“I’ve been admiring your hat,” she called from across the walk that separated us. Later, I would admire the tact with which she had spared me embarrassment by making herself out to be the one who had been staring. “It’s becoming to your face.”
“Thank you.” Inclining my head, the green felt hat waved a garnet and a sage plume at her.
“I don’t think I could wear such a hat half as well as you,” she said graciously.
“I’m sure that’s not so. It would suit you. Am I mistaken, or are your eyes green?” I asked, feeling that we had exhausted the subject of hats. I don’t know why I remarked on the color of her eyes. I couldn’t rightly make them out, because of the shadow cast by the brim of her straw bonnet. An awkward silence ensued, which I felt obliged to put to an end by crossing over to her bench. After a moment’s hesitation, in which I considered whether to sit beside her or a little apart, I decided on the former as being the less likely to embarrass. I did not want her to think that I was shy of her, as one might be in the presence of an anomaly.
She smiled, gave me her little hand, and said, “My name is Margaret Fuller Hardesty. Father was a Transcendentalist until he followed Mother’s example and died. I often wonder what became of him and his philosophy. Having no relations, near or distant, at least no one willing to acknowledge the connection, I came to New York to find employment. I suppose it was small wonder that I found none”—she smiled archly—“until Mr. Barnum happened to see me in the Central Park. I was walking on Sheep Meadow, my eyes intent on the ground, in the hope of finding the remains of a picnic lunch, when I was startled by a lumbering shadow on the grass, accompanied by heavy footsteps. I looked up and there, like a maharajah, sat Mr. Barnum astride Jumbo the Elephant, together with the Milo Brothers and, languid within the curve of its trunk, Miss Adelina, the famous high-wire ascensionist and juggler.”
“‘How do you do, little lady?’ I couldn’t have guessed that his voice—he had addressed me in the most cordial way—was able to reach the last row of seats in the Hippodrome, over the din of beasts and human beings come to gloat—or so it always seems to me, who has never felt at one with them.
“‘I have not had lunch,’ I said, hopeful that a banana or a bag of peanuts might be among the paraphernalia carried on the elephant’s back.
“‘Where do you live?’ he asked. ‘I don’t mean to pry, but if we happen to be traveling in the same direction, I can give you a ride home.’
“‘I am presently stopping at a gardener’s unused shed.’
“‘Very resourceful.’
“Barnum grew thoughtful while Miss Adelina scratched the elephant’s huge leathery ear and Mr. Marsh, a renowned trombone soloist, blew spit from the mouthpiece of his instrument. He had been playing circus ‘screamers’ in the van to advertise an engagement at Madison Square Garden.
“‘I think you’d be happier with us,’ said Barnum, smiling radiantly. He let down a silken ladder and, lifting his high hat in welcome, bade me join him.”
“And you accepted his invitation?” I asked, fascinated by her tale, as anyone would be.
“I most certainly did!” replied Margaret, who had been alone and, like other pariahs in the world’s richest city, destitute.
A multitude beyond a miracle of fish and loaves to feed is packed into tenement houses, choked by stench, freezing or sweating according to the season, and famished for light and air, from the Five Points to Hell Gate. And a great many more of their predecessors lie in paupers’ graves on Ward’s, Randall’s, and Blackwell’s islands—infinitely beyond the reach of Barnum’s screamers, in an eternity of silent waiting for the promised recompense.
“Was Mr. Barnum kind?” I asked, hoping that he had been.
“He was and still is,” replied Margaret, smoothing her skirt. “I’ve been with him since that afternoon in 1862.”
“And are you happy?”
“I am.” She regarded me a moment. “It is not for you to be angry.” She took note of my perplexity. “Earlier, I saw it in your face. Your anger at whoever or whatever made my friends and me is as unwelcome as your pity.”
I bit my lower lip and frowned. I did not tell her that the anger and the pity had been for myself.
“We are not mistakes,” she said, modulating her tone into a softer register. “We are, as Mr. Barnum says of us, ‘nature’s eccentricities.’ And I am ‘La Belle Excentrique.”’
I looked at this miniature human being, remarkable in every aspect, and felt a surge of affection and—strange to say—gratitude. I admired her courage, knowing instinctually that she would have considered my admiration demeaning because it implied a sympathy—a pity, even—for the difference between us, a difference she would have vigorously denied. There she sat, her short legs dangling above the pavement, her head reaching only as far as my shoulder, endowed by nature, as though to compensate her for having fashioned her thus, with a ferocity—a strength of will—that carried her proudly past the rude stares, which might be contemptuous or kind, and the constant insult of a world not suited to her needs and dignity. There she sat as if I and not she were to be pitied for having been born “normal.”
“I invite you to tea,” she said, and for a dreadful moment, I pictured the two of us sitting in a Fifth Avenue tea shop, inviting careless stares in which I would be implicated. Before I could accept her invitation regardless of the tearoom she might choose, she said, “My rooming house is not far.”
I watched her clamber down from the bench as unselfconsciously as a child would have done. Not wanting to embarrass her, I did not offer my hand. We left Bryant Park, which had been a potter’s field until, in 1840, the nameless graves were opened and the remains unearthed and transplanted in the demotic soil of Ward’s Island. We headed for her rooming house, at the seamy edge of Longacre Square, erstwhile center of the city’s carriage trade. I matched my stride to Margaret’s shorter one, inconspicuously, so as not to slight her.
The Absurdity in the Room
“WON’T YOU SIT DOWN?” asked Margaret.
She had not needed to point me to the chair in which I now found myself sitting, at ease despite the strangeness of the room. Mine was the only chair, indeed the sole furnishing, that could accommodate a person of my size. The maroon horsehair sofa, the armchair, the carved walnut pedestal table, the cupboard, the plates, cups, and saucers were suitable for her diminutive figure. I was the eccentric, the absurdity in a room bright with fripperies and chintz, rose carpets and claret drapes. I felt as if I were sitting in a private box in a theater where a play was about to be performed for my exclusive enjoyment. In my seemingly big chair, I was Gulliver lording it over the Lilliputians or Barnum’s Cardiff Giant among the gawkers. Neither by word nor gesture did Margaret acknowledge the topsy-turvy universe in which we two were speaking to each other as if nothing were amiss. For her, nothing was amiss.
“What a charming room!” I may have sniffed (I hope not) as one might do upon entering a circus dressing room and detecting a lingering odor of greasepaint and sweat.
“Thank you, Ellen.”