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Christopher Somerville’s A-Z of walking: E

blog_chris-somervilleE is for Elephant – and in particular the mighty Maharaja, who decided to assert his right to roam in famous circumstances. When Wombwell’s Menagerie in Edinburgh closed down in 1872, its 7-year-old Asian elephant was bought by Belle Vue Zoo in Manchester. How to get him there was the problem. Maharaja threw a tantrum at Waverley Station, smashing up the railway horse-box he was supposed to travel in. “Very good, ” quoth his keeper, Lorenzo ‘The Lion Man’ Lawrence, “I’ll jolly well walk him to Manchester. ” The odd couple set off on foot along the public roads, travelling 20 miles a day, and stirring up interest in every town and village they passed through. In fact, it’s now reckoned that the wagon-wrecking and subsequent 10-day slow march could have been a publicity stunt by Belle Vue. If so, it worked brilliantly. Crowds thronged to welcome Maharaja to Manchester, especially once the news of the tollgate episode got about. Reports said that the tollgate keeper at Victoria Park on the outskirts of the city, eyeing the vast bulk of the elephant, had rather unwisely inflated the fee. While he argued the toss with Lorenzo Lawrence, Maharaja simply tore the tollgate off its hinges, threw it aside and sauntered through. The tollgate incident passed into myth. In Manchester Art Gallery hangs Heywood Hardy’s fabulous 1875 painting of the affair, with Maharaja towering over the gate, his trunk and tusks about to do their work, while the smock-frocked toll keeper argues with The Lion Man. Slightly more ignobly, Maharaja’s great skeleton still stands on display in Manchester Museum. Looming large in death as in life, this formidable walker and exponent of the freedom of the King’s Highway has never ceased to be an icon and an inspiration.

  One Response to “Christopher Somerville’s A-Z of walking: E”

      At 8:24 pm on March 12th, 2010 martin campbell wrote:

    In Belfast, during the blitz in World War 2, we had a lady zoo keeper who took the elephant home every evening with her for safekeeping and let it roam her back garden. It became quite a sight each evening to see the two of them saunter down the main road on the (relatively) short distance to her house. Last year Terry Wogan got hold of the story and relayed it -in disbelief- to his listeners. However, it was quickly confirmed when the Belfast local evening newspaper published a picture of the said pachyderm, happily munching away in the lady’s garden.

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