by Mim E. Rivas
Although Beautiful Jim Key made several new fans from a press gathering that Rogers hosted, no inquiries about hiring him followed. But Albert’s uncle, Professor C. C. Long, principal of the Eighth Street District School, smitten with Jim and profoundly impressed by Dr. Key, had a startling idea. Wouldn’t it be marvelous, he proposed, if all the students at his school could witness one of Beautiful Jim Key’s performances?
Better still, Rogers added, why not make performances available to every young student in the city? He could see it then: entire school systems of every major city in America closed in honor of officially decreed Beautiful Jim Key Days. In his imagination, Rogers visualized Jim being presented with keys to those cities, along with medals, awards, and commendations.
Those visions were soon mocked. At a meeting with the municipal school board that his uncle quickly arranged, Albert Rogers and Dr. William Key described the value that a series of performances for students throughout Cincinnati would have on their understanding of the object lessons of kindness and patience. Noting the dubious expressions on the faces of the board members, Albert went further, offering to host the performances himself at no cost to the school board. If he hired the Auditorium, with its seating capacity of four thousand, Jim and Dr. Key would perform thirty-minute shows throughout the day, which ought to accommodate all the children of the city; if not, a second day of performances could be arranged.
“Absolutely not” was the unanimous response of the board.
“Why, sirs?” Rogers felt compelled to ask, nearly speechless.
“Because,” retorted an indecorous board member with a chin thrust out toward Bill Key, “we can’t close our schools for horse shows, or monkey shows.”
Furious, Rogers later apologized to Dr. Key. Of course, the Doc had heard much worse in his lifetime, and he only encouraged his partner not to pay those comments any mind. The best way to counter stupidity and unkindness was to go the opposite direction and not give up.
Those thoughts and what seemed to be setbacks lit a fire in Rogers, and within a matter of days he was able to secure three excellent promotional opportunities, covering three different strategies. The first of these came during a meeting with the management of the Odeon Theatre. Promising them that his “remarkable new play” would make their stage the talk of the theatre world around the nation, Albert convinced the Odeon to engage the show at their earliest convenience. Almost too early, the managers promptly engaged the play to run for a week starting October 18, less than two months away.
Emboldened, Albert decided not to take the school board’s no as definitive and went next to the Auditorium’s manager, booking the huge hall for the three days following what he predicted would be a sold-out week at the Odeon.
Before leaving Cincinnati, a third opportunity that fell into their laps at the last minute was a charitable performance on behalf of the six hundred children of the House of Refuge, not precisely the foray into philanthropy that Rogers had been looking for, but an opening nonetheless. As much as A. R. Rogers professed to know and care about animals, and horses in particular, the marked sensitivity that Jim showed toward the orphans—as though he actually knew they had met with unfortunate circumstances in their lives through no faults of their own—struck him as uncanny. Again he wondered if through some hypnotic force Dr. Key was cuing Jim to perform differently for different audiences. The Doc would have scoffed and expressed his observation that animals were often more highly in tune with human feelings than were other humans. No matter how Jim accomplished it, from the start to the finish of his performance, Rogers witnessed a visible transformation on the part of the children.
A letter to that effect was delivered from the House of Refuge’s president, Charles Thomas, as Albert prepared to depart for the train station. Thomas sent his thanks, with gratitude from the board of directors, for the gift Beautiful Jim Key had bestowed on the orphans. He noted, “If you could have heard not only their many expressions of delight during the performances and those given me privately afterward I know that you would have felt repaid for the ray of sunshine you have thrown into the lives of these homeless waifs.” Rogers brought the letter at once to show to Doc Key and to Jim, showing the two the passage that described lessons the children had learned about the importance of humane practices toward animals. Since many of the House of Refuge’s orphans would be placed in homes in the country, the lessons would have practical as well as moral benefits. “Several boys who have had the care of horses before coming to us,” wrote Thomas, “said that they would never whip a horse again.”
Just as exciting to Albert was the fact that the letter included their very first—and unsolicited—publishable endorsement: “The perfection to which you have brought the training of Jim Key is truly wonderful and surpasses anything of the kind that I have seen. I feel confident that he has not his equal in intelligence.”
Within a week, they had received more than a hundred additional endorsements, thanks to a four-day engagement at the Waverly Park Fair in Newark, marking the end of summer and the New Jersey State Agricultural Fair. Mayor James H. Seymour of Newark, Elizabeth’s mayor John C. Rankin, the officers and membership of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of New Jersey, and every possible other area civic leader wrote recommendations and signed petitions extolling the virtues of the “most highly educated horse in the world” (according to the Newark Evening News on September 9, 1897). The Newark Daily Advertiser claimed that a “more mystified and delighted audience never watched” a performer, human or otherwise, of Beautiful Jim Key’s inexplicable talents. President W. L. Tomkins of the State Agricultural Society wrote that it was gratifying, “in these days of Houchee Couchee shows,” to be called upon to attest to an attraction as meritorious as that of Jim Key. If only more trainers and promoters would spend more time developing such acts, he wished, than “the class which has been in vogue, and leads to the degradation of the human being.”
Ironically, Rogers had first been hesitant about appearing at the fair, since the tent and the new stage weren’t ready yet. The Doc apparently encouraged him to take the engagement. After all, he and Jim had been performing in county and state fairs for a few years and could employ the same format they had used with such success at the Tennessee Centennial. Dr. Key’s instincts were correct as usual, and as early as September 1, while they were launching into Rogers’s next strategy, the buzzing began. The World soon jumped on the Beautiful Jim Key bandwagon by featuring a half-page, illustrated article on him (Sunday, September 11, 1897) as Albert started fielding invitations, securing dates through much of the fall. They agreed to appear for the last five days of September at the Casino Hall Summit for the Trenton Interstate Fair, and continue on to Pennsylvania for an exposition during the first week of October (offered the top weekly fee so far of $500). That gave them only a week off before the debut of the play in Cincinnati on October 18.
The Danbury Fair in Connecticut loomed as a possibility for November, but before pursuing the engagement, Rogers sent one last inquiry—and a packet of press clippings and endorsements—to Mr. Allen Williams, press bureau chief of Madison Square Garden as well as a director on the Board of the American Institute Fair. Mr. Williams replied two days later, disappointing Rogers one last time. “The only trouble with having Jim Key at the American Institute Fair,” the press bureau chief acknowledged, “is that they do not seem to want any such Show attraction, no matter how great its merit. I urged it upon them because I was wonderfully impressed with the performance which I witnessed at Newark.” In fact, Albert’s colleague volunteered to write an endorsement for the horse and a letter of introduction that could be used for press references. Once again, however, Williams delicately hinted that part of his board’s objections had to do with Dr. Key’s lack of established credentials. He went on to reiterate that “if this equine prodigy is managed by such a successful veteran as Major Pond, I think his owner should be a great financial winner.”
Rogers
took no personal offense from such attitudes, though they frustrated him. He recognized that Major J. P. Pond, the peerless lecture circuit promoter, had taken the value of the spoken word to unprecedented heights and had helped to build the fortunes of some of the most famous American thinkers of the age: names like Mark Twain, Henry Ward Beecher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Wendell Phillips, as well as emerging authorities such as Thompson Seton, a lecturer on the subject of wild animals. But even with Albert’s own knack for hyperbole, he couldn’t imagine convincing Major Pond that Dr. Key and his horse could be counted as masters of the spoken word. Although the man and the stallion were extraordinary in myriad ways, to suggest they were paragons of great American thinking was, believed Rogers, at least for the moment, overreaching.
It was true that Pond, who led a Wisconsin unit in the Civil War as captain and major, also managed musical entertainments, having conceived the idea of promoting military bands as concert attractions. He had managed the careers of many notable singers and musical novelties such as the boy violinist Florizel. Through the management of Gilbert and Sullivan, he had made himself a small mint by retaining rights to some of their operas—Pirates of Penzance for one. Upon further reflection, Rogers had to realize that if he wanted Major Pond to take over Beautiful Jim Key’s management, it might not be a difficult proposition to interest the impresario. The real problem was that he could see himself being pushed out of the picture, a possibility he dreaded.
Rogers decided instead to be as Pond-like as he could in his own efforts to establish Dr. William Key’s name and reputation on a broader public scale. He immediately revised the press materials—adding deliberate phrases such as “successful veteran horseman” and “renowned throughout the Southland”—that featured the Good Doctor’s background more prominently. As a result the Newark Evening News wrote a follow-up story to an earlier one, declaring Beautiful Jim Key all the rage of the Waverly Fair with credit clearly due to Dr. Key. Drawing from Albert’s research, the News became the first paper to write at length about the “venerable looking colored man” determining him to be a “character of the most unique order.”
The stigmas of being described as a practitioner of voodoo and being known as a horse whisperer—or a dabbler in methodology thought by the better known equestrian authorities to be suspect—were offset by the reporter’s series of questions to Dr. Key about his educational formula of kindness and patience.
“I made him understand that by learning promptly,” the Doc told the Newark Evening News, “that he would earn a piece of lump sugar or some other dainty, while dullness meant no sugar and a good scolding.”
A scolding? Did the trainer punish his horse with the whip? The reporter had to raise the question because of rampant abuse of circus and other performing animals.
“No, sir, I never used a whip in training Jim.” Dr. William Key compared whipping animals to whipping children, saying that in either case, “The whip makes ’em stubborn and fearful.” Trust was the firmament for education, he explained; fear destroyed trust.
With a few other press pieces positioning Bill Key as an expert in his field, it occurred to Rogers that if Dr. Key could win an endorsement from the Orange Driving and Riding Club—an almost unspeakably prestigious group of equestrian enthusiasts who had never hosted a horse show of any kind—then the Major Ponds of the world might help their cause, just to be associated with their caliber of excellence. But by what strategy could Albert, Bill, and Jim entice the impervious lions of the club to sponsor a couple of evenings at their unspeakably exclusive clubhouse?
The answer arrived at once: Glenmere. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?
Much later, Doc Key must have laughed when he read Albert’s revision of the section in the promotional pamphlet on Jim’s journey from home state star to national prominence: “So North went Jim and Dr. Key to Mr. Rogers’ beautiful country home, ‘Glenmere,’ at South Orange, New Jersey, a suburb of New York, and here for two years Jim’s education received its finishing touches before he was ever put on public exhibition.”
Two years was obviously an exaggeration. The time spent in retreat at Glenmere was actually much closer to one week.
Nonetheless, by the evening of Tuesday, September 14, with Beautiful Jim Key’s two-act play still in rehearsal, his general public presentation had been polished to a high sheen, losing some of its rustic county fair appeal and its patent medicine show elements, while several new elements had been added to reflect the astoundingly rapid advancement of Jim’s educational level. He had seemingly jumped overnight from country elementary schoolboy to private high school student bound for college. Doc Key and Jim appeared very pleased as additions to sets and props arrived continuously, with new display and spelling racks, authentic post office–styled mail cabinets, Jim’s own watch tower clock and mechanical calendar—of very fine design—an organ, a telephone, an electric cable car coin box, and, the coup de grace, a Beautiful Jim Key nickel-plated cash register, made just for him by the National Cash Register Company (a manufacturer out of Ohio), with leather tabs he could pull rather than having to press keys with his soon-to-be celebrated nose. Rogers had also ordered sets of oversize playing cards so that Jim could demonstrate his budding poker knowledge—Be careful, he cheats, Stanley Davis (who had been practicing with Jim) could have told Rogers and Key, but didn’t—along with colored posters of the flags of different nations, which the Doc had been teaching Jim to identify.
The time spent in collaboration at Glenmere laid a needed foundation of trust between Dr. Key and Albert Rogers, a bond that was apparently made stronger by both Keys’ instant fondness for the other Rogers family members. This included their English butler, Mr. Barton, and their Irish housekeeper, Mrs. Lowrey, along with the rest of the estate’s employees who, Bill observed, were treated with respect and kindness, if not as equal family members. The Doc and Albert’s father seemed not to have enough hours to discuss subjects of mutual interest—the news of the day, outer space, philosophy, business, and Hiram’s health. Just two years younger than Doc Key, Hiram had a few ailments that bothered him, and he was clearly impressed by his sixty-four-year-old guest’s youthful vigor. Key may have actually recommended his own Keystone tonic for the elder Rogers, or possibly treated the ailments with an herbal remedy and even an incantation or two. Whatever Dr. Key did was able to produce such a positive result for Hiram Draper Rogers that he continued from then on to confer with Key whenever medical worries arose.
Jim, always partial to the ladies, had Albert’s mother, Mercy, and his three sisters—Alice, in her early thirties, Grace, age twenty-seven, and twenty-four-year-old Stella—fluttering in and out of the stables, catering to his every whim. At Maiden Lane, Dr. Key, Jim, and Stanley had already spent time getting to know Albert’s wife, Clara, and her three boys, eight-year-old Clarence, six-year-old Newell, and the toddler Archibald. At Glenmere, Stanley found more opportunities to play with the boys—who enthusiastically showed him around the estate, with Archie, scrambling to keep up. Later Stanley reported to Albert that his youngest was quite a little athlete. Albert’s sons sat in on Jim’s lessons and enjoyed thinking up words and names for him to spell. He became very proficient at spelling C-L-A-R-E-N-C-E and N-E-W-E-L-L (even though the first time Jim tried he spelled it with only one L), but he had problems spelling the name of the youngest, which he insisted was A-R-C-H-E. The concept of the non-phonetic I-E seemed to amuse Beautiful Jim Key, and he was stuck on “Arche” from then on.
The suburban rumor mill of the Oranges chewed on the mysterious goings-on at Glenmere. When word spread that only a select group of prominent citizens had been invited to attend the Tuesday evening party, those left out pooh-poohed the horse’s alleged abilities and raised questions of credibility. The mulatto trainer was a voodoo man, they had heard; the so-called Arabian-Hambletonian wasn’t even a legitimate breed. And Albert Rogers, despite his parents’ respectability, not only dabbled in dark arts of amusement promotion and
publicity stunts, but also mingled far too openly with the lower classes. When the grumbling reached the editorial offices of the Orange Chronicle, a representative from the local newspaper called on Rogers to ask why he had not invited any of their correspondents to attend. This was a switch for A. R. Rogers, after having to twist the arms of reporters in New York to attend his gatherings, and he eagerly, albeit belatedly, extended an exclusive invitation to the Chronicle to cover the informal evening.
Even though the newspaper tried to send a cynic, from the moment his carriage turned up the long, elm-lined circular drive to Glenmere he fell at once under the same spell that the other guests experienced. The anticipation of witnessing the private exhibition of the “wonderful trained Southern horse that has created such a furor wherever shown,” the correspondent reported, was almost equaled by the enjoyment of being greeted by the three lovely, charming Rogers sisters. Alice, Grace, and Stella, their husbands and children, along with Hiram and Mercy, hospitably showed guests around their Fountainebleau-esque home, and then led everyone along a path to the stables.
Intended to suggest that the group was entering a magical realm, huge Japanese lanterns lit the path from the main house, past the guest wing, through the trees that sheltered the round open-aired summer house, and back toward the stables and carriage house. Hosts and guests entered the main carriage room to find it transformed into a small theater space—prettily decorated with flags and bunting—while one half of the room was comfortably arranged with stable seats and the other half was railed off to designate the stage area. Jim’s new display rack—“a large framework, on which in parallel rows were cards, with the letters of the alphabet on them, figures from 1 to 25 and a number of names of individuals”—covered much of the rear of the railed-off space. Jim’s new set piece conveyed “an imitation of a post office, with boxes numbered from 1 to 30, in each of which was a letter.”