Excerpt from The Remarkable Courtship of General Tom Thumb by Nicholas Rinaldi, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

My mother was furious. Bad enough that he lied about my age and changed my name to Tom Thumb, but it was nothing less than outrageous to declare that I was English-born, and to print it on a poster. Since my mother had never set foot in England, it was tantamount to saying she wasn't my mother!

She fumed and fussed so much that Barnum offered to tear up the contract and let her take me home to Connecticut—a quick end to my career before it even started. But no, not for the world was she going to let such a thing happen, and Barnum must have known that all along.

My first performance was in the Christmas pageant, which ran for three weeks. Mary Darling, the house magician, played the Holy Mother, and the Bearded Lady was Joseph. I was the Infant in the manger. A few janitors with strong singing voices were the shepherds. Sheep were the sheep, and a camel was the camel. After "Silent Night" and a few other carols, I leaped out of the manger and performed my whirling, churning, acrobatic breakdown dance. Then I hopped back into the manger and listened to the bone-rocking, spine-tingling, ego-building applause. It was exciting to be the newborn Savior. I was looking forward to the time when I would cure lepers, raise the dead, and change water into wine. But I would skip the part about being nailed to a cross.

The Museum was on Broadway, across from St. Paul's and the Astor House, and what a place it was. Big, brash, and splashy. I still remember the first time I saw it. The building stood five stories high, and it spread wide, filling the corner at Broadway and Ann Street. Sunlight blazed on the white marble, and there were massive painted plaques between the windows, images of the live animals that could be seen inside. A tiger, a bear, a buffalo, an orangutan, a pair of zebras. And, daily, huge, gaudy banners were hung from the balconies, listing the day's special attractions—

LIVING MONSTER SNAKES MYSTERIOUS GYPSY GIRL FAMILY OF ALBINOS BOHEMIAN GLASS BLOWERS WILD INDIANS IN SAVAGE WAR DRESS

And, on days when I was performing, an enormous banner for me—

GENERAL TOM THUMB SMALLEST MAN IN THE KNOWN WORLD

On the second-floor balcony, a brass band played one tune after another, welcoming the crowds that came pouring into the Museum—some heading for the theater, others browsing through the many halls and galleries that were filled with paintings, statues, ancient coins, medieval suits of armor, muskets and three-cornered hats from the time of the Revolution. A poster by the ticket office boasted that the Museum contained over 100,000 CURIOSITIES.

In the wide halls, there were large glass display windows, floor to ceiling, showing bearskins and leopard skins, the skeleton of an ape, the jaw of a dinosaur, stuffed birds, a stuffed moose. Plenty of living animals too, in cages on each floor, and an entire menagerie in the basement.

In an alcove on the third floor, there were three Egyptian mummies in various stages of unwrap. I liked those mummies, and often wondered how they felt, lying there, with strangers like me going close and staring.


At the Museum, there was a tutor who worked with me several hours a week. Kwink was his name. "Just Kwink, without the mister," he said. He had large brown eyes and a bushy head of white hair. His method was to bring me around to four or five exhibits, and we studied the accompanying information cards. He explained the words I didn't know, and I wrote them down in a book of blank pages that he gave me. We looked at stuffed birds and animals, many that I'd never heard of, and a large collection of rocks and crystals, all new to me. I learned what a kimono was, and how to spell it. I touched a cannonball, and learned a bit about that, too. A canoe from the West Indies. A toga, a sari, a walrus tusk. A machine that tested your strength and a machine that talked with a human voice.

Excerpted from The Remarkable Courtship of General Tom Thumb by Nicholas Rinaldi. Copyright © 2014 by Nicholas Rinaldi. Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.