The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb - Melanie Benjamin [159]
From The New York Times, December 27, 1884
A BRILLIANT CHRISTMAS TREE—HOW AN ELECTRICIAN
AMUSED HIS CHILDREN
A pretty as well as novel Christmas tree was shown to a few friends by Mr. E. H. Johnson, President of the Edison Company for Electric Lighting, last evening in his residence, No. 189 East Thirty-sixth-street. The tree was lighted by electricity, and children never beheld a brighter tree or one more highly colored than the children of Mr. Johnson when the current was turned and the tree began to revolve. Mr. Johnson has been experimenting with house lighting by electricity for some time past, and he determined that his children should have a novel Christmas tree.
[ NINETEEN ]
Finale, or—the Curtain Comes Down
AND NOW IT WAS JUST THE TWO OF US—GENERAL AND Mrs. Tom Thumb, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Stratton. The perfect couple, a love story in miniature, the sweethearts of a country torn apart by war but united in good wishes for our happiness: we were never supposed to end up like this. Diminished, unnerved, hiding in the house I had been so determined to leave all those years ago.
Quite bluntly, Charles was never the same after the fire. Shaken to the core by his inability to save himself, humiliated by the manner in which he was saved, he refused to ever again appear in front of an audience.
“Charles, you’re being ridiculous,” I told him, time and again. “Can’t you just be grateful that we survived?”
“No.” He shook his head, his breathing even more labored these days, his body not merely large but puffy, his skin clammy to the touch. “I can’t forget the fireman hauling me down the ladder like that. I couldn’t do a thing to help myself, Vinnie! You don’t understand. You don’t know what that’s like!”
I pressed my lips together and shook my head. I did know what that was like—but now our roles were reversed. My husband was not inclined to look into my eyes for understanding or recognition. He was not inclined to look into anyone’s eyes, lest they see him for what he believed he was—a coward.
He was only forty-five, but until that night, he had never faced any real physical danger. The worst was probably the time when he was a child and Queen Victoria’s dog had tried to bite him, a story he told over and over to anyone who would listen. And his pride had suffered; this was the man who had stomped around with a tiny pistol in the West, confident he could slay any number of Indians with it. He had laughed along with everyone else at the notion, but deep down, I knew that he thought he could. He may have been imitating people all his life, but what made Charles such a gifted mimic was his conviction; he believed in every single role he had ever played—including that of husband.
And now he thought he had failed in that as well; suddenly he could not meet my gaze or even enjoy being in the same room with me. I didn’t have the courage to tell him that he was wrong; he had never been given the chance to succeed in that role. For hadn’t I made sure of that, long ago?
So he holed himself up in Mama’s parlor, where he read over old newspaper clippings and hauled out tarnished medals and yellowing citations, reliving his past instead of facing the future. Charles had been a Mason for years, attending elaborately secret meetings (I knew they were secret because he always made a point of telling me they were); soon after we were married he had been made a Knight Templar in the Bridgeport order. And now I often found him looking over all his various hats and plumes and swords from that organization; it meant a great deal to him these days. I think he felt it bestowed the last measure of dignity he had left.
We both slept badly after the fire; we moved from my old upstairs room to one on the first floor, and could not go to sleep unless one or both of us checked to make sure the windows and doors were unlocked, and there was a bucket of water