The Elephant as an Advertisement

The first exhibitors of elephants gathering in sixpences and shillings were, for good reasons, chary of free peeps at the big beasts and the early menagerie managers stole their elephant exhibits across the country when most of the Reubens were slumbering, although the mountain of flesh was made the principal feature of the public parade.

James Raymond, an American showman and a man of most estimable character was one of the first to appreciate the elephant at its first value as an advertisement. He had experienced a rather unsuccessful venture at St. Petersburg with Carter, a famous wild beast performer of his day, and returned to New York in the autumn of 1842, resolved on recovering his losses by a bold, startling and expensive innovation. Already the owner of the famous elephants Columbus and Hannibal, he acquired Siam and Virginius and the mammoth quartet drew the band wagon in parade. And Raymond’s next season was the most prosperous in the country, the show being called “Herr Driesbach’s Menagerie,” with Jacob Driesbach in the lions’ den.

The “Big Four” of the elephant team were monster trickers and their weights were respectively: Virginius, 8,600 lbs.; Hannibal, 9,000 lbs.; Columbus, 9,300 lbs.; Siam, 9,500 lbs. Albert Thompson, at this writing living in Putnam County, New York State, is enthusiastic over these animals and he has seen all the large ones since both Oliver and Jumbo. Of Siam, the veteran keeper and trainer says:

“He was the finest built and most intelligent elephant I ever saw. Evidently, he was better bred, showing as much difference as exists between the thoroughbred and the dunghill.”

During Raymond’s continuance in the tent show business, both in exploiting circuses and menageries, he and his after-partner, Waring, believed in the drawing power of the elephant, whether attached to the band wagon or going it alone.

The desire to see the elephant, even after dark in a great city, has always been one supplied by purveyors of amusement and excitement. In 1852 and 1853, the late Lewis B. Lent, of New York circus fame, was partner and manager of P. T. Barnum’s American Museum and Menagerie, exhibiting, among other curiosities, General Tom Thumb and the elephants. This show drew, according to Mr. Lent’s veracious account, with “ten elephant power.” As Lewis B. Lent began his circus career in 1834 and was himself a proprietor at the time of the great financial success of James Raymond‘s elephant band team, he was following in the footsteps of an illustrious predecessor. From my earliest acquaintance with Mr. Lent, he regaled me with many details of the triumphs of the ten elephant show and frequently reiterated his faith in the enticement of the elephant as an advertisement. Having suffered reverse of fortune, he was without capital to carry out his pet scheme and it was not until he engaged with Adam Forepaugh for the season of 1879 that he found an employer with the required herd of elephants.

Lewis B. Lent was a well-read man, a practical advertiser and one particularly capable of judging the value of an attraction on its merits as an advertisement. In the preparation of advertisements, press notices, couriers and small bills, he was adept and no manager or agent excelled him in the design of small newspaper cuts. Lent spared neither expense nor pains in the literary and artistic features of these announcements where he had the election and his taste and judgment are reflected to this day in the small bills by reproduction of the familiar cuts, representing such historical subjects as “James Robinson somersaulting on horseback,” “James Melville performing his carrying act,” “Carlotta de Berg leaping through the big balloon,” “Robert Stickney leading the leaps,” and others that would illustrate an era.

At the time that Lewis B. Lent and the writer “joined out” with Adam Forepaugh’s Great Show, the official letterhead and envelope boasted that it was the “Largest Zoological and Arenic Aggregation in the World.” It was a sizable show and, as its owner proudly remarked on repeated but justifiable occasions, “belongs to one man.”

Forepaugh returned from a wintering in California [to his winter quarters] in the exposition buildings at Louisville. Hon. Joel E. Warner, ex-mayor of Lansing, Mich., was secured as general agent; W. W. Durand, director of publications; Lewis B. Lent, advance manager and railroad contractor and router; and “a fellow about my size” was to do the literary with the local press. (43)

Long before going to Louisville, I was commanded to appear in New York and hold converse with the veteran Lent and exchange views with him as to the best method of building a boom, with twelve elephants to help you. I write twelve elephants with some degree of uncertainty. The street bill of the day, a very poor affair printed at St. Louis, read “12” in numerals and in repeated print. Somehow I have faint recollection that the governor remarked with a chuckle, as he displayed a proof of the wood cut:

“Adam, the first man, is only shy two, and ten for twelve is as much as the public ought to expect from any showman.”

Advance manager Lent enlarged on his theme, if it is practical to enlarge on “twelve elephants;” and, in his enthusiasm, I became quite as ardent. I was no tyro in amusement advertising and [I was] a long time admirer of the abilities and qualities of my versatile, old friend. Of course Mr. Lent revived the marvelous ten elephant seasons of 1852 and 1853 and we were both quite agreed that the “aggregation” had a brilliant prospect before it. Four elephants had drawn a band wagon in the early forties, also amazing audiences. Ten elephants had pulled everything alive to the tents of Phineas T. Barnum and Lewis B. Lent in the young fifties. And was it too much to expect that twelve elephants, “count them,” should fill the bill and the treasury? Besides, Adam Forepaugh had consented that the first “gun” of the season should be a splurge - a full-page advertisement in the New York Clipper and the “Showman’s Bible” was a bed blanket sheet in those days.... Besides, again, Mr. Lent had prepared a 3-sheet and a large poster depicting, after the same design, one dozen elephants in line. (44)

As before remarked, Adam Forepaugh had a show of considerable size. And it might also be added that when it appeared in the streets it had a brass band at each end of it. Aside from the elephants, the parade had no distinguishing features. The horses were of course good or they would not have belonged to that sturdy judge of horse flesh. The menagerie was complete, including a giraffe, and the cages were ornately carved and gilded. The ring performance was fair, heralding Robert Stickney (Senior), Wooda Cook, Annie Carroll, Jeanette Burdeau, Millie Turnour, Pauline Lee and Lottie Miranda. “Bill” Monroe was equestrian director and - well, never mind, “Bill” was “Bill” and quite in keeping with the polish to be found at headquarters at that period.

Any alert advertiser would have jumped to the conclusion that the elephants were the thing to “bear down on hard” but somehow Durand either did not cotton to the idea or received a tip on the side from the old man about expenses. Be that as it may, arriving in Louisville, I found Mr. Lent very much perturbed. The sixteen-page courier had not materialized and there was little prospect of it ever seeing pen, pencil or print. Still, Lewis B. Lent, the large, had confidence in the drawing power of a dozen elephants. If there was ever a cold, miserable spring, A.D. 1879 was one and it will live as such in my memory. I recall a season of frigidity and heat connected with the opening in Louisville. I had not been on duty as press agent for five minutes when “danger” and the “literary bureau” collided. The proprietor had his peculiar methods of doing business but transactions in my province were somewhat different. I had never before been in the employ of a manager who failed to recognize the correspondence of the amusement journals or questioned my authority as to the “passing” of a local member of the press.

Adam Forepaugh was a very large man and his language was, well, say terse. He sat on me vocally, verbally and voluminously; but, if I say it myself, he, to the astonishment of nephew John and Bill Monroe, did not scare me a little bit. And I spoke my piece fearlessly and with excellent effect. The showman looked at my flaming face for a moment and took in my rapid remarks with astonishment as I informed him that I would not permit him or any attaché to dispute my authority in my office ... and if he did not like my style I would not be beholden to him for a return ticket to the land where nutmegs grow on pine trees.

It is diverging to say - while twelve elephants wait - that “Danger” saw the point and appreciated the moral deduced: that it was folly to spend large sums of money on advertising and then lose a great share of the effect on account of the finishing touches of courtesy at the door.

It [was] unsatisfactory as [well as] an unprofitable sequel that the boom of twelve elephants blasted at birth. That, unfortunately, was one of the seasons in which the manager did not “lay up a cent” and there were not many [others that did]. Perhaps the miscarriage of so flattering a scheme needs no recalling, save to prove the old adage of “the best laid plans of men and mice” and to demonstrate that in inciting public interest in an enterprise, on centering attention to an alluring attraction, the conditions as well as the proposition must be favorable.

A few years afterwards, Adam Forepaugh, not at all mindful of the failure of a dozen elephants to draw, bought every elephant in sight in the home and foreign market and put “a-quarter-of-a-hundred on the street” as well as in the bills. P. T. Barnum & Company had fully as many and, if I recall correctly, Forepaugh at one time owned over thirty, renting a number to other showmen. I also remember Adam Forepaugh’s coming into his office in Philadelphia one evening and asking in earnest inquiry:

“Say, look here, how many elephants do I own, anyhow?”

He had been up at the winter quarters and had missed a trunk in the herd.

I might come down to modern date and tell of the elephant as an advertisement in a political procession as well as in a circus parade but my lamented friend, William H. Harris of the Nickle Plate Shows, was familiar with the subject. Setting aside the elephant as a trade mark of the G.O.P., I expect at no distant date to return to so engaging a subject as the elephant as an advertisement.

Footnotes

43. Forepaugh’s season opened in the Exposition Building in Louisville for a stand of April 2-5. The circus followed with a tour of the mid-western and New England states.
44. Forepaugh’s one-page Clipper spread appeared in the April 5, 1879, edition. The elephant puffery read in part: “Ponderous Asiatic Monarchs! One round dozen - at a cost of $135,000. More of these Monster Forest Mastodons than are owned by any one man on the face of the earth. Dispute it if you dare!”


Top

Copyright © 2005
William L. Slout and Circus Historical Society, Inc.