by Mim E. Rivas
Rogers predictably turned that down too, insisting that he considered $75,000 and upward the new going price, but he still managed to wrangle an endorsement from the Barnum & Bailey representative who told the Pittsburg Commercial Gazette: “This educated horse is undoubtedly the most intelligent horse in the world. We have never had any that could begin to do what he so easily does. Nor have I ever seen any such exhibition, though I have witnessed the performance of every trained horse on both continents.”
Not every idea that Key and Key tried in their performances met with the approval of Rogers. One of the newer bits that had their show ending with a tableau of the Doctor setting up his cot next to Jim as the two pretended to go to sleep—their actual nightly routine—didn’t go over well. Some said it was touching, but others thought it strange. They soon dropped the new bit.
Rogers seemed to enjoy the smattering of press who showed up at surprise hours, sometimes at Jim’s stables, or early in the day when Beautiful Jim Key was known to be taken out on his long morning run, as though they were trying to catch him and the trainer off guard, in the act of putting together their trickery. Rogers knew they would find nothing. But with a trail of suspicious fellows lurking about, Bill and Jim became less amused. Normally, it was the Doc’s habit to let reporters interview Jim out of his presence, with Stanley or Will standing nearby, to prove that he wasn’t signaling his horse to respond in any particular way to their questions. He told them in advance to make sure that they stuck an apple or two and maybe some sugar in their pockets—to play a game of hide-and-seek with Jim—or else he’d have nothing to say to them. Once after he returned to find that the reporter couldn’t get Jim to spell his name at his spelling stand, it turned out that it was because after a thorough search of the reporter, the petulant bay hadn’t found a thing. As the story went, Doc Key asked, “Well, how was it?” to which Jim did begin to spell, lining up the letters “F-R-U-I-T-L-E-S-S.”
Only once did Dr. Key come close to losing his patience with a reporter who seemed hell-bent on exposing him as a quack, accusing him of making up the tale about Jim finding the buried treasure for the ex-slave lady. In other accounts, this reporter pointed out, Dr. Key had said that it was Jim’s dam, Lauretta, who had the telepathic powers and had found the pot. Some newspapers had stated the treasure was worth $1,000; others said $4,500. So what other tall tale was the “doctor” telling?
Playing dumb, William Key smiled and said nothing.
The reporter continued, “Now, Dr., what about your claim that you personally collected most of the rabbit’s feet yourself at Chickamauga?”
Doc Key shrugged. What about it?
“Well, it’s generally believed that to have any efficacy a rabbit’s foot must be got at a graveyard at midnight by a cross-eyed nigger and you’re not cross-eyed and the Chickamauga battlefield is not a graveyard.”
“Oh yes it is a graveyard,” Bill Key countered sharply. “There are thousands of bodies buried there, and it doesn’t make any difference about a nigger being cross-eyed.” With a searing look at the reporter, he added calmly, “Any good nigger can collect the feet and they will have full power.”
With fame came higher scrutiny, distortions of the facts, and outright fabrications, as a mythologizing process began. The press started to describe Beautiful Jim Key with the romantic phrase “he was bred in Old Kentucky,” and that stuck, even though it had never been claimed, but may have spun from the fact that his Hambletonian grandsire was Ohio-bred Kentucky Volunteer. Some newspapers mixed up the political persuasions of Bill and Jim, sometimes on purpose, depending on the leanings of their readership.
Like all stars, Jim and his associates also suffered a loss of privacy, experienced early on the last day of the Pittsburg Exposition, when Jim and company were mobbed as they attempted to board the train for Cincinnati. This could have caused Rogers—typically late—to almost miss the train, but as he rushed up, he had a new letter for Doc Key to see. Just received from Jas. Heekin of the Jas. Heekin Company—makers of “celebrated Cincinnati high-grade roasted coffee”—the letter of introduction requested his business colleagues to receive A. R. Rogers and to let them know that any courtesies extended to Albert and his fellows would be most appreciated.
The letter helped, and so did the advance press, evidently, as another crowd was waiting for the train in Cincinnati. Amid these signs of Jim’s increasing celebrity status, the Odeon Theatre managers excitedly informed them that the coming week’s run of The Scholar and a Model Office Boy was close to being sold out in advance.
With the opening of the play, Rogers used the occasion of a debut in his hometown—where Jim was being given the fawning reception that he’d anticipated on his previous visit—to begin to earn back his investment and, with the additional 25,000 or so admissions sold for the subsequent run at the Auditorium, then some. A century later, the merchandising concepts of A. R. Rogers might seem commonplace, but in his era, and given the range of venues in which he was promoting a most unusual act, they were truly brilliant, truly ahead of his time. In the printed programs handed out at the Odeon, at the very spot on the page where the act break was marked and intermission implied (during which, since the Doc wanted music, the Orchestral Regina Music Box, furnished by the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, was played), theatergoers could also discover:
Those who desire a large and very handsome photograph of Beautiful Jim Key, to show to their friends, can purchase the same in the lobby. There are five different views, Filing Letters, Writing, Reading, Spelling and Counting, Using the Cash Register and Taking the Silver Dollar from the bottom of the Glass Bucket of Water. Price, 25 cents each.
For prices ranging from $5 for private boxes, which sat six, orchestra seating for fifty cents, and balcony seats at twenty-five cents, twelve thousand Cincinnati theatergoers fell in love with the almost human horse. Will Griffin played his parts winningly too. But the truly brilliant star was Dr. William Key—whom Rogers had highlighted in the program as “the most successful trainer of horses ever known”—and whose dignified bearing and aura of kindness and intelligence captured the favor of audiences and critics alike.
Though the play itself was not necessarily a literary triumph, the run at the Odeon was a stunning success on several counts. The structural choices worked, making Act I (“Scene—School Room: The Audience are requested to ask the questions”) the more informal, free-flowing demonstration, incorporating the easier exercises or those Jim had been performing the longest:
1. Jim’s admiration of the ladies.
2. Jim opens school ringing brass bell and silver bell around the ring, tells time and reads the calendar for any date asked for.
3. Jim picks out any letter, playing card or number asked for.
4. He will spell any ordinary name requested by any one in the audience.
5. Jim brings various names from the rack at command.
6. His views on politics.
7. Jim shows his proficiency in figuring, adding, multiplying and subtracting in any numbers below 25.
8. He writes.
9. Jim plays the organ.
Act II (“Scene—The Office”) had Dr. Key in the role of the Employer and W. G. Griffin in the role of the Chief Clerk, both guiding most of the questions (with some audience input), in a more scripted format, with Jim doing some of his harder or newer bits:
1. Jim goes to the post office.
2. Jim distinguishes various pieces of money from 1 cent to $20, ringing the amount on a street car register as correctly as the conductor.
3. Jim goes to a regular cash register with a five dollar bill, rings up any amount requested and brings back the correct change.
4. He will show how he rang up money in his cash box used at the Nashville Centennial.
5. He rings up the telephone.
6. Jim takes a silver dollar from a large glass bucket filled with water, without drinking a drop.
7. Jim distinguishes colors and flags, and tells ho
w it is he is able to do these wonderful feats.
8. Jim offered for sale—not wanting to leave his owner he becomes lame—well again.
9. Jim says good-bye.
The reviews traveled quickly to other cities, spurring inquiries from theatres across the Northeast; some were reprinted elsewhere, like the article that ran in the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, and also made the New York Mail and Express. The writer raved, “Speech alone is denied to Jim Key, the most intelligent horse that ever looked through a bridle or munched oats, but he makes himself as clearly understood as the most accomplished linguist. When it is said that speech is denied to Jim Key, audible speech only is meant.” Critics who questioned his breeding had to hear him praised as that most “handsome bay, through whose veins flow the purest of Arabian and Hambletonian blood.” The ever-simmering accusations that Key, Key, and Rogers were involved in a hoax were answered in reviews that read like full-page testimonials, including a list of signatures from representatives of Cincinnati’s military, police, and courts in a declaration that read: “we the undersigned…take pleasure in testifying that Beautiful Jim Key does all that is claimed for him and that there is to the best of our belief no deception, but that the horse really seems to have very remarkable intelligence, and we cheerfully recommend this very interesting, astonishing, and amusing entertainment.”
W. L. Lykens, one of the most well-known theatrical booking agents in New York City, was inspired enough by the write-ups to make the trip to Cincinnati. Not at all disappointed, he went on record as saying, “In my province, I have handled many native and foreign attractions, I have seen the exploited novelties in this and other countries, but without solicitation and unhesitatingly I have the honor to say that the education of Beautiful Jim Key and the acts he performs are not short of marvelous.”
Prior to their arrival in Ohio, Albert had received a cable from his uncle saying that the stodgy members of the school board were still opposed to the idea of shutting the schools down for a day-long series of children’s shows at the Auditorium. That didn’t change, even with reports that many schools in Pittsburg had directed their students to the Exposition, and as Jim’s pending Odeon run had become the talk of the town. In Cincinnati, Albert responded by inviting every principal, teacher, and school board member to attend the Monday opening evening performance at the Odeon as his guest and by scheduling a special discounted children’s matinee two days later. The invitation proposed: “If, after witnessing this performance, you agree with me that every child should witness it, and you would care to announce it to them, I would appreciate it. This special School Children’s Matinee will not be advertised.”
When news followed that a crush of thousands of Cincinnati children flooded the streets surrounding the theatre and had reached near riot levels on Wednesday evening—after it became clear that the Odeon could seat only the earliest arrivals—the school board held an emergency meeting and approved closing down the schools for the day on Monday, October 25, so that every student in the city be given the chance to witness Beautiful Jim Key’s grand “object lesson of what can be accomplished through kindness and patience.” The board voted unanimously to reject Rogers’s offer that the shows at the Auditorium be free to the students, resolving instead to charge an admission of ten cents each—except to those who couldn’t afford it—the logic being, as one board member quipped, “A free show does not impress the mind of a child.”
While the only coverage that Cincinnati newspapers had allotted Jim back in August had been one brisk blurb about his benefit performance for the House of Refuge, by now he was their darling. The Cincinnati Commercial Tribune went so far as to offer “Twenty-five Dollars in prizes to the scholars of the public Schools for the best composition on Beautiful Jim Key. The best compositions to be published from day to day.”
If Bill Key harbored any reservations about some of Albert’s marketing tactics—and he did—he recognized that what the promoter had accomplished with the Cincinnati school board was a monumental coup, a turning point in a journey he was beginning to see as reaching far beyond anything he had dreamt back in Tennessee when waiting for his future turf champion to be foaled. From here on out, almost every city where they performed would be able to follow the model established in Cincinnati; indeed the former skeptics on the school board signed a testimonial, touting their own leadership in the cause of humane education.
Albert Rogers likewise understood that his aims notwithstanding, the heroes of their ambitious venture were the horse and the man from Shelbyville, Tennessee, who in three short months, in spite of some obstacles, had begun to capture the attention and hearts of the public—young and old, male and female, rich and poor, educated and not. The much more difficult challenge that lay ahead, however, was to capture the public mind, and to change attitudes and behavior toward animals.
The turn from the nineteenth century to the twentieth was a cacophonous time in America. It was literally loud and noisy, with the roar of industry and the crash of conflicting concerns about a host of old and new issues. For any activist, it was not the most opportune moment in history to launch a movement, let alone breathe a second wind into a cause that seemed to have had its day, or to help unify its well-meaning but disorganized proponents.
The problem wasn’t just that the greater volume of protest was about humankind’s cruelty to other humans—with prominent voices speaking out against America’s growing imperialism and increasingly violent racism toward blacks, Native Americans, and immigrants, as well as women’s inequality, and the battle heating up over workers’ rights—but that the prospect of a rapidly transforming world made it that much harder to craft a resonant message to last beyond a season.
Perhaps at no other time in the country’s history had so many radical changes taken place, on every plane of existence, so suddenly, with technologies, social structures, values, and belief systems loudly clashing and clanging up against one another. In just a handful of decades the agrarian base of commerce had been toppled by the industrial revolution. Inventions that could not have been imagined in the early 1800s were by late century exploding into reality almost daily. In the decade between 1896 and 1906 alone, human ingenuity created everything from Jell-O (gelatin dessert, 1897) to the engine-powered airplane (1903), as well as:
radio (1896)
electric stove (1896)
aspirin (1897)
telephone with answering machine (1898)
anesthesia (1898)
flashlight, battery-operated portable (1899)
tape recorder (1899)
wireless telephone (1899)
radio telephone (1900)
zeppelin blimp (1900)
electric vacuum cleaner (1901)
electric typewriter (1901)
air-conditioning (1902)
crayons (1903)
electrocardiogram (1903)
silicone (1904)
animation of motion pictures (1906)
radio amplifier (1906)
Although travel by rail and by horse for most Americans would continue to be the main modes of transportation for a few more decades, by the turn of the century a number of automobiles were increasingly spotted on city streets and country roadways. In 1908, Henry Ford’s assembly line would ring in the era of mass production, making the horseless carriage affordable to the booming middle class, as the numbers of cars on the road multiplied exponentially. Electric cablecars were appearing in many cities, eliminating the use of horse-drawn trolley cars and saving those horses from abuse, but those equine servants still pulling individual carriages were still exposed to dangerous conditions. In most urban areas, where immigrants were now flocking in ever greater numbers, bursting already crowded lower-income neighborhoods at their seams, the challenge of crossing the street was as much of a life-and-death proposition as it had been in 1866 when Henry Bergh founded the ASPCA.
By the mid-nineteenth century, like several larger cities, New York City was inhabited by
teeming masses of homeless nonhuman species: pigs, hogs, goats, dogs, cats, ducks, geese, various and sundry rodents and birds, donkeys, horses, cows, sheep, and other livestock abandoned or escaped from the numerous pens kept near shanties and Central Park squatter houses, or from the many slaughterhouses, despite efforts to keep the meat-packing industry near the city’s more remote addresses. After a visit to New York, Charles Dickens wrote friends about his attempt to cross lower Broadway, warning them about the estimated ten thousand hogs roaming freely about town. “Take care of the pigs,” he noted, “a select party of half a dozen gentleman hogs have just now turned the corner.”
In the 1860s, as many as one million nonhumans called New York City their home, not including insects. Despite laws that had been passed both to prevent cruelty and to cope with the overwhelming noise, sanitation, and health problems, enforcement seemed impossible.
Henry Bergh, son of a prosperous shipbuilder and upper-class scion, decided to challenge the status quo. After a visit to England, where he was inspired by the work of the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, he brought the movement to the United States officially in 1866. Bergh had some advantages, not the least of which was his wealthy circle of friends, who were keen to participate in some form of philanthropy and helped to fund his activities. His timing was also such that with the end of the Civil War and the cause of ending slavery no longer the focus of forward thinkers, abolitionists and humanitarians of the day turned their already stirred energies to consider the plight of their animal brothers and sisters. To Bergh’s disadvantage, even though he named his organization the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, with the ambition that it have a national reach, the structure of local, county, and state jurisdictions fairly limited his authority to the city. Nonetheless, the tall, thin-faced elegant gentleman with the droopy mustache—known as Don Quixote of Manhattan—spurred the establishment of SPCAs in localities across the country.