At the commencement of this chapter we find the Indians still proceeding with their amusements at the Egyptian Hall, riding out during the day for fresh air and to see the city, and enjoying their roast beef and chickabobboo; the interpreter laid up, as described, and Mr. Rankin labouring to promote, and preparing for, an event that was to give greater notoriety to himself and his party, and ensure more splendid success through the kingdom, as the sequel will show.
My opposition to his views in promoting the marriage of this love-sick pair afforded him the suitable occasion of calling on me one morning and advising me of a course which “he had been, he said, recommended by many of his friends to pursue, which was, that (as he had now heard me lecture on the modes of the Indians until the subject had become sufficiently familiar to him to enable him to give the lectures well enough himself) he could promote his own interest much better by taking the Indians to the provincial towns, meeting all the expenses, and taking all the receipts, instead of sharing with a second person, which his friends thought was a great pity he should any longer do.” He represented that by such a course he could afford to do better by the Indians, and he thought it would be decidedly for the interest of both, and he had resolved to do it. I said to him that it was, to be sure, a resolve which he could easily make, as we were under no other than a verbal agreement, and entirely confidential, so that, if his interest urged it sufficiently strong, there was no doubt that he could do as he pleased, and that, under any circumstances, I should have but one anxiety, and that would be for the welfare of the Indians under his charge. I had so far done all I could to introduce them and him properly. I had added my collection to their exhibition, to give it additional interest. I had devoted my best efforts in lecturing on them and their customs, and had succeeded (after lying still with them for a month in London) in getting for them an audience of the Queen. By these means I had rendered him and them a service, for which I wanted no other return than the assurance that, wherever he went with them, he should take good care of and protect them.
He said he had made up his mind to take them on his own hands in that manner after an exhibition for ten days longer in the Egyptian Hall, when he was to leave London on a tour to the provincial towns; and he wished me to advertise these exhibitions positively to close on a certain day. I then informed him that I should do so, and should freely yield to his proposition to sever in the manner he had proposed, on account of the accomplishment of the marriage, which he had assured me was just at hand, and in the responsibility of which I was determined to take no part. This I told him was an argument sufficiently strong, without further comment, to incline me to meet his proposition without the slightest objection.
I therefore advertised, as he had suggested, that the Indians could only be seen in London that number of days; and from night to night announced the same thing from the platform when giving my lecture; and to the last day, at his request, stated that the Indians were positively to leave London at that time. The next morning after we had made this final close, and I had announced it as such to the audience, advertisements appeared in the papers that “he had rented the adjoining room to Mr. Catlin’s, and on the same floor, for two months—a much finer room, where ladies and others would be much better accommodated; where the lectures in future would be given by Mr. Rankin, himself, who had lived all his life among the Indians.” And in his advertisements, a few days after, he had the imprudence to state that “hereafter the beautiful and interesting bride of the ‘Strong Wind,’ the interpreter, will make her appearance on the platform with the Indians, and preside at the piano.”
This extraordinary advertisement, which of course was after the consummation of the marriage, was inserted in all the London daily journals, and was at once a key to all the absurd and disgusting efforts that had been used to create an excitement on the occasion of the wedding. It had been carefully announced that the wedding was to take place at a certain hour in the day in St. Martin’s church, that ten thousand people might be waiting there for a chance to see the novel spectacle of a beautiful London girl married to an Indian from the wilds of America, and then to trumpet it through the city and through the land where they were going, that the shillings might the more abundantly pour in for a sight of the extraordinary pair that were united in St. Martin’s church in London, and the “beautiful and interesting bride who was to preside at the piano” while the Indians danced.
To make this affair more exciting, and its disgusting humbug more complete, several omnibuses and coaches, drawn by four-in-hand, were employed to convey the “beautiful and interesting bride” and bridegroom, and Mr. Rankin and his attendants, through the streets to and from the church where the ceremony took place. Each of these splendid affairs was decorated with evergreens, ribands, &c.; and on their tops, bands of music playing through the streets, and other attendants, covered with belts and ribands, waving flags of various and brilliant colours. These carriages were directed to be driven through the principal thoroughfares of London, that the excitement and hubbub might be the more complete, and that the greater number of shillings might be turned into the exhibition-room.
The scheme, as a business one, was not without some ingenuity, but, most unluckily for its projector, it did not exactly succeed. There was too much sagacity in the London people and the London press not to detect the object of the scheme, and too much good taste to countenance and patronise it. The result was, and deservedly so, that it was condemned by the press, and the project and its projectors held up to public view in the light that they deserved.
The next day after his advertisement that “the beautiful and interesting bride was to appear and preside at the piano,” he put forth another advertisement, stating that the bride would not appear, as announced the day before, owing to objections raised by some of her friends, &c. These friends were nearly all the press in London, as well as her father and her husband, who had never been consulted on the subject, who were indignant at the step he had taken, and ordered him to countermand his advertisement.
He then commenced his exhibition of the Indians in his new quarters, and under the new auspices, necessarily without the additional attraction of the new and beautiful bride, and also without the aid of his interpreter Cadotte, whom he had turned out of his employment, and to whom he had refused admission to the house to see his fellow Indians or to hold any communication with them. Cadotte was thus driven to his father-in-law’s house, where he took up his residence, and Mr. Rankin proceeded with his exhibitions, himself lecturing on their customs and interpreting their speeches to the audience, and all the various communications of the audiences and the public to them, wherever they went, without knowing five words of their language.
The extraordinary announcement which he had put in the papers of the appearance of the “beautiful and interesting bride upon the platform” had drawn a great crowd together at his first exhibition under the new arrangement, and, from the odd mixture of people it had brought together, begat some very amusing incidents worth recording. On ascending the platform for his first lecture, amidst a room densely packed, chiefly with working men and working women, whose application to their tasks during the day had prevented them from getting a glimpse of the beautiful bride of the “Strong Wind,” and had now handed in their hard-earned shillings, he soon found himself in the midst of difficulties which it would seem that he had not anticipated.