Earthly Astonishments (21 page)
Read Earthly Astonishments Online
Authors: Marthe Jocelyn
He was trying to bestow a gift. He was trying to apologize.
She smiled at him, aiming for his hidden heart. For less than a moment he smiled back. Then he shook his head, as if catching himself from going soft.
“On second thought,” he said gruffly, “you may choose just one of them. The others will make a charming exhibit, set up on a plaster model just your size.”
LITTLE JO-JO
DEPARTS MUSEUM
A
UGUST 24, 1884
—Little Jo-Jo, the celebrated Lilliputian star of R. J. Walters’ Museum of Earthly Astonishments, has departed from her position there, with little explanation.
The petite charmer was discovered by Mr. Walters last spring and performed daily throughout most of the summer.
As reported in the
New York Tribune,
she was the victim recently of an attempted abduction. A former employer, Miss Ethelwyn MacLaren, has been charged in that crime.
It comes as no surprise that the spirited Little Jo-Jo should wish to improve her circumstances. Her admirable character and appealing visage will be welcome in fine parlors and theatrical venues wherever she goes. The cultural population of this City will miss her. We wish her well.
S.S.
Fair Britannia
September 9, 1884
Dear dear Emmy,
You might laugh if you saw me, wrapped in a blanket on what the sailors call a deck-chair That means a chair that sits on the deck. The sailors never sit down, but I do. When I try to walk, I am toppled over in an instant. Even this ship, as big as a cathedral, is not so steady against the ocean swell. I am the size of a gargoyle.
When I opened the tidy package you wrapped and found the new shoes inside, I about swooned. You couldn’t choose a better thing to make me remember you every day of our travels. I could say “Thank you” till sunset, which takes a long time on the ocean.
With all the dollars I saved this summer, I paid my own passage for the voyage. And Nelly is still pinching
herself that your father insisted on giving her the reward for your safe return. I told her what you said, that having her help change things was the same as saving your life. So she deserves the dollars. And now she and Charley are here with me, having a grand time.
We had supper last night at the captain’s table. We were told it was an honor, but he slurped his soup as noisy as old Barker.
We are giddy like children, thinking about all the sights ahead of us. I wish you could be here too. But we’ll tell you all the stories when we come home again.
Your friend,
Josephine
P.S. Charley sends a hello and says to keep your feathers fluffy.
Josephine first appeared in my imagination as a magical person, even smaller than she is in the book. I soon realized that I wanted her to be a real child who faced the world from a different perspective than most of us do. Although her troubles are often the result of her size, her solutions come from quick wits and courage, qualities available to all of us.
Mr. P. T. Barnum and his most famous midget exhibits, General Tom Thumb and Lavinia Bump Warren, are the only real people in this book. All the other characters I made up to help tell a story about a time and place in American history that always have fascinated me.
Josephine is not real either, but she has a real condition, which is now known as dwarfism. It was P. T. Barnum who coined the word
midget.
Today people like Josephine prefer to be called a short-statured person or Little Person.
The Museum of Earthly Astonishments did not exist, but there were dozens of real “dime museums” in the New York area during the second half of the nineteenth century. Mr. Walters was like many curators who displayed all of the “curiosities” mentioned in the story, as well as many more, human and otherwise.
In 1884, when
Earthly Astonishments
takes place, Coney Island was beginning to be a popular resort for New Yorkers. The steamer ferry and new railway lines encouraged thousands of day-trippers to come and spend their hard-earned dollars on a holiday by the sea.
Within twenty years, Coney Island became the home of three racetracks, several huge hotels, and three spectacular amusement parks. One of the most exotic attractions was an entire miniature city housing 300 midgets, whose whole lives were a performance for the gawking crowds. I made Josephine sail away before she could be a part of that.
The first roller coaster was invented the summer that Josephine lived in Coney Island, but she and Charley did not have a chance to ride it. It consisted of a wooden cart that rattled down a hill of railway track and then back up another incline, where it came to a stop.
Until 1918, United States law did not compel children to go to school. Wealthy children mostly did, and poor children mostly didn’t. Poor children, from the age of seven or eight, often worked to help provide for their families, in any number of jobs that Charley was happy to avoid: factory labor, shoe-shining, rolling cigars, or newspaper selling. There were also thousands of children, as Josephine saw, who had no families and lived on the streets.
During the 1880s, the section of New York City now known as the Lower East Side was one of the most crowded places on earth. Over a million people, including many immigrants from Europe and Ireland and China, lived within just a few blocks, crammed into dark, airless, filthy tenement buildings. Often two or three families shared one apartment, as Nelly and Charley did with the Wongs, making do with primitive plumbing and straw beds.
For Emmy’s sister, Margaret, coming from a privileged home,
the poverty and squalor would have been a shock. Nelly and Margaret probably earned only a couple of dollars a week. Out of that they would have had to pay for rent and food, clothing, and household supplies. There would certainly be nothing left over for treats.
Josephine’s proud gesture of buying her own dress and shoes would have used up her five precious dollars, but not much more. Certainly her wages from Mr. Walters, on top of her room and board, would allow her the luxury of savings!
Although there continue to be Little People working with carnivals and circuses, they are there by their own choice. Human beings will always be curious about those who are different from themselves, but it is up to each of us not to be cruel.
Copyright © 2000 by Marthe Jocelyn
Published in Canada by Tundra Books, 75 Sherbourne Street, Toronto, Ontario M5A 2P9
Published in the United States by Tundra Books of Northern New York, P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Jocelyn, Marthe
Earthly astonishments: a novel/by Marthe Jocelyn.
For ages 8-12.
eISBN: 978-1-77049-036-9
I. Title.
PS8569.O254E27 2003 jC813′.54 C2002-903630-5
PZ7
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.
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