following escape from the circus that had been both a
home and a prison to him for much of his young,
brutish life, was captured and rudely delivered into the
hands of his eager top-hatted wardens. As punishment
for the escape, Jonathan was tethered to an elephant
stake and left to dodge the ponderous shuffle of the
restless pachyderms that encircled him. The boy
received little sustenance during this three-day period
including few, if any, sweets. He was whipped and
denied access by local clergymen. A nearsighted
elephant, one Baraboo, mistook young Jonathan’s head
for an oversized peanut and sucked his scalp. The
young man is considering the filing of criminal
charges against the Grund Traveling Circus and Wild
West Show for reckless endangerment. He also seeks to
have his contract with his present employers fully
nullified. It is not clear if the boy has rabies. More than
likely he does not. Illustrations on page 7.
The illustrations on page 7 included one in which Baraboo was being fitted with very large glasses. The caption read, “She’s got the memory of an elephant but the eyesight of Teddy Roosevelt!”
16. “You are compelled to appear.” The full text of Athol Twainy Esq.’s letter of legal notification (October 17, 1900) follows.
To Mr. Thaddeus Grund
And to all other members of the Board
Of the Grund Traveling Circus and Wild West Show:
I have been retained by Jonathan Blashette to act as counsel on his behalf in the matter of Jonathan Blashette v. Thaddeus Grund et. al. in which the party of the first part hereafter prays nullification of the contract binding said youth to the aforementioned circus entity. I set forth herewith the following reasons for termination of his contract:
1. The Grund Circus has violated the aforementioned contractual agreement through base negligence, careless wardship and rampant malicious cruelty, including but not limited to the showcasing of the boy’s anatomical defects in a manner outside the boundaries of proper decorum and respect for the human condition. The boy was additionally chained among elephants, urinated upon (not by the elephants, but by a mischievous passing monkey), belittled, maligned and forced to endure an egregious assault upon his dignity by the owners and management of the Grund Circus.
2. The Grund Traveling Circus and Wild West Show, is, further, a fraud. While it resembles to some degree, a circus, its wild west show component has not been fully operational for some twelve years, and is, at present, made up of two bronzed Irishmen in frayed Indian headbonnets, a three-legged buffalo with some form of bison mange, one Annie Oakey (make note: Oakey, not Oakley) whose markswoman skills generally leave so much to be desired that audience members are forced to duck for cover when she fires at targets and skeets, one Wild Bill Hiccup (a purveyor of patent medicines), and Buffalo Bill Coby who contributes little more to the evening’s entertainment than stumbling about in a drunken stupor, wantonly spewing invective, and scratching his delicates.
The Plaintiff therefore prays release from said contract and swift return of the boy to his parents.
In their answer, Grund’s attorneys made much of the fact that Mr. Twainy was not an attorney, did not possess a law degree, and had never, in fact, even studied the law beyond a passing glance at his cousin Claude’s case books, (such contact often involving little more than the lazy tracing of his index finger around the embossed lettering on their spines), and was obviously preying on the meager financial resources of Jonathan’s mother and father. The attorneys cited the fact that Twainy had only once actually consulted with Jonathan after being retained to represent him, this conversation taking place over the telegraph wires and unfortunately truncated by a misapprehension of the word “Stop.” Furthermore, the attorneys for Grund called Twainy’s own sanity and credibility into question by reminding the court that Twainy had once vouched for the sound mental faculties of Mary Todd Lincoln even as she was discovered wading in a Washington D.C. duck pond wearing a crown of Christmas garland and telling off-color jokes about Secretary Seward; instigated an ill-founded lawsuit against songstress Jenny Lind for shattering and collapsing the north wing of London’s Crystal Palace; and posited in a recent Chatauquan lecture that the likes of the Tilden/Hayes presidential debacle wasn’t anomalous at all, but would, no doubt, occur again, perhaps early in the twenty-first century, with the Republicans again besting the Democrats through wantonly political, extra-constitutional judicial intervention. JBP.
17. For Jonathan, it was a Christmas without much cheer. In the midst of all the legal wrangling, Jonathan received news that his favorite cousin Tibalt Fluck, a chaplain serving with American soldiers fighting the Philippine insurrection, had been wounded in the throat (and following a laryngectomy would only be able to communicate through compelled belches). Jonathan’s worries didn’t stop here. At a time when most boys his age were welcoming puberty with good-natured youthful insouciance, Jonathan was forced to endure bouts with ptomaine poisoning and ringworm, and fallout from the nearly fatal practical joke he and several members of the Clown Corps played on High Wire Harriet. By the time of Emmaline’s visit, Jonathan was dejected and emotionally frayed.
Emmaline writes home to husband Addicus:
Dear Addicus,
Our son is dejected and emotionally frayed. It is both sad and ironic to see him this way. Sad because he has always been such a happy boy, ironic because he is generally surrounded by clowns.
I will be so relieved when this lawsuit is behind us and we have won the boy’s release.
In the meantime I will try to cheer him as best as I can.
Do not forget to repair that hole in the roof of the chicken coop. And don’t eat up all my preserves. And don’t forget to snuff out the candles on the Christmas tree when you retire each evening. We have lost our home once to fire, and I will not have it happen again!
Your wife,
Emmaline
JBL.
18. The fire was quickly contained. Emmaline pretended not to notice the smell upon her return. Addicus, had, after all, patched the hole in the roof to the chicken coop and left all of her preserves untouched.
19. It was Twainy who first introduced Jonathan to the doctor. Dr. Meemo’s claim that he had surgically detached a third leg very similar to Jonathan’s is hard to confirm in the medical literature of the day. The Journal of American Amputation (February, 1892) does report an operation in which Meemo successfully removed an extraneous nipple from equestrian Kip Von Arnsburg in 1897, and another performed apparently with equal success in which Meemo skillfully excised a full tuft of superfluous eyebrow from the wife of an unnamed United States senator. Neither Twainy nor young Jonathan had any reason not to believe that Meemo could remove the extra leg with equal aplomb, and while they waited for the resolution of the lawsuit, Toby launched a fundraising campaign among circus employees to pay for his friend’s surgery.
20. Winter quarters were anything but accommodating. Oronwaggee was originally a shipbuilding center. It flourished for approximately six months in 1877. Situated nearly 150 miles from the nearest navigable waterway, the town’s location quickly became problematic for its numerous ship construction outfits, lured to the area by cheap labor and a surfeit of whores. Upon the completion of each new ship, attempts would be made to transport the vessel overland, each craft ultimately left to die a slow, weather-assaulted death in one of the area’s corn and wheat fields, except for those few upon which salvage rights by local farmers were successfully exercised. One such former “land” ship, the Persian She-Ghost, became home to Jonathan and Toby when their circus trailer was overrun by field mice. Oronwaggee Public Library Historical Clipping File.