A Tyranny of Documents: the Performing Arts Historian As Film Noir Detective

PERFORMING ARTS RESOURCES VOLUME TWENTY-EIGHT A Tyranny of Documents: The Performing Arts Historian as Film Noir Detective Essays Dedicated to Brooks McNamara Edited by Stephen Johnson Published by the Theatre Library Association Published by Theatre Library Association Copyright 2011 by Theatre Library Association Headquarters: c/o The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, New York 10023 Website: http://www.tla-online.org/ Membership dues: $30 personal; $20 students/non-salaried; $40 institutional The articles in this volume have been copyrighted by their authors. The Library of Congress catalogued this serial as follows: Performing Arts Resources Vols. for 1974—issued by the Theatre Library Association ISSN 03603814 1. Performing arts—Library resources—United States—Periodicals I. Theatre Library Association Z6935.P46 016.7902’08 75–646287 ISBN 978-0-932610-24-9. Theatre Library Association has been granted permission to reproduce all illustrations in this volume. Front cover image: For credit information on the collage imagery, see the full illustrations in this volume on pp 16, 33, 102, 111, 129, 187, 196, 210, 218, 254 Cover and page design: Sans Serif, Saline, Michigan Printed by McNaughton and Gunn, Saline Michigan Manufactured in the United States of America This serial is printed on acid-free paper. Barnum’s Last Laugh? General Tom Thumb’s Wedding Cake in the Library of Congress1 MARLIS SCHWEITZER In most if not all archives, food is strictly prohibited. This is certainly the case at the Library of Congress, where researchers entering the Manuscript Read- ing Room are required to place all personal belongings in specially desig- nated lockers and present all pencils, papers, computers, and cameras to a guard before gaining admittance to the room. You can imagine my surprise, then, when one of the archivists turned to me after delivering my first boxes from the Minnie Maddern Fiske Papers and said, in a conspiratorial tone, “Before you finish with the collection, ask to see Tom Thumb’s wedding cake.” I laughed and said I would be sure to request the cake, but I was puz- zled. What was cake, anyone’s cake, doing in the Library of Congress? And how had wedding cake from one of P.T. Barnum’s greatest nineteenth-century stars found its way into the collection of an actress celebrated for intro- ducing American audiences to Ibsen in the early-twentieth?2 Here was a real mystery. Although my interest was piqued, I held off on requesting Tom Thumb’s cake. I was hot on the trail of another mystery involving Harrison Grey Fiske, Minnie Maddern Fiske’s husband, and didn’t want to waste my time with a frivolous—or so I thought—diversion. But as I worked through the Fiskes’ correspondence, I came upon a letter and calling card from the Countess M. Lavinia Magri, the former “Mrs. General Tom Thumb,” ad- dressed to Harrison Grey Fiske as President of The Dramatic Mirror Co. In the letter, dated February 16, 1905, the Countess writes: Allow me to present you with a piece of my Wedding Cake which was made when I was married to Charles S. Stratton known as the only original General Tom Thumb—Feb. 10th 1863 at Grace Church New York City. My anniversary was the 10th of Feb. 1905. The Cake is now Forty two years old.3 The Countess’s letter answered my question about how the wedding cake had found its way into the collection, but new questions arose. What had com- pelled the former Mrs. General Tom Thumb to write to Fiske? The formality of 116 the letter seemed to indicate that she did not know Fiske personally. Was she perhaps hoping for a notice in the Dramatic Mirror, one of the most widely read and influential theatrical newspapers of the period? Or did she simply want someone of Fiske’s caliber and influence to know that she was still alive and still devoted to the memory of her former husband? And what about Fiske? Why had he included the cake with the rest of the material he submitted to the Library of Congress? What was so special about this cake anyway? I decided that before my time at the Library was over, I would see the cake for myself. There was something so deliciously perverse, so utterly Bar- numesque about requesting a box of cake from the Library of Congress. Still, the prospect of looking at a piece of century-old cake was far from appetiz- ing. Would there be anything left to see? Would it be moldy or magotty? Just a bunch of crumbs? The cake arrived in a thin cardboard container like the ones used by the Manuscript Division for all of its collections. There was nothing to signal the rather unusual object inside. After lifting the flap of the container, I carefully withdrew another box covered with a thick beige fabric. It looked like a scrapbook or book of photographs—nothing out of the ordinary—with a label on the side that simply read “Minnie Maddern Fiske 147.” I lifted the lid of the box and . there was the cake, encased behind glass in a small, presumably airtight, space, wrapped in what appeared to be parchment paper (Fig. 1). The cake was dark brown and lumpy, almost brownie-like but with some questionable yellow spots. I’ve never seen 137–year old cake before so was surprised that it had held together this well, all things consid- ered. Beneath the cake was a soiled box with a label reading “E.F. Tinkham, Watchmaker, Jeweler, and Optician, Middleboro, Mass.” I will confess: I was disappointed. I’m not sure what I’d expected to see— some monumental slab of fruit cake slathered in royal icing, perhaps?—but the sight of this sad-looking lump beside a grease-stained box didn’t jibe with the elaborate spectacles I associate with Barnum and General Tom Thumb. Why would someone like the Countess Magri want to give this cake to an acquaintance like Fiske forty-two years after her wedding day? I real- ized that I knew very little about nineteenth century weddings and wedding cakes and even less about Tom Thumb’s 1863 wedding to Miss Lavinia War- ren. I endeavored to find out. The Wedding of the Century The February 1863 wedding of Charles S. Stratton (otherwise known as General Tom Thumb) to Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump (better known as Lavinia Warren) was one of the most spectacular and eagerly-discussed per- formance events of the mid-nineteenth century. According to one source, over 15,000 people clamored for an invitation to the “Lilliputian” union of Stratton, one of Barnum’s most celebrated performers, and the lovely and diminutive Warren, who appeared daily at Barnum’s American Museum as the “Queen of Beauty.”4 Photographs of the wedding party taken by renowned photographer Mathew Brady were so popular that “miserable en- gravings” and “spurious impositions” flooded the market.5 Barnum’s Last Laugh? 117 A piece of wedding cake from the marriage of Charles Stratton and Lavinia Warren is preserved in the Minnie Maddern Fiske Papers at the Library of Con- gress. Photo by author. 118 PERFORMING ARTS RESOURCES Like Stratton, Warren was a midget6 with well-proportioned features, a charming singing voice, and an air of sophistication. Born to one of New England’s oldest and most respected families, she had been taught to value “integrity, morality, and charity.”7 This education did not, however, prevent her from desiring a career on the stage and she had been drawn into show business as a teenager. After performing on a Mississippi show boat for sev- eral years, she met Barnum (always on the lookout for new talent), and willingly accepted his offer of employment. Under Barnum’s management, Warren held formal afternoon receptions or levees at the American Mu- seum, during which she entertained Civil War Generals and members of New York’s social elite. “She has a full, round, dimpled face, and her fine black eyes fairly sparkle when she becomes interested in conversation,” a re- porter for the New York Tribune enthused in December 1862. “She moves about the drawing room with the grace and dignity of a queen, and yet she is devoid of affectation, is modest and lady-like in her deportment.”8 In the early winter of 1863, New York papers began publishing detailed accounts of General Tom Thumb’s initial meeting with and subsequent wooing of Lavinia Warren.9 Although skeptics argued that the courtship was simply another of Barnum’s schemes to boost business, both Barnum and Warren insisted that the marriage was a love match.10 In the 1873 edi- tion of Struggles and Triumphs; Or Forty Years’ Recollections of P.T. Barnum, Bar- num describes the first meeting between Warren and General Tom Thumb and the General’s declaration to Barnum that he “must marry that young lady.”11 Although Commodore Nutt (George Washington Morrison Nutt), a midget from New Hampshire whom Barnum had recently introduced to Museum audiences, had likewise declared his devotion to Warren, Gen. Tom Thumb was determined to win her for his bride. On January 8, 1863 he reportedly wrote to Warren’s parents in Middleboro, Mass. requesting their daughter’s hand in marriage (a copy of the letter found its way to the New York Times, likely with Barnum’s assistance). A week later, the Times re- ported that “[t]he envoy of Gen. Thumb has returned with the joyful information that Miss Warren’s kind parents have consented to grant their daughter’s wish.”12 Critics had good cause to suspect Barnum’s hand in the marriage negotia- tions, as do present-day historians.

Load more