The elephant they loved

JUMBO By Paul Chambers, Steerforth, $23.95, 224 pages Reading Paul Chambers’ “Jumbo,” the biography of the remarkable elephant born in Africa “around

Christmas 1860” and groomed for outsized fame, one is never far from love or linguistics.

According to Mr. Chambers, Jumbo’s given name was most likely derived “from the slang phrase ’my mumbo,’ which London’s watermen, market traders and hackney carriage men would shout at any person wearing tattered patched garments. Such ragged individuals were reminiscent of Mumbo Jumbo, a west African tribal holy man who would dress in bark and leaves.”

These days, with the Victorian era of Jumbo’s life well behind us, we ride in jumbo jets and, if imprudent enough, eat or drink in jumbo portions.

But in the beginning there was Jumbo, the African bull elephant. By this able and animated accounting, Jumbo had a faithful “wife,” an adoring public and a trainer who rarely left his side for over 30 years. He liked to drink alcohol — preferring whisky over beer — was prone to fits of temper but was ultimately capable of being trained to put up with captivity, first in European zoos and then in America as part of the P.T. Barnum travelling circus.

Mr. Chambers tells Jumbo’s story according to the chronology and in an understated way. The British author of “A Sheltered Life: The Unexpected History of the Tortoise” comes to his task with grace and sympathy. For as is the case with many superstars, life is not always easy or uncomplicated and Jumbo’s was not without its hurdles.

Taken by Hamran tribesmen in the remote desert highland that straddled the border between eastern Sudan and Abyssinia (now Eritrea), Jumbo — the name he would be known by a few years later — was a scrawny runt “who had not been expected to survive long after his capture.”

But survive he did, first transported to France to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, then later, in 1865 to the London Zoo. There he would meet Matthew Scott, the devoted zoo keeper who would nurse the ailing elephant to health and stand by him as he became the toast of London. At over 11 feet tall at the time of his death, Jumbo was the world’s largest elephant.

Mr. Chambers does a good job of setting up Jumbo’s story, taking care to offer important details about the anti-social Scott who preferred the company of animals to people; Abraham Bartlett, the superintendent of the London Zoo, who comes across as a chilly figure who was mostly interested in business and image and more than happy to part with the often difficult elephant and his grouchy caretaker.

This is a thoughtful book, bolstered and informed by science. Readers learn much about the habits and preferences of elephants, and while it is not clear that Jumbo and Alice his “wife,” a smaller African elephant who came into Jumbo’s life in 1865, ever mated, descriptions of their bonding and alliance are touching and memorable.

During the time Jumbo and Alice lived in London they were often seen together and the crowds adored them. As Mr. Chambers writes, “In a remarkable career spanning three decades Jumbo not only thrilled countless people and bore children without number on his massive back, but rubbed shoulders, metaphorically, with the likes of Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales, the young Winston Churchill and P.T. Barnum.”

Jumbo’s departure from England with Barnum, like the travels that brought him there were more than a little difficult and Mr. Chambers describes these journeys and their hurdles well. And he does not skimp on sentiment. English children were devastated by the prospect of Jumbo’s departure:

“Dear Mr. Barnum, I write on behalf of our dear old Jumbo. Do be kind and generous to our English boys and girls. We do so love him, and I am sure if you have children or little friends of your own you will be able to understand how their hearts would ache and their tears be shed should they lose the friend who has given them such delight, and who is one of their few pleasures in this great and sorrowful city … Dear Mr. Barnum, you, who have so many famous animals, and among them so many elephants surely will think seriously and kindly before you take from us our very dear friend Jumbo …”

But Barnum was not swayed. A larger than life teetotaler who disapproved of Jumbo’s occasional drinking and who believed there was no such thing as bad publicity went forward with his new acquisition.

Jumbo took to the circus life and brought delight to thousands. But in the end, on a trip to Ontario, Canada, Jumbo met his death in a railroad yard when he was hit by a moving train. Barnum tried to spin the death by saying that Jumbo died trying to save Tom Thumb, a young circus elephant but this was never proven.

Mr. Chambers has carefully assembled here the legends and the legacies. In the 1939 book “Dumbo,” Jumbo would be transformed into Jumbo Jr., “a circus elephant who is cruelly treated until it is discovered that his giant ears allow him to fly.” From a small print run, “Dumbo” crossed paths with Walt Disney and the rest is history.

This gentle, well-wrought book takes readers to the thrilling places where it all began.

JUMBO

By Paul Chambers

Steerforth, $23.95, 224 pages