Cabinet Photograph (Wendt, photographer, Boonton, N.J. [1899]), printed on verso, “The Smallest Couple in the World / Che-Mah was born on the Island of Choo-Sang, China…1838…Age [61] years; Height 28 in., Weight 40 pounds / Pearley was born in St. Louis, Missouri…1874…Height 34 in….The Most Polite and Intelligent Magnets on Exhibition. 4 x 6.5“, inscribed on verso in now-faded pencil: “To my Friend, Mr. [J.?] Mcglenin, Che Mah”; with pictorial postcard, “Che-Mah/ The Chinese Dwarf / The Smallest Man in the World / Height 28 inches, Weight 40 Pounds, Age 70 / A resident of Knox, Indiana / Mr. Mah is highly educated and has appeared before the people of all countries”. (Frank Green, Knox, Indiana) Postally-used, with 1909 Indiana postmark and handwritten note by a local resident: “…This is a good picture of Mr. Mah, it looks just like him…”
Memorabilia of the most famous – or notorious - Chinese-American of the late 19th century, a dwarf, supposedly Chinese-born, who immigrated to America in 1881 to become P.T.Barnum’s sensational stage attraction, “the smallest man in the world”,
Che Mah first appeared on the London stage in 1866. Speaking English fluently, though with a comic pidgin accent, he said he had been born in a seaport south of Shanghai to a “wealthy tea grower”, fleeing from his country as a political refugee. Educated and urbane, he was reportedly given an audience with Queen Victoria and became a poker-playing crony of the Prince of Wales before sailing for America in May 1881. After immigration troubles were resolved – the Chinese Exclusion Act had not yet passed – he began touring the US under the management of P.T.Barnum, who dubbed him a “rebel prince”. While he spoke several European languages, a Chinese laundryman who approached him to converse in their native tongue found him nervously silent and concluded, “he no Chinaman”. Nevertheless, Che Mah’s fame was enhanced by the “social excitement” that followed reports that he had won the love of a teenaged caucasian girl in New York, their marriage only prevented because the girl, a Catholic, could not find a priest to marry them.Whether or not they formally married, the couple lived together long enough to have a son, who went with the mother when they separated. Becoming a naturalized US citizen, Che Mah continued to appear on stage until the turn of the century; the photo offered here, taken by the partner of “freak” specialist Charles Eisenmann, dated from Che Mah’s stint with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, just before he retired to a farm he had bought in rural Indiana. There he was “highly respected” and popular, even after he married another caucasian woman. Citizens of Knox, Indiana proudly sold picture postcards of their famous resident, until, in 1923, he and his wife went through a bitter divorce; he then became a recluse until his death in 1926, leaving a sizable estate. Thirteen years later, a book by a circus impressario claimed that Che Mah’s entire life had been a hoax, hiding the well-kept secret that he was not Chinese at all, but a British Jew. That contention has never been proven. All of Che Mah’s government records state his Chinese birth, and no American who knew him over the 88 years of his life ever openly doubted that he was, in fact, Chinese.