On the Road With a Circus

by William Carter Thompson

“As a matter of fact, I know that R. F. Hamilton, the accomplished director of the Barnum & Bailey press department, has in his possession affidavits from the Forepaugh employees whose duty it was to see that the white elephant never faded, in which they confess their perfidy. A brush and snowy liquid were the only requirements.”

Our circus carries a herd of twenty-five elephants and most of them are trained in all sorts of difficult elephant performances, a task requiring patience and perseverance, and a close and continuous study of the nature of each individual animal. Of all beasts, the elephant is probably the most sagacious. He never forgets. Trainers aver that after a lapse of half a century the elephant will conduct his performance as perfectly as if but twenty-four hours had gone by. Their value to a circus rests not merely upon the attraction of their ring exhibition. Their great strength makes them useful when heavy wagons defy the straining efforts of horses, and they are frequently called into other service which requires unusual power. The application of the broad head gives motion to the most obstinately stationary vehicle, and often extricates the show from annoying plight and delay.

There are two distinct species of elephants. The Asiatic differs from the African, not only in its greater size and in the characteristics of the teeth and skull, but also in the comparative small form of the ears, the pale-brown color of skin and in having four nails on the hind feet instead of three. The intelligence of the former class is greater, too, than that of the African brute, whose head is much shorter, the forehead convex and the ears of great breadth and magnitude, covering nearly a sixth of the entire body.

The average term of an elephant’s life is probably about eighty years, and he is not in possession of full vigor and strength until more than thirty years old. An approximate idea of the age can be gained by the amount of turn-over of the upper edge of the ear. The edge is quite straight until the animal is eight or nine years old; then it begins to turn over. By the time the beast is thirty the edges lap over to the extent of an inch; and between this age and sixty the droop increases to two inches or more. Extravagant ideas are held as to the height of an elephant. Such a thing as an elephant measuring twelve feet at the shoulder does not exist in India or Burmah. An authority on the subject says the largest male he ever met with measured nine feet ten inches, and the tallest female eight feet five inches. The majority of elephants, however, are below eight feet, and an animal rarely reaches nine feet, the female being slightly shorter than the male. The carcass of an elephant seven feet four inches tall, weighed in portions, gave a total weight of thirty-nine hundred pounds; so an elephant weighing two tons should be common enough. The skin was about three-quarters of an inch to one inch thick.

The training of elephants for exhibition purposes is accomplished by a block and tackle and harness, so arranged as to force them into required positions. They learn easily, as compared with the cat family of animals. It is only by the most constant surveillance by the keepers, however, that the elephant is kept in good humor and not tempted to display the ferocity which is one of his natural attributes.

The first elephant ever born in captivity in this country saw the light at the winter quarters of Mr. Bailey’s Show, at the corner of Ridge avenue and Twenty-third street, Philadelphia, on March 10, 1880, at twenty-five minutes to three o’clock in the morning. The event attracted a great deal of attention among scientists and students of natural history. From the time the circus went into winter quarters, several of the most distinguished physicians of the city regularly visited the prospective mother, and the diet and conduct of the animal were studied with great care. Crowds of people flocked to see the baby. Its birth disproved a great many theories which scientific men had accepted as facts of zoology since the days of Pliny. The chief of these were that the period of gestation is twenty months and twenty days, and not from twenty-two to twenty-three months as had been supposed, and that the young does not suckle the mother through the trunk but through the mouth. The baby, whose mother, Hebe, was oftener called “Baby,” weighed one hundred and twenty-six pounds, was thirty inches high and measured thirty-five inches from the tip of the trunk to the crupper. It was of a pale mauve color. The trainer of Hebe explained to the scientists that the other animals in the herd were aware of Hebe’s condition for months and exhibited their form of elephantine courtesy to her. Upon one occasion, he asserted, Hebe was about to fall from a broken pedestal in the ring when the other elephants rushed to the rescue. With their huge bodies they formed a cushion against which she fell, sliding gently to the ground. Whenever Hebe called, the other elephants invariably rushed to her side, and the man who tried to abuse her would have met instant death. So great was the interest aroused in the baby elephant’s birth that Stuart Craven, manager of the circus, received telegrams from all parts of the United States suggesting names for her. One man offered to buy a robe for her if given a name he suggested. A lady wanted the baby called after her. The name Columbia was finally selected. After the birth of her infant, Hebe tossed the little one around like a shuttlecock, and in her frenzy twisted off a large beam with her trunk. It was found necessary to secure her with chains.

ELEPHANTS “WORKING THEIR WAY.”

The next baby elephant came to life at the winter quarters of Barnum’s circus at Bridgeport, Conn., at eight o’clock on the night of February 2, 1882. It was another female, and the mother was Queen, a fifteen-year-old animal. The event was expected, and at six o’clock in the evening indications of its coming were noticed. Queen was carefully chained. After fifteen minutes of laboring the baby was born. Mr. Barnum and others who were summoned did not arrive in time. The baby weighed forty-five pounds, or eighty-one less than Columbia. It was two feet six inches high and three feet long, exclusive of the trunk which was seven inches. It was perfect in form and quite strong. Its color was bluish, and it was covered with shaggy black hair an inch long. An hour after its birth it was sucking. Mr. Barnum offered fifty-two thousand dollars for an insurance on the life of the baby for fifty-two weeks. He was jubilant and said three hundred thousand dollars would be no temptation to sell her. The sire of the baby was Chief.

A woman mastering the leviathans of the animal kingdom was one of the wonders of a circus in 1887. She was Mrs. William Newman, wife of “Elephant Bill,” who had grown up with the circus. She was a matronly looking person, quite stout and pleasant-mannered, devoid withal of the masculine traits that her occupation might seem to require. At her command the elephants, eight in number, marched, wheeled, countermarched, halted promptly and “grounded arms” by lying on their sides. Then, like schoolboys, delighted at a release from what they deemed duty, the huge beasts broke ranks and assumed different postures and occupations about the ring. One of them stood on his head, another turned a grind-stone with his trunk, a third walked on a revolving barrel, and several others respectively engaged, to their own apparent amusement, in dancing on a pedestal, ringing a bell and “clapping hands.” Mrs. Newman gave few public exhibitions, and there has never since been a successful woman elephant trainer. For some reason, they fail in this branch of circus work, whereas in other departments they are fully the equals of the other sex.