The Strand Magazine/Volume 4/Issue 24/Zig-Zags at the Zoo

by Arthur Morrison

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ZIG ZAGS AT THE ZOO

by Arthur Morrison and J. H. Shepherd.

uffa Culli, Jung Perchad, Jingo, and Solomon—where are their enemies? What human thing so base as nurse ill-will for the genial elephant? The jolly elephant—the meek, all-obedient elephant—the elephant, who provides the world with ivory, and Sunday-school anecdotes, and rides for twopence! Though I turn from my fellow-man—having found him out—though every other thing that crawls, runs, or flies revolt me, still may I keep my faith in the elephant; for assuredly he will be worthy thereof. He, almost alone among living creatures, has never betrayed my trust. I believed in the lion—the picture books of infancy taught me of his valour, his magnanimity, and all the rest; but the lion has turned out an impostor. I believed in the camel—his intelligence, his long-suffering docility; but the camel is a humbug. In the elephant I may still believe. All those charming stories, wherein the elephant never forgets an injury, nor is ungrateful
The squirter.

for a benefit—usually expressing the facts by squirting water over somebody—all those charming stories I may still turn to for comfort amid the tribulations of this world, with confidence that even it they are not all strictly true, they are at least reasonable lies. I look back with much affection upon the virtuously-squirting elephant. The squirtee most clearly to be remembered is the bad, tailor who pricked the elephant's trunk. The squirter was, I believe, the first elephant whose acquaintance I made. I certainly knew him long before I knew that other virtuous elephant who broke a man's head with a cocoanut, to compensate the man for breaking a cocoanut with his head. I almost think I knew him before I first met the Noah's Ark elephant. The Noah's Ark elephant was my most confidential playmate, and tasted rather of garden-mould till the paint came off when he lost his grittiness
The Noah's Ark Elephant. and became a pig, having broken his trunk. He was not very broad in the back, it is true, having been made of a flat piece of wood, but he was very interesting animal before he was a pig. I was much more intimate with him than with Noah, who was a little stiff, not to say stuck-up. As a pig his career ended suddenly in a memorable maritime disaster—when a vessel in my ownership, chartered at the time as a cattle-boat, foundered in the duck pond with most of the farmyard and a good deal of the ark.

The Circus Elephant.

It was while the Noah's Ark elephant was a pig that I first saw the circus elephant. He was not altogether a fair specimen. He was rude. He rang an immense railway bell for his dinner, and when he had finished one course, swept everything off the table with his foot. None of the elephants in this place would behave like that. Even Jingo and Solomon, who are young—mere boys—know better than that, and take buns and apples most respectfully. The circus elephant, too, played low practical jokes with the clown, and danced on a tub at a fatal sacrifice of dignity.

Mandevile's Olifaunt.

In Sir John Maundevile I still have a dear friend among what that charming old truth-monger called the "olifaunts." He has curly tusks and a bushy tail, and carries a very tall castle on his back, with mighty battlements. He is more startling even than our old friend of the Surrey side, once ignominiously cleped the "Pig and Tinder-box." When first I met the pantomime elephant I cannot remember. But I have often met him since, and more than once I have been permitted to refresh one or both ends of him with half-and-half. He is the only elephant of my acquaintance whose magnificence has turned out to be hollow. Anatomically, he is simple, his viscera consisting almost entirely of two convenient handles, whereby his trunk and tail may be made to swing. I knew an exceptionally talented forelegs, who drew extra pay for his ability to knock off a stage policeman's helmet with the trunk. But he was subject to the infirmities of genius, and once, under an exceptional burden of half-and-half, fell ruinously down a trap-door with all the front half of the structure and the Great Mogul, who was in the howdah. Also, I knew a hindlegs—but that is another story.

The pantomime elephant.

The burglar.

The late Albert Smith once knew a sponge-cake elephant—but that also is another story. There is moreover another story still—any number of other stories—about the burglar-elephant. He is always in the papers. He gets away from a menagerie and shoves in the front of a tuck-shop with his head; after which he eats the tuck-shop, shutters and all, and goes to sleep on the ruins of the house. Sometimes he goes the rounds of a market and samples things in general. He is very catholic in his tastes, and will toss off a scuttleful of coals or a suit of ready-made clothes with equal freedom and good humour. He has also been known to break into a pill factory, being afterwards used as an advertisement for the pills. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals seems to have had no means of preventing the perpetration of this form of revenge.

Stoking.

Here, at the Zoo, the elephants are much too respectably brought up for this sort of thing. Still they are not muffs, and will take their beer and 'bacca in ali good-fellowship. Leave no unprotected pocket wherein cigars within the sweep of Jung Perchad's trunk. For 'bacca he will chew and beer drink, if Iles, his keeper, but leave him for two minutes to his wicked devices. Here we have the elephant's one little vice. He will hang about a
Bar-lounger.
"No monopoly." bar. See here, on summer days when all four leave their work of carrying childhood in two-pennyworths; just on the home side of the tunnel under the Outer Circle stands a refreshment bar. With any excuse whatsoever, but usually with no excuse at all, Jung Perchad, Suffa Culli, Jingo, and Solomon will linger wistfully about this bar. Buns are their ostensible object, but I know they covet beer. Even a bun, however, will be taken in good part, and it takes a vast number of buns to offend an elephant. Buns, indeed, are the civilized elephant's chief article of commerce, and between the elephants and the bears is much trade rivalry. Solomon is understood to be agitating for a pole, to place the establishment upon an equal footing with the opposition.

The last bun.

Bank Holiday is a terrible day for these elephants. No reasonable elephant can refuse a bun, or an apple, or a lead-pencil, or a boy's hat, when it is offered. It might hurt the donor's feelings; further, some day, in the winter, when nobody comes, he might want just such refreshment. But it is sad to think of the faithful elephant towards the end of the day, weighed down to the very earth with the offerings of an injudicious public, helplessly contemplating the last bun, with no inch of storage left. And sadder to know that, when the struggle is done, and that last bun deposited, with dolor and affliction, upon the varied accumulation which he envelops, that elephant will proceed indoors to face the officially-provided supper—a barn full of "cow's wittles" (Suffolkese) and a serried company of pails full of mash. What he does
Official supper.
Bilious face and boiled eye. with the supper in the circumstances is a matter of speculation, but none is ever left over for breakfast. More sadness, too, one might look for on the morning after a Bank Holiday, in the bilious and dissipated face, the boiled eye, of Jung Perchad, greatest of all the takers of the cake. But the bilious face, the boiled eye, is not there. No elephant has a liver. Anatomists may profess to have discovered a liver in a dead elephant, but that is only said to astonish the ignorant. Proof plain is there that no living elephant is so afflicted. Nobody with a liver may light-heartedly eat pencils and pocketcombs and purses and plum-cake as does an elephant. Suffa Culli has swallowed a purse with six guineas in it, gaining less discomfort by the transaction than the owner, who had to walk home. The lamented Jumbo once purloined and swallowed a box of blister ointment from the pocket of a veterinary surgeon. with perfect impunity; anybody who has lunched off blister ointment might well spend the few remaining minutes of his life in admiration for Jumbo's digestive works. So that the excesses of Bank Holiday never leave any seeds of subsequent discomfort with either Jung Perchad, Suffa Culli, Jingo, or Solomon. Staggering outside a mammoth load of everything, either may lean pantingly against a tree for a few minutes—you may see their favourite tree between the elephant and parrot houses, forced from the perpendicular and bare of bark—but to-morrow he will be equal to beginning again.

Outside a load of everything.

In the bad weather, when few visitors come, the elephants are kept indoors. This is as well, upon the whole. If they were all let loose, with very few people about the grounds, awkward things might happen. In the summer, and especially on Bank Holidays, there are quite as many offers of refreshment as can easily be attended to, and the elephantine belief that the entire outside world is intended to be eaten does not get free play. An unfortunate country visitor meeting several elephants at once after a long estrangement from buns, might have disconcerting adventures. His pockets would certainly be rifled and his umbrella eaten, at once; also his hat. I am not quite certain that they wouldn't assume that he had offered them most of his clothes. I had some very good friends among the elephants of Mr. John Cooper, the famous tamer. Notably Blind Billy, who had all the value of his lost sight in his solid common sense. But I was speaking of clothes. Mr. Cooper's Betsy once ate a whole suit exclusive of the boots, but inclusive of certain pockets full of money and tobacco. The reason Betsy refrained from eating the boots was the simple one that they weren't there, which is why I should expect little mercy for the clothes of our friend from the country. The elephants would have them, and when they had gently relieved him of everything loose, they would curl their trunks up overhead and wait for further contributions. That is just like an elephant. He can't understand when you have got to the end of your resources.

Iles is master of the elephants. Scott, whom Jumbo made famous, was his predecessor, and, long ago, Godfrey, the bearward, kept the elephants. Jung Perchad, Suffa Culli, Jingo, and Solomon all respect Iles, and trumpet when he tells them. Also, Suffa Culli will pick him up
Master of the Elephants. carefully with her trunk, and plant him on her neck; then—gentle soul! she will pass him up the whip. Have I, or have I not, detected on these occasions a certain twinkle of the eye, and a certain playful flourish of that whip? I believe I have. "Here, take it, my friend," Suffa Culli might be saying, "take it, and play with it as much as you like. It seems to please you, and it doesn't hurt me. But if I began on you with it———" and she chuckles quietly. But she will obey the crack of that whip, and presently kneel down as gently as you please for Iles to alight. Moreover, on request, she will raise her voice (and her trunk) and trumpet most tremendously. I fear that the repetition of this sort of thing has made Suffa Culli unwarrantably vain of her voice.

Suffa Culli chuckles.

Now, their winter shutting-in may preserve these elephants from colds, and may preserve private property from the elephants; but it deprives them of exercise. I must make a suggestion of some sort on behalf of these elephants when next I see Iles—some means of healthy recreation and "keeping in form"; something, in fact, in the way of a gymnasium. I do not go so far as to recommend the horizontal bar in Jung Perchad's case—it would come expensive in bars. But they all have tastes which would lead them to prefer a bar of some sort, even with nothing to drink on it.

Keep the pot a-boiling.

Even the swimming bath at the back, wherein is found much cool refreshment during summer, is largely out of the question in winter. Possible rheumatism and the chance of being frozen in makes that delectable pond useless till spring. An elephant has a great fondness for wallowing in water, although whether entirely from motives of cleanliness may be disputed, since on occasion he prefers a deposit of soft mud; a very proper and
The Bath.
A scraper. natural preference, I believe, for any creature in a state of imperfect civilization, as may be judged from the tastes of the human boy. Mud, argues the human boy, is soft, mild, and soothing to the touch; also it is warm and comforting, equally in its liquid or semi-liquid state, and when forming a solid extra-cutaneous deposit. Wherefore the human boy, following his proper instincts, mudlarks. Is it this predilection for mud which leads all these four elephants persistently to the foot-scrapers placed at the doors of the elephant-house for their accommodation? Look at them. They are obviously intended for the use of elephants, and for that of no lesser creature in this world. I have no doubt that at the absolute command of Iles these elephants would scrape their feet; for the elephant is a placable fellow, always anxious to please; but as it is they never do so, and all those many hundredweights of iron stand useless; for it never strikes a man entering the house to use an article of convenience so obviously intended for an elephant.

A perspective.

But in the winter, though one may not meet him outside, one may hold quite an improving conversation with the elephant in his house. He is always ready for conversation. He waits all day for it behind a row of great bars and curling trunks. I do not know whether any nervous, short-sighted strangers ever at a first lengthwise glance take this elephant-house for the abode of serpents, all loose and looking for victims, but it might be excusablee—especially if the house were made a great deal longer, and less well-lighted, and more elephants provided. But it is unlikely that this expense will be incurred for the purpose. Short-sighted people make enough mistakes about elephants already, in the manner of the American in blue spectacles who lately hailed Suffa Culli and her juvenile load under the impression that she was an omnibus carrying passengers to and from the Gardens; and in the manner of the historical gentleman of bad sight, who offered a biscuit to Jung Perchad's tail. By-thebye, was this gentleman an historical personage or a mere figment of a funny man's imagination? I have heard of him, often—had heard of him before I knew Jung Perchad—but I cannot get Iles to admit having seen him.

Through the gauge.
Those three inches.

The arch under the Outer Circle stands for ever a memorial of the stature of the late lamented Jumbo. Jumbo could just get through that arch, and then by aid only of a certain shrinking within himself—a sort of gigantic shrugging of the shoulders. If the Society had thoughtlessly repaved under that arch with thicker stone, Jumbo would have been kept out all night. Now, this arch and the constant talk of Jumbo is a lifelong grief and tribulation unto Jung Perchad. Nothing would please Jung Perchad so much as to get a sore back against the top of that arch. But he can't. He is exactly three inches too short. He might get the sore back, of course, by rubbing against the side, but Jung Perchad is an honourable elephant, and a sportsman—never condescending to a mean trick; besides which, nobody would accept it any sore as evidence of record height except one at the very top. Those three inches make a gloomy creature of Jung Perchad—when there are no buns, and he has leisure to brood. The despicable atom of measurement is being continually hurled at his wrinkled head, and even Iles shows him no mercy. "Oh, dear," says the young lady visitor, "what a great elephant!" And Jung Perchad feels the sinful pride rise within him. Then the young lady says, "Is he as big as Jumbo was?" and Jung Perchad's heart is ready to break, for well he knows Iles's too truthful reply. Three inches less. Oh, that three inches! Where is the glory of being the biggest elephant in the Gardens of the Zoological Society of London only to be for ever reminded of an insignificant inferiority to a perfect stranger, who is dead?—and serve him right, probably. Jung Perchad grinds his teeth—lucky he hasn't tusks no—matta—r—r, a time will come! And he broods, and resolves to eat every earthly thing he meets, till he finds something that makes him grow; and matures mechanical plans for getting his back nearer the crown of that arch, until the last inquirer after those three inches has left, the gates are shut, and night falls; and his legs grow unsteady beneath him, and give way; and poor Jung Perchad and all his sorrows sink into a grey, grunting heap of slumber.