time for the answer and other guests have a chance to ask a question as well. >> robert wilson is with us today was the author of a biography of terrence king the editor of the american scholar, former editor of

preservation and the editor of civilization book editor and columnist from the "washington post" book world and essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including american scholar , the atlantic monthly, new republic, smithsonian, "washingn post" magazine and the wilson quarterly and the book review pages of the boston globe the new york times and the "washington post" living in manassas virginia please give a warm savanna welcome to robert wilson. [applause]

>> thank you i appreciate that introduction. i hope your app works a lot better than the app for the iowa caucuses. [laughter] i trust it will you actually probably have tested it. and thank you to all of you for coming on this cold morning. it's nice to see so many of you here it's pleasant to see c-span here and thank you for all it does to support book culture in america. we are tempted to say normally what remains of book culture on a day like today to be optimistic about the state of

books. i love being in savanna we come here as often as we can we live outside of washington dc and on the panhandle of florida then had a 15 hour drive that would drop off on the way and go out to dinner so now we look forward to the trip very much. this is the third biography i have written it's not really a trilogy at all. they are related to 19th century figures. and the first one was that explorer of clearance king and

explored california in the early days with the peaks in the sierras including mount whitney and the survey of the great basin one of the great surveys of the 19th century. one of the people who accompanied him was a very fine photographer named timothy o'sullivan who worked with matthew grady, a civil war photographer who is also a portrait photographer in new york. i started to read about brady thinking there wasn't a big one - - a good book but perhaps for good reason, and it turned out to be a hard subject because he didn't leave a lot of written material. he may have been illiterate

actually. but brady had a studio on lower broadway in manhattan catty corner from barnum's american museum. and and then a dusty old museum that have those specimens and then to be completely transformed and lights going up and down broadway. a band was out on the balcony

and musicians were hand-picked and they would drive people back into the museum.us [laughter] so it was quite a lively place. the photographer was very successful but i couldn't help him in the blogging way across the street at the museum were so much is going on. after a while i began looking longingly across the street also. [laughter] because the subject was everything that brady was not that he wrote a wonderful autobiography, a lovely writer and an exuberant fellow and was thought to have a certain charm bringing people in and making them comfortable but

nothing than the larger than life character that barnum was. so brady led me to barnum. and also to think of it as a trilogy is probably my last biography for the very reason i don't think there is a better subject than barnum. i have had so much fun spending years with him thinking about and talking about him for six orim seven years. this may be the last time i do that because i want to move on. but the one other thing that

led me to barnum working on brady i went around to 25 different venues and i always a picture slideshow with the photographs and one of them was a photograph of barnum and whenever introduce a photograph i would always say the full name phineas taylor barnum because the slightly amusing name because nobody hears the name phineas. also the way that barnum looked in the photograph that was middle-aged he was a rather handsome man but in midlife maybe not so much with

a very brief story barnum tells about his self and the autobiography which he lived in bridgeport connecticut and became a pro- lincoln man and stephen a douglas came through bridgeport to speak during the presidential campaign and one of his friends said what do you know about douglas? to which barnum replied here is a red nose looking like a regular barroom and that was the very image but that was the exact image of pt barnum.

>> and then to show the photograph to the various audiences there was a chuckle as people feel even to this day they know barnum on some level. obviously barnum and barrett on - - barnum & bailey and ringling brothers circus is a name we have known throughout her k lifetime. which ended in 2017 so that name has carried on to some extent but we also think we know b him because the early part of his career the famous

sign this way to the egress they thought it was a fantastic based they would .ind themselves out on the street and then have to pay another quarter to get back into the museum that story probably is true but also barnum said the phrase there is a sucker born t every minute that is almost certainly false it's hard to prove something didn't happen. but barnum wrote many more words were writtenny about him have there is no sign anywhere

or even thought it because to me the most persuasive argument of his set on having said that the relationship he began to develop with the museum goers it was a theater through those melodramas and then in the circus career that was really the last quarter of his life he was always careful with his relationship about the audience he did not overtly exploit them in a way there's a sucker born every minute and then to spend

enormous amounts of money to bring things and from all over the world and wild animals and objects and people of interest and he continued and half of that so his whole philosophy of this centers on the word that he calls humbug he calls himself the prince of humbug's and today's world the word humbug tends to meet somebody that exploits or tricks other

people but in barnum's usage he used the word or do find it of what w he did because he thought that was getting publicity your people in the building but the crucial part of idea of humbug was once you got them inn the building or in the tent they have to get more than they bargained for so if you brought the men under pretext to see the remains of a mermaid once they came in that maybe this really isn't the remains of a mermaid but there are other thingsf here that we can't see so people

would go away happy. so to me that is the crucial thing about how we should be thinking about barnum. barnum was not perfect. i have to say that he was wonderful company always he could turn a phrase so well that i always enjoyed being in his company and often was won over by him one of the things that made him a great character to writeeim about is that he wasn't perfect and one of the challenges that made

the job interesting day by day was to think about the things he did in the various context he may have done this but then everybody did e it so that was the historical characteristic or his treatment of animals , he was very dedicated to bringing exotic animals to exhibit in his museum there was often a grisly process to capture them and ship them and the understanding of how to care for them when they got to the museum was limited. they were learning all the

time barnum did bring handlers for the animals that were familiar with how they lived but it was a process that involved the death of a lot of animals the smithsonian institution benefited from this that happens so often that barnum would send the carcasses to the smithsonian and they had a collection as a result this is unsavory at best and it's the one of the primary reasons the barnum & bailey ringling brothers went out of business that they stopped exhibiting animals and people stopped going to the circus this is an example that

we have certain values and there are other values at the time and what you think of him but i'm not a person who feels that you will now have that stated perfection for everybody that came before us there are ways in which that they have evolved even if they are far from that stated perfection then i tried as hard as i could to give him a break on things that i felt were related to the way people

thought t and i also try to think as a man was he ever cruel to people? and he treated people very well. and many of o the people were called freaks were very devoted to him and grateful to him he was a very nice to his dwife i don't think that is anything we can forgive out of a historical perspective. he came from a culture in new england that was very much all about practical jokes and playing tough jokes on people

making them look silly once after he was in england for several years he came home unexpectedly and had two or three kids at the time and one of his daughters had died in the interim and he had not come back. he came back without announcing he was coming and sent somebody to tell his wife she must come to the museum to find out some information. it was clear that she would think that he had died but she came in there he was to greet her and there was a great practical joke i think the cruelty of that is

self-evident. and then to think through these things and maybe because i'm a journalist i focus on the negative he was a person who brought an incredible amount of joy to millions of people and as i say he was just such great company. to be a journalist and focusing on the negative so to talk about his attitudes about race he lived from 1810 through 1891.

and that i what i came to admire about barnum's he changed throughout his life i felt he became a better person which is especially remarkable because he had a lot of success early on in his life and became notorious and a character in the newspape newspaper. he made a lot of money he lost a lot of money at one point and made it back one and he bece quite famous but i think about

how few people who have success early in life don't feel it is a reward so how many people like that actually change and become better? barnum had a bit of a problem and he began to notice that people around him that he h respected were similarly conflicted and eventually he gave up drink at the age i would sayy late thirties and like all reformed people became a great advocate for temperance and one thing that is a known very widely about barnum is he became one of the

most in demand temperance speakers of his day on par to give hundreds of temperance speeches in fact later in his life and then he would go out with the circus and off been scheduled temperance speeches and say he was in a town he had never been in before and then they would say please stop doing that because so many people wereth going to his speech rather than the circus it was hurting the intake. [laughter] that is one way in which he changed so his religious phase he was a universalist and was very opposed and it was a

great revival. and very opposed any movement towards confusing churchh and state for the very purpose of fighting the idea of the religious party developing and that part of connecticut at the time of getting far from race but i will get back to it. but as a result of his temperance speaking he got to know a lot of the famous preachers of the day and many of those were abolitionists so they had an effect ont his

growth one of the first acts that got barnum into the public eye and in some ways i feel that reputation that he has to this day we know the name barnum because that unscrupulous evening person if you could name any such person who achieved high office in this country there would be people in slapping that label and it would not be complementary. tracing back to the first act he became involved in. he did a lot of things in his

teens and twenties and thirties and had dry goods stores and in his early thirties he felt his life's work should somehow have to do with the showman and at the time ran a boarding house and then he read in the paper about an act on display when they came into the store and talk to him about it that was a blind slave woman who purported to be 161 years old and who further claimed to be the nurse made of george

washington it would go around to tell stories about little george and to seeing ancient hymns that nobody had ever heard before. by the way i love this perspective i feel that maybe i went into the wrong business. [laughter] but barnumri hurried up to see this woman and to be favorably impressed with the possibility she could be quite old.

and suspected that she wasn't 161 years old life expectancy for a white woman at that time ecwas about 44 slave woman i daresay less. she was blind, crippled, one arm wouldn't move. but time was good to her she spoke in a strong voice so barnum decided to she was supposedly owned by a person in kentucky someone had paid him for the right toso exhibit her but they wanted to get out of the business. so barnum made an offer and brought her toer new york after creating a buzz in the newspapers and began to exhibit her and went very well

and he took her on tour and at one point when he got to boston he became acquainted with a man who was famous for displaying automatons the creations that were mechanical and they would seem to talk and respond to questions so it occurred h to him because the crowds had begun to fall off for her to plant a story in the newspaper to say she was the automaton and was made out of indiaad rubber and gadgets like that. this became a typical ploy for

barnum when he had an act, he would either create that counterargument and then to challenge audiences if there's something in the museum and then encourage to come back but i do think the length of his career one of o the things he knew he was doing was not only bringing people in and those who were isolated the

telegraph had not been invented the railroads were notot running. throughout his lifetime people who lived in small villages began to have more access to the world athe large. i think one of the things barnum did through the museum and exhibits was bring the world that we are eager to know more about it. and one of the things hene was doing was challenging people to use their critical sense. and to say come and decide for yourself. that is the partrt of this and

it seems pretty awful and was exhibited for a few more months and became sick and died. barnum had an arrangement with the surgeon in new york to do an autopsy of her. and then to show it had been a hoax so he rented a big venue and advertise and charged admission for this autopsy. pretty awful. he invited preachers to calm as it turns out the surgeon found all organs were in great shape except her lungs.

she died of tuberculosis. and he felt she could not have been more than 80 years old. this did not slow down barnum at all. he was not all chagrin that this was the case and continuent to get publicity. when there are other instances where he had racial views that were terrible. but as i say with his connections and his wife was very much against slavery and became more and more of an abolitionist. and became a republican in lincoln supporter and was very

prounion like there was and exhibit and the hero of charleston. so anyway he did a lot of things to support the union cause and after the war he ran for the legislature in connecticut. and he said he wanted to do that for the sole purpose of voting for the 13th abolishedwhich slavery and he did as a legislator but also gave a

dramatic and widely publicized speech in favor of giving the vote to african-americans in connecticut which he argued in terms they would not find noble today but he was very much in favor it didn't happen for many more years in connecticut but that superseded that. so i make a case in the book that people in the review point out in 1860 at a point where i am arguing to be more enlightened he exhibited a little person a 4 feet tal tall, black man who weighed

50 pounds the missing link between charles dickens book who has just come out in 1859 and this was 1860. and it was just awful but what is interesting was, when he was exhibited there would be a white man out front telling histli story. and in the background, this man would be mocking the white guy to say don't really believe this this is what is going on. which is meant in some way and

barnum finally permitted it but ended up building a house for this man. they were friends for the remaining of barnum'ss life and then to be seen by 100 million people. so anyway that is another one that is hard to think about. so i will leave you with one quick image lay in barnum'sou life in the late 18 seventies taking james bailey and went

to england that was in the big building in olympia for the three rings and at the beginning of each day's performer there were two performances arf day. and then into a fancy carriage with foot men. and then to go slowly around the ring. and then to a stand up and say if you want to see barnum i am mr. barnum.

and very much as a member who looked a lot like who did not turn off their phones? it was me. [laughter] and in the 18 sixties and left the presidency going on a two year tour to promote the united states. and with the most beloved americans to say no you had it all over me everywhere i went do you know barnum people ask me. so i will stop if there are questions.

[applause] >> what is the most surprising thing? >> and really was a better person. >> you touch on to have the simplistic picture and i would like to turn that around the current status of american and politics and american popular culture have your view of

barnum. there is a piece in the new yorker about my book and to be completely unaware of what is going on politically in this country and to try very hard there was a book called humbug. and then he gave me his blessing. and that barnum deserves a new book regeneration. and that my own beliefs politically and there will be

times a moderate sensibility has to understand and the situation. and then to apply my own judgment. and then want to come out of the reviews. i know i've been kind of negative today but but i gave him too much credit in fact the new york times that referred to him as barnum swingman. [laughter]

>> so do you have something to do with that? [laughter] yes. he was married 40 some years to his wife. they were very much in love early on. barnum spent in and incredible amount of time on the road whether to get away from her i don't know later but early on they were separated a lot she discovered she hated to travel and one of the ways but they made fun of her when she would travel. and he did hide the marriage which happened on valentine's day we can even think of the year right now but then he

brought her back the following september they had a church wedding and it was announced because his previous wife had died in november. >> people asked me what barnum would have thought of twitter. [laughter] because i have asked not just to blurt out the answer i think he would have loved it and is a genius that would be word for word the enthusiastic advertiser in that way to get

the attention of the editors. and to have a couple of major fires in the museum then with telegraph around the world he was in touch with people all over the world and so later with the circus which was a small city setting it up elsewhere in a couple of days was genius and so you embrace those new technologies. and then to be all over twitter to make as much publicity as he can.

>> what prompted you to start writing books? >> i never got a chance to ask youu that. >> have done some writing but at a certain point i decided i needed to write a book or stop thinking about it. the subject i come to know through wonderful book by woman named patricia o'toole called the arts. it's about clarence king and henry adams, john hey and very interesting lives. in the five of them had the kind of social group. in the book king was the sky,

they were all very intellectual people. from east. in the book, king would sort of blowing from the west all sunburned. and everybody seemed to be in love with him. male and female. this is really interesting subject. really should be a book about him. i kept telling my writer friends, you really need to write a book about clarence king. he's really a great character. a friend of mine used to work for the new york times, so the wise thing once that i've never forgotten witches you just can't give away a good idea. and part of this what makes a good idea good is your enthusiasm for it. so eventually i just said, i will write it myself. so i did that. as i said in the beginning, that's what led me to matthew

brady. with both the king book and the barnum book, i was very lucky that there had been very good academic biographies about both figures. so they help me out. in fact the biographer from barnum, named arthur saxon is still alive and extremely generous to me. i wrote him a text yesterday and i said after today, barnum will be his again. [laughter]. but brady with a different character. and as i said there's not been a good book about him. there's not a lot of people run him. and so a lot of it had to do with looking at the photographs and with him there's the question of what is brady

photograph. he ran a studio that's another people out to actually take the photographs and with the recalled photo by matthew brady. and so is a very different kind of challenge to write about. >> i was wondering if you saw the show meant movie and what you thought of it. >> sorry, can you say that again. >> did you see the greatest show meant movie. >> of the show, i'm sorry. i did see the movie. i'd actually agreed to write something for the daily beast about the little ways in which the movie didn't quite get barnum right. blake came out of the movie so enraged that i felt i could not write a lighthearted piece so i did not fulfill that.

it struck me that there were so many ways, will this whole question of present day sensibility sensibility of the times. the sensibility of the movie is so hollywood. 2018 or whatever the movie came out. 2017. the thing that offended me most was to me it was like a big shocker, hollywood does movie and doesn't get the history right. that's never happened before of course. [laughter]. it just struck me as being perverse because barnum was so much more interesting than the character they came out in the movie. and just the whole thing, jackman had a dance, whereas one of the people exhibited was a famous opera singer and they traveled around the country together. and at one point, jenny on new year's eve try to pull barnum out. as an adult dance.

and he said come on barnum you can dance. and after he tried dancing for a little bit, she said, i do believe you are the worst dancer i have ever seen. i'm not quite sure that he never danced again. and then any time anything did happen in the movie, and they're having a to celebrate. and since barnum was very different person that would not have happened. it's just the small things. but anyway, my wife liked the movie. [laughter]. thank you very much. [applause].