The Remarkable Courtship of General Tom Thumb: A Novel - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nicholas Rinaldi is the author of three previous novels (Bridge Fall Down, The Jukebox Queen of Malta, and Between Two Rivers) and three collections of poetry. His work has been widely reviewed and earned many awards in the United States and abroad. With his wife, Jacqueline, he currently resides in Connecticut. Please visit his website at NicholasRinaldi.net.

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The Remarkable Courtship of General Tom Thumb

PROLOGUE

LIFE IS A ROAD

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you.

You must travel it for yourself. . . .

Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. . . .

—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Long before the war started, it was already there, breathing, rumbling, hidden. It was in the clouds, in the rush of the rivers and in the rain, in the way people talked, the things they said and didn’t say. The worry, the awareness that things were wrong and getting worse.

I remember my father saying there was no easy answer, there would be a war and a lot of killing. He looked me in the eye. “And aren’t you glad, Charlie, that you’re a tiny runt of a dwarf and won’t have to carry a gun and fight.” It wasn’t a question, it was a casual observation that he left hanging in the air. And it made me miserable because even then, young as I was, I didn’t like the idea of being left out of anything, especially this wild, strange thing my father was talking about, filled with smoke and thunder and charging horses.

But the war hung back, biding its time. It whispered, it murmured. And maybe, I thought—maybe it would change its mind and go home to wherever it came from. But that was a big maybe, so big you could walk around inside it, and there was no place to hide.

* * *

I had been a large baby, nine pounds two ounces. My mother never tired of telling me that. After half a year, I measured twenty-five inches, head to feet—but afterward, nothing. I was twenty-five inches tall, and was stuck at that height until I was fifteen years old. Then I was growing again, but slowly, an inch a year, sometimes less.

It used to bother me, the way my mother was always saying I’d been a big, healthy baby. In part, I think, she was letting me know I had given her a hard time when I was born. But there was something else, too, which I eventually understood. She wanted me to know there was nothing wrong with me at birth. She had delivered me in perfect condition—normal, not a dwarf—and if, after six months, I suddenly stopped growing, it wasn’t her fault, it was mine.

That may, in fact, have been the way it was: a secret willfulness deep inside me, invisible even to myself. A decision to be different. Not a conscious choice made on a certain day, but something written in my bones. And the irony is that my smallness was not the curse my parents first thought it was, but a blessing, for them and for me. Though I have, of late, come to understand that blessings, like gift horses, may come with a bad set of teeth.

I spent my first years in a small house on a narrow street, and have vivid memories of my two sisters, both older than I. They used to run around the house in their flimsy cotton shifts, or in nothing at all, throwing pillows at me. They would grab my arms and swing me back and forth, then toss me in the air and bounce me on the bed. I liked that.

They taught me my ABCs, and I watched as they wove their hair into long braids that they piled high on their heads. In their best Sunday clothes, their dark red satins, they were the prettiest girls in the neighborhood. I have pictures of them, pasted in a large book of photographs that I keep. Pictures of my parents, pictures of Barnum, pictures of Queen Victoria, Louis Philippe, Lincoln, Queen Isabella, and too many others. Pictures of pictures. Memory is a barbed hook. No matter how you struggle, you never get free.

* * *

I was four years old when Barnum discovered me, and soon to turn five when I first appeared on the big stage at his American Museum. Barnum told the world I was eleven, lest anyone imagine I was just an undernourished slow grower and not an authentic dwarf. And, on the theory that an English dwarf would be of more interest to Americans than a homegrown dwarf from Connecticut, he announced that I was English-born and had just arrived from London.

My mother was furious. Bad enough that he lied about my age and changed my name to Tom Thumb, but it was nothing less than outrageous to declare that I was English-born, and to print it on a poster. Since my mother had never set foot in England, it was tantamount to saying she wasn’t my mother!

She fumed and fussed so much that Barnum offered to tear up the contract and let her take me home to Connecticut—a quick end to my career before it even started. But no, not for the world was she going to let such a thing happen, and Barnum must have known that all along.

My first performance was in the Christmas pageant, which ran for three weeks. Mary Darling, the house magician, played the Holy Mother, and the Bearded Lady was Joseph. I was the Infant in the manger. A few janitors with strong singing voices were the shepherds. Sheep were the sheep, and a camel was the camel. After “Silent Night” and a few other carols, I leaped out of the manger and performed my whirling, churning, acrobatic breakdown dance. Then I hopped back into the manger and listened to the bone-rocking, spine-tingling, ego-building applause. It was exciting to be the newborn Savior. I was looking forward to the time when I would cure lepers, raise the dead, and change water into wine. But I would skip the part about being nailed to a cross.

The Museum was on Broadway, across from St. Paul’s and the Astor House, and what a place it was. Big, brash, and splashy. I still remember the first time I saw it. The building stood five stories high, and it spread wide, filling the corner at Broadway and Ann Street. Sunlight blazed on the white marble, and there were massive painted plaques between the windows, images of the live animals that could be seen inside. A tiger, a bear, a buffalo, an orangutan, a pair of zebras. And, daily, huge, gaudy banners were hung from the balconies, listing the day’s special attractions—

LIVING MONSTER SNAKES

MYSTERIOUS GYPSY GIRL

FAMILY OF ALBINOS

BOHEMIAN GLASS BLOWERS

WILD INDIANS IN SAVAGE WAR DRESS

And, on days when I was performing, an enormous banner for me—

GENERAL TOM THUMB

SMALLEST MAN IN THE KNOWN WORLD

On the second-floor balcony, a brass band played one tune after another, welcoming the crowds that came pouring into the Museum—some heading for the theater, others browsing through the many halls and galleries that were filled with paintings, statues, ancient coins, medieval suits of armor, muskets and three-cornered hats from the time of the Revolution. A poster by the ticket office boasted that the Museum contained over 100,000 CURIOSITIES.

In the wide halls, there were large glass display windows, floor to ceiling, showing bearskins and leopard skins, the skeleton of an ape, the jaw of a dinosaur, stuffed birds, a stuffed moose. Plenty of living animals too, in cages on each floor, and an entire menagerie in the basement.

In an alcove on the third floor, there were three Egyptian mummies in various stages of unwrap. I liked those mummies, and often wondered how they felt, lying there, with strangers like me going close and staring.

* * *

At the Museum, there was a tutor who worked with me several hours a week. Kwink was his name. “Just Kwink, without the mister,” he said. He had large brown eyes and a bushy head of white hair. His method was to bring me around to four or five exhibits, and we studied the accompanying...