My great-grandfather, Henry James Lockhart,
generally known as Harry (1861-1905), was an elephant trainer, as were his two
brothers Samuel and George. Sam and
George were far better known than Harry, who has rather been forgotten, perhaps
because more of his life was spent in the United States. Research needs to be done to excavate his
career, which may have been as illustrious as his brothers’.
An intriguing anecdote about Harry can
be found in the El Paso Herald from
18 January 1904, p. 8, almost exactly a year before his death. It is headed ‘HARRY LOCKHART, ELEPHANT TRAINER, REACHES MOTHER’S BEDSIDE JUST IN
TIME.’ He was in El Paso, Texas, for a
few days en route to Mexico City
where he was working for Orrin Brothers’ Circus, which had opened a Circus
Teatro building in Mexico City in 1894 (Kanellos, p. 98). El Paso seems to have been his usual
stopping-point and he had good friends in the town.
From the article it can be seen that
Harry was a popular man, described as ‘The famous elephant trainer and
traveler, and prince of good fellows, genial Harry Lockhart’. Harry was a larger-than-life character:
‘“Business is good" wherever Harry goes’ the journalist claimed, before
noting that he had a great reputation as a joker. On a more serious note, the journalist, who
must have sat down with Harry over a few drinks, recounted a dream Harry said he
had had:
‘Mr. Lockhart.
while traveling through the west recently, dreamed that his mother was ill in
Paris. He at once telegraphed to Mrs. Lockhart, who replied that she also had
had a similar dream.’
Presumably at this point his mother was
not unwell, or she would have said so. But a dream was enough to set Harry off to
Paris: the account concludes:
‘That settled it
– Lockhart took the first train for New York, which left in ten minutes, and
from there took the first steamer for Europe. arriving in Paris to find his
mother seriously ill and praying for him to come. Mr. Lockhart has left a host
of warm friends in this city behind him who will be always glad to welcome him
back. He intended leaving yesterday, but his friends. Bloom and O'Brien, hid
his baggage and he could not get away.’
His mother was Hannah Pinder, through
whom the Lockharts are related to the illustrious Anglo-French Pinder circus
family. The dream was most likely precognitive,
because when he had it Hannah was apparently not ill. No more details are given, so the nature of
the ailment is unknown. We do not know
how close in time her dream and Harry’s were, nor precisely how similar.
Hannah was born in 1826 so if the dream
had occurred in 1903, she was 77, an age when a dutiful son might be worrying
about her health. But that would not
explain him making a trip from the western United States to France to see her. He may have made the entire incident up, but
lying about your mother’s health is on a different level to pulling a
journalist’s leg. If he had been telling
a yarn, surely it would have been a better one.
The article’s headline implies Harry
arrived just in time to witness his mother’s demise, but Hannah outlived
Harry. She died in 1910, while Harry
died of pneumonia in Mexico City on 31 January 1905 (family lore says that he
had been out in the rain organising shelter for the elephants), and was buried
in the city’s English Cemetery (Panteón Inglés, Real del Monte.). It was almost exactly a year after the
spectacular death of his brother George on 24 January 1904, when he was crushed
by a runaway elephant at Walthamstow, London.
The El
Paso Herald carried a story on 1 February 1905, p. 3: ‘Mrs. Harry Lockhart,
wife of the well-known elephant trainer, passed through the city yesterday en route to the City of Mexico to join
her husband, who is seriously ill there. “Harry” is well known here and his
numerous friends hope that he may pull through and continue to delight the
circus goers with his famous trained animals.’
Sadly by the time she arrived he was already dead, and there is a
further family story of his wife and young son, also Harry, arriving at the
cemetery as the mourners were leaving it.
Reference
Nicolás Kanellos. A History of Hispanic Theatre in the United States: Origins to 1940
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).
