Michael Daly [Daly - Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked-Tailed Elephant, P. T. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison

TOPSY

TOPSY

THE STARTLING STORY OF
THE CROOKED-TAILED ELEPHAN T ,
P. T. BARNUM, AND THE AMERICAN WIZARD,
THOMAS EDISON

MICHAEL DALY

Atlantic Monthly Press

New York

Copyright 2013 by Michael Daly

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Jacket design and artwork by Michael Tedesco; Jacket art: poster for
Forepaugh & Sells Brothers combined show and photographs of
P. T. Barnum and Thomas Edison courtesy of the Library of Congress

All insert photos courtesy the Library of Congress, with the following
exceptions: Photo 4.3 (Jumbo has fallen): McCaddon Collection of the
Barnum and Bailey Circus. Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books
nd Special Collections, Princeton University Library. Photo 5.1 (Adam
Forepaugh) and Photo 5.2 (Addie Forepaugh): Billy Rose Theatre Division,
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Astor, Lenox and
Tilden Foundations. Photo 6.2 (The Fearless Frogman): Print Collection,
Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The
New York Public Library; Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9457-2

Atlantic Monthly Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

To the Daly girls: Dinah, Sinead, Bronagh, and, yes, Stella

CONTENTS

: The 200-Pound Baby

: The Elephant

: Barnum

: The Elephantine Expedition

: Ugly

: The War Between the States, the Battle of the Dwarfs

: 4-Paw

: The Fire, the Plowing Elephant, the Panic,
and the Dusky Attendant

: Crooked Tale, Crooked Tail

: The Continued Magic of Kindness and the First
Beauty Contest

: The Wizard

: The White Elephant War

: Ephs Escape, Pickpockets, and Pink Lemonade

: The Tree of Knowledge and the Fearless Frogman

: Another War Begins

: The Executioners Experiments

: The Chair

: Westinghoused

: Reading Your Own Obituary

: The Great Name Vanishes

: Topsy Somersaults; Gold Dust and
Duncan Get a Home

: The Wizards Latest Marvel and So
Many Elephants

: Sid Sorrows, Topsy Traipses

: Topsy and the Tormentor

: From Lady Moody to the Billion-Dollar Smile

: Here I Am! Here I Am! Where Are You?

: The Big Swim

TOPSY

ONE

the 200-pound baby

The 200-pound baby thudded from womb to earth somewhere in an Asian forest on a date historical records list no more precisely than circa 1875. The first sounds she heard would have been the trumpeting and rumbling of the other elephants welcoming her into the world just as they each had been welcomed in their own first moments. She would have begun to learn even as she struggled out of whatever remained of the amniotic sac that she had been born into a uniquely caring society. This societys bonds only began with the mother who had remained standing during the birth and now gingerly stepped back to gaze upon her stirring newborn.

The others would have kept protective watch as the newest arrival awkwardly rose, the mother gently nudging the baby with a foot or giving a little hoist with her trunk, but only if it was needed. The baby would have rolled upright from her side and raised herself first on her forelegs, the two rear legs scrambling in earth wet with the cascade of fluids that had accompanied her arrival. She would have soon been up on all fours, and within minutes of her birth she would have been taking her first wobbly steps, her eyes huge and wide and pink-rimmed. The surrounding grown females would have stood ready to help the mother guide her baby between her forelegs, where she could begin to nurse. The baby would have suckled with her mouth, for it would be some days before she began to control an elephants most distinctive appendage, her trunk, with its one hundred thousand muscles.

Among the myriad possible uses for the mothers trunk was giving her child a dusting of earth, perhaps to protect against biting insects and to dampen the scent that might attract predators hoping to snatch a vulnerable newborn. The whole group would have maintained a sunrise-to-sunrise vigilance against that threat as it waited for the babys postnatal steps to become sure and strong enough for travel. A maternal shadow would have followed the baby as stagger became gambol.

The males in these extended family groups are driven off when they reach adolescence, usually to wander alone, sometimes in small bachelor groups. The other adults would all have been females, and they would have been as gentle as the mother in steering the baby back when she ventured too far, the sensory cells along the length of their trunks helping to gauge a touch that was gentle as well as firm, imparting a caress along with a nudge. These were allomothers, mothers in every way save when the baby sought to feed. There remained but one mother in the fullest sense as the babys connections with the rest of the group branched out and deepened, caress by caress, touches so light as to prove the sensitivity of an elephants skin despite its wrinkled thickness.

The usual wait would have been two days before the most senior female, the matriarch, gave the signal and began to move. The others would have followed, perhaps a dozen or more, any mothers with calves toward the front. The matriarch would have restricted the pace to that of the littlest one. The baby would have been not just with the group, but its immediate and collective priority.

Even so, the baby still would have been expected to walk unassisted through the forest, finding and developing her footing. The only time she would not have been moving on her own power was when the herd had to swim. The mother would then support the baby in front of her with her trunk as the herd moved tirelessly through the water, their buoyancy liberating them from an otherwise unrelenting demand of elephantine existence that the baby was still too small to know: gravitys translation of size to encumbrance. Elephants have been known to swim as long as six hours without touching bottom.

The perfection of their evolved design would have been demonstrated anew as they left the water and again became subject to gravitys pull. Elephants footpads expand under their weight, reducing the depth they sink into wet earth. The footpads then contract as they are raised, breaking the muds suction.

Back on dry land, another marvel of evolution would have made their tread appear to be considerably lighter than that of much smaller animals. The skeletal structure of their feet is angled in a way that has been compared to a platform shoe, so they walk on their toes, the weight spreading evenly toward the heel on a cushioning pad of fatty tissue. The pad is similar to the seismic tissue that whales and dolphins use to detect and receive sound waves in the sea and may enable elephants to detect vibrations in the ground. The footpads as well as the trunks contain Pacinian corpuscles, liquid capsules surrounded by layers of tissue and gel and containing nerve endings so sensitive to pressure as to enable these biggest of land beasts to detect the faintest of stirrings. This and similarly acute senses of hearing and smell compensate for relatively weak eyesight to such a degree that blind matriarchs have been said to lead a group successfully.