by Mim E. Rivas
Oh? Well, then. Albert dug himself a deeper hole, asking who, in fact, owned the horse?
If he had insulted William Key, the older man didn’t let on. Patiently and kindly, the Doc assured Mr. Rogers that Jim was indeed his horse.
Now aware that he was losing ground, Albert Rogers tried one last question, asking who promoted the act.
Doc Key paused and thought for a moment. The Doc supposed he was their promoter, but that was more when they were in the patent medicine business; admittedly, he was not an expert promoter in the area of expositions and such.
Albert R. Rogers had found an opening. With a doff of his hat, he presented his card, pitched himself as a promoter and booking agent for some of the top attractions in the country, and presumably rattled off impressive fees that his acts commanded. He figured Jim Key, properly promoted, could equal or surpass his most profitable attractions, earning weekly amounts of as much as $500, even $1,000.
Dr. Key laughed. He knew Rogers had to be blowing smoke. But then again, he liked the sound of that kind of profit.
Rogers then made his proposal. He would buy Jim Key for $10,000 and, if Dr. Key stayed on, he would pay him a percentage of the gate as salary. Bill Key, poker faced, rejected the amount out of hand, explaining that he had turned down higher offers. Albert then raised the amount, first doubling it, then tripling, continuing until he stopped at $100,000. The Doc savored each increasing offer before declining it, but this last one—the estimated value of his estate at the time, the sum material attainment of sixty-four years of life—made him stop and think hard. He must have considered that his relationship with Jim Key was not rooted in ownership. He rarely, if ever, used the word owner in reference to himself and his role in the care and training of animals—equine, canine, or other—who were part of his household and stables. Bill spoke of himself as Jim’s teacher, companion, mentor, and confidant. He no more owned Jim Key than Jim Key owned him. But perhaps his reluctance to sell Jim, no matter the price, may have been rooted in his understandable aversion to the concept and practice of humans owning and selling other humans; the master-slave paradigm was much too close for comfort to the manner in which many people treated their horses. Then again, he was not being asked to part with Jim, except on paper, and in return would receive $100,000 and a percentage of the money this Rogers fellow seemed certain they would rake in. A man had to be very proud or very foolish to say no.
And yet, as the story went, Bill Key turned down all that money. Rogers couldn’t believe it. That’s when he offered a compromise. What if he gave Dr. Key $10,000 cash up front for the exclusive rights to promote Jim Key on a percentage basis. The Doc mulled the amount over. Getting desperate, Rogers added that in addition to that he would pay Dr. Key a salary, plus expenses.
The Doc warned Rogers that Jim had expensive tastes. The hay and grain had to be specially ordered to make sure it was free of impurities. Plus, from early colthood Jim Key had only been given the purest drawn spring water to drink, and he also required the services of at least one full-time groom. Moreover, he told Rogers, “Jim has got to have a private car for long distances. He’s a light sleeper anyhow and when the train gets moving, he has to stand up the rest of the way. He just refuses to lie down.” Jim was very sensitive, he went on, to the constant jarring and bumping of all the stops and starts.
Rogers suggested, “For long distances, I would be glad to arrange a stopover at a halfway point so he could enjoy the comforts of a local stable, and get the rest he requires.” A little too eagerly, trying to close the deal, he summed up his offer—ten thousand dollars cash up front, a split of the gate, plus salary and expenses for the doctor, his groom, and for Jim.
Dr. William Key liked this offer and he liked Albert’s enthusiasm. As much as he was skittish about a business partnership with anyone, let alone the young redheaded white man he had only just met, he realized that Rogers was exactly what he and Jim needed to navigate their way onto the national scene. But again he hesitated, not wanting to be rushed into a decision. “Let me think about it,” he said at last, not seeing the hurry.
Rogers panicked. If they waited, he was sure that Key would either talk himself out of joining forces with him, or that someone else would come up with a better offer. He had to create a sense of urgency and some form of enticement that Bill Key couldn’t refuse. In that moment, Albert R. Rogers had the brainstorm that would seal the deal and transform their destinies. It involved telling something of a lie, albeit motivated for philanthropic reasons. Rogers quickly explained to Dr. Key that there was, as it so happened, no time to wait, that he was tasked with filling a lucrative spot at the American Institute Fair within the month. If Key was interested, they would have to leave in only days for New York. But there was more to his hurry than just financial interests, Mr. Rogers insisted. As a matter of fact it was a cause very close to his heart. He wanted the opportunity to present Jim Key as a “grand object lesson of what kindness and patience can accomplish”—to quote the President of the United States—to the ruling powers of the ASPCA, with whom he was closely associated.
A light filled Bill’s probing eyes. Seeing it, Rogers went further, proposing that a percentage of earnings from Jim’s performances go to the ASPCA to be used to promote the organization’s concerns on a nationwide and even international basis, perhaps to establish needed rescue shelters, animal hospitals, horse ambulances, and to encourage the organization of more branch societies.
Doc Key was sold. Even if he guessed that Albert Rogers had overstated his connections, he was so impressed by the younger man’s salesmanship—and it took one to know one—that he accepted in full the terms of the deal.
A mix of these versions found their way into different press accounts. In Albert’s promotional pamphlet, he may have originally described the $10,000 as a payment of good faith for the right to exhibit Jim. But he ran into problems when trying to solicit interest from exposition managements. He found that whenever he referred to Jim as his own amazing, educated horse that he had just purchased at the Centennial, curiosity was much more piqued.
Dr. Key appeared to recognize that Rogers, as a white upper-class Northerner, could provide access to him and Jim Key that they couldn’t have otherwise obtained. He also seemed to initially accept the public relations story that Rogers included in his promotional materials about his ownership of Jim.
After an almost sleepless night of preparations at his New York townhome at 75 Maiden Lane, Albert Rogers woke early on Saturday, August 14, and beheld the first draft of the PR pamphlet, including his version of how he had discovered the horse:
While at the Nashville Exposition, Mr. A. R. Rogers, a businessman of New York, saw for the first time this marvelous, intelligent animal. Being very greatly interested in humane societies, and a great lover of horses in particular, he purchased from Dr. Key for $10,000 this beautiful animal, but Dr. Key put in the contract a clause to the effect: “I am always to be Jim Key’s groom and teacher,” for he would not part with his pet. So North went Jim and Dr. Key.
All that the two men and the horse knew of each other they had learned in the eight days that had transpired since their departure from Nashville on August 7 and Jim’s New York debut that Saturday at Field’s Stables. Doc Key and Jim may have been provincial Tennesseans, but they might have guessed that the size of the gathering wouldn’t give them the sort of splash in the New York press that Rogers had promised. However, they may not have been aware—as the small crowd was led through the chilly downpour into the large, well-appointed stable where the performance was to be staged—that there were no representatives from the American Institute Fair. They may not have known that neither was there anyone present from the ASPCA.
What was evident was that the rainstorm had deterred many from attending and that several ladies were so mortified by having to traipse through the mud and muck into the stable that they did not stay for the demonstration. Since Doc Key had warned Albert that Jim was known to tu
rn in halfhearted efforts when audiences were small or not overly enthusiastic, the promoter most likely didn’t tell them that reporters from the Journal and the World had failed to show. And yet, Jim comported himself as brilliantly as he had for the presidential entourage, rising to the challenge of dazzling the little group that clustered about his platform amid the smell of wet hay and the drumming sound of a late-summer rain on the stable’s roof.
Rogers watched with sinking spirits, not defeated, but facing the fact that this act was not going to be as easy to promote as he had imagined. Nonetheless, he smiled and thanked his guests for coming out in the inclement weather, mentally making plans to hold another private showing on the following Wednesday, August 18, and perhaps to debut the act in Cincinnati—where the public was less jaded than in New York. As his friends and colleagues dispersed, he may have been surprised to see Dr. Key in conversation with a couple of young men scribbling notes on writing pads while a third gentleman, a sketch artist, was finishing off a drawing of Jim in his most glamorous pose.
Miraculously, it turned out that two newspapers—not wanting to be out-scooped—had sent their most junior correspondents. Fledglings or not, both reporters wrote with such enthusiasm that the following day, the Sunday New York Sun included a mention of the showing and the Sunday Herald ran a half-page article on Jim along with a collage of small drawings of him performing his extraordinary feats.
Rogers could never be sure what magical spell Dr. William Key had employed to suggest to each of the writers that the horse be billed with a new name, but somehow both the Herald and the Sun unwittingly included it. It had a ring to it, Rogers had to admit, a grandeur suited to the one-time ugly duckling of a horse whose career as a celebrated, educated Arabian-Hambletonian had now begun. Prominently displayed in both newspapers in captions over the articles was: “BEAUTIFUL Jim Key.”
PART TWO
of the HISTORY
6
Key, Key, and Rogers
Progress in humane feelings is hard to discern during the decades when 25,000 streetcar horses died annually. Poverty and frustration in human society multiplied animal suffering…with penalties frequent and jobs scarce, little compassion remained in the weary driver of a dray or streetcar for the feelings of a horse that was not even his. So human dilemmas triggered many instances of cruelty. Neither the moral nor the emotional aspect of the helplessness of animals appeared to have touched the public mind.
—GERALD CARSON,
Men, Beasts, and Gods: A History of Cruelty
and Kindness to Animals
IN THE EXCLUSIVE VILLAGE OF SOUTH ORANGE, in the Montrose Park neighborhood of New Jersey, there were larger estates than Glenmere, on more expansive pieces of property—with owners whose names suggested they were among the very richest of New York’s elite families, all staking out their country retreats in the manner of English nobility. There were Mandevilles, Meekers, Babsons, Pages, and Firths; the estates of James T. Woodhouse and William Redmond covered as much land as many of the other lots put together, while investors like I. M. Freeman and John T. Lord owned several small noncontiguous tracts. Compared with some of the imposing mansions and grounds in the Village, the estate belonging to Mercy Adelia Rogers and her husband, Hiram, could have almost been considered modest. But because of its certain distinguishing characteristics, an invitation to Glenmere was coveted in any season in society circles from all of the Oranges.
For one thing, it was only one of two named estates in the whole of the private enclave off of Montrose Road, the other being Woodhouse’s dominion known as Hillside. For another, Glenmere had been designed as a kind of enchanting inn—probably so that Mercy and Hiram could depend on frequent visits from their two sons and three daughters and their grandchildren. Modeled after the fanciful French palace at Fontainebleau, it was sometimes mistakenly called by that name, even though Mercy and Hiram would be quick to point out that their home was but a cottage in comparison to the sixteenth-century castle once belonging to a de Medici. Glenmere’s location on Ridgewood Road was also prime real estate, bordered by a flowing brook that ran along its one side, and was one lot away from a riding ring, a quarter-mile track.
At first, it hardly occurred to A. R. Rogers that Glenmere could be an ideal launching place for Beautiful Jim Key. After the gatherings at Field’s Stables, he was sure that with the “crisp” New York notices, they would be flooded with requests for engagements at exhibitions in large halls. When that didn’t happen immediately, he sent out a new press release that included President McKinley’s quote from the Tennessee Centennial exhibit, along with the New York Sun’s assessment that “such a performance as Beautiful Jim Key goes through with has never been equaled by any horse in this vicinity,” and, of course, the Herald’s sensational review: “Almost all things seem possible to Beautiful Jim Key, except the power of speech. So perfectly is this wonderful horse trained that the trainer does not touch him with hand or whip.”
A trickle of interest began to flow. On Thursday, August 19, a telegram was sent to Albert at Maiden Lane from a J. L. Fynes, the assistant general manager of B. F. Keith’s Amusements Enterprises—which was the entity that booked theatrical entertainments for Keith’s New Theatre of Boston, Keith’s Opera House of Providence, Keith’s Bijou of Philadelphia, and Keith’s Union Theatre of New York. The letterhead was cause for Albert’s heart to pound—this being just the echelon he sought for Jim—but the telegram made no promises. “Dear Sir,” Fynes wrote, “If you care to have the horse go through his performance on our stage next Thursday A.M. at 10:30, I shall be pleased to witness same, and will then see whether I can place him.”
Beautiful Jim Key’s first real New York audition seemed not to go well. A big problem was the lack of response—positive or negative—that Jim received from the three or so theatre men in attendance; they simply had never seen anything like the act before and didn’t know how to react. But as disappointing as the B. F. Keith rejection was in the short term—and Albert had delayed their trip to Cincinnati because of the audition—it set into motion the collaboration that needed to occur between Key, Key, and Rogers.
Dr. Key pointed out to Rogers that from his years in the patent medicine business he had learned that different kinds of audiences responded to different kinds of presentations. For the general public, a free-flowing, informal demonstration—such as he and Jim had done at the Centennial and for the press gatherings—worked fine. Doc may not have been a New York sophisticate, but he could obviously see that for the higher priced ticket these men who booked the fancy, big-city opera houses were looking for a real show, with real stage scenery, music, and lights, and if not a set script, then at least enough of a predictable structure that the folks knew when to applaud.
A play? Why hadn’t Rogers thought of that? Already he had begun to harbor lofty ambitions for his promotional pamphlet, seeing his presentation of Jim’s accidental journey toward higher education as an entrancing saga, all the more moving because it was true. Rogers believed “He Was Taught by Kindness” could touch a public nerve and even rival the manner in which the latest fictional works were captivating an increasingly literate populace. He couldn’t help but think of that small paperbound booklet published in England twenty years earlier—a fictional “autobiography” of a horse by the name of Black Beauty, written by Anna Sewell.
Sewell’s book by this time had sold in the vicinity of three million copies (selling ten times that many over the next century and a half). In spectacular fashion, the thin volume had opened the public mind to the importance of preventing cruelty to horses. Probably no book had so managed to become a tool of social change in the United States to such an extent, other than Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, first published in 1852, which had provided the abolition movement with one of its most powerful, enduring voices.
Forty-five years later, the staged version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin continued to reign as the most popular drama in th
e country. There were so many traveling productions performing it on the repertory circuit (newly referred to as “the road”) that “Tom” troupes were known to bump into one another in transit, one company barely pulling up stakes as the other was pulling into town.
If Rogers could envision his pamphlet as a great bestseller, he could just as easily see it being turned into a traveling or Broadway spectacle. A full-scale play that embodied themes of Black Beauty and Uncle Tom’s Cabin? Why not?
On the train to Cincinnati, as Rogers and Doc Key started to write the dramatic piece, the former medicine showman was more of a realist, proposing that their first effort be on a more cost-efficient, modest scale. Rogers agreed, and the two proceeded together to map out the scenes for a two-act play, The Scholar and a Model Office Boy. Beautiful Jim Key was to star in the dual leading roles of the Scholar and the Office Boy, and Dr. William Key was to play the Professor in the first act and the Employer in the second act. But no amount of enticement or cajoling could convince Stanley Davis to play the role of Jim’s Valet in the school setting and the role of the Chief Clerk in the office setting. An actor would have to be found, suggested Rogers; preferably a classically trained Negro actor, suggested Key.
As the details were debated and while Rogers dispatched telegrams ordering the construction of a twenty-foot stage and a custom-designed blue-and-white-striped tent to seat five hundred, a new set of obstacles awaited them in Ohio. Albert had been so sure that after his New York disappointments over the lack of interest from the ASPCA and the American Institute Fair, his hometown would provide a welcoming haven in which to debut not only the different versions of the act they were now developing but also to do so under the auspices of a local humane organization. Unfortunately, the Ohio Humane Society, while interested, couldn’t commit to sponsorship, its board of directors being concerned that the costs would exceed any profits they might generate.