The Resurrectionist The Lost Work of Dr. - By E. B. Hudspeth Page 0,16
who was quick-tempered and eager to rouse a crowd into a frenzy. His last public performance was at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Scheduled to perform for two months, he lasted just three days. At every show, he was mocked and ridiculed; the mobs grew larger and larger. On the third day of performances, the crowd rushed his stage, killed some of the animals, and burned many of his artifacts before forcing him out. Black was devastated.
July 1893
Bernard,
Perhaps you have heard, perhaps the jubilant laughter of my demise was carried freely through the air by Hermes himself, or perhaps you still do not know. I was in attendance at the Columbian Exposition––The World’s Fair. I was ridiculed, mocked, and spit upon. They meant to harm me. These are the people, the public, whom I as a doctor ventured to heal? These are the wounded and sick that I labored to discover cures and remedies for?
What wretched flesh they are. They will learn that I can do much more than heal, dear brother––I swear to you that. I can do much more now.
Your brother––do not forget that.
After his failure in Chicago, Dr. Black would never host another public appearance, although he would continue to perform in private for select audiences. These shows were not widely advertised (and in most cases were not publicized at all). There is little information about the contents of the guest list or what exactly the performances entailed. Itineraries suggest that the show remained active, visiting three or four venues every week.
We do believe that the show remained in cities for only one or two days at a time. Sometimes it was presented in private homes or theaters; often Dr. Black had no choice but to perform in secluded wilderness settings. It’s rumored that he performed in the Hills Capital Building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, just one night before it was burned to the ground. In various journals and diaries, spectators have described an “unholy” feeling about the performance and its practitioners.
The show traveled in America until the winter of 1895. Spencer, Elise, Alphonse, and possibly six or more performers and assistants were leaving New York, but instead of heading south to avoid the coming cold weather, Black decided to travel north to meet with Alexander Goethe. Goethe was a wealthy, eccentric naturalist who paid Black for a private demonstration of the show, to be performed at his opulent palatial estate.
Goethe possessed several bizarre “cabinets of curiosities,” which were common among aristocrats of the late nineteenth century. The care and effort given to his collection were extraordinary; it was often described as “a new wonder of the world.” There were so many artifacts that they required their own separate building: dried skins of Visigoth warriors, Mayan weapons, embalmed priests from Egypt, and a number of questionable artifacts, including the arm of a siren and the torso of a sphinx. Goethe claimed that he fished the arm of the siren from the Indian Ocean and said that it fought with a ferocity that made him believe he had hooked a Spartan soldier instead. He claimed that the sphinx was found dead on the shore of the Nile and beasts had torn it to pieces, leaving only the tattered remains that he housed in his museum.
Advertisement for the World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the World’s Fair, 1893. The bird-faced creature (harpy) in the center was possibly one of Black’s earlier taxidermy creations. One spectator claimed, “We saw the beasts move on the stage. They crowed and moaned like real living things. Not God’s creatures but instead something else, something terrible.” Many dismissed the performance as a type of hoax or optical illusion.
Spring 1896
A chance encounter has allowed me an introduction to the well-known Alexander Goethe—explorer, collector of all things, and man of the world. He was not as I supposed him to be. No, he was a crass and unpleasant creature, his spine crooked in the side, his bones too long for his legs and scorn painted on his face.
The man spoke from within a cloud of smoke sweeter than the scent of opium. He told me he smoked the nectar of the lotus and that only he knew how to extract the essential ingredients needed for the everlasting smoke. After a time, I was invited to see his vast collection, a superior one to any I had ever borne witness to. Though I swore to him that I would not disclose what was housed therein, neither