![]() Impeccably performed "classical" pieces, from Chopin to Mendelssohn, from Hoffman toĭonizetti he could also make perfect imitations of animal sounds and play any song upon Barnum, capable of dragging on stage Lilliputianĭwarfs and cannon women and Siamese and disabled brothers with four legs like MyrtleĪ horrendous show (with today's eyes) and stratospheric at the same time. More than a concert, it is a show on the model of the "Curiosity" that will make the fortune Impresario-custodian who will arrive to have him exhibited up to four times in a single day. He started touring America immediately afterwards, following an The fact is that in '57, at the age of eight, he already made his debut at Columbus «Impossible - they answered -, he does everything himself». Smelled the deal, he left the child free access to the piano and looked for music teachers Not childish songs: classical music!īethune soon realizes he has bought a phenomenon. Playing what he had learned by listening to the music teacher. "Tom,Īt the age of five, the black boy, slave, blind and "idiot" leftĮveryone mesmerized by placing himself at the piano while the owners ate dinner and Tom hasĪs much common sense as a horse or a dog, and I'll show you that it can be taught. The master's seven children («A horse or a dog can be taught almost anything. The little boy's initiation to the keyboard was born from a family challenge of Mary, one of Marvelous musical prodigy) of 1868, "When he began to walk and run for the courtyard, itsĪmusing peculiarities made it a domestic animal ». Sympathy and care of the family in his childhood", says a promotional booklet ( The In time it will beĭiscovered that the disability is double: "His imbecility and helplessness ensured him the He is eight months old and his eyes are white, empty, without light. Indeed, the man accepts, as a gift, even the third child of the couple. He, she and two "healthy" children by the landowner James Neil Bethune, a general with aīeard and mustache, a theorist of slavery, editor of a newspaper hostile to emancipation. The family of Mingo and Charity Wiggins, in this respect, is fine. That the sale will be "for families", so as not to separate fathers, mothers, children. Without failing the clarification, widespread among the self-styled gentlemen of the South, Selling "a dozen Negro slaves raised in Georgia" (translated: raised up properly) including Jones, covered in debt, adds that the auction house Harrison's is also Outside Columbus, Georgia, on the Alabama border. It is Christmas Eve in 1850 and the " Columbus Times & Sentential" publishes theĪnnouncement of the sale of a twenty-acre (8-hectare) manor house and estate just
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