Beautiful Jim Key

by Mim E. Rivas

  The following week a horse blanket fit for a derby winner—with the name Jim Key worked into its design—was mailed to Albert Rogers with a note from Frederick Walton honoring “one of the most knowing horses in the world” and his trainer.

  Dr. Key’s in-laws later recalled that both the man and his horse savored their successes, carefully collecting the gifts, trophies, awards, fan letters, and postcards they received, and taking crates of them home for safekeeping, whenever they could. It was said that nothing meant as much to either of them as the awards and honorary memberships they had begun to receive for their humane work.

  While the early 1898 endorsement from George Angell and the network that formed the American Humane Association had dramatically opened numerous new doors for Key, Key, and Rogers, there truly could have been no greater boon to the organization or to the movement than Beautiful Jim and Dr. William Key. Within less than three years, almost 300,000 children signed the Jim Key Pledge: “I promise always to be kind to animals.” Adult membership, predominantly female, exploded to as many as three million in the various Bands of Mercy, which came under the umbrella of Angell’s American Humane Education Society. The idea for the Bands of Mercy had been borrowed from the RSPCA, a concept that basically allowed for the franchising of clubs or reading and social circles to discuss and embrace humane philosophies, often by sharing true or literary stories about animals.

  The shift in public sentiment had begun. The movement had broken out of elite drawing rooms and had arrived at Main Street, thanks in large part to Jim Key; he had also broadened the focus of animal welfare to include not only protecting animals from cruel treatment but also celebrating the connection between humans and nonhumans through acts of kindness. The notion that animals could think, reason, and feel was no longer so radical.

  But missionary work, like celebrity, could be exhausting, if the itineraries for the 1898–1901 seasons were any indication. Most of that second year had kept Jim Key and company in the North, starting with a return to New Jersey, with theater performances, humane benefits, and school events in Plainfield that made national headlines throughout the month of March that both praised and condemned the Equine Wonder.

  There were already at least four different camps of those who seemed outraged by the growing prestige given an educated horse from Tennessee. These adversaries included those who believed the act was rigged or that Dr. Key was a hypnotist; those who thought Jim Key was a sideshow that belonged in the circus or strictly as children’s entertainment; those who strenuously opposed the advancement of the humane cause and especially any Darwinian-type suggestion that we had more in common with our furry and feathered friends than we knew; and the most insidious of the lot, those who were threatened not by the prestige of a horse but by his Negro costar.

  Taking the stance that all press was good press, Albert Rogers ignored the criticism and continued to gather testimonials and clippings, sending them out in thick, weighty packages. In one press release of this era, Albert announced that the Great and Only Bostock, the thirty-year-old Animal King who had been born in a circus caravan and had become a lion tamer at fourteen, had offered him $100,000 for Beautiful Jim Key, an amount rejected out of hand, with the claim he was worth twice that. The promotional pamphlet went into its third printing, declaring the Beautiful One to be valued at twice his former value or ten times his “purchase” price.

  In the month of May, the show moved on to a stint at the Scenic Theatre in Atlantic City, across from Young’s Pier, where everything that could go wrong did. First the rains came, blowing off the ocean in relentless slats across the boardwalk, shutting down all of the tented entertainment and throwing a wet chill into the stables and the theater. There was no local humane group sponsoring Jim and attendance was noticeably low, which didn’t help the star’s tendency to turn in a lackluster performance for smaller, less energized crowds. Many who did venture out in the stormy weather were holding press passes or were performers from the tented shows who had been given passes, and when the box office became very slow, Rogers turned it over to Stanley and his brother Sam (who was now traveling with Jim’s troupe).

  Rogers knew this had to be a temporary lull, but he was blue, as he admitted he could be at times, and after a telegram arrived for him at his hotel—its contents to remain undisclosed—he sent word to Dr. Key that he had been called away. This had happened before, when his father had taken ill, so the Doc was worried that the emergency had to do with Hiram. Evidently, A. R. Rogers now spent less time on the road, putting more responsibility on William Key, not only for stage and road management, but also for the money and the books. When later asked about this arrangement, with the inference that it would be tempting for any manager to skim from the pot, Albert Rogers vehemently asserted, “He is the most faithful man I ever met. I would trust Bill Key with my life.” He also added the following paragraph to the promotional pamphlet:

  Few men have seen as much varied life as has Dr. Key, and few men have done more good. It is said that the Doctor is worth close on to a hundred thousand dollars, but his love for Jim is so strong that he prefers to travel around with him rather than live in ease.

  While it was the case that the Doc didn’t need the “large salary” (Rogers did mention this point in his pamphlet), William Key was nonetheless extremely fastidious in checking Albert’s bookkeeping and making sure that every cent owed him and his staff was paid in full and on time. When it came to addressing these matters, the Doc’s tone, ironically, was somewhat scolding and schoolmarmish, though patient after a fashion, sort of the way he spoke to Jim when the horse wasn’t putting forth his best effort.

  Although the Doc wasn’t upset with Rogers for the sudden departure, he did fear the worst and cabled him urgently at Glenmere to inquire if his father was all right. After a few days, Rogers sent a terse reply stating that Hiram was fine, but he was more concerned about how business was doing and how Jim was doing. Doc Key immediately wrote back in his sprightly, clean longhand:

  Dear Sir

  Everything is all right. Jim is well and doing his work O.K. Business is very dull on account of storms. We are playing hear the rest of this week and I am expecting to go home next Sunday morning if you are willing for me to go. I would like to hear from you in the mater at once so I may know what to do about getting ready. Please send me my check from Dr. Fields stable as soon as feasible. Have it handled with care. I would like to have it sent by express. In closed find statement of money I have received and spent for the month of April. I am very glad to hear that your father is better. I have been greaving over him as dead. As the porter of the hotel told me you had received a telegram of his death.

  I remain very respectfully,

  Wm. Key

  After returning from an errand in the rain, Doc Key imagined he was about to confront his next cause for worry when one of the Davis brothers came to find him, asking him to hurry to Jim’s stall. There was something he had to see. What was it? He would have to see for himself came the answer; there were no words to explain. Now in a full panic, the Doc raced back to the stables, obviously having come to the conclusion that Jim had hurt himself or become sick. He would have blamed himself and would have possibly recalled premonitions that the Atlantic City engagement boded poorly for the show. Why had he ignored instincts that had served him so well in the past?

  It was bad enough that Jim Key couldn’t go out for his morning run and that he had to be cooped up inside, without the usual distractions of reporters and admirers coming around. But what concerned Dr. Key was the homesickness he sometimes observed in Jim. Naturally, that was what he was feeling, and why he was anxious to get back to Shelbyville. Maybe the Doc had the blues too, brought on by the rain in Atlantic City, reinforcing the realization they were all starting to have that it could get awful lonely at the top.

  It was good to have Stanley and Sam with him on this leg of their travels, even though it was their sister, Maggie, with whom he would hav
e preferred to be spending time, if truth be told. As his late third wife had predicted, he did think about having a woman to keep him company, an attractive, kindhearted, intelligent woman no less, and spring in Bedford County was especially nice weather in which to go courting. He perhaps had expected that his interests in that direction were supposed to slow. But such was not the case. Maggie was still studying at the Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes in Normal, Alabama, as Dr. Key had arranged. When she was finished, however, he could see building a place on his new property and marrying Maggie. He looked forward to having Jim there too, since the increasingly valuable smart and handsome horse had pretty much missed breeding seasons, and it would be a joy to see him getting to be a horse for a few months.

  These may have been the kinds of thoughts the Doc used to distract himself from imagining that the worst had happened to Jim Key.

  At the stables, outside of the stall, a strange sight greeted Dr. Key. There in the middle, hopping around the hay and scrambling after a stick, much as he had done when he was a spindly legged ugly duckling of a colt, Jim was playing not as a dog, but with a dog. He was a small to middle-size, black-and-white wire-haired, scruffy mix of what looked like some terrier, some collie, and maybe schnauzer. He had just wandered in, one of the Davis brothers explained, who figured the dog was a stray trying to get out of the rain.

  The moment that Jim lifted his head to acknowledge Doc Key, the dog began to bark in a very demanding manner: Who are you and what do you want?

  That’s what he had been doing to Stanley and Sam for the last hour, and he wouldn’t let either of them come near Jim. The dog seemed to want to be Beautiful Jim Key’s bodyguard. To prove it, the dog made a running leap onto Jim’s back, much to the big bay’s pleasure. Jim trotted back and forth as the dog squeezed his eyes into a pensive expression, as though he were meditating upon a subject of deep complexity.

  Dr. Key communicated in like manner—as he knew how to do—his demeanor suggesting that any new friend of Jim’s was a friend of his. He checked around with managers of the other acts then engaged in Atlantic City to see if anyone had lost a dog who could squint up his eyes and appear to contemplate important questions, but no one claimed him. At the end of the week, the dog they called Monk—either because of his thoughtful appearance or as a nickname, which was short for Monkey, in honor of his antics—left Atlantic City with the rest of the Tennesseeans. From then on, he was Jim’s constant companion and guardian.

  Monk never appeared onstage as part of Jim’s act, but he received almost as much publicity as did the Celebrated Educated Arabian-Hambletonian, starting with an item that ran in Plainfield, New Jersey, where The Scholar and a Model Office Boy was to be presented for a week at the Stillman Music Hall:

  Jim Key…is in a box stall at Uncle Dan Roberts’ stable where he is guarded by a dog. The dog stays on the horse’s back all the time and carefully warns all persons away except the ones appointed to care for the horse, on penalty of being bitten.

  Monk had a particular bias against reporters and would bark at any that tried to interview Jim unless they first made a to-do over him or if photographers were present. Monk loved to sit to have his picture taken, preferably by himself. Perhaps he had some vaudevillian training in his background because his routine was to strike a pose and then to bark as a signal to the photographer to take the shot. At night, he slept curled up on Jim’s back and, as noted, spent the day happily perched there, alternately thinking deeply and enjoying the view. Of course, when it was time to put a saddle on Jim and ride him—whether it was Dr. Key (usually the one to take him out for a canter), Stanley, Sam, or occasionally Albert Rogers—Monk would begrudgingly leap down and allow his charge to be ridden.

  Rogers was no doubt thrilled by the addition to Jim Key’s entourage of the dog who had adopted a horse. He didn’t offer any more of an explanation about whether or not it was his father’s health that had called him away, or another business concern, or his own case of the blues. In any event, his high spirits were restored and he had returned bursting with new promotional ideas that included Monk when Beautiful Jim Key played Riverview Park in Baltimore.

  Promoting Jim much like a political candidate, Rogers paraded his star and entourage through town, advertising showtimes on huge banners that draped Jim’s customized open-air trolley car with his signature blue-and-white-striped canopy and a Hambletonian-size megaphone through which his barker cried out his approach. In a joint effort of a local humane group and the board of education, a series of spelling bees pitted fourth, fifth, and sixth graders against the educated horse with a prize of one dollar given to any human student who could win a round with Jim. The Equine King did lose now and then, mostly on difficult or longer words, but the headline grabber was when he won against a sixth-grade boy by spelling the word P-H-Y-S-I-C-S.

  After an uneventful but restful trip home during the summer, Dr. Key, Jim, Monk, Stanley, and Sam traveled to Pennsylvania. In the Beautiful Jim Key advertising van, they were mobbed on the streets of Pittsburg and York, doubling the business they had done in Pennsylvania the year before. At the Pittsburg Exposition, fairgoers did not balk at the extra admission charged to enter Jim’s pavilion, despite the fact that it hadn’t cost them anything extra to see him at the last Exposition. For three weeks, the show, performed every half hour on the hour, took in over $1,500 per week, an impressive net of $1,000 per week when the weekly salary of $500 was deducted. This emboldened Albert Rogers to list their weekly fee at double what it had been, or to give venues the option of hiring them on a percentage, which soon led to increases of the average price of admissions from ten and fifteen cents to twenty-five and fifty. Allowances were made for special children’s shows and humane benefits. Rogers and Dr. Key came up with a policy that in every city where they performed, free passes were to be granted to teachers, school administrators, and clergy, to any show or shows of their choice.

  In a stroke of excellent timing, during the week of October 10, 1898, the annual convention of the American Humane Association was held in Pittsburg, an opportunity that allowed Dr. William Key and Beautiful Jim Key to present a special performance for delegates from around the country to witness the man and the horse that had won the endorsement of their president, George Angell. The reaction from the delegates was as if an equine angel had been sent to their cause straight from heaven.

  Albert Rogers was deluged with even more requests, not only from regions in the Northeast but now from below the Mason-Dixon. Though he and Dr. Key had agreed not to take engagements in the winter months, neither could bring himself to turn down invitations from North Carolina and Georgia, where they were sorely needed to raise awareness and funds.

  The fall engagement in Greensboro, North Carolina, met with enormous success, and some of Jim’s most effusive write-ups. A reporter for the Greensboro Record posited that what he had witnessed Jim Key do—from correctly spelling the name Blackburn, to correctly answering questions out of order that included how many days in the week, the various months, the regular year and leap year, and performing his silver dollar trick twice—was proof that animals had minds; and if that was the case, animals were entitled to the rights of human beings, all in all, “a strong argument for the formation here of a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals.”

  A special series of performances of The Scholar and a Model Office Boy was held to benefit the local library fund with the intention, said the Evening Telegram, of purchasing books on humane subject matter in advance of starting a society. Performances at the Academy of Music were segregated: “Adults 25 cents, children ten cents. Colored people in their gallery 10 cents.” A change of policy was instituted in which most subsequent engagements included special shows exclusively for Negro audiences that were advertised as being sponsored “at the request of Dr. William Key,” offering all seats to any person of color at discounts.

  Another barometer of the Southern climate at the time in North Carolina
and South Carolina, where Jim performed in Columbia, was his billing as the Celebrated Democratic Educated Horse. In Greensboro it was noted, “Jim met President McKinley at the Nashville Exposition, but has never liked the President and is still a staunch democrat, though raised in a colored family.”

  Albert Rogers may have only then truly appreciated Dr. Key’s brilliance in training Jim to “talk politics.” Now he could also better understand why the Doc warned him about venturing too far off the beaten path when booking engagements in the South. Not that Negroes experienced prejudice and violence only in the Southern states or just outside of the bigger Southern cities. You had to be careful no matter where you went. Still, there was a sense of danger at the start of this foray into North Carolina.

  Again the problems began with the weather. At a county fair in Raleigh, hurricane-force storms wracked the fairgrounds. With the winds starting up and the fair being shut down, Rogers sent Dr. Key, Jim, and Monk back to the stables and kept his roadmen, along with Stanley and Sam, to help him collapse the tent. They had barely done so when a full-scale hurricane bore down for the next six hours, requiring them to cling to the tent poles for dear life as they tried to save the tent and themselves from being swept away. Rogers made it back to the Carollton Hotel and fell into bed with a fever and nausea. The next week, when he had not yet recuperated, a distraught Dr. Key came to inform him that after a show Jim had cut his foot so severely that he wasn’t sure he would walk again. But there was more. It seemed that Sam and Stanley had been kidnapped.

  Without much more of an explanation, he insisted that he would handle the crises his way. In the meantime, he begged Rogers to consider leaving early, since a Yankee might not be safe in these parts traveling in the company of three Negroes with a $100,000 famous horse and only the horse’s pet dog as protection.