Alright, perhaps it was a bit less dramatic than that....
Okay, okay, so I made this photo...
Several years later, when I was about 10 years old, I came across Joseph again. I was in a movie store flipping through a book about mistakes made in films, and there I saw a black and white picture of a very odd looking man. Somehow, I immediately made the connection that this was the same individual that had been on the poster many years ago, almost as if it were a piece of a puzzle that was very slowly being revealed to me. It was from this that I learned the name 'Merrick' and mistakenly thought for years that this must be his first name. After seeing the picture, I asked my father (who happens to be a doctor) what had happened to the Elephant Man - I'm sure a difficult thing to try and explain to a child. He told me he'd had tumors all over his body, and eventually this is what killed him. A rather simplified explanation, but I'm sure it seemed like enough for a child. However, the question still stayed somewhere in the back of my mind - who is this man?
As an ironic sidenote - the scene referred to in the movie book was the one in which Joseph meets Mrs. Kendal, and to this day I cannot remember or figure out what the mistake was they were talking about!
Not long after, at the age of 11, I became obsessed with "The Phantom of the Opera" - a famous tale of a deformed gentleman living in the late 19th century. This may seem irrelevent to the story at hand, as it seemed to me at the time, but as I look back on it, I believe it was another piece of the mystery I had become swept up in. A question that every phan seems to ponder is "was the Phantom of the Opera real?" Was this, in fact, a true story, as the novel claims, or was it something else? Around the age of 16 or 17, I made it my mission to find out, and began researching the history of the story. I had done some reading about the Victorian era prior to this point, but this step was a catalyst in my fascination with the time period. I fell in love with the late Victorian period - the womens clothing, the glow of the gas lamps, and the birth of electricity - I found it all captivating.
Two years later, in the winter of 1998, Joseph reappeared in my life. I was wandering through a video rental store (before the days of DVDs, folks), and what should I see, but a box with that dark, grainy image that had been in the back of my mind since my childhood. I knew there must be a reason it had stayed with me so long, and so of course, I took the film home.
I don't recall if I managed to breathe or blink throughout the entire time I watched the film. Immediately, I knew this was something very significant, as if a huge, missing piece of that puzzle had finally slipped into place. I could barely sleep that night, and the next morning I made straight for the downtown library to find out everything I could about John Merrick - as, after watching the film, I believed that was his name.
It didn't take long in reading to figure out that his name was, in fact, 'Joseph' Merrick, nor did it take long for everyone around me to believe I had finally and completely lost my mind. My roommates, friends, and family smiled and nodded, but there seemed to be a sadness in their eyes, as I descended into a mad frenzy trying to learn everything out there about this young man. Or, then again, they could have just been rolling their eyes... that's a possibilty too...
So, I read anything I could find about this late 19th century gentleman. I hunted down a copy of the film on VHS (although, I now own the wonderful DVD, among other things..), which was much more difficult than it should've been, and finally found it at a store in downtown Chicago. I was thrilled to discover a special on the discovery channel, and of course immediately taped it. I came in contact with others like myself on the internet, and one of them was kind enough to send me a video of the play, which had been broadcast on PBS some years ago. Of course, it wasn't long though before I decided all this was not enough - I had to make the journey to England myself to see the place he had called home....