While in Havana, I engaged Signor Salvi for a few months, to begin about the 10th of April. He joined us at Louisville, and sang in the three concerts there, with great satisfaction to the public. Mr. George D. Prentice, of the Louisville Journal, and his beautiful and accomplished lady, who had contributed much to the pleasure of Miss Lind and our party, accompanied us to Cincinnati.
A citizen of Madison had applied to me on our first arrival in Louisville, for a concert in that place. I replied that the town was too small to afford it, whereupon he offered to take the management of it into his own hands, and pay me $5,000 for the receipts. The last concert at Louisville, and the concerts at Natchez and Wheeling were given under a similar agreement, though with better pecuniary results than at Madison. As the steamer from Louisville to Cincinnati would arrive at Madison about sundown, and would wait long enough for us to give a concert, I agreed to his proposition.
We were not a little surprised to learn upon arriving, that the concert must be given in a “pork house”—a capacious shed which had been fitted up and decorated for the occasion. We concluded, however, that if the inhabitants were satisfied with the accommodations, we ought not to object. The person who had contracted for the concert came $1,300 short of his agreement, which I consequently lost, and at ten o’clock we were again on board the fine steamer “Ben Franklin” bound for Cincinnati.
The next morning the crowd upon the wharf was immense. I was fearful that an attempt to repeat the New Orleans ruse with my daughter would be of no avail, as the joke had been published in the Cincinnati papers; so I gave my arm to Miss Lind, and begged her to have no fears, for I had hit upon an expedient which would save her from annoyance. We then descended the plank to the shore, and as soon as we had touched it, Le Grand Smith called out from the boat, as if he had been one of the passengers, “That’s no go, Mr. Barnum; you can’t pass your daughter off for Jenny Lind this time.”
The remark elicited a peal of merriment from the crowd, several persons calling out, “That won’t do, Barnum! you may fool the New Orleans folks, but you can’t come it over the ‘Buckeyes.’ We intend to stay here until you bring out Jenny Lind!” They readily allowed me to pass with the lady whom they supposed to be my daughter, and in five minutes afterwards the Nightingale was complimenting Mr. Coleman upon the beautiful and commodious apartments which were devoted to her in the Burnett House. The crowd remained an hour on the wharf before they would be convinced that the person whom they took for my daughter was in fact the veritable Swede. When this was discovered, a general laugh followed the exclamation from one of the victims, “Well, Barnum has humbugged us after all!”
In passing up the river to Pittsburg, the boat waited four hours to enable us to give a concert in Wheeling. It was managed by a couple of gentlemen in that city, who purchased it for five thousand dollars in advance, by which they made a handsome profit for their trouble. The concert was given in a church.
At Pittsburg, the open space surrounding the concert room became crowded with thousands of persons, who, foolishly refusing to accommodate each other by listening to the music, disturbed the concert and determined us to leave the next morning for Baltimore, instead of giving a second concert that had been advertised.
Le Grand Smith here paid me off for my “April fool” joke. He induced a female of his acquaintance to call on me and reveal an arrangement which she pretended accidentally to have overheard between some scoundrels, who were resolved to stop our stage coach on the Alleghany mountains and commit highway robbery. The story seemed incredible, and yet the woman related it with so much apparent sincerity, that I swallowed the bait, and remitting to New York all the money I had, except barely enough to defray our expenses to Baltimore, I purchased several revolvers for such members of the company as were not already provided, and we left Pittsburg armed to the teeth! Fortunately, Jenny Lind and several of the company had left before I made this grand discovery, and hence she was saved any apprehensions on the subject. It is needless to say we found no use for our firearms.
We reached New York early in May, 1851, and gave fourteen concerts in Castle Garden and Metropolitan Hall. The last of these made the ninety-second regular concert under our engagement. Jenny Lind had now again reached the atmosphere of her legal and other “advisers,” and I soon discovered the effects of their influence. I, however, cared little what course they advised her to pursue. I indeed wished they would prevail upon her to close with her hundredth concert, for I had become weary with constant excitement and unremitting exertions. I was confident that if she undertook to give concerts on her own account, she would be imposed upon and harassed in a thousand ways; yet I felt it would be well for her to have a trial at it, if she saw fit to credit her advisers’ assurance that I had not managed the enterprise as successfully as it might have been done.
At about the eighty-fifth concert, therefore, I was most happy to learn from her lips that she had concluded to pay the forfeiture of twenty-five thousand dollars, and terminate the concerts with the one hundredth.