Now We're Onto Something!

What a day sports fans, what a day we have had! I spent way too much money to have professionals translate material generously provided by the Circus Museum in St. Petersburg. Most was in Russion (those beautiful cyrillic letters). And there was an article in German. When the company (USTranslations) asked for $150 I cringed, but hey I really wanted the name of the fat man in the pictures. So I hit the button on pay pal thinking, "It's just numbers on a screen..." Two days later, I had the translation. Trembling fingers hit the download key and the whole story spilled out in perfectly comprehensible English.  Oh my.

In this story the fat man is a suitor! A "rather rich" Englishman named Rogerom Barkom (not sure about those "oms"), who had just proposed to Julia. Oh my goodness. And for the first time - well, second if you count her dying words - anyway, we have words attributed to Julia, "Of course, I would not refuse you in your proposal, if you were to reduce yourself at least in half." While the fat man pondered his options another suitor stepped forward, "Make me the happiest man on Earth. I am good and need no reducing. I just do not have any money." Her reply was, "Ho. Oh, money, money! He who has it cannot be unattractive!" I'm not sure she put it quite that way, but the Russians seem to have caught the gist of a situation that clearly brought poor old Theodore Lent to high alert. He proposed to Julia and the couple were married after she finished her German tour.

Best of all, the image has a note at the bottom: "Permitted by the Censorship of Moscow March 10, 1865 . . .

AND Julia's "authoritative biographer." You remember Dr. Jan Bondeson, the one who said her husband married her for her money,  . . thought the photo showed Lent introducing Julia to the fat man. Would it be evil to chortle now?

(Source of Photo: Bondeson, J. A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities, p. 229).