulses, but also many of its best. He came to represent much of what was most admirable about his young country. And he did so with a sense of humor and a joy in living that is rare in today's public figures.
He led a rich, event-filled, exhilarating life, one indeed characterized by both struggles and triumphs.
His is a life well worth knowing and celebrating.
That was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is PT. Barnum, An American Life, and it was written by Robert Wilson. Okay, so let's jump into his early life. From a very young age, he realizes that he has an interest in the earning of money. And it says, What did interest him from an early age was money and its accumulation. The boy decided that for extra money, he could start making sweets and selling them to soldiers on the day when the militia trained. So let me just pause there. He's about 12 years old at this point. And remember, his life, he was born in 1810, and he dies in 1891 So his life takes place, large part of his life when he's a young man, takes place post-American Revolution, but pre-Civil War. And so that's what they mean about the militia there. Within a few years, he could afford to buy a sheep, a cow, and other property. And the reason I'm telling you this is because this is how he's reflecting back. This author quotes heavily from Barnum's own autobiography. And this is what in his autobiography, this is what he says about this time in his life and about the earning of his own money, the impact it made on his mind. And he says, it made me feel that it was quite a man of substance. And having this passion for commerce, for trying to make money, winds up being beneficial because, like a lot of people that we said in the podcast, his early life is filled with tragedy. So at 16 years old, his father dies. And this leaves him as the oldest child, the person that has to work to support his family. So it says, Barnum's father died of a lingering illness, leaving his family with debts. Now the eldest of five children, with the youngest only seven, Barnum remembered the family returning from the cemetery, to quote, to our desolate home, feeling that we were forsaken by the world, and that but little hope existed for us on this side of the grave.