Jumbo's Hide, Elvis's Ride, and the Tooth of Buddha

by Harvey Rachlin

  On April 25, 1846, a battle erupted between forces of the two countries when a Mexican regiment crossed the Rio Grande to engage a waiting American cavalry led by General Zachary Taylor. President Polk asked Congress to declare war, arguing that Mexico had “shed American blood on American soil.” Within a few weeks Congress authorized the president to recruit volunteers into the army and granted $10 million for the United States to attack Mexico. The southern states embraced the war, while the northern states opposed it on the grounds that Mexico, which had become an independent country only twenty-five years previously, was a weak country, and that annexing Texas would inflame the slavery issue.

  Meanwhile, on May 8, 1846, another battle erupted at Palo Alto, Texas, in which Zachary Taylor led the Americans to their first major victory in the then-undeclared war. War officially came shortly after, however; the United States made its declaration on May 13, and Mexico reciprocated against its northern neighbor ten days later. Thus the Mexican War was official, with many new battles to be fought and much more blood to be spilled.

  In the early morning hours of September 21, 1846, Zachary Taylor received a note from General W. J. Worth recommending that the enemy be diverted at the eastern end of Monterrey. Taylor concurred. While it was still dark, Colonel John Coffee Hays, a Texas Ranger who had received a commission in the army, led a scouting party to determine if the enemy was preparing to ambush Worth’s camp. Through the night it had been raining, and Hays’s rangers had had to sleep on the wet ground without blankets to protect them from the cold air. After riding about a mile, Hays stopped his unit, deciding to wait until dawn broke; his men dismounted and made camp, some falling immediately to sleep.

  When sunlight broke through the darkness, it revealed a stunning sight—a Mexican cavalry brandishing lances with flapping pennons six hundred feet away. The Mexican cavalry’s leader ordered his men into formation. Colonel Hays issued an order for his rangers to prepare themselves for battle, then mounted his horse and headed out to meet the enemy.

  After riding a couple of hundred feet, Hays, an experienced Indian fighter, confronted the Mexican leader, also on horseback. Hays bowed. The Mexican colonel, whose name was Juan N. Najera, returned the gesture by removing his headgear. Hays, wearing a bandanna and holding a saber, challenged his counterpart to a duel, and Najera accepted. Hays’s men, now awake and watching, wondered about their leader’s intentions, since he was not known to be an adept swordsman.

  In moments the duel was ready to commence. The Jalisco cavalry (part of General Manuel Romero’s brigade) and the Texas Rangers, situated on opposite sides, fixed on the two combatants. As Hays slowly advanced, without warning the Mexican colonel suddenly charged, swinging his sword. Hays swerved, losing his grip on his own sword, which fell to the ground. But Najera had turned and was bearing down on his now-unarmed adversary. Before his nemesis could cut him down, Hays drew one of his pair of six-shooters and fired a shot into Najera, dropping him from his horse and killing him instantly.

  Hays bolted toward his men, who were now on their horses, and shouted for them to get off and take cover behind their mounts. The Mexican cavalry charged, but the rangers held them off, killing dozens but losing only one of their own men. The Americans knew their death toll would have been much higher save for the order by Hays to dismount and take cover.

  The Americans continued to defeat the Mexicans in battle after battle until even the American pioneers in California forced Mexican officers out. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided for settlement of the war, with Mexico to cede California and New Mexico to the United States and recognize the Rio Grande as Texas’s southern border, in return for a U.S. payment of $15 million to Mexico.

  When the Mexican War finally ended in 1848, John Coffee Hays decided to pursue a career outside the military. But he was to be no ordinary civilian. The reputation of the Texas Rangers from the Mexican War had spread far and wide, with Hays perhaps the most famous of this stalwart bunch.

  Hays’s fame is a typical example of the larger-than-life esteem in which mid-nineteenth-century easterners held their western heroes. In 1853, for example, Hays wanted to attend the presidential inauguration of his old friend and fellow Mexican War officer, Franklin Pierce, in a bid to be appointed California’s surveyor general. Before arriving in the nation’s capital he stopped off in New York, where one day he was recognized by a man talking in the street with an acquaintance. The man remarked to his friend, “That’s Colonel Jack Hays, the famous Texas Ranger,” whereupon his friend shouted, “My God, hurry up and catch him. I’d rather be introduced to him than any man in the world.”

  The man accosted Hays and introduced his friend. The man later wrote, “After the interview I had hard work convincing my friend that the modest, unpretentious, mild, quiet-toned gentleman he talked with was the world-renowned Jack Hays, the Texas Ranger. He had expected to see a man breathing fire and with the war over look conspicuous and overpowering in every feature.”

  Hays’s presence at Pierce’s inauguration and at the celebration that followed drew the attention of the public and the newspapers. One reporter wrote that of all the people in the capital for the inauguration, the center of interest was the Texas Ranger, Jack Hays, about whom “it may be safely asserted that no man in America … since the great John Smith explored the primeval forests of Virginia … has run a career of such boldness, daring and adventure. His frontier defence of the Texas Republic constitutes one of the most remarkable pages in the history of the American character.” Needless to say, Hays was awarded the federal surveyor-general post that he had come to Washington to seek.

  While he was a ranger, Hays had befriended a Comanche chief named Buffalo Hump, and one day he had idly promised to name his first son after the Native American. When his first son was born in California, Hays made good on his promise. Hays’s uncle sent word to Buffalo Hump that his old friend from Texas had a son, and that Hays had given his son the chief’s name for a nickname. Buffalo Hump promptly purchased two gold-washed silver spoons (one is engraved “Buffalo Hump Hays,” the other “BHH”) and a matching cup, and had a friend deliver these items to the Hays family in San Francisco.

  After the duel in which Hays shot and killed Najera, either Hays recovered the Mexican colonel’s sword from the battlefield as a souvenir or one of his men retrieved it to present to him as a gift. It stayed in Hays’s family until about 1989, when John Hays, a direct descendant and namesake of the celebrated “Captain Jack,” and his mother donated the sword along with other original John Hays artifacts, including the Buffalo Hump Hays silver spoons, to its present home. Today the sword serves as a symbol not only of gallant duels fought with pride and courage in the interests of national ambition, but of a historic struggle in which Texans fought hard for their independence.

  LOCATION: Autry Museum of Western Heritage, Los Angeles, California.

  CHARLES DICKENS’S PROMPT-

  COPY OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL

  DATE: 1849.

  WHAT IT IS: The novelist’s specially prepared copy of his famous novel that he used for reading in public, containing alterations of the text, stage directions, and other annotations.

  WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: It is a bound volume in which the 166 pages cut from a copy of the twelfth edition of the novel are affixed to larger cream-colored sheets. In the wide margins and on the inlaid pages are alterations, comments, directions, and editorial symbols made by the author in ink and pencil. The text contains many crossed-out passages; examples of stage directions include “cheerful narrative,” “tone to mystery,” “tone down to pathos,” “up to cheerfulness,” “stern pathos,” and “tone to Tiny Tim.” The cover measures 6½ inches wide by 8⁷/₈ inches long by 1 inch deep. The pages are 5½ inches wide by 8½ inches long; the inlaid pages measure 3¼ inches wide by 5¾ inches long. The book has marbled paper-covered boards and a red morocco leather spine that is stamped in gilt.

  At eight o’clock on the evening of March 15, 1
870, a bearded gentleman dressed in formal attire with a red geranium sprouting from his lapel walked onto the stage of St. James’s Hall in London. He carried with him the prompt-copies of the two works he was to perform that night, A Christmas Carol and The Trial from “Pickwick,” but having recited them scores of times before, he would during the course of the night turn their pages only perfunctorily, without needing to refer to them. Having captivated audiences on both sides of the Atlantic with his public readings over the years, this was to be the very last of his Farewell Readings series. Charles Dickens, the century’s most famous and popular novelist, was ill and exhausted, his public readings having exacted a serious toll on his health, and he resolved that after this last show he would devote his full energies to completing his novel-in-progress, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

  Dickens set down his prompt-copies on his wooden reading table at the center of the stage, which had a little shelf on which rested a flask of water. His main reading piece of the evening was the Carol, and he was ready to bring the story to life, with all its animated, colorful characters. He drew a deep breath as his adoring audience waited, aware that Dickens (“The Inimitable,” as he was nicknamed) was an ill if not dying man.

  Charles Dickens had embarked on a secondary profession of delivering public readings of his works almost inadvertently after the publication of his second Christmas book, The Chimes, in 1844. For reasons of frugality, Dickens, along with his family, had been living in Italy since the summer of that year, but he had corresponded with his friend John Forster about celebrating the book’s publication by doing a reading for their close friends. Forster agreed to host such a gathering, and Dickens returned to London, where on December 3 he delivered a reading of Chimes—his first reading of any of his works—to about a half-dozen people. It was a cozy little affair that would through time take on an aura of legendary proportions. As Dickens read his holiday story, he brought some of the men seated around him to tears, an effect the author would have on audience members throughout his lecture career, and one he would delight in.

  Thereafter, it became Dickens’s practice to stage readings of portions of a new or in-progress literary endeavor. It was a couple of readings to a circle of friends in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1846 that gave Dickens the idea that there was money to be made in what he had previously been doing for free. Dickens at the time had been preoccupied with the impending publication of his Dombey and Son, and on September 12 he held a soiree in which he read the novel’s first chapter. It was such a success that shortly after Dickens gave another reading to the same group. So enthused was the author by the reception that he wrote a letter to Forster in which he expressed his satisfaction at making audiences laugh and declared that “in these days of lecturings and readings, a great deal of money might possibly be made (if it were not infra dig*) by one’s having Readings of one’s own books.”

  Some friends would advise the illustrious author that it was in fact beneath his dignity to read for profit, but the idea nonetheless held a powerful appeal for Dickens. That Dickens was naturally suited to appear onstage before an audience was consistent with his restless character. As a young man he had an avid interest in theater and over the years had written and acted in plays, and he sometimes even performed duties as a stage manager for various productions.

  It wasn’t until eight years later, however, that Dickens actually delivered his first public reading—and it was not for profit but for charity. A writer whose works commented penetratingly on the social ills of his day, Dickens decided that his readings would be for the benefit of particular causes. Perhaps Dickens’s compassion for the unfortunate developed partly as a response to his own youthful poverty.

  Born on February 7, 1812, in Landport, Charles John Huffam Dickens was the second of eight children. His father, John, was a government clerk who was locked up in the Marshalsea, a debtors’ prison, and when Charles was ten his mother had opened a school that failed to attract students. Charles was forced to go out and earn money himself, and he went to work in a factory where he mounted labels on blacking pots. This was a painful part of young Charles’s life, “an evil hour for me,” he called it, that no doubt provided inspiration for such themes as cruelty to children and inhumanity to the poor that he would bring out later in his stories. It was the plight of uneducated male laborers that first drew Dickens’s philanthropic attention, however, and for the benefit of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, a free educational institution, on December 27, 1853, he gave his first charity reading. For some three hours Dickens riveted the audience’s attention at the Birmingham Town Hall with his animated storytelling of his beloved Carol. By this time his book was on its way to becoming a classic. Dickens had begun to write A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas in early October 1843 and had completed the novella by the end of November. He submitted his original manuscript (The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City) to his publisher, Chapman & Hall, and it was published on December 17, 1843. The title page was printed in two colors, and the book contained illustrations by John Leech.

  A page from Charles Dicken's prompt-copy of A Christmas Carol. Dickens marked the pages of his prompt-copy to edit the story and help him bring it to life when he recited it to audiences.

  One can imagine the Victorian audience enthralled as the author acted out his tale of a miser being taken on eye-opening excursions by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, which lead him to discover the true spirit of Christmas. Onstage Dickens infused life into his Carol characters: Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, the ghost of Jacob Marley, Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig, and others. A review from the Portland Transcript of February 4, 1868, gives a vivid picture:

  His power of facial expression is wonderful; it is as much what he does as what he says that constitutes the charm of his performance. He gives a distinct voice to each character, and to an extraordinary extent assumes the personality of each. At one moment he is savage old Scrooge, at the next, his jolly nephew, and in the twinkling of an eye little timid, lisping Bob Cratchit appears. All this is effected by the play of features as well as the varying tones of voice. It is the comical or the savage twist of the mouth—the former to the right, the latter to the left—the elongation of the face, the roll or twinkle of the eyes, and above all the wonderful lift of the eyebrows, that produce such surprising and delightful effects. And then he not only personates his characters, he performs their actions. This he does by means of wonderfully flexible fingers, which he converts at pleasure into a company of dancers, and makes to act and speak in a hundred ways. He rubs and pats his hands, he flourishes all his fingers, he shakes them, he points them, he makes them equal to a whole stage company in the performance of parts. But then the man is also there. Dickens, the author, comes in at intervals to enjoy his own fun; you see him in the twinkle of an eye and the curve of the mouth. When the audience laughs he beams all over with radiant appreciation of the fun.

  Dickens’s fame as a reader instantly spread, and he was soon besieged by invitations to recite his works. Under the mistaken impression that he had turned professional, many of those requesting a performance offered to pay him. Over the next few years offers poured in from all over Great Britain—and elsewhere—so many, in fact, that Dickens couldn’t even begin to consider all of them. He resisted the temptation, albeit with reluctance, to read professionally because of the belief that it would compromise his higher calling as a writer, and he continued to speak for the benefit of charities. Dickens customarily drew large audiences of between two and four thousand people at a single reading. A Christmas Carol was an audience-pleasing favorite and a staple of his repertoire.

  As time passed, however, his own emotional and financial difficulties caused the novelist seriously to consider making a career out of reading for profit. By 1857 his marriage was dissolving, and he would find that he had a deep need to be around people; the tremendous outpouring of admiration and affection bestowed on him at readings
lifted some of his despondency. In 1857 Dickens had also moved into a new home, Gad’s Hill, and doubtless this had drained his resources while elevating his lifestyle. Just before he separated from his wife Dickens remarked, “I must do something, or I shall wear my heart away.” The allure of being surrounded by ardent admirers, as well as of the potential financial gain, was obviously too great to pass up.

  On April 29, 1858, Dickens made his professional debut as a reader at London’s St. Martin’s Hall. For his performance he chose not his vastly popular Christmas Carol, as he had originally planned (the spring was the customary “season” for public readings in London at the time), but another Yuletide tale, The Cricket on the Hearth. Only a few weeks later, however, Dickens installed Carol in his professional repertoire.

  Dickens prepared special annotated copies of the works he read in public in which he wrote performance instructions and cut out passages. Though his dependence on these prompt-copies would wane through the years, he would nevertheless continue to carry them onstage. Dickens was a diligent rehearser and had memorized his better-received works like Carol, but he kept his prompt-copy near in case of a lapse.

  Over time Dickens shortened A Christmas Carol in half-hour increments until he had it down to under ninety minutes, in order to fit another item into his program to entertain audiences for about two hours. But the Carol’s reading time was always approximate, as Dickens never gave the same performance twice, including more or less text depending on his own mood and the audience reaction, and sometimes improvising on his own printed words. Dickens was by no means a mechanical reciter and improvised lines and mannerisms to try to amuse his audience. If any new material received a very positive response, Dickens would be apt to include it in future readings.