Enjoy book tv, now it over the weekend on cspan2 read. Robert wilson is with us today courtesy of paul and heather hamilton. He is the author of Matthew Brady, portraits of the nation and explore king a biography of clarence kane. He is the editor of the american scholar, a former editor of preservation and the founding literary editor of civilization a farmer book editor empowers we use today in the editor of the Washington Post book world. His essays reviews infections have appeared in numerous publications including american scholar, the american short fiction, the atlantic monthly,ti the new republic, the smithsonian, the Washington Post magazine, and the wilsonn quarterly. And on the opinion and book review of the boston globe three times, yesterday, and the Washington Post. He lives in virginia please give a warm savannah welcome to robert wilson. [applause]. Robert thank you chris, i appreciate that introduction. I hope your app works a lot better than the one done for the iowa caucuses. [laughter]. I trust it. What you probably actually tested it. Thank you to all of you for coming this morning on this cold morning. It is very pleasant to see so many of you care. It is very visit to see cspan air and i want to thank cspan for all it does to support book sculture in america. I am tempted, to say that normally what remains of the culture in america but on a day like today, it is very easy to be optimistic about the state. I love being in savannah, my wife martha and i come here as often as we can pretty relive outside of washington dc we have a place on the panhandle of fflorida. Used to dread the 15 hour drive until we decided that we could stop off at savannah on the way go to the rain for dinner is in a way look forward to the trip very much. As chris said, the third biography i have written. It is not really a trilogy. Not at all. All three books are related to the 19th century figures whose crews resorted of the heights in the middle of the 19th century. In the first flight was developed and explore name parents came. He was dniester when out west. He explored california in its early days pretty people im some of the major peaks in the sierras name some of them including mount whitney. Later he did a survey of the great basin or the Great Western surveys of the 19th century or the people who are attempting him on that survey was very fine photographer named timothy and osullivan had worked with Matthew Brady, the civil war photographer is also a portrait photographer in new york. I was sort of writing about writing and thinking that wasnt really about good book about brady perhaps for a good reason and then i thought i would write one printed in writing turned out to be hard subject because he did not leave a lot of written material. He may have been illiterate actually. Who brady had a studio on Lower Broadway in manhattan. Kind of catty corner across the street from barnums american museum. Which was the biggest tourist draw in the city of new york. Barnum took over what was very kind of a dusty old museum the hannah sort of mineral specimens and things like that. I completely transformed it. And flags flying from the roof and lights, going up and down broadway. Him and that was out on the balcony overlooking the street. The musicians were handpicked to be so bad with they would drive people into the museum. [laughter]. So it was quite a lively place brady the photographer was very successful but i could not help thinking of him as looking and kind of longingly across the street ae barnums museum work o much is going on. And after a while i began looking longingly across the street two. [laughter]. G partly because barnum was in the way, was the subject of sort of everything that brady was not in that he run a wonderful autobiography and he was justrfa lovely writer read he was an exuberant fellow. Brady was thought to be to be full of charm, is kind of bringing people in. And taking them further portraits and making them comfortable. But it was nothing sort of like the boy its largerthanlife character barnum was. So Clarence King led me to brady and brady led me to barnum. One other reason is it possible a trilogy is is probably my last biography for this very reason that i just dont think there is a better subject than barnum. Ive had so much fun spending years with him. Often thinking about are talking about barnum now for six or seven years. And this may be the last time i do that because i want to kind of move on. One thing one of the thing that led me to brady, were to barnum was when i was working at brady, was i went around and talked to maybe 25 different venues about brady i always had a picture slideshow saw showing his photograph. One of them was a photograph barnum. Whenever id introduce the photograph i would be sure to say barnums full name because of phineas, is a slightly amusing name. I never heard of it before. But, there is also i think, something about the way barnum looked in his photograph. It was taken, sort of middleaged. He was a rather handsome man early in his life and his wife are one, but he was very handsome older man. But in midlife, maybe not so much. Im just going to be very brief story to barnum tells about himself and his autobiography which is painted in bridgeport, connecticut very much became a republican from lincoln man. But stephen a douglas came through bridgeport to speak during the president ial n. Campaign. One of his. Friends said, would you know about douglas to which barnum replied, his red nosed clear eyed dumpy swaggering chap looking like a regular barroom loafer rated 2 inches delighted friends responded that that mornings paper had said that douglas was a very image and personal appearance of pt barnum. [laughter]. I think the other reason that when i went to the photograph of barnum, to these various audiences come therewith to bes this court of chuckle. I think people feel like into the stated they know him. On some level and obviously the name Barnum Bailey circus is a name that we have all known throughout her lifetime. And it ended as you know, in 2017. So there is that name and it has carried on our knowledge of barnum to some extent. But think we also think we know him because of one thing from his for the early part of his career as a museum owner, the famous sign up this way to the aggressors youll learn the story innd school. The rest being g the exit, peope at the egress with some fantastic beasts. [laughter]. So they would follow the sign themselves out in the street. [laughter]. And they would have to pay in the quarter to get back into the museum. That story is probablyry true. Ty other story, or the other thing the real thing we know about barnum is that he says the phrase, theres a sucker Born Every Minute. That said story is almost certainly false and it is hard to prove something did h not happen. But barnum wrote, i would take hundreds and thousands of wordsr himself. At least that many probably minimal words were about him. There is no sign anywhere did he ever said it. Bring thought it. During most persuasive argument against is having said that, is the relationship you begin to develop with this with his museum goers and inside his museum was a theater so the more people who would come to go to sort of melodramas he put on there. Later in the circus career, really just the last quarter of his life, he was always very careful about his relationship with his audience. He did not ever overtly exploit them in a way that a sucker Born Every Minute would suggest. After he bought the museum, he spent enormous amounts of money to bring things in from all over mthe world. Wild animals, objects, people of interest, and continued to charge only quarter or maybe twice if you follow the egress sign and half of that 12 and have since, spent for children. In his whole philosophy of this centers on the word that he used a lot called humbug and he called himself the prince of humbug. In todays world, the word among tends to mean somebody who exploits or tricks other people but in barnums usage, and abuse the word and defined it to do what he did which is a thought of humbug as creating some kind of a stir, fighting something to get publicity and get people in the building but the crucial part of the idea of humbug was what you got them in the building or in the tent, they had to get much more than they had bargainedin for. Sophia brought the men under pretext, say remains of a mermaid, which was one of his famous exhibits. Whence they came in, they had to feel that when they are in the museum that maybe this is not really the remains of a mermaid but there are all of these other things here we can see and so people would go away happy. So that to me is one of the really crucial things about how we should be thinking about barnum. Barnum was not perfect however. I have to say that the balance, will he was Wonderful Company always for me. Reading him as a safe and writing him so. It was so witty and he could turn of phrase so well. I always enjoyed being in his company and is often won over by him worried one of the things the main a great character to write about was that he was not perfect. He was very. Imperfect. One of the challenges and one of the things that really made the job interesting day by day for me, was to think about the things that he did in the various contacts. And one is he may have done this but then everybody did it that day this was sort of the historical characteristic and you might think of his treatment of animals which he was very dedicated to bringing exotic animals to exhibits as we have seen is often a grisly process to capture these animals and ship them come up with the understanding of how to care for the month they got to the museum was limited and they were learning all of the time three department did all felton ring handlers for the animals of people who were familiar with how they lived. But it was a process that involved the death of lots of animals. In fact the Smithsonian Institution benefited from this thing that happened so often bent and that barnum would often send the carcasses to the smithsonian pretty have an amazing collection of such things as a result. Today this was an unsavory at best, is a direct reason and one of the primary reasons why the circus the Barnum Bailey ringling circus went out of business when they stopped. They stopped exhibiting elephants, people basically stopped going to thest circus. So this is an example that we have certain values and there were other values of the time. How do you way that into whether or what you think of him. Im not a person who deals with what i would call leaves and presentism then that we have no just sort of state of perfection we can look on insensibly on those who came before us. There are obviously, ways in which our opinions about things have evolved and even if they are far from the state of perfection, they are obviously better than they were. So i i tried to try as hard as i could give him a break on the things that i felt kind related to to the way people thought in his time. I also tryry to think of him though as a man and think about well, was he ever cruel to people. Ase. A rule, i think he loved people. And he treated people very well and many of thed people who worked for him, socalled freaks, were very devoted to him and very grateful to him. He was not very nice to his wife. I dont think that is something that we should forgive out of any sort of historical perspective. He came to from a culture in new england was very much all about practical jokes. He had a wife into her three kids at the time. One of his daughters had died in the interim and he had not come back. He came back without announcing he was coming, he sent someone to tell his wife she must come to the museum to find out some information about barnum. It was clear she wouldve thought he died. Someone got noticeeo of this. She came and there was barnum to greet her and it was a great practical joke on her. I think the cruelty of that is selfevident. Was really a matter of, sort of going through his life in think through these things. Maybe because i am an journalist i seem to be folky on the negative here. He was a person who brought an incredible amount of joy to millions of people. Was dedicated to that as well. And as i say he was just such great company. I think one of the things, and journalist and focusing on theul negative, i would sort of like to talk a little bit about his attitude toward race. One ofin the things it was interesting to me about barnums career or his life as a whole, he lived from 1810 until 1891. A span of the second century almost. One of the things i wanted to tell you that it really admired and came to admire about barnums that he change throughout hisis life i felt. He became a better person. Which is especially remarkable because he had a lot of success early on in his life. He was notorious, he became sort of a character in the newspapers, everything he did people were interested in. He made a lot of money, he lost a lot of that money at one point but made it back. He became quite famous. I think about how few people, who have success earlyar in life, dont feel it is a reward for their perfection as human beings how many people like that actually change and become better through their lives . Barnum had a bit of a problem with the grape, as they say. He began to notice people around him, that he respected were similarly inflicted. He eventually, gave up drink. This is at the age of i would say his late 30s. Unlike all reformed people, he became a great advocate for temperance. One thing that is really not known very widely about barnum as he became one of the really most in demand temperance speakers of his day. Kind of on a par with kerry nation. He gave hundreds of free temperancet speeches. In fact later in his life, he would go out with the circus, when the circus was on the road, he would often schedule temperance speeches because he was in a town he had never been in before. Finally his partners asked them to please stop doing that because so many people were going to his speech rather than going to the circus. It was perching the intake there. That was one way in which she changed. His religious faith, he was a universalist. He was very opposed to sort of hard core religion and very opposed to, this is the days of the great revivals. And very opposed to any Movement Towards confusing the roles of church and state. At the age of 21 he started a newspaper for the very purpose of fighting the idea of religious party developing with connecticut at the time. Im getting pretty far away from race, i will get back to it. As a result of his temperance speaking, he got to know a lot of the famous preachers of the day and they became great friends with him. Many of those were abolitionist. They had an effect on his growth. One of the things that got barnum into the public eye, and in some way fueled the reputation that barnum has to this day one of the other ways we know the name barnum is often the ones group you loose person who i wont name, achieved high office in this country, people would immediately slap the barnum label and it would not be a complementary label. I think you can trayce this back to his first acts that he became involved in. He did a lot of things in his teens, 20s, 30s he started the newspaper, he ran lotteries, he had dry goods stores, he worked in dry goods stores. When he was in early 30s, he felt his lifes work should somehow have to do with being a showman and exhibiting acts. He at the time ran a boardinghouse and a store in new york city. He read in the paper about an act that was on display in philadelphia and indeed a Person Associated with the act came into the store and talk to him about it. The act wast a blind slave woman was purported to be a 161 years old. Who further claimed to be the nursemaid of george washington. She would go around andab tell stories about Little George they would also sing ancient hymns that no one had ever really heard of before. By the way, i love this perspective. I feel maybe i would into the wrong business. At. [laughter] but barnum hurried up hurried down to philadelphia from new york to see this woman, joyce, was favorably impressed with the fact that she could be quite old. She never admitted throughout his life as he often did about other things he did, that he suspected she was not 161 years old. The Life Expectancy for aye woman at that time was about 40. I would day agenda dirty say for slave woman it was last. She was blind, kind o of crippled one of her arms would not move. But her tongue moved very well. She spoke up in a strong voice. So barnum decided that the people who she was supposedly owned by a person in kentucky. Some other people paid him for the right toth exhibit her but they wanted to get out of that business. So barnum made the offer, brought her to new york after kind of creating a buzz in the newspapers and began toeg exhibit her. And it went over very well. He took her through a tour of new england and at one point, when he got to boston, he became acquainted with the man displayed on tomtoms, creation sort mechanical because someone might be in a box under this stage would seem to talk and respond to questions. S. Had occurred to him because the crowds had begun to fall off for her to plant a story in the i newspaper saying she was in automaton that she was made out of india robert and gadgets and stuff like that. This sorta became a typical ploy for barnum. When he had an act he would either create a conflict counter argument about the person or whatever is on display. And then sort of challenge audiences to come and see for themselves. If it was something in his museum they might want to go in and see this act. Then he encourages to come back and see it again. I do think if you look at the length of his career, one of the things he knew he was doing, who is not only bringing people in who had lived lives there pretty isolated. When he was born the telegraph had not been invented, the photograph, the railroads were not running, and throughout his lifetime, people who lived in small villages he was, began to have more access to the world at large. I think one of the things barnum did through his museum and exhibits was bring that world to people who were eager to know more about it. One of the things i think he was doing was challenging people come and looking you make a decision. So that was sort of the petite part of this. In the case of joyce, it seems pretty awful. Joyce was exhibited for a few more months, came and died barnum had had an arrangement with the surgeon in new york, to do an a autopsy of her. The surgeon had been eager to show it had been a hoax. So barnum rented a big venue, advertised and charged admission for this autopsy.