Freaks and the American Dream: Horatio Alger, P. T. Barnum, and the Art of Humbug

Abstract

my belief that you're a humbug, said disappointed customer. Thank you, sir, said Rough and Ready; I've been takin' lessons of Barnum, only I haven't made so much money yet. ... Don't do it again, my lad. It's wrong humbug people, you know. By way, do you ever come museum? Yes, sir. Well, your joke is worth Here is a season ticket for three months. --Horatio Alger, Rough and Ready When Horatio Alger lets P. T. Barnum suddenly appear as a character in Rough and Ready, fourth volume of his Ragged Dick series, he hints at a significant connection between Barnumesque humbug and his own fiction. (1) In Chapter XV, which introduces a distinguished personage (167), newsboy Rough and Ready not only dishes up humbug customer looking for coverage of horrible disasters, but he also falsely claims that P. T. Barnum, who happens be walking by, is Horace Greeley. The duped gentleman, who keeps a seminary in country, eagerly speaks with Barnum as if he were Greeley, commending him on his luminous editorials and their satisfactory exposition of principles which I profess (172). Barnum goes along with joke but confronts newsboy afterwards, chiding him that to humbug people is wrong. Nonetheless, in same breath he also rewards boy with a free season pass because the joke is worth something. Overtly, deception compares Horace Greeley's journalism Barnum's humbug; but, less directly, Alger might also be speaking about himself and his attempt capitalize as a fiction writer on lessons in art of humbug he learned from P. T. Barnum. (2) This essay argues that similarities between Alger's fictional practices and P. T. Barnum's exhibition strategies are central in understanding both nature and success of Alger's most famous and quintessential rags-to-riches story, Ragged Dick (1868)--a context critics have overlooked. On surface, Alger shows that Dick's education and improvement depend on his abandoning his favorite pleasures, such as going Barnum's and low theaters. Yet Dick's success, and success of novel, have much do with popularity and dynamics of freak shows. Partially designed by himself and partially by Alger, Dick is a freak, and our pleasure of reading about him is similar pleasure he himself seeks when he visits Barnum's museum. Ragged Dick is, like Tom Thumb, a charming miniature man, and his poverty and homelessness become curious and entertaining within this reduced scale. By offering his rags-to-riches story, novel allowed its middle-class readers indulge their curiosity and face and appease fears about pressing social issues such as extreme urban poverty, immigration, rise and threat of finance capitalism and its concomitant social mobility and fluidity. Ragged Dick's astounding success can be traced not so much professed message that any honest boy can make it respectability and obtain American dream with a lot of determination and a little bit of luck as way in which novel, while professing this message, is also able imply almost its direct opposite, namely that Dick is a freak and American dream of rising from rags fiches a freak event. Dick's rise is an example of formidable Barnumesque humbug that happens only those whom middle-class audience enjoys and for whose performance they are willing pay. Alger's Anti-Freak Show Message Explicitly, Alger's novel, like his character Barnum, considers all forms of humbug wrong; narrator notes that Dick's greatest flaw is his love for entertainment and way he squanders his money on shows and spectacles. The novel opens with Dick waking up late because he had gone Old Bowery previous night. Another of Dick's faults, Alger's narrator explains, was his extravagance. …