It can’t have been him, she thinks. A glimpse was all she caught, his hunched shoulders, his dark hair, and then the curtain of the tent swung shut behind him. She has seen him in so many places. In Paris, she once followed a man for five minutes until he ducked into an inn and she saw his nose was the wrong size. In Barcelona, she glimpsed him across a crowded ballroom, but when she hurried towards him, she saw his movements were too fluid, his figure too neat. Often, as she swings across the ring, she’ll find herself searching the crowd for him. After, Stella will tell her off, scold her that a lapse in attention means a broken neck.
‘You left him,’ she’ll say, ‘don’t forget that,’ and Nell will shrug and say, ‘I don’t know who you mean.’
Nell rubs her face, her hair drawn back in a tight plait. Perfumes are scattered about her, tortoiseshell combs, a silver looking glass. Tiny animals carved from amber, gifted to her by Danish royalty. She took the steamer across the English Channel, hung over the back of the main deck and watched the water churn behind them, Stella’s and Peggy’s arms linked through hers, Pearl shrieking with laughter. She picks up a miniature leopard, weighs it. It won’t have been him, she tells herself again; it is not possible.
The gong sounds more urgently. They will be wondering where she is, Stella cussing under her breath. Nell stands, stretches, bounces on the balls of her feet. She shakes her head at herself, smiles. This is her room; her show.
She crosses the grass. There they are, fretting, searching the crowds for her. They have not seen her yet. Her women, with their soft, strong bodies. Pearl and Stella and Peggy. They belong only to themselves.
Nell quickens her pace. The audience is waiting for her. Her friends are waiting for her. She feels the familiar crackle of power.
Author’s Note
By the 1860s, the Victorian freak show, which traded physical difference as a form of entertainment, was booming. ‘Deformito-mania’, as Punch dubbed it, swept the globe with an unabated fury. Queen Victoria, dubbed the ‘freak fancier’, was the industry’s biggest fan and helped to popularize it, entertaining countless ‘human wonders’ and showmen in Buckingham Palace. For the performers themselves, the industry might have offered some opportunity and freedom, but it could also take it away with devastating effect.
I wanted to shine a light on the individuals involved in this world. As with most fiction, the question I wanted to ask was, How would it have felt? How would a young girl like Nell have experienced and navigated such coercion, opportunity, fame and objectification, while also retaining a sense of herself? Was there such a thing as choice when this industrial society refused to adapt itself to the needs of people like Peggy? More than a hundred and fifty years later, a handful of the era’s most famous personages are still known, the most prominent example being Joseph Merrick, dubbed ‘The Elephant Man’ for a still-undiagnosed medical condition which produced growths on his body (he is not mentioned in this book as he did not appear publicly until 1884). But there are countless other stories which have been lost to time, a few faded cartes-de-visite the only sign that the performers ever lived at all.
Before I started Circus of Wonders, I considered writing about real historical figures, especially those who are lesser-known. However, when I sat down to write, it felt like I was invading their privacy – these were real people about whom so many outlandish stories had already been spun by media and showmen, their voices silenced and their histories overwritten by those who profited from their lives. While, to a point, all of history is fiction, the imagination of the grey areas of their lives – impulses, desires, reactions – seemed like a trespass. Therefore, I decided it was important to make my characters and their stories entirely fictional. However, echoes of their narratives can be found in many historical accounts, and I felt it was important to acknowledge the wider context of real people and performers, too. All of the information about individuals such as Julia Pastrana, Joice Heth, Charles Stratton, Charles Byrne and Chang and Eng Bunker is correct and derived from my research.
Julia Pastrana, a singer and performer from Mexico, had hypertrichosis and was sold to the circus by her uncle. She toured in life and was then toured in death by her husband, Theodore Lent. Sewn into a dress she herself had made, he had her dead body and that of her newborn baby embalmed and displayed around the world. Julia and her child were widely shown as late as 1972, and finally buried in 2012 in a cemetery in Sinaloa de Levya, a town near her birthplace.
Joice Heth was an African American slave who was bought by P. T. Barnum in 1835. Slavery was illegal in the north of America at this time, so Barnum negotiated to ‘lease’ her. Blind and almost entirely paralysed, Barnum had her remaining teeth extracted to make her look older. He marketed her as ‘The Greatest Natural and National Curiosity in the World’, alleging that she was 161 years old. Upon her death, he sold tickets to her autopsy, attended by 1,500 members of the public. When it was proved that Joice Heth was not as old as Barnum had claimed, he spun many different tales, including one suggesting that Heth had escaped, and that they’d performed the autopsy on the wrong person. Alive or dead, it seems Barnum did not care as long as he made a profit. It was on this ‘success’ that P. T. Barnum, the so-called ‘Greatest Showman’, launched his career.
Charles Byrne measured between six feet seven inches and eight feet tall, according to various sources, his height caused by a then-undiscovered growth disorder, known today as acromegaly. The fictional Brunette has the same condition – it would have caused severe headaches and joint pain, among other symptoms. Byrne became a celebrity in London, entertaining large audiences and even inspiring a stage show Harlequin Teague, but he was constantly hounded by those who wanted to examine his body against his will, and it is widely reported that this caused him to sink into depression. Aware that the surgeon and anatomist John Hunter wanted his body upon his death, and falling ill due to medical complications and excessive drinking, Byrne made detailed arrangements to avoid this fate, including the instruction that he should be buried at sea in a lead coffin. However, Hunter bribed Byrne’s friends and obtained the man’s body. Charles Byrne’s skeleton was displayed until 2017 in London’s Hunterian Museum. There are ongoing debates as to whether his skeleton will be exhibited when the museum reopens in 2021, as many petitions have called for his body to be buried in line with his wishes.
The very fact that the remains of Sara Baartman, Charles Byrne and Julia Pastrana were displayed until so recently highlights their treatment as medical curiosities rather than real people who deserved the dignity of a burial. Whether alive or dead, they have been objectified for the entertainment of spectators.
While this abuse is undeniable, there were many performers who sought out, benefitted from and appeared to welcome the fame and financial security offered by the industry. Chang and Eng Bunker, conjoined twins from today’s Thailand, toured the UK and America. They played badminton and discussed philosophy before audiences, and after three years, decided to dispense with a showman and manage themselves. In less than ten years, they had made $10,000, with which they bought a large estate. They married two sisters and fathered twenty-one children, dying quietly at the age of sixty-two.
Charles Stratton was a little person, acquired by P. T. Barnum at the age of four (unlike his character in the film The Greatest Showman, who is a fully grown man at the time he chooses to join the show, a rewriting of history which downplays the power imbalance and exploitation of the freak show). Stratton’s rise to fame was stratospheric. Newspapers sang his praises, a Parisian restaurant changed its name to Le Tom Pouce, actors begged to be associated with him, and between fifty and sixty coaches of the nobility were seen outside his exhibition rooms at any one time. He married another little person, Lavinia Warren, in a lavish ceremony witnessed by 10,000 people, reported in newspapers from the New York Times to Harper’s Weekly. Queen Victoria gifted them a miniature coach. They earned vast sums of money, owning several houses, a steam yacht and a stable of pedig
ree horses.
With so few first-hand accounts from these performers (which is, of course, telling in itself), it is impossible to know how they felt about their careers, especially considering how limited their options will have been due to a deeply prejudiced society. Lavinia Warren once said, ‘I belong to the public’, a sentiment which I attribute to Stella in this book, and which has always struck me as heartbreaking.
Circus of Wonders is, among many things, a book about storytelling. There are no simple answers, no easy ways of reading a deeply complex and problematic piece of history. I wanted merely to highlight how this industry could both exploit and empower, and to put Nell at the heart of her own story.
Elizabeth Macneal,
November 2020
Acknowledgements
I owe so much to so many. Countless books have inspired and educated me, and without which it is difficult to imagine writing this novel. Historical fiction, of course, is as much about the time in which it is written as the time it is set. Therefore, I am indebted to many contemporary accounts about disability and disfigurement, spanning essays, memoir, poetry and fiction. I recommend these wholeheartedly and encourage anybody reading this to seek them out. In particular Marked for Life by Joie Davidow; Beyond the Pale by Emily Urquhart; Dwarf by Tiffanie DiDonato; the poetry of Sheila Black (especially House of Bone); Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space by Amanda Leduc; Disability Visibility edited by Alice Wong; and The Girl Aquarium by Jen Campbell, as well as her Instagram account (@jenvcampbell) and YouTube channel (jenvcampbell).
I have spent many months immersed in books on Victorian circus, the freak industry and the Crimean War. In particular I am grateful for The Wonders by John Woolf; Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body edited by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson; Crimea by Orlando Figes; No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War by Helen Rappaport; The Life of P. T. Barnum by P. T. Barnum; and the Crimean War dispatches of William Howard Russell.
There are many individuals who have helped to build this book. I am filled with gratitude:
To my astonishing editor Sophie Jonathan, who has shaped this novel with such sensitivity, intelligence and care. I know how lucky I am; thank you. To my agent Madeleine Milburn, for supporting me in innumerable ways. You are a powerhouse and a true friend. To everyone else at her agency – it is a pleasure to know you all.
To everyone at Picador. It is a rare and precious thing to be able to call your colleagues ‘friends’, but this is my particular joy of being published by Pan Macmillan. My gratitude for Camilla Elworthy is boundless – I hope there are many more road trips to come, though I’m not sure if my stomach muscles can take much more laughter. Katie Bowden, you are magnificent! Thank you for all of your incredible marketing ideas and enthusiasm. Katie Tooke designed this book jacket, a work of art in itself. There are so many others I long to thank, for everything from marketing to sales to book design to finance to editorial to post-room, but I am afraid I will forget somebody. But you know who you are, and I hope you also know how grateful I am.
To everyone at Emily Bestler Books, and my international publishers, for continuing to make my dreams come true. Emily Bestler and Lara Jones, I am so glad to work with both of you.
To the booksellers and book bloggers who have supported The Doll Factory; I appreciate it so very much.
To those who generously shared their own experiences with me when I was planning and writing this book, and for talking so eloquently about the representation they’d like to see. In particular, thank you to Sarah Salmean.
To Jen Campbell for the sensitivity read. Your thoughts and ideas were invaluable and I hope I have done justice to your edit.
To Philip Langeskov for being both tough and encouraging about the first iteration of my opening chapters.
To John Landers and Diana Parker, Sophie Kirkwood, and Lydia Matthews and Aneurin Ellis-Evans for friendship and a place to stay when I couldn’t concentrate at home.
To Kiran Millwood Hargrave for reading my first draft and being so thoughtful and generous with your feedback (and many more bowls of noodles and weird cocktails to come, I hope).
To all of my friends – thank you for the delicious meals, for the endless moral encouragement, for reminding me ‘it’s just a book’ (ha), for the jokes and beach swims and the best of times. You all kept me sane, and I promise the third novel will be a less arduous journey for all of you (or at least I’ll be less insufferable).
To my family. It was a lucky, lucky day when I wound up with all of you in my life. I cannot thank you enough. Support, laughter, distracting hikes, pep talks, and endless love. Mum, Dad, Peter, Hector, Laura, Dinah, and – as always – Grandma and Grandpa. I love you all so, so much.
And to Jonny, for everything. Again.
Circus of Wonders
Elizabeth Macneal was born in Scotland and now lives in London. She is a writer and potter and works from a small studio at the bottom of her garden. The Doll Factory, Elizabeth’s debut novel, was a Sunday Times bestseller, has been translated into twenty-nine languages and has been optioned for a major television series. Circus of Wonders is her second novel.
ALSO BY ELIZABETH MACNEAL
The Doll Factory
First published 2021 by Picador
This electronic edition first published 2021 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
The Smithson, 6 Briset Street, London EC1M 5NR
EU representative: Macmillan Publishers Ireland Limited,
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ISBN 978-1-5290-0252-2
Copyright © Elizabeth Macneal 2021
Author photo © Mat Smith
Cover design: Katie Tooke, Picador Art Department
Illustration elements © Shutterstock
Typography © Novia Jonatan
The right of Elizabeth Macneal to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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