We left him to his performance and Mr. Dode to see to the horse’s needs. I followed my friend across a wide porch and into the hotel lobby, where seven guests were sitting in chairs upholstered in buffalo hide, their heads buried in newspapers, turned in conversation, or fallen onto slowly rising and falling breasts in sleep. You could’ve mistaken them for an accidental congress of drummers and other travelers who are ubiquitous in hotel lobbies or the privileged residents at a sanitarium, in various stages of senility and physical collapse.
Margaret greeted them in general and then introduced me to each one.
“I’d like you to be acquainted with my friend Ellen Finch. You may call her—”
She looked at me for approval, and I said, “Please do call me ‘Ellen.’”
They put down their papers and turned their heads toward me, while those who had been asleep were nudged into wakefulness. More than polite, the smile they shed on me conveyed welcome and acceptance—not because of anything I’d done to deserve it but because their trust in Margaret was unquestioning. They regarded her with respect and—I could see it in their faces—affection.
“Ellen, please say hello to Miss Etta, the contortionist.”
“I am happy to meet you, Miss Etta.”
She acknowledged our new acquaintance by tying herself into a knot, shocking in its revelations, which none of the others appeared to notice.
“Mrs. Stoner, snake charmer.”
I waited nervously for her to produce her stock-in-trade, but she apologized. The hotel did not allow reptiles. Of all the eccentrics there, she was the dullest. Her charms, I supposed, were dispensed solely for the pleasure of the snake, whose name was Napoléon.
Margaret worked her way around the room, and I became acquainted with Mr. Matchett and Mr. Engelbrecht, scientific fencers; Mr. George Bliss, leaper; Miss Watson, chariot driver at the Hippodrome; and Miss Mattie Elliott, grotesque dancer, who was also renowned for her high kicks.
“Ellen is curious about us,” said Margaret.
I felt myself blush and looked at the faces ranged before me for any sign of resentment.
“She is not, however, the least patronizing or malicious. Her curiosity is only that which one human being feels about another. I invited her here—she did not ask to be brought—to see for herself what sort of people we are when we are being just ourselves.” She turned to me and asked, “Ellen, do you have any questions for my friends?”
It was a dreadful moment. To say the wrong thing would be devastating, to say nothing rude.
“Miss Watson.”
“What would you like to know, my dear?”
“Aren’t you scared of driving a chariot? I have an appreciation for the dangers after reading Mr. Wallace’s novel Ben-Hur.”
It was a stupid remark, especially since I had not read the book, but only the reviews. The Century criticized it as an “anachronism,” and The Atlantic as “too lavish.”
She smiled tolerantly. “Terrified! If it weren’t for the frisson, I would stay at home and knit.”
Several of her colleagues laughed—at me, I expect. Their amusement was not spiteful.
“Miss Etta, how is it that you are able to fold up like a—” An apt comparison eluded me.
Miss Etta was kind enough to complete the simile. “Portmanteau.”
I nodded in the affirmative. Frankly, I didn’t care how the trick was done. Whatever I’d hoped to learn by visiting Barnum’s Hotel, this was not it.
“My bones are vulcanized,” she said in a confidential tone, as if to conceal her secret from the rest of the eccentrics.
“She is an enterologist,” intoned Margaret with a deference that, though sincere, I thought comical.
“I’m not familiar with the word.”
“Mine is a very artistic profession!” exclaimed Miss Etta. “Mr. Barnum says so.” I could see that she was pleased with herself. “Allow me to demonstrate.”
She glanced at the lobby until her gaze fell on a rosewood cabinet on which a cut-glass vase of nasturtiums sat. I’d guess that the cabinet was about the same height as Tom Thumb at his tallest. Having opened its door, she packed herself inside it. “Peekaboo!” she called from between her thighs, and then she stuck out her tongue. The sight produced a disagreeable effect in me. I felt the blood leave my face as the room began to spin.
“Ellen, are you all right?” asked Margaret, helping me to a sofa.
“Forgive me, my corset is too tight,” I replied untruthfully. “That and the heat quite overcame me.”
She sat beside me and held my thumb until I felt it begin to numb. Her childlike frame was engulfed by the sofa; her short legs, clad in a striped skirt, were barely able to fold over the edge of the seat. Yet she behaved perfectly, as though not the least incommoded by the oversized world. “You went white as a ghost,” she said solicitously.
“I’m sorry to be such a bother,” I replied, my shamefaced glance taking in Margaret and each of her fellow artistes.
They made noises of concern, which I knew to be genuine.
“Seeing my act for the first time can come as a shock,” said Miss Etta after she had unpacked herself from the cabinet.
“Not at all. I was thrilled!” The truth is that the act had affected me queerly, as if I had happened on something altogether too grotesque for words.
“To put the color back in your cheeks” with a demonstration of scientific fencing, Mr. Matchett and Mr. Engelbrecht each offered me an arm and escorted me onto the porch. I sat in a rocking chair as they produced rapiers—seemingly out of thin air. (It was often so in those days that things came and went without explanation.)
“We have added an enhancement to our performance to edify the public, as well as to entertain it,” remarked Mr. Matchett smugly.
“A classical enhancement!” put in Mr. Engelbrecht, who clearly resented his partner’s superior attitude. A livid scar and a missing earlobe hinted that their tempers were not ideally suited to a combative profession.
With astonishing rapidity, Mr. Engelbrecht assumed the character (and strange to say, the costume) of Mercutio; in a trice, Mr. Matchett had transformed himself into Tybalt. (Mr. James once treated me to a performance of the “lamentable tragedy” at the Booth’s Theatre in Manhattan, with Edwin Booth in the role of Romeo.)
“We salt our swordplay with Shakespeare for the hightoned crowd,” simpered Matchett.
“Edwin Booth praised my fencing!” crowed Engelbrecht.
“Henry Irving said of my performance, ‘I could not have been more staggered by Mr. Matchett’s Tybalt had I been hit over the head with a sledgehammer such as is used to dispatch oxen.’”
Face-à-face, the pair of scientific fencers began to hurl Shakespearean insults.
ENGELBRECHT-MERCUTIO: Tybalt, you ratcatcher, will you walk?
MATCHETT-TYBALT: What wouldst thou have with me?
MERCUTIO: Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives. That I mean to make bold withal, and, as you shall use me hereafter, dry-beat the rest of the eight. Will you pluck your sword out of his pilcher by the ears? Make haste, lest mine be about your ears ere it be out.
TYBALT: I am for you.
They drew their swords and waggled them at each other.
MERCUTIO: