FAREWELL
Mabel Barnes had first clicked through the turnstiles at the Pan-American gates at the very end of April. The grounds had been muddy then, the piles of lumber hard to navigate. She found exhibits closed, gardens bare, and pedestals still waiting for statues. Now, thirty-three visits later, on a cool, sharp-edged November day, she had come full circle. The city she had loved was on the verge of disappearing. She wandered by boxes, barrels, and overturned dirt. One building, the stately New England exhibit, had been gutted by a fire, and workmen with crowbars and axes wrenched apart its porch. Others, like the sixteen buildings in Bostock’s show, had been auctioned off two days earlier. Esau’s quarters and Chiquita’s living and reception rooms, along with animal skins—from lions, tigers, panthers, leopards, and jaguars—had been sold.
The schoolteacher entered the fair alone that final day, joining 125,000 others on the grounds. She walked to the New York State Building, where, four months earlier, she had waited on tables at a reception for fellow teachers. She took a last look at the Esplanade and the Court of Fountains. Abby Hale then met her, and together they said good-bye to the big exhibition buildings. As usual, the women saved the Midway for last. They wanted to see one final show—the one that had enthralled them more than any other: Darkest Africa. But it was too late. The stockade surrounded a deserted encampment. “To our disappointment,” Mabel said, “we found [it] empty and forlorn.”
They went back to the Electric Tower and “feasted [their] eyes on the beauty of it.” They tried more buildings and found more of them locked.
As the two women toured the grounds that afternoon, they would have noticed crowds clustering around special visitors. Carrie Nation was said to have been there. Audiences loved showing how much they hated Mrs. Nation, with her loud opinions and saloon-smashing attacks against the devil, alcohol. The six-foot-tall temperance reformer, who spent much of her outspoken life in handcuffs, would have met plenty of enemies at the Pan-American. Two months earlier, while lecturing at Coney Island, Nation had fixed her fierce opinions on President McKinley, who at the time lay injured in Buffalo. She said publicly that she was “glad” he had been assaulted. “The President was a friend of the rumsellers and the brewers,” she declared, “and therefore did not deserve to live.” When the New York audience hissed at her, she told them they were “hell hounds and sots.”10
Abby Hale and Mabel Barnes had no time for the likes of Mrs. Nation. They also skirted another celebrity. Holding court on the West Esplanade bandstand, with her big oak barrel, a black cat, and Captain Billy Johnson, was Annie Taylor.
All her work over the previous weeks—the attention, money anxieties, and most of all the most frightening ride of her life—had brought Taylor to this triumphant moment. Resplendent in a blue jacket, and showcased next to Iagara, the cat that allegedly had preceded her over the falls, Taylor began greeting people around noon. She took particular time with children and those “who displayed enthusiasm above the average.” She also tried to make it clear she was not putting on an act at the Exposition, like Midway performers. She was, for the sake of $200, “receiving” visitors.
And what a reception it was. Around and behind her, a line snaked with curious and admiring (and paying) guests. Thousands of people of all sorts—“a continuous stream of humanity”—had come to meet her. Exposition guards, reported a witness, “had their hands full preventing crushes.”
Observers said she showed signs of her ordeal. Her nose was red, and she looked ill. She didn’t want to shake hands—her doctor, she said, advised against it. And she admitted that she ached. “I am very much bruised as the result of my trip,” she said to a reporter. “The muscles of my back, between the shoulders, are particularly sore.” She couldn’t stand the cold, either, and had to stop and warm herself now and then inside the Temple of Music. All in all, one reporter commented, Mrs. Taylor seemed rather the worse for wear. He also thought she had not aged particularly well. “Mrs. Taylor looks fully the 43 years that she admits,” he commented.
Annie Taylor had won her first battle—she had subjugated Niagara Falls just as surely as the rich men who had diverted its water for modern technology. But she was struggling in her second battle—her fight for dignity. She had received plenty of compliments, to be sure. “All who have met and talked with her agree upon two points,” said the influential Buffalo Express. “She is certainly the best-educated and most refined appearing person who has ever attempted a feat of daring at Niagara. And she is (or was before her violent experience) the calmest, most self-possessed of all the great multitude of adventurers commonly classed as Niagara Falls cranks.” The Express also described her as “modest and sensitive.” Other papers called her the bravest woman in the world and suggested that she had put to shame other male Niagara daredevils, like Carlisle Graham. One columnist also pointed out that, given as she was driven to desperation, she chose a more honorable route than suicide. She had simply sought a “competency for the remainder of her days.”
Still, there were plenty of people who maintained that Mrs. Taylor’s barrel ride revealed nothing more than dumb luck and cheap showmanship. “The net results of the hazardous trip,” wrote the Grand Rapids Herald, “is that Mrs. Taylor has acquired a little notoriety, which she can capitalize to the extent of becoming a dime store freak.” Other newspapers called her “reckless and selfish” and ridiculed her audiences. “The country is filled with people who are just morbid enough to crave a look at her,” remarked one paper.
As the general public debated Taylor’s character and judgment, the distinguished women of Buffalo seemed to ignore the adventurer. They spent the final days of the fair in the elegant confines of the Women’s Building, enjoying last luncheons, toasting each other with crystal, and nodding and smiling over bouquets of pink cosmos.11
As dusk approached on Farewell Day, Mabel Barnes and Abby Hale ate a picnic and walked together toward the Triumphal Bridge. The November sky, cold and luminous, performed its own send-off at sunset, and then, at a little after 6 p.m., the Illumination took over. Every band on the grounds struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The women could not get enough of the scene. “We looked and looked and looked,” said Mabel. The schoolteacher rarely repeated herself, so it must have been a powerful moment. They wanted to stay until midnight, when John Milburn would throw his extinguishing switch. But Mabel knew what the end of a fair usually brought with it, and already she could see signs of destruction, as rambunctious visitors began to rip up flower beds. Not willing to get caught in the mayhem, and perhaps not willing to see the ruination of everything she had admired, Mabel went with Abby through the Midway one final time. Then they left.
The women knew what they were doing. Even before they walked out, scavengers began raiding buildings for food and tore away signs and banners and decorations. In the Illinois display, said one witness, crowds swept the guard “aside like a fly” and men held him down while they stripped the apple exhibit of every piece of fruit. In the chrysanthemum exhibit, “souvenir fiends” took every flower.
For those who could concentrate on it, the fireworks show proved stupendous. At 8 p.m., on Park Lake, the reliable James Pain sent up a sky-full of meteors and let loose a shower of exploding stars, rockets, and shells. He lit up a portrait of John Milburn and re-created the bombardment of San Juan. At the very last, he sent up a poignant set of illuminated words: FAREWELL TO THE BEAUTIFUL CITY OF LIGHT.12
The final tribute to the fair, delivered at 11:30 p.m. in the rotunda of the Temple of Music, was, according to at least one listener, “a funeral oration.” The mourners, huddled against the evening cold, included Latin American representatives, state commissioners, and all the fair’s backers and planners.
Mayor Conrad Diehl spoke first. He accepted the gift of the Temple of Music organ—one of the few valuable souvenirs the city would retain—from Buffalo’s James Noble Adam. He then turned over the podium to the man, once his political adv
ersary, who had since become his trouble-tested colleague: President John Milburn. “We started out,” Milburn said to the group, to “begin the 20th century by a binding of the relations of the free peoples of North, Central, and South America. . . .” This, he said breezily, had been accomplished, and he thanked the Latin American emissaries. And this land, he went on, gesturing at the grounds, “was once a plain and a scheme.” But it had become “one of the most beautiful scenes that the human eye ever has looked upon.” He thanked the people who built the fair.
Then he entered rockier terrain. “The exposition,” he announced, “has been a great success.” Was there a collective intake of breath? Milburn knew insolvency was on everyone’s mind, but he refused to give in. He would not use the word failure. “If it has been a financial unsuccess,” he said, “it has been worthy of all praise.” He tried it again. “. . . I believe that what financial unsuccess there is about it the citizens of Buffalo will meet with the same energy and generous spirit by which they constructed the exposition.” At the very least, he asserted, “we have made Buffalo known to the United States as it never was known before.”
Milburn finished speaking just before midnight, and, with a smaller group of men—including Director of Works Newcomb Carlton and Henry Rustin, mastermind of electricity—he walked to the Triumphal Bridge. High up in the Electric Tower, eight army buglers rang out “Taps.” Except for some muffled weeping, the grounds were still. Milburn touched a button on a box. Connected to the Exposition’s rheostat, it sapped the power from the fair’s 160,000 incandescent bulbs. Gold to crimson they went, and then shell pink to pinpoints. The Exposition became so dark, said one witness, it seemed like stars had “fallen into a sea of ink.”
The end, a reporter wrote, was “apparently painless.” It is hard to know why he used personification to describe the final moments of the Exposition, but, then again, death and electricity had been so tightly linked that autumn it was perhaps unavoidable. Rainbow City perished, he said, “like a fair queen, a lovely lady, from whose cheeks the color faded, in whose eyes the luster died, on whose lips the bright smile vanished. The darkness of night enveloped her like a funeral pall. She did not struggle, no sigh, no moan. The fountains of her life fell and grew fainter, until they stopped.”
To the less overwrought, it simply became very, very dark. Fairgoers made their way to the exits, some of them stopping to remove tiny lights and take them as souvenirs. On the Midway, other visitors began to act out. They smashed booths, threw restaurant chairs, and fought each other with vines and branches, plants and palms. They threw confetti until they waded in pools of paper. They took food and fruit, ripped feathers from Indians, and wrested flowers from Hawaiians. Twenty-five of them became the last patients at the Exposition Hospital.13
While crowds surged through the Midway, behind the doors at Bostock’s Wild Animal Arena, Chiquita prepared for the night. She had entertained audiences all day long. If she carried any bruises on her body, they were concealed, and if she was distraught, she had put on a brave face. She had moved through her drawing-room act as though nothing had happened. It wasn’t as though she had any choice. “I was taken possession of,” she said.
For Frank Bostock, the outlook was bright. Having spent months grooming the press, he was able to shape the story of Chiquita’s flight to his liking. Tony Woeckener, he explained, had facilitated the abduction of Chiquita, and he had been arrested. A competitor on the Midway had sought to undermine the Animal King, and Tony had been the “tool” the schemers used. Thankfully, a loyal employee had intervened and rescued the little performer. So happy was he to have order restored, he decided not to bring charges against the “kidnappers.”
As for Chiquita’s affection for the cornet player? “Chiquita has had these little attachments frequently,” he told reporters. “Then when the suitor thinks he’s the whole thing, her love grows cold.” And the wedding? It had been forced. The Woeckener boy and his friends had taken Chiquita to dinner and had fed her some wine before driving her to the judge. Even she would admit she was in a “batty state.” Chiquita was worth a lot of money. She had thousands of dollars and jewels. Who wouldn’t want to marry her? The Animal King announced he would do what he could to protect her from these sorts of manipulators in the future.
That protection, in fact, would begin right away. Aware that Tony had begun to protest, the showman would put Chiquita out of his reach. Luckily for Bostock, this was Buffalo. Canada was only a river away.14
10.
The Elephant
I
THE WARRIORS
“In all that followed,” remembered Chiquita later, “I did not lose my courage.”
Frank Bostock, with the help of his wife, smuggled Chiquita through Niagara Falls and across the Canadian border. This made things so much easier for him in court. When he was sued by Tony and his father to relinquish his star performer, he claimed he could do nothing. He didn’t have Chiquita and he couldn’t bring her to Buffalo. The judge was convinced. On November 8, he decided that Alice Cenda was beyond his jurisdiction.
The judge might also have been swayed by reports of the showman’s generosity. Bostock’s lawyer told him that the Doll Lady was “never kept in restraint,” and that she had been whisked away by Bostock’s nurturing family in order “to recuperate.” The lawyer asserted, too, that Bostock “treated [Chiquita] as a member of his family, that he had bought her fine raiment, jewelry, horses, and carriages and all manner of luxuries.” He had even taken pains to educate her. Wasn’t it apparent that Bostock was the one being badly used? Wasn’t it obvious that there was a “conspiracy” afoot to steal away his moneymaking show?
Tony’s lawyer had a firm response. Chiquita never owned fancy clothes or cars. They were on loan from Bostock. As for the claim that the animal trainer truly cared for the performer? Bostock, he said, “has cared for her just about the same way he has cared for his elephants.”1
There had been nothing but positive reports about Bostock and his elephants all season. The showman had boasted nonstop of their tricks and performances and the press had reported nothing about mishandling or abuse. Tony’s lawyer, it seems, was referring to very recent news.
On November 6, Bostock had sent the indefatigable Captain Maitland into the offices of the Buffalo Enquirer to make an announcement. As usual, the writers readied themselves for a barrage of exaggeration. This story, though, seemed different. In fact, the newspaper staff suspected that the captain might be speaking the truth. Maitland told them that Jumbo II, Bostock’s enormous elephant, was going to be killed in public. The veteran animal-soldier, the beast decorated for bravery in the Ethiopian theater, had developed musth. It seizes some elephants, Maitland explained, and if action were not taken, Jumbo might “wreck the entire exposition.” Furthermore, he said, “people are in danger of their lives and we do not know how to handle or control him. Therefore, he must be killed.”
Maitland did not need to remind the writers of very recent events—they were well publicized. A few days earlier, just as the Animal King was beginning to dismantle his show, Jumbo II had acted up. Henry Mullen, the assistant elephant keeper, had entered the animal’s cage to clean his bedding when Jumbo wrapped his trunk around Mullen, picked him up, then dropped him. Then he did it again. The second time, Jumbo twirled Mullen “about as a juggler spins a plate,” and tried to step on him. Mullen yelled, and other assistants, armed with “pronged spears and clubs,” beat the elephant until he desisted. Mullen suffered broken bones and lacerations. It would have been worse, the keeper said, but the elephant, being heavily chained, couldn’t use his tusks or lift his feet high.
And there was more.
On November 6, twelve-year-old Tina Caswell, the daughter of Bostock’s zoo manager, decided to visit Jumbo and feed him some hay. For some reason, Tina had “forgotten the elephant’s bad nature.” Jumbo took the girl in his trunk and hoisted her. When her dress tore, she fell to the ground. She was badly frighten
ed.2
Within a week, Jumbo II went from being a magnificent beast to a “murderer.”
For months, he had been the wonderful warrior elephant, the pachyderm with a history of saving men and inspiring his own species. True, he had been rambunctious. Even before Buffalo he had strenuously objected to being placed in slings and hoisted by derricks onto ships, and he had never liked being confined in crates. He had also been overly boisterous in wooing Big Liz, the female elephant in Bostock’s zoo. On one occasion in July, he tried to break the chains that bound him head to foot, and he stomped on a tub of liquor meant to subdue him.
But, the press explained at the time, his unruliness had simply been the product of “cupid’s dart.” His behaviors had simply been “antics.” And ever since then, he had quietly entertained thousands in Rainbow City. Big pussycat that he was, he had been unnerved by thunderstorms and had even trumpeted in fright at the sight of a tiny marmoset. But all that was gone. Now he was the Exposition’s monster.
While some officials agreed that Jumbo II was afflicted with musth—which male elephants periodically experienced when ready to mate—others declared that he had been wicked all along. The famous war record that had listed his heroic and altruistic deeds was now understood as a “very bad record.” A new report asserted that he had killed seven men in India. Outside of Buffalo, the fabrications of the press went further, announcing that he had killed seven people at the Exposition. Indeed, there were now hardly enough terrible words in the English lexicon for Jumbo II. He was a “huge brute,” a “rogue,” and, above all, a “man-killer.”3
Nobody asked why young Tina Caswell, who had been in the menagerie for months, was permitted to wander into Jumbo’s pen. No one challenged Mullen’s story. And no one wondered why Jumbo was sentenced to death when other ferocious animals were permitted to live—in fact, their aggression was a drawing card. People flocked to see Rajah, the “man-killing” tiger. In April 1901, the Bengal tiger had leaped upon Frank Bostock in Indianapolis after training exercises, ripped the showman’s arms and legs, lacerated his face, and thrown him, unconscious, on the ground. Rajah, who had killed a young trainer just a month earlier, was nevertheless forgiven, and soon was dispatched to perform in Buffalo.
The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City Page 19