Phineas T. Barnum and Ernestine de Faiber

The greatest impresario of the nineteenth century, P. T. Barnum was a shrewd judge of popular taste and an intuitive master of the art of publicity who tickled the public's imagination and gleefully exploited its credulity for more than fifty years. Barnum first gained national attention in 1842 with the opening of his American Museum on Broadway in New York City. Offering a veritable smorgasbord of entertainments for a single low admission fee, Barnum's museum became one of New York's most celebrated showplaces. Throughout the spring and summer of 1864, Barnum's Broadway establishment advertised attractions of every description-from a "musically educated seal" to "the great giant girl from Nova Scotia." Among the featured performers was "the beautiful and graceful danseuse" Mlle. Ernestine de Faiber, who had delighted Washington, D.C., audiences earlier that year. To publicize her performances at Barnum's, de Faiber posed for this photograph with the leering showman.