The Elephant Keeper

There came a day of thunder, heard at a distance of many miles, but drawing steadily closer. Now the Elephants became restive, flapping their ears to keep off the clouds of thunder-flies which plagued their eyes, and as the sky darkened, and the growls and rumbles of thunder grew louder, I put them in the cart-house. I attempted to soothe their emotions by talking in a soft voice and stroking their trunks. No animal likes thunder, and the horses were also anxious, while all the birds fell silent. Flashes lit the sky, and the first huge drops began to splash down; then, after a brief pause, when the storm seemed to draw breath, the rain fell in a torrent, pounding the roof of the cart-house with a deafening noise and spurting as it hit the ground. On a sudden the door flew open and in burst Lizzy, her hair dripping. I gave her a horse-blanket to wrap round her shoulders and sat beside her on a heap of straw. ‘You do not mind me being here?’ she inquired, squeezing her hair and looking at me with her dark eyes.—‘Not at all, why should I? How is Mrs. Harrington today?’—‘Mrs. Harrington has bought herself a new dress and is very pleased with herself,’ she said, and took off her shoes. ‘O, I am soaked! How dark it is! How is your elbow?’—‘My elbow?’ I was surprized; I had forgotten my elbow. ‘It is mended, but still a little stiff.’ I bent it slowly, while she watched; then she drew back her sleeve and shewed her own arm, which was very soft and fair in comparison to mine. Her hair dripped on to my arm, and she brushed it off, and let her hand linger on my arm, and then I thought that I should kiss her, indeed that she would like me to kiss her; but I was too shy, and afraid that, if I did, she would make some joke at my expense. Even so, I might have plucked up courage and kissed her, but the Elephants chose to interrupt us, their trunks sliding over our shoulders and joining our hands. The storm continued for more than an hour; when it was at an end, a band of brilliant yellow light shone from under the dark cloud which was moving away to the east. I let the Elephants into the yard, and they splashed and trampled through the puddles with great relish.

This storm was one of the very few times that I saw the Elephants agitated. Although they started at loud noises, for instance when pheasants burst from the undergrowth, or ring doves clattered with smacking wings from the thickets, they were for the most part very placid and even-tempered. However, on one occasion, when we were riding along a track, Timothy came to an abrupt halt and gave a sharp trumpet. At the same moment he stiffened his trunk and pointed: upon which I, leaning over his head and following its line, saw a large viper coiled in the bracken. I urged him on, but he would not budge, nor would Jenny, who was following close behind, and we had to wait until the viper, perhaps conscious of danger, uncoiled itself and slid away. I conclude from this, that both Elephants knew, either by a kind of instinct or because they had seen snakes in the Indies, that snakes were poisonous, which was remarkable, though even more remarkable, to my mind, was that whenever we passed that same spot, both Elephants remembered the viper and checked stride to see whether it was still there.

In the autumn we sometimes met herds of village pigs, rooting for mast. The Elephants did not like pigs, and would hurl pieces of wood, or stones at them, with great accuracy and force. These pigs soon learnt to avoid us, and whenever we drew near would flee in squealing terror. There were also occasions when we unexpectedly encountered horses. On a day of hard frost, as we were walking through a field of bean stubble, we heard the sound of the chase, and presently the hounds came pouring toward us, hot on the drag and barking furiously. They streamed past, pursued by the horses with their riders who, as always, were shouting and tally-hoing in a state of great excitement. Neither of the Elephants was in the least disturbed by the commotion; but one black mare, upon seeing the Elephants, was so unnerved that it shied and threw its rider, a heavily built gentleman by the name of Dr. Chisholm. Dr. Chisholm lived in Gillerton; he was well known both for his love of food and for his fiery temper. His foot now being caught in the stirrup, he was dragged some way through the mire before the horse came to a halt. Picking himself up, he turned on me in a fury, what the d-v-l did I mean parading my d—ned Elephants here, getting in the way of the chase, etc.—I respectfully replied that I was sorry, I had not known that the chase would be coming this way, to which Dr. Chisholm retorted that in that case I must be deaf. He remounted and galloped off.

I was a good deal troubled by this matter, and feared that Dr. Chisholm would complain to Mr. Harrington. I heard no more of it. However, before long, I had occasion to remember the incident and to wonder about its consequences.

The whole of January 1768 was exceedingly cold, with a bitter north wind, and heavy falls of snow. Every morning, as my father and I walked from Thornhill to the Hall, we came upon the bodies of thrushes and blackbirds frozen stiff, and every evening the sun, sinking through a trench of violet, seemed the colour of blood. Several of the horses having fallen ill with a contagious distemper, I became afraid for the safety of the Elephants who, without the protection of a coat of hair, or fur, were exposed to the full rigour of the cold; and though I kept them in the cart-house, and wrapped them in horse-blankets, they were listless and miserable. I could understand the depression of their spirits, for they were used to the heat of the Indies. When the cold deepened, a fine powdery snow blowing through the edges of the door, I lit two small stoves, though it worried me perpetually that the Elephants might accidentally knock a stove over, and set fire to the straw. For this reason I stayed with them all night, rising from my bed to stoke the fires, or to give the embers a puff with the bellows.

My father confidently expected the weather to change with the new moon, which fell I think sometime after the middle of the month, and indeed there began a thaw shortly afterward; however, soon the cold returned harder than ever, with the same piercing wind. Mr. Harrington had not gone to Bristol, for Mrs. Harrington was about to give birth; and I remember that, to test the depth of the cold, he carried out an experiment, placing three glasses of different liquids in the open air: the glass of water froze in six minutes, hard enough to bear a five shilling piece upon it; the glass of port wine froze in two hours, and the glass of brandy in six hours. By now this persistent weather was becoming a serious matter for farmers, even worse than the summer’s drought. Mr. Harrington’s barns were well provisioned with hay, but many farmers had little or no hay left and could not afford to buy more, prices being so high; moreover, in the fields the turnips had frozen to solid blocks, which left the sheep without food. People prayed for milder weather, however when the thaw came, in the middle of February, the turnips had rotted in the ground and were pulpy and worthless, and many sheep died of starvation.

Before this thaw both Elephants did fall ill, as I had feared. The first to sicken was Timothy, whom I found with his head hanging and eyes closed, and when I offered him a carrot he declined. Soon Jenny too fell ill, and when both animals lay down, I became very afraid that they had lain down to die. With my father’s help I opened their mouths, and poured cordials of milk, peppermint and honey down their throats. The horses had been bled, as a matter of course, and my father was in favour of bleeding the Elephants; a suitable vein, he believed, lay in the roots of each ear. I was reluctant to bleed, for fear that it would be impossible to stanch the flow; however, my father urging strongly, I gave way. We bled Timothy first, and hit the vein at once. The blood was dark and very rich, and we succeeded in drawing off a full three pints of blood. When we came to Jenny, the first blow missed the vein but struck with the second, and though her blood was less rich and flowed sluggishly we took two pints. I should mention here the old story that the blood of an Elephant is colder than that of any other animal, but this is entirely untrue, it is as warm as that of a horse.

After this, there was little more that we could do. My father left, but I stayed with them. Sometimes I rested my hand against one or other of their chests to feel that their great hearts were still thundering away, and sometimes I talked to them, which, while helping them not at all, seemed to relieve my anxiety. To keep out the chill I let no one into the cart-house save for my father and Mr. Harrington, and Joshua, who made me kneel and say another prayer on their behalf.

Soon after their recovery, my father fell ill. First, he complained of pains shooting through his legs, next, that he was hot and giddy. Since he had always enjoyed good health, I was surprized but not greatly concerned, for, as I say, I was still thinking of the Elephants. He went home and, taking to his bed, sank into a fever. This being the middle of the day, my mother became very alarmed, and began to think of fetching the doctor—the same Dr. Chisholm whom I mentioned earlier—however, before doing so, she consulted Mrs. Perry, as she did on every matter. Mrs. Perry bustled up and, looking at my father, declared that the fever was not serious, she would stake her life on it being no more than a severe cold with a touch of ague. All this I had from Jim, my brother, who was at home, for in such weather there was little to be done in the gardens. As the afternoon wore on, my father continued to decline, and in the evening, despite Mrs. Perry’s repeated reassurances, my mother sent my brother through the snow to Gillerton, where Dr. Chisholm lived. Dr. Chisholm being at table, Jim was told to wait. More than two hours passed before Dr. Chisholm appeared—patting his mouth with a napkin—to ask what the matter was. My brother told him.—‘And what is your father’s name? Ah yes—he is the father of the Elephant keeper, is he not? Well, let us hope he is not ill with the dreaded Elephant Fever. I cannot come now, young man, but I shall come to him later.’

My brother returning home, gave this message to my mother: ‘Dr. Chisholm is coming later.’—‘But could he not come at once?’—‘No, he is at table, but he will come later. He says that Father may have Elephant Fever.’ My mother, very frightened, cried out, ‘What is that?’ Upon which my brother told her, that it was a special disease which human beings caught from Elephants.

Since I had stayed the night at the cart-house, I knew none of this; however, shortly before day-break, Jim appeared, and told me that I must come home at once, bringing a piece of one of Timothy’s tusks. It seems that Mrs. Perry now believed my father would only be saved if he were given a medicinal potion made of powdered tusk. This was utter folly, I did not believe a word of it; even if it were true, Timothy would not have stood idly by and allowed me to saw off his tusk. Jim then mentioned that, as he had returned through the snow from Gillerton, he had been followed by a light. I asked, what sort of light; he did not know, but it was a dancing light, like a will o’ the wisp. I said to myself, it is probably no more than the frozen crust of snow glistening in the light of the young moon; but I knew that Jim believed it to be an omen of our father’s death.

I hurried home. My father lay in the icy bed-room, and while my mother moaned and shook, Mrs. Perry held sway, muttering spells and incantations. ‘I knew it would happen. The Elephants! The Elephants! Where is the tusk?’ When I said that I had not brought any tusk, my mother begged me to run back and fetch some, for my father’s life hung by a thread. I told her that I could not do so, that the Elephant was the property of Mr. Harrington; whereupon she cried out that I must ask Mr. Harrington. I did what I could to calm her and then attended to my father, who was burning hot, and in the absence of Dr. Chisholm, who had still not visited, I resolved to bleed him. Having fetched a knife, I laid bare his arm. ‘It will do no good!’ cried Mrs. Perry, ‘he has Elephant Fever!’ and my mother wailed that I was not a doctor, that we must wait for the doctor. ‘For how long? We cannot wait,’ I said.—‘We must wait!’—‘But if we wait—the longer we wait—we cannot wait.’

We waited a few minutes, during which I felt my father’s pulse, which was running very fast and intermittent, and I then said that I did not think we should delay any longer, that he must be bled, and I stretched out his arm. However, my mother cried out, ‘O! I hear him! O! He is come!’ running to the window and scratching at the frost flakes; but she was mistaken. ‘O Tom you must go and fetch him!’—‘But Jim has been!’—‘Then where is he? Why has he not come? Why? O! O!’ for my poor father had given a kind of low groan, and she flung herself in agonies over the bed. ‘O! Timothy! You must not leave me! You must not!’ As I stood back, knife in hand, I noticed Jim’s wan face and wondered whether, when he had spoken to Dr. Chisholm, he had conveyed with sufficient force the desperate nature of my father’s condition. Yet there was another suspicion which crossed my mind, that the doctor had decided to ignore my father’s illness, on account of what had happened with the Elephants when he was hunting. However, this may be to do Dr. Chisholm an injustice, for he did indeed arrive at the cottage about noon, though by then it was too late. It seems that he had been urgently called to attend to a gentleman by the name of Mr. Rogers, who had slipped in the snow and bruised an ankle.

I will pass over the melancholy details of my father’s death. His burial had to be delayed for two weeks, the ground being as hard as stone, even a pick would not penetrate it; during this period he lay stiff and frozen in his bed. My poor mother was greatly distracted and would not enter the room on any account; nor would she allow a single fire to be lit in the cottage, despite the extreme cold, and when Jim and I came to carry him down the stairs, she cried, ‘O, do not hurt him!’ After the burial, she begged me not to go on working any longer with the Elephants, for fear that I would catch the same deadly Elephant Fever. Indeed, she was certain that I would catch it. She said, through her tears, that she had known from the beginning that the Elephants were dangerous and that no good would come of them; for an angel had warned Mrs. Perry in a dream, and Mrs. Perry had warned my mother, and my mother had warned me and my father, but neither of us would pay any heed, and now the best husband anyone had ever had was dead and cold, and I would die too, that was all but certain, and she would be left with Jim, who was no help to anyone, and she did not know what she would do. I attempted to reassure her; but she was deaf to all consolation, crying out that it did not matter what happened to her, since she would not be alive for much longer.

The story that the Elephants had been the cause of my father’s death was quickly spread by wagging tongues; chiefly, no doubt, that belonging to Mrs. Perry, but by others too; so that for a time it was generally believed that even to go near the Elephants was dangerous, while to breathe in a single particle of their breaths (which, in the frosty air, billowed from their mouths in clouds) was fatal. They were seen as walking contagions, and shunned by everyone but me; indeed I was also widely shunned, with people saying that, if I had only cut off a piece of Timothy’s tusk, my father would still be alive, and that I could not have loved him enough. This was a most unjust charge, for I had loved my father as faithfully as any son could have done. I was greatly troubled on my own account, but also on that of the Elephants: when I looked at them and indeed, when they looked at me, with their sad, wrinkled eyes, I felt a kind of horror. How will you survive, I thought, with such a deadly reputation? At the same time, there was something that made me doubt—not that Elephant Fever existed, but that it could have led to my father’s death. I questioned my brother Jim, who repeated to me the exact words used by Dr. Chisholm: ‘Let us hope he is not ill with the dreaded Elephant Fever.’ I said to Jim, ‘Then we do not know for certain that he died of Elephant Fever.’ Jim agreed that we did not know for certain.