Chapter Forty
Desperation left Eng and Chang no choice. The war had stripped us of nearly everything: our fortune gone, our labor force
depleted, our crops withered from drought and inattention. What remained was land we could barely afford to keep and Confederate
currency worth less than the paper it was printed on.
Creditors circled. Taxes mounted. The brothers hired one incompetent manager after another, each promising more than he delivered.
The crops never seemed to get planted at the right time. When they did, there weren’t enough hands to tend them. The livestock
suffered. The barn roof sprang a leak that pooled water in the corner where we stored seed. Fences sagged in slow surrender.
I watched Eng’s face grow tight with fear. He and Chang had not been this poor since their days of indentured servitude to
Abel Coffin.
And so they returned to the road—reluctantly, but with grim resolve. This time, they brought two of the boys: our son Patrick
and Chang and Addie’s Albert. The hope was that their young faces might give the act fresh appeal. The boys were eager for
adventure, proud to be included. But I was uneasy about them stepping into the family business, on display for the amusement
of strangers. As I hugged Patrick goodbye, I prayed the audiences would be kind. That the boys would come home unmarked by
the cruelty of strangers.
After a disappointing start in the Midwest—thin crowds, meager takings—they pivoted back to the East Coast, where their fame had longer roots.
The money came slower than before, but at least it was steady.
In Northern cities, Eng and Chang learned to step carefully around questions about the war.
They were simple farmers from North Carolina, they said, caught up in events beyond their control.
They’d done their duty to home and family, nothing more.
The New York Herald reported their explanation that they “loved the Stars and Stripes, but when their state seceded, they considered it their
duty to go with it.”
A blatant lie. I wondered if people believed it.
They returned briefly to Surry County to drop off the boys—who’d had a fine time—and then left again. They were home so little
now that their visits felt like intermissions between departures.
By the time they reunited with Barnum, their fortunes had already begun to turn. Crowds were growing, and in the wake of war’s
upheaval, curiosity found new purchase. What drew them back was not desperation but calculation. Barnum offered what they
could no longer achieve on their own: grand venues, elaborate promotion, and access to wealthier audiences willing to pay
premium prices for private viewings. Despite their mistrust of the showman who’d once exploited them, they saw that his connections
could elevate their tour.
The gamble paid off. By the late 1860s, to everyone’s surprise—including their own—they had earned enough to pay off our debts
and buy the adjoining property.
But even as financial worries eased, others took their place. Kate, our eldest, was unwell, her frail body racked by a mysterious
illness. Her cough rattled through the house at night. No one seemed to know what was wrong. Doctors were vague, offering
little beyond the usual remedies—rest, fresh air, patience. When Eng returned from tour, he watched her with a father’s helpless
worry. He decided that she must see specialists he’d read about in Edinburgh and London.
Barnum, ever the showman, saw another angle.
He told the press that the twins were traveling to Europe for one last attempt at separation.
(No reputable North American doctor would try the operation—certainly not the twins’ local physician, Dr. Hollingsworth, who had refused outright.) The fabricated story spread, filling newspapers with speculation that built interest in the twins’ appearances, while the truth—that they were seeking care for an ailing daughter—was more mundane.
And so, on a bitterly cold November morning in 1868, I watched them board the carriage that would take them to the train:
Eng and Chang, Kate frail in her fur coat, Addie’s daughter Nancy holding her cousin’s arm. Before they boarded the Iowa in New York Harbor, they stopped at the White House to meet President Johnson, who clasped their hands and wished them well.
The crossing to Liverpool took two weeks. Newspapers reported that the twins passed their time reading, talking, and playing
backgammon and chess, as they had on their first voyage to America when they were boys.
The girls, seasick and miserable, rarely left their cabins.
In London, the highlight of their tour was an audience with Queen Victoria. The woman who had inspired Addie’s and my white
wedding dresses had now ruled for more than three decades. She met them in a private chamber and pressed gold watches into
their hands, each engraved with their initials.
But the British press was not kind to Eng and Chang, describing their tour as one of those “melancholy exhibitions which from
time to time disgrace our civilization by attracting the usual gaping and unintelligent crowd.” The paper condemned those
who would “exhibit for shillings, and expose to idle curiosity, the terrible physical malformations of our fellow-creatures.”
Reading those words, I felt a jolt of indignation at the cruelty of the phrasing—and beneath it, an uneasy recognition that the writer wasn’t entirely wrong.
We had lived for so long with the reality of their exhibitions that we no longer questioned them.
What had once been a matter of survival now appeared faintly grotesque.
There was, indeed, something disturbing about the spectacle we had come to accept as ordinary.
In Edinburgh, at the medical school, a team of doctors examined Kate. Eng’s letter arrived soon after, the diagnosis devastatingly
terse. Pulmonary consumption, too advanced for anything beyond comfort measures.
For months, I lived in a state of suspended grief, not knowing whether my daughter was alive or dead. I woke each morning
thinking of the miles of ocean and land between us. Every letter that arrived made my hands shake. At last, in mid-August,
they returned. I had imagined the moment so many times—rehearsed the embrace, the flood of relief. But when Kate stepped down
from the carriage, I barely recognized her. She was thinner than ever, her cheeks hollow, her eyes bright with fever. I pulled
her close, overwhelmed by a bitter mix of sorrow and gratitude that she was home.
Sick as she was, she’d thought to bring presents: candy for her siblings and cousins, gloves and silk to make dresses for
her sisters, ornamental knives with mother-of-pearl handles for her brothers, a gilt-edged Bible for Addie, a lace shawl for
me.
Eng barely had time to unpack before he and Chang set off again—this time for agricultural fairs out west, a grueling circuit
that would take them through the fall and winter.
I stood on the porch with the children as their carriage rattled down the road, feeling the familiar ache of watching him
go. I worried for him. He was frailer now, his black hair peppered with gray. I knew how much his back ached, how much he
missed the farm when he was gone.
And yet, his absence was not entirely unwelcome.
With Eng and Chang away, the house was calmer.
The air felt lighter. There were no simmering tensions, no pointed silences, no fretting over finances.
I didn’t have Chang looking over my shoulder, passing judgment on how I ran the household or mothered the children.
I could parent as I pleased. Speak freely.
Sleep alone without question or complaint.
The days were full, the work of the house and farm relentless, but there was a steadiness to it. I could shape the flow of
my days. Make decisions without waiting for approval.
This constant travel seemed to be our future. All of us suspended between their comings and goings, between what had been
and what lay ahead.
In January 1870, the brothers returned to Europe for a three-week stint with a German circus in Berlin. Each night, they followed
a high-wire act, a troupe of clowns, and bareback riders into the ring, where they were met not with applause but with jeers.
The crowd laughed, booed, heckled. The papers called them awkward, seam-faced old men, ridiculous and undignified in that
carnival atmosphere.
Eng and Chang were humiliated.
In a moment of desperation, they sought out the renowned pathologist Dr. Rudolf Virchow. He examined them and, like every
other physician before him, concluded that the risk of separation was too great. Afterward, he offered them glasses of schnapps.
Chang, brooding and despondent, still smarting from the scorn of the Berlin audiences, proceeded to get very drunk.
On the seventh day of their voyage back to New York in July, disaster struck.
The brothers were seated at a small table, playing chess with a fellow traveler, when Chang’s face went pale. He swayed in his seat. The pawn in his hand slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor. “Something’s wrong,” he muttered.
He tried to stand, but his body wouldn’t obey. Several passengers rushed over and helped escort them back to their berth.
Chang’s entire right side was paralyzed. For the rest of the journey, he lay motionless in bed. Eng, though perfectly healthy,
had no choice but to remain beside him, just as immobile.
In the days that followed, Chang spiraled into despair, swinging between sullen silence and bursts of fury. His helplessness
enraged him. He drank to dull his frustration, but the alcohol only fed his resentment.
Eng’s body ached from the hours of lying in one position. At first, he tried to cheer his brother, to maintain a sense of
hope. But as the weeks wore on, his patience thinned. The more Chang drank, the darker his mood became.
Eng felt like a prisoner. He was a prisoner, chained to a body that could barely move.