Inseparable

by Yunte Huang

  “Brother,” said Eng, “I never saw you so great a philosopher as you are now. Those girls inspired you, and when you go back to see them, don’t fail to take me, and I will do my best in helping you win Adelaide, who sent that thrill to the bottom of your craw. I know you have sand enough in your gizzard to digest it.”16

  Chang probably would not have minded such a gentle ribbing from his twin, but still, they needed to do something to turn things around.

  In Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, there is a crucial turn of events, a dramatic change of heart when the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, visits Pemberley, the sprawling estate of Mr. Darcy, whose marriage proposal she earlier rejected. In Darcy’s absence, Elizabeth tours the estate and is charmed by the grandeur and beauty of the place. She also hears convincing testimonials from Darcy’s servants about the kindness and generosity of the master:

  It was a large, handsome stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills;—and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal, nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste.17

  As the Chinese saying goes, “When you love a house, you will also love the crow that lands on its roof [ai wu ji wu].” Elizabeth begins to wonder whether she has misjudged Darcy and whether she has made a mistake by turning down his proposal. At that moment, she imagines herself being the mistress of Pemberley, which “might be something!”

  The house Chang and Eng had built in Traphill was certainly not as grand as Pemberley, but the twins’ courtship of the Yates sisters proceeded apace, almost as though it had taken a page from the classic British novel. It was said that Adelaide was more receptive to Chang’s advances than Sarah was to Eng’s, which created a dilemma for all four. Both Adelaide and Chang knew, of course, that their relationship would not stand a chance if Sarah did not come along, or Eng was, in a manner of speaking, to be left alone. The calculus was such that if one sister were to marry one of the twins and yet to bed both of them, it would certainly be considered polygamy; if the two sisters were to marry the twins, at least the numbers would be right—even if the situation would still seem mind-boggling to all concerned or curious. Winning over Sarah, then, became a must for the marriage plot to work. Eng turned to Adelaide for help, and Adelaide, having her own interest at stake, willingly became Eng’s confidant and messenger. When necessary, she would add a few words of approval of Eng and some sisterly advice to Sarah. Eng’s advances and Adelaide’s whispers softened Sarah’s heart, but still, as Graves put it, “she gave but slight encouragement” to Eng.18

  Against Sarah’s “pride and prejudice,” the twins came up with an idea to impress the recalcitrant young woman: “quiltin’,” as it was called in this part of the world. One of the traditional means of sociability for women, a quilting party brought together the community, mostly women, for chat, gossip, courtship, and other forms of interaction while sewing a quilt, which provided a symbolic coherence. With their special purpose in mind, Chang and Eng were determined to make this the fanciest quiltin’ anyone had ever seen. As Graves described in his biography, “Preparations on an adequate scale were duly made. Pigs and lambs and ‘the fatted calf’ were slain to make ready for the feast.”19 Then, on the appointed day, farm wives and daughters from nearby, including Adelaide and Sarah, dressed in their best gowns, cambric collars, and lace caps, arrived at the twins’ house for an evening of merriment and a feast on a Homeric scale. They took their places in the big sitting room, much bigger than their ordinary farmhouse living rooms, and arranged themselves around the four sides of a quilting frame. While the women began to stitch and chat, the twins circled around them, entertaining, wisecracking, and paying special attention to the two Yates sisters—treating them like princesses and making them the envy of all the others. As the delicate fingers flew through stitches and words of banter bounced around, most of the women there had no clue that they were participating in the Niobe-like weaving of the biggest local “scandal.” They would be shocked to learn that the freakish “Sime twins,” as they called them, were not just flirting innocently with the Yates girls. As Graves continues in his account of the fated night and after, “The quilting was soon done, and the supper over, the young folks betook themselves to the various amusements in which they enjoyed until a late hour. The next day Miss Sally did not leave for home until she had heard the earnest vows of her lover, nor did he cease to plead, with that persuasive eloquence sincere passion lends, until success was attained.”20 Sarah apparently was impressed by what she saw at the twins’ home at Traphill. Though not a grand mansion, the house was, in the words of Graves, “uncommonly elegant,” equipped with silverware, brass candlesticks, ivory-handled knives, tablecloths, and so on, all bought in New York—which could have been Paris, as far as the local women were concerned. The rooms were airy and spacious, neatly furnished with tables and benches of solid wood and chairs made of hickory and bottomed with polished splits of white oak. In the corner of the parlor were “several clay pipes with long cane stems while nearby hung the calico poke filled with smoking tobacco, native grown, but of the choicest flavor.”21 Overall, everything showed the good taste of the house’s masters. Like Elizabeth Bennet imagining her future as mistress of Pemberley, Sarah had begun to see the bright side of being wedded to the twins, or one of them. Such a bright side may be summarized succinctly in the words of Adelaide, as she is portrayed in Burton Cohen’s play The Wedding of the Siamese Twins (1989), “They’ve traveled. They’re interestin’. They’ve got money. They want us real good.”22

  Having finally won the hearts of both sisters, Chang and Eng would now need to clear the hurdle of the parents. David Yates was adamant in his opposition, and so was his wife, Nancy, even though her own physical condition should have made her more malleable in her feelings toward these two Asian “freaks.” According to contemporary testimonies, Nancy was morbidly obese. “This lady was about five feet seven inches in height and nearly nine feet in circumference,” describes Graves.

  Her accurate weight was never ascertained for the reason that there were in that neighborhood no adequate means of weighing her. Several contrivances were resorted to ascertain her weight, but the nearest approach to success was by using two pairs of steel yards drawing together four hundred and fifty pounds which being firmly secured a sort of swinging platform was attached thereto. When this good woman stepped upon the platform both beams flew up; but the gentleman engaged in the enterprise estimated that her weight could not have been less than five hundred pounds. She was unquestionably the largest woman in the state, perhaps in America. Long after the time we have been speaking of, she died of obesity. When her coffin was taken from the undertakers it could not be gotten into the house until an opening was made for it.23

  In fact, Nancy was sometimes visited as an object of curiosity just like the Siamese Twins. Shared physical abnormality could have turned Nancy into the twins’ sympathizer. But it did not, although growing up with a mother who was “abnormal” might have made the girls more receptive to the twins in the first place. Having encountered curiosity, if not stares, from the local people as a result of their mother’s enormity, the sisters, one can suspect, might have already been inured to associating the disabled with Hester Prynne–like outcasts of the community. As portrayed in The Wedding of the Siamese Twins, the sisters’ attitudes toward the twins as freaks were indeed influenced by their own mother’s abnormality:

  ADELAIDE. Why? They’re farmers just like Poppa.

  SALLY. And real peculiar lookin’ ones, too.

  ADELAIDE. Anymore peculiar lookin’ than Momma?

  SALLY. (Shocked.) You’re talkin’ about our Momma who has loved you to pieces ever since you showed your nasty mouth on this good green land.

  ADELAIDE. My mouth ain�
��t nasty. I’m speakin’ the truth. Momma don’t look like anyone else we ever saw. Do you love her any less because of it?24

  Although it is fictional, Cohen’s Broadway play contains more than a kernel of truth.

  Parental opposition, however, did not stop the girls from wanting to unite with these two united brothers. Defying their parents’ order, they rendezvoused, though stealthily, with the twins. They sought the help of the pastor of the Baptist Church, Colby Sparks, who agreed to intervene and spoke to the parents, but to no avail. In desperation, the girls and their Siamese sweethearts resorted to the time-honored tactic of elopement to fulfill their conjugal dream. They came up with a plot:

  For a time the matter was to be apparently dropped until the ensuing county court week when Esquire Yates, who was one of the county justices, would go to Wilkesboro to assist in holding the court, then the parties at an appointed hour should meet at a “Covenant Meeting House” which stands on the hill near the South Fork of Roaring River, and there, their old friend Colby Sparks, the Baptist Pastor, was to be in waiting ready to perform the ceremony, easy to be done before there could be any danger from pursuit. They understood pretty well there could then be no pursuit, for the irate father could not know of their flight in some time, and the mother who weighed five hundred pounds could not follow over such roads as lay between the Yates homestead and Covenant Meeting House.25

  In the end, it turned out that they did not have to resort to such a desperate measure. The parents relented before the planned elopement. We are not entirely sure what had caused the parents to change their minds—perhaps they were well aware of the stubbornness of their daughters; perhaps the mother’s disability eventually made the Yateses feel more receptive to the twins’ abnormal condition; perhaps the twins’ wealth made the match easier for the parents to stomach, knowing that their daughters would be well provided for; or perhaps it was a combination of these factors. In any case, the wedding was set for April of 1843.

  When the sleepy community awoke to the shocking news, the good folks did not take it well. When they saw the conjoined twins riding with the Yates girls in an open carriage, their resentment, already at a high point because of fears of liaisons between whites and blacks, reached a boiling point. A few men, according to Kay Hunter, smashed windows at the Yates house. Some neighbors “threatened to burn his crops if he did not promise to control his daughters.”26 Having world-famous freaks live among them was one thing, but seeing them united with two of their young women in an “unholy alliance” was quite another. The community outrage might not have been as violent as those dramatic scenes in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, when the enraged crowd attacked the clown and the beauty, but it was enough to make all concerned pause.

  The longtime associates of the twins were also aghast. Charles Harris, who had now settled comfortably in Traphill after marrying a local girl and siring an heir, was appalled by the twins’ desire for the same thing. As someone who had traveled the world with the twins and taken care of their various interests and needs for a decade, Harris seemed unable to accept the possibility that the conjoined twins could live a life as normal as his. He tried to talk the twins out of what he regarded as their foolishness, but to no avail. Disappointed, Harris communicated with James Hale, whose reaction was even more indignant and nasty. “Give me all the particulars of the marriage,” Hale replied to Harris. “I am very anxious to know how they got into such a stupid scrape. If they only wanted skin, I think they might have managed to get it for less than for life.”27 As I described earlier, Hale had showed a willingness, genuine or feigned, to facilitate the twins’ romantic pursuits—or, to put it in his crude words, to satisfy their carnal desire for “skin.” But, just like Harris, Hale found it absurd that the twins would try to marry and live a “normal” life. Fallout then ensued between the twins and Harris. They had no choice but to distance themselves from their former manager and old friend.

  Neither the outcry of community members nor the opposition from friends and associates could derail the twins from executing their conjugal plan. It had been more than two years since they had settled in Traphill, and they had built a strong enough social network to sustain a temporary outburst of cries and grumblings. Also, David Yates, though not a pillar of the community, was after all a wealthy planter and county justice—in other words, a force to be reckoned with. As soon as he gave his blessing to the marriage, the cow, so to speak, was out of the barn.

  Accordingly, on April 13, 1843, a very fine early spring day, the most unusual double wedding took place at David Yates’s house in Mulberry Creek, officiated by Reverend Colby Sparks. Considering the extraordinary nature of the union, the twins and the Yates family took care to follow the law to the letter—never mind the part that forbade miscegenation—and posted a bond of $1,000 for each marriage. North Carolina required postings of such bonds to ensure that there was no legal obstacle to the proposed marriage. Volunteering as the bondsman for the Yates party was Sarah and Adelaide’s elder brother, Jesse. The bond for Eng and Sarah reads:

  Know all men by these presents that we Eng one of the Siamese Twins and Jesse Yates are held and firmly bound unto the state of North Carolina in the sum of one thousand Dollars, current money, to be paid to the said state of North Carolina for payment whereof, well and truly to be made and done we bind ourselves our Heirs executors and administrators jointly and severally, firmly by these presents sealed with our seal and dated this 13th day of April A.D. 1843.

  The condition of the above obligation is such, that the above bounden Eng one of the Siamese Twins has made application for a license for marriage to be celebrated between him and Sarah Yates of the County aforesaid now in case it should not hereafter appear that there is any lawful cause or impediment to obstruct said marriage, then the above obligation is to be void otherwise to remain in full force and virtue.

  Eng

  Jesse Yates.

  Chang’s bond was identical except for the names of the bride and groom. Most extraordinarily, even on these bonds, Chang and Eng still had no last name. They were each known as “one of the Siamese Twins,” and each signed only his given name. However, on the marriage licenses issued by a county clerk a few days earlier, the last name “Bunker” mysteriously appeared. The crucial part of the licenses reads, “You are hereby licensed and authorized, to solemnize the rites of matrimony between Eng Bunker and Sarah Yates, and join them together as man and wife.” It seemed that the twins had no problem using their unique brand, “the Siamese Twins,” for official purposes, legal or financial. But the absence of a surname would not do for the women they were about to marry. They needed to choose something for the misses.28

  As for how they landed on the name of Bunker, there have been a few theories and stories. As noted earlier, Judge Graves believed that the twins had chosen the name in honor of Catherine Bunker, the woman for whom Chang had still carried a torch. Bunker was also the name of the New York company with which the twins had maintained a lasting business and banking relationship, an enterprise run by Frederick, William, and Barthuel Bunker—Catherine’s father and uncles.

  Another explanation of the name’s provenance sounds more comical: When the twins went to the Naturalization Office to sign citizenship papers, the clerk asked for their names, and “Chang and Eng” was the answer they gave. The dismayed clerk told them that unless they could provide a Christian name or a surname, they would not be able to complete the application process. While the twins stood in confusion, a gentleman named Fred Bunker came to their rescue by suggesting that he would consider it an honor if the twins would adopt his family name, which the twins happily obliged.29 This story, though intriguing, is apocryphal. The twins had acquired citizenship in 1839, and if they had adopted the Bunker name at that time, there had been no sign of it. None of the documents to date, including court summonses, business records, and personal correspondence, contained a trace of the Bunker name until its sudden appearance on the marriage licenses
. In fact, records at the superior court in Wilkes County show that it was not until 1844, a year after their marriage, that the twins petitioned the court to legally adopt the Bunker name. Also, in the county archive, the marriage bonds are now accompanied by a slip of paper that states, “TOOK NAME OF BUNKER, FOR SURNAME.” It seems that the twins did indeed adopt the surname around the time of their marriage but did not legalize it until a year later.30

  Another explanation of the name might be far less plausible than poetic: Bunker sounds like a corrupt form of Bangkok, a city that still tugged at the heartstrings of the twins.

  Whatever the real reason, the twins had now settled on a name by which they would be known—and one that their brides would assume. In the quiet living room of the Yates house, shielded from the peering eyes of the public but still within earshot of neighborly guffaws and grumblings, the famous Siamese Twins were wedded to the two sisters: first Eng and Sarah, and then Chang and Adelaide. It was probably moot to speculate who the best man was for Eng and who for Chang. The marriage vow that contains the phrase “until death do you part” would certainly carry extra meaning for that occasion.

  After the ceremony, the small gathering of family and friends were treated to “a most elegant supper,” followed by the Virginia reel, a group dance popular in this mountainous region. After the festivities were over, Chang and Eng took their brides home to Traphill, where an extra-wide bed—widest perhaps in all of North Carolina or even North America—awaited the four of them.31

  26

  Foursome

  When a conjoined twin has sex with a third person, is the sex—by virtue of the conjoinment—incestuous? Homosexual? Group sex? Well, it definitely is sex. You can tell, because everyone wants to talk about it.