CHAPTER VI

“Jumbo” shipped. The Baroness Burdett-Coutts gives him his last bun. Arrives safely at New York. A duty of £450 demanded. My awkward encounter with the Customs officer. Fatal accident to “Jumbo.” Something about the Aztecs. Their curious history. I go in for theatrical management. I start with pantomime at the Metropolitan Alcazar, Broadway. Deverna’s extraordinary rubber “properties.” The topical hits greatly relished. The foolish penal code. Marriages in Barnum’s captive balloon. My benefit and the misfortune that happened. The gallery gives way and many people injured. In five minutes I lose all my fortune.

At last the day arrived for the departure of the biggest passenger that ever left the British shores. Practically, as a passenger, he had the entire ship to himself (barring a few emigrants), for the _Assyrian Monarch_ was a cargo ship and had been chartered for the purpose. No monarch could have had greater honours paid him. The steamer was dressed with flags and the boy crews of the training ships in the Thames manned the yards as he went by. The Baroness Burdett-Coutts and a party of friends bade him farewell on board the steamer and the Baroness gave him his last bun. It was said that messages recording the state of the illustrious animal’s health would be placed in india rubber bags in lieu of bottles and dropped into the sea at intervals, but whether this delicate attention was paid him I am unable to say, as I did not travel in the _Assyrian Monarch_, for having to reach New York some days before he did I went from Liverpool.

“Jumbo” arrived at Jersey city on April 9th and by night was lodged in Madison Square Gardens little the worse for the voyage, save that he had lost half a ton in weight owing to sea sickness. On the other hand he had contracted a taste for whisky, presumably administered for medicinal reasons. How much constituted a dose I am unable to say. The Customs authorities claimed £450 for duty, which the owners refused to pay on the ground that “Jumbo” had been imported for breeding purposes. The question was referred to the Treasury and ultimately the claim was abandoned. Again was “Jumbo” specially privileged. On the whole Barnum and Bailey made a splendid bargain. What with buying him, booming him in various ways and his transportation to America, he cost £3,000. On the other hand we cleared this sum in New York alone and during eighteen months we took 1,500 dollars per day--equivalent to £300.

That voyage of mine to America was marked by a comical incident which forced me to pretend to be something Nature had not fitted me for. The night before I left London for Liverpool I had a cable from Mr. Bailey instructing me to bring over a prize dog as a pet for Mrs. Bailey, she having no children. I brought the pug--“Punch” was its name--I also purchased 24 pairs of tights, 24 pairs of theatrical boots and a silver cornet for which I paid £16 at Chappell’s of Bond Street, the cornet being for Mr. Robinson, who was the conductor of our band.

With all this paraphernalia I arrived at New York, and in due course presented myself and my belongings at the Customs. The officer passed everything excepting the silver cornet, at which he looked very doubtfully.

“What have you got there?” was his question.

“Oh, that’s an implement of my trade,” said I, readily enough.

“Yes? And who are you?”

This was a poser, but I thought I was equal to it, so I explained that I was a musical clown at Madison Square Gardens.

The officer smiled cordially.

“I’m real pleased to hear that,” said he. “Come into the office and give us a few of your latest English tunes.”

He wasn’t contented with this (to me) monstrous proposal, but actually invited some of his brother officials to form part of the audience! What my consternation was like I cannot describe. I had never blown a cornet in my life! However, I wasn’t going to be done, and plucking up my courage I followed him into the office, brought out the cornet, put the mouthpiece on it, and with all the assurance of a professional musician asked the gentleman what he would like to hear.

“Play one of your own compositions,” said he.

I did. I composed it on the spot and made the most terrible noise that ever issued from a cornet.

The official evidently was not impressed.

“Where’s the invoice for this?” he remarked drily.

I showed it to him--there was no help for it.

“Ah. That’ll cost you so many dollars extra. You’d better get out and do a bit of practice.”

I never had such a take down and I felt I’d made a fool of myself.

When I took the cornet to Mr. Robinson he said, “What a beauty,” but on my telling him of my adventure and what the instrument cost, he nearly fell into a fit.

“My dear Whimmy,” said he laughing heartily, “I could have got the thing cheaper in New York.”

“Jumbo’s” lost half-ton was soon made up. He began speedily to put on flesh again and despite the fact that he had more exercise with the show and less buns than at the Zoological Gardens, he became fat and unwieldy and certainly lazy. All this led to his undoing. Some eighteen months after he became an American citizen he was being removed from one town to another, and during the journey was taken along the railway track to avoid the crowds which were anxious to see him free, gratis and for nothing. He was proceeding along a bend in the line when a big locomotive engine was heard coming behind. The driver did not see the big beast, and “Jumbo,” in total ignorance of his danger, could not be induced to quicken his pace. The attendants did all they could to urge him on, but his indolence had become too strong a habit. The locomotive struck him violently on the side as he was leaving the metals, and he fell down the incline, where he lay till his death, which occurred some few hours after. Nothing could be done as he had received severe internal injuries.

Passing from the very big to the very little I might say a word or two about the Aztecs which Barnum was so anxious to have to add to the attractions of his show. They were an ugly diminutive couple with dark olive skins, gleaming eyes and big hook noses. I dare say some of my older readers may remember them being quite a rage in London and the provinces in the early ’sixties. They were brought from Mexico by one Reaney, who represented them as being the last of their race, and as also having royal blood in their veins. This may have been so, but I have a suspicion that the story was a showman’s fake.

Royal or not, they proved a mine of wealth to their exhibitors, though they hadn’t the slightest spark of interest in themselves personally. They were hardly four feet high and exceedingly slightly built. With their ringletted hair they looked more like dolls or wax figures from a costumier’s window than human beings, and they passed their time in smoking cigarettes and quarrelling in some kind of guttural jargon which no one but themselves understood. They were a most unpleasant looking couple, yet the British public clustered round them--the ladies especially--anxious to shake them by the hand, though their palms were generally moist and dirty and very disagreeable to the touch.

When I was commissioned to take them to America they had lost their celebrity and had fallen very low indeed. After being exhibited in a penny side booth during the last days of the Surrey Gardens, where they were much more interested in their own snarlings than in the gaping visitors, they became the property of a Mrs. Morris, who hired a shop in the New Cut and turned it into a show, and there I found them.

I may be wrong, but to my mind, speaking as one who has passed a good part of his life among shows and showmen, that the taste for freaks and monstrosities once so marked a characteristic of the British sightseer has disappeared. If so, it is hardly to be regretted.

After I finished my season with the Barnum and Bailey “Jumbo” season in America I had saved a few thousand dollars, so I thought I would go in for management in the theatrical business. I decided to produce an English pantomime and made arrangements with Deverna, the finest theatrical property artificer in America. Deverna was marvellous in making, among other achievements, properties of rubber, and he made two tramway horses--all of rubber, so that they could be stretched right across the stage and if you let them go they would return to their proper places. These two cost me a lot of money, but they were worth it. You could knock them off their feet and they would right themselves in the most startling fashion. I rented the Metropolitan Alcazar Theatre, Broadway, New York, from a Mr. Wilson for three months. I engaged a first-class company and gave them three weeks’ rehearsal and set to work to produce the pantomime, the title of which was “The Three Wishes.”

We opened on December 19th, to a big house. The English harlequinade was a novelty to an American audience and I was curious to see how it would go down. Everybody, I suppose, has his own idea of fun, and where one person sees humour another sees nothing to laugh at, so I had to take my chance. The result, however, was a success. _The New York Herald_ was good enough to say of my efforts that they “provoked considerable laughter.” It further observed that “Deverna’s splendid pantomime and ballet, ‘Les Amours de Venus’ by M. Baptistan, were well received. Many of the local scenes were recognised, and the hits at the penal code and the peculiarities of horse car travel drew forth sympathetic applause and hearty laughter.”

I may say in explanation of the “hits” at the penal code that the latter was an extraordinary enactment, which could only have been passed when the legislative authorities were in a temporary condition of imbecility. It laid down all kinds of rules and regulations as to what was proper and improper to do on Sunday, and a more fussy and grandmotherly scheme for interfering with individual liberty was never devised. As the notoriously prudish Comstock was the person appointed to carry out the obnoxious law, it is pretty certain he took a keen delight in pouncing upon offenders and exacting the fine laid down for a breach of the code.

The Americans are certainly an extraordinary people, with their constant craving for excitement, for bigness in everything, for the almighty dollar, and for their extreme sentimentalism. They are perpetually involving themselves in contradictions. At the very moment when some were howling about Sabbatarian morality, others were crazy over cock-fighting! Matches were being got up and fought in hosts of places, not secretly but openly, and reports of the combats were published in the papers without any apology. The incongruity did not occur to me at the time, but it did afterwards, when I myself was interested in the doings of game-cocks, as will be told in the proper place.

So long as you can tickle the curiosity and vanity of the Americans and make them fancy you’re going to show or give them something the rest of the world has never seen or possessed, you’re on the right lines as a showman. Barnum, the prince of the profession, discovered this as early as 1842 when he exhibited General Tom Thumb, and he was always bringing out something fresh and “unique” to the very end of his long career.

He was extraordinarily fertile in finding out new ways of pleasing the American public and incidentally making money. One of his most original notions he worked out while I was with him. He had a captive balloon for flights, in which, of course, he made a charge. How he came to extend this privilege into an extra special one I am unable to say, but New York was one day startled by an announcement that marriages were being “solemnised”--I suppose this is the proper word--daily in the captive balloon!

And this turned out to be the case. Engaged couples were crazy to be married up in a balloon and Barnum was quite ready to oblige them. The balloon carried a clergyman at every trip and united the candidates in the free and easy fashion which the American marriage law approves. Of course, he had his fee and so did Barnum, who charged for the flight a sum which, though high, was eagerly paid by the bridegroom.

What there was so attractive in this absurdity I am unable to say, unless it enabled the couples so wedded to crow over those who had to be contented with a commonplace church or chapel.

To return to the Alcazar pantomime. I of course was clown, and I had splendid support from Charles Christie, pantaloon; J. F. Raymond, harlequin; Thomas Watson, sprite; and Eva French, columbine. I needn’t say there was any number of pretty girls in the ballet.

The run continued through the Christmas holidays to January 3rd, which night I set apart for my benefit. By the irony of fate that night proved to be most disastrous in my career--I lost a fortune in less than five minutes. A tremendous crowd had assembled outside the theatre, and I told my manager to open the doors. The house was crowded to suffocation and just when we were going to begin there was a stampede from the top gallery. It had dropped two feet with the weight of the people. Women and children were shouting and crying--some with arms and legs broken--but, thank God, there were no lives lost.

There was no performance that night, and subsequently the authorities condemned the theatre. The accident had a sequel which was of grave consequence to me. The people who had been injured brought actions against me and they got absolutely everything I had, to the last dollar I had saved for five years, and I was left penniless. There was only one thing to do--return to England--so I borrowed 500 dollars from Mr. Bailey and took boat for Liverpool.

[Illustration: The Royal Windsor Castle Programme]