IN THE DAYS OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM

 Robert Edric

Jonathan Cape 1990

It is midnight and the museum has closed its doors. As stillness descends on the darkened galleries, strange animals and birds settle in their cages and the Museum’s human inhabitants, released at last from the day’s toil, gather in to discuss the world outside. For this is P. T. Barnum’s American Museum, the culmination of forty years of showmanship, and these men and women, his sports of nature, are its most profitable exhibits. But forty years are beginning to take their toll. The man who gave the world General Tom Thumb now offers them the White Elephant. Once Barnum could do no wrong; now it seems success is slipping beyond his reach.

This is New York in the summer of 1864. Across the country civil war rages. In the south, Atlanta burns, and sparks from that conflagration seem to threaten the great city by the Hudson. Everywhere, the heat of the flames is felt in the sweltering summer night. In the American Museum, Barnum’s human showpieces lead a strange existence. Confined to their quarters high above Broadway, they seize the hours of darkness as their own.

In the days of the American Museum is their story; the story of their struggles and triumphs. As we travel with them through that overheated summer we come at last to the events of one night, a night that becomes for them all – Barnum included – a long and terrible journey into day.

This novel is Ex-Libris. It has a missing fep, a stamp with amendments on the second fep and a stamp on the title page, very minor movement to the cover boards. The pages are clean and tightly bound. A recommended read.