The Elephant Island Chronicles

Presents

Zenobia’s Infidelity

By H.C. Bunner

Illustrated by S. B. Griffin

Foreward by Gio Mɑrron

Narration by Eleven Labs

Foreword

Zenobia’s Infidelity by H.C. Bunner is a masterful blend of humor, irony, and small-town charm, encapsulating the absurdities of human and animal behavior. First published in the late 19th century, this story highlights Bunner’s gift for weaving farcical situations with vivid characters and sharp observations.

The story unfolds in Sagawaug, a quiet country town disrupted by the unexpected bond between Dr. Tibbitt, a self-assured country doctor, and Zenobia, a circus elephant with an oversized capacity for affection. From the moment Zenobia becomes the reluctant recipient of the doctor’s medical care, she develops a comically excessive attachment to him, leading to a series of misadventures that disrupt the town’s peace and test the doctor’s composure. Bunner’s prose shines as he captures the slapstick chaos of an elephant rampaging through Sagawaug, creating an indelible portrait of rural life colliding with the spectacle of the circus.

At its heart, Zenobia’s Infidelity is a delightful satire on human vanity, rural society, and the unpredictability of life. Bunner’s use of Zenobia as both a literal and figurative “elephant in the room” underscores the ways in which relationships—human and otherwise—can confound and entangle even the most confident individuals. Whether through Zenobia’s antics, the petty rivalries of Sagawaug’s inhabitants, or the burgeoning romance between Dr. Tibbitt and Miss Minetta Bunker, Bunner offers a timeless comedic exploration of pride, affection, and the absurdities of small-town life.

As you read, enjoy the playful yet poignant humor of this tale, where Bunner transforms an unwieldy elephant into a vehicle for examining the unwieldy emotions of human beings. This story is not only a testament to Bunner’s wit but also to his enduring understanding of the human condition—quirks, chaos, and all.

Gio Marron

Zenobia’s Infidelity

By H.C. BunnerIllustrated by S. B. Griffin

Dr. Tibbitt stood on the porch of Mrs. Pennypepper’s boarding-house, and looked up and down the deserted Main Street of Sagawaug with a contented smile, the while he buttoned his driving-gloves. The little doctor had good cause to be content with himself and with everything else—with his growing practice, with his comfortable boarding-house, with his own good-looks, with his neat attire, and with the world in general. He could not but be content with Sagawaug, for there never was a prettier country town. The Doctor looked across the street and picked out the very house that he proposed to buy when the one remaining desire of his soul was gratified. It was a house with a hip-roof and with a long garden running down to the river.

There was no one in the house to-day, but there was no one in any of the houses. Not even a pair of round bare arms was visible among the clothes that waved in the August breeze in every back-yard. It was Circus Day in Sagawaug.

The Doctor was climbing into his gig when a yell startled him. A freckled boy with saucer eyes dashed around the corner.

“Doctor!” he gasped, “come quick! The circus got a-fire an’ the trick elephant’s most roasted!”

“Don’t be silly, Johnny,” said the Doctor, reprovingly.

“Hope to die—Honest Injun—cross my breast!” said the boy. The Doctor knew the sacredness of this juvenile oath.

“Get in here with me,” he said, “and if I find you’re trying to be funny, I’ll drop you in the river.”

As they drove toward the outskirts of the town, Johnny told his tale.

“Now,” he began, “the folks was all out of the tent after the show was over, and one of the circus men, he went to the oil-barrel in the green wagon with Dan’l in the Lion’s Den onto the outside of it, an’ he took in a candle an’ left it there, and fust thing the barrel busted, an’ he wasn’t hurted a bit, but the trick elephant she was burned awful, an’ the ring-tailed baboon, he was so scared he had a fit. Say, did you know baboons had fits?”

When they reached the circus-grounds, they found a crowd around a small side-show tent. A strong odor of burnt leather confirmed Johnny’s story. Dr. Tibbitt pushed his way through the throng, and gazed upon the huge beast, lying on her side on the grass, her broad shoulder charred and quivering. Her bulk expanded and contracted with spasms of agony, and from time to time she uttered a moaning sound. On her head was a structure of red cloth, about the size of a bushel-basket, apparently intended to look like a British soldier’s forage-cap. This was secured by a strap that went under her chin—if an elephant has a chin. This scarlet cheese-box every now and then slipped down over her eye, and the faithful animal patiently, in all her anguish, adjusted it with her prehensile trunk.

By her side stood her keeper and the proprietor of the show, a large man with a dyed moustache, a wrinkled face, and hair oiled and frizzed. These two bewailed their loss alternately.

“The boss elephant in the business!” cried the showman. “Barnum never had no trick elephant like Zenobia. And them lynes and Dan’l was painted in new before I took the road this season. Oh, there’s been a hoodoo on me since I showed ag’inst the Sunday-school picnic!”

“That there elephant’s been like my own child,” groaned the keeper, “or my own wife, I may say. I’ve slep’ alongside of her every night for fourteen damn years.”

The Doctor had been carefully examining his patient.

“If there is any analogy—” he began.

“Neuralogy!” snorted the indignant showman; “‘t ain’t neuralogy, you jay pill-box, she’s cooked!”

“If there is any analogy,” repeated Dr. Tibbitt, flushing a little, “between her case and that of a human being, I think I can save your elephant. Get me a barrel of linseed oil, and drive these people away.”

The Doctor’s orders were obeyed with eager submission. He took off his coat, and went to work. He had never doctored an elephant, and the job interested him. At the end of an hour, Zenobia’s sufferings were somewhat alleviated. She lay on her side, chained tightly to the ground, and swaddled in bandages. Her groans had ceased.

“I’ll call to-morrow at noon,” said the Doctor—“good gracious, what’s that?” Zenobia’s trunk was playing around his waistband.

“She wants to shake hands with you,” her keeper explained. “She’s a lady, she is, and she knows you done her good.”

“I’d rather not have any thing of the sort,” said the Doctor, decisively.

When Dr. Tibbitt called at twelve on the morrow, he found Zenobia’s tent neatly roped in, an amphitheatre of circus-benches constructed around her, and this amphitheatre packed with people.

“Got a quarter apiece from them jays,” whispered the showman, “jest to see you dress them wownds.” Subsequently the showman relieved his mind to a casual acquaintance. “He’s got a heart like a gun-flint, that doctor,” he said; “made me turn out every one of them jays and give ’em their money back before he’d lay a hand to Zenobia.”

But if the Doctor suppressed the clinic, neither he nor the showman suffered. From dawn till dusk people came from miles around to stare a quarter’s worth at the burnt elephant. Once in a while, as a rare treat, the keeper lifted a corner of her bandages, and revealed the seared flesh. The show went off in a day or two, leaving Zenobia to recover at leisure; and as it wandered westward, it did an increased business simply because it had had a burnt trick elephant. Such, dear friends, is the human mind.

The Doctor fared even better. The fame of his new case spread far and wide. People seemed to think that if he could cure an elephant he could cure any thing. He was called into consultation in neighboring towns. Women in robust health imagined ailments, so as to send for him and ask him shuddering questions about “that wretched animal.” The trustees of the orphan-asylum made him staff-physician—in this case the Doctor thought he could trace a connection of ideas, in which children and a circus were naturally associated. And the local newspaper called him a savant.

He called every day upon Zenobia, who greeted him with trumpetings of joyful welcome. She also desired to shake hands with him, and her keeper had to sit on her head and hold her trunk to repress the familiarity. In two weeks she was cured, except for extensive and permanent scars, and she waited only for a favorable opportunity to rejoin the circus.

The Doctor had got his fee in advance.

Upon a sunny afternoon in the last of August, Dr. Tibbitt jogged slowly toward Sagawaug in his neat little gig. He had been to Pelion, the next town, to call upon Miss Minetta Bunker, the young lady whom he desired to install in the house with the garden running down to the river. He had found her starting out for a drive in Tom Matson’s dog-cart. Now, the Doctor feared no foe, in medicine or in love; but when a young woman is inscrutable as to the state of her affections, when the richest young man in the county is devoting himself to her, and when the young lady’s mother is backing the rich man, a young country doctor may well feel perplexed and anxious over his chance of the prize.

The Doctor was so troubled, indeed, that he paid no heed to a heavy, repeated thud behind him, on the macadamized road. His gentle little mare heard it, though, and began to curvet and prance. The Doctor was pulling her in, and calming her with a “Soo—Soo—down, girl, down!” when he interrupted himself to shout:

“Great Cæsar! get off me!”

Something like a yard of rubber hose had come in through the side of the buggy, and was rubbing itself against his f