I was amazed, yet amused and half alarmed. What to do, I did not know, so I sat still on a box which I had stumbled over, as well as upon, afraid to move or put out my hand lest I might touch some machinery which would give the signal for thunder and lightning, or an earthquake, or more likely, a Mont Blanc avalanche. Restored tranquillity overhead assured me that the gas had been relighted. I knew Smith must be anxiously awaiting me, for he was not a man to be behind time when so important a matter as dinner was the motive of the appointment. Something desperate must be done; so I carefully groped my way to the stage door again and with a strong effort managed to wrench it open. Covered with dust and perspiration I followed behind the rear of the out-going audience and found Smith, to whom I narrated my under-ground experiences.
Brushes, water and towels soon put me once more in presentable condition and we went to the Garrick Club where we dined with several gentlemen of note. Smith could not refrain from relating my mishaps and their consequences in my search for him under difficulties, and worse yet, under his stage, and great was the merriment over the idea that an old manager like myself should so lose his reckoning in a place with which he might well be supposed to be perfectly familiar.
When the late William M. Thackeray made his first visit to the United States, I think in 1852, he called on me at the Museum with a letter of introduction from our mutual friend Albert Smith. He spent an hour with me, mainly for the purpose of asking my advice in regard to the management of the course of lectures on “The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century,” which he proposed to deliver, as he did afterwards, with very great success, in the principal cities of the Union. I gave him the best advice I could as to management, and the cities he ought to visit, for which he was very grateful and he called on me whenever he was in New York. I also saw him repeatedly when he came to America the second time with his admirable lectures on “The Four Georges,” which, it will be remembered he delivered in the United States in the season of 1855-56, before he read these lectures to audiences in Great Britain. My relations with this great novelist, I am proud to say, were cordial and intimate; and now, when I called upon him, in 1857, at his own house he grasped me heartily by the hand and said:
“Mr. Barnum, I admire you more than ever. I have read the accounts in the papers of the examinations you underwent in the New York courts, and the positive pluck you exhibit under your pecuniary embarrassments is worthy of all praise. You would never have received credit for the philosophy you manifest, if these financial misfortunes had not overtaken you.”
I thanked him for his compliment, and he continued:
“But tell me, Barnum, are you really in need of present assistance? for if you are you must be helped.”
“Not in the least,” I replied, laughing; “I need more money in order to get out of bankruptcy and I intend to earn it; but so far as daily bread is concerned, I am quite at ease, for my wife is worth £30,000 or £40,000.”
“Is it possible?” he exclaimed, with evident delight; “well, now, you have lost all my sympathy; why, that is more than I ever expect to be worth; I shall be sorry for you no more.”
During my stay in London, I met Thackeray several times, and on one occasion I dined with him. He was a most genial, noble-hearted gentleman. In our conversations he spoke with the warmest appreciation of America, and of his numerous friends in this country, and he repeatedly expressed his obligations to me for the advice and assistance I had given him on the occasion of his first lecturing visit to the United States.
The late Charles Kean, then manager of the Princess’s Theatre, in London, was also exceedingly polite and friendly to me. He placed a box at my disposal at all times, and took me through his theatre to show me the stage, dressing rooms, and particularly the valuable “properties” he had collected. Among other things, he had twenty or more complete suits of real armor and other costumes and appointments essential to the production of historical plays, in the most complete and authentic manner. In the mere matter of stage-setting, Charles Kean has never been surpassed.