Alfred Trumble, A Spangled World; or, Life with the circus, New York: Richard K. Fox, 1883.

Chapter X. Circus Curiosities

In addition to the attractions afforded by the equestrian and other performances of a circus, and by the menagerie, there are nowadays to be found certain human curiosities of equal interest. The larger show's exhibit these themselves. The minor ones show them in side shows to which extra admission is charged. Some of these side shows pay large premiums to the regular circuses for the privilege of traveling with them and catching the stray change of the audience after the regular performance is over.

Among the foremost of the circus curiosities is Captain Costentinus, the Tattoed Greek. Barnum brought him out and at first he took immensely. He was a fine specimen of manly form and his blue tattooing had the appearance of tight fitting clothes. He was a Greek sailor (or a soldier) and, together with half a dozen of his comrades, was captured by some savage tribe, and they were all tattooed. He was the only one, according to his story, who outlived the exceedingly painful operation. The color of his tattooing is toning down with age, like an old Turkish rug. He is advertised now as "the tattooed Greek nobleman." He is very reticent, speaks English badly, and is rather inclined to be surly. But he is said to get a salary of $150 a week, and at that rate has a right to a temper of his own.

Probably the most intelligent man in all the group of giants, dwarfs, and others, is Chang, the Chinese giant He could certainly stand on the sidewalk and lay his hand on the second-story windowsill of an old-fashioned dwelling-house. He is better proportioned than any of the other giants. Chang is about the only giant on exhibition one can sit down and talk intelligently with. He speaks English fluently, as well as French, German, and Chinese. He had traveled all over the world, and had seen everything, and was well read in Chinese and English literature. He will pick out passages in standard English works and compare them with like sentences from the Chinese that were written and published centuries ago. On more than one occasion I have sat after the show was over and all the people gone, talking with Chang, and with two or three dwarfs standing on neighboring chairs, listening. Chang told some wonderful tales of his adventures in many lands. He had lived in England a number of years, had been presented at Court.

Next to Chang, perhaps, in intelligence, comes little Chee Mah, the Chinese dwarf. This very small specimen of humanity, certainly ??? thirty inches high, is forty-five years old, and is well proportioned for a dwarf. His little body contains quite as much dignity as could be crowded into any of the giants. He always insists upon having his name properly pronounced, and is gratified by the addition of "Mister." When a reporter was writing his name one day, when he first arrived in the country, Chee Mah told him how to spell it and what letters to capitalize, and cautioned him to leave a space between the Chee and the Mah. There is no doubt that both be and Chang are genuine Chinamen.

One naturally looks with suspicion upon all these strange creatures, but there is no doubt that they are nearly all what they purport to be. Nearly, not quite. The idiotic boys from Ohio are neither Australians nor Aztecs, but the fat boy is fat enough to satisfy the curiosity of the most eager spectator. The late living skeleton, Martin P. Avery, could hardly be nearer to one of the specimens hanging in the medical schools. I had the pleasure of his acquaintance for several years. He was the only one of the entire lot who did not seem satisfied with his fate, and this, no doubt, was because he was once an ordinary man, without any special distinction. He said he lost flesh gradually till he lost more than double the one-third of total weight that the doctors say a man can lose and still live. There is something ridiculous and repulsive in seeing a parcel of bones thus defraud the undertakers for a score of years. He was at one time the most widely advertised curiosity in the country. When he was first "'brought out" his exhibitor was shrewd enough to get some of the prominent doctors interested in his case, and their opinions were given wide circulation in the newspapers. These opinions, while they were of intrinsic value to the skeleton, exasperated him beyond degree.

"I couldn't see," he said to me one day, “after reading some of their remarks, how I could possibly live another day. When I read Dr. ---s opinion I was convinced that I was already dead. But I still have a pretty fair appetite.''

[Note: missing page]

After Mme. Ghio's appearance at Barnum's, came Mme. Clark of Philadelphia. She was on exhibition for a number of years, and created quite a furore in this city. She had the reputation of being a clever artist, and probably some of her paintings are yet in existence. Her husband was exceedingly jealous, and after he succeeded in making her life pretty miserable she obtained a divorce. Mme Myers has been before the public for a number of years, and is still a popular card. Her husband formerly kept a small grocery store in Avenue C, but now he is traveling with his wife. Mme. Myers' face bears a striking resemblance to the old paintings of the Saviour, and she has many times been requested to sit to prominent artists and sculptors, but she has always declined.

Bearded women are, as a rule, peevish and a never ending source of annoyance to managers. They demand as many little attentions as a prima donna, and are continually grumbling. A brother of Hyatt Frost, manager of the old Van Amburg show, is the only manager on record who subdued a bearded woman. About fifteen years ago he was exhibiting Mme. Johnson through the oil regions of Pennsylvania, and she kept him in hot water week in and week out. One, night he discovered the Madame asleep, and procuring a sharp pair of scissors clipped her beard close. By so doing he bankrupted the show, but he swore that he would go back to New York and drive a stage for a living before he would travel with Mme. Johnson.

Bearded women get from $20 to $35 a week as salary, according to their charms and the lengths of their beards. In spite of the prevailing impression that bearded women are men in disguise there is little doubt but most of them are what they claim to be. The same remark applies to the fat women, with the exception that when you are told their weight you can always afford to deduct at least fifty pounds for every hundred. The pay of fat women is about the same as that of the female Esaus.

"I'll tell you a queer thing," said a well-known showman one day to me. "You needn't write it up, for it would make a fool of me; but it has made a good deal of an impression upon me. What do you think of Metempsychosis?"

There was only one answer to make: "All bosh."

"I'm not so sure of that," said the showman. "When I had the museum in Louisville in 1859 I had one of the best giants you ever saw. He was over eight feet high, and weighed between four hundred and five hundred pounds. He was the best card I had, but he died, and the only thing I regret in my whole business career is that I made an advertisement of his funeral. It was an immense affair, and it paid. We had to make him seem a little bigger even than he was, and the coffin was nearly eleven feet long, and was carried on a lumber wagon, draped in black. That was nearly twenty-two years ago, and there are plenty of people in Louisville at this day who remember the giant's funeral. He was buried in a grave twelve feet deep, for effect. Well, one day last spring I was in the museum in the morning, when in came Tommy ----, and said he had a dwarf to let for $15 a week. I went back with him to his hotel to look at the dwarf, and I no sooner set eyes on his face than I saw the face of poor old Donald, the giant we buried in Louisville. He had the same hair, the same eyes, and the same features, and even the same teeth. Donald had one upper front tooth gone, and so had the dwarf. Donald had a little nick in the top of his right ear, and so had the dwarf. I saw the dwarf start and grow pale when he looked at me. As for me, I was in a cold perspiration, and felt faint. There was Donald, the giant, standing before me, only dwindled from eight feet to three. The dwarf's manager saw I looked sick, and we went out together into the air. I have never seen ,the dwarf since. He was in Melbourne a few months ago, and I hope he will stay there. What made it all the more singular, Donald was always so proud of his size, and shoved the dwarfs around out of his way like so many cats. The dwarfs all hated him, and he despised them. It may be the poor fellow's punishment."

The amusements of these singular beings, as may easily be imagined, are few. They dare not show themselves in public, or they become too familiar to the people. Sometimes they live in the museums where they are exhibited, and sometimes in a boardinghouse. When in the latter place dwarfs and giants and skeletons and fat boys are put together without ado, and those of them who have ever heard it cannot fail to realize that "poverty makes strange bedfellows."

They are only mortal, after all, these people, and like the rest of us they have their little failings. Some of them have a weakness for gin. Hardly any of them refuse malt liquors. They have to be very careful in their drinking, for they are almost constantly on exhibition. Sunday is their only time, and they take advantage of it. There may be seen a select company of curiosities, including hairy men, bearded women, skeletons, giants, dwarfs, musicians, and attendants on a Sunday afternoon, gathered around the big bass drum stood on end, each awaiting his turn to throw the dice. Whoever makes the poorest throw is condemned to pay for the beer. Thus they remember the Sabbath day and keep it wholly.

There is sometimes an interesting history attaching to the inanimate objects in these museums. The wax figures for example. They surely do not come under the Biblical prohibition of idols, for they are not likenesses of anything in the heavens above or the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth. The eye of the dashing country visitor is caught by them, however, and they do duty till they are utterly unable to stand up, or incapable of further repair. I am on intimate terms with a wax figure now on exhibition in this city, that was made in London in 1837, according to the lettering on a corner of the base. Among the live inhabitants of the museum the most remarkable attachments sometimes spring up. One recent instance will sufficiently illustrate. When a certain dwarf, still in Now York, came to this country less than six months ago, he was followed in the next steamer by a huge German giant, who shed tears when the dwarf left Europe, and could not bear to be separated from him.

In this tidbit of information about our big and little and thin and fat and bearded friends, it is sincerely to be hoped that there have not been made public enough of the secrets of the trade to injure the business in the slightest degree. Above all, that nothing has been said to offend any of the giants, or I will never dare enter a museum again.

Chapter XI. The Men Ahead of a Circus

There are many men in the show business not past middle age who remember when the advance advertising of a show was done by one man, who journeyed on horseback, carrying his bills and posters in a pair of saddle-bags. James L. Hutchinson, of the Barnum-London combination, who is yet in the thirties, can remember when the advent of a two-horse wagon to carry the bills was looked upon as an extravagant innovation that might prove disastrous to the show that started it. Last year the show to which Mr. Hutchinson belonged had seventy-four men on the road in advance of its company, to whom it paid salaries ranging from $30 a month to $200 a week; and so long as the outlay for advertising does not exceed one-half the daily expenditures, Mr. Hutchinson and his partners will not be alarmed.

Take such a show as Barnum's, for example. The gorgeous lithographs of horses at full speed, men flying through the air, women leaping through hoops, elephants balancing on tubs, and the like, that are posted about town and stuck in show windows at the opening of the season are not, as many suppose, the first work of the show agents. They are almost the last. Three months before the first forerunner of the show took the road. This was the railroad contracting agent, probably the highest paid and most important man among the pioneers of the circus. He had mapped out before he started all the lines of travel, and before the show got around he had traversed them all himself. He had informed himself as to the height of tunnels and bridges, to see whether the great cars could pass beneath them, learned how fully the roads were equipped with locomotives, arranged for the hauling over the roads of the ponderous advertising cars, got the lowest figures for transporting the show train, and, after mailing back passes to other advertising men who were to follow, had moved on.

In the railroad agent's wake come the contracting agent and assistant, quick moving, unostentatious men, who do their work quietly and expeditiously. They are four or five weeks ahead of the show. Hotel accommodations are engaged by these, sites for the tent are leased, licenses are obtained from city officers, bill boards are secured, and meat, fish, vegetables, bread, water, etc., are ordered in needful quantities.

Ten days later, or about three weeks in advance of the show, the first advertising car, twice as long as an ordinary car, and gayly painted, rolls into town at the end of some train, its coming heralded for miles in advance by the loud piping of the steam calliope that it carries. There are sixteen persons aboard, and all the material for billing the town is snugly arranged within. The sections of the huge sheet posters are methodically arranged in drawers, and the steam that makes the calliope discourse its reverberating sounds also makes the paste that gums the posters to the fences. While fences and walls and barns are papered over by a part of the force, another part is engaged in, mailing circulars to schools and clergymen and other conspicuous persons in the vicinity.

The excursion man follows. He sees all the railroad superintendents about special rates, gets time tables of the different roads, and advertises the excursion trips to the show from the surrounding country. There are half a dozen in the shows's excursion department. Then the man who puts the familiar lithographs in store and shop windows goes abroad and blazes his pathway with flaming prints.

Car No. 2, manned like No. 1, is twelve days behind the first. It contains an organ of tremendous lung power instead of a calliope. From this car the country is billed a second time with an entirely new lot of posters so bewilderingly brilliant that the boys will not have done admiring them before the tents are pitched on the circus lot.

About this time look out for the stereopticon. It is dead sure to blaze out some evening in the village on which the circus is moving. Sandwiched between pictured representations of the sculptor's and painter's art the illuminator deftly projects good stock advertisements of the great moral exhibition that is on the road. The stereopticon artist is also a business man. Under his superintendence men on horseback scour all the country that is not reached by railroads, and push the show bills under the noses of all the inhabitants thereof. Each horseman is required to go the postmaster of the town he visits, and bring back a piece of paper stamped with the postmark, to show that he has made the journey and delivered the bills.

As the stereopticon man becomes a dissolving view, the soap artist looms up in the distance. Barber shop and bar-room mirrors, windows of shops and stores, in fact, glass surfaces wherever found, are covered with artistic designs in white. Flowers, vines, wreaths, crosses, faces, and figures are made with a cleverness and celerity that excite the wonder and admiration of the rural mind. In the larger towns it is a common practice of the soap artist to station himself at the terminus of a horse car line and decorate the car windows with pictures as the cars halt. The advertisement is more than likely to be rubbed off at the stables by the wrathful superintendent, but if the car has borne the news once along the line the soap artist feels that his work has not been in vain. If he can get a show notice even in a single corner of a conspicuous window, the artist will sometimes as compensation cover the rest of the surface with the business card of the merchant who grants the favor.

Two of the most glib-tongued members of the profession next invade, the town upon which the show is bearing down. One is a press agent who had a predecessor in the same line months before. Press agent No. 2's advent may be known by the sundry squibs in the local journals, and the liberal extracts about the show from other papers.

The other is a man in modest garb, of benevolent countenance, and bland manners. His work is to see the school trustees and teachers, heads of institutions and the like, and arouse a sentiment in favor of the great moral exhibition. He is a good speech-maker, and his addresses to children on the beauty of true goodness and moral menageries, would do credit to Schuyler Colfax or Deacon Richard Smith. The schools usually respond in a body in consideration of reduced admission.

And still there is no gap left between the departure of the press man and school visitor and the coming of the show. The country is, again freshly billed with still different pictures. New lithographs are seen in store windows and bunches of little handbills hang up in different places. Finally just in advance of the approach of the great show train men travel back and forth over the railroads and fling handbills to the breeze from car windows, and up to the moment the show is opened the incessant heralding goes on.

Top