“Sarah, my life is falling apart,” I said.
“You can’t go back to America, Juba,” Sarah said. She sat next to me at the table and put her head close to mine. “It’s too dangerous.”
“It’s not just the danger. I’ve learned to live with that,” I said. “You have to watch yourself, but you can live with it. Freddy—the man Miss Lilly is writing about—was chasing a dream. I’ve danced with him. We actually made up a dance story—Little Red Riding Hood—and we danced it together. But it seems that my whole life is coming apart.”
“It’s not your fault that Gilbert Pell has left,” Sarah said. “I think he always drank too much and ran around too much. It seemed that he could never sit still.”
“Maybe it was because his life had reached the same point as mine has,” I said.
“Juba, you have me,” Sarah said. “And we have each other.”
“But all my life I’ve dreamed of being a dancer. Not just a dancer, but a great dancer,” I said. “I wanted to do something with dancing that nobody else has ever done. But every time I think I’ve made it, every time I feel I’m just about ready to take off, to fly away from the crowd, I end up with nothing. When Freddy and I danced together—it was over seven years ago—the program was great and people were talking about how much the dancers had done. There were Irish kids dancing, and black dancers, and some I didn’t know what their backgrounds were, but they gave it everything they had. And after all the applause had stopped and people took their smiles and handshakes to their daily lives, I was nobody again.
“Freddy let his guard down because he needed to have a dream to hang on to. I came to England as Boz’s Juba. I loved meeting Mr. Dickens and talking to him. He made me feel like an artist, and what he said about me, and about my dancing, was more than I expected from such a great man, but it was exactly what I needed. He made me feel like I mattered, Sarah. He made me feel as if I really mattered.”
“Oh, you do, Juba.” Sarah put her arm around my waist. “You really do.”
I felt sorry for myself, and sorry for Sarah that she had to put up with me. We talked more about Gil and about Mr. Campbell, and even a little about Charles Dickens. Sarah said there were probably times when he felt bad about who he was or how his life was going. I didn’t think so. He had seen his “worst of times” and had moved on. He was where I wanted to be.
Sarah’s father had worked for a tailor in Dudley, some seventy-five miles north of London. Sarah said that the tailor, a Mr. Preece, had said he would always give her a job if she wanted it.
“My father had a room with him, and I think we could take that room now that my father is retired,” she said. “Would you like that?”
“I think he’d be surprised to see you coming to Dudley with a black fellow,” I said.
“We don’t get many surprises in Dudley—it might be good for him.”
I didn’t really know what to do. I thought of Stubby back in New York, and how his dream of becoming a top chef hadn’t worked out. Freddy Flamer stayed on my mind as I wondered how things would have been for him if we had hit it off better. I could have helped his dancing and maybe . . . maybe things would have worked out differently. As it was, I didn’t imagine there was much for me back in Five Points. Working for Peter Williams would lead nowhere. No matter how well I danced, it wouldn’t help. I was still black, still someone who could be sold in parts of the country I called home.
Dudley, in a way, would be a new beginning for me, and although I was terrified that we were making a mistake, Sarah’s enthusiasm and faith in me gave me courage. We arranged to be married in a small chapel in Marylebone, with a Reverend Cotter looking over his glasses at me and asking Sarah twice if she was sure about the wedding. She said she was. We had rounded up Mr. Campbell and a lady friend of his to witness the ceremony. I explained to him that I had assumed the name of Henry Juba to start my new life with Sarah, and that satisfied him.
Reverend Cotter ended the ceremony with “May you both be blessed with the strength of heaven, the light of the sun and the radiance of the moon, the splendor of fire, the speed of lightning, the swiftness of wind, the depth of the sea, the stability of earth, and the firmness of rock.”
As we left the chapel, Sarah held tight to my arm, smiling. I could see her eyes glistening with tears that matched my own. It was a new start for both of us, and I determined to make her life with me really fine. I had more faith in our love than anything I had found in my life.
It took us three days to conclude our business in London. Mr. Campbell went with me to turn in the ticket and managed to scream and turn red when the ticket seller tried to tell me there was a charge and they could only give me half of the money. I finally got it all, and Sarah and I took the train from London to Birmingham and then a coach to Dudley that very night.
Mr. Preece did have a vacant room and didn’t much care about who took it as long as we could pay for the first week’s lodging. The room was large enough for the two of us, and we had free use of the kitchen. Sarah was used to Dudley, a very small town with its center less than a mile square. The people spoke differently than they did in London, but I could understand most of them.
“What is it that you do, lad?” an old gentleman in Mr. Preece’s tailor shop asked me. His wife, almost a head taller than he, clung to his arm and gave me the sharpest look she could muster.
“I’m a dancer,” I said.
“A dancing master?” he replied. “You teach dancing? That’s not very likely, is it?”
I remembered Jack Bishop telling me that many towns in Ireland had dancing masters who taught the young people. I told him that I did indeed teach dancing, and he cleared his throat several times and sniffed. “Do you have anyone around who can hold a fiddle?” I asked.
He said he could certainly find someone over the next hour if I intended to stay in town. It was nearly two hours later when the man returned with his wife in tow, a man carrying a fiddle, two more women, a clergyman, and a man in uniform. They stood in front of the shop looking for me to provide a bit of entertainment.
“Play,” I said to the fiddler.
“Play what?”
“Do you know any jigs?”
He frowned, but he put his fiddle to his chin and began to play. I gave him four measures to warm up, and I began to dance.
It was the women who began to clap their hands in rhythm first, and then the man in uniform. The fiddler, a stocky sort with thick, curly hair, leaned into his playing. He was better than I thought he would be.
Within the week I put up a sign in the window of our rented room that read Dancing Master and had my first two pupils. They only had a few pence to spare, and it wasn’t worth my time to try to lighten the feet of the two girls who came on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but it gave me an air of being respectable. It meant more to Sarah than it did to me.
Sarah, dear, dear Sarah. I hadn’t imagined that she would ever mean so much to me. But she was my crutch; she had put her sturdy soul under my arm for the past two years, holding me up in my darkest moments with her cheerfulness. For the first time in the landscape of my memory, something came before dancing. It was Sarah.
When the small crowd in Dudley saw me dance for the first time, they were amazed. A shrewish woman, her face deeply lined with reminders of her age, came over to me after I had ended the dance and poked me. I still remember her amazement that I was real.
“You must be a devil!” she said, craning her neck toward me. “Real people with souls don’t move like that!”
For weeks, people would stop me on the street and ask me to dance. “Just a bit,” they would say, or “for a moment.” A small theater group, dedicated to putting on dramas, asked me if I would dance between the acts.
The people of Dudley were amazed at my dancing, but there was no theater that wanted to book me. As word got out, a few theaters contacted me and offered short engagements. Sarah said it was a start, but I knew better.
“They’re offering me up as a novelty,” I said. “Something to take the mind away for a few minutes. Nothing more. Charles Dickens said to me that what we did, what he did with his words and me with my dancing, had to transform people. For a long time I didn’t know what he meant. But when I think about it, what dancing is and what it needs to be doing, I can see it. I want people to look at me as they first did in Dudley and wonder if I am a man or a devil. I want them to think that a man’s body can’t move the way mine does, and if mine can move, if I can go across a floor the way I have so many times, then they must think again about everything that is possible. They must be some new person, if only for the minutes they are watching me.”
The village people in Dudley were surprised to see me dancing, to see a black man who could perform magic with his body, but they could not support me. Was that always the case with artists? If I ever saw Mr. Dickens again, and if that great man had time, I would ask him: Did you have moments of despair as you wrote A Christmas Carol? When you are alone in the night, the echoes of your readers’ praise still ringing in your ears, are you worried that they don’t really love you? Do your readers ever think of you as they do of me, that you are a creature who does not need to eat, to be safe with money in the bank and a never-ending supply of wood for your fire? Do they think you are otherworldly, some kind of gifted devil instead of a human being?
The folks in Dudley grew to like me, to nod when they saw me on the street or tip their hats, but without a theater, I was lost. I even thought of starting my own venture, some small place, like Almack’s back in Five Points. Sarah and I rented a hall on Sedgley Road for a weekend, but the seats, like the ones in London, were nearly empty.
London was the only place we knew where I would find steady work, and I made the trip there at the beginning of each week, coming home to Dudley when I could, bringing whatever earnings I had managed to scrape up. I found a job as a waiter’s assistant at Mivart’s Hotel. It was hard work, on my feet for twelve hours a day, but it brought in some money, and I was able to contribute at least something to our household. Sometimes I would be in London for weeks at a time, living close to the bone and longing for Sarah. In the quiet times, in the cheap lodgings I found, I would try not to ask myself if I had failed. I knew that I had touched some lives with my talents, and had given some people the idea that they could do something different with their own lives, and with their own bodies. I told myself that I had put dancing—no, not dancing, but the ambitions of dancing, the hope for the applause and the headlines—behind me. But then, one raw day, while cleaning up tables at Mivart’s, I ran into Mr. Campbell again.
“Juba!” Mr. Campbell’s voice caught me by surprise. “Sit down, my boy.”
Of course I couldn’t sit at his table in a fine restaurant, but he consented to come to the kitchen to see me. We talked. I told him of my circumstances, and he talked of what had happened when I had first arrived in London. He made it seem grander than I had imagined. He told me that Gilbert Pell had fallen on hard times and was no longer performing.
“He’ll come back when he’s ready,” Mr. Campbell said. “How are you doing?”
“I’m doing as good as any other bird strutting along the sidewalk,” I said. “It’s a hard business.”
“That it is. That it is. You know, there’s a fellow in Liverpool who is trying to enlarge his theater,” Mr. Campbell said. “For the last year or so, he’s been doing a few weeks of Shakespeare and putting on some performances of John Gay. It’s the Gay piece, The Beggar’s Opera, that pays his bills. He wants to have a spectacular month-long performance with minstrels, acrobats, and singers for the autumn season. Shall I write to him about you? It would pay reasonably well and might do us both some good. I had a nice business with the Pell brothers and with Christy. Anything American goes over reasonably well, you know.”
I tried not to be too excited, but I was. I wanted to sit right down and write Sarah and tell her all about it, but I knew I would be home before she received the letter. Mr. Campbell had asked me to come to his office the following Saturday morning, and I said I would.
Sarah was excited, as I knew she would be, and pressed my shirt so that I would make a good impression on Mr. Campbell.
“If you are you”—Sarah started off slowly as she held my vest up to the light—“if you are Boz’s Juba, then any moment can bring excitement. Just that little idea makes everything worthwhile. Don’t you think so?”
“It could be,” I said.
Yes, I was bubbling inside. It might be a chance to dance again, to move across a stage and know that hundreds of eyes would be watching my every move. Yes. Yes!
When I got to Mr. Campbell’s office on Saturday morning, there were three other performers there. One by one they presented themselves to Mr. Campbell and discussed jobs with him. Some brought flyers, and I was angry with myself for not bringing the flyer advertising me as Boz’s Juba. Mr. Campbell would certainly have remembered that billing, but it would have given me more confidence.
What I had done since I had last seen Mr. Campbell was to let my mind do its own dancing. I had built up the engagement at Liverpool to the same size and glory I had lived through at Sadler’s Wells. I imagined the crowd roaring their approval and Sarah waiting for me backstage with a pot of tea.
“I did speak to the proprietor in Liverpool, Stephen Powell, and he was quite excited about having you perform there,” Mr. Campbell said. “He asked if you had been dancing for the last two years and I told him yes, so you’ll have to back me up on that one, Juba. The deal is two weeks of nightly performances and, if things go well, an additional two weeks. He’ll check his books after that and decide what he wants to do in the future. But believe me, he is a smart operator, and in my mind, Liverpool is set to become the next London.”
“What kind of dancing is he looking for?” I asked. “Does he have a set program?”
“I think he’s looking for you to make a contribution there,” Campbell said. “Maybe you can negotiate a separate deal with him for the programming. And do you know any minstrels in the Liverpool area?”
“No, but if there are chances to perform, I’ll find them,” I said.
Two weeks was not the month I had hoped for, and the money being offered was far less than I had dreamed of, but it was dancing and it was money, and it was yet another chance to show the world what I could do.
“You shouldn’t go until the weekend,” Sarah said. “Your cough sounds awful!”
“I need to go to see the stage, and the theater,” I said. “I want to be ready when I meet the people in Liverpool.”
It was a day’s journey to Liverpool by a crowded coach. I took the cheapest seat I could get, on top of the coach, and knew it was a mistake as soon as we started. My whole body was shaking with the cold, and as Sarah had said, my cough was getting worse. I tried to pass the time thinking about possible programs. Gil Pell had not been very imaginative in his shows. He would have us sit in chairs, tell a few jokes, play the songs and sing, and then I would dance. It worked in a warm hall, and the dancing performances were always the highlights.
I thought about the performance at Almack’s, when we did Little Red Riding Hood. The audience had loved the performance, and as Margaret had said, knowing what to expect was a big help.
It was dark when the carriage reached Liverpool, and much colder than it had been in Dudley. The carriage had stopped at an inn, but I headed toward the waterfront, where I knew I would find cheaper lodgings. I found the dock area easily enough, by just asking everyone I saw on the street and following their directions.
I looked for a pub, someplace where men gathered to drink, and found one. Once inside, I asked a woman if she knew of somewhere I could find a bed for the night.
“Are you wanting to pay for one or are you looking to chat one up?” she asked, amused at her own joke.
I told her I would be willing to pay a reasonable price, and she directed me down the street to a wooden building that looked for all the world as if it might fall over at any moment. I knocked on the door and found myself talking to a rough-looking tattooed man in his trousers and no shirt.
There were no private rooms to be had, but there was a large room on the second floor with four cots, and one was empty.
“You’re in luck,” said the man, who I presumed was the owner. “Usually they’re all full by this time of night.”
I put my case under the cot as quickly as possible after taking out the crackers and sardines Sarah had packed for me. I ate them quietly on the bed and then stretched out. The rough blanket on the bed didn’t do much to warm me up, but I fell asleep soon enough.
In the morning I woke up with my head reeling.
Mr. Campbell had given me the address in Liverpool, and I checked it several times as I was putting my clothes on. I was slightly dizzy, I guess from exhaustion and the cold that I couldn’t seem to get rid of. The question in my mind was whether I would take my case from under the bed and carry it around with me. I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want the extra burden of the case, but I didn’t want to leave it behind for someone to take, either. On the ground floor there were men sitting and having tea. I was startled and stopped in the doorway. Suddenly I felt a hundred times better and crossed the floor to where one of the men sat.
“Stubby! It’s me, Juba! When did you get to England?”
“You talking at me, chap?”
“You’re Stubby Jackson, from Five Points, right?” I pulled over a chair and sat down.
“No, I’m not” came the quick answer. The man before me leaned back and squinted. “And I don’t know who you are, either.”
Now the face that had looked so clear a moment before looked less clear. It wasn’t Stubby; it was a white man, perhaps Italian, and much older than I imagined my friend must be by now.
I apologized and quickly retreated.
The theater, on a side street, was disappointing. The building was badly in need of paint, and the sign above the main entrance seemed sad, rather than the bright sign I would have liked to see. I knocked on the front door, remembered how early it was, and was about to leave when a voice called out, asking who was there.
“Juba!” I said. “Boz’s Juba!”
Some words from within that I couldn’t catch, and then the door opened.
“You must have been caught in the morning rain,” the man said. “You’re soaking wet. I gather you’re the dancer Campbell was crowing about. He said you presented a neat package. Come in.”
I stepped into the dimly lit room, just noticing that I was wet. I hadn’t got caught in the rain, but the exertion of carrying my case around had brought on a sweat even in the cold air.
Stephen Powell was nicely built and carried himself well. As we sat in chairs in the lobby, he told me of his plans. More or less, he confirmed what Mr. Campbell had already laid out for me.
“I want to open in February,” he said. “High-class material. King Lear to start, then perhaps Romeo and Juliet, and then Othello. All good plays. Dramatic stuff. In between the turnarounds, when one play ends and the next begins, I want to do minstrel and variety shows. But it has to be good stuff as well. If you’re half as talented as Campbell says, then you’re the man for the job. I can help you round up some minstrels here in Liverpool, and you can direct them any way you choose. You fit for the job?”
“I am,” I said.
“Good. Right now I’m getting the first production together. It’s a light two-act piece called Aggravating Sam. Then Lear and the rest.”
I was feeling faint and wanted to leave immediately.
“You contact me next Monday, and we’ll work out the details and all that. That’s five days from now,” Mr. Powell said. “Just bang on the door, and either I’ll be home or the wife will let you in to wait for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Going home was not possible right away. I felt so weak, I was nearly staggering when I left the theater. I went back to where I had secured a cot for the night and arranged for another night’s stay.
To spend a day on the carriage to Dudley and then another coming back seemed senseless. I would just stick it out for a few days and pull my resources together. I slept most of the day and woke in the middle of the night. My pillow was damp from sweat, and I knew I needed rest. But I had only enough money for two or three days. Five days would not be possible unless I found some money to at least fill my belly.
The docks. Nothing is drearier, little can be harder. I went down and begged for work.
“You don’t look like you can lift your head, fellow,” a dark, shoulder-heavy man said. “Let alone a crate.”
Still, he gave me a job. I was to work with a gang to unload coffee from the Philippines. The sacks were heavy, and the pace was killing.
As I walked down the narrow gangway from the ship to the dock, I thought of Stubby again. How could I have mistaken the man drinking tea for my friend? But as I carried the bags, I thought I saw him again. This time he was half in the shadows and half colored by the light from a streetlamp. I put the sack of coffee I was carrying on the cart and walked near the dark figure. Again, it wasn’t Stubby.
Panic. Breathing was getting harder in the cold, wet air of Liverpool. Someone was yelling at me to speed it up. To speed it up.
Was I falling? Was I home again? Did I make it through the night? Had I been paid?
I found myself stirring and started to reach for my pockets. Where was my money? I sat up for a moment; then the room began to spin and I fell back again.
“Hey, the black boy is coming around!” someone was saying.
I pushed myself to one elbow and looked around me. There were faces, all white, staring at me. Where was I?
“Where is this place?” I asked.
“Liverpool workhouse,” a woman answered. “We thought you’d be dead for sure by now. They were poking you yesterday to see if you were alive. I bet you’d be dead for sure by this morning, but look at you, still halfway living, aren’t you?”
The workhouse. Only the poorest wound up in these places. Those who were about to die or go to prison.
“I don’t belong here,” I announced.
“You don’t belong anyplace, but if you want, they’ll take you to the edge of Liverpool and dump you,” a woman said. “You’ve been here almost a week, coughing and sweating and talking out of your mind. One of the men thought you might have had Saint Vitus’ dance, the way your legs were jerking around. Anyway, you might as well stay here. You’ll get a crust of bread in the morning and a bowl of soup.”
I closed my eyes again. No, I didn’t belong here. I asked around to see what day it was, and it was past the time I was to see Mr. Powell. The moment had come and gone, and I lay on a pallet in the workhouse.
Visions. Visions that I did not chase, or stumble across the floor to touch or greet. Stubby came to mind; I hadn’t realized how much he was within me. Once I dreamed of Mr. Dickens, not like the last time I saw him, but the first, at Almack’s, with his soft face and long hair. Visions of Miss Lilly and of Peter Williams, grinning, his sly eyes peeking from that round, dark face.
But the vision I had most was of the one who would save me. It was a vision of Sarah. My Sarah.
I sat down and wrote a letter. I asked the woman who had spoken to me if she would post it for me. She said she would, and I gave her tuppence. I read it once again to make sure it was right.
My darling Sarah,
Things have not gone well here in Liverpool. I am ill, no, sick as I can be. When you get this letter you must not fret. Only come to Liverpool to rescue me. Please don’t take the cheapest seat. The ride is very hard and very long. There is to be a minstrel show here and Mr. Powell has asked me to perform in it. I think he will be annoyed that I did not show up when he requested, but when you come and nurse me back to health and he sees what I can do, he will be glad to have me on board. Sarah, all I need is a chance to show what is in my soul and in my body. Life will take care of me after that, and I will bring my art to the world after all. When this engagement is over, perhaps we should go to New York. You will be delighted to see the huge city, and New York will be delighted to see my precious Sarah.
Oh, yes, there is a family here in the workhouse. The man looks very bad, and the two children, a boy and a girl, are forlorn. I asked the boy if he could dance, and he said he knew a few steps. Sarah, I showed him how to do a slide using the rhythm of a jig. When he got it down, he smiled. It was a beautiful smile.
I cannot wait to see you again. You will be like an angel sent from God to revive me. In my heart I know we will be all right. I love you,
Your Juba