Side Show Studies Part 6

"You wouldn't believe that I spent over seven hundred dollars to turn that smallest elephant white a few years ago," said the Colonel as the waiter refilled their gla.s.ses, but his companions made unanimous protestation that they would believe any statement he made, and the Colonel settled back comfortably in his chair to tell the story which they demanded.

"You will have to listen to the story of the famous war of the white elephants, then," he said, good-naturedly, "a struggle which will remain famous in the circus world as long as the big tops are spread. It was in the good old days of fierce compet.i.tion in the business, the days when the press agents earned every dollar of their salaries, and sometimes had to go to the extent of saying things in print which were not strictly true. There was intense rivalry between the two big shows, the P. T. Barnum and the Forepaugh aggregations, and the bitter feeling between the proprietors was transmitted to the employees. The advance agents would steal each other's printed matter and posters out of the express offices, and you could always count on a fight between the canvas men whenever the two shows were close enough together. They would damage each other's property, loosen nuts on the wagons so that the wheels would come off and cause upsets, and do anything to embarra.s.s the rival show.

"Each show tried to outdo the other at every point; advertising, number of performers, length of the street parade, menagerie collection and everything which money could buy. They started in to see which could get the largest herd of elephants, each advertising the largest herd in captivity, and that compet.i.tion raised the price of elephants all over the world and denuded every small zoological park in Europe, while it pretty nearly bankrupted the shows to feed them. We had eighty with the Barnum circus, and finally Mr. Barnum came to me and said that he had purchased a Sacred White Elephant and told me to start giving it publicity. Of course, I didn't know anything about that particular kind of elephant, but as I always like to be perfectly accurate in my statements I made a scientific study of it. I found that, as a matter of fact, there was no such thing as a white elephant known in natural history, although there was an occasional absence of the usual pigment in the skins of some beasts which give them a trifle lighter color, and that these animals were apt to have a few spots on the body which were nearly white, just as you sometimes hear of a negro who is spotted. When such a spot occurs in the center of the forehead the Buddhists regard the beast as sacred, from the fact that the G.o.d, Buddha, is always depicted as wearing a jewel in that position and it is looked upon as his special mark of protection. It is the ambition of every Indian Rajah to possess one, for then he is billed as 'The Lord of the Sacred White Elephant,' a t.i.tle which seems to fill a long-felt want in the heart of an Oriental potentate.

"Well, Barnum's agent had, by some hook or crook, procured one of these and sent it to London, but owing to the lateness of the season it was decided to leave it there in the Zoological Gardens and get up a controversy which, in itself, would be a good advertis.e.m.e.nt for it. The average Englishman is very fond of writing to the _Times_ to expose a fraud, and we knew that there would be a protest from those who would be disappointed in the brute's color. There are hundreds of retired officers who have served in India living in London, and they know all about Sacred White Elephants, and time hangs heavily on their hands.

They were only too anxious to certify to its genuineness, and they wrote the peppery kind of replies to the criticisms which might be expected from men who had spent the best years of their lives under a hot sun and lived upon curries and red peppers. Of course, I saw that the letters were copied in the home papers, and before the circus season opened I had the Great American Public watching anxiously for the reported sailing of the Sacred White Elephant.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _"Walking upon its hind legs, BACKWARD."_]

"I should have been on my guard, for the Forepaugh bunch just kept sawing wood and saying nothing, but whenever I met their press agent he gave me the quiet laugh. Our elephant was finally shipped, and you can imagine that I made the most of it in the papers. I had 'em filled up for two days, and then, while ours was still in mid-ocean, out comes Forepaugh's announcement that his Sacred White Elephant would land in New York the following day. I knew it was a fake, for they were very difficult to obtain, but they stole our thunder, just the same. I managed to get a peep at it while it was being unloaded, and although it was only a dirty yellowish color, I knew that it would make ours look like a decided brunette by comparison. They had worked it well and kept it quiet, but knowing that there was a n.i.g.g.e.r in the woodpile and that money would bring him out, I spent it like a drunken sailor in trying to get information.

"Forepaugh had eminent scientists examine the beast and give their certificates that it was genuine, and all the inside information I could get was that the elephant had been purchased through Cross, the great animal dealer in Liverpool, and that it had been kept secluded in his place there all winter. Sam Watson, who was Forepaugh's foreign agent, and his groom, a man named Telford, were the only people who had access to it, and they had spent hours every day in its stall. Cross would give us no information as to how or where he obtained the elephant, for Forepaugh bought all of the animals for his menagerie through him, while we dealt with his great rival, Hagenbeck, of Hamburg.

"Forepaugh got all the newspaper s.p.a.ce for the next few days, and when our elephant finally arrived it looked mighty dark-colored for a white elephant when compared with the fake one. It was hard to educate the people up to the significance of the little white spot in the center of the forehead, but any one but a blind man could see that Forepaugh's fake was lighter in color. We went at it, horse, foot and artillery, and the fight cost the two shows more than a quarter of a million dollars, and lasted until we patched up a truce in St. Louis to save us both going into bankruptcy. I got some of Cross's employees to swear that they had seen the elephant being painted in Liverpool, and Forepaugh replied by getting a commission of scientific sharps from Ann Arbor to examine the beast and swear that the color was natural. There was good money in perjury and scientific opinions those days, but I never let up for a minute in my endeavor to get at the truth of the matter, for I knew it was hanky panky and I am a diligent searcher after truth, especially when a rival has sunk it to the bottom of a well. I experimented with some of our elephants until I nearly took their thick hides off, but I could get no satisfactory results until I called in Marchand, the chemist, and asked him if he could give me something to bleach an elephant. He had an especially strong solution of peroxide of hydrogen made up, and I selected the smallest animal out of our herd of eighty to try it on. It happened to be the one which you just saw working on the ballyhoo over there, which you noticed was the ordinary slate color. We soaked cloths in the peroxide and covered the beast with them and then put blankets on top. After they had been on for awhile we washed the animal with ammonia and water and repeated the performance until that elephant was as white as snow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _"Forepaugh had eminent scientists examine the beast."_]

"Forepaugh was to open in Philadelphia, so I shipped our fake over there, and when they had their street parade I followed right behind it with our bleached animal on a truck which was liberally placarded. The notices called attention to the fact that Forepaugh's alleged sacred elephant was simply painted and that the men who did it were bunglers at the business. 'LOOK AT THIS ONE!' read our largest placard. 'WE TELL YOU THAT IT IS A FAKE! So is Forepaugh's, but he won't tell! This is A BETTER JOB BY A BETTER ARTIST!' That made the Forepaugh people hot, and they replied with a new bunch of affidavits and expert opinions from a lot of University of Pennsylvania professors. That couldn't offset our show-up, though, and the whole situation had become so mixed that the public thought all of the elephants were fakes. We had the only genuine one and the best fake also, but they were a pair of white elephants in every sense of the term, and a losing proposition. The one which we had bleached would only keep white for about two weeks, and as each treatment cost seven hundred dollars Barnum called me off. The Forepaugh bunch was trying to poison it, and as the whole thing was dead as a money-making venture and white elephants a drug in the market, we let this one regain its natural color. When the great herd was broken up it was sold off, and I never saw it again until to-night."

"But what was the inside history of the Forepaugh white elephant?" asked one of his companions, and the Colonel smiled as he lighted a fresh cigar.

"I never knew it until this year, when one night over a friendly drink Sam Watson, who is now a clown with the Big Show, confessed the whole thing. Forepaugh is dead and the shows have been consolidated, so there is no further object in keeping the thing quiet. It seems that Forepaugh's agents found out that Barnum had purchased the elephant from an impecunious Indian Rajah; in fact, he had purchased two, the first one having died on its way to England. It was the misdirection of a cable announcing the death and ordering another at any cost which put them wise to the fact that Barnum had a rarity. Watson had never heard of a sacred elephant, but he started out to get one when he read that cablegram. They were scarce articles, and Barnum had bought the only two which were to be had for love or money in all India, so he and Cross got their heads together and started out to manufacture a bogus one in Liverpool.

"They prepared a closed stall, which was always kept locked, and put an elephant in it--just a common, or garden, elephant. Then Sam and his groom, Telford, proceeded to get busy with bath bricks, pumice stone and a barrel of white aniline dye. I imagine they had a pretty hard winter's work and it was certainly a tough period for the elephant, because they had to sc.r.a.pe about half the skin off the poor brute before the dye would take hold. They finally succeeded in getting him several shades lighter than normal, all except about eighteen inches at the end of the trunk. They could do nothing with that on account of the habit of the beast, which was always mussing around in its bedding, searching for stray peanuts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _"Then Sam and his groom, Telford, proceeded to get busy."_]

"They kept in touch with the London Zoo and found out when we were to ship the genuine one, and then got their fake on a steamer which would land it in New York a few days ahead of us. Of course, they had to keep working at it all the way over, but they kept it quiet and no one caught on. When the scientific sharps came to examine it, Sam would hoist the trunk up in the air while he drew their attention to the marvelous whiteness of the under side, and no one caught on to the fact that the end of the trunk was the natural color.

"He let them remove some bits of skin for microscopic examination to prove that no dye was used, but he always had them taken from the inner side of the foreleg near the body, from which the natural pigment is absent in all elephants. Sam swears that they never had to fix one of the experts; they were only too anxious to get the advertis.e.m.e.nt, and they were prepared to swear, and did in this particular case, that black was white.

"I have a few gray hairs in my head, and most of them came during the strain of that fight. The game isn't what it used to be and I'm glad that it isn't, and let me tell you, as a result of long experience, that the worst thing which can happen to a man is to have a white elephant, fake or genuine, on his hands."

THE HYPNOTIC BEAR AND THE SENTIMENTAL LECTURER

THE HYPNOTIC BEAR AND THE SENTIMENTAL LECTURER

The doctor shook his head as he slipped his ophthalmoscope into his pocket, and Rey, the trainer, who had been holding the bear's head still while the oculist made the examination, opened the door of the cage for him. The bear--a medium-sized black animal--wandered aimlessly about, stumbling over the water pan and knocking its head against the bars, its eyes, which were evidently sightless, shining like two fiery opals as they reflected the electric light.

"I am sorry to tell you that it is a hopeless case," said the physician to the Proprietor, who was standing with the Stranger in front of the cage watching the examination. "Both optic nerves are atrophied, and the animal must have received some serious injury, possibly a heavy blow on the forehead." The Proprietor, who has the reputation of being a "good loser," thanked him and gave some directions to the trainer about the care of the animal before leading the way to the table in front of the Arena, where the Press Agent was waiting for them.

"It is rather unusual to call the most famous specialist in the country to examine a menagerie animal," he said, after the doctor hurriedly left them to catch the express train back to the city. "You know that he takes no small fee; his services are either given for charity or his charge is very high--and this visit was not for charity."

"I should think that the value of a bear would hardly warrant the expense," answered the Stranger as the waiter filled the gla.s.ses.

"It wouldn't be for an ordinary bear, but I was willing to pay anything in reason to restore the sight of this particular specimen, so I sent for the best-known oculist in New York. The decision which he has just given will probably mean a loss of thousands of dollars to me, but that is one of the risks which I have to a.s.sume. Would it interest you to hear a rather unusual romance of the menagerie business?" The Stranger gave eager a.s.sent, and the Press Agent settled himself comfortably and lighted a cigar.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _"There seems to be a sympathy between them."_]

"You have no idea how many animals are offered to the owner of a menagerie and from what unusual sources the offers come," said the Proprietor. "Travelers in far countries bring back strange animals as pets or curiosities; people buy young wild animals which get beyond control when they mature and become veritable white elephants on their hands, and their owners have to dispose of them. I have had everything from monkeys to lions brought to me, and so it did not surprise me when an artist came to the Hippodrome in Paris last winter and asked me if I didn't want to purchase a bear. He seemed anxious for me to see it immediately, and at his earnest solicitation I got in a cab with him and drove to his studio, which was situated on the far side of the Seine.

The bear which you saw examined to-night was in a small room adjoining the studio, chained to a ring in the wall.

"The apartment was luxuriously furnished, and I realized that it was not lack of ready money which made the artist so anxious to dispose of the brute; but he seemed in a desperate hurry to have me take it away, and offered it for such a low price that I closed the bargain at once. I suggested sending one of my men for it in the evening, but he insisted upon my taking it with me, and as the bear was evidently as gentle as a kitten I called a closed cab and drove away with it. The bear sat comfortably on the seat beside me and gave no trouble, but as we drove along I got to thinking the matter over and the whole proceeding seemed a little strange. I had Mephisto, as the bear was named, put in a cage well away from the other animals--a sort of quarantine precaution which I always take with new arrivals--and as there was apparently nothing unusual about him gave him little attention, there being for the moment no group of animals in training for which he would be available. I soon noticed that during the intermissions, when the audience wandered about and examined the animals in the cages, there was always a crowd of women about his den; but I thought that it was because he was such an inveterate beggar, and had a habit of standing at the bars with his mouth wide open, waiting for some one to flick a lump of sugar into it.

"The bear had given us no trouble, and there was only one peculiar thing about him: he seemed to have an aversion to cats. The bodies of three of them had been found in front of his cage, although we had never seen one killed. The cats about a menagerie instinctively keep out of harm's way, and it puzzled me to know how Mephisto had managed to get them within reach of his heavy paw. Jack Bonavita, who fusses about his lions at all hours of the day and night, solved that mystery and incidentally saved his pet cat, Tramp, from an untimely ending. Tramp has been with Jack for years and appreciates the folly of venturing within reach of the animals in the cages, but Bonavita came across him in front of Mephisto's cage in the middle of the night. The bear was absolutely quiet, lying with its head on its paws and its eyes, which glistened like two points of flame, fixed on the cat. Tramp was staring at it in turn and slowly drawing nearer to the cage, apparently struggling against some influence which was stronger than its will. Bonavita watched them for a few minutes, but before the cat ventured within striking distance he picked it up and carried it away, while Mephisto, growling with rage, tried to break through the stout bars and get at it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _"Tramp was slowly drawing nearer to the cage."_]

"Two days before we were to sail for America I was sitting at my desk arranging some of the last details of shipment, when the door burst open and a well-dressed, handsome woman rushed in, followed by the artist who had sold me the bear. She was in a tearing rage and jabbering excitedly in a language which I did not understand, while the artist was trying to quiet her. She pushed him aside, and opening a purse which was well stuffed with banknotes, she asked in French, which she spoke with a marked foreign accent, for how much I would sell Mephisto. The artist protested, but she turned on him and gave him a tongue lashing of which I could guess the meaning, although the words were unintelligible to me.

I couldn't quite grasp the situation, but the strange hypnotic power which the bear apparently exercised over cats had excited my curiosity, and I wished to investigate it at my leisure, so I politely but positively refused to name a price, and told her the animal was not for sale. The artist seemed relieved and she was very much disappointed, but she quieted down and asked me what I intended to do with the animal. I told her that I was taking it to America, where it would be put in a mixed group which Rey was to train, and after inquiring when we were to sail, they left the office.

"I regretted that I had not taken the opportunity to find out something about the history of the animal, and looked over the audience to try to locate the couple, but they had left the building. One of the keepers told me that she had screamed when she recognized the bear and called it by name. She was trying to bribe him to let her go into the cage when the artist came up and expostulated with her, and they had an awful row before coming to my office. I heard nothing more from them and we shipped the animals at Havre the following day. The traveling dens were placed in the 'tween decks, which is not a pleasant place to be when the ship is tossing about, and I was surprised the second day out to find the woman who had tried to purchase Mephisto standing in front of his cage in that smelly place, talking to the bear as if it were a child.

She laughed when I came up to her, and told me that as I would not part with the bear I would have to take her with the show. I, too, laughed, for I have a large family of daughters, and I knew that the simple traveling gown which she wore had cost more than two months' salary of my best trainer, but to my great surprise she was in dead earnest, and asked me seriously if I would not let her train a group of animals."

The Press Agent grew very attentive, but the Proprietor told him that he was not talking for publication, and that a name which occupied several pages of the Almanach de Gotha was sacred, even from an American promoter of publicity.

"And she does carry that name and was born to it," he continued, "but I can't tell you what it is. She didn't tell it to me and it was not on the pa.s.senger list, but the amba.s.sador from a great European nation came on from Washington to see her and remonstrate with her and to influence me to exclude her from the show. I wouldn't consent to that, but I am afraid that the accident of the bear's going blind will be the cause of my losing an act which promised to be sensational."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _"The bear sat comfortably on the seat beside me."_]

"You have kept it quiet enough," said the Press Agent with a trace of resentment in his voice. "It sounds to me as if it ought to be good for a front-page column in every New York paper."

"As I told you, there are reasons why I can't exploit it," answered the Proprietor. "I am counting upon it for my opening sensation at the Paris Hippodrome next winter, and I don't intend to discount it before a Coney Island audience. But to get back to my experience with her on the steamer. I found that she occupied the most expensive deck stateroom, and had a maid and a man servant traveling with her; so that I refused all of her renewed offers for the bear when I found the powerful fascination it had for her, and I finally consented to let her try the experiment of working with a group of animals. You know the cla.s.s from which trainers are usually recruited, and you can imagine the interest I take in a woman who possesses an absolute fearlessness which is inherited from generations of ancestors who have never shown the white feather, in addition to education and intelligence. The only thing which puzzled me was her motive, and that I have not discovered yet, although the amba.s.sador, who had received all sorts of communications about her from his own government, told me her history. It seems that she has always been noted for her eccentricity and her rebellion against the strict laws of convention which were supposed to control her life, and this is not the first time she has defied them. She had commissioned the artist--who, by the way, is one of the most celebrated men in Paris--to paint a portrait of her. At the same time he was painting an exhibition picture to be called the 'Dancing Bear,' and had purchased Mephisto for a model. The picture was to represent the bear dancing on its hind legs opposite a woman, to the music of a flageolet played by a man bear leader--such an exhibition as is commonly given at the country fairs throughout Europe. He had no difficulty in getting a male model, but he was in despair about the woman dancer. He tried model after model, and although they started in all right each one became so nervous after a sitting or two that they refused to continue. The bear was chained to the wall and they were posed safely out of reach, but each of them a.s.serted that the animal was like a serpent and trying to charm them so that they would come close enough to be caught. They were all afraid that they might yield to the fascination and be seriously injured.

Tramp, the cat, would probably have told the same story if he had been able to talk.

"As a matter of curiosity the artist experimented with men, but the bear appeared indifferent to them and the men made no complaint. It only seemed to exercise this strange hypnotic power over women--and cats--for the artist found two Persian felines, which had been studio pets, dead beside it; simply crushed, as were those which were killed by the bear at the Hippodrome. He mentioned the matter during one of the sittings for the portrait, and the lady, being curious to see the animal, came to his studio--and then the trouble commenced. She developed a most unaccountable attachment for Mephisto, and he was as gentle as a lamb with her. They would sit facing each other by the hour, and the artist swore they talked to each other and understood each other perfectly. The animal never attempted to harm her, but the artist became alarmed for fear there should be an accident, and believing that there was something uncanny about the brute, he decided to get rid of it and sold it to me.

"Well, I watched her with the bear on shipboard and since we landed, and I can't yet understand her control over it, for it does not control her in any way. There seems to be a sympathy between them which makes them absolutely understand each other, and through it she understands the other caged beasts. The act which I had framed for her when I found that she was absolutely in earnest was a dance to be given in the midst of a group of adult lions. The lady is absolutely fearless and approved the plan, but stipulated that she should select the lions.

"'I have means of knowing which ones will behave and which are such idiots that they can't be controlled if anything goes wrong,' she answered when I suggested that I was a better judge of the dispositions of the lions. 'I don't intend to have my beauty spoiled,' she said, 'and I only want beasts which are intelligent. No one can trust a fool.'

Perhaps I have fallen under her influence, which according to her standard should indicate intelligence, for I have given way at every point and her judgment has proved correct, for in rehearsing the act she has perfect control over the animals, three of which I considered the most vicious in the menagerie. I let her take them in fear and trembling.

"For the past three days she has been anxious and uneasy about the bear and has insisted that it was rapidly going blind. She says that the bear is her teacher about things in the animal world, and that she can tell what it is thinking about. Its eyes look perfectly sound, and it is only for two days that we have noticed anything wrong with it. Mephisto knew its way about its old cage so well that it gave no evidence of blindness, and a bear is naturally clumsy in its movements, but when we moved it to a strange den it stumbled over everything. I experimented by bringing Tramp in front of its cage, but with the loss of sight the hypnotic power has apparently deserted it, and the cat paid no attention to it. Finally I called in the doctor and you heard him p.r.o.nounce his verdict."

"But where is the great loss?" asked the Stranger.

"It is princ.i.p.ally a loss in prospective profits," replied the Proprietor as he beckoned to the waiter. "I had the new act all planned out for Paris--the lady was to appear masked for her performance, but I knew her ident.i.ty would be discovered and that it would be a tremendous sensation. I don't know how much of her desire to train animals is due to eccentricity and as a protest against the conventions which hedged in her former life, and how much to her strange infatuation for Mephisto, but since its blindness has developed she has lost interest and I suppose she will renege on the whole business."

"How do you account for it all--her infatuation for the bear and her intuitive knowledge of the dispositions of the lions?" asked the Stranger.

"I don't try to account for anything. It is one of the thousand things about animals and the million things about women which no mere man can understand," replied the Proprietor laughing. "I have simply given you the facts of the situation and you can draw your own conclusions, but the bear's blindness upsets my plans and possibly prevents a sensation in circles which approach royalty."