Zoila had been steps away supervising Lucía, who continued to irritate her troupe mates by monopolizing the space in the parlor. She glimpsed a man running and bolted after the would-be kidnapper. Her thundering footsteps in hot pursuit spooked him, and the mummy wrap rolled off the basket. The man dropped the entire basket once he realized Lucía was not inside and ran for his life.
Still pumped with the adrenalin of the chase, Zoila put her dagger way and boldly approached Frank.
“I am leaving with Lucía,” she announced. “Have her money ready tomorrow morning.”
Frank Uffner walked over to his desk and pulled a document from an untidy pile.
“You’re a smart gal, ain’t you? You even read the future now, don’t you? See here.” He pointed to a ship’s passenger ticket. “You and Lucía and a few of the other midgets are going to England with me to meet royalty. So get packing.”
Antonietta Gonzalez
On November 11, 1880, the National Steamship Company’s vessel, the SS Spain, made its way down the River Mersey into the port of Liverpool, England. Frank Uffner and his entourage wobbled down the gangway still feeling the effects of the sea sickness they’d endured during days of rough Atlantic waters aboard the 4,500-ton ship. As much as it had pained him to pay for expensive first-class saloon passages for Commodore Foot*, Miss Quigley*, General Mite, Lucía and Zoila, he didn’t want his star performers to arrive sick, or worse, to have died onboard. His concern did not stem from love or respect for his performers: he simply did not want to add to his financial woes with compounding funeral expenses.
Saloon accommodations included three meals a day, steward service, and the care of a medical doctor. It was common knowledge that the average mortality rate for immigrant passengers arriving in New York from Europe was a whopping ten percent. These passengers traveled in the nightmare of steerage class, deep in the dank decks of the ship’s bowels. Frank Uffner couldn’t risk losing his human investments so he reluctantly spent his money for first-class. He was not a gambler: he was a hoarder, squirreling his profits until the day he could start to live the high life, alone without his ball-and-chain of a wife.
Captain Grace* and the other officers waved goodbye to Lucía and the rest of the troupe as they walked down to the dock, but no one waved back: they were all under wraps until their first performance in England. Frank Uffner lead the way, his arms wrapped in a paternal hug that did not draw any attention to the camouflaged Miss Quigley and Commodore Foot. He simply resembled a gentlemanly father caring for his short children as they disembarked from a tiring, cross-Atlantic voyage.
Frank Uffner insisted that Zoila carry a covered General Mite on her back like a sack of potatoes while Lucía lay in her usual market basket clutching her stomach and moaning with the dry-heaves. Zoila resembled a beast of burden: in addition to carrying General Mite and Lucía, she also had to balance Lucía’s garment valise on her head. At the sound of a harsh trill and a familiar voice calling out to her, Zoila slowed down for a moment. For a split second she thought it was the brujo cursing her from this foreign dock, but when she realized who was rudely calling out to her in the tell-tale patois of Veracruz, she ignored his cries for help.
Señor Zárate’s dogged insistence on accompanying Lucía to England had forced Frank Uffner’s hand. He’d purchased him the cheapest steerage passage in the hopes that Señor Zárate would be among the unfortunate ten percent who met a watery grave at sea. But Señor Zárate had transformed himself into a tenacious Mexican Hairless Xoloitzcuintli dog. He still carried the internal wound of the American newspaper articles that called him a dumb peon, a brutish animal. With his new, more abrasive persona, he growled at Frank Uffner when the manager didn’t meet his demands for more money. He reasoned that everyone understood a growl—and feared a bite. He also decided they no longer needed the interpreting services of Zoila, whom he hoped to get rid of entirely. Señor Zárate had managed to endure the zoo cage conditions of steerage and now he was prepared to fight Frank Uffner for Lucía’s percentage of the profits like a dog with a scrumptious bone.
The over-embellished articles and the expedient printing of the British newspapers impressed Frank Uffner. New York had lots to learn from Fleet Street and its affordable penny press. In his estimation, the newspapers’ free publicity would easily bring out the crowds to see his performers. If things went as planned, he would soon be able to retire at the conclusion of a long and profitable stay in England. In the meantime, he continued with his daily newspaper reading routine. He rounded-up his tiny quartet and read them the Liverpool Mercury’s November 19, 1880 account:
A private view was given yesterday afternoon at the Piccadilly Hall of a neat assortment of dwarfs just imported from America by Mr. Frank Uffner. The Lilliputian company numbers four. The largest of the lot is a little man of German extraction, who calls himself Commodore Foot. He was born at Fort Wayne, Indiana, is 32 years of age, has a merry-wrinkled low comedian cast of countenance, and is almost as big as an ordinary bee hive. Miss Quigley, who hails from Glasgow, and indignantly repudiates any connection with the Irish country from which she derives her patronymic, plays foil to the Commodore.
The rest of the article detailed all of Lucía’s unique attributes, but Frank Uffner eliminated them from his reading since he wanted to cut down Lucía in front of her father. Señor Zárate needed to understand that Lucía was not the star of this quartet, even though in reality she was the main attraction.
Frank Uffner chose to read only the newspaper articles that in one way or another disparaged Lucía. “Well look here, ya’ll,” he announced, gathering the quartet to hear a long extract from The Bury and Norwich Post.
Though the young lady has attained the interesting age known as “sweet seventeen,” her personal charms are not great, for we learn from the Times that she bears “an ugly likeness” to the Aztecs who were in London some twenty years ago, and very much resembles a smaller kind of monkey. There is some hope, therefore, that there will not be the enthusiasm about these unfortunate little specimens of humanity that there was on the first appearance in England of General Tom Thumb, an enthusiasm which drove an accomplished artist, vainly struggling for bread, to the death of a suicide.
Commodore Foot instantly protested. “What is the point of reading such Scheisse to us, Mr. Uffner? Surely you don’t think it encourages us to go onstage in good cheer, day in and day out, knowing the audience is waiting for us to die, do you?”
“Did a gnat such say something? Let me swat it!” Uffner reached out and slapped Commodore’s rear end.
“Rude,” muttered General Mite.
Miss Quigley agreed that Frank Uffner was talking trash.
“Yer bum’s oot the windae!” she screeched. Frank Uffner just laughed.
“Look here, we seem to have a wee mutiny.” he teased them. “Well, no supper for all of yous tonight.”
The newspaper reading tradition came to a halt despite daily coverage in the newspapers from Suffolk to Cornwall to Northumberland, and all points in between. The articles thrived on writing about the smallest of details about the Lilliputian quartet. They wrote that General Mite did not like to sit on people’s laps, that Miss Quigley dressed excessively, and that Commodore Foot was boastful—and envious of General Tom Thumb, whom he considered his main competitor. By far the most positive press was for Lucía. She was described as a baby doll, or an animated doll with a lady-like carriage, slender and with a neatly made figure. The Isle of Wight Observer went completely overboard:
Her blood is sangre azul, the bluest blood of Castile by descent, and herself is a veritable Faerie Queen. La Princesse Felicie, shown some years since, was equally diminutive, but her wits were in proportion. On the contrary, little Lucía speaks Spanish and English fluently, and is in her way, a very small way indeed, une grande dame de par le monde.
The buzz about the Lilliputian quartet swarmed all over Britain, and within a few weeks, the royal family commanded an appearance.
The London Morning Post of December 16, 1880 reported: “Mr. Uffner had the honour to appear by command before their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, at Marlborough House, Wednesday, December 15.” After bearing the regal seal of approval, the reports about Lucía escalated to hyperbolical heights.
The Leeds Times reported that during the visit to the royals, Lucía was lost, and that “after a long diligent search, she was found hiding inside one of his royal highness’s boots. She thought it was a good joke.” No one bothered to double-check the veracity of such reporting—and it didn’t matter. Lucía’s every move incited a crowd; even her custom-made gown that Madame Rosalie* displayed in the window of her Regent Street atelier caused a commotion. Though Frank Uffner hated to part with his money for such frills as a new dress, he knew that having every newspaper in the country rave about Lucía’s ridiculously small gown would soon pay by producing sellout audiences. He particularly relished the Prince of Wales’* interest in Lucía.
Unlike his severe mother, Queen Victoria*, Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, loved high jinks. Known for his dapper fashion sense and his wanton womanizing, the Prince of Wales admired Lucía’s spunk and devil-may-care attitude. In 1861, when he was first introduced to his future wife, Alexandra of Denmark*, in Speyer, Germany he’d heard court chatter about the Chamber of Art and Curiosities. It was housed at a nearby castle, Schloss Ambras, in Innsbruck, Austria. The Prince of Wales was most intrigued by the renowned collection of human oddities depicted in portraits given to Archduke Ferdinand II*, one of the Hapsburg family. Now that the Prince of Wales was eye-to-eye with Lucía, a sprite, a flesh-and-bone oddity, he recalled one of the portraits in the Schloss Ambras collection.
Ever since 1547, when Henry II* of France received a gift of a wolf-boy from the Canary Islands, the royal families of Europe had vied for possession of their own human oddities to display at court. Henry II maintained a zoo in Paris, the Hôtel des Tournelles, but he decided to educate the wolf-boy, whose given name was Pedro Gonzalez, along with the other noble children in the household in Fontainebleau. He knew the indigenous people of Tenerife were still troglodytes living in caves, still brutish in his evaluation, but he saw a keen intelligence in the wolf-boy’s eyes and he decided to bring him up as a human. Henry II dressed Pedro in exquisite Lyon silk that complemented the foot-long silky down that covered the boy’s entire body. Pedro became quite the scholar, adopted the Latin version of his name, Petrus Gonsalvus*, and brought joy to all— except to himself. His mournful whistles could be heard throughout the vast forests surrounding Fontainebleau and saddened the queen, Catherine de Medici*. Eventually, Petrus’s waling shrills, his piercing tones of anguish, broke her heart and she found a perfectly normal wife for Petrus.
The Prince of Wales picked up Lucía and set her down on top of his bulging stomach, so he could bounce her up and down. She was seventeen years old but to him she was an animated monkey. He totally ignored Lucía’s grumpy pleas to set her down.
The prince couldn’t recall the rest of Petrus’s story, so he asked his wife: “Alex, do you recall the werewolf portrait in Schloss Ambras?”
“Don’t you mean the wolf-girl portrait at the château in France, in Blois?”
“Is she the werewolf whose whistles moved Catherine de Medici to find her a husband?”
“No, Bertie. That was Petrus, the little wolf-girl’s father. Catherine actually gave the little wolf-girl as a gift to the Duke of Parma* who then gifted her to the Marchesa of Soragna*.”
“What a remarkable memory you have, dearest.”
“I must say I do!” the princess laughed. “One does hate to boast, but I still recall all the details.”
“Do tell,” commanded the prince. “But first, someone take this squirming rat off of me!”
Zoila approached the prince bowing and curtseying until she was close enough to lift Lucía off his corpulent stomach-chair. From close range she couldn’t help hearing the rest of the story of Antonietta Gonzalez*, a story she did not want to hear, not after reading the tragic details of Julia Pastrana’s demise in these frigid-hearted European milieus.
“In the portrait in the château in Blois,” Princess Alexandra continued, “the artist Lavinia Fontana* included a very legible letter in which the wolf-girl writes the specifics of her life. It read:
Don Pietro, a wild man discovered in the Canary Islands, was conveyed to his most serene highness Henry the king of France, and from there came to his Excellency the Duke of Parma. From whom came I, Antonietta, and now I can be found nearby at the court of the Lady Isabella Pallavicina, the honorable Marchesa of Soragna.
The prince was impressed with his wife’s memory, but didn’t feel like praising her too much. She might think she had the upper hand and try to put a stop to his dalliances with his many mistresses.
“What happened to the wolf-girl after sitting for the portrait?” he asked.
The princess chuckled. “Tonnetta or Tognina, that is what they called her in Italian, and her entire family, including her sister’s hairy babes, moved away from their respective patrons to a village on the shores of Lake Bolsena in Italy. Her eldest brother, Enrico*, also a werewolf as were her four siblings, convinced the Pope that their animal nature required them to live a secluded life with nature. Can you believe that such a tricky strategy worked?”
“Clever for savages,” the prince observed. Lucía sat wriggling as his feet. “But what happened after that?”
“The villagers said that after the family moved to their shores they heard cheerful whistling from one side of the lake to the other. As if in the melodic tones of birds, the whistlers were telling each other mirthful stories.”
“Makes animal sense.” The prince patted the top of Lucía’s head. “I understand that the Guanche* people of Tenerife still communicate with a whistle language. But what finally happened to the werewolves?
“I believe the beasts lived happily ever after. Or do I recall them moving to Mexico?”
“In that case, we will have to send an expedition to Mexico to find their hairy descendants. The apple does not fall far from the tree, as you know. I wouldn’t mind adding werewolves to our cabinet of curiosities.” The prince laughed at his own ludicrous suggestion, as if the British Empire wasn’t facing an insurgency from their overseas subjects, as if the Indian Rebellion of 1857 had never occurred.
“That or send a lackey to listen for any whistling communication among their great-great-great-great grandchildren in Lake Bolsena,” the princess suggested with glee, singing the word “great” up and down a musical scale.
“Well, I’ve seen enough Lilliputians today.” All the talk about beasts had given the Prince of Wales a sudden animal urge and he craved the satisfaction of his Italian mistress, La Barucci*.
Zoila wanted to applaud the daft princess for her detailed recounting of this tale. It reminded her that even among the most powerful men in the word, like President Hayes and the Prince of Wales, heir to the throne of the British Empire, there would be no compassion for Lucía. Neither man showed a curious mind eager to understand Lucía’s challenges. On the contrary, these world leaders parroted the same observations and held the same beliefs as their uneducated peoples. Lucía and others like her were freaks put on earth for amusement and ridicule; at best Lucía, Julia, the Sicilian Fairy, and Antonietta were considered human-like creatures.
However, by recounting of the life of Antonietta Gonzalez, the princess had inadvertently recommended a course of action for Zoila and Lucía: Lucía would simply break her contract with Frank Uffner, just as Enrico had done with his patron, the Pope. Then, Zoila thought, the two of them would buy fertile land in Mexico and live a pastoral life in harmony with nature. They would rejoice in the buzzing of the Melipona bees as they pollinated the vanilla orchids, and finally inhale the sweet-scent of the fruit of their labors.
The long-winded rallying cry of the British press regarding Lucía persisted. But headlines like Curiosity-mo
ngers cannot afford to throw away the chance of such a unique spectacle as Lucía Zárate were no longer a call to action. From the Wrexham Advertiser in Clwyd, Wales to the Burnley Express in Lancashire, England, newspapers tried to stoke the waning fires of interest in Lucía by concocting complicated love stories about her and the other little people in the quartet. But the public yawned at old news and hankered for fresher novelties.
The sixteen months the quartet had performed throughout Britain had been lucrative, but by spring 1881, Frank Uffner was strolling around the streets of London, keeping an ear to the ground, trying to determine how to revive public enthusiasm in Lucía. Señor Zárate, secretly at Uffner’s heels all over London, sniffed for the truffles-worth of earnings due to him for having had the luck to father Lucía. When Frank Uffner witnessed beehive activity in Hyde Park, he went into high gear, and by March 12, 1881 the Leeds Times, along with the rest of the press, reported headline news:
The “Midgets” Lucía Zárate and General Mite had an adventure on Tuesday which is sure to make them more famous than ever. They were taking their morning drive through Hyde Park, when the horses became restless and finally broke into a run, and were only pulled up at Hyde Park Gate.
Zoila spotted Frank Uffner’s telltale puppeteer strings in this publicity stunt—and it alarmed her. Before that carriage ride, he’d sent her on a fool’s errand, promising to keep an eye on Lucía while she was away. Instead, as soon as she left the hotel, he rushed Lucía and General Mite into the prearranged carriage of a daredevil driver who had agreed to pull off the out-of-control caper on one condition: that he would also appear in the newspapers as the hero of this faux accident. He beamed with pride when he read the same Leeds Times article:
Lucía Zárate: The odyssey of the world’s smallest woman Page 13