"Since June 1st, 1832, we have ceased to be under any arrangement with Captain Coffin," Chang and Eng wrote at a later date to their discoverer, Robert Hunter, in London. "We had then attained the age of 21 and considered we had fulfilled to the letter and spirit all the engagements entered into between Captain C. and ourselves at Siam."
It is clear that Chang and Eng had no second thoughts about quitting the employ of Captain Coffin and going on to become "their own men."
According to the unpublished biography prepared by their friend Judge Jesse Graves—who had discussed every aspect of their lives with them—they felt that Coffin had been swindling them. Wrote Judge Graves:
Chang and Eng had for a long time been very greatly dissatisfied with the conduct of Captain Coffin who as they alleged received very large sums as the proceeds of the exhibitions and always refused to pay over anything to them saying he was to pay all over to their mother. They had agreed to remain with him until they became twenty-one, and that same strict and rigid compliance with all their promises and engagements which characterized them all through life induced them to remain with the man who they regarded as unfaithful, until their full term should be completed lest they should prove as faithless as he had been. But looking to the time when they would be released and free again they had been as industrious as possible prosecuting their studies until now they found themselves able to read and write very creditably and to understand so much of arithmetic as to enable them to keep their own accounts and to make their own calculations, and as they thought abundantly able to take care of themselves. They therefore left the employment of the captain as they styled him and sought to enforce their own claim and their mother's against him; but they never [were] able to effect any recovery. They always felt that he had acted in very bad faith.
In the years that followed, all biographers of Chang and Eng, in articles, pamphlets, books, flatly stated that the twins broke with Captain Coffin because he had defrauded them, robbing them of portions of their box-office receipts.
However, except for the fact that Captain Coffin owed the twins' mother a second payment of $500 for their services, which he never delivered to her, and except for the fact that Mrs. Coffin confiscated some of the twins' personal effects after they left the concern, there exists not a shred of evidence that Coffin swindled or defrauded them in any way.
Captain Coffin may have exploited the twins badly, he may have misused them and lied to them, but there remains no proof that he was a thief who appropriated money that rightfully belonged to them. Actually, Captain Coffin was far from the United States during Chang and Eng's tour undertaken for him in 1831 and 1832. Neither his wife Susan nor Coffin's friend Captain Davis, who spoke for her, directly handled the money the twins had earned. All income from the twins' exhibits was collected by their friends and managers—first James Hale, then Charles Harris, both of whom were trustworthy, and both of whom deducted and paid out the twins' salaries and expenses at the source, before sending the profits on to Mrs. Coffin.
Chang and Eng had not ended their relationship with Captain Coffin because they had been swindled. They ended it for numerous other reasons. They ended it because, from the time of their tour in England with Coffin and the time of their tour in the United States under Mrs. Coffin, they felt the Coffins were parsimonious regarding traveling expenses and allowances. They ended it because they felt that they had been and were being ill-rewarded—being paid only $10 a month abroad until March of 1831 and $5o a month when they returned to the United States from England—while their employers were profiting out of proportion from their earnings. They ended it because they felt that the Coffins treated them as second-class beings, and because they believed that they had been unfeelingly and ruthlessly overworked. They ended it because they resented being in bondage, ordered about, controlled and driven by fellow humans. They ended it because they believed that they had a legal right to do so, that their verbal contract expired on their twenty-first birthday. They ended it because they wanted to be independent and to reap the profits from their exhibits themselves, while it was still possible.
For these reasons, on June 1, 1832, in Buffalo, New York, they cut their ties with the past and set out as self-employed performers.
One of their first acts on their own was to retain the services of Charles Harris as their manager. They were aware that he knew his job, and they liked and respected him as a person. A month later, Harris himself confirmed this in a letter to Captain Davis:
"You ask in your letter to be informed `who is to attend with C-Eng in their movements.' I have to acquaint you in reply that I continue with them for the present, how long I may remain in their company is uncertain; should anything occur to render it expedient or necessary for me to discontinue travelling with them I have no doubt that they would write to Mr. Hale & ask him to manage their business for them."
At no time did Harris find it "expedient or necessary" to leave them. He stayed with them as their faithful manager throughout the following eight years of their American and foreign tours.
The twins' next act was to return the carriage, wagon, and horses to Mrs. Coffin and cast about for replacements. After Captain Davis instructed Harris to sell the vehicles and equipment, Harris replied to Davis, "I of course looked about what I could do with the Horse, Waggon & other things belonging to Mrs. Coffin. After enquiring I had sufficient cause to come to the conclusion that the offer of $io3 made by Chang-Eng was an eligible one, & I therefore closed with them & have got the money." With that, Harris mailed the $103 to Mrs. Coffin, and now the twins were in possession of their own horse and carriage and baggage wagon.
The twins' final act of business, before returning to the exhibition circuit, was to dismiss their handyman Tom Dwyer. He was dropped solely as a matter of economy. Harris informed Captain Davis of the move, stating, "Chang-Eng did not like to keep Tom any longer under the same arrangement as Mrs. Coffin made with him; for his board alone cost $1 a day in addition to his wages & they thought that they might get as well attended for $25 which was the monthly sum paid to the boy who traveled with them last summer & which sum of $25 p month included every expence except travelling & which was considered too dear then by them."
At last they were ready, and now that their earnings would be entirely their own, they were prepared to work even harder. Finishing with Buffalo on June 6, 1832, they toured almost every village and city in New York State, then spent the rest of the year covering New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio.
Because Chang and Eng were in business for themselves, Charles Harris had begun to keep two daily record books for them. One was an account book of their earnings each month. The other, "An Account of Monies expended by Chang Eng," was a day-by-day listing of money they spent and what they spent it on.
To celebrate their new freedom on June 1, 1832, Chang and Eng had bought "500 Cegars" for "$q,”
“A Horse named 'Bob' " for "$72.50,”
“A Pocket book" for "$1" and "Candles" for "14g." Meticulously, thereafter, Harris had noted the twins' expenses: "Apples" for "65¢,”
“Washing" for "$2.25,”
“Expences for boat hire at the [Niagara] Falls" for "$4.31 &1/4,”
“Advertising in Niagara County Courier" for "$1”
“Opodeldoc" (a liniment for horses) for "25¢,”
“Two suits of Thin Clothes" for "$13.50,”
“Mending Jackets" for "25¢,”
“A Trunk" (they bought numerous trunks for their traveling effects through the years) for "$10," and "Lemon Syrup" for "50&1/4 cents ."
One interesting notation for the last day of June was "Mr. Doty's Bill—Seneca Falls" for "$12.75." Chang and Eng later knew a Dr. Edmund H. Doty as the result of their close friendship with three brothers, William, Bethuel, and Frederick Bunker, wine and tea merchants whose firm was Bunker & Company at 13 Maiden Lane in New York City. Because of this friendship, Chang and Eng allowed Bunker and Company to do much of their business and banking for them. One of the Bunkers had a daughter named Catherine, with whom Chang had fallen in love on the twins' first visit to New York City.. When Chang drew up his earliest will, he named Catherine Bunker as his major heir. Catherine Bunker eventually married Dr. Edmund H. Doty. This apparently did not end Chang's affection for Catherine, which now included friendship with her husband. Doty was regarded as something of an entrepreneur, and in 1849 he signed the twins for a tour. It is possible that the "Mr. Doty" in Seneca Falls and Dr. Edmund H. Doty were one and the same.
For the remainder of 1832, the expense ledger continued to be a record of the costs of their tour as well as a kind of Rorschach test of their interests, habits, personalities. The expense book revealed that they bought "2 pairs of Suspenders,”
“Horse feed,”
“A pair of lucky Pistols,”
“Curry Comb & brush,”
“2 Black Silk Cravats,”
“A Rifle,”
“300 Havana Cigars," and "7 lbs of Spermaceti Candles" (needed for lighting hotel rooms and to go to the stables).
The expense book also revealed costs for altering shirts, buying an additional twenty-three pounds of candles, mending the twins' shoes and boots, buying two pairs of gloves, and' finally hiring a replacement for Tom Dwyer, which was entered as "Thomas Crocker (including board & washing) $30."
In September, Chang and Eng were spending money on two mustard plasters for Chang, repairs for their wagon, cravat stiffeners, oil for harnesses, advertising in an Ithaca newspaper, toll charges, toothbrushes, quills. There were also entries for "Cutting hair of C.E." (while they still retained their Chinese queues, their hair in front was kept short) and "Catching the horse Bob," which cost "18& 3/4 cents."
With the coming of October there came also the costs of four custom-made flannel vests, a new inkstand, "Seidlitz Powders" for "371/20,”
“2 suits of Claret Colored Clothes," one new buffalo robe, 12.23," a bearskin (exchanged three days later for a second buffalo robe), "$3," and then there was an unusual bill paid for "Expences at Kenyon College $1.30." Apparently the experience at the Ohio campus was enjoyable, for to their expenses the twins added, "Book presented to Kenyon College (Moore's life of By-ron) $4."
Although Chang and Eng were free and on their own the last six months of the year, they were not free of Captain Abel Coffin and Mrs. Coffin, or her surrogate, Captain Davis. Acrimonious exchanges over the falling apart of their relationship continued in their correspondence during June and July. Harris had had to wind up the financial accounts of the defunct concern. Chang and Eng, incited by Mrs. Coffin's efforts to woo them back, brought up past grievances and vented their anger over difficulties in recovering their personal effects.
Chang and Eng, as well as Harris, looked forward to seeing Captain Coffin in person as soon as possible after he returned to Boston from Java. While Harris merely wanted to have Coffin audit his bookkeeping, and so be done with him, Chang and Eng wanted to meet their former employer so that they could get all the festering grievances off their chests. For his part, Captain Coffin, unaware while at sea that the twins had broken with him, would certainly want to see them upon learning of their defection, everyone agreed. Coffin would want to meet with them, if only to make an effort to coax them back into the fold.
On July 27, writing from Madison Village, New York, Harris advised Captain Davis that "Chang-Eng fully expect . . . that Captn. Coffin is come home & have asked me to write to you again to let you know our intended movements." Harris included part of their itinerary for the next month, and reiterated, "I make no doubt that Captn. C is now returned & that we shall very soon see him."
During this time, beginning two weeks after they had quit the Coffins, Chang and Eng had carried on a furious exchange with Captain Davis. In their opening salvo on June 15, 1832, from Rochester, New York—having come of age—they had referred to themselves for the first time as two people:
"In the letter you say that as regards Capt. and Mrs. Coffin's treatment of us, you still continue of the same opinion—as to this we can only refer you to what we asked Mr. Harris to insert in his last letter to you respecting the cruel & severe manner in which we were treated when attacked by sickness, in being forced into a close hot & crowded room when we were more fit to be in bed; we shall leave you to judge whether such treatment as this was kind or not!!!"
At one point, Captain Davis had written the twins, "For a certainty Captn Coffin will lose a large sum of money by the concern as it stands at present."
This had been a red flag to the twins. In a fury, weaving in and out of singular and plural reference to themselves, they answered:
To this our reply will be a question as to whether you are aware of how many thousand dollars have been received at the door of our exhibition room since we were first purchased of our Mother (as some folks have called it).
If you know the amount recd. we would beg to let you know that but a very small part of it has been spent on our account. Are you more over aware that $500 (Five Hundred Dollars) is the amount paid to our Mother (from first to last?) Perhaps you are not aware that from my first landing in Boston to my arrival in New York from England, there was only $1 p month allowed to me out of this I bought all the trifling little articles which I wanted from time to time.
Since my arrival in New York (in March 1831) I have had $50 per month. Put all these together & if you will compare it with the sums which we have been the means of collecting together you will find our share to be very, very paltry indeed. We would state one fact to you to shew you how considerately we have been treated. Capt. C. had a good offer made to him for our appearance on the stage of one of the London Theatre's & on accepting it he told us that in consideration of our standing in our room from 10 to 5 (7 hours) & having after this to go to the Theatre he promised us £12 sterling p. week. The engagement lasted 18 nights, which would have come to 36 pounds sterling. How much do you think we received? Only One Third—that is 12 pounds sterling—well, with that we bought a little gold watch & we often & often had the annoyance to hear Mrs. Coffin say to many persons "See what a nice watch my husband has given to Chang-Eng?" Whereas it was bought with money hard earned by wearying & continuous attendances at the Theatre night after night to fill her & her husband's pockets with money.
Later on the same day that they wrote the preceding letter, Chang and Eng were still brooding over Captain Davis' charge that Captain Coffin and the concern had lost money exhibiting them. Because they had more to say on the subject, the twins dictated a second letter three pages in length.
The twins told Davis that if the concern had lost money on them, it was because it had mismanaged its affairs. In their opinion, they said, the trip to the British Isles could have been done "at less than one third of the expence." First of all, Chang and Eng pointed out, Captain Coffin had had too great an entourage in London, and had spent too much on the "persons & animals," and in the second place Mrs. Coffin had been brought along to save money and had instead proved a deadweight. Detailing a part of the expenses abroad, the twins wrote:
We shall begin with persons, Captn & Mrs. Coffin, Mr. Hale & myself—Teiu (the boy who accompanied me from Siam) one cook, one man servant, one chambermaid (Ann), one coach-man, a boy to clean the horses, 4 or 5 men to carry boards, one doorkeeper, one cheque taker, a man employed every day to clean our room & in addition to all these, two living animals in the shape of horses. In addition to this long list—we can tell you (which most likely you were not aware of before) that when any of our clothes wanted repairing, a girl was hired to come into the house and do it at more or less expence. Altho' we heard with our own ears the speech made often & often "That Mrs. Coffins going to England would cause a great saving of money by her being able to do all the repairs to the clothes of those composing our party." The savings under this head must have been very very great!!!! I confess I may perhaps be blamed for stating these facts but I never should have entered into such particulars if it was not that the first stone has been thrown at me!!!!
To this, Chang and Eng added a lesson in arithmetic:
If a man receives Sioo in one day & finds his expences in the evening to be Sioi—we know very well that he is a loser by the day's work, still he may go on for a short time & fancy that he is making money & may remain of the opinion until he adds up both sides of his book, then he finds his mistake. We have stated all these "facts" to you—because we feel certain that this letter will let you into the knowledge of many things of which you were before ignorant, and of this we feel pretty sure because otherwise we think you would not have written in the harsh manner in which you have done.
Almost three weeks later, on the night of July 4, in Auburn,
New York, the twins had gone to bed but had been too agitated to sleep. Fatigued as they were—they had performed before 650 persons that day—they had awakened Harris (who was sleeping in the same room) after midnight and asked him to write a letter for them to Captain Davis. The cause for their agitation was an unexpected visit that evening from Captain Samuel Sherburne, who had been master of the ship Robert Edwards which had taken them to England in 1829. During the evening, the twins had learned for the first time that Captain Coffin had bought them steerage tickets to England and had listed them as common servants.
All of this ill-treatment Chang and Eng recounted to Davis. Once again they aired their resentment at the claim that the concern had lost money exhibiting them, and once more they derided Mrs. Coffin's claim that she and her husband had always been concerned with the twins' comfort:
I stated in a former letter that all this attention to my comfort was entirely to be placed to the account of my being the means of making money & of course I must be well fed, well clothed, & always live in the best houses—as in such I have always had the best success in business; but my situation now reminds me of an Old Merchant Ship lying in the mud & waiting to be sold for firewood or any other purpose. Whilst this ship was young (If I may so speak of a ship) & strong & seaworthy enough to bring home rich freights to its owners, it was well kept, well painted, well furnished, with masts, rigging, or sails when requisite & in fact kept in high condition with a good crew & an able commander: — But the lapse of time having at length rendered her crazy, & weatherbeaten & therefore unsafe any longer to be trusted with valuable cargoes, she is condemned & left to crumble to dust, unless there is old iron enough in her timbers to make it worthwhile to break her up. It is no use to take any more trouble about her—as all source of income from her has ceased & all that now remains is to sell her for whatever "she will fetch." The poor old ship reminds me of my situation—but, thank God, all parts of the comparison are not presented in my situation; it is true I am no longer a source of revenue to my "owners"—they can no longer reckon on the income arising from my exertions; & therefore notwithstanding all I have been the means of doing is worse than forgotten, yet in one particular I am more fortunate than the poor old unserviceable ship, for altho' "I have been bought" (as has been said to many of me) yet "I cannot be sold"; I have, moreover, to be thankful for continued good health & the prospect of still being able to do something for myself, notwithstanding the cold ingratitude of those for whose benefit I have so long & so laboriously toiled & endured hardships.
By July, Chang and Eng were eager to wipe the slate clean of the Coffins. There had remained only two pieces of unfinished business with the old concern. One was to hold the long-delayed meeting with Captain Coffin. The other was to recover their personal belongings, which were still in the hands of Mrs. Coffin. In early July, on behalf of the twins, Harris wrote Davis from Auburn:
"Chang-Eng request me to say that they will be much obliged to Mrs. Coffin if she will pack up all their things & have them enclosed in a strong deal box & addressed to them to the care of Elliott & Palmer 20 William St., New York. They are anxious to have this done as soon as possible as there are some of their things which they are in want of & when they go down to New York City they can select those things which they are in want of."
Chang and Eng had then waited a few weeks, hoping to hear that their personal belongings had been packed by Mrs. Coffin and sent on to New York. Instead, they received word that their effects had not been shipped. "The reason Mrs. Coffin has not sent the things as requested," Davis wrote them, "is the expectation of her husband home & then she did not know but Chang-Eng would come East [to New England] & would not want the things at New York."
Infuriated, the twins had Harris reply to Davis at once:
"As to Captn. Coffin's return that need not have anything to do with it. For in the first place even now I consider the time of his return quite uncertain & in the next place the season is so far advanced, that I shall not have time to go to the East. Eight months ago the subject of Captn. Coffin's return was mentioned in the same manner it is now, and if I had sent for my things in February, I supposed the same answer would have been sent & that I should have been kept waiting all this time for 'Capt. Coffin's return.' This waiting for & expecting 'Captain Coffin's return' is becoming an old story to us, as it is now a story of eight months standing—therefore we hope to hear no more of it & to save all parties trouble we hope the things have been sent before now."
In this letter to Davis, the twins also struck out at him, attacked him for the tone of his earlier letters, which they felt had been both unreasonable and insulting. Nor were they assuaged by the more conciliatory tone in Davis' last letter. By now they had lost all patience with him:
. . . you have stood up as long as you could for your friend Captain Coffin & tried to defend his conduct as long as you could, but when you find yourself beaten you endeavour to retreat—but, as it requires a very clever tailor to sew a tear in a new coat—so that the mark of the sewing may not be afterwards seen—so it requires some person more capable than you seem to be to defend such conduct as that of Captn. & Mrs. Coffin to me; but we know that sometimes a coat may be so badly torn that the trouble of sewing it up is more than it is worth—as when it is done everyone can trace the seams. In fact we will confess you have done as well as you could under the circum-stances; but it is hard work to "wash coal"—so as to make it appear white. As to "Captain Coffin making his own arrangements on his return home" we are at a loss to suppose what this can mean as relates to us—but suppose his arrangements may be to return me to my mother at the end of 18 months from the day of my leaving Siam which was the 1st April 1829!!!!!! And taking me back to her himself!!!!! As to the first of these arrangements—returning me at the end of 18 months—I need hardly draw your attention to the state of the case—if I were to go home immediately it would be almost 48 months instead of 18 months from the time I left till the time of my return home, but if I remained quietly for 48 years in the same situation of servitude in which I have been up to a very late period, the promise of sending me home would not have been once thought of — And at the end of that time I make no doubt there would be found persons ready to say (as now) that "Captn. C would lose money by me." This assertion shows a degree of Impudence which I was unprepared to expect — But this is a strange world!!!!!! As to Captain Coffin's promise of giving my mother $500 more (& which promise I was witness to) I very much fear that as "Captn. C will be a loser by the concern as it now stands"!!!! so my mother has a slim chance of seeing 500 cents much less Dollars; but I hope that without this she will be able to get on pretty well. When a man breaks his word in one particular it is rather difficult to rely on him for the keeping of his word in other matters.
Chang and Eng then went on to say that their traveling with the Coffins in England had provided "a very good insight into their Characters." The more the twins came to know the Coffins, the more they disliked them. Especially did the twins dislike Su-san Coffin—because she discussed their "private affairs" with "everyone," because she constantly lied, because she "hated" any person who "liked" them. In fact, said the twins, "I fear I shall be driven to let my friends know the real state of the case between me & Captn & Mrs. Coffin. Indeed it will save me a good deal of trouble to have a short statement of my treatment by Captn & Mrs. Coffin printed, so as to satisfy the numerous enquiries made of me on the subject."
This letter proved to be the last letter that Chang and Eng wrote the Coffins through Captain Davis which has survived. In fact, it may have been the last letter to pass between the two warring camps. But for the twins, it was not the end of Captain Coffin in their lives.
Two months later, Harris received a hasty letter from James Hale, written from Boston: "Capt Coffin ... leaves Boston tonight for the purpose of visiting you and Chang Eng." To this, Hale appended a note to "My friends Chang Eng" which told them: "I am glad Chowtapow [the twins' name for Coffin] has come back to see you, and I hope all difficulties may be made strait."
Hale added that he had met with Captain Coffin, and Coffin had accused him of inciting the twins to quit and go off on their own so that Hale could once more manage them. Hale told the twins, "Whatever he asks you about the advice I have given you, I hope you will tell him true. I am not afraid he shall know the truth. I have not had much time to talk to him since he came home, and I hope he will greet you more cordially than he did me, since he would not shake hands with me when we met. I felt very sorry for this, for as you very well know, I was always pleased to call him my friend."
Chang and Eng girded themselves for the meeting. It had been almost two years since they had set eyes on Captain Coffin. Now, at last, he was on his way to see them.
It was in the first week of October in 1832 that Captain Coffin caught up with Chang and Eng in Bath, New York, and he met with them there at length.
Three letters written by three different persons relate what transpired at the meeting between the Siamese Twins and Captain Coffin and what finally happened between them.
The first report, from James Hale, elaborated upon his earlier meeting with Coffin in Boston, before he left to see the twins, and it gave some idea of what Coffin expected to discuss with the twins. Wrote Hale: "His whole tune then was to find out where
Chang Eng were, and to get my opinion as to what kind of bargain he could make with them to go to France—in fact he was so sure of his prey that he actually made me an offer if I would go to Europe with them. I told him I didn't believe he would succeed . . ."
Before departing to find the twins, Captain Coffin had said to Hale, "Well, Mr. Hale, I hope I shall make it all right with Chang Eng, and on my return I will let you know immediately, and hope then to meet you as a friend."
The second report on the meeting, from Chang and Eng themselves, was contained in a letter they wrote on May 5, 1834, to Coffin's former partner, Robert Hunter, in London:
"In Sept. 1832 when Captain C. followed us to the western part of the state of New York he told us that the arrangement with the Government was for seven years, and that 2 &1/2 years was mentioned to our mother in order to quiet her fears and prevent any obstacle from being in the way of our leaving home with him. However, this kind of double dealing was but badly calculated to induce us to remain with him any longer."
The third report on the meeting came from Captain Coffin, in a letter addressed to his wife: "I have at length found Chang Eng after a wild goose chase last night .I arrived here I have travelled night & day. . . . We have had much talk they seem to feel them-selfes quite free from me they seem glad to see me I shall settle as soon as possible & return home. . . . PS C & E are going to Ohio."
Chang and Eng were through with Captain Coffin, at last. But as it turned out, he was not quite through with them.
Hale's letter written on November 4 also related the aftermath:
From various sources I have been able to collect the following facts. They must be true for they all emanated from Coffin!!!!???
"That Coffin on finding you out, immediately went into your room, told Chang Eng that it was no use to undertake to show any airs, he was their master and would exercise his authority—he then overhauled all your trunks and not finding my letters believes they were smuggled away because my damn'd stuff wasn't proper for him to see—that he found Chang Eng indulg-ing in all sorts of dissipation—whoring, gaming and drinking—that he urged the impropriety of their having connexion with women, and that Chang Eng said they had as good right to a woman as he had—upon which Coffin gave Chang Eng 'the damndest thrashing they ever had in their lives'—and that before he left them, they acknowledged he 'was perfectly right in beating them, as it was for their own good'!! That he found Harris a damned little rascal, and upon his interfering he gave him a thrashing, kicked him down stairs and out of the house. That he ordered them on to Cincinnati and that altho' he had reason to believe Hale was a cursed scoundrel, and had put Chang Eng up to a great deal, yet, that Harris was a cursed sight worse."
Captain Coffin's tale of how he had gone to Bath, New York, and accused the twins of intercourse with prostitutes, of gambling, of drinking, provoked Hale to declare "my belief that he is as great a liar as his wife." As for the gossip that Coffin had beat up the twins, Hale, who knew the strength of Chang and Eng, wrote them that he had told those who repeated the story, "It cannot have been so, for he (Coffin) is yet alive."
While Chang and Eng were finally free of Captain Coffin, their friend Hale in Boston was not. On November 13, 1832, Hale received a stiff note from Coffin, who stated that he was going abroad again and "before I leave I wish you to relinquish your right of the copyright of a book relating to the Siamese Youths in my favor. . . . I allso request every thing you have in your hands belonging to the Siamese Youths previous to there becoming of Age as you are knowing to their being under my protection previous to that time."
Concerning Coffin's demands, Hale informed the twins, "As I have not nor do not intend to answer his note, I suppose he will wait a day or two and then see if can't get me entangled in a lawsuit. If he does, by the gods, I'll write such a 'History of the Siamese Youths' and their owner Capt Abel Coffin, as shall make him curse the day he ever heard of Siam."
Now fully enraged by Coffin, Hale wrote him a long letter saying that he was aware of the "base and calumnious lies" Coffin had been circulating about the twins and himself, and that he “would immediately publish to the world a full account of every transaction in which you had been engaged since our first acquaintance."
Hale was able to counterattack after he learned that the Coffins had had a silent partner in their management of Chang and Eng, a man named Captain Daniel C. Bacon who owned one-eighth of all the profits made on the twins. While Bacon had received his share of the cash profits, he did not know that some of the profits had been skimmed off by Mrs. Coffin to buy personal effects and household belongings. Hale informed Bacon of this, and Coffin was immediately forced to settle with Bacon by giving him $800 more.
Captain Coffin's only response to Hale's letter and his own involvement with Bacon was to hire a Boston lawyer to sue Hale for the copyright of the original pamphlet on the twins. Hale sought a lawyer of his own, and was advised that while Coffin's suit was weak, it could entangle Hale in the law and cause him all kinds of difficulties, including an audit of the records he had kept while he had managed the twins. Reluctantly, Hale gave up. As he reported to Chang and Eng, "I had better swallow a little wrong than to have to pay too dearly for insisting upon my right."
The loss of the old pamphlet was not serious for either Hale or the Siamese Twins. It was outdated, and could easily be supplanted by a new biography of Chang and Eng. In fact, Hale set out to write the new biography at once, and on May 17, 1833, he reported the news of it to the twins:
"I have obtained the copy right of a new pamphlet which bears this Title `An Account of the Siamese United Brothers, by themselves; United we Stand. Published for the exclusive benefit of the Twins, and sold by them only. Price 250 cents ... The new book will be entirely different from the other, and many things will be left out of mine. Your request that the public should know you `are no longer slaves' will of course be attended to ..."
On November 19, 1832, Captain Abel Coffin, master of a new vessel, the Monsoon, sailed out of Boston for Calcutta, India, and then Sumatra. In effect, he had also sailed completely out of the lives of Chang and Eng, as well as Hale and Harris.
In the late fall of 1837, while Chang and Eng were touring New York State, they were to hear of Captain Coffin for the last time. Weeks earlier the Nantucket Inquirer had carried a story about Coffin, which would be summarized in the seafaring records of the Nantucket Library as follows: "August 28, 1837: Captain Abel Coffin of Boston, died at the Island of St. Helena, aged 47:04. A descendant from Nantucket, he was Master of a vessel and died of a fever."
His heirs—his son Abel, his daughter Susan, and two more children, all raised close to God—would do much to redeem the family name in the Siamese Twins' eyes. Years later, Judge Graves wrote the postscript on Captain Coffin and Chang and Eng: "Long after his death however they [the twins] were very kindly treated by his son and daughter living in or near the City of Boston."
But with the advent of 1833, the Siamese Twins were still touring Ohio. Hale wrote them that he was coming out to see them, and to help Harris in any way he could. Hale added, "Capt Davison sails tomorrow for Java. He has given me a very interesting account of his first interview with your mother which I will bring with me."
The twins were forever eager for reports of their mother Nok, in Meklong. Hale, whenever he could, picked up news for them. On April 4, 1834, he wrote them:
I have seen Capt Davison, with whom Hunter came from Singapore. He says that Hunter had seen your mother, and that she was very anxious to see you even for a short time; but that when Hunter explained to her how well off you were, how well you were doing, and the difficulty [of] making a voyage to Siam, she was very well satisfied, and expressed great pleasure you were doing so well. She, your father [the twins' stepfather Sen], brother and sister were all well when Hunter left Siam, and were in want of nothing but to see you, which they hoped to do in a few years.
Capt Davison informs me that Hunter has been in great favor with the King, who has made him a great Chowkoon, with a heavy title, but I am afraid without much profit. He also says that Hunter's losses by the great flood, by the rascality of his partners, and other causes have been very great, and that he is now quite poor. I am glad to hear however [that there now] is a prospect [of his] friends in England getting him up a voyage . . . which I hope will be profitable.
The twins wrote to Robert Hunter on May 5, 1834, in London:
We are very much obliged by the information which you have communicated to us respecting our mother. . . . We fear that the great rising of the waters in Siam were disasterous to you as well as to many others, but we hope to hear after some time that you are doing well, and that you are "very rich" instead of being as you say you now are, "very poor," but we suppose you mean that you are "very poor" in comparison to what you once were. We are fully determined to go back to Siam but cannot at present fix any time.
We have enjoyed good health since we saw you and are now completely acclimatised to America. We have nearly completed the tour of the United States, being now in the 19th state of the 24 which compose the Union.
In the year or more before this letter to Robert Hunter, the twins and Harris had continued their tour of the nation without pause. During 1833, they spent four months in and out of Ohio. Then, for the first time, they invaded the South, where they had never been seen, and their profits soared. In September they were in Kentucky, where they earned a fair $413. But in October, when they toured Tennessee and Alabama, their income jumped for the month to $1,105. In November and December they were in Mississippi, where their income for the two months reached $2,433.
During those months, Harris' expense ledger continued to tell the story of the twins' travels and tastes. The ledger listed "Hire of an ox team to draw us out of mud 250,”
“Soaling Eng's Monroe shoes 60 cents,”
“Ferriage over Detroit River $1.50,”
“Purchase of 3 wild Ducks from Indian boys 500,”
“1000 Cigars from Mr. B $18" (these were bought wholesale, and sold retail along with the pamphlets at the exhibits), "A ring given to Caroline Scovill $1.50" (possibly a romantic gift, maybe only a friendly one), "Two suits of Clothes made at Canton $28,”
“Physic for Charley's (the Horse's) legs 100,”
“Violin $10," and "Cleaning Chang Eng's teeth $3."
The new year of 1834 found Chang and Eng in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They spent that entire year exhibiting up and down the East Coast. In December 1834, the expense ledger bore two entries that signaled a new adventure. On December i8 there was a listing reading "Passport for J. W. Hale to Havana $2," and another on December 19 reading "Hale's passage to Havana $34."
Two years earlier, James Hale had urged Chang and Eng to try their luck in Cuba, and after that to visit Europe. Again in November 1833, he had written them, "I presume by the direction you are now taking, that you intend visiting Mobile and N. Orleans and perhaps to take a sail over to Havana in the winter . . ." However, the twins had rejected his notion and decided to continue touring in the United States at least another year. Learning of this, Hale was disappointed and again tried to get them to go to Havana. On April 4, 1834, he wrote them from Boston:
"Your resolution to remain in this country another year somewhat surprises me, but of course I cannot so well judge of the probability of success, as you can yourselves. . . . However desirable it may be to you to remain a year longer in this country, I fear your success in business will not be so great as you ought to have, owing in a very great degree to the pressure on the people; for I assure you at the North people look devilish hard at their quarter dollars before they part with them."
For the most, Hale proved to be right. In September 1834, working in New York City, Maryland, and Virginia, the twins grossed only $526 for the entire month. Shortly after that, they determined to heed Hale's advice. They set their sights on Cuba, then made up their minds that it would be best if Hale joined their company and went ahead to Havana to book them and advertise them while Harris continued to handle their affairs during their last weeks in the United States.
And so, in December 1834, Hale came down from Boston to join the twins and Harris in Charleston, Virginia. After spending nine days with the twins, Hale set off for Cuba, while the twins went on to exhibit in Savannah, Georgia.
On January 14, 1835, the twins, accompanied by Harris, sailed for Cuba on the schooner Evaristo. Ten days later, the party arrived in Havana, where Hale was waiting to take them to a pension owned by a Mrs. West.
Hale had mounted an extensive advertising campaign for Chang and Eng in Havana. In advance of their arrival he had spent $12 for a sign announcing their opening and $15 on hand-bills in Spanish.
While there remains no record of how well Chang and Eng did in Havana during February, the income account Harris kept indicates the exhibit took in $914 in March and about $500 in April.
As for the twins' activities in Cuba, these were best mirrored in Harris' expense ledger.
Since the language of Cuba was Spanish, and the twins spoke only English and Siamese, some help was needed to answer spectators' questions at their exhibits. After a week in Havana, Harris noted in the ledger: "Paid to a sort of an Interpreter for 6 days $6." Two weeks later the "sort of an Interpreter" was disposed of, and a better and cheaper one hired for the remainder of the twins' stay: "Wm Gardner (interpreter) 2 weeks to the 14th Inst. $8.5o."
After four weeks at Mrs. West's pension, the ledger carried the entry: "Expence of moving to Calle de Dragones $2.50." This was a place with rooms owned by "our friend Don Martin de Ferrety." To cut costs, Chang and Eng had decided to forgo restaurants, buy their own food, and cook their meals in Don Martin de Ferrety's lodgings.
The twins were inveterate sightseers, and when they were not working in the exhibition hall they were out in the city like any other tourists. They constantly traveled from their rooms to various sights in a volante, a two-wheeled covered carriage drawn by a horse on which the driver sat, which was the popular taxi of Cuba.
On April 2, $50 was spent on "Hale's passage to New York," and then on April 9, Harris and Chang and Eng paid $150 to take the steamship Edward to Philadelphia.
In the next three months the twins were showing in the Peale's Museums in New York City and Albany, and then they toured Vermont. In early July, they traveled north by steamship to visit Lower Canada for the first time. Their tour of Lower Canada was a financial success. Their gross income for July 1835 was $1,041.
They exhibited two more months in the United States, and then they prepared for an important new trip, one they had never taken before but one that promised glamour and excitement.
Nearly five years before, Captain Coffin had wanted to take Chang and Eng to France, but the French government had re-fused them a visa out of fear that the sight of such "monsters" would be harmful to children and pregnant women. Two years later, after they had broken with the concern, Coffin had sought a reconciliation with the twins and again had wanted to take them to France. By that time, the French government's attitude toward the Siamese Twins had changed. Undoubtedly, their continuing popularity in the United States, where their public appearances had neither frightened youngsters nor caused pregnant women to give birth to deformed babies, had assuaged the fears of the French. The twins' staunch advocate in France, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, let it be known that Chang and Eng would be admitted to France any time they wished to visit.
James Hale had long held that they should make a continental tour. Now, at last, in October 1835, Chang and Eng capitulated. They would tour the Continent, or at least part of it, with an itinerary of bookings that would include touching on England and six months in France, Belgium, and Holland.
In mid-October, the twins, accompanied by Charles Harris, boarded the ship Resolution in New York harbor, once again said good-bye to the United States, and sailed for England.
Chang and Eng were at sea on the Resolution four to five weeks. They arrived at Dover, on the English Channel, November 22, 1835.
The small boat that brought them from the Resolution to the shore entered the harbor at low tide. When they reached the pier, Chang and Eng were forced to climb up a twenty-inch-wide iron ladder to get to land, a mean feat even for one man. But, as usual, they scurried up the ladder with natural agility, to the delight of onlookers.
A British newspaper carried this account of their arrival: "On Sunday Chang-Eng the Siamese Twins, who were exhibiting in London five or six years ago, landed at Dover from the ship Resolution, from New York, on their way to Paris. They went to the Ship hotel, where they were viewed by the Earl and Countess of Warwick, the Earl of Scarborough, and other persons of consequence staying at the hotel. They have since appeared under the verandah, smoking their cigars, so that passers-by had an opportunity of seeing them. They are much improved in their general appearance and particularly in stature, since they were in England."
The twins had no intention of going to London. They planned only a brief stay at the Ship Inn before catching a boat that would take them from Dover to Calais, and thence they would go to Paris, their primary destination.
On November 24, Chang and Eng, with Harris, crossed the English Channel on the steamboat Firefly.
Once safely in Calais, and on French soil at last, they stopped over long enough to refresh themselves with a hearty dinner of mutton chops, cold fowl, and wine. Harris made arrangements for a horse and carriage to take them to Paris.
The following morning, their dollars converted into French francs, the trio set out for Paris. By nightfall, they had reached Abbeville, where they paused for supper, then rode on in the night to Beauvois, arriving there in time for breakfast. After having their carriage wheels greased, they continued on the road to Paris. Here and there along the way, Chang and Eng saw beggars, and tossed some of them a few sous. At one stop, the twins indulged themselves with pate de veau and sponge cakes at a cost of 1 franc 14 sous. The next day, at an overnight stop, Chang and Eng had a haircut in preparation for their arrival in Paris. Finally, on December 3, 1835, they were in Paris.
It was a Paris recovering from the costs of glory. Napoleon Bonaparte lay in his grave these past fourteen years. Only the year before, the Marquis de Lafayette, an international hero, had died. It was largely through Lafayette's sponsorship that France now had a moderate and dull king, whom the radicals had misread as a revolutionary and had supported. The king was sixty-two-year-old Louis Philippe. "Intelligent he might be," wrote historian Rene Sedillot, "but nobody could call him glamorous. He was an easygoing husband and a good father. His umbrella be-came a national joke, his pacific nature a lasting reproach. When Belgium rose against the Dutch and wished to place itself under the wing of a French prince, Louis Philippe refused to accept the proposal for fear of offending the English. On two, on three occasions he chose retreat rather than defiance. He was obstinately wedded to peace. His subjects began to get bored. Of their great and glorious twenty years they remembered only the triumphs."
Three months before the Siamese Twins arrived in Paris, King Louis Philippe had introduced the September Laws to curb the outspoken press. Everywhere Chang and Eng went, they found Parisians seething at this censorship.
In the City of Light, the twins also found artistic ferment. The recent novels of Honore de Balzac and Stendhal were in the bookstalls, along with Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Alexis de Tocqueville's classic study, History of Democracy in America. In this Paris resided Frederic Chopin, 25, George Sand, 31, Alexandre Dumas pere, 33, Hector Berlioz, 32, and Eugene Delacroix, 37.
Chang and Eng were quick to settle in Paris. Harris found rooms with a landlord named Bolot at eight francs a day, and hired a servant and an interpreter. The twins then bought three pounds of candles to illuminate their quarters in the evenings, and because the winter was cold they rented a dray to bring them firewood. Soon they discovered a favorite restaurant, Michele's, which they frequented daily. They also stocked their rooms with refreshments—"essence of anchovies," champagne, and ices ordered from Tortoni's. They could not resist the French shops, acquiring black silk for their hair, two new clay pipes, a set of chessmen and a board, and lavishly spent 370 francs with a tailor.
But business was not neglected. Paris was to feel the impact of the twins' presence. Harris arranged for the printing of 150 large placards and 1000 handbills advertising the exhibit of the Siamese Twins, and these were distributed and posted throughout the capital. Nor did he stint on newspaper advertising. During December 1835 and January and February 1836 no week seemed to pass without sizable ads on the twins in Galignani's Messenger and other leading newspapers.
The basic advertisement, as carried in the Constitutionel of January 16, read: "The united Siamese Twins will receive visitors everyday from 1:00 to 4:00 at the Hotel de l'Europe, rue Richelieu at 111 near the boulevard. The twins intend to stay in Paris only a short time. Price of entry 2 fr., 5o cent."
One newspaper, La Quotidienne, sent a particularly sensitive reporter to cover Chang and Eng's first performance. The reporter was impressed, and his graceful and sympathetic coverage gave the twins a splendid send-off in Paris:
These monsters, since we must call them by their name, are not monstrous at all. . . . One remembers that these twins born in that part of India situated between China and the Ganges, in the famous kingdom of Siam, in this country of free men were already offered to Paris; it has been five or six years since they were repulsed from France as monsters of Satan. All the protests of M. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire could not move the police, who nevertheless welcomed the unfortunate Ritta-Christina [Sardinian female twins with only one pelvic organ and one pair of legs, brought surreptiously into Paris and exhibited]. . . .
They are now twenty-five years old; and what I admire about them, is the intelligence with which they have profited from their position. It is the first time I have seen monsters or savages with enough spirit to conserve their independence, take care of their own affairs themselves, and not sell themselves as weird beasts to an avid master who profits from their dependence. How far superior are the Siamese brothers to the Osages and to the poor Charruas who came from so far away only to be worthlessly dragged down streets and shown in sideshows, and dying of hunger and misery beneath the French sun, without having ever demanded their liberty! The Siamese twins have never been sold, they belong to no one, they travel on their own expenses, in their own coach, with their own servants, and when they arrive in a big city, they depose their passport to the police, go to a good hotel, take a commodious and well-heated apartment; they move in and dine well, without waiting for someone to throw them a crust of bread after the exhibition. They hire an interpreter, and inform the public that they will receive them at certain hours. It is fitting that we cannot do better than these young monsters from the banks of the Ganges, in my opinion, of all the monsters, savages, Charruas, Bedouins, present and future, who come to seek their fortunes in Paris.
The Siamese twins are twenty-five years old; their height is about five feet tall, one of the two, Eng, is a little smaller and less strong than the other; their skin is olive, their eyes small and raised in the Chinese way; their hair is of the most beautiful ebony black; they wear it short in the front, but in back it forms long braids which circle their heads like crowns. Dressed in European clothes, they wear little open vests, and the only visible part of their bodies is the band which unites them; a little opening in the shirt suffices to show this communal part which forms as a hyphen-mark between the two brothers...
When one is hungry, the other is hungry, when one is tired, the other rests; they both like to eat well, and in this, as in everything, they have the same tastes; they are particularly fond of oysters and fish, and they enjoy, so they say, delicious and big meals. They have never put to the test, thank God, any desire to be married, and yet they are fond of children. One of the two was stricken, in America, with an intermittent fever, and the other fell ill, that one also felt the effects when blood was taken from his brother's arms; what, finally, can I say to you? This double man is, in all respects, but one and the same man, and we are more burdened to find individual facts by action of community between two beings so ultimately united, and at the same time so complete, each in his own.
When it comes to purely intellectual phenomena, it is clearly evident that they are equally double and independent, the one does not know the thoughts of the other; thus one can read a novel while the other studies history; but it is true that they don't like to do different things at the same time; in general, they read the same book together, as together they execute all the actions of their life.
Despite their warm press reception, the public response to the twins' exhibits was disappointing. During their three months in Paris, their expenses were higher than their income. Nevertheless, they loved Paris and avidly took in the sights. They hired a coach to go to the Bois de Boulogne, to the Jardin du Roi, to the rue de 1'Universite. In a fiacre, they went to Pantheon. They visited the Church of the Madeleine, the royal mint, the palace and gardens of St. Cloud, and hired a coach to take them to a china manufactory in Sevres. They paid two visits to the Jardin des Plantes, a museum of plant and animal anatomy and history, and were intrigued most of all by the giraffe. Throughout their stay, the twins were active socially. While it is not known whom the twins met in Paris, it is known that they visited the better houses and salons of the city, and they may well have rubbed elbows with the cream of Parisian society and culture.
While still in Paris, Harris made a cryptic note of an expense for the twins: "A frame for the portrait 8 francs." This likely referred to a five-by-seven-inch portrait of the twins—an "Ingreslike" miniature exquisitely detailed on a block of fine ivory—done by an unidentified French or Dutch artist. In the miniature, Chang and Eng may be seen as they were seen by Frenchmen in Paris. They wore black silk cravats, dark blue coats, and brown trousers.
The only blemish on the twins' stay in Paris occurred as the result of a tenuous partnership they formed with a fast-talking French promoter who had extravagant plans for their future. The promoter convinced the twins that they could be the stars of an enormous Siamese museum he planned to build, one replete with every imaginable type of Siamese artifact. In the museum there were to be models of Siam's major cities, temples, and public buildings. There were to be groups of wax figures representing the different classes of people engaged in their various occupations. There were to be stuffed Siamese animals and birds, as well as giant Buddhas. The promoter promised to import a full orchestra of Siamese musicians—eight gongs, five drums, and a flageolet—and a company of Siamese jugglers. Chang and Eng, of course, were to be the main attraction, and the whole package would be advertised as "Chang and Eng's Wonders of Siam."
The twins were favorably impressed by the idea, and first steps were taken toward executing the project. It soon became apparent, however, that the promoter was a little on the shady side. While he had pretended to have money, actually he had been using the twins in order to finance the whole scheme. When the twins realized the promoter's talk was bigger than his wallet, they broke with him and abandoned the project. The promoter later came to America, where he made a fortune with a patent medicine.
While in Paris, the twins attracted their usual complement of curious doctors. One French surgeon conducted a simple experiment on them. He applied strong pressure to the five-inch ligament that bound them together, in an effort to see how they would respond. They responded by fainting, although whether from pain or fright was not reported.
The British Medical Gazette printed the speculations of another French doctor: "M. Coste has visited these singular strangers, and raised rather a curious question about them; namely, at what epoch during uterine life their union took place? He has satisfied himself that it occurred during the last days of the first month of pregnancy!"
A second French physician who examined the twins was so impressed by their ability to speak English that he speculated in his report that they had probably forgotten their native Siamese, which was not true. The physician's report contained the standard medical information about the twins, but then gave way to a goulash of non-medical philosophizing: "Plato said that in the origin of things, human beings were created in doubles, but of a different sex. As we see here, Nature has realized to a certain point the imagination of Greek philosophy: she has produced two beings, but she has produced them of the same sex; the young Siamese are two boys."
It was definitely time to leave Paris, if only to escape the doctors and their prose.
On March 1, 1835, Chang and Eng, accompanied by Harris, set out for the next stand, which was to be in Brussels. It took them eleven days to cross France into Belgium.
The Belgian metropolis was still suffering the aftereffects of the liberal workers' revolution five years earlier. Following the defeat of Napoleon, the allied powers had forced Belgium and Holland to unite as one country under a Dutch king. The Belgians revolted in 183o, and gained an uneasy independence that was not made secure until nine years later. After Chang and Eng checked into the Hotel de Flandre in Brussels, they were eager to see the remnants of the revolution. They were escorted on a visit to the beautiful Palace of Orange, which the reigning prince and princess had occupied for two years before being driven from it. The twins found the royal rooms had been left untouched since the revolution—the princess's gloves and ink-stained pens were still lying upon a table in her boudoir.
Harris lost no time in getting down to business. He ran off 1,000 handbills and distributed them. He made the rounds of the leading Brussels newspapers and placed advertisements announcing the arrival for exhibition of the Siamese Twins. He also advertised for a Belgian interpreter, and then the twins were shown to the public for thirteen days.
After that, the twins traveled to Antwerp, a city still recovering from the fighting that had ensued in 1831 when the Dutch invaded the country. The Belgians, aided by a large French force, had driven them back. In the years since, the Dutch had withdrawn their major businesses from Belgium, and this had sorely affected the local economy. Chang and Eng found the city quiet and subdued.
The twins exhibited in Antwerp for about two weeks. Being insatiable sightseers, they found the time to visit Notre Dame Cathedral, where they enjoyed Rubens' Descent from The Cross, and then, difficult as it was, they climbed the five-hundred-foot staircase to the top of the spire for a look at the city below. The twins would always remember the Flemish paintings and old churches of Antwerp, but what they would remark on most often were the attractive women of the area, many of whom were of Spanish descent and wore the traditional mantilla.
On April 13, Chang and Eng left Antwerp in a carriage, on their way to Holland and an eleven-day engagement in Rotterdam. On this trip across the Belgian countryside, they encountered an unusual local tradition that they would never forget.
In Belgian towns at that time, young men, after serving their apprenticeship in the trade of their choice, were expected to take three-year traveling tours. The purpose was to educate them practically as to how their vocations were practiced in other parts of the country. By custom, the young men asked for money from anyone they met on the road—which was called "fighting" for a living, and consequently they were called "fighters."
As Chang and Eng rode through Belgium, one of these fighters stopped them and asked for a donation. The twins gave him a small sum, hardly believing that such a well-dressed and respect-able-looking young man was serious in his request. The fighter thanked them for the donation, then observing that they were bound together, inquired if they were "the vast celebrity, the Brothers of Siam." Chang and Eng acknowledged that they were indeed none other than "the Brothers of Siam." Hearing this, the young man quickly reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of silver coins, at least fifty times the amount that the twins had given him. He offered it to them in return for a closer look at their wondrous ligament. Amused, Chang and Eng stepped down from the coach and displayed themselves to their one-man audience—but would not accept the proffered money.
Proceeding by coach to the Dutch frontier, the twins ran into difficulties. The Dutch border guards would not let them enter the country, pointing out that they lacked a necessary signature on their visa. Unhappily, they were forced to turn around, make the long ride back to Brussels, obtain the necessary signature, and then return to the frontier, where they were finally passed into Holland.
Rotterdam was their first stop. They moved into the Hotel des Pays-Bas, sent out fifty-six articles of clothing to be washed and pressed, had their boots cleaned, and replenished their supply of cigars.
Their appearance in Rotterdam was well received. About this time, the twins had ceased to put on their acrobatic act, preferring simply to stand or sit while on exhibit. To judge by the turnout, the Dutch public was satisfied just to look at them and question them through their interpreter.
Next, Chang and Eng moved on to The Hague, where they were booked for a two-week stay at the Hotel de Marechal. Their last stop on the European tour was Amsterdam, which they reached on May 15. They were on exhibition there for a month, and the public which attended their shows was enthusiastic. Their appearance in Amsterdam came to the attention of King William of Holland, and curious as any plebeian, the ruler summoned them to the royal palace for a visit.
In what remained of their spare time, Chang and Eng indulged themselves in their favorite pastime of shopping. Their expense record revealed the variety of their acquisitions during their four weeks in Amsterdam: "A pair of silk Gloves ... Two Umbrellas ... 2 Silk Stocks ... Three pair of Trowsers of ‘droll pattern' [undoubtedly Dutch pantaloons] ... A pair of boots for Chang ... 1300 Cegars ... Wooden Shoes ... 5 pair of Trowsers …2 Velvet Vests.”
They also acquired several canaries, which accompanied them home.
On June 15, 1836, Chang and Eng, with Harris, boarded the transatlantic brig Francia for their voyage back to the United States.
Following a smooth ocean crossing of almost eight weeks, the trio arrived in New York on August 7. Their first purchases in the United States were a new birdcage and a large quantity of bird-seed for their imported pet canaries.
For the next three years, from their return to New York City in 1836 until 1839, Chang and Eng, accompanied by Harris, continued to tour steadily through the eastern and southern portions of the United States. Tirelessly, almost daily, they exhibited in town after town, continued to take in money and save as much as they could while they faced ever-dwindling audiences (for so many had seen them before), working toward the day when they could finally be free of the routine of one-night stands and public displays. Their mutual secret desire was to change their means of livelihood and alter their way of life. Renowned on two continents, they were fast reaching a crucial point, a crossroads in their lives.
Always uppermost in their minds was the desire to go back to their native Siam, return to their home and family, far from the curious eyes of strangers. They had from time to time received news of their mother. They had learned that in 1833 she had remarried, and her second husband was a Chinese named Sen. No children had been produced by that marriage. More recently, an American naval officer, finding himself in Siam, had called upon Nok at her family's houseboat in Meklong, and was able to inform the twins that she was well.
The twins often spoke of going home and seeing their mother again one day. Yet they were not certain where their true home lay anymore—whether in Siam or in the United States.
The resolution would come soon, and it would occur in the place where they opened this last phase of their almost continuous eight-year tour. The place was Peale's New York Museum, under the proprietorship of Rubens Peale, son of the founder of America's foremost theatrical showcase before the advent of Phineas T. Barnum.
It was because of the twins' frequent appearances at Peale's Museum in New York—sometimes for a month at a time, some-times for three months—that they were to encounter the person who would be responsible for changing their entire direction in the years that lay ahead. Peale's Museum, first established in Philadelphia in 1786, had been the brainstorm of an eccentric naturalist and artist named Charles Willson Peale, who had painted the earliest known porstrait of George Washington as well as fifty-nine other Washington portraits.
Peale's main interests had been painting—he had studied in London under Benjamin West—and natural history. His career had been interrupted by the Revolutionary War, during which he fought in the Battle of Trenton, and by three marriages. He found his true calling with the establishment of his museum in Philadelphia. There had been earlier museums, small collections mainly intended for scholars. Peale's Museum was the first de-signed for the general public. In the beginning, Peale's Museum was devoted to natural curiosities. The main feature was an exhibit of animals carved out of wood and covered with hide, de-picted in their natural habitats. From this, the museum grew to include botany, mineralogy, and all the natural sciences, as well as life-sized figures of different human racial types. To this, Peale added a room for lectures and concerts. The enterprise was a commercial success, and several members of Peale's large and talented family continued in their father's footsteps.
Peale had twelve children, and named five of his seven sons after great Renaissance painters. Each of his seven sons chose a career drawn from some aspect of his father's life—Raphael and Rembrandt were painters; Rubens was a museum director; Linnaeus was an adventurer; Franklin was a mechanical engineer; and Titian and Titian the 2nd were both naturalists. Three of the sons were interested in expanding the museum idea.
While Titian managed the Philadelphia museum, it was Rembrandt Peale who attempted to establish a museum of fine arts in Baltimore, and Rubens who eventually bought it and made it popular. It was this same Rubens Peale who opened the most famous of the family showcases, Peale's New York Museum, on Broadway opposite City Hall, on October 26, 1825, four years before the Siamese Twins arrived in New York on their first visit.
Slowly over the years the various Peale's Museums changed their character, from staid showplaces of natural history and galleries of art to repositories of oddities, wonders, and freaks. The changes were necessary in order to appeal to a wider spectrum of public interest and to compete with a major Manhattan rival, Scudder's American Museum, later to become truly famous as Barnum's American Museum.
In the year of its opening, in 1825, Peale's New York Museum was already making concessions to popular taste by featuring Egyptian mummies, which created a sensation. By 1829, live Indians were introduced, and Peale's "showed them in all their hair-raising acts of tribal meaning." The Indians were followed by freaks, namely Deborah and Susan Tripp, the incredible fat children—Deborah, three years old, weighed 124 pounds, and Susan, five years and ten months old, weighed 205 pounds. The obese sisters, in turn, were followed by Nicholas the Ventriloquist and a troupe of "Trained Canary Birds" who "awakened amazement and delight, one by feigning death or standing on its head, the other by playing dominoes, 'with any of the company!' "
Peale's New York Museum was plainly ready for the Siamese Twins. In 1831, Rubens Peale had booked Chang and Eng into his lecture hall. According to a New York historian:
"The Siamese Twins and an Italian Band of Music were at Peale's . . . in December. The Wallace family of clever children began on December 19th; on New Year's Day, 1832, Gray's 'Fantocini,' from London, including an Indian juggler, performing with golden balls, Grimaldi, the clown, the Old Soldier, who disengages from his body the whole of his limbs. . . . The stuffed figure of a Bengal Tigress that killed a lion in the Tower of London was set up about this time . . ."
After that, whenever Chang and Eng were not on the road, they became regulars at one Peale's Museum or another. Between 1834 and 1837, they made over a dozen appearances at various Peale's Museums in New York City, Philadelphia, Albany, and Baltimore.
While Chang and Eng were on exhibition in Peale's New York Museum, there occurred the fateful meeting that would affect their entire future. At one of their showings, a member of the audience was a Southern physician visiting New York from his native North Carolina. The physician "was so impressed" by the twins—apparently not only by their oddity, but by their personalities and intelligence—that he determined to meet them on a personal basis. After their exhibit had concluded and they had left the stage, the physician asked an attendant if he might have the honor of meeting them. Permission was granted.
Finding Chang and Eng in their private dressing room, the physician introduced himself as Dr. James Calloway, of Wilkesboro, North Carolina. The young Dr. Calloway was well known in his own right. A grandnephew of the frontiersman Daniel Boone, Dr. Calloway had been elected to the North Carolina legislature at the age of twenty-three, had studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and had then set up a medical practice in Wilkesboro, a practice that ranged over seven North Carolina counties. Later, he would become an officer in the Confederate Army and a stalwart of the Episcopal Church.
Now, attracted by Chang and Eng not as abnormalities of nature but as human beings, he sat in their dressing room in Peale's Museum and became deeply involved in a friendly conversation with them. According to Shepherd Monroe Dugger, who had met the twins and would publish a privately printed reminiscence of them in 1936, the talk between Dr. Calloway and the twins took a personal turn:
"In the conversation of that call, it was revealed that the Twins, being fond of sport, went on a hunting or fishing vacation twice a year.
"The Doctor told them that Wilkes County was replete with clear streams teeming with fine fishes; that the hills and mountains abounded in deer and wild-turkeys, with smaller game, as squirrels and pheasants galore. He invited them to come to Wilkesboro, on their next vacation, assuring them the abundant courtesies of the town and country. This was the beginning of a friendship between them and Dr. Calloway that ended with their death . . ."
After exhibiting in North Carolina in early 1839, Chang and Eng were ready for a long-deferred vacation. Dr. Calloway's vivid description of his corner of North Carolina, which they dimly remembered from having exhibited there, had made a lingering impression. The twins consulted with Harris and agreed to accept the physician's invitation, and together the three arranged to spend their free time in Wilkesboro.
Soon, the twins were on their way to Wilkesboro, little aware of the profound effect the visit would have on the rest of their lives.