Mark Dunn - Ibid - A Life

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-Ghos t, became home to Jonathan and Toby when their circus trailer was overrun by field mice. Oronwaggee Public Library Historical Clipping File.

21. It was a long winter.1900 Farmer’s Almanac.

22. The raffle put Jonathan a few dollars closer.Some sources say the raffle raised a little over $60. Other sources put the figure closer to $70. A third source inexplicably converts this amount to yen.

23. The circus troop was never at a loss for entertainment.Performers all, Jonathan’s circus family found imaginative ways to entertain one another during the long, dark nights of their Midwestern winter encampment. (Grund discouraged his performers and roustabouts from venturing into town for their diversions due to the risk of altercations with local rubes.) For many of Jonathan’s colleagues these vaudeville-like romps offered the opportunity to exercise talents that weren’t being tapped by Grund who preferred to pigeonhole his performers by their physical defects and/or bigtop performance skills. A sample “programme,” which I discovered among Jonathan’s papers, follows. Apparently, the boy played the role of mere audience member that night.

The Programme

Flora Dora Galora Our very own Gibsonian delights will entertain you with a high-kicking, toe-tapping musical medley of madcap merriment. This will be followed by a heart-stopping bottle-washing competition.

Lee and Lipner Move aside Weber and Fields! Lee and Lipner are rip-roaringly funny and gay. They throw barbs while folding newspaper into oriental oragami, then engage in a madcap bottle-washing competition.

The Man of 1000 Responses Jinks Nyberg will offer bare-tongued rebuttal and rejoinder to all comers. Then he will do some long division.

Our Pint-sized Sarah Bernhardt Wee Clarissa McGill will play Lady Macbeth as we have never seen her before — only 27 inches tall! Miss McGill will then weave a small bath mat.

Husky Henry Holton delights and confounds with his perorations on the excesses of capitalism while whittling wooden fruit.