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

She showed me the palace, the large halls filled with paintings, statues, and wall hangings. And the chapel. Then she took me by the hand and brought me into her garden, to show me the camellias and the gardenias. And the flash of excitement in her eyes as she drew me farther along and showed me the purple rose that had been named for her, the 'Rosa Reina Isabella.' How does one forget such moments? How does one survive them?

On a Saturday afternoon she brought me to the bullfights, and, much to my astonishment, she picked me up and sat me on her lap. What an excitement that was, to be so close. "You will see much better from here," she said.

And for sure, I did. The picadors parading on their horses, then the banderilleros, and the matadors in their fancy costumes, embroidered with silver and gold. The matadors paused in front of us, bowing to the Queen. Three matadors, stern and ready, eager to go one-on-one against a bull. And the bulls, in a pen at the edge of the field, snorting and restless.

I enjoyed the pageantry, the colors, the brass band. But soon enough, when I saw the matador waving his cape, inviting the bull to charge, I felt the tension.

Many times it charged, and when it was worn down, in went the matador's sword, and the bull fell dead to the ground. The crowd crying olé, olé.

"Such a brave bull," Isabella said. "It knew how to die. And the matador, such courage—always an inch away from death."

That's what it was about, I realized—about death, and that bothered me, because then especially, as I sat on Isabella's lap, death was not something I wanted to think about. After all the traveling, and all the places I'd seen—palaces, cathedrals, bridges, rivers, thatched roofs, the different ways of talking and living, I had decided that I hated death, and wanted nothing to do with it.

While that lifeless bull was dragged from the arena, I felt that if death were something tangible, something I could see and walk up to, I would kick it in the shins and set fire to its underwear.


From Spain, we traveled back up to the north of France, then crossed the border into Belgium. We had a long stay in Brussels, where I met with King Leopold and Queen Louise. Then we toured through several nearby cities, and soon we were fully two years into our tour.

Barnum brought us back across the Channel, for another yearlong sweep through the British Isles. He advertised it as my Farewell Tour. The crowds were still there for me, and since these were my final appearances, I concluded each performance with a song that was popular at the time—

When other lips and other hearts
Their tales of love shall tell,
There may, perhaps, in such a scene,
Some recollection be
Of days that have as happy been—
Then you'll remember me!
And yes—remember me!

After those three exciting years in Europe, my father found himself presiding over more wealth than he'd ever hoped to see. He set some of it aside for my future, and with another portion he built a new house for the family—a substantial three-story place with a garden, a veranda, and a high cupola from which you could look across the tops of the trees and see, in the distance, the schooners on Long Island Sound. There was a special apartment for me on the ground floor, with low windows and small furniture, and space for a dwarf piano and a dwarf billiard table. My two sisters had their weddings in that house, and those were happy times, full of excitement.

But my father, with his bottles from Scotland. My sense, always, was that he was openly proud of me, boasting that I was his son—but underneath, he was suffering. It must have been hell for him to see that I, so young, a kid, a singing-and-dancing brat, was able to pull in so much more money than he could ever make doing hard work with a hammer. It just tore him to pieces. What kept him going were those bottles from the Highlands, the morning nip and the evening sup, and the many swigs between. Too tipsy at times, shouting at the walls and quarreling with the furniture. But despite all that, he was a good father, gentle and always there for us. And still he sang, digging into the old tunes, "Annie Laurie," and "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep." And his other favorite, "Comin' thro' the Rye."

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.