Magruder's Curiosity Cabinet

by H. P. Wood

  “Didn’t we discuss this already? No apologies from you, please. Not after all you’ve done.” She sighs. “I was just sitting here thinking. Mum would want to be sent back to England, put to rest next to Father. And my brother’s body is still out there somewhere. I’ll have to…I don’t know exactly. Speak to the city? Find the Arundale? Someone must know something.”

  “And then? Will you go home too?”

  Kitty looks out at the water, watching the little birds as they flap-flap-flap-drop their way across the surf. “You know, when Archie found me, I’d been sitting on this bench for days, just watching those birds. They make no sense at all. They do everything the hard way. But they keep on going, no matter what.” She smiles at her new friend. “Will I go home? Do you intend to go home?”

  Nazan looks over at their little group. At Zeph. She smiles back at Kitty. “I’m pretty sure I already am home.”

  “Well, there you are.” Kitty takes her hand and squeezes it. “There’s your answer.”

  Author’s Note

  Every sideshow talker assures his audience that the marvels lurking just behind that tent are absolutely, completely, 101 percent gen-u-ine and for real…and I’m no different.

  Every sideshow talker is a big ol’ liar…and I’m no different there either.

  Still, I want to say something about aspects of this book that really are 101 percent gen-u-ine, and I should start by hat-tipping my source material. My favorite resources for all matters Coney were the primary ones. For example, the Brooklyn Public Library has a fantastic site called Brooklyn Newsstand (http://bklyn.newspapers.com), which makes papers like the Brooklyn Daily Eagle searchable online, with articles dating well back into the nineteenth century. I also leaned heavily on the 1905 publication Souvenir Guide to Coney Island by W. J. Ennisson. Ennisson’s descriptions of Coney’s many spectacles are spectacular in their own right. Significantly, the foldout map indicated a spot for me to place Kitty’s park. This was a great gift because so much of the shoreline was held privately in this era—specifically, owned by businesses that might not have appreciated a Tibetan-style funeral on their property.

  Among secondary sources, I have to mention the indispensable Coney Island: Lost and Found by historian Charles Denson. Denson runs the Coney Island History Project and hosts walking tours throughout the summer season. (If you are interested enough in Coney Island to pick up this book, you will thoroughly enjoy touring the real place.) The extensive website of Jeffrey Staunton (http://www.westland.net/coneyisland/) was another vital resource. So was the book Secrets of the Sideshows by Joe Nickell and back issues of the journal Shocked and Amazed! On and Off the Midway, which is helmed by the inimitable James Taylor.

  Now a quick trip into the real/not real…

  • • •

  I’m not aware of any major outbreaks of plague on the East Coast. However, Honolulu and San Francisco both had quite dramatic experiences with the disease in the early 1900s. This was part of the “third pandemic” of the plague, which impacted parts of China, India, central Africa, and Australia.

  At this point in history, knowledge of plague transmission was a bit sketchy. The idea that plague was caused by bacteria was not unheard of at the time—in fact, the guilty party, Yersinia pestis, had been discovered in 1894. But the discovery was controversial; many doctors had yet to be convinced that Yersinia pestis was to blame.

  Consequently, plague-fighting efforts in the 1900s were a mixed bag. Some steps were taken that still seem logical—a greater emphasis on hygiene, for example—and some seem like madness now, like burning an apartment building to the ground because one resident died of the plague. (I’m sure the fact that many of these buildings were taking up valuable shorefront property never entered into the minds of city planners.) Fumigation with sulfur was used occasionally too; it was an old-school, yellow-fever-fighting technique in New Orleans, as described by Archie.

  As for the symptoms and course of the illness, I based my version of the plague mainly on texts like Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron (1351) and Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722). Those works and others portray a disease horrorscape in which healthy, young Europeans enjoyed breakfast in the sunshine only to die in agony before dinner. Modern scientists would say that although pneumonic plague is highly contagious, the actual course of the illness is probably not quite as swift as I’ve suggested here. It may be that people back then were in poorer health generally, which perhaps allowed the disease to work its terrible magic more quickly. Or maybe that strain was more virulent than the one existing today. Or maybe Boccaccio and Defoe were big ol’ fibbers. In any case, I hope readers will forgive my adoption of the more romantic (if more dire!) scenario outlined by writers who came before me.

  • • •

  Historically, half-and-half performers like Rosalind Butler tended to sell themselves as hermaphrodites. As with most sideshow advertisements, this was largely untrue. That being said, Josephine Joseph, who appeared in the classic film Freaks, strongly insisted on the identity of hermaphrodite, even when arrested for fraud after a performance in Blackpool, England. In any case, whatever else the half-and-half performance might have been, it certainly was an embodied threat to the binary gender system.

  With Rosalind, I tried to imagine a character who is not merely a threat to that system but is consciously at war with it. The character was inspired by real historical figures like the Chevalier d’Éon de Beaumont, a French spy who switched gender presentations multiple times throughout life until being forced to choose and stick with one by Louis XVI. I was also thinking about Civil War surgeon Dr. Mary Edwards Walker. The first (and so far only) cis-female Congressional Medal of Honor winner, Dr. Walker nonetheless suffered multiple arrests and indignities for her lifelong insistence on dressing “like a man.”

  In contrast to Walker’s time, recent years have seen a welcome—if slow and stuttering—movement toward acceptance of people with nontraditional gender presentations. While I have never considered the character to be transgender, I’m certain that gender fluid is a term Rosalind would have adored and embraced. Given the period setting of this story, however, I didn’t feel like it was plausible for me to use here.

  • • •

  Zeph’s Race to Death show is a fictional Frankenstein monster assembled from real parts. The road race did indeed occur in 1903, with events unspooling kinda sorta as Zeph describes. In turning a real-life tragedy into a spectacle, Zeph is making his own contribution to a type of performance that was very much in vogue at the time. Reenactments of disasters such as the Galveston Flood and the Boer War drew huge audiences. Meanwhile, both Luna Park and Dreamland had their own versions of the tenement fire show witnessed by Kitty and Archie.

  Another precursor of Zeph’s show is, of course, the flea circus, and to that, I’ve added the tradition of pulgas vestidas, or “dressed fleas.” The folk art of creating teeny-tiny costumes for fleas was practiced in Mexico a hundred or so years ago. The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology has some examples in their collection, should you care to get out your magnifying glass.

  • • •

  Despite her mystical claims, the character of Yeshi Lowenstein is more truth-based than one might expect. The Tibetan practice of sky burials still continues to this day, more or less as described in the book. A lot of that scene is based on descriptions in the online Travel China Guide and in Pamela Logan’s “Witness to a Tibetan Sky-Burial: A Field Report for the China Exploration and Research Society.” Logan’s essay is available online, as are many photographs of the sky burials—they are not for the faint of heart.

  As for Yeshi’s other “miracle,” levitation… Well, it wouldn’t be proper of me to ruin that. But if you are a truth-seeker with an Internet connection, just plug “levitation” into YouTube, and all will be revealed. Be warned—the truth, once known, can’t be unknown.

  • �
�� •

  Speaking of YouTube, Robonocchio was inspired by a real automaton created by Henri Maillardet in the eighteenth century, and you can see it in action online. Even better would be to visit Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute, where the automaton resides. Maillardet’s machine can draw only four pictures, but it made me think, Wouldn’t it be great if… And Chio was born.

  If Maillardet’s robot were the father of Chio, then his mother would surely be the fortune-telling machine called Grandma’s Predictions, which dates back to the 1920s. Grandma is still in working order, and you can seek her counsel anytime at Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park in Coney Island. Grandma also tweets (@ConeyIslGrandma), because of course she does.

  • • •

  William Reynolds was a real person who served a single term as a New York state senator but found more success in real estate. He and his consortium shepherded Dreamland into existence, and Reynolds was also involved in developing the Chrysler Building. According to Charles Denson, Reynolds was a “slightly shady, larger-than-life character.” In Coney Island: Lost and Found, Charles Denson alludes to a story about Reynolds being “‘accidentally’ shot in the groin by New York mayor John Mitchell.” A story published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1909 mentions Reynolds returning from a sojourn in Europe “accompanied by his friend W. J. Urchs and his Negro mandolin quartet.” Sure, why not?

  All that being said, I have no knowledge of his children—Spencer and Charlie are entirely fictional.

  • • •

  Finally, no historical evidence supports the idea that Teddy Roosevelt was a poor hand washer. I’d like to extend my sincere apologies to all surviving Roosevelts for any insult to their ancestor’s personal hygiene.

  —H. P. Wood

  P.S. A bibliography and more information about these topics and much more can be found on my website: hpwood.net.

  Reading Group Guide

  1. Magruder’s takes inspiration from plague outbreaks that occurred in San Francisco and Honolulu in the early 1900s. If there were a case of the plague in your neighborhood, how do you think you would react? How about in your local school? Did the plot remind you of more recent events, such as the Ebola outbreak? Or did this seem entirely different? Why?

  2. Kitty starts the novel alone on a bench, thinking about drowning herself. She ends as the leader of a fairly big con to save Magruder’s. How does she get from point A to point B? What motivates her to change and grow? Does she fail at any point?

  3. Some of the characters are “unusual” because of their physical bodies, while others are “unusual” because of their lifestyles. How does the question of choice impact the characters? Does a character like Rosalind have more choice than a character like Zeph? Or not?

  4. What attracts certain “normal” characters like Nazan and Spencer to the Magruder’s world? And on the other hand, why do you think some characters find the world threatening?

  5. Whitey the fireman warns Zeph to stay away from anarchists because of the “trifecta”—meaning that membership in three minority groups is too many. This idea is sometimes described as “intersectionality,” which refers to being affected by multiple types of oppression (such as racism, sexism, classism, ablism, and homophobia). What other examples of intersectionality do you notice in Magruder’s? How does intersectionality impact how characters understand the world and one another?

  6. Books play a fairly large role in the story: The Souls of Black Folk and The Wizard of Oz both appear in the first chapter, Nazan and Spencer’s first conversation involves Austen and Wells, and a copy of Captains Courageous changes Spencer’s mind about what his next move should be. Why do you think authors reference other books in their own stories? What do you learn about a particular character based on what book he or she is reading?

  7. What role does friendship play in the story? What are some of the key friendships that develop over the course of the book? How and when do characters such as Zeph and Spencer start to see each other as individuals rather than types?

  8. At one point, Rosalind tells Seamus the bellhop, “Not one of us knows what we can do, until one fine day, we stand up and do it.” What other instances did you notice where characters “stand up” and do something they didn’t intend? How does it work out for them?

  9. The story of Magruder’s is told from a few different points of view. There are certain points—for example, the death of Bernard the Giant—where the reader knows more about what’s happening than the characters do. Why do you think the author decided to tell the story this way? How do changes in point of view affect the plot, the characters, and the reader? Was one character’s point of view more compelling than another?

  10. The conclusion of a novel can leave the reader satisfied or disappointed, happy that it’s over or wanting more. How did Magruder’s ending affect you? Why?

  Acknowledgments

  Like a starlet on Oscar night, I’ve no way to know if I’ll ever get up on this stage again. So with apologies to the orchestra conductor, I offer the following thanks while I can.

  Thanks, Mom, for being my first teacher and greatest supporter.

  Thanks to the many other teachers who inspired and shaped (and occasionally terrified) me, including but not limited to Mrs. O’Brien, Mr. Sullivan, Steve Schieffelin, Tori Haring-Smith, Paula Vogel, and also Anne Bogart and Eleanora Von Dehsen, who weren’t technically my teachers but—let’s be honest—pretty much were.

  Thanks to my father, who said he liked this book when I really needed to hear it.

  Thanks to my friends Kate and Charlene and Tom and Ronnie and Jessica and Tim and George, who read lousy drafts I wrote and helped me make them better. (Special thanks to my friend Kat: I guess it’s okay if you read this now.)

  Thanks to the entire team at Sourcebooks, and most especially my editors—Shana Drehs, Stephanie Bowen, and Grace Menary-Winefield. Their enthusiasm made this possible, and their wisdom challenged me to push harder and do better. Heather Hall and Sabrina Baskey made invaluable contributions as well, saving my hide a number of times—my thanks to them too.

  Thanks and XXOOs to Courtney Miller-Callahan, for giving me a shot. This would not have happened without her.

  Thanks to the entire sprawling Wood family—the kindest, most lovely circus I could ever have the great fortune to join.

  Thanks to Valerie Tomaselli, my colleague, mentor, and friend, who believed in this project when I didn’t.

  And thanks most of all to Mark and Maia Rose, who believe in me when I don’t. Without you, nothing.

  All my love,

  —H. P.

  About the Author

  Credit: Nicole Friedler Photography

  H. P. Wood is the granddaughter of a mad inventor and a sideshow magician. Instead of making things disappear, she makes books of all shapes and sizes. She has written or edited works on an array of topics, including the history of the Internet, the future of human rights, and the total awesomeness of playing with sticks. She lives in Connecticut with a charming and patient husband, a daughter from whom she steals all her best ideas, and more cats than is strictly logical.

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