She first appears in historical records in October 1688, in the accounts for the annual Michaelmas Fair at
Leipzig in Germany. There, a man identified as 'Barthel Verhagen from Amsterdam' had displayed an elephant, charging a fee from those who wished to view it. Alongside him, Anton Verhagen, most probably Barthel's brother, was showing a lion and a tiger. It was Anton who turned up with the elephant in
Vienna in 1689, and he also exhibited various exotic birds and animals around the great fairs and markets of Europe. Over the next decade after 1688, Barthel Verhagen and the elephant undertook a tour of Europe, and making a comfortable living. In
Berlin in December 1689 customers paid two 'groschen' to see her perform military exercises with a rifle and a flag. Twelve months later, the elephant was to be found performing its tricks in the Italian towns of
Bologna and
Lucca; early the following year she was back across the Alps, visiting
Bremen in the north of Germany and
Stargard in western Poland, and in October once more in Leipzig. After Leipzig, the elephant and her keeper visited the Swiss towns of
St. Gallen,
Zurich and
Basel in 1693. In 1694 they were in the northern Baltic towns of
Kaliningrad and
Gdańsk. In August 1695 the elephant was in
Nuremberg. In March 1696 she appeared near
Heilbronn, and by Easter was in
Frankfurt. There is evidence that the elephant had also appeared in
Stuttgart in south-west Germany. After the summer of 1696, Verhagen was back in
Amsterdam, where he had already bought an inn in 1681, which he now renamed 'De Witte Oliphant' (
The White Elephant). A contemporary drawing from Stuttgart indicates that the elephant was in the company of 'two Dutchmen'. Barthel Verhagen had by then been joined by another Dutchman, Jan Jansson, who shared the responsibilities of exhibiting the animal. Jansson was a close business associate of Verhagen; in 1703, just before his death, Verhagen was to name Jansson as his heir and executor. On Verhagen's retirement, Jan Jansson rented the elephant from him on a three-year lease, and in 1698 took the animal to France, where she appeared in
Nantes and
Paris. Records indicate that keeper and elephant were still in France in April 1700. But Jansson himself returned to Amsterdam in 1701, and in November of that year that the elephant passed from Jan to his brother Gregorius. Gregorius Janssen (he used this spelling of his surname) signed a contract with Verhagen to rent the elephant for a period of three years, paying a sum of 3,000 guilders per annum. With the contract signed, Gregorius took the elephant to England. The elephant was a great success in London. The theatre impresario
Christopher Rich was keen to hire the elephant as a novelty act to be inserted into any play or farce that he might put on. However, this plan fell through when his builder advised him that any attempt to widen the doors to permit the elephant's entrance on stage would cause the entire building to collapse. In November 1701, the elephant performed at the White-Horse Inn in Fleet Street, every day from ten o'clock in the morning through to six in the evening. In March 1702, Verhagen apparently agreed to sell the elephant to a bird-merchant of London, David Randal, for one thousand pounds Sterling. When Randal sent his notary to Verhagen's house a few days later, to finalise the deal, Verhagen denied all knowledge of any such agreement, passing it off as a drunken joke. Verhagen did not sell his elephant. Indeed, when Verhagen made his last Will and Testament (in August 1703), he stipulated that 'the elephant he owns shall as long as it lives never be sold, but shall always be leased out by the executors'. The income was to be used for annuities for his three daughters. ==In Scotland==