Empire of skulls, p.16
Empire of Skulls, page 16
If people were aggrieved about losing their quarter to see some ridiculous monkey-fish horror, they could always head across Ann Street to the Phrenological Cabinet. Admission there was free. Surrounded by skulls, they could touch the truth of humanity all day long. And that was one place the Fowlers had an edge over Barnum—tactile reality. At the Cabinet, people could feel the smooth peaks and valleys of a human skull and discover what those surfaces meant. At Barnum’s American Museum, they could look at oddities with a mixture of curiosity and disgust, but they couldn’t touch what they saw. Of course, that didn’t stop people from showing up at Barnum’s museum in droves; it was the top tourist attraction in New York. But the Phrenological Cabinet was right behind, emerging as the second-leading tourist attraction in New York during the 1840s and 1850s.7
Little wonder that Barnum and the Fowlers struck up a friendship and supported each other. Barnum visited the Phrenological Cabinet for a head reading on several occasions. And in one of his biographies, he thanked the Fowlers profusely for supporting his work as a temperance advocate. (Both Barnum and the Fowlers were proud teetotalers.) Calling Orson and Lorenzo “my worthy friends,” he praised their publishing firm for being “pre-eminent in the Phrenological line,” and for doing much “to enlighten the public on Temperance, Physiology, and other important matters. Few men have published a larger number of useful books.”8
For their part, the Fowlers regularly publicized happenings at the American Museum; increased traffic to the area benefited the Cabinet too. And his exhibits served as proof of their science. Because of their friendship with Barnum, the Fowlers were able to talk with and examine the human oddities who appeared regularly at the American Museum. Exploited for profit, dehumanized and ostracized, the people Barnum exhibited never received the dignity they deserved, but they were central to the celebrity culture that defined Broadway. The most significant human oddity of the day, given the money he commanded, was Charles Stratton, better known as General Tom Thumb. Standing three feet, four inches tall and weighing approximately fifteen pounds, Stratton became almost as famous as Barnum himself. Getting to know him well over the years, the Fowlers understood the challenge that Stratton posed to phrenology. Given his tiny head, and given the fact that brain size correlated to mental abilities in phrenology, how could the new science account for Stratton’s humor, wit, charm, and ongoing success?
Sleighing in New York, an 1855 painting by Thomas Benecke depicting a carnivalesque winter scene in front of Barnum’s American Museum
The answer, Lorenzo explained, was balance: “The size of his head is in harmony with that of his body.” Phrenology was not about absolute sizes in all cases; it was rather about relative sizes based on individual people. To prove as much, Lorenzo detailed the sizes of Stratton’s organs and concluded that he was “well put together and of good material,” with a strong social nature and prominent intellectual organs. “He is very observing, has a good memory of persons, places, stories, and events, can converse fluently, and has quite a taste for music; but he is truly indebted to his Imitation for his successful performances.” Phrenology thus explained how a dwarf, born to poor parents in Connecticut, could rise to the top of global entertainment and charm the world.9
Other performers at Barnum’s American Museum who served as proof of phrenology included Josephine Clofullia, the most famous “bearded lady” in the world. The Fowlers found her “ambitious, fond of display, regardful of personal appearance, and anxious to please.” Even though she sported a thick beard, she was a “dignified and self-possessed” woman of refined character. Another was Sylvia Hardy, the “Giantess of Maine,” who was publicized as being eight feet tall but was at least six inches shorter than that. Calling her phrenological development “remarkable,” the Fowlers were gobsmacked by her “unevenly developed brain,” where some of her organs were “expectedly small” and with “limited influence in character,” while others were “immensely large and controlling.” On the whole, however, “She is independent, quite persevering, and most decidedly kind and generous.”10
Perhaps the most important performer at the American Museum the Fowlers were able to examine was Barnum himself. If phrenology had anything to say about improvement and success, it should be able to do so via the cranium of the Greatest Showman on Earth. In 1852, the Fowlers published a lengthy account of Barnum’s phrenological development, along with a detailed biographical sketch. Praising his “active temperament, with sufficient vitality to enable him to perform much mental or physical labor,” the Fowlers printed a chart of the sizes of all his organs. Particularly striking was how many of his organs were “large” (size 6)—Amativeness, Philoprogenitiveness, Adhesiveness, Alimentiveness, Firmness, Hope, Veneration, Benevolence, Sublimity, Mirthfulness, Individuality, Agreeableness, Human Nature, and several others. This many large organs meant that Barnum had a brain perfectly fitted to the wonder shows he put on across the United States and Europe. Indeed, it was his brain that made the wonder shows possible.
But the Fowlers went further than simply publishing Barnum’s phrenological character. They told his life story—how, through hard work and concerted activity, he rose from obscurity to international fame. Born in Danbury, Connecticut, to a middle-class family, Barnum tried his hand at various businesses. He was a clerk for a time, a dry-goods merchant for a time, a newspaperman for a time, and a politician for a time. He failed at all of them. But his “thorough independence, characteristic of his whole life,” kept him—and his mind—going, until “his untiring industry, his knowledge of human nature, his aptitude for business, realized him a considerable fortune.”
After telling Barnum’s story as a rags-to-riches tale, even though such a tale wasn’t strictly accurate—Barnum came from a fairly distinguished family in Connecticut—the Fowlers dedicated several pages of their journal to defending their friend from accusations of charlatanry. His hoaxes, they explained, were not the result of duplicity but grew out of honest mistakes. “The truth in regard to these and kindred subjects,” the Fowlers told their readers, “has never appeared in print, and consequently Barnum has been viewed in a false light—a light, perhaps, of his own creating. Nevertheless, as we wish to show him as he is, we must be pardoned for publishing the facts, as we know them, briefly, and we repeat, for the first time.” It was Barnum, they wrote, who had been duped into buying the Feejee Mermaid from an unscrupulous sailor; it was Barnum who had been tricked into believing that Joice Heth was 161 years old and the boyhood nursemaid of George Washington; and it was Barnum who had been deceived into believing the odd-looking “Woolly Horse” he purchased was captured by Colonel John Frémont in the wilds of California.11
Why defend Barnum at such lengths? Part of the answer was friendship and common cause. But there was something else. The Fowlers were expanding phrenology through tales of celebrities and successful public figures, whose greatness grew out of hard work and mental improvement—the core promises of phrenology. If Barnum’s success was due more to humbuggery than to honest toil in service of greater understanding, then phrenology’s story of improvement was suspect, at least when it came to their friend and fellow entrepreneur. Defending Barnum was a way of defending phrenology and the promise of democracy—the promise that everyone could improve their lot in life simply by following the principles of the new science. America was a land where anyone could become a celebrity, including someone like P. T. Barnum.
BARNUM WAS THE most successful purveyor of human oddities in the nineteenth century, but he was just one of many in an era of carnivalesque performance that helped the Fowlers amass proof of their science. In fact, years before Barnum hit the national stage, a traveling oddity show traversed the nation, raking in big profits and establishing the template for future exhibitors. In sprawling cities and small hamlets, people turned out in droves to witness a spectacle and to contemplate some big questions: Was it real? Was it a hoax? Why would God create two brothers who were inseparable, literally, due to a twelve-inch band of flesh on their abdomens?
Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins, came to the United States after their Chinese mother, who was living in Siam (now Thailand), “leased” them to a ship captain who was passing through the area. The captain, Abel Coffin, saw them playing on the banks of a river and, after approaching them, knew they could bring in the big bucks. And he was right. Inquisitive gawkers across America eagerly paid twenty-five cents for a chance to see the twins and converse with them (after they learned English).12
In 1836, after years of performing, the twins announced their return to New York, one of the first cities in which they appeared after moving to the United States. Orson heard the news of their return and, along with his assistant, Samuel Kirkham, dashed to the stately Washington Hotel to convince Chang and Eng they needed a reading. Years earlier the twins had heard of the new science and had even received an examination from an amateur phrenologist, whose account did not impress them. But Orson was different, and Chang and Eng could tell as much, so they let him feel their heads. With the Siamese twins seated on a sofa, Orson stepped behind them and moved spryly across the bumps, spans, and masses of their heads—one hand working on Chang, the other on Eng. As he went, he called out to Kirkham what he felt, and Kirkham dutifully took notes. Right away Orson knew he was touching “a striking example of the truth of phrenological science.” In the size of their heads and the details of the characters, the twins were nearly identical, both biologically and phrenologically. “Some small difference, indeed, in the development of some few of the organs does exist,” Orson acknowledged, but the differences were minuscule compared to the remarkable similarities. “Among all the heads ever examined by the Editor,” Orson wrote years later for The American Phrenological Journal, “such an agreement in size, shape, and temperament, or anything approaching to it, in any two, they never before witnessed or heard of.” When this account appeared in the journal, it was accompanied by an attractive engraving of the twins, dressed immaculately as antebellum gentlemen and linked by the fleshy patch of abdomen that amazed the world.13
Shortly after Orson’s examination, the twins retreated from the national spotlight and settled in North Carolina, where they bought a farm, owned slaves, married local sisters Sarah and Adelaide Yates, and had twenty-one children between them. But public exhibitions, and the money that came with them, were too alluring to leave behind forever. In 1854, after more than fifteen years in private pastures, they agreed to appear for several weeks at the Broadway Museum and Menagerie, an upstart museum meant to rival Barnum’s. The museum was opened by Herr Driesbach, a German American performer who had made a name for himself as the best lion tamer in the world. Traveling to far-off lands, Driesbach amassed a zoo of exotic animals—rhinos, hyenas, monkeys, apes, lions, tigers, bears, and more—that he decided to show off to the people of New York. To compete with Barnum, however, he needed more than just animals to attract tourists, so he booked some human oddities, including the Siamese twins and a man named Sanders Nellis, who was born without arms but could shoot a bow and arrow with his feet and play a variety of musical instruments.
Chang and Eng appeared at the Broadway Museum alongside two of their children, whose presence raised unspoken questions of sexual encounters at a time when intercourse was a topic too unseemly for public discussion. As soon as the Fowlers heard that the twins were right up the street, they made quick plans for another examination, hoping to discover what, if anything, had changed in their mental development. Laying hands on the world-famous twins, Orson discovered that the head of one twin was “a quarter of an inch larger than that of the other, and his individual organs correspondingly fuller; but otherwise, we could not detect the slightest difference.” This was not terribly surprising, given what Orson had found in 1836, but it was nonetheless significant: “This complete correspondence, considered in connection with their perfect similarity of character, corroborates, as far as one marked fact can do, the truth of our science.”
The Fowlers went on to note that their Combativeness was well developed, but they lacked any semblance of Destructiveness or Secretiveness. They had incredibly large organs of Benevolence and Veneration, especially considering their national heritage, where people were often underdeveloped in these areas. As dedicated family men, their Adhesiveness, Philoprogenitiveness, and Inhabitiveness were properly large. It was a point hammered home by another engraving, which featured Chang and Eng, now older and wiser, wrapping their arms around two of their children, the kids leaning comfortably over their fathers’ knees.14
BECAUSE OF THE pervasiveness of celebrity culture at the time, the Fowlers saw a huge opening for their cause. Practically every periodical, book, or tract they published included vignettes of the rich and famous from every sector of American life. Actors, artists, musicians, novelists, poets, religious leaders, politicians, scientists, doctors, inventors, business tycoons, and more—the Fowlers covered them all to prove that phrenology could account for greatness in whatever way it appeared.
Some celebrities they featured were close friends. Newspaper editor, ghost hunter, and political visionary who helped found the Republican Party, Horace Greeley received several phrenological exams over the years, including one in 1847 when the Fowlers noted his head “combines great strength of mind with a high order of intellectual capacity and mental worth.” Another friend was Horace Mann, a prominent politician, reformer, and creator of America’s public school system. He visited the Phrenological Cabinet in 1853 and sat for a reading that revealed remarkable Firmness, which had been “unusually stimulated to activity by circumstances, as if his course of life had been a pioneering one.”15
Other important figures in the Fowler carnival were not family friends, but they were useful for promoting phrenology. Henry Clay, a congressional representative from Kentucky, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and arch nemesis of Andrew Jackson, did not run to the Fowlers for an exam, but he did allow Orson to feel his head, which was remarkable for its unity: “Every organ helps its fellow and contributes to the general result.” Then there was Alexander Campbell, renowned minister, theologian, and leader of the restoration movement, which led to the creation of the Church of Christ and Disciples of Christ denominations. In 1847, Campbell visited Lorenzo for a reading but withheld his identity as a test of the new science. He sat in the exam chair gobsmacked as Lorenzo described “with such remarkable exactness what I knew of myself.” After leaving the exam, he wrote Lorenzo a letter professing his belief in phrenology and declaring that it would, in short order, take its rightful place as the preeminent science of human nature. There was also inventor Samuel Morse, whose telegraph revolutionized communication. In 1848, he allowed Lorenzo not only to examine him but also to take a bust of his head for posterity. Lorenzo found that Morse’s perceptive faculties, Constructiveness, and Ideality were the controlling features of his mind, giving him “that scientific, experimenting, and practical cast of mind which exactly fit him to invent the telegraph.”16
There was another category of celebrity who were caught up in the Fowlers’ phrenological crusade, and that was people who were not yet celebrities but would become so later on. Future leaders who received an exam when they were young included President James Garfield, Civil War hero and President Ulysses S. Grant, and opera singer Clara Louise Kellogg, among many others.
Then there was the future celebrity drawn into the march of phrenology via Lorenzo’s lecture in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1849. Sitting in the audience, enraptured with what he saw and heard, a twenty-eight-year-old John Brown Jr. was awestruck as Lorenzo asked for volunteers from the audience for a public examination, then proceeded to describe their characters perfectly. At the close of the lecture, as was common at the time, a committee of audience members was assembled to pass resolutions thanking the speaker for his contributions to their collective knowledge. The committee in Springfield thanked Lorenzo for restoring confidence in phrenology, for vindicating it from charges of materialism and infidelity, for showing that phrenology is “essential to a more complete and successful study of man,” and for instructing them on a science that is “eminently calculated to promote our health, happiness, and usefulness as individuals, and the welfare of society generally.”17
John Brown Jr. signed his name excitedly to the statement. Over the next decade, Americans would canonize or demonize the Brown family—there seemed to be no middle ground—especially its patriarch, John Brown Sr. In 1856, the Brown family patriarch used a cache of broadswords to hack to pieces several proslavery settlers in Kansas. Then in 1859, he led a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to set off a revolution that would bring an end to slavery. It didn’t work, and on December 2, 1859, he was hanged for treason, murder, and insurrection. Brown’s actions were, in many regards, the flame that lit the fuse of civil war, changing America forever.
John Brown Jr. worked alongside his eccentric father to abolish slavery, although he did not participate directly in the Kansas massacre or the raid on Harpers Ferry. He worked logistics to support those missions, but he did not take up arms. And in 1849, he had no idea of the role his family would play in fomenting war; he was simply looking for a career.
John Brown Jr.’s initial interest in the science likely began when his father received a phrenological exam in 1847 from Orson. The elder Brown swung by Clinton Hall while visiting New York and paid for a written description, which John Brown Jr. kept safe for decades after his father swung at the end of a rope. Orson found Brown’s character remarkable: You are “very active, both physically and mentally, . . . are more known for your practical off-hand talent than for depth and profundity of comprehension.” Orson then continued:
