7

Service to Humanity

There are eleven million horses in the United States, and not one man in a million who knows how to educate them in the highest degree of usefulness. We say educate; for the horse is an animal of high and spirited organization…. Primarily, the word educate means to lead out or lead up; and it is by this process of leading out and leading up… that a colt becomes a useful horse. Now, teachers, like poets, are born, not made. Only a few are gifted to see…through any form of highly organized life, discern its capacities, note the interior tendencies…and discover the method of developing the innate forces until they reach their noblest expression…. The few who have this gift are teachers indeed, and, next to the mothers of the world, deserve the world’s applause as foremost among its benefactors.

—D. MAGNER,
Magner’s Art of Taming and Educating Horses

October 26, 1901.
The Boston Food Fair.

DR. WILLIAM KEY HAD TO HAVE BEEN AMUSED by the sight of the small brigade of somber gentlemen, many whiskered and bespectacled, who filed into the front rows of the auditorium at Boston’s Mechanics Building. Glancing furtively around the cavernous hall where there hovered the ghosts of the Mechanics Society’s patron saints, Paul Revere and Benjamin Franklin, they carried notebooks and writing instruments which they began to use as soon as they were seated. Some seemed to be sketching the stage and the props on it; others made cursory notes of anything that, by the look of their flared nostrils, might smell suspicious to them. The sight of the aerial display of five thousand dangling rabbit’s feet appeared to confirm their worst expectations, as several nodded and pointed.

The Doc knew that this team of Harvard professors—leading names of academia from the fields of psychology, medicine, linguistics, and zoology—had come there under the supervision of Harvard president Charles Eliot. Probably the most influential individual in the field of American higher education, Eliot was a supporter of George Angell and one of Jim’s more devoted admirers, and had no doubt arranged this examination of Jim and his teacher.

This was obviously a consequence of the rising swell of accusations that some forms of hoax or hypnosis, or both, were the only explanations for Jim’s otherwise inexplicable abilities. But the ongoing bubble of controversy didn’t bother Bill Key. He knew it was only one of the costs of fame. And, as the Boston Globe declared in advance of their appearance at the Boston Food Fair, Beautiful Jim Key and Dr. William Key were now both quite famous: “Horse, the pupil, and man, teacher, have been in nearly all the large cities of the country, and in many of them the schools have been dismissed for the day to permit the children to see a horse who can ring up a telephone as easily as he can trot a mile.”

Dr. Key’s celebrity status may have surprised Albert Rogers, especially after the early press coverage had so often described the trainer as “an old colored man” and Jim’s “aging Negro valet” and after Rogers in their PR materials had first referred to him as a “faithful old Uncle Tom” (which led Southern newspapers like the Atlanta Journal to write about the Doctor, “Uncle Billy Key is one of the old time Southern negroes”). Even after Rogers had added notes in their pamphlet about Dr. Key’s financial success in the patent medicine business and his unrivaled ability as a horse trainer, it was not until George Angell met the three of them and connected instantly with William Key that Albert recognized how the Doc was as much a star as Jim.

Angell and Key were kindred spirits. They were both getting on in years, George Angell almost eighty years old in 1901 and the Doc almost seventy. Despite their differences in color and height, they actually resembled each other. Both were lean, distinguished, typically dressed in simple but elegant attire. About each of their faces was an aura of kindness and intelligence, each with an intellectual openness and expressions that could alternate between lighthearted amusement and serious concern. When the two first met three and a half years earlier, Angell and Key discovered they had interests in common other than the humane cause and could discourse at length about such topics as the pros and cons of unregulated patent medicines, the influence of diet on health, about roots and herbs, about current events, the Bible, and even the oddities of talk that outer space travel would one day be possible. The former lawyer made a gift to the self-taught veterinarian of several copies of Black Beauty and Beautiful Joe, inscribing them to Dr. William Key and Beautiful Jim Key.

Doc Key was genuinely delighted and promised to read both aloud to Jim, presumably at bedtime before saying their prayers and good night.

From the start, Rogers recognized that though Angell appreciated the promoter’s energy and ideas, and was immediately impressed with Jim Key, the reason that they received the full support of the officers and board of the American Humane Association was the impression that Dr. Key had made on the founder and president. Rogers now considered that he might not have had the level of resistance to “an animal act” from the other humane groups if he had thought to promote the visionary educator first, and then the horse second. Making up for lost time, he arranged for a photographic session to produce a publicity portrait of Dr. Key. Run in most of the newspapers and sold at exhibits, the photograph earned the trainer virtual overnight public recognition. At the same time, because of the almost eerie, mesmerizing look on William’s face, rumors that he had to be a voodoo hypnotist became even more widespread.

The Doc took it all in stride. He had always been special, different, gifted, suspect. But that had never stopped him from challenging people’s prejudices, and it wouldn’t now. For his part, Beautiful Jim Key took to his stardom with what some described as a trademark modesty, an attitude of Aw shucks, spelling, figuring, reading? That ain’t nothin’!

Would-be critics were nearly always caught off guard by Jim’s onstage inventions. No matter how prepared they were to say that he was being cued by his trainer, they couldn’t hold back the feeling of affection that his humanlike antics engendered in them, and that, by extension, made them feel that perhaps the goals of the humane movement were not so radical as all that. Jim’s rehearsed bits, such as bowing to the ladies or his act of going lame and even his political routine, merely convinced cynics that he was a great thespian. Because they were baffled by the other feats that required elements of memory, critical thinking, and reasoning, many still distrusted what they saw with their own eyes, insisting that there was a trick. But the stunt of submerging his head underwater and removing the silver dollar without drinking a drop was not one of those inexplicable feats; it was very clearly the result of an incredible amount of patience and encouragement in a training regimen that transcended the language barrier between teacher and student. If reporters managed to sit through the whole show as nonbelievers, they were won over by the silver dollar showstopper almost every time.

One such detractor was present at a Cincinnati performance of the The Scholar and a Model Office Boy, in which it was customary after the dutiful office boy had retrieved the silver dollar and returned it to the Employer that his boss would say, “Jim, your mouth is all wet. The customers will laugh at you. Go and get a towel in your trunk and I’ll wipe your mouth for you,” and to the amusement of all, Jim would go to one of his steamer trunks, nudge open the lid with his nose, and then pick up the towel in his teeth. Jim’s next rehearsed bit was to neatly fold the towel on a table and replace it in the trunk before closing the lid. At this particular performance, when Jim opened his trunk and removed the towel, he discovered that it was already soiled—obviously left there by mistake—and he immediately dropped the unclean towel on the floor, puckering his lips in disdain. From all accounts, his spontaneous reaction took the Doc and Will Griffin by surprise, challenging them both to keep a straight face.

Mrs. Long, a woman in the audience who had not until that moment been enthusiastic, was so impressed that a few days later she delivered to the star in person a half-dozen expensive fringed towels, each hand-embroidered with the name of Beautiful Jim Key.

In Philadelphia, where Jim was on exhibition for seven weeks for the 1900 Export Exposition, while he was preparing to give a demonstration to civic leaders, one of the city’s most illustrious citizens was heard to grumble to Dr. Key that he thought the furor over the “educated” horse was ridiculous. He’d seen trick horses before, which he found to be embarrassing to the animals and to the humans involved. “What makes this horse so special?” he asked bluntly. “What can he do that I haven’t seen before?”

“Well, sir,” said Dr. Key without hesitation, “he can spell your name.”

“Indeed? If he spells my name, I’ll…” He paused, perhaps wondering if he really wanted to eat his hat or do some other outlandish act, instead offering, “I’ll send him the finest blanket money can buy.”

Jim sidled up, throwing a look to the Doc that the Equine King’s grooms had seen him throw when reporters came back for interviews: oh, not another one?

Dr. Key asked the man to tell Jim his name, and to please speak slowly and clearly. The spelling of names was often where Jim made errors. Because the Doc had taught him to spell phonetically or to memorize the spelling of certain words and names, if Jim had never heard the word or name before, he was as capable as any student of making a mistake. Interestingly enough, this was how Bill Key spelled, inconsistently, although Jim, having had the tutelage of Stanley Davis and Will Griffin, could sometimes win in a spelling bee against his teacher.

“My name is Walton,” the man said, looking somewhat awkward as he talked to the big bay. “F. M. Walton.”

The name was either phonetically straightforward or one Dr. Key had practiced with Jim before, since they regularly had a list of names of prominent citizens in advance of arriving in new cities. In either case, Jim easily spelled and picked out the letters W-A-L-T-O-N, lining them up on his spelling rack.

The following week a horse blanket fit for a derby winner—with the name Jim Key worked into its design—was mailed to Albert Rogers with a note from Frederick Walton honoring “one of the most knowing horses in the world” and his trainer.

 

Dr. Key’s in-laws later recalled that both the man and his horse savored their successes, carefully collecting the gifts, trophies, awards, fan letters, and postcards they received, and taking crates of them home for safekeeping, whenever they could. It was said that nothing meant as much to either of them as the awards and honorary memberships they had begun to receive for their humane work.

While the early 1898 endorsement from George Angell and the network that formed the American Humane Association had dramatically opened numerous new doors for Key, Key, and Rogers, there truly could have been no greater boon to the organization or to the movement than Beautiful Jim and Dr. William Key. Within less than three years, almost 300,000 children signed the Jim Key Pledge: “I promise always to be kind to animals.” Adult membership, predominantly female, exploded to as many as three million in the various Bands of Mercy, which came under the umbrella of Angell’s American Humane Education Society. The idea for the Bands of Mercy had been borrowed from the RSPCA, a concept that basically allowed for the franchising of clubs or reading and social circles to discuss and embrace humane philosophies, often by sharing true or literary stories about animals.

The shift in public sentiment had begun. The movement had broken out of elite drawing rooms and had arrived at Main Street, thanks in large part to Jim Key; he had also broadened the focus of animal welfare to include not only protecting animals from cruel treatment but also celebrating the connection between humans and nonhumans through acts of kindness. The notion that animals could think, reason, and feel was no longer so radical.

But missionary work, like celebrity, could be exhausting, if the itineraries for the 1898–1901 seasons were any indication. Most of that second year had kept Jim Key and company in the North, starting with a return to New Jersey, with theater performances, humane benefits, and school events in Plainfield that made national headlines throughout the month of March that both praised and condemned the Equine Wonder.

There were already at least four different camps of those who seemed outraged by the growing prestige given an educated horse from Tennessee. These adversaries included those who believed the act was rigged or that Dr. Key was a hypnotist; those who thought Jim Key was a sideshow that belonged in the circus or strictly as children’s entertainment; those who strenuously opposed the advancement of the humane cause and especially any Darwinian-type suggestion that we had more in common with our furry and feathered friends than we knew; and the most insidious of the lot, those who were threatened not by the prestige of a horse but by his Negro costar.

Taking the stance that all press was good press, Albert Rogers ignored the criticism and continued to gather testimonials and clippings, sending them out in thick, weighty packages. In one press release of this era, Albert announced that the Great and Only Bostock, the thirty-year-old Animal King who had been born in a circus caravan and had become a lion tamer at fourteen, had offered him $100,000 for Beautiful Jim Key, an amount rejected out of hand, with the claim he was worth twice that. The promotional pamphlet went into its third printing, declaring the Beautiful One to be valued at twice his former value or ten times his “purchase” price.

In the month of May, the show moved on to a stint at the Scenic Theatre in Atlantic City, across from Young’s Pier, where everything that could go wrong did. First the rains came, blowing off the ocean in relentless slats across the boardwalk, shutting down all of the tented entertainment and throwing a wet chill into the stables and the theater. There was no local humane group sponsoring Jim and attendance was noticeably low, which didn’t help the star’s tendency to turn in a lackluster performance for smaller, less energized crowds. Many who did venture out in the stormy weather were holding press passes or were performers from the tented shows who had been given passes, and when the box office became very slow, Rogers turned it over to Stanley and his brother Sam (who was now traveling with Jim’s troupe).

Rogers knew this had to be a temporary lull, but he was blue, as he admitted he could be at times, and after a telegram arrived for him at his hotel—its contents to remain undisclosed—he sent word to Dr. Key that he had been called away. This had happened before, when his father had taken ill, so the Doc was worried that the emergency had to do with Hiram. Evidently, A. R. Rogers now spent less time on the road, putting more responsibility on William Key, not only for stage and road management, but also for the money and the books. When later asked about this arrangement, with the inference that it would be tempting for any manager to skim from the pot, Albert Rogers vehemently asserted, “He is the most faithful man I ever met. I would trust Bill Key with my life.” He also added the following paragraph to the promotional pamphlet:

Few men have seen as much varied life as has Dr. Key, and few men have done more good. It is said that the Doctor is worth close on to a hundred thousand dollars, but his love for Jim is so strong that he prefers to travel around with him rather than live in ease.

While it was the case that the Doc didn’t need the “large salary” (Rogers did mention this point in his pamphlet), William Key was nonetheless extremely fastidious in checking Albert’s bookkeeping and making sure that every cent owed him and his staff was paid in full and on time. When it came to addressing these matters, the Doc’s tone, ironically, was somewhat scolding and schoolmarmish, though patient after a fashion, sort of the way he spoke to Jim when the horse wasn’t putting forth his best effort.

Although the Doc wasn’t upset with Rogers for the sudden departure, he did fear the worst and cabled him urgently at Glenmere to inquire if his father was all right. After a few days, Rogers sent a terse reply stating that Hiram was fine, but he was more concerned about how business was doing and how Jim was doing. Doc Key immediately wrote back in his sprightly, clean longhand:

Dear Sir

Everything is all right. Jim is well and doing his work O.K. Business is very dull on account of storms. We are playing hear the rest of this week and I am expecting to go home next Sunday morning if you are willing for me to go. I would like to hear from you in the mater at once so I may know what to do about getting ready. Please send me my check from Dr. Fields stable as soon as feasible. Have it handled with care. I would like to have it sent by express. In closed find statement of money I have received and spent for the month of April. I am very glad to hear that your father is better. I have been greaving over him as dead. As the porter of the hotel told me you had received a telegram of his death.

I remain very respectfully,

Wm. Key

After returning from an errand in the rain, Doc Key imagined he was about to confront his next cause for worry when one of the Davis brothers came to find him, asking him to hurry to Jim’s stall. There was something he had to see. What was it? He would have to see for himself came the answer; there were no words to explain. Now in a full panic, the Doc raced back to the stables, obviously having come to the conclusion that Jim had hurt himself or become sick. He would have blamed himself and would have possibly recalled premonitions that the Atlantic City engagement boded poorly for the show. Why had he ignored instincts that had served him so well in the past?

It was bad enough that Jim Key couldn’t go out for his morning run and that he had to be cooped up inside, without the usual distractions of reporters and admirers coming around. But what concerned Dr. Key was the homesickness he sometimes observed in Jim. Naturally, that was what he was feeling, and why he was anxious to get back to Shelbyville. Maybe the Doc had the blues too, brought on by the rain in Atlantic City, reinforcing the realization they were all starting to have that it could get awful lonely at the top.

It was good to have Stanley and Sam with him on this leg of their travels, even though it was their sister, Maggie, with whom he would have preferred to be spending time, if truth be told. As his late third wife had predicted, he did think about having a woman to keep him company, an attractive, kindhearted, intelligent woman no less, and spring in Bedford County was especially nice weather in which to go courting. He perhaps had expected that his interests in that direction were supposed to slow. But such was not the case. Maggie was still studying at the Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes in Normal, Alabama, as Dr. Key had arranged. When she was finished, however, he could see building a place on his new property and marrying Maggie. He looked forward to having Jim there too, since the increasingly valuable smart and handsome horse had pretty much missed breeding seasons, and it would be a joy to see him getting to be a horse for a few months.

These may have been the kinds of thoughts the Doc used to distract himself from imagining that the worst had happened to Jim Key.

At the stables, outside of the stall, a strange sight greeted Dr. Key. There in the middle, hopping around the hay and scrambling after a stick, much as he had done when he was a spindly legged ugly duckling of a colt, Jim was playing not as a dog, but with a dog. He was a small to middle-size, black-and-white wire-haired, scruffy mix of what looked like some terrier, some collie, and maybe schnauzer. He had just wandered in, one of the Davis brothers explained, who figured the dog was a stray trying to get out of the rain.

The moment that Jim lifted his head to acknowledge Doc Key, the dog began to bark in a very demanding manner: Who are you and what do you want?

That’s what he had been doing to Stanley and Sam for the last hour, and he wouldn’t let either of them come near Jim. The dog seemed to want to be Beautiful Jim Key’s bodyguard. To prove it, the dog made a running leap onto Jim’s back, much to the big bay’s pleasure. Jim trotted back and forth as the dog squeezed his eyes into a pensive expression, as though he were meditating upon a subject of deep complexity.

Dr. Key communicated in like manner—as he knew how to do—his demeanor suggesting that any new friend of Jim’s was a friend of his. He checked around with managers of the other acts then engaged in Atlantic City to see if anyone had lost a dog who could squint up his eyes and appear to contemplate important questions, but no one claimed him. At the end of the week, the dog they called Monk—either because of his thoughtful appearance or as a nickname, which was short for Monkey, in honor of his antics—left Atlantic City with the rest of the Tennesseeans. From then on, he was Jim’s constant companion and guardian.

Monk never appeared onstage as part of Jim’s act, but he received almost as much publicity as did the Celebrated Educated Arabian-Hambletonian, starting with an item that ran in Plainfield, New Jersey, where The Scholar and a Model Office Boy was to be presented for a week at the Stillman Music Hall:

Jim Key…is in a box stall at Uncle Dan Roberts’ stable where he is guarded by a dog. The dog stays on the horse’s back all the time and carefully warns all persons away except the ones appointed to care for the horse, on penalty of being bitten.

Monk had a particular bias against reporters and would bark at any that tried to interview Jim unless they first made a to-do over him or if photographers were present. Monk loved to sit to have his picture taken, preferably by himself. Perhaps he had some vaudevillian training in his background because his routine was to strike a pose and then to bark as a signal to the photographer to take the shot. At night, he slept curled up on Jim’s back and, as noted, spent the day happily perched there, alternately thinking deeply and enjoying the view. Of course, when it was time to put a saddle on Jim and ride him—whether it was Dr. Key (usually the one to take him out for a canter), Stanley, Sam, or occasionally Albert Rogers—Monk would begrudgingly leap down and allow his charge to be ridden.

Rogers was no doubt thrilled by the addition to Jim Key’s entourage of the dog who had adopted a horse. He didn’t offer any more of an explanation about whether or not it was his father’s health that had called him away, or another business concern, or his own case of the blues. In any event, his high spirits were restored and he had returned bursting with new promotional ideas that included Monk when Beautiful Jim Key played Riverview Park in Baltimore.

Promoting Jim much like a political candidate, Rogers paraded his star and entourage through town, advertising showtimes on huge banners that draped Jim’s customized open-air trolley car with his signature blue-and-white-striped canopy and a Hambletonian-size megaphone through which his barker cried out his approach. In a joint effort of a local humane group and the board of education, a series of spelling bees pitted fourth, fifth, and sixth graders against the educated horse with a prize of one dollar given to any human student who could win a round with Jim. The Equine King did lose now and then, mostly on difficult or longer words, but the headline grabber was when he won against a sixth-grade boy by spelling the word P-H-Y-S-I-C-S.

After an uneventful but restful trip home during the summer, Dr. Key, Jim, Monk, Stanley, and Sam traveled to Pennsylvania. In the Beautiful Jim Key advertising van, they were mobbed on the streets of Pittsburg and York, doubling the business they had done in Pennsylvania the year before. At the Pittsburg Exposition, fairgoers did not balk at the extra admission charged to enter Jim’s pavilion, despite the fact that it hadn’t cost them anything extra to see him at the last Exposition. For three weeks, the show, performed every half hour on the hour, took in over $1,500 per week, an impressive net of $1,000 per week when the weekly salary of $500 was deducted. This emboldened Albert Rogers to list their weekly fee at double what it had been, or to give venues the option of hiring them on a percentage, which soon led to increases of the average price of admissions from ten and fifteen cents to twenty-five and fifty. Allowances were made for special children’s shows and humane benefits. Rogers and Dr. Key came up with a policy that in every city where they performed, free passes were to be granted to teachers, school administrators, and clergy, to any show or shows of their choice.

In a stroke of excellent timing, during the week of October 10, 1898, the annual convention of the American Humane Association was held in Pittsburg, an opportunity that allowed Dr. William Key and Beautiful Jim Key to present a special performance for delegates from around the country to witness the man and the horse that had won the endorsement of their president, George Angell. The reaction from the delegates was as if an equine angel had been sent to their cause straight from heaven.

Albert Rogers was deluged with even more requests, not only from regions in the Northeast but now from below the Mason-Dixon. Though he and Dr. Key had agreed not to take engagements in the winter months, neither could bring himself to turn down invitations from North Carolina and Georgia, where they were sorely needed to raise awareness and funds.

The fall engagement in Greensboro, North Carolina, met with enormous success, and some of Jim’s most effusive write-ups. A reporter for the Greensboro Record posited that what he had witnessed Jim Key do—from correctly spelling the name Blackburn, to correctly answering questions out of order that included how many days in the week, the various months, the regular year and leap year, and performing his silver dollar trick twice—was proof that animals had minds; and if that was the case, animals were entitled to the rights of human beings, all in all, “a strong argument for the formation here of a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals.”

A special series of performances of The Scholar and a Model Office Boy was held to benefit the local library fund with the intention, said the Evening Telegram, of purchasing books on humane subject matter in advance of starting a society. Performances at the Academy of Music were segregated: “Adults 25 cents, children ten cents. Colored people in their gallery 10 cents.” A change of policy was instituted in which most subsequent engagements included special shows exclusively for Negro audiences that were advertised as being sponsored “at the request of Dr. William Key,” offering all seats to any person of color at discounts.

Another barometer of the Southern climate at the time in North Carolina and South Carolina, where Jim performed in Columbia, was his billing as the Celebrated Democratic Educated Horse. In Greensboro it was noted, “Jim met President McKinley at the Nashville Exposition, but has never liked the President and is still a staunch democrat, though raised in a colored family.”

Albert Rogers may have only then truly appreciated Dr. Key’s brilliance in training Jim to “talk politics.” Now he could also better understand why the Doc warned him about venturing too far off the beaten path when booking engagements in the South. Not that Negroes experienced prejudice and violence only in the Southern states or just outside of the bigger Southern cities. You had to be careful no matter where you went. Still, there was a sense of danger at the start of this foray into North Carolina.

Again the problems began with the weather. At a county fair in Raleigh, hurricane-force storms wracked the fairgrounds. With the winds starting up and the fair being shut down, Rogers sent Dr. Key, Jim, and Monk back to the stables and kept his roadmen, along with Stanley and Sam, to help him collapse the tent. They had barely done so when a full-scale hurricane bore down for the next six hours, requiring them to cling to the tent poles for dear life as they tried to save the tent and themselves from being swept away. Rogers made it back to the Carollton Hotel and fell into bed with a fever and nausea. The next week, when he had not yet recuperated, a distraught Dr. Key came to inform him that after a show Jim had cut his foot so severely that he wasn’t sure he would walk again. But there was more. It seemed that Sam and Stanley had been kidnapped.

Without much more of an explanation, he insisted that he would handle the crises his way. In the meantime, he begged Rogers to consider leaving early, since a Yankee might not be safe in these parts traveling in the company of three Negroes with a $100,000 famous horse and only the horse’s pet dog as protection.

Unable to gather his strength to leave, at any rate, Rogers described some of these events and others in a letter that he wrote to his friend Louise, a confidante:

rains last two weeks hurt business & we were in a great hurricane & nearly blown to pieces had to drop the tent and all hang on the poles all night while the wind hurled & the rain poured. Next experience a drunken man got into my room & I pitched him out & then he tried to shoot me. But I am still alive.

Came here in a special train…it looks like another rainy week. Jim cut his foot badly & nearly killed himself last night—he is very lame & I am greatly worried (if I ever worry) about him.

I have been very sick indigestion I guess—am staying at the Hotel until I can get out—I send by same mail some cotton I picked for you the other day & Enclosed find a photo of a friend you can always swear by—I never meet any ladies—except dancing girls & these I just say good morning to as they speak to me in the grounds—I hope you keep well. I am feeling to miserable to write at length (if I ever do) Kind regards to your good mother. Yours as ever, A. R. Rogers

After Albert tucked his sentimental cotton plant and photo of himself into a Carrollton envelope, he had second thoughts about mailing off his tale of woe and instead kept the letter folded away behind his press materials. Doc Key sent word that the Davis brothers had been located and were returned unharmed. Dr. Key and Albert Rogers expressly kept the episode out of print, not wanting anyone else to get any ideas.

As to Jim’s injury, no mention of it hit the papers either. Evidently Rogers took the public relations stance that celebrities, like gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus, were immortal and therefore immune to illness and aging. In fact, he began around this time to lie about Jim’s age, keeping him at approximately eight years old until reporters started doing the math, at which point Beautiful Jim Key became permanently eleven years old. Rogers also started adding the line “he was bred in Old Kentucky” to his press releases, simply because it had a ring to it, probably until Bill Key expressed his disapproval. Why insult Tennessee? Besides, the truth was much more interesting.

 

Under the Good Doctor’s care, Jim’s foot healed rapidly, leaving him with a bandage and a limp but able to perform at the Piedmont Tobacco Fair in Winston and make his much-publicized December debut in Atlanta. Here the humane group was a welcoming and eclectic group of clergy, Christian and Jewish, humanitarians and literacy proponents, who actively embraced Beautiful Jim Key into the bosom of Dixie. For weeks before he arrived, the Atlanta Constitution had trumpeted his engagement, so that by the day his “royal procession” rolled into town in Jim’s customized palace train car that advertised the dates and times of his performances, thousands reportedly came out to the train tracks, if only to say they had seen him pass by, while another several thousand flocked to Atlanta to see the show. The Constitution declared that “Jim Key the Fashion” was why so many theater parties were planning to attend his opening and subsequent shows, suggesting that as much attention was being showered on “the intelligent beast” as on an operatic star. The Constitution’s December 19, 1898, breathless review of opening night, written by the newspaper’s editor, included a mention of the fact that when asked by a member of the audience Jim had spelled C-O-N-S-T-I-T-U-T-I-O-N “unerringly” (although he had remained motionless for a full minute to think it through first). Constitution!

The Atlanta Humane Society was applauded for the theatrical decor of the Hall at No. 80 Whitehall Street and the display window with its assortment of rosy apples surrounded by lumps of sugar and a printed message that read: “Beautiful Jim Key was taught by kindness, apples and sugar, and not by a whip.”

The editor described Jim’s physical appearance in fairly standard terms, noting the white star on his forehead, the white tip on his nose, white on a fore and a hind foot. Also: “He has a clean set of limbs, and no blemish. Jim’s neck is finely arched; he has a powerful, fine eye, and sharp and small ears. He has the widest forehead of any horse, being thirteen inches from center to center of eyes.” (This width was often given as evidence of the stallion’s high IQ.) But the editor of the Constitution was fascinated by elements beyond the physical:

If there is aught of truth in gentle Buddha’s teachings, the soul of a gentleman and scholar inhabits the Beautiful body of wonderful Jim Key—whom the Atlanta Humane Society has brought to Atlanta to demonstrate in brute creation’s behalf that animals reason and think…. It will not be so very many cycles before that soul re-enters a human frame and adds another mighty figure to the book of time.

As if the editor had experienced a spiritual awakening, he wrote that Jim Key was proof of a Divine Creator who could endow Jim Key with intelligence “equal to most children of its age,” a Universal Mind who could similarly create a Michelangelo, Napoleon, or Shakespeare. He went on:

All of which Theosophists say goes to prove that Jim does possess a soul, and all of which materialistic scientists argue is convincing that a man no more has a soul than a brute; but the difference between the two is merely a difference of mentality, and Jim to them appears human, for they argue because his trainer, Dr. Key, by long association and persistent suggestions, “has ejected his own intelligence into Jim’s long head.”

First minds, now souls? In traditional circles, the suggestion that animals could possibly have souls was downright heresy. The old guard insisted that Man’s Dominion over Nature was an absolute and unshakeable tenet of Existence. But with Jim Key now complicating the distinctions, others were starting to ask if instead of merely exploiting nature and its inhabitants to fulfill human desires and needs, wasn’t a reverence for all creation just as much ordained?

In Nashville, another new humane group composed of ministers, rabbis, university officers, and prominent citizens said yes to that question and came together to find a way to welcome their native sons back to Tennessee in February 1899. In fits and starts a plan emerged that would soon have Beautiful Jim Key leaving a hoof print of sorts on the history of country music.

The Nashville Humane Society’s timing was impeccable. Emboldened by Jim’s success in Atlanta, a committee of influential Nashvillians—including J. K. Kirkland, the chancellor of Vanderbilt, and community leader Rabbi Isadore Lewinthal—proposed to the Reverend Sam P. Jones that they rent the Sam Jones Union Tabernacle for two days of performances, even though the magnificent barn-styled hall—with its curved tiers of wooden pews that could seat six thousand and with its unparalleled acoustics—had been expressly built for the purpose of saving souls, not for popular entertainment. This was a firmly held policy.

The benefactor of the Tabernacle, Captain Thomas Ryman, was a self-professed former sinner and operator of a riverboat gambling operation who, back in 1885, had gone to heckle Jones at a tent revival meeting where the reverend was preaching. In an effort to clean up Nashville’s rowdy saloon-and-brothel-infested neighborhoods and riverfronts, Reverend Jones had targeted Ryman and fellow proprietors by demanding that they stop the sale of liquor in their establishments. No booze in saloons or gaming parlors? Who did Sam Jones think he was? But when Captain Ryman and an entourage walked into the tent revival meeting on May 10, 1885, ready to disrupt the event, he was shocked to hear Jones announce that the subject of his sermon was the importance and goodness of mothers. As it so happened, Thomas Ryman loved his dearest mama above anyone or anything; Reverend Jones knew that and had planned his sermon for effect. It worked, well beyond what the man of the cloth had wagered. Ryman was so possessed of the Spirit that he promised he would not only halt the sale of liquor on his boat but also build a church so that Reverend Jones would never have to preach in a tent again. Seven years later, Sam P. Jones held a revival in the completed Union Tabernacle and pledged to his friend Captain Ryman that the house of God would remain so, and would not be used or rented out for entertainment purposes.

By 1899, that policy had been bent only once, for a concert given by the Chicago Orchestra the year before, the logic for that being that the musical repertoire was religiously themed. In asking that the rules be amended again for a performance to benefit their work in animal protection, the Nashville Humane Society argued politely that the horse and his Negro teacher were, after all, missionaries doing God’s work. The educational themes were also stressed, since the Tabernacle had been used in 1897 for graduation exercises for Meharry Medical College, an African-American institution. It was further pointed out that it had been used during the 1899 Tennessee Centennial for a gathering of the Confederate Veterans Association that had prompted the addition of the balcony commemorated as the Confederate Gallery. Jones and his board deliberated, many protesting that such a shift in policy could open the door to every sort of entertainment. What was next? Plays? Vaudevillians? Minstrels? Opera divas? Where would it end? There were those, however, who remembered that Jim Key and Dr. Key had been the talk of the town at the Centennial, winning praise from no less than the President of the United States. Meanwhile, the pragmatists reminded the board that the income from renting the Tabernacle for two days when it would normally be dormant could be put to good uses, which were, after all, God’s uses. At last a decision was made to grant the request to the Humane Society for two days in the middle of the week, February 14 and 15.

The Nashville Humane Society went to work, arranging school closures and performances for entire student bodies from primary and secondary schools as well as college students, along with a special show for students from black schools and colleges. Mayor Richard Dudley helped the cause by contacting the local press. In failing health and about to leave town for warmer climates, Dudley regretted not appearing at the show but wanted his fair city to know the stories of Fort Bill and the mortgage that the Young Doc had paid off for the widow of John W. Key. The mayor told the Nashville American:

“I regret very much that I cannot fill that engagement, but I have written to Governor McMillin, and asked him to take my place on the programme…. Outside of the good accomplished by the exhibition…a feeling of sentiment actuates me. You may not know it but William Key…and I were boys together in Bedford County.”

After the reporter asked the mayor why he was so proud of “Old Bill Key,” Dudley told of the deeds of his friend during the Civil War and went on to say that the Good Doctor was not satisfied with just tearing up the mortgage. “To help his old mistress he earned more money, educated her children and set them up in business.” Dudley corrected the reporter, “That’s Old Bill Key, now Dr. Wm. Key to you.” The interview concluded, “So you can see why I feel kindly disposed toward William, and any enterprise with which he is connected. I hope the people of Nashville will give the performances the support which they richly deserve.”

The Nashville American jumped on the promotional bandwagon with headlines such as “Chesterfield Among Horses Is Jim Key, the Wonderful Animal to be Exhibited Here: Has a Checkered Career. Began Life as a Scrub Colt and Is Now Doing Missionary Work for his Equine Brothers in Bondage.”

Before the impact of the advance press could be gauged, a record-breaking freeze paralyzed Nashville and most of Middle Tennessee. The Nashville Humane Society board members were able to postpone the performances to the following week, but they were certain that the turnout would be significantly hurt by the change in dates. In desperation, the benefit committee wrote to Reverend Jones and asked, in the most complimentary way, if he wouldn’t, with his grand powers of persuasion, preach to his Sunday following about the potential for spiritual improvement inherent in attending one of Beautiful Jim Key’s performances. The Reverend Jones acquiesced, and all parties held their breath to see how many would come. To everyone’s astonishment, despite the still freezing temperatures, 17,610 came out to wait in line to purchase tickets, not including the several thousands of students with reserved seats at special matinees.

Those who had predicted that Jim Key’s appearance would set a dangerous precedent and open doors to other forms of entertainment turned out to be right. More touring symphonies soon came to the Tabernacle, followed by the staging of nonreligious operas, and the appearances of nonordained lecturers. The pattern continued after 1904—the death of Captain Ryman prompted Reverend Jones to rename his house of worship Ryman Auditorium—including sold-out performances by Sarah Bernhardt and Marian Anderson. After Sam P. Jones died in 1906, the antientertainment forces fell further by the wayside as the Ryman was visited by thespians of every stripe, by vaudevillians, magicians, comedians, dancers, minstrels, bands, lecturers, movie stars, musicians, and singers. It could be argued that entertainment without overt religious themes would have never been permitted at the Ryman had it not been for the precedent set by Jim Key. In no small credit to this history, in 1943 Ryman Auditorium became the official home of the Grand Ole Opry, also known as the Mother Church of Country Music. On the same stage where the Equine King had preached the gospel of kindness, came future legends that spanned the country and western spectrum, including that other King, Elvis Presley, who in 1954 blended music that was black and white, from the church and from the saloons, and shocked the Ryman to its core.

Nashville did not take to Presley at that time as fast as it had embraced Beautiful Jim Key in 1899. In competing rave reviews after the shows, the Nashville American and the Nashville Banner had a war of words over who had actually discovered Jim Key a year and a half earlier when he was only part of an exhibit at the Tennessee Centennial. Neither paper was responsible. It was, in fact, the Nashville Sun that first wrote about Jim and claimed he was the top draw of the Exposition.

 

Competitions arose among cities, states, fairs, humane societies, school systems, benefits, and box offices. Where were more seats sold? More money raised to rescue mistreated animals or investigate reports of cruelty to nonhumans, children, and the elderly? More testimonials? More publicity? More delightful and astonishing anecdotes about the most famous horse in America?

When the Pittsburg Press welcomed Jim back to their fair city’s Exposition for a third season, the newspaper took one of Albert’s earlier ideas and made a novel offer to the West Pennsylvania Humane Society to promote a fund drive to raise $400 for a much-needed horse ambulance. Contributors’ names were publicized in the Press with amounts ranging from as high as $100 from presidents of prominent companies, down to donations of as low as $1 from a certain “Fido.” With promotional help from Jim’s live performances, the drive also got a huge boost from a half-page cartoon of a bespectacled Beautiful Jim Key, in his lounging attire, reading a copy of the newspaper. Plugging the Press Animal Ambulance Fund, its headline read “Pittsburg Needs an Animal Ambulance,” and the caption for Jim’s comment read “That’s the best bit of news I’ve read in a long time!”

The drive raised $1,000, enough to buy a derrick to rescue animals who regularly fell into excavation areas, as well as what became known as the Jim Key Ambulance of Pittsburg.

Not to be outdone, the Women’s Pennsylvania SPCA in Philadelphia, having heard about the 1897 Cincinnati newspaper-sponsored essay contest, decided to improve upon the concept and use the occasion of Jim’s school performances at the Export Exposition on the Esplanade to sponsor a citywide composition contest on the topic “What Patience and Kindness Will Accomplish with Animals.” Every entrant received a large souvenir button with a picture of Jim and Dr. Key on it, as well as the name of the “Women’s Penna SPCA,” while medals in the shape of copper coins with Jim’s likeness were awarded to the contest winners.

The frenzy to own one of those copper coins became a contagion that spread through Philadelphia, inspiring the Women’s Society to mint Commemorative Beautiful Jim Key pennies for sale. They soon became collector’s items across the state and the country, signifying the value of both humane beliefs and education.

Inadvertently, in these and other ways, the self-taught veterinarian and his horse spurred an ad hoc literacy movement, which in turn continued to sound the themes of the humane movement, and vice versa. Teachers and school administrators listened carefully to William Key, examining their own attitudes toward the discipline and instruction of young humans. How realistic was an approach of “kindness, kindness, and more kindness”? Many were willing to try to find out.

In Philadelphia, where on the dare of a student, Jim correctly spelled P-E-N-N-S-Y-L-V-A-N-I-A, and responded to another child’s question of “how much is four times five, plus five, minus three?” by plucking up the card with the number 22 on it, one formerly skeptical reporter quipped, “What will he learn next, square roots?” Another less caustic Philadelphia reporter called him the “Equine Marvel of the Century” and the newly erected Beautiful Jim Key Palace on the Esplanade a shrine to humane education. This reviewer described the atmosphere at the start of the show as charged with excitement and applause:

…with all eyes centered on the beautiful horse as he comes on stage. A large bay, fully sixteen hands, with a head of exquisite turn, large eyes, soft as a deer’s, half hidden by the dressed forelock and ears sharp pointed and well sloped forward, the nostrils open, the upper lip in motion. “Who are you?” he asks as plainly as man ever spoke. He is, indeed, entitled to his name, for every muscle of the rounded body, instinct with glorious life, is swelling and diminishing with his every graceful motion. As he advances upon the stage, he bows to the audience, with all the grace of a debutante, and stands waiting to respond to the questions that are so rapidly put to him.

If kindness and patience could do that for a horse, what other applications could they have? More than one newspaper adopted the modern notion that perhaps “to spare the rod” would not spoil the child, or horse, or any other creature.

Because every performance continued to be different, flowing in an order based on the questions being asked, there were no pronounced differences between the presentations Dr. Key and Jim gave to younger audiences and those performed for adults. But in Philadelphia, as in every other city where schools were closed for half or whole holidays, local youth took a most proprietary stance toward the Equine Wonder, and they came in crushing armies to his shows. Wherever school matinees were held, police reinforcements were often called in to assist in what the “blue-coated” officers must have thought was akin to the “‘Charge of the Light Brigade’—barring the shot and the shell” (so observed by a Minneapolis reporter) as fanatically enthusiastic children clamored to be let into the next show.

But as Dr. Key would have had occasion to recall at that 1901 Boston Food Fair appearance, as the ponderous Harvard professors got their examination under way, the claims that he used hypnosis were frequently leveled at him because children often exited Jim’s shows in an almost serene state, as if the young audience was being mesmerized by trainer and horse.

In Plainfield, New Jersey, there had also been a reporter’s suggestion that Doc Key might be leading Jim with tricks of his voice, clucks, or other coded vocal guides. But none could be discerned, and William Key’s tone and cadence were admittedly conversational.

At the 1899 Export Exposition in Philadelphia, a man in the audience had stood up and questioned Dr. Key about his use of the short whip. It appeared that from time to time in the show the Doc would gently tap Jim with it, once, or maybe twice, but no particular scheme could be observed. William Key never explained the tapping. It might have been a secret signal, although how the code would have worked was just as much a mystery. It might have been a prod for Jim to focus on the task at hand and to let him know that it was not yet time for his reward. But rather than explaining the light tapping, Dr. Key offered not to use the riding crop at all during the performance. He put it backstage and returned, holding his arms at his sides without much movement.

For most of the rest of the show, Beautiful Jim Key was as much of an intellectual prodigy as ever until the show was interrupted, at precisely 3:42 P.M., by an earth-shuddering commotion that was accompanied by a monstrous shrieking of whistles. Much of the audience, thinking there was a fire, rushed to the doors. The mayhem so terrified Jim that he lunged straight for the floodlights and into the screaming audience.

“Jim!” William Key had been forced to bellow, stopping the stallion’s stampede in his tracks, right at the last second, just before serious injury was inflicted.

The commotion was not caused by fire, but rather, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported the next day, an unscheduled departure of Admiral Dewey’s locomotive on its way to Washington. Dewey had asked that he be routed close to the Exposition so he could see the “gaily decorated buildings” and be able to wave to cheering crowds as he passed by.

The incident was the example Dr. Key used from then on as to why he held the whip, in case of an emergency, and if he needed it to guide Jim out to safety.

On another tack, the Doctor countered skepticism by encouraging audience members to try to confuse Jim, whether by rearranging the letters, figures, cards, and words on his display screen, or by removing them. If a spectator asked, “Jim, go get the eight of clubs,” and it wasn’t there, Jim’s usual response was to scan the screen a couple of times, just to make sure, and then to shake his head no, with one of his pseudo shrugs or even a put-on yawn to the Doc, as though they were having a private joke: Amateurs!

Sometimes Dr. Key liked to see what would happen if he challenged Jim onstage. At a theater in Syracuse, he asked his costar to bring him the six of hearts. When Jim brought it to him, the Doc stepped forward, his back to his horse, held up the card to the audience—to great applause—and then discreetly tore off a corner with two of the hearts from the card.

He turned back to his student. “Now, Jim, are you sure you brought me the six of hearts?”

Beautiful Jim Key moved his head up and down emphatically, then gazed out at the crowd, asking for affirmation. Amid a chorus of applause some voices warned Jim, “Check the card! Two hearts are missing!”

Acting confused, Dr. Key repeated, “You sure it was the six of hearts?” After Jim indicated yes once more, patiently, of course, because his trainer was getting up in years and it would be impolite to roll his eyes or act peevish, the Doc held out the card and asked, “Well, please count the number of hearts on this card.”

Using his foot to strike the ground, he counted one, two, three, four hearts. What foul play was this? Dr. Key smiled, waiting for the audience to applaud him, but the Equine Marvel just then spotted the piece of the torn card on the ground with the two missing hearts. To laughter and a thunderous ovation, the man and the horse bowed modestly, proving their case, for the moment, that they couldn’t trick each other, let alone the world.

 

Skepticism continued to grow proportionately to their success. But there was one place in all the nation where there was an entire city of true believers. Shelbyville, Tennessee. The suggestion to any of these citizens—or their descendants—that Dr. Key’s methods were suspect or that Jim wasn’t the most amazing horse who ever lived was to them an insult. Many in town had been up to the Tennessee Centennial to see Jim there, but almost nobody missed the grand event on January 27 and 28, when as had been agreed Albert Rogers brought a production of The Scholar and a Model Office Boy to the Shelbyville Opera House. The proceeds went to establish a Bedford County Humane Society that A. R. Rogers was on hand to help organize. The rallying cry of “Encore! Encore!” was enough to convince Dr. Key to return after their week in Nashville for two more nights in order to raise money for a humane society in Madison County over in West Tennessee.

The joy that Dr. William Key must have felt at these command engagements was probably rivaled only by Jim’s pride. Three years back he was making political jokes at the county fair, and here he was, starring in his own play. Monk was obviously pleased just from the added attention. The engagement was likewise a celebration for the Davis family, who were able to witness the attention that Stanley and Sam received for being members of the troupe; not to mention that they were able to stay safely close to home. There was already talk around town about Stanley soon going off to Collins College for Veterinary Surgery in Nashville, which the Doc had recently arranged, and one day taking over Doc Key’s veterinary business. The family was likewise happy that Maggie Davis was doing well in her studies in Alabama and that it looked as if there was a budding, long-distance romance brewing between her and Dr. Key, their thirty-three-year age difference not at all a hindrance.

It was, above all, the hometown crowd that experienced the biggest vicarious thrill for their conquering heroes. They could now certainly say they knew them when.

Less than two years earlier, most people in America had never heard of Shelbyville. But now, suddenly, with every article, booklet, or promotional piece put out about Beautiful Jim Key, the town was becoming as much of a household name as he was. As the family members of the next two generations of these firsthand eyewitnesses could testify, both the horse and the man defined and changed their lives; Bill and Jim Key were charmed, magical even, and made the city so as well.

As Bedford County breeders began to examine their horses for signs of the kind of extraordinary talent Jim had demonstrated, it was in this time frame that they started to notice that while there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary about their horses’ intellectual abilities, there was in fact something distinctive about the local equine gait.

A mix of Narragansett and Canadian Pacers, Thoroughbred, American Saddlebred, horses of the Morgan strain, and, yes, Hambletonian blood (linking them to Beautiful Jim Key and his sire, Tennessee Volunteer) had coalesced into this emerging bloodline. These general utility horses that were sometimes called Nodding Horses, Tennessee Walkers, or Plantation Horses had a rolling, strolling walk that was smooth and courtly. Eventually, the three natural gaits observed came to be categorized as the flat-foot walk, the running walk, and the canter, each with enough lilt and rhythm so as to be dancelike but not so as to jostle a rider. The elegant nodding of the head resulted from the innate, unusual foot motion of these horses, as well as the undulating limberness of their backs. Another pervasive trait of this emerging breed was the Walkers’ incredible relaxation, which allowed the top athletes to travel as fast as six miles an hour with the special pushing stride that the horses had developed in adapting to the rolling hills of Middle Tennessee. With the imminent arrival in nearby Wartrace of Allen-F-1, who had actually been bred in Old Kentucky, the Tennessee Walking Horse would soon be named, an equine dynasty that was to put Shelbyville and environs on the map as horse country forevermore.

During this stop in Shelbyville, Jim secured a major celebrity endorsement deal. The arrangement Dr. Key made was with the Robinson-McGill Mfg. Co., makers of “harness, saddles, collars, and strap goods,” one of the oldest and most respected harness makers in Bedford County. For a premium, Robinson-McGill paid for the right to use Jim’s name and likeness on all their advertisements and products, calling them the “Jim Key Brand,” and the company also gave Doc Key salesman status, which provided him a significant commission on any orders he made while out of state when he was traveling. Albert Rogers was not involved in this merchandising opportunity, as it wasn’t covered under his promotional agreement. Then again, when Rogers had arranged an endorsement fee from National Cash Register, maker of the customized cash box with leather tabs that Jim used in his shows, that had not been split with the Keys. Meanwhile, when he negotiated with NCR’s competitor, Metropolitan Cash Register of New York, to use their nickel-plated Twentieth-Century Beautiful Jim Key cash register, at a sizable premium, that money was his. Rogers benefited from a similar arrangement with Amberg Imperial Letter Cabinet File.

This was another hazy area of the Key, Key, and Rogers partnership, like how to split proceeds from the hot-selling souvenir photographs, postcards, buttons, pamphlets, and other Jim Key paraphernalia. The Doc was becoming concerned that his percentage of those immense profits was too small, but he had not yet figured out a way to broach the topic with A. R. Rogers. Dr. Key had limitless respect and appreciation for Albert Rogers, knowing in the depths of his being that without him he could not have made the journey into the worlds that the promoter inhabited. But Key had survived by being smart, and he would not tolerate any whiff of an inequity or any possibility that he was being exploited.

There was another small problem. With the deluge of edible gifts—mainly sugar and apples—that Jim was receiving everywhere he went, he had begun to look a tad portly and didn’t seem to have his normal verve on his morning runs. It was not something Dr. Key worried about, but when they played three weeks in New Orleans for the Horse Show and the Louisiana State Fair, the topic of Jim’s added girth actually made the papers. Jim was, without question, the most illustrious equine there, standing out even more with the ubiquitous Monk on his back. Besides, the extra weight did little to change his handsome star presence, or so Albert Rogers pointed out in his latest edition of the increasingly read promotional pamphlet:

Jim is a splendid saddle horse, and has led many big parades. His beautiful arched neck and the graceful curves of his body and long, sweeping tail, make a beautiful picture, as he keeps step to the music, though prancing and fairly dancing. At the New Orleans Horse Show, and many others where he has been on exhibition, he has taken all the blue ribbons in several classes.

Rogers didn’t mention that when it was proposed that Jim participate in a one-mile trotting race, Doc Key, perhaps knowing better, couldn’t say no. He had, after all, boasted more than once to reporters that the proud great-great-grandson of Rysdyk’s Hambletonian could trot a mile under harness, if not at the two-and-a-half minute standard, then at least under the three-minute mark. Suffice to say, Beautiful Jim Key did not win the race and may have been rather embarrassed about it. The Doc shrugged it off, joking to the press that Jim’s excess horseflesh was on account of the excess wine the pampered bay had been drinking.

Though Dr. Key devised a stricter diet and exercise regimen that Monk helped him monitor, Jim had his ways of sneaking treats. Coconspirators involved Stanley and Sam, as well as reporters, and Albert Rogers who could never refuse the lovable bay’s soulful entreaties. Still, Rogers was quick to do some damage control about rumors that the star was spoiled or out of shape, writing in the pamphlet:

Either the Doctor, who trained him, or a groom is always by his side, and he could not be given more constant care and attention were he the fleetest racer in the world on the eve of the most important Derby of the turf. Even his grain and hay, though the choicest quality that can be bought, are examined very closely to see that no impurities are in them. His drinking water is not from the common hydrant, but is the purest spring water that can be had; often bottled water secured for him…. Every morning he has his gallop, and comes in reeking with perspiration to receive an hour’s rubbing and combing until his coat fairly shines, and is then in fine condition for his daily work…. Never has been sick; always takes especial delight in his work.

Jim, Monk, Dr. Key, and Rogers were discovering, each to a different degree, that once you were famous, the public had a distinct sense of ownership about what you did or said, how you looked, and with whom you associated. Fans had a right to know everything, so it seemed, including one question that arose frequently: why had Dr. Key taught Jim to like sugar in the first place? Surely, he knew that so much sugar would be bad for Jim.

Nonsense, countered the Doc. Sugar was easier to use when training because it could be used in such small amounts, as compared with apples or apple pieces, which if eaten in too great a quantity could upset Jim’s stomach. Moreover, he said, and Rogers quoted him in the promotional pamphlet, “Sugar I have always found good for animals.”

The New Orleans performances produced a meaningful testimonial from Lew Parker, a manager of the St. Charles Theatre and Academy of Music, and a former contracting agent for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West traveling show, who wrote to describe his early years traveling the world on the lookout for gifted equines. “In all my travels I saw all the trained horses. And I am free to say that Jim Key is the greatest of them…. I firmly believe Jim Key will live in history as the greatest horse ever exhibited.”

Regardless of the obstacles, challenges, mishaps, and pitfalls of celebrity, Jim was the beneficiary of what seemed to be an unstoppable momentum, much like the champion racehorses he was being compared to. The numbers spoke for themselves:

• One week—Muncie Street Fair. $1,847 (1899)
• Seven weeks—Export Exposition, Philadelphia. 173,263 admissions; $20,612.00 (1900, similar to box office for 1899)
• Six weeks—Pittsburg Exposition $7,000 (1900, similar to box office for 1899)
• March 17 to September 1, 1901—Young’s Ocean Pier, Atlantic City. “I have never had such a drawing card on my pier before; during our large attendance at Easter time, over 80 percent of the thousands who thronged my pier paid an extra admission to see Jim Key.” ( John L. Young)

After their first engagement at Atlantic City, Rogers had not been eager to return in 1901, even with the promise of headlining a bill that included the likes of the incomparable palmist/astrologer team of Albert & Albert, the vaudevillians McMahen & King (“the funniest of all Black face Comedians”), the ever popular Colored Cake Walk dancers, The Gleckers (“baton manipulators”), the Irish comedians Mike & Dennis, Albert C. Waltz, skater and cyclist extraordinaire, a “light artist” and master of “clay modeling,” and Mademoiselle Dulce Durant, whose barefoot dancing was intoxicating. The summer at the New Jersey resort promised to be a profitable one too, with crowds pouring down to the seashore in breathtaking numbers.

But there was a conflicting venue that had much more potential for reaching the masses. It was the Pan American World’s Fair at Buffalo, set to run during the same months as the stint at Young’s Ocean Pier. William Key weighed in on the decision, expressing some sort of bad premonition about Buffalo, sending a handwritten note to Rogers with two question marks by the event: “Pan American??”

The Doc may have further consulted with astrologers Albert & Albert, to see what their predictions were for the world’s fair. They too, it seemed, saw a dark cloud over the enterprise. A. R. Rogers complied with Doc Key’s wishes and withdrew his application for a Beautiful Jim Key concession at the fair, but he did not alter his plans for some of the other attractions he continued to promote.

At first, with the staggering words of praise issuing forth out of Buffalo, Rogers must have thought Dr. Key either overly superstitious or simply wrong about whatever he had foreseen. At a cost of ten million dollars, the planners had executed a miracle, said papers across the country. In a daring departure from the uniform white finish to most buildings used at most expositions—which had been daring when it was first done to create the wonder of Chicago’s 1893 White City for the Columbian World’s Fair—the Pan American planners had erected a Rainbow City by finishing exhibit halls in shades of gold, green, red, and blue. The multicolored electrical night scene reportedly surpassed anything ever attempted, and the staging against the backdrop of Niagara Falls was exquisite.

But several things that could go wrong did. There was the typical lateness on the completion of the Exposition, leaving early visitors unimpressed. The Pan American theme to promote unity among nations of the Western Hemisphere was also a flop, especially with rising criticism of U.S. imperialism at the doorsteps of neighbors. Then there was the May 9, 1901, stock market collapse, the result of a panic that erupted when financial titans J. P. Morgan and E. H. Harriman battled it out for a takeover of Northern Pacific Railroad, plunging stock prices to near worthlessness. Though not the last Wall Street collapse ever to shake the nation, it was the first time in history that the market closed early, after investors’ losses in the hundreds of millions. (The crash undoubtedly hurt the Rogers’s family fortune, making Albert’s income now necessary to support his loved ones, not just a hobby or, as he liked to say in the case of Jim, a philanthropic bet to see if he could prove to his friends that animals think and reason.) If the panic wasn’t enough to plague the world’s fair, the oppressive, unprecedented summer heat in Buffalo made more headlines than the exhibits. Then, in the fall, the weather finally cooperated with cool, glorious autumn days. But just when planners and investors hoped to recover from financial losses of more than $3 million and mushrooming lawsuits, tragedy struck on September 6, 1901, at the Pan American Exposition.

At a reception held in honor of President McKinley in the Temple of Music, a fairgoer named Leon Czolgosz, described as an unassuming man of average height dressed in a nondescript black suit, joined in a crowd of well-wishers to shake the President’s hand. When he approached, at the range of two feet, Czolgosz raised his outstretched hand, which held a concealed revolver, and fired it twice, striking fifty-eight-year-old McKinley in the chest. One bullet became lodged in his breastbone and another in his stomach. As Secret Service men apprehended Czolgosz—an anarchist seeking to overthrow the government—McKinley’s first concern was to admonish his aides to be gentle in telling his beloved and fragile Ida about the shooting. He also insisted that he was not seriously injured and asked that his assailant not be harmed, even as lynch mobs thirty thousand strong began to assemble.

Eight days later, William McKinley died in Buffalo, and Theodore Roosevelt, age forty-two, located in the middle of the night on a manly adventure off on some mountaintop and escorted at top speed to Buffalo, was sworn in as the youngest man ever to serve as president of the United States.

It was only one month after ascending to the presidency that Roosevelt hosted Booker T. Washington at the White House, a controversial yet courageous act that definitely earned him the admiration of Dr. William Key. Arriving in Boston two weeks after that historic occasion, Dr. Key told reporters that Jim had always been a Democrat but had switched his party affiliation. Beautiful Jim Key was so upset by the news that one of his first famous fans had been assassinated that he decided to support McKinley’s party in his memory. The horse also liked Roosevelt, a friend to the Negro people, and because the new President had spoken out against docking the tails of horses. As far as other candidates for other offices, it seemed that Jim would make up his mind, depending on the individual, not the party.

The Boston Globe reporter couldn’t prevent a mocking tone from entering the article, commenting after Dr. Key’s statements that readers could decide for themselves “whether or not horses have minds.” This dubious stance appeared motivated not so much by journalistic integrity as it was by Bostonian snobbery, or that’s how it must have felt to Albert Rogers, who’d had little success until now booking Beautiful Jim Key for any major exhibits in Boston. The sophisticated New York City audiences were almost provincial when compared with the elitist tastes not just of the Brahmins but also of most every Bostonian he encountered. Even with vibrant letters of introduction from George Angell to exhibition planners and school board directors, Rogers could not seem to find an opening. It mattered not that The Scholar and a Model Office Boy at the Star Theatre on New York’s Broadway had been reviewed as daring (the choice of a vaudeville context at a melodrama theatre was “out of the usual line”) or that it was described as a tonic for the jaded playgoer. “It is worth going below Twenty-third Street just to see theatergoers laugh until the tears run down their cheeks,” one New York critic promised. “The star of the show was a horse, ‘Beautiful Jim Key.’ His tricks were entertaining and he seemed to get as much fun out of his part as the audience did.” Nor were theater owners in Boston swayed by the money the play had made in other cities.

In 1900, one area theater had been willing to do the play, provided there was a name change, since, heaven forbid, what producer of any taste would open a show that had been done last in—now, where was that place, Shelbyville? Rogers didn’t argue, thinking that a name change wasn’t such a terrible idea, and brought The Horse of the Twentieth Century to Boston for a short run that thrilled George Angell and his colleagues and made a lovely splash with the general public but still didn’t pave the way for the kind of receptions that were being bestowed on Beautiful Jim Key everywhere else.

The Food Fair planners may have finally been influenced by news of an unprecedented decision that Angell announced in a letter to A. R. Rogers:

It gives me pleasure to inform you that at the annual convention of the American Humane Association recently held at Pittsburg, Pa., Beautiful Jim Key was elected an honorary member of the Association. I think this is the first instance on record of such an act on the part of our organization. It was an expression of our appreciation of the intelligence of the horse, the kindness of his trainer, and the generosity of his owner.

No newspaper account or piece of correspondence could accurately convey the significance of this honor to Jim or Bill. The romantic Rogers couldn’t resist having Jim “write” a letter to George Angell that described what it was like when Mr. Rogers read the news to a large auditorium full of children and he learned of his status as the first nonhuman to be elected to so august and important an organization, and he promised to serve faithfully on behalf of every species. Despite this overly cute conceit, the event marked an evolution in Jim’s demeanor as a celebrity, as though he genuinely recognized he was now a diplomat for his kind and had to be on his very best behavior. He shirked off his former modest blush along with his extra pounds, carrying himself less like a first-run and more like an unbeatable champion.

More honorary memberships followed. Jim Key soon became the first nonhuman honorary member of Angell’s other organizations, the Massachusetts SPCA, the American Humane Education Society, and the Parent American Band of Mercy. Not to be left out, a literacy group elected him as the first nonhuman honorary member of their Pen and Pencil Club.

Dr. William Key was next elected to all four branches of Angell’s humane groups, and at last Albert Rogers, for his energy and innovation, was made a vice president of the Education Society. He sensed that there had been resistance to this symbolic gesture from some of the other officers. Nonetheless, now that he could legitimately call himself a philanthropist, he was determined to live up to the example of his greatest inspiration, George Angell. He was even inspired to look for property to buy in or around Boston, seemingly preferring the aristocratic social set there to the New York and New Jersey elite. One of his first acts as an officer was to form the Jim Key Band of Mercy with the outlandish promise to sign up one million or more children within five years (this number was in addition to the one million signers of the Jim Key Pledge card he had been collecting), and he devised a kind of pyramid scheme for enlisting membership, with himself, “Uncle Bert,” as the presidential figurehead. Also as an honorary member of the Parent American Band of Mercy, he daringly told Angell that he would boost the three million adult members of the various bands to ten million within those same five years.

Angell laughingly encouraged him, believing that if anyone could do it, the persistent A. R. Rogers could. Albert became more relentless than ever, securing engagements for Jim for dates more than three years ahead, flooding the planning committees of the world’s fairs in Charleston, South Carolina, and St. Louis, Missouri, with petitions for buildings. He promoted practically in his sleep, soliciting testimonials from animal experts such as Professor J. W. Gentry of the Gentry Dog and Pony Show (“Beautiful Jim Key stands without a compeer on earth, and I have seen them all”), and from James A. Cathcart, owner of the famed educated Bartholomew’s Horses (“I have never seen a horse the equal of Jim Key”), as well as from the most respected animal trainer alive, Adam Forepaugh Jr., who quipped, “I revere Dr. Key.”

Free passes to educators and booking agents were now a fixture everywhere Jim performed, as were Jim Key Pledge cards and application forms for establishing a Beautiful Jim Key Band of Mercy (“sign up ten other friends and have your names pasted on the great Jim Key banner roll”). Albert’s AHES vice presidency didn’t diminish his zeal as a promoter as he sent out press releases with Jim’s new honorary memberships listed, and with new potent catchphrases: “Refined. High class. Interesting.” “In New Acts More Wonderful Than Ever.” “Higher Educated.” “The Society Pet and Children’s Delight.” “The Talk of Every City.” “The Pride of the South.” And not to be forgotten: “He Was Bred in Old Kentucky.”

Out of all the honors, the most prestigious one that the AHA, the MSPCA, the AHES, and the Parent American Band of Mercy chose to bestow was to Dr. William Key, with its presentation set for November 1, 1901, of the Service to Humanity Award. George Angell insisted that in spite of a spell of ill health he himself be present to award the gold medal to his friend and colleague in a public ceremony. He had to witness the moment for himself when Dr. William Key received his due.

So with that event in the works, the planners of the Boston Food Fair realized that it really couldn’t hurt to exhibit the horse. True, the horse had nothing to do with food, but neither did the musical entertainments that were scheduled to perform. There was also the thought that Beautiful Jim Key did have a certain fondness for the ladies, who came in determined hordes to this fair to enjoy both the bountiful food giveaways and the lectures on topics such as new salads or the latest ways to prepare stag. Once the Food Fair had booked Beautiful Jim Key, the Cambridge and the Boston school superintendents decided to schedule special school matinees for their students after all.

But honorary memberships and national celebrity notwithstanding, Bostonians continued to be coy, wanting to be wooed. Even though Jim’s show was staged in the massive hall at the Mechanics Building, for the first and second weeks of the Food Fair he was listed at the bottom of the newspaper ads, as an afterthought. Day by day, however, his name started moving up in the ad, as word of mouth spread. By the third week he was at the midpoint of the bill, and by the fourth week he was second from the top. By the last week, he was the lead attraction, ahead even of the Royal Marine Band of Italy whose conductor, Signor Giorgio Minoliti, composed the music for “The Beautiful Jim Key Two-Step” and began selling the sheet music, soon a collector’s item, wherever the Italian musicians appeared.

There was no question. Boston had fallen in love with Beautiful Jim Key. The standoffish Globe reporter who had mocked Jim’s politics and the suggestion that he had a “mind” now wrote tearful testimonials, describing how the big bay could spell “G-L-O-B-E,” or how anyone could stand up and ask him anything. “Tell him to multiply 6 by 8 and divide by 12, and he brings you the right answer”—4—“on a card from the rack.” Could he identify the name of the President? “He picks out the name Roosevelt.” Operate a general store? Indeed, “he slams the drawer shut on the cash register with as much dash as a girl in a lunch room who has fingers.” The Globe reporter had his suspicions banished with this incident:

A lady called for a letter from the alphabet and Jim fetched E. Dr. Key remonstrated and said, D. And the woman thereupon stated that she had called for E and that the horse had understood her correctly while the man had made a mistake.

Incredibly, the Boston Globe then proceeded to publish human-interest stories about average citizens around town committing humane acts, with headlines such as “Man Rescues a Cat from a Tree at Great Risk to Himself,” as well as in-depth articles about Bostonian companion animals like Mrs. Dr. Thornton’s “mascot” named Filipino (Pino for short), a mischievous and lovable Java monkey known for stopping by police headquarters and firehouses, and for joining the fellows in drinks and a smoke during off-hours.

Jim Key had started something rather remarkable. But infatuation was not enough for a true and lasting commitment from Boston, Massachusetts, unless there was a way to prove there was not one iota of deceit involved in Jim’s exhibition. Hoaxes were very much in the news after the scandal at the Pan American World’s Fair over the discovery that the lucrative exhibit of a ten-foot-four, 2,900-pound petrified Cardiff Giant once said to be the Eighth Wonder of the World was a fake.

That’s when someone, most likely George Angell, proposed that Dr. Key and Jim be subjected to a rigorous examination by a delegation of Harvard’s leading authorities. President Charles Eliot was present for the duration of the study but did not make any comments, asserting that he would defer to the professors in their findings. (Eliot’s own testimonial later read: “It is really the most remarkable exhibition I have ever witnessed. I have seen him several times.”)

And that was how Bill Key found himself very much entertained by all the fuss.

During the first show, the curious group had repressed the usual reactions, neither laughing nor indicating amazement. They watched, listened, asked questions of Jim in loud, professorial voices, and occasionally took measurements. In between the two shows, they buzzed around the stage in a cooperative hive, peeking under props and in drawers, searching through Dr. Key’s clothing and conducting a very thorough examination of the Educated Arabian-Hambletonian. They asked the Doc all the usual questions, looking for his system, and honed in on the short whip. Without objection, Doc Key agreed not to use it for the second show.

They seemed to focus much more closely now on their various specialties. During questions related to spelling and reading, the linguist paid the most careful attention; when the questions were mathematically related, the math professor jotted down several notes. After the show concluded, they shook hands with Dr. Key, thanked him for his patience, bid adieu to Beautiful Jim Key, and left to confer with one another before making a pronouncement.

The following day, October 27, 1901, the Boston Globe ran only a short piece with the headline “Examined by Harvard College Professors”:

A number of Professors from Harvard made a special trip to see Jim Key, the celebrated horse, yesterday, for the purpose of examining him from a psychological point of view, some persons having expressed the opinion that the animal is kept hypnotized.

Just what was the secret the finest minds in America had uncovered about Bill and Jim? Their determination was unanimous. There was no hoax. No hypnosis. Jim was not a freak of nature. He was naturally of a high intelligence, but not a genius. Their explanation for his mathematical wizardry and humanlike reasoning and abstractions was succinct: “After a stay through two performances, during which the Professors made a careful examination of Jim Key’s mathematical ability, and interviewed Dr. Key, the horse’s teacher, they came to the conclusion it is simply education.”

 

Bill began to think that he and Jim needed to take some time off from the rattling pace they had been maintaining for nearly five years. Maybe permanently. At almost seventy years old, he had started to ask himself why shouldn’t he retire. Especially after reaching the pinnacle of his life’s achievement on the day when he accepted the Service to Humanity medal from George Angell in front of a Boston auditorium filled to overflowing. How could any attainment surpass that high point? To make it that much sweeter, two weeks prior to his award ceremony, in the embrace of Bostonians who knew the real thing when they saw it, Jim had been feted and presented with a similar award, the Living Example Award from the Parent American Band of Mercy. Beautiful Jim Key had become to the humane movement what Black Beauty had been only on paper as a fictitious standard-bearer, it was said, while a crossbred “scrub colt” had grown up to be an actual living example that animals could think and feel; proof of the power of kindness. Jim’s medal was fittingly beautiful, but the Doc’s Service to Humanity medal was a priceless treasure, a gold five-point star that hung from a gold bar inscribed with the credos of the sponsoring organizations: “Glory to God, Peace on Earth, Kindness to All Harmless Living Creatures,” dated November 1, 1901, to Dr. William Key by the Parent American Band of Mercy and the Massachusetts SPCA.

In December, Jim and Dr. Key were featured in their first of three appearances in Our Dumb Animals, which Albert Rogers was quick to promote as the publication of the American Humane Education Society with its motto of “Kindness, Justice and Mercy to Every Living Creature.” As Uncle Bert, Rogers plugged the article in his next newsletter:

This paper should be read by every lover of animals. It is the most quoted from paper in the country—full of crisp up-to-date facts, full of interesting information in the humane cause. Edited personally by Mr. Angell, whose terse signed notes are always to the point, and famous the world over. They are little acorns from which great oaks have grown and will grow. Mr. George T. Angell, of Boston, is the great Apostle of Humanity toward the Birds of the Air and All Animals, and without question has done more to educate the masses to consideration and kindness towards animals than any one else. He is one of God’s own noblemen, whom all love and revere for his unselfish devotion to the Humane Cause.

Dr. Key knew that George Angell had made sure that the magazine’s staff, in their offices in Boston’s Goddard Building at 19 Milk Street, wrote and placed the story in a way that acknowledged him and Jim, yet also promoted their mutual cause. On what better note to take their bow, the Doc couldn’t imagine.

Whether or not William Key saw himself as lucky, he knew to count his blessings and knew that he had also worked for those blessings. He had shared his wealth, had repaid debts of kindness, and had lived an honorable life, bringing honor to his family and community. He had used his gifts well, had reaped what he had sowed, and recognized that there were responsibilities that came along with the privileged position in which he moved, as a traveler between different worlds. It might have been a long time since he had officially gambled, but deep down in him there was probably a feeling of not wanting to tempt fate any longer.

This would have been his mother wit talking. There were signs. He could probably feel, when he was able to stand still, that the winds were changing again, the shifting ground underneath his feet signified harder times ahead. Maybe he foresaw the coming world wars, the rise of the machines, the great struggle to come for civil rights, but in any event he somehow perceived that this window of consciousness that had opened wide to value kindness and goodness was going to be closing soon. He and Beautiful Jim Key had come along in the right way at the right time for the humane movement. But that time was fleeting. Why stay too long at the fair?

And there were other causes and concerns that needed aid in his later years. In the various black newspapers and journals that Dr. Key collected, there was an emerging divide that was troubling. There was the path of less resistance, the separate-but-equal approach of Booker T. Washington, whose focus on education at Tuskegee and formation of the National Negro Business League won approval from the Doctor. But there was also the recent voice of W. E. B. DuBois, the first African-American to receive a doctorate from Harvard, who wanted full equality, and who warned against the deepening color line, adding a sense of urgency to the need for leadership from the black upper class in helping develop political organizations and foster the economic empowerment for all people of color. William Key apparently believed both leaders were right, that education, education, education was the cornerstone of advancement on the one hand, but that a color-blind marketplace—such as he had created for himself—had to be actively, consciously cultivated, maybe even demanded. Those happened to be his values as a self-educated professional and as an entrepreneur, and what he hoped to convey to Negro audiences in whatever capacity he was able.

These were also his priorities for how he spread out his assets, spending generously when it came to assisting his relatives with their educational and business pursuits, and securing more property for himself. Besides the 240 acres that he wanted to develop, he owned the land and home near what had been Keystone Driving Park (soon to be turned over to the Davises) and his place on North Main Street, which had another house, stables, and offices for his veterinary businesses (eventually to be taken over by Dr. Stanley Davis), and he was also looking to purchase a house in town, closer to the train station and the courthouse square. The property he had in mind was on Bethany Lane, in one of the better neighborhoods in Shelbyville, with a graceful white Victorian home on it, a stables and corral out back, and plenty of pasture where Jim and Monk, and the other Key family horses and animals could graze and play. Now that Maggie had received her degree, he was ready to legalize their union and provide for her a comfortable life. Plus, he had never written a will, and that was another thing he ought to do. Not that he was slowing down much or was ever even tired after performing on his feet hour after hour. Maybe his Keystone tonic was a youth elixir after all. Then again, it was a wise man who knew that only this day was given and that tomorrow was never promised.

Perhaps he was not feeling as safe as he once had felt traveling among so many strangers, a symptom of fame and of not being able to be anonymous, as well as a symptom of the increase in racist attacks on people of color. When recent race riots exploded in New York, the white mobs went on a rampage, some with the express purpose of killing black celebrities and entertainers like Bob Cole and Bert Williams. To be an African-American of wealth and stature was threatening enough, but to be loved and admired by white audiences seemed to be a crime, especially when black male musicians and actors found favor with white female fans.

So though it was all very well for a famous big dark stallion to bow and make bedroom eyes at the white women in his audiences, if the venerable mulatto horse trainer ever tried it, he would have been killed, as they said, in a New York minute. Presumably, this was one of the reasons why William Key agreed for Albert Rogers to be presented as the owner of Beautiful Jim Key, so as not to be known as the owner of a horse now estimated to be worth upward of $200,000.

Fame aside, the Doc didn’t have to know the statistics—that since 1893 up to this era, once a week, on average, two Negroes were lynched by mobs—to know that the brutal killings by hanging, mutilation, or being burned alive were not slowing down. The South was more dangerous than the North and West, but sometimes only by degree. Dr. Key, with his therapeutic orientation, needed to step back as a way of finding a prescription, or at least a perspective. Dr. W. E. B. DuBois wrote about a similar inner struggle of his divided self:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Key needed to reconcile the duality that while he and many more in white America had flourished in recent years, too many African-Americans still struggled under the yoke of prejudice and cruelty. Of the ten million Negroes in the United States, nine million lived in the South, more and more separate, less and less equal. He wanted to do more to help, as he had done when he had visited North Carolina and made an ostensibly large contribution on behalf of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of North Carolina, an African-American organization that “secured homes for the homeless” and had built a hospital as well as an orphanage in Charlotte.

One of the reasons it was becoming harder to include the humorous political debate with Jim in his act was that none of the political parties they mentioned any longer held the advancement of people of color as a part of their platforms. How could he and Jim joke about voting, when most black people were denied that right?

But his real reason for contemplating retirement was less about those or any personal trends, and more about Jim’s well-being. He worried that the winter travel, in spite of the comforts provided to them, could be creating a time-lapse disaster. True, Jim hadn’t come down with any illnesses from traveling, as of yet, but the Doctor believed that horses weren’t designed to move so often from one extreme climate to another.

At the end of 1901, they departed in a November winter storm from Massachusetts, where the doting Boston Traveler reported, by the way, that A. R. Rogers said Jim was earning net 4 percent on a million dollars per year, and that he was sending Jim to balmy Charleston to their world’s fair for the next three months, where, predicted the Traveler, “he is sure to be the main feature as he has been this past month,” and where, if Charleston didn’t yet have a humane society, they would soon after Jim got there.

The South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition was another financial disappointment to investors and another indication that the glut of big-scale fairs and expositions was beginning to erode the public appetite for them in general. But once again Beautiful Jim Key was a top draw, the proverbial horse who couldn’t lose. He proved to be such a moneymaker and publicity success, he was declared the “Feature of the Midway,” as his friends in Boston had predicted. Before long, Albert’s fellow concessionaires hired him as a consultant to increase their business and then collectively elected him president of the Charleston Amusement Concessionaires Club. With his trademark spunk and ingenuity, A. R. Rogers launched a midway newspaper—for which he served as managing editor—to promote daily events and increase traffic to the various concessions.

By this point, Rogers had become a celebrity in his own right, sought after for his promotional expertise by peers like these in South Carolina, by fair organizers, creators of exhibits and rides, by other promoters, and even by entertainment trade papers such as Billboard Magazine. Nine months earlier, he was interviewed in that periodical about the new phenomenon of so-called electric parks, which were modest-size amusement parks set at the ends of trolley lines to make sure that American families had somewhere to go when they paid the full fare to take the trolley out of town. Rogers told the reporter, “Probably no amusement line has developed so rapidly the last three years as the street railway parks, or has any more profitable proposition been adopted.” His “Advice to Street Railway Managers of Parks,” as the column was entitled, was to capitalize on riders’ idle time by publishing free newspapers like his Street Railway Journal, with paid advertising from park concessionaires. (The park phenomenon was not as long-lived as he predicted, however, once city dwellers began to make their treks to the suburbs to live.) Albert had raked in the bucks by publishing these railway journals, not just from charging the cost of the ads but also by including more Jim Key product endorsements.

Even though he represented many other successful attractions and was traveling less and less with Dr. Key, Jim, and Monk, the name of Beautiful Jim Key always appeared at the top of his letterhead and was always his most potent calling card. On one flyer of this era, in a fit of hubris by which he likened himself to Barnum, he did list himself above Jim’s name, proclaiming: “ROGERS—A name that stands for all that is refined, high class and entertaining in the amusement world.” But he must have reconsidered this approach, since he quickly dropped it, allowing his roster to do that pitch:

• BEAUTIFUL JIM KEY, The Greatest Drawing Card in America
• Liquid Air Exhibitions
• Edison’s Electrical Fairyland
• Sub-marine Tank Exhibition: Deep Sea Diving in the Largest Tank in the World. A trip to the bottom of the sea. Divers at work raising sunken vessels, marine tableaux, etc.
• The Novel Animated Picture Exhibitions
• Southern Life and Cotton Exhibition: A reproduction of a Typical Southern Plantation with the Negroes gathering cotton in the fields, etc.
• Barnard’s Patented Giant Sea Wave
• Stella, Maid of the Moon: The Beautiful Mysterious Floating Star
• Electrical Naval Battles: Reproducing in miniature celebrated Naval Battles, with Guns and Mines Fired, Boats and Signals run, all by Electricity
• Am. Wild Game Park and Sportsman’s Exposition: A reproduction of a forest, with Live Buffalo, Moose, Caribou, Deer, Bears, etc., and an Indian Encampment with their Dances, Races, Games and Plays. Trappers, Guides, Log Houses, Canoe Races, Souvenirs, etc.
• Portable Electrical Prismatic Fountain: with Fire and Serpentine Dances and Plastique Poses. “The Girl with the Robes of Fire.”
• The Celestial Chinese Band and Festival Lanterns: With Chinese Races and Games and wonderful Kite Flying Contests, with their Chinese Dragon and Centipede Kites 100 feet long, Mammoth Butterfly Kites ten feet high and other grotesque designs. Chinese singing and acting, Chinese Fireworks, Day and Night. In all, the most unique entertainment possible.

Less high class but more profitable, the amusement rides he brokered and leased for parks and fairs—updated versions of Shoot the Chutes and the Mirror Maze, along with roller coasters such as the Loop-the-Loop—were another avenue of income. In all his marketing efforts, Rogers continued to be as innovative and relentless as William had first known him to be.

Interestingly enough, since Jim had been rethinking his political views, he was no longer billed in the South as the Educated Democratic horse but instead as the Educated Southern horse. Dr. Key was undoubtedly upset that the Charleston Exposition had done much less than the Tennessee Centennial to involve people of color, both in planning and in attending the fair. Because of his concern, coupled with the influence of Albert Rogers, and the popularity of Beautiful Jim Key, it was agreed that New Year’s Day, January 1, 1902, be celebrated as Negro Day. Special ten-cent discount coupons were issued that read:

This special ticket and 15 cents will admit the bearer to the astonishing performance of the Feature of the Midway, the Wonderful Educated Horse, BEAUTIFUL JIM KEY, Who can read, write, spell, count, figure, change money, tell time, play cards, etc. Taught by Dr. Wm. Key, the Most Successful Colored Trainer in the World. The One Show Everyone Wants to See of ALL, Regular admission 25 cents. Don’t lose this ticket. This ticket worth 10 cents. Good New Year’s Day Only. Negro Day at the Exposition. This Special Price for Colored People Only, by Special Request of Dr. Wm. Key who wants all his colored friends in Charleston to see Jim.

New Year’s Day 1902 had thus become another pinnacle, a day-long celebration with continuous performances in the Beautiful Jim Key Palace on the midway of the South Carolina Inter-State and West Indian Exposition. Fair planners were astonished to see how profitable the day had been and promptly opened admission to people of color; later it was believed that Negro fairgoers helped the Exposition from suffering worse losses. And it meant more to Dr. Key. On this New Year’s Day in his personal history he was given a reprieve from the discomfort of being a Negro permitted to perform on stages of halls where other people of color weren’t allowed to sit in the better seats or at all. But not only that: on this day he didn’t have to hide or diminish who he was and what he had accomplished. His feeling was certainly akin to the sentiments expressed by Booker T. Washington in a speech—a copy of which Dr. Key came to own—to the almost all-white National Educational Association:

You may not know it, but my people are as proud of their racial identity as you are of yours, and in the degree that they become intelligent, social pride increases. I was never prouder of the fact that I am classed as Negro than I am today.

How did Jim, “who had been raised in a colored family,” as the Southern newspapers had noted, feel about what this meant to the Doc? How much could he have understood, after all? What might Doc Key have explained to him? The only answer is that Beautiful Jim Key could unquestionably sense his teacher’s unbridled happiness and pride, which in turn would have made Jim the happiest horse who ever lived.

Albert Rogers saw it. The secret of Beautiful Jim Key’s extraordinary abilities was something more than “simply education.” Yes, it was kindness and patience, together with the strange life among humans that Jim had lived early on and the inseparable nature of the relationship between horse and man. It was both more than all that, yet also more basic. It was love. The love between human and nonhuman was so powerful it had bridged the language divide, more similar to a father-son relationship than anything else Rogers could conjure. Jim was happy when Doc Key was happy. The secret was love.

At the end of January, this realization was with Albert Rogers when he, Key, and Key took a brief recess from Charleston to travel to the freezing North to do a benefit honoring George Angell in Providence, Rhode Island. The program proclaimed, “Kindness has accomplished what cruelty could not have,” and further noted, “Affection toward an animal is never misplaced.”

These deepening sensibilities inspired Rogers, a short while after their return to Charleston, to add a new line to the promotional pamphlet that was now in its seventh or eighth edition. Romantic though he was, he couldn’t find a way to articulate what he now understood was really a great love story, saying instead very chattily: “One of the most interesting features of this marvelous performance is the affection displayed towards each other by the horse and his trainer.”

In this edition he also included an interesting comment Dr. Key had made about the Bible studies he and Jim had been working on. They had found many more than the fifty-four biblical allusions to horses and donkeys that they had first counted but had stuck with learning those fifty-four. Jim had learned to recognize them when quoted aloud and to cite book, chapter, and verse from written cards placed on his screen. Dr. Key had only begun incorporating this skill into their shows and was also teaching Jim to spell the names of the prophets. Bill Key repeated what he had told Albert when they had started this process. “Jim likes to hear about horses in the Bible, for they were very prominent animals then.”

Rogers couldn’t have imagined a more prominent horse than Jim was in this time. He looked at the book names and chapter citations—Genesis 50, Exodus 14, Revelations 6, and so on, in no special order.

Dr. Key continued, “Jim likes the prophets. The prophets had visions of horses. John says he looked up and beheld a white horse in heaven, and what Jim wants to know is, if there are white horses in heaven, why can’t a good bay horse go there also?”

A long silence naturally ensued. Albert had come to know William Key well, even with the formalities of their relationship, and he knew by now that this comment was both literal and metaphoric. What did he tell Jim? Rogers responded.

Doc Key had no ambivalence on this topic and assured Mr. Rogers that all horses go to heaven, good or not.

This set the mood for the Doctor to tell Albert that it was time for a break. By way of preamble, they discussed some of Doc Key’s complaints, including the fact that since he did most of the selling of the souvenir items, he ought to be getting a bigger share of the profits, despite the cost of their production being on the promoter’s shoulders. Rogers made some concessions, and they clarified some of the murkier areas of their arrangement, as well as how they could keep their humane work and merchandising activities going in the event that Jim had to suddenly retire.

This was a theoretical discussion until Dr. Key confessed what he hadn’t really admitted to himself. Jim Key had woken up on a couple of mornings and had been unable to stand. A good guess was that he had a touch of rheumatism, and it could get worse. Much worse. But then the symptoms had vanished.

Understandably upset, Rogers proposed a way to continue the Jim Key Band of Mercy and the souvenir and pamphlet sales, without Jim having to perform. Rogers had recently purchased an especially smart pony named Dick who was being trained at Glenmere, as Doc Key knew. The hope was that Dick could eventually do shows and benefits too. The other hope, better yet, was that Dr. Key might feel differently in a month or two.

With that, the two men shook hands, and a few days later, Dr. Key, Jim, and Monk left Charleston for Shelbyville. After a month or so, as they all settled into a much slower pace, a letter arrived from Albert Rogers requesting that some of the equipment he had purchased or had made for the show be shipped to Glenmere. He wanted to know where the large megaphone was, and what the dimensions were for the display rack, as he was commissioning a new one for Dick.

William knew when he read Albert’s letter that he was a man with a broken heart. The Doc had already shipped all those items some time before and had returned the megaphone just after that. But Albert wasn’t the only one who was suffering. For Jim and for Monk, the novelty of being back home and getting to play for hours, being free to live life as a normal horse and dog, not having to work or travel, seemed to be wearing off a little. There had been a few reporters for Monk to chase away, but no photographers. Jim got lots of visitors and fans stopping by, but that was a far cry from being onstage in front of thousands. Dr. Key figured this was to be expected, what a racehorse went through after an injury, or anyone with more time on their hands than they’d ever had before. He was still resolved that he had made the right decision. Writing A. R. Rogers, he reminded the promoter where to look for the items that he had previously returned and also went over the dimensions of the display screen. He continued:

The weather is very fine here most spring like. Jim is on blue grass every day for 4 or 5 hours & takes at least 4 or 5 hours to clean the mud & dust off that he rolls & tumbles in. Hoping you much success in your dates and to hear from you often. I remain yours truly, William Key

Rogers wrote back to test the waters, wondering how he and Jim were feeling, and if there was the possibility of performing in the near future. Dr. Key wasted no time in replying:

I am in fine health—also Jim is in splendid condition, and good shape and ready to hit the road at any time.

A month later, Beautiful Jim Key returned to public life, spending the spring and summer in Chicago—where he broke box office records at the amusement park housed in the White City that had been built for the 1893 World’s Fair, even with its need for renovation—and enjoyed a picture-postcard-perfect autumn in Syracuse, New York, before wrapping up in October with the 1902 season of the Boston Mechanics Fair.

At a fee of $5,000, fifty percent of which was contributed to the MSPCA, Beautiful Jim Key spent just over a month solidifying his place in the hearts of Bostonians. The Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association wrote a testimonial declaring they had first believed the fee to be prohibitive until discovering that he was the best drawing card they had ever hired.

In Syracuse, after Jim had just finished as the star attraction at the Alhambra Pet and Horse Fair and was readying for a run of his play, a reporter for the Post Standard made it his life’s purpose to find out what the Harvard professors had missed a year earlier. When he went to the luxurious, blanket-lined stall where the Marvel of the Century was being groomed, he faced down Monk, who barked out in no uncertain terms that no one was to disturb Jim during his toilet. When Dr. Key heard the commotion, he diplomatically intervened and led the reporter and Jim out and onto the Alhambra stage so that the famous horse could give a “private performance for the representative of the Post Standard.”

In the hall where the stage was located, unfortunately, there was a window overlooking James Street that provided several distractions—horses and humans passing by—that were much more interesting to the pampered star than his “audience of one.” Rather than chiding Jim, the Doc simply lowered the curtain on the window, at which point the handsome bay “reluctantly turned toward the auditorium and consented to show off.”

Because of poor acoustics in the hall there was a vibration in the room that forced the reporter to lean forward and speak very distinctly. He began requesting letters and numbers to be brought forward, which Jim did with a “dead easy manner,” and he then said, “Jim, spell Post Standard.” Dr. Key stood aside, expressionless, the writer observed, while Jim directed a look at him that said: I suppose you think you’ve got me, well, watch.

The journalist until now had resisted Jim Key’s charms. But the way he trotted back and forth, bringing forward the letters P-O-S-TS-T-A-N-D-A-R and lining them up on his spelling rack, securing each card behind the nickel rail, until he was out of room and had to stand at the end, holding the D in his mouth, was too spontaneous, too inexplicable, and too wonderful to be disproved. Why bother?

From then on out, that was the attitude of most journalists. Beautiful Jim Key had other rivals and other hurdles to overcome, but skepticism hardly reared its head anymore. The Post Standard reporter conceded his own skepticism as Jim stood there grinning, the D in his teeth, with one of his shrugs and an expression that said You see, I do read the papers.