The Humbug and the Nightingale: P. T. Barnum, Jenny Lind, and the Branding of a Star Singer for American Reception

Abstract

Here everything is done on a large scale. In early 1850, star singer Jenny Lind had a decision to make: should she accept P. T. Barnum’s offer to come to America for a recital tour?1 Already known as the “Swedish Nightingale,” Lind was adored by audiences in Europe and respected by critics and musicians. In that same year, Phineas Taylor Barnum was also at the height of his formidable powers. Known widely for trickery, advertising puffery, and duping the American public into paying for tickets to view questionable exhibitions, he had risen to infamy as America’s greatest seller of hoaxes. He was the kind of person who was called at the time a “humbug,” a salesman who overadvertised but did not deliver on his promises. Yet Barnum was convinced that bringing Lind, a legitimate talent, to America would be a colossal success. In order to secure her signature, he offered an unusual contract. If Lind would come to America, he would prepay her a fee of $1,000 a night for150 performances, totaling $150,000 or roughly the equivalent of $4million in 2017.2 The full sum was to be placed in escrow at the Baring Brothers Bank in London, before the singer’s departure. Lind accepted Barnum’s terms in January of 1850, and began her American tour in September of that year (Figure 1).

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