tour, and when they visited Vienna, Hermann Otto described
seeing his old acquaintance in a “red, silk-like harlot’s dress with
a frightening rictus across her face.” A few years later in Karlsbad,
Lent heard of another woman, Marie Bartel, who suffered from
conditions similar to those of his late wife. (Today the official
diagnosis for Julia’s maladies is generalized hypertrichosis
lanuginosa, which produced the hair covering her face and body,
and gingival hyperplasia, which thickened her lips and gums).
Determined to add Marie to his
show, Lent threw a bag of plums
over a wall and into the garden
where she spent her days. A little
while later, he persuaded her
father to let him marry her. He
promised to never exhibit Marie,
but the oath was short-lived.
Soon she was singing and
dancing onstage as “Zenora
Pastrana,” Julia’s “little sister,”
with the embalmed mummies of
Julia and her son behind her for
an added macabre touch. But
perhaps “Zenora” had the last
laugh. After further exhibitions
throughout Europe and America,
the pair retired in St. Petersburg,
where Lent began to go insane. At least once, he showed up
nearly naked on a bridge over the River Neva, shrieking incomprehensibly, tearing up bank notes and throwing them into the
water. Marie had him committed to an asylum, where he died
shortly thereafter. As for Marie, she moved back to Germany and
sold the embalmed bodies of Julia and child, which then shuttled
among fairs, amusement parks, museums, and chambers of
horror throughout Europe for decades.
In 1921, Haakon Lund, manager of Norway’s then-biggest
carnival, purchased the bodies of Julia and her son from an
American in Berlin. They arrived as part of a cabinet of curiosities
44