Ross Gilfillan - The Snake-Oil Dickens Man

‘I have to talk to you about last night,’ I began.

‘Billy, I just larned that the lady I entertained is your mother. Well, I was real shocked but I congratulate you upon having such a paragon for your guide in life. She is the very model of modern womanhood and she did me an unspeakable honour.’

He put an arm about my shoulder and said: ‘I’m sure you understand. Why, we’re men of the world. These things happen, as we know. Life goes on and today life is looking very bright indeed. Can I count on you to help, Billy?’

Looking back, I think I might have acted in a way that would have better preserved the dignities of both my mother and myself. But even had I the necessary resolution, the revolver I had bought solely as an accessory of fashion wasn’t over-choosy about its targets and I would most probably have hurt myself.

But it was hard not to be caught up in the excitement; impossible not to acknowledge the curiously friendly folk who had already accosted me with all manner of inquiry and entreaties for tickets. Rather than knocking him down or waving a gun in his direction I soon found myself up a ladder, with Wilkes up another as we tied a hastily-painted banner across a narrowing of the main street.

Then I was posting bills in shop windows, gossiping with traders and customers and relishing the celebrity and status my connection with Barnum had apparently brought me. To be the centre of anybody’s attention was a profoundly novel sensation. As I swaggered along Main Street, it seemed that every eye was upon me and every tongue forming my name.

All morning more people arrived. Wilkes had seen to it that the telegrapher was kept busy informing surrounding towns and rail stops that Barnum was here tonight. Already buggies, coaches and wagons were streaming in, horses were tethered all along the streets and long lines of people stood before the makeshift ticket office that Wilkes had arranged outside the Mayor’s office.

I watched as D’Orleans took their money and issued his tickets. When his customers had made their purchase they went back to milling about the town, wasting time looking at this and that, walking in and out of the stores and saloons, taking up good vantages on the plaza or just sitting on the sidewalk, shooting competing streams of tobacco juice into the dirt and reading the special issues of the Bugle that Amory had spent all night printing as soon as he knew what was afoot.

D’Orleans dealt his red and yellow tickets like cards from a deck but as fast as he could reduce one line, another had grown. From time to time he would stop and mount the table he had made from a couple of planks upon barrels, survey the crowd with concern and announce in a voice that carried to the ends of both lines, ‘Mr Barnum appreciates your interest, folks, he surely does, but there is only a limited number of seats available for tonight’s show. I must therefore prevail upon you to show forbearance and limit your purchases to six tickets per individual. Six tickets only, PLEASE!’

But that just got the crowd more agitated and more mothers with children attached, more farmers and merchants and drunkards and idlers pushed into the growing lines. When this was at its height, D’Orleans signalled me over to him and implored me to relieve him a while, while he attended to important business. It was maybe two hours before I saw him again, by which time I had significantly reduced the supply of tickets which were bundled in the carpet bag into which I put the takings. I had also had the enormous pleasure of being able to hand four of the coveted red tickets to Cissy Bullock. What would she make of me now, I wondered, as she floated back to her carriage?

It was hot and uncomfortable work, unrelieved by the warm breeze that had got up and gained in strength, flapping the big banner and sending hats skittering about the street and causing wise commentators to remark that Barnum had better have brought strong stakes, if he wanted to keep his tents. There was some local superstition about this zephyr, that it only came when things were on the change or something awful was about to happen to the town. But when I had spoken of this to Elijah, he only snorted his contempt and said that was all a fallacy.

But just as the wind seemed ready to snatch the tickets from my hands and my eyes were red-raw from the grit that had blown in upon them, D’Orleans reappeared. He told the remaining crowd there would be plenty more for everyone the next day and me to get on back to the hotel, where I was wanted by Merriweather.

III

But it was Elijah, and not Merriweather who had been ringing my attendance and it was with some irritation that I mounted the stairs after a fruitless search for the book I had taken with me last night, into the saloon. I passed Merriweather in the lobby but he was busy instructing the carpenter, regarding the special arrangements for accommodating General Thumb.

I had only lately come to regard my daily visits to Elijah as blessed periods of respite from the mundane routines of hotel life and times at which I might exercise faculties that went untested anywhere else in this no-hope place. This afternoon was different and I was loathe to leave the scenes of so much unprecedented excitement and had half a mind to ignore the summons, borrow a horse and gallop back into town. The other half acknowledged that it had been a long morning and that I had worked to exhaustion. Also, the effects of the whisky that so much novelty had distracted me from suffering, were now making themselves known. An hour or two with Elijah might be sufficient for me to recuperate before I returned in time to witness the arrival in town of the Greatest Show on Earth. Elijah recognised the condition I was in the second I began to make my apologies. I fumbled with the glass cover of the oil lamp and somehow caught it just before it hit the floorboards.

‘This is too bad,’ he said as he gazed vacantly through my presence. ‘It’s a poor enough show that you don’t attend me because of some flimflam men and their circus and that I have sat here the livelong day with nothing to occupy me but my memories. But that you lost your Great Expectations whilst in your cups is beyond crediting. Well, Pip and Estella will have to remain at what they are about until we can get another copy.’

He sighed over the manifold follies of youth, mine in particular. His brow furrowed as he cogitated upon something before he leaned towards me, upon his stick and said: ‘Billy, there is something I must talk to you about. It’s a very important matter and I must be sure that I explain it and you understand it properly. I had thought to lay the matter before you today but it’s clear that you’re too tired from your gallivanting and addle-headed from whisky.’

And so I had been an instant before but now that Elijah had confirmed my suspicion of the other evening, that something of significance was to be revealed to me, I felt as alive as electricity and burned with curiosity.

‘Pardon me, Mr Putnam, but you’re mistaken. I never felt better,’ I said. ‘Please tell me all now.’

But Elijah was adamant. ‘Tomorrow will be better,’ he said. ‘I shall expect you at sundown. We will take a walk. In the meantime and in lieu of our readings, perhaps you will be so good as to take down a little more of my memoir?’

I moved a lamp to a small table and opened the bound ledger in which was written already so much of Elijah’s story, the place at which his angular hand was replaced by my own slapdash loops denoting that at which he had owned to himself that he was certainly going blind.

He said, ‘Remind me of where we left off last time.’

‘You had been in London some three months and had visited with the lawyer, from whom you collected your inheritance. The sum was much smaller than you had expected but Mr Bulstrode had been good enough to help you invest it in the hope of great return. We had just completed a passage in which Mr Bulstrode announced that he had secured an introduction to Mr Chalmondely-Palmer, agent for the Bombay Spice and Silk Company.’