Lucía Zárate: The odyssey of the world’s smallest woman

by Cecilia Velástegui

  The driver displayed great coolness, as did both Lucía and the General. The General remarked to the driver that he had only ‘to keep them in the road” and he could let them ‘rip’ on in perfect safety. Lucía, when informed that the horses were running away, remarked, “me no care; make plenty race, me likee.”

  In Zoila’s estimation the only accurate reporting of Frank Uffner’s potentially lethal stunt was in the article’s conclusion:

  Mr. Uffner was the most concerned party, as a spill might, it is said, have cost him a heap of money, seeing that the exhibition of the dwarfs is a great financial success.

  Zoila’s blood boiled. Frank Uffner’s unthinking and lackadaisical care of Lucía was only surpassed by his blind devotion to the almighty profit. He’d even leaked Lucía’s supposed net worth to the Hampshire Telegraph, a move that incited Señor Zárate’s fury since he’d only receive a pittance thus far. According to the report of the event, it had been Lucía who’d instigated the joy ride. She was quoted as saying, “Let’s have a lark,” and then commanding the horses and the carriage driver to run away. This fallacious reporting extended to the compassion expressed for Frank Uffner, who reportedly sat “in terror, he thought he might lose Lucía, and with her the 30,000 pounds sterling she is supposed to be worth.”

  Zoila didn’t need a crystal ball to know the source of that quote. During the last few weeks, while the crowds at Lucía’s performances continued to decline, Frank Uffner had hatched and executed numerous plans to get Lucía back into the public eye. He tried to imitate the marketing genius of circus promoter P.T. Barnum, but he always fell short. One gambit was arranging for Lucía to stand up on the outstretched palm of Von Brustad, the Norwegian giant, who stood sky-high and dumbfounded at this senseless display. When the jostling of too many journalists frightened the giant and his arthritic palm shook, Lucía lost her balance. Luckily Zoila was there to break Lucía’s fall.

  Not chastened by this near accident, Frank Uffner frightened Lucía by rushing her into the monkey house of London’s zoological gardens and, despite her screaming protests, forcing her to shake hands with the caged monkeys. Subsequently the press discussed the distinct similarities between Lucía’s cries of protest and the monkey’s shrills. The Glasgow Herald summarized:

  She is so utterly unlike anything one ever put eyes on before that it is really difficult to think of her as being human. Some kind of new bird or monkey suggest itself, or “the missing link,” but apparently the little creature is only one of those marvelous lusus naturas that do occasionally present themselves, and it would certainly be impossible to find a more astonishing specimen of the human race.

  Zoila’s ire turned into rage upon reading the words “missing link” and “monkey” as descriptions of Lucía. These were the same spiteful words that had been bandied about on publicity posters and in pseudoscientific explanations about the medical conditions that affected Julia Pastrana and Carolina Crachami, the Sicilian Fairy. Zoila didn’t need another knock on her head to hear their piercing forewarnings about Lucía’s destiny. Her mind raced with visions of both lonely girls as they accelerated wildly on their hellish, downhill spiral after being exploited and exhibited as freaks for the profit of the most unscrupulous and vicious of men.

  The parallels between the trajectory of the lives of Carolina and Julia made Zoila numb. Both of their families had deserted them into the hands of foreign wolf-men in sheep’s clothing, who displayed them abroad in the lowest of dime museums and kept them in squalid conditions. The girls’ survival instincts and their hearts of gold were evident in their efforts to sing and dance and entertain the crowds for a morsel of food, or the occasional reward of a kind smile that acknowledged their humanity. Both girls were devoted to their manipulative managers. Julia even married her exploiter, Theodore Lent*, who continued to torment her body after her death. Gentle Carolina trusted Dr. Gilligan*, the Irish charlatan, because he was her only contact with the outside world.

  When Zoila grasped all the similarities between the girls, she was stunned and fearful. Both girls had toured Britain after leaving the warm shores of their native lands, both had been analyzed by foreign scientists more familiar with the animal world than with humans, and both had been summoned for a royal audience shortly after their arrival in London. Yet none of the people of rank and title they met came to their defense or tried to put a stop to their exploitation.

  In fact, in 1824 the Duchess of Parma*, sojourning in London, had demanded that Carolina be presented to her immediately, relying on the same spoiled tantrums as her sixteenth-century ancestor when she demanded Antonietta Gonzalez as a gift. Neither Duchess of Parma showed any regard for the emotional and physical suffering of the girls; they simply expected their royal decrees to be summarily satisfied, thereby proving that the rotten fruit does not fall far from the tree.

  The press understood that the public had an insatiable appetite to view those whom they perceived as monsters, human curiosities, and missing links. Society as a whole seemed to justify its morbid interests by siding with the scientists who evaluated the girls and deemed them less than human. If science was on their side, they could gawk and jeer Julia’s dance or Carolina’s singing and not feel any remorse. The public didn’t even protest on the basis of common decency when Julia and her new-born baby were embalmed and displayed from Russia to Denmark, or when Carolina’s minute dangling skeleton bounced along the corridors of Europe’s most illustrious medical centers.

  Zoila paced the tight quarters of the cramped hotel room, her fists clamped at her chest. Both the vial of Felipe’s dry blood and the honed edge of her dagger pressed against her, at war with her reason. Compassion, violence, and logic fought as she tried to decide on a plan of action to release Lucía from this trap. She struggled with the notion that Lucía’s life had many similarities to those of the other exploited girls, and despite Zoila’s care, Lucía may end up with a similar fate. If Zoila didn’t execute Lucía’s escape as soon as possible, her wheel of misfortune would soon speed of control.

  Unlike America, where Zoila had learned how to maneuver around cities, board trains, and move from city to city, Britain and its customs remained a puzzle to her. She didn’t know her way around London, but she understood that she must change the course of Lucía’s unspeakable downward direction, and that the moment to rescue Lucía was now. This was her bugle call to battle, and she’d have to be prepared to shove the dagger into Frank Uffner’s jugular if he refused to rip up Lucía’s contract and turn over her earnings.

  But when Zoila stormed into Uffner’s room and made her demands, his response dazed her.

  “Sure thing, Zoila,” he said. “I’ll settle the score with Señor Zárate in the morning. After all, we’re meeting to make arrangement for the wedding.”

  “But, that can’t be, sir. General Mite does not wish to marry Lucía.”

  “Never mind that. Lucía will be in the wedding. You have my word on it.”

  To Zoila, this was not a selling point. It would be a marriage destined to doom.

  “But Lucía has not told me about the wedding,” Zoila persisted, “and she doesn’t seem any happier about it today than she was yesterday or for that matter the whole year and half we’ve been in Britain.”

  Frank Uffner stood up as if to dismiss her, but Zoila stood her ground. She tried to persuade him to let her carry Lucía’s money back to Mexico for safekeeping rather than releasing it to Señor Zárate. During the six years that Lucía had been on the road in America and in Britain, her father had shown up at regular intervals. He’d wrangle with Frank Uffner over the correct amount due to Lucía, then reluctantly settle on a much smaller amount, stuff the money into his suitcase and skedaddle. Once he arrived back in Veracruz he’d buy additional parcels of land in his village of Cempoala where he had grandiose plans to transform himself from a scruffy peon, as the American newspapers had dubbed him, to a member of the landed gentry, the don, the patrón. Until that day, he pro
mised himself, he would continue to climb up society’s ladder on his daughter’s frail back.

  Frank wouldn’t listen. He shoved Zoila out of his way.

  “See here, Zoila. No need to worry about Mexico. The loving couple aim to stay here in Britain. Now move out of the way, I gots to go.”

  Just when Zoila thought that Frank Uffner had exhausted all his publicity stunts, he leaked to the press that General Mite and Lucía were soon to be engaged. Lucía beamed with joy, but General Mite’s true, mean spirit came through again. During their first performance after the engagement announcement, General Mite attacked Lucía. The press watched in glee and rushed back to Fleet Street to be the first to print:

  The two are tenderly attached to each other and will not submit to be separated; but the General, I grieve to say, is apt to become impatient with the frivolity of his sweetheart and to administer severe shakings, to which the young girl meekly submits as a matter of course.

  “All publicity is good publicity!” Frank Uffner held up a rolled newspaper above Zoila’s head. “Now that we have the public’s attention, get Lucía dressed in that pink velvet dress. She’s going to the wedding.”

  “You cannot be serious, sir. General Mite is abusive!”

  “He’s a man, ain’t he?”

  “If she is to be married she needs a white dress and a trousseau and her father is not here and she is simply not prepared. You can’t mean that the wedding is today, right now, can you?”

  Frank Uffner guffawed. “Damn, you’re a dumb cow! Lucía ain’t the bride. She is the first bridesmaid at Commodore Foote and Jennie Quigley’s wedding. Now get her dressed!”

  Lucía’s depressed mood worsened after the wedding. She barely said two words during her receptions, as the levées were called in Britain. She hardly ate, and at night Zoila had to stop her from pulling out clumps of her already thinning hair. Zoila could not put her plan into action knowing that Lucía could never survive the long voyage back to Mexico. By contrast, General Mite acted chipper on stage and had a gleam in his eye. He never looked at Lucía, even when he had to speak with her on stage; instead he looked at a distant point and smiled. Zoila took note of the changes in his mood: something was about to happen. But her immediate goals were to nurse Lucía back to health and to work with Señor Zárate to force Frank Uffner to relinquish Lucía’s earnings in total.

  “Well, look here.” Frank Uffner held up an elegant card. “We’ve been summoned by Her Majesty the Queen and several Royal personages. After nearly two years of being in her country, the old bat finally wants to meet us.”

  Mrs. Uffner and Señor Zárate were the only two overjoyed with the news. Mrs. Uffner asked, “What should I wear, Frank?”

  “Woman, you’re not going. Period.” Frank shooed her away. He faced the other side of the room and shooed Señor Zárate as well. “You neither, amigo.”

  Very early the next morning, Mrs. Uffner retaliated by disappearing and not serving anyone breakfast. Queen Victoria’s summons to Windsor was for a morning visit and they left hungry and in a hurry. Lucía’s mood was at an all-time low. She was rude to the Queen, and neither Frank Uffner nor General Mite felt like intervening. Instead, as soon as the meeting concluded, General Mite recounted Lucía’s rudeness to a journalist he knew. In no time, the Hampshire Telegraph, and many others, reported the entire fiasco:

  The Midgets did not have their regular breakfast, a fact which Miss Lucía Zárate much resented. When the Queen asked her if she liked England, Lucía “let on,” and said she didn’t like it at all. “Aren’t you well today?!” asked Her Majesty. “No, I am no,” was the answer the little Mexican lady’s broken English. “We had to come and see so early, I haven’t had my breakfast.” After the reception was over, one of the officials told Lucía she had been rude to the Queen, and asked if she wasn’t ashamed of herself. “Me not care,” exclaimed Miss Zárate, with a stamp of her little foot; “Plenty Queen. Only one Lucía Zárate.”

  Lucía’s malaise permeated her being like the all-encompassing London fog. For two years she carried her blanket of lethargy from one city to another throughout England, and her acts were as lackluster as General Mite’s. By 1884, worried that Lucía’s performances would soon be cancelled, Frank Uffner searched the continent for a rival to Lucía. Since he easily embezzled most of Lucía’s earnings, he didn’t want to replace her, but the falling show profits forced him to look for an alternative little woman to bewitch new audiences.

  Miss Emilie “Millie” Edwards*, a sweet-faced girl from Lancaster, England, traipsed ever- so-coyly onto the stage— and into General Mite’s heart. Soon they were inseparable, on and off the stage, and within a matter of months, their sincere love for each other was evident to all. Frank Uffner was beyond himself with self-adulation.

  “Ain’t I a genius for signing up another midget?” he asked his wife.

  “Not compared to P.T. Barnum*, you ain’t. He’s moving away from little folks and into bigger and more talented show people. Why, he’s even got giant elephants and lions in his shows, while you’re still attached to midgets. Get it through your thick head—they’s a dying breed, Frank.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Let’s see if we can’t get the most out of the romance between General Mite and Millie.”

  “The sooner the better, before Mite dumps her like he did Lucía. Anyways, what good is that Mexican midget to us now, Frank? Answer me that.”

  “Hate to admit it, but you have a point there about Lucía.”

  “Well, then, genius, let’s plan a wedding right quick between Mite and Millie. Get it done, get the press all up in arms about it, and let’s milk all the money we can now, Frank.”

  “I’ll do as I see fit, woman!”

  By May 1884 the British press was abuzz with every possible detail about the wedding between General Mite and Millie Edwards. Nothing was too small to be left unreported. Readers knew not only the time and place of the civil and church ceremonies; they also knew that Mr. O’Gorman conducted the civil ceremony in his signature thin, reedy voice. They read that General Mite was accompanied by the senior Mr. Flynn and that they were staying at the Denmark Hotel, while his fiancée resided at the Grand Hotel. In no time, fans waited anxiously for a peek of Mite and Millie at both hotels. Readers knew that the 3rd Dragoon Guards played the Wedding March, and they laughed with the description of the slobbery kiss that Colonel Nepts*, the bridegroom’s best man, had planted on the bride. With all the nitty-gritty reported by the press, the reading public felt as if they’d been honored guests at the wedding and they soon forgot all about Lucía.

  After the wedding, the press couldn’t allow a lull in news, so they continued printing speculations about Lucía’s fiery temper, suggesting it had pushed General Mite into Millie’s arms. They compared her long nose to Millie’s pert button nose. They exaggerated the amount of money Lucía earned. Even as late as December 26, 1885, long after Lucía was no longer a star attraction, The Era of London wrote:

  A good freak makes more money without opening his mouth than the most accomplished actor. Little Lucía Zárate, the Mexican midget, who is undoubtedly the smallest human ever exhibited, got $2,800 for four weeks in this city, and now she wants $800 a week.

  Lucía didn’t care to listen to any of the news that Frank Uffner read aloud. She didn’t care about the earnings that only her father had ever seen. She could not care less about the counterfeit jewelry Frank Uffner bought her with her own proceeds. Lucía slumped next to Zoila, sighing inconsolably over losing Mite. She stood up and searched around the hotel, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mite’s big blue eyes, but he and his bride had left Frank Uffner’s employ for greener pastures. The days and months dragged on and on for Lucía, yet she couldn’t wade out of the murky waters of her broken heart. Not even Zoila’s kind and patient ministrations or buoyant tales could rescue Lucía from her drowning depression.

  Zoila understood the depths of heartache, but Lucía’s funk extended beyond losing Gen
eral Mite. She tried in every way to enliven Lucía, but the girl’s spirit sank willingly, like the sacrificial bodies thrown to the depths of the cenote waters in Mexico. Zoila tried a different approach. She reminded Lucía of all the accomplishments she made during her ten years of touring.

  “You should be proud of learning English in record time,” she praised Lucía.

  “Not really. Didn’t you hear Mr. Uffner read the paper yesterday? They quoted me as having said: “Me no likee Millie!”

  “Everyone who can read knows that it is yellow journalism, gross exaggeration. You speak English well and you should also be proud of how hard you’ve worked. Why, you’ve never missed one show, have you?”

  Lucía sneered. “Oh, no, I would never disappoint. I’m just a perfect au-to-ma-ton, like one of the French dolls we saw in New Orleans, aren’t I?”

  Lucía sat down and imitated the mechanical movements of the Jaquet-Droz automata that played the organ. She amplified the automata’s breathing and eye movements, following her bulging eyes along an imaginary organ keyboard. Zoila appreciated the sarcasm in Lucía’s comment and she laughed along with Lucía. These theatrics were cathartic, she believed, and encouraged Lucía to continue.

  “Why don’t you do an imitation of Mrs. Uffner?” she suggested.

  “Whatch you talking about, girl?” Lucía squawked. “They ain’t no money in imitatin common folk. They’s only money in the big top circus nowadays!”

  Zoila couldn’t stop laughing at the spot-on imitation of both voice and subject. “Who says you don’t speak English well? You can even imitate Mrs. Uffner’s trashy English!”

  “I’m twenty-two years old, Zoila. You’d be surprised at all the things I now know.”

  “Well, tell me more about them,” Zoila said. She wanted to encourage Lucía to release her pent-up feelings.