Catherine
Holt—
also known as Carrie or Carry—
was born in Michigan in 1894. Her career as a professional Fat Lady
spanned the 1920's and 1930's. Carrie was said to have tipped the scales
at 468 pounds, with a 84-Inch bust.
Carrie
tells her story below, in this 1922
article reprinted from The
American Magazine.
(Research
and article Courtesy of Karl
Niedershuh.)
The
Joys and Sorrows Of
A Circus Fat Lady
Carrie Holt, whose bust measure is 84 inches,
hip measure almost 12 feet, and who
weighs 468 pounds, says she has broken everything except the Ten Com-
mandments—“Chairs and beds?” says Carrie; “I
break 'em all! But
there's one comfort: I don't have to worry about getting
fat! Which is more than most women can say”
By Allan Harding
It was the middle of the afternoon. From the circus arena, close by,
came the blare of trumpets and a medley of strange cries; but the side
show was enjoying an interval of peace and quiet. The giant was striding
around with a midget perched on his huge shoulder. The "armless
wonder" was writing a letter on a typewriter with her toes. But
most of the freaks had retired to their dressing-rooms -- to meditate
on our eccentricities, not theirs.
"Miss Holt!" called the circus man, as we approached one of
these dressing-rooms. "Here's someone that wants to see you."
It seemed a rather unfortunate way of putting it, I thought, to tell
a 468-pound lady that someone wanted to see her. I shouldn't have been
surprised if a thick, juicy voice, the kind that goes with a 468-pound
figure, had replied that Miss Holt would be on exhibition later, price
of admission twenty-five cents.
But nothing of the sort! Almost immediately the curtains parted. They
parted, at a conservative estimate, about four feet. Miss Holt's bust
measure is 84 inches -- seven feet! And when you consider that she has
a 32-inch arm adjacent upon and appertaining to each side of this 84-inch
central periphery, you will realize that a four-foot opening was a mere
crack for her to squeeze through.
She negotiated it neatly, however; and there stood Carrie Holt, beaming
benignly upon us. Her name, by the way, is Catherine, but "Carrie"
is the perfect appellation for a woman who is simply a quarter of a
ton of good nature, so everyone calls her that.
When the circus man brought two chairs and waved us to be seated, I
looked at Carrie Holt -- and Carrie Holt looked at the chairs! One of
them was a large, substantial arm chair; the other a none too robust
specimen of the bent-wood type.
After observing them with a calculating eye, Miss Holt invited me to
take the large one. Then, when I was seated, she rested her hand on
the arm of my chair and, with an anxious look, dropped abruptly onto
the bent-wood affair. To her evident surprise, it withstood the shock
nobly.
"When I sit down," she said, with a sigh of relief, "I
never know how far I'm going. I generally keep right on, till I land
on the floor. But I will say" -- with a beaming smile -- "that
I'm in a good deal better shape than the chair is when they come around
to pick up the pieces.
"I ought to get a commission from the furniture man. I've wrecked
more chairs and tables than it would take to furnish a hotel. But I
can't help it. You see, I don't sit down gradually, the way most people
do. I can't bend! I just have to hope for the best -- and then drop.
"The chair you have is stronger than this one, but the arms make
it just so wide and no wider. If I landed on it, it would only be a
has-been, as an arm chair! There was a rocker in the rooms I had last
spring; and it had arms. I just knew I was taking an awful risk to try
to sit in it, but I do love to rock, and I almost never get a chance.
So I tried it."
SHE shook her head sadly.
"I got a hammer and some pieces of wood and fixed up the damage.
But the next day the landlady said to me, 'I see you've been making
some improvements in your rocking chair.' And, do you know, that's all
she ever did say about it.
"But they're not always as nice as she was. Last year, when we
were showing in Philadelphia, I was awfully mortified when a girl in
the crowd pointed to me and said, real loud, so that everybody heard
her, 'Oh, Mother! There's the woman that broke our bed!' Of course,
I did break their bed; but why mention it in public! I didn't do it
on purpose. And a person has feelings, even if she is in a side show.
"People talk about being as safe as if they were in bed. Well,
that isn't my idea of being safe. Wood, or brass, or iron -- I'm afraid
of every bed I meet, because I break 'em all. With the circus, of course,
we travel in our own [railroad] cars; and the beds have wire mattresses,
with solid boards underneath. That's fine for the other people in the
show, but when I got my 468-pounds on that wire mattress, I just found
myself lying on the boards under it! Bruises? Well, there were places
on me where I wasn't anything but bruises.
"But I haven't been fat all my life without learning a thing or
two. I got one of the men to put bricks under the corners of the wire
mattress frame, raising it a foot or more from the boards. And now"
-- Miss Holt rolled her eyes rapturously -- "now I go over the
bumps like a baby in a hammock."
"Speaking of hammocks," I began; but she stopped me with a
gesture.
"I know all there is to know about hammocks!" she declared
with fervor. "As I said before, I've been fat all my life. I weighed
twelve pounds when I was born. Going strong right from the start, you
see. By the time I was eight years old, I weighed one hundred and ten
pounds; and from then on, I got fat faster than ever.
"People ought to have a lot of sympathy for fat children. But they
haven't! For instance, I was hungry all the time. I'll bet I was hungry
in my sleep; but I couldn't stay awake to find out. I just love to sleep.
But when I was awake I could eat any time I had the chance. Ham! Oh
my, how fond I was of ham! And molasses and bread and butter and cake
-- "
Again she rolled her eyes rapturously.
"But did anyone sympathize with me because I was fat and hungry?
No; they made fun of me because I was fat, and scolded me for being
hungry. Boys were the worst. Do you know that a boy is the meanest thing
alive? I'll tell the world he is! I couldn't go on the street without
some boy calling me 'Fatty,' and 'Baby Elephant,' and telling me to
'get a dray.'
"But the ones that knew me kept at a safe distance when they tried
to be funny! When I was ten years old I could lick a boy of fourteen.
And I was a scrapper, even if I was fat. So when the boys teased me
they kept out of my reach. Girls never were mean like the boys.
"BUT I was going to tell you about the hammocks. We lived in Providence,
where I was born; and under the trees in our yard we used to have a
hammock; one of the net kind, made of cord. Well! When I got to be fourteen
years old and weighed two hundred pounds, it just seemed as if I couldn't
look at that hammock without breaking it. I must have made a hollow
under it, I fell so often. Finally, my mother had a hammock made of
wooden slats and hung it up by thick ropes. But even that used to break
down sometimes.
"We had a swing, too, under a big oak tree. The ropes were as thick
as your finger -- I mean, as thick as my finger!" She laughed and
exhibited a finger half as thick as my wrist. "But I broke even
that rope -- and almost broke my head, too.
"We fat people do get a lot of falls. I remember we had a parlor
set at home: a sofa and several chairs to match. Beautiful furniture
it was, too, all upholstered in green plush. Well, I had to sit somewhere,
even when I was in the parlor. And I broke every one of those chairs,
even the sofa. My sister said then that she thought it was time they
got something I couldn't break; so they had a special chair made just
for me.
"I don't know why they blamed me. I couldn't sit on air! Of course
I've learned a few tricks now. You notice I keep one hand on the arm
of your chair; I've got the other one braced against this post on the
other side of me."
Not being able to see what was on the other side of Miss Holt without
getting up and making a detour of her circumference to find out, I took
her word for it.
"In this way," she explained, "I distribute my weight
between your chair, my chair, and the post. I always try to manage something
like that. But you'd be surprised to know how many things can happen
to me. In New York last spring, I was going to take a taxi one day;
and as I stepped on the running-board to get in -- well, the running
board broke right in two! Of course, you can't make me think that running
board wasn't cracked already. But it broke, anyway, and down I went,
with my head inside the taxi and the rest of me -- well, never mind
about that. I just mention it to show you that I never know when I'm
safe.
“AND suppose something does happen suddenly that puts me in danger.
I can't run away. So I just shut my eyes tight and stand still. If it's
going to get me, it will get me. That's all there is to it. Last year,
when the Ringling Brothers circus was at Madison Square Garden, in New
York, the side show was in a big hall in one corner of the building.
On one of the platforms was a cage containing a chimpanzee named Sally.
And one day, Sally, who was sometimes dangerous, got out of her cage
twice.
“I was standing talking with Mr. Edwards, when he suddenly said
to me, 'Don't move! Sally's out!'
“I couldn't move fast enough to get away, anyhow. So I just shut
my eyes, and waited. I could feel that the creature was close to me,
but I had to stand there and take whatever happened. First, I felt one
of her long arms coming around my right side – then her breath
on my neck as she put the other arm around me.
“But as I stood there, thinking my next moment would be my last,
she just gently moved me over to one side and let go of me. She was
trying to get to the man beyond me. But by that time her keeper had
come and he took her to her cage.
“She got out again that same afternoon. But this time I was on
my own platform, which happened to be next to the giraffes. I knew Sally
didn't like to go near giraffes, so I felt pretty safe. But I'd have
had to stay there anyway, safe or not safe! To get down the flight of
steps from my platform, I have to turn around and back down. If I try
it facing forward, I can't see the steps at all! Even when I back down,
I sometimes miss one and roll the rest of the way.
“When we're on the road, and I go down to the train at night,
some of the men bring a stepladder and boost me onto the car platform.
Now, you know that's not pleasant for any lady. You don't have to be
fat enough for a side show to find it out, either. Lots of stout people
have to be boosted up steps and have to back out of an automobile, and
it isn't half as funny to the person that's doing it as it is to the
folks standing around looking on.
“I have one consolation, anyhow: I'm paid for being fat. My family
thought it was perfectly terrible for me to go into the show business.
'How can you stand it?' they said, 'to sit on a platform and be stared
at? It's dreadful!'
“I told them I'd be stared at, anyhow, no matter where I went
or what I did. I might as well get something out of it for myself. Of
course, sometimes it seems as if I can't stand it. I get so sick of
seeing all those staring faces that I could scream. But the laugh isn't
all on one side. There are plenty of freaks in the crowd; all of the
'strange people,' as they call us now, ain't on the platforms.
“Those of us who are on exhibition have a bit of fun picking out
the other ones. We have our own little ways of calling each other's
attention to the freaks we spot. When I see a real funny one, I say,
kind of careless-like, to Miss Gilmore, the snake-charmer, who sits
next to me, 'I hope there's an extra platform!' That's a tip for her
to look for a freak down in the crowd. Or maybe Miss Gilmore will say
to me, 'Well, Carrie, put on your things and go home. You're going to
lose your job.' Then I know there's an awful fat woman in the crowd,
and I begin to look for her.
“It's funny about those fat women. I've had them come close to
my platform and say, “My! But I do pity you!' I always laugh and
tell them to cheer up. 'You've got a good start,' I say; 'you'll catch
up with me before long.'
“They don't like that; but I think it's a poor joke that won't
work both ways. If a fat woman comes along with some friends, one of
the men in her party is dead sure to tell her she ought to get a job
with the side show. Ain't it mean of them? They're just as hateful as
they were when they were boys.
“Sometimes these fat women tell me they know how I can reduce.
But what would I want to reduce for? If I lose my weight, I lose my
living! We fat women get small salaries, only about twenty-five dollars
a week. But I average thirty-five dollars a week more, from the sale
of my pictures.
“YES indeed,” said Miss Holt, with pride. “Plenty
of people like the Fat Lady. I have a good many admirers who send me
flowers and candy. Some of them buy a new picture of my every season.
Oh, I'm as happy as most folks, I guess.
“As for the side show, the public doesn't know anything about
us from just seeing us on our platforms -- on exhibition. Why, we're
just like a big family. There's Miss Krao,
for instance, the one they call 'The Missing Link.' You know her: she
has a long beard and a dark brown complexion. But she's the sweetest
and loveliest lady I ever met. She speaks several languages and is a
good deal more refined than most of the crowd that stares at her. A
perfect saint! That's what she is.
“Last year we side-show people with Ringling
Brothers formed a Social Club. We had dues and made
the members pay ten-cent fines for breaking certain rules. I had lots
of fun laying traps for them, so I could collect the fines. Altogether
we got almost a hundred dollars; and toward the end of the season we
gave a big picnic.
“We had a grand time. I was in everything, even if I was fat.
In the baseball match I was one of the outfielders. The only way I could
have stopped a ball would have been to let it hit me. But if laughing
makes people fat, I'd have weighed a ton before the game was over; and
even the Living Skeleton would have got too stout for his job.
“I took my turn at batting, too; and once I actually hit the ball.
But, my land! Before I could get to the first base, they had thrown
the ball clean around all the bases about six times, and they said I
was out.
“Of course I admit that it was joke for me to try and play baseball;
but you'd be surprised at the things I can do. I can walk quite a good
deal. If I'm in New York in the winter, I go shopping by myself. People
in New York are used to seeing anything on the streets, so I don't attract
near as much attention there as I do in a smaller town.
“The worst thing is the automobiles. Last winter, I had stepped
behind one that was standing on the curb; and while I was waiting there
to cross the street, the chauffeur backed the car down against me before
I could turn around and step up onto the walk. You see, I can't step
up backward the way you would if you were in a hurry. I have to turn
around in a circle and step forward.
“Well, as usual, I simply had to shut my eyes tight and let it
come. When the chauffeur felt the jar, I guess he got out and came around
to investigate. And, do you know, that man never asked me if I was hurt?
He began looking at the car, to see it it had been damaged!”
CARRIE HOLT has a keen sense of humor. But this particular incident
did not strike her as at all funny! However, she is too good-natured
to stay angry long.
“I don't suppose,” she challenged me, with her beaming smile,
“that you'd pick me out as a dancer, would you? Well, I can't
dance much now, I'll admit. I'm too short of breath. But when I was
a girl -- and I weighed two hundred then -- I could dance a jig first
rate. The young folks always wanted me at their parties. Fat folks are
sure to be jolly, you know. I'd rather be fat and full of fun than skinny
and solemn.
“I can swim, too. And float! Well, I could float from here to
Europe, I guess! Oh, I like to do all sorts of things. When I was a
girl I was simply crazy about balloons. I always wanted to go up in
one, but I couldn't get anybody to take me. I went up in an airplane
once, at a fair in Maine. Ruth Law was making flights at the same fair;
and one day I got her to take me up in her airplane.”
Miss Holt's eyes twinkled with mirth. “We got ten feet off the
ground,” she said; “but we couldn't get any higher! At any
rate, Miss Law said she couldn't. It seemed kind of funny to me. But
I didn't say anything.
“That's one of the things you learn to do, if you're fat. Never
ask people why something doesn't work! No matter what it is, or what's
wrong with it, they'll always blame the fat person. You ask any fat
man or woman if that isn't so. If an automobile breaks down, or a horse
balks, or an elevator gets stuck, or even if a railroad train stops
where it shouldn't, everybody gets off a joke on the fat person, if
there's one in sight.
“I had another experience that same season in Maine. Late one
night we went from Skowhegan to a town about twenty miles away; and
some of us rode over on the truck that carried the baggage. We'd gone
about ten miles when the truck broke down; so we had to stay there while
the men fixed the engine. It took them several hours, and after a while
I got sleepy. I always do. I simply love to sleep! So I went off among
the trees and lay down to take a nap.
“I can sleep 'most anywhere. I don't even need a pillow, because
I can just lay my head on my arm, like this, and there I am.”
Miss Holt demonstrated for my benefit that a lady of her proportions
carries with her a full equipment of pillows, conveniently attached
to her own ample person.
Again her eyes twinkled as she continued her story. It seems that she
was still slumbering when the truck was finally ready to proceed; and
the other members of the party, having heard rumors that the Maine woods
harbored bears and wildcats, pictured those beast as making a square
meal off Carrie. In great alarm they began to search for her, shouting
lustily the while. She did not hear them -- but they soon heard her.
She herself is my authority fro stating that the music of a jazz band
is a mere murmur compared with what Carrie Holt is capable of when she
is sleeping. Her friends assured her, that night, that she need never
fear a wild animal so long as she was asleep. But, as she plaintively
remarked; “That's another thing I can't help. Did you ever know
a fat person that didn't snore?
“I have to admit that if a lady's as fat as I am, she has her
troubles. Mr. Edwards -- he's the man that goes around in the side show
and lectures on the freaks -- always tells the crowd that I haven't
seen my own feet for twenty years. That ain't so,” declared Miss
Holt confidentially. “I can see 'em -- if I try. But there's one
thing I do wish: I wish I'd been born with shoes and stockings on, and
that they would last for life! Just take a good look at me and try to
imagine me putting on my stockings! Oh, I manage to do it, but it's
a hard day's work.
“But I know a fat lady in another show who can't reach her feet.
She has a great trick, though. She has her stockings made with very
wide tops and she can swing them around, the way the cowboys swings
a lasso, and make the top of the stocking come right down over her foot!
When she has lassoed her foot, she can pull the stocking up. I've tried
to do it, but I never succeeded.
“Getting dressed is some job, believe me! But with prices the
way they have been the past few years, I've been lucky to be able to
buy enough clothes to get dressed in. I make all my own wardrobe; and
as it takes about seven yards of muslin to make me even a nightgown
you can know that my clothes are a big item of expense. I make my own
bloomers; and it takes almost three yards for each leg!
“I need only about ten yards of silk for a dress, because my dresses
are quite short and are sleeveless and low-necked. You can understand
why they are made that way. If they were not, people might claim that
I wasn't really so very fat, but was all padded out to just to look
fat.
“Most of my dresses are either pink or baby blue. Those are my
favorite colors. I think they're such good taste, don't you? Now, my
mother didn't have good judgment, the way she dressed me when I was
a girl. Do you know, she used to have me wear bright red! She said that
folks wouldn't notice how fat I was, because they'd be kind of dazzled
by the color. I never could believe that. But of course I had to wear
what she bought for me.
“I save up my old dresses to wear on rainy days. Sometimes the
tent leaks so much that we have to hold umbrellas over us as we sit
on the platforms. You know, they often put me on the platform next to
the Living Skeleton, because they think he makes me look fatter and
I make him look thinner. Well, when it rains, I need one of those family
umbrellas -- the kind meant for a mother and six children. And Transparent
William -- that's the Living Skeleton -- well, I tell
him that if he'd put a nickel on top of his head, he'd keep perfectly
dry. You know what Lou Graham says about him! Mr. Graham is the announcer;
and when he's talking to the crowd outside, he tells 'em that 'the Living
Skeleton will do a high drive through a piccolo!' You can't beat that,
can you?”
“The nearest I ever came to making a high dive myself was one
time when I was showing at the fairs in New England. Two or three of
the other girls and I had an attic room in a house near by; and one
night the place took fire. There was just one little window in our attic.
The other girls climbed out of it onto the roof, but when I tried to
follow them, I stuck in the window. They tried to pull me out, and some
other folks tried to pull me in. But they couldn't budge me either way.
Luckily, the fire was put out before long; and then they took down the
whole window frame, with me in it.
“I was on the third floor of another house once when it took fire.
I grabbed my trunk -- without stopping to think I'd unpacked all my
clothes, and I started down the stairs, dragging my trunk after me.
Half way down, I met the firemen coming up. Well,” -- Miss Holt
gave me a look of resignation -- “Transparent William, himself,
couldn't have got past me on those stairs! The firemen had to go down
and wait until I could back downstairs, trunk and all. They were real
mad at me; but I don't see why. I had as good a right to get out as
they had to get in.
“But when I hear people talk about narrow escapes,” she
added, with her jolly laugh, “I think to myself, 'You don't know
what a narrow escape is.' I told you that my bust measure is eighty-four
inches, seven feet. But my hip measure is nearer twelve feet.
“I told you how they have to boost me aboard the circus train.
But as I'm always the first one out in the morning, there's nobody around
to help me off. Usually, they're shunting the cars backs and forth,
anyway. If someone did bring a stepladder, the train would like as not
move just as I tried to get on the ladder.
“So I back down to the bottom step, then jump off backward. I
always look first to see that there's a good place for me to light.
I can land all right, even with the train moving, if it isn't going
fast. If you tried it, the motion of the train would make you lose your
balance. But me! Why, when I land square on my two feet, I'm as solid
as a rock. Nothing can move me!
“But there's one thing I certainly am scared of: a bathtub! I
don't know which is worse: getting into one, or getting out after I
am in. Sometimes I wish I was a real elephant. The nearest I can come
to their way of getting a bath is to stand under a shower. But lots
of bathrooms don't have showers; and every time I get into a tub I risk
my neck. That is, I would risk it, if I had a neck; but I haven't. Whatever
I get, I never get it in the neck.
“THERE'S one thing people say about me,” remarked Miss Holt
thoughtfully, “that I wish you'd contradict. Of course I hear
all sorts of comments that they make. I don't know whether they think
I haven't any ears, or haven't any feelings. Some people are real nice
and friendly; but there are others that act as if I wasn't a human being.
I might as well be in the menagerie tent, along with the animals.
“But when they get so that I can't stand them any longer,”
she said, with a satisfied smile, “I have one little trick that
never fails to work: I pretend to give a big sneeze! That makes 'em
move on. I suppose they think my germs must be as much bigger than ordinary
germs as I am bigger than ordinary folks.
“But I was going to tell you the remark that I want you to contradict.
There isn't a day that I don't hear it a dozen times. People look me
over and then they say, 'It must be a disease!'
“Now, I'm just as well as they are; probably better. I'm never
sick, except for a cold. And anybody would have colds if they had to
stay in here, breathing all the dust and bad air, and with their arms
and shoulders bare, no matter what the weather may be. I don't eat even
as much as an ordinary person does. In the summertime, when we're on
the road, I don't eat as much as some of the midgets do! I take only
two meals a day then. Not that I want to reduce. My face isn't my fortune,
but my fat is. I don't want to lose it. I always do lose some in the
summer; but I get it all back in the winter, when I just sit around
and crochet. I eat a pound or two of candy a week in the winter. But
I guess there are plenty of women who ain't in the side show that eat
as much candy as I do.
“The fact is, I was just born to be fat. So why not make the best
of it? One thing is certain: whatever else I may worry about, I don't
have to worry about getting fat. That's more than most women can say.”
_________________________
The American Magazine, vol. 94, no. 3, Sept. 1922, pp. 62 - 63. 100,
103.
