The Buckingham Palace Duel

Charles Stratton was twenty-five inches tall and fifteen pounds when P. T. Barnum found him in Bridgeport in 1842, paid his parents three dollars a week, lied about his age, christened him General Tom Thumb, and put him on a stage. By five he was drinking wine in his act. By six he was meeting Queen Victoria.

The command performance, in March 1844, went beautifully. He bowed. He went through his routine. The Queen wrote in her diary that he was the greatest curiosity she or indeed anybody had ever seen, and that he made the funniest little bow and said much obliged, Mam.

Then, because royal protocol required guests to leave a monarch's presence without turning their backs, the six-year-old began reverse-bowing his way toward the door of Buckingham Palace.

The Queen's poodle attacked him.

What the dog made of the tiny soldier reverse-shuffling across the carpet is not recorded. What the boy did is. He drew his miniature sword and fenced it.

The Queen, delighted, had him back twice more. King Louis-Philippe received him in French court dress. Queen Isabella of Spain received him before he was ten. When he married Lavinia Warren in 1863, the gift from Victoria was a carriage built to his scale.

He had, by then, been a working soldier for nineteen years.