THE DANCING TURKEY
In the States Papers office in London is a “propper ballad” entitled a “Sommons to New England,” which was written about 1680. It alluringly recites natural conditions in the colonies. One verse runs thus:
“There flights of foules doe cloud the light,
Of turkies three score pound in weight
As bigg as ostridges.”
All the early travellers in America confirm the vast weight of these wild turkeys—Josselyn said sixty pounds. The turkey has not grown larger by domestication, the wild birds are still finer and more beautiful than the tame ones. All foreign epicures agree that American turkeys are the best in the world. In America we make fine distinctions, even in American turkeys; tastes differ with localities. In some northern States no turkey is perfect unless stuffed with chestnuts—that is, as food. In Louisiana he is gorged with pecan-nuts. In South Carolina raw rice is your only prime turkey-food. In Virginia wild persimmons give the turkey a tang that gilds refined gold. The President of the United States, whoever he may be, feasts every Thanksgiving Day on a Narragansett turkey fattened on Narragansett grasshoppers—and I approve the President’s taste.
These Presidential turkeys, though great and fat, are not “as bigg as ostridges;” but a Narragansett turkey with whom I was acquainted—as Rosa Bonheur would say—fairly rivalled his ancestors of colonial days.
His name was Launcelot Gobbo; he was born, or rather hatched, on a Narragansett farm. He was the joint property of Bill and Ralph Prime, two farmer’s sons, fourteen and fifteen years of age, who, according to the good old fashion in the Prime family, were given each year some portion of the farm stock—a cosset lamb, a brood of chickens, a pig, a cote of pigeons—to rear and sell, or keep as their very own. This year their share of the farm-products was Launcelot Gobbo and his mate. His name was given him by the village school-teacher, a young college student who chanced to come frequently to call on the boy’s sister, Mary Prime. Gobbo was chosen as their handsel because he was such a mammoth turkey-chick, a nine-days’-old wonder; and by tender cherishing he had fulfilled the great promise of his youth.
This great size had been aided by careful feeding, on a composite diet, of Narragansett fashion, extended by Oriental suggestion. His first food was such as all well-reared Narragansett turkeys have, milk curdled with rennet, by which the gasps and stomach-ache so fatal to turkey infancy were avoided. Then came the natural food-supply of grasshoppers and Rhode Island whole corn. The Prime boys had few books to read; among them were several dry and colorless memoirs of sainted missionaries to the East. There was one nutritious kernel, however, in one of these rustling husks of books; it was an account of the preparation of locusts as food, the roasting, frying, and drying them for grinding them into meal. Bill Prime was an inventive genius, a true Yankee, ever ready to take a hint; moreover, he was animated by sincere affection for his pet, and pride in his size; and as he read the meagre missionary accounts he conceived the notion of supplying Gobbo with his dearly loved grasshoppers after autumnal winds had chilled and cleared the fields of vegetable and insect life.
It was not as easy a task to catch and dry these American grasshoppers as Oriental locusts, but love laughs at limitations; just as Gobbo laughed when his daily dole of grasshoppers was dealt out to him on chill October and November mornings, with the Tallman sweetings that formed his dessert. “Laugh and grow fat” is the old saying; and as Gobbo laughed he also grew fat, and he waxed taller and taller. Ralph thought Gobbo weighed thirty pounds; Bill set the weight at least five pounds higher. As the turkey was full and rich of feather he looked to me twice as large as any other I had ever seen; really big enough to reach the seventeenth-century standard of “three score pound in weight.”
But Gobbo had other claims to consideration besides his size or his distinguished name; he was an accomplished turkey—a trick-performer. Like Shakespeare’s famous Gobbo for whom he was named, he “used his heels at his master’s commands.” When Bill struck the ground near him with a stick and called out “Dance, Gobbo, dance for the ladies,” and set up a shrill fife-like whistle, Gobbo spread his great fan-like tail, and nodded and bowed his head, and circled and hopped around in exact time with the rapping of the stick, in the most pompous, ridiculous, mirth-provoking caricature of a dance that ever was footed or clawed. He posed before the whole town as a show-bird. Stolid Narragansett farmers and fishermen for miles around came to see him, and roared aloud at his dancing, which he had to exhibit every day in the week. Even on Sunday, at the nooning, Bill proudly but secretly led the neighbors’ boys home to the farm and behind the barn; though the deacon sternly frowned on a Sunday dance, even by a turkey who had no soul to be saved.
It was the second week of November; Gobbo was still growing and still dancing, when one day a gayly painted vehicle with a smart horse came dashing into town. The wagon had an enclosed box behind the chaise front. It might be taken for a peddler’s cart or a patent-medicine coach, but it was neither; it was the collecting-van of a Boston “antique-man.” Persuasive, smiling, flattering, peering into every kitchen, cupboard, and dresser, in every parlor closet, in every bedroom and gabled attic, he gathered in his lucrative autumnal harvest of brass andirons and candlesticks, of old blue dishes and copper lustre pitchers, of harp-back chairs and spinning-wheels. He débonnairly purchased two pewter porringers, a sampler, and an old mirror of Mrs. Prime, while he effusively praised the farm and the cattle. And as he partook of the apples and cider generously set before him, he shouted with laughter at Gobbo, who proudly danced for him again and again. As the early twilight began to lower, the “antique-man” called out a cheerful good-night and drove away. Gobbo also stalked off—and forever—from the Prime door-yard, for in the morning he had vanished from the farm as completely as if he had evaporated.
How the boys stormed and mourned! how fiercely they descended on the “colored” Johnsons, more than suspected in the past of chicken-stealing! how they hunted the woods and meadows! how they fretted and fumed!—but to no avail. To check their worry and anger, their mother sent them off to Boston to spend Thanksgiving week with their married sister.
With the sea-loving curiosity of all boys, they haunted the wharves and lower portions of the city, and on the day before Thanksgiving, as they wandered up from the docks through a crowded and noisy street, they joined a little group gathered around the show-window of a “dime musee,” for in the window stood as a lure, a promise of treasures and wonders within, an enormous turkey, penned in a wire coop, drooping of feather, and listlessly feeding.
“He isn’t nearly as big as Gobbo,” said Bill, contemptuously. “Not much,” answered Ralph; but even as they spoke there gathered in their questioning brains, in their eager eyes, a conviction which burst forth from their lips: “It is Gobbo!”
Now they were Yankee boys, slow but shrewd, and they knew every feather of the wings, every fold of the comb and wattle of their pet; but each paid his dime and entered the museum to be sure. Past the voluble showman, the wax figures, the stuffed animals, they silently strolled to the window. No one else stood near within doors. “Dance, Gobbo, dance for the ladies!” cried Bill, excitedly, striking the floor with his cane, and his heart beat high. Oh! how the crowd outside on the street laughed as Gobbo spread his tail and danced “most high and disposedly,” as the French ambassador said of Queen Elizabeth in the gavotte.
A great printed card hung over Gobbo’s pen; he was to be raffled that very night. Made suspicious by fraud, the boys scarcely dared leave the hall even for food, but with the instinctive good sense of many of country birth, Bill interviewed a friendly policeman on the beat, and another policeman appeared at the raffling at eight o’clock and sat near the Prime boys on the front row of seats in the hall.
At the appointed hour a noisy but not disorderly crowd had gathered. The master of ceremonies removed the wire netting from around Gobbo, who was still feeding and still fattening. The showman entreated silence, and in a reasonable stillness began: “Gentlemen, this magnificent turkey, the biggest ever known in the civilized world, the feathered monarch of the ornithological world, will—” when a shrill whistle pierced the air, and “Dance, Gobbo, dance for the ladies!” was roared out. The turkey reared his long neck and head like a snake, and with a piercing gobble literally flew from the platform to his friend Bill, with a force that almost stunned the boy. The showman advanced: “What does this mean?” he shouted. “Don’t you touch him,” screamed Bill, and “Don’t you touch him,” confirmed with emphasis the policeman, while Ralph explained to the inquisitive and sympathizing ’longshoremen and sailors who crowded around him, how the turkey had been lost and found; not without some bitter aspersions on the character of the antique-man.
An adjourned meeting was held at the police-station the following morning, when the Prime boys testified and Gobbo danced, and a gay session it was in those dingy rooms; and the showman with a sham good-humor resigned his claims to what had proved to him a very lucrative drawing-card.
There ought to be a romantic ending to this tale of a lost love; but every turkey has his day, and this was Gobbo’s. He was too big to keep in a city yard, and too big to take home in the cars; thus did his greatness, as did Cardinal Wolsey’s, prove his destruction. Even his accomplishments were a snare; for when it was known he could dance, his talent could not be hidden under a bushel in obscure country-life. He had ever been destined for a city market, and soon again he graced a window, this time of a great city poulterer; and on the eve of Thanksgiving he was again raffled—the second time, alas! with hanging wings, and plucked sides, and drooping head.