Anyway, I wrote a substack based around The Halloween Tree that got me thinking about that.

open.substack.com/pub/foodbuil...

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. 😂

She gave most of her fees to charities. And yeah, plates and paper dolls and lots more. There’s a style of bed called a Jenny Lind bed. They still sell them under that name today.

By Lind’s time, PT Barnum knew a lot about marketing. That’ probably why she was so noteworthy.

Ben Franklin (several decades earlier) saw how people there were using fans with his face on them and decided to support his stay by selling his own stuff. But he hadn’t gone to France with the intention of doing that, so he had to write his daughter for his family soap recipe.

I think maybe the biggest difference was marketing. With Liszt, I feel like the composer was annoyed that these crazy people were following him hoping to get his dirty hankies. With Lafayette people were selling commerative plates, but they were doing that on their own.

I think there was more of a 1:1 equivalent with the fans of Franz Liszt. Historians called it Lisztomainia. The articles I read stated that his fans would fight over his handkerchiefs. Doctors were worried that his fans had a genuine medical malady.

You would think that. Then her name pops up in cities like Fort Smith Arkansas. I know Barnum was her promoter, but her name must have really been everywhere. Like Beatlemania.