Mark Dunn - Ibid - A Life

So enamored was Jonathan of the jocular and gregarious Toby, Grund notes, that the circus impresario would often find Jonathan even during those first budding days of friendship with Toby, happily combing the adolescent’s furry arms and shoulders, or clandestinely munching bunches of pilfered bananas with Toby under the bleachers during big top performances. According to Grund, the two boys quickly became inseparable.

It speaks to the durability of this friendship that many years later Jonathan would bear the cost of maintaining Toby in a private room at the sanitarium where he was to spend his final declining years. Having advanced in hirsute florescence from monkey fur to a full body coat of hoary-white shag, Toby convinced himself that if he wasn’t the Abominable Snowman, he must at least be a very close relative.

7. “ I think she likes me.”Young Jonathan misinterpreted the wink. Little “Annette of the Skies” was victim to periodic blepharospasm, or spasmodic winking. Jonathan later suspected his error after catching the prepubescent trapeze wonder winking at a draft horse. Joseph Alksnis-Lochrie, “Childhood Under the Big Top,” Calliope: The Magazine of the Circus 12 (fall 1957): 37–38.

8. One by one the sideshow performers came around.No one seems to agree on who next extended hand (hoof or flipper) in friendship to Jonathan. Alksnis-Lochrie insists that it was Needleman, the Human Pin Cushion, who reportedly showed up at Jonathan and Toby’s trailer door one night with a freshly baked chess pie and a set of darning needles for “postprandial amusement.” Jacques Le Pelletier in his book on the history of the side show Hawking and Gawking (Philadelphia: Moyamensing Books, 1972) believes that Penny Pullman first broke the ice, much to the displeasure of her less sociable conjoined sister Patsy who was in the midst of a sponge bath when Penny dragged her off to Jonathan’s trailer for a “hey and a howdy.” According to Le Pelletier, Patsy never forgave her sister for this indignity and extended her grudge to Jonathan, nursing it for the duration of his tenure with the circus. Intending to boycott his farewell dinner, she arrived under obvious physical duress (The sisters were united at the hip.) and protested this act of effrontery by spending the entire evening hidden from view beneath a saddle blanket, except for a brief moment when she poked her head out, turtle-like, to join in a toast to the health of President McKinley.

9. Mickey and Benny and Doob represented Grund’s very own “Lollypop Guild.”Doob Maxfield enjoyed a few moments of fame several years later when he volunteered, along with other Grund Circus dwarfs, to participate in Dr. Harvey Cushing’s ground-breaking pituitary gland research project. His poem, “To Good Doctor Cushing,” was published in Tiny Writings by Tiny People (Boston: Really Little, Brown and Company) and was well received:

Will you, doctor, make me tall?

I so tire of being small.

That is all.

10. His schedule was grueling.Jonathan’s Diary, 2 October1900, JBP.

11. “ I am forever called upon to display myself.”Ibid., 4 October1900. Among the more bizarre requests Jonathan received from sideshow audiences dubious of the true corporal nature of his third leg, are the following.

“Take off that shoe. Now wriggle the toes. Take off the other shoes. Now wriggle all the toes at the same time.”

“Hop around the room like a bunny. Like a three-legged funny bunny.”

“My little Margaret wants to sit on your knee. Don’t be a wisenheimer; you know which knee.”

“That ain’t a real leg. I’m bored with this humbug. Bring out the girl who eats things on a dare.”

12. “ I am demoralized.”Ibid., 7 October1900.

13. “I have decided to escape.”Ibid., 8 October1900.

14. “My escape has been foiled. I was snared and returned to my captors.”Ibid., 10 October1900.

15. Jonathan was placed under lock and key.As ghoulish as it may sound, there does seem to be substantial evidence that Jonathan was kept chained outside his trailer between performances for a period of several days following his return. This story is corroborated by a number of sources. However, one wildly erroneous contemporaneous account in the De Leaux Falls Courier would lead one to believe that Jonathan suffered a great deal more than credible sources indicate.

Escaped, Potentially Hydrophobic Circus Freak Boy

Captured, Chained, and Denied Sweets

Some Children Dream of Running Away to the Circus;

This Child Dreamed of Running Away from the Circus.

“They tossed him onto the wagon like

a sack of flour,” reports eyewitness Vitula Hart

who watched the capture from the window

of her dentist’s office.

“The boy should never have been so

roughly handled but it is always prudent to deny

children sweets,” opined the dentist.

De Leaux, Louisiana October 10, 1900Today this

newspaper learned of the unfortunate condition of

one twelve-year-old Jonathan Blahshit [sic] who,

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.