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Circus Scrap Book
October 1932, No. 15
Scroll down for the article you are looking for in this issue. Note: Only some articles are included in this online edition. The Circus Historical Society does not guarantee the accuracy of information contained in the information in these online articles. Information should always be checked with additional sources.
Aerial Feats
Clipping dated 1866. Reprinted in Circus Scrap Book, No. 16 (Oct), 1932, pp. 5-7.In San Francisco, California, on Sunday, June 17th, 1866, Mlle. Rosa Celeste was advertised to make an ascension on a tight rope, stretched from the Cliff House to Seal Rock, a distance of 400 feet. A correspondent says: "The day was the most disagreeable one we have had this season, it being cloudy and blowing a perfect hurricane. Nevertheless, groups of people rushed in every piece of conveyance to the Cliff to witness the daring ascensionist. At noon the wind had not subsided, and Mlle. Celeste concluded she would not attempt it on that day. Mr. Eugene Lee (brother of Frank Lee, now in New York) a young gymnast, offered his services to walk the rope, which were accepted, and he prepared himself for the perilous feat, but no one expected that he would accomplish it, as the wind was continually rising. At last, the young man made his appearance and stepped on the rope with an elastic step, his face showing the utmost confidence. When within seventy-five feet of Seal Rock (where there were no guys to the rope) the rope swaying to and fro from the effects of the high wind, Mr. Lee fell, but being an excellent gymnast, he caught himself, and with the utmost exertions he succeeded in reaching the shore, and was greeted by cheer after cheer from the assembled crowd. The wind was too high for such an ascension, and the young man should not have been allowed to have made the attempt."
On the following Sunday, the 24th, every imaginable species of vehicle was seen bearing persons in search of pleasure or excitement, to witness Mlle. Rosa Celeste accomplish the feat which she had promised to perform. The oldest and most experienced gymnasts in this state declared that she was attempting an impossibility. James Cooke (the circus performer now in Australia with Wilson's Circus) had, with the aid of a wire stretched on each side of the rope, on which he might rest his balancing pole, and after falling on the rope several times in order to rest the muscles of his legs, on which there was such a cruel strain, succeeded in making the ascension last October. If a girl of 18 years of age can accomplish a feat that severely tried such a veteran gymnast as Cooke, was generally declared to be utterly impossible. However, a group of between three and four thousand persons assembled to see Mlle. Celeste make the attempt. A rope was stretched from the Cliff House to Seal Rock, a distance of 400 feet, and to an elevation of 100 feet above the sea. Between the shore and the rocks the waves dashed furiously and broke into surf with a sullen roar. As the rope was being stretched tight, one of the guys broke; there was no time to attach another, as the wind might spring up at any moment and render it impossible to accomplish the feat. At midday, the sun shining in its utmost splendor and magnificence, Mlle. Celeste stepped on the rope, cast a quick glance 'round on the assembled multitude, and amidst loud applause started on her dangerous journey. With a firm step the dauntless funambuleste treads daintily along the rope. She has no wires to the sides; her sole dependence is on that rope and her own will, wonderful nerve and practiced strength. A fog now sprang up from the sea, and by the time she has made about two-thirds of the way, has enveloped in its misty folds, the brave young funambuleste. Now all eyes were attracted toward Seal Rock. See! The flag is waved. It tells that the feat has been accomplished in safety, and shout after shout peals forth from the excited crowd. A rope had been attached from the Cliff House to the Rock for the purpose of communicating by letter, and over this, Captain Foster, of the Cliff House, sent a note tendering his congratulations to Mlle. Celeste, who now rested after her labors on Seal Rock. She sent back a reply in which she expressed her determination of walking back on the rope. Captain Foster immediately sent back the following letter: "No! No! You must not come back on the rope. Your friends beg you will not. Your fame is made. For myself, I hope you will not return as you went - not that I doubt your ability, but you have done enough. Your friend, Foster." Warm clothing was sent over by the rope communication, and the heroine of the day came back by water, instead of again treading the perilous pathway she had traversed before.
As Mlle. Rose Celeste has undoubtedly established her fame as the female Blondin of the world, the following particulars will doubtless prove interesting:
Mlle. Rose Celeste was born in Jacksonville, Fla., on the 4th of February, 1848. She was brought up in Rushville, Illinois, went to Cincinnati, Ohio, and lived there four years previous to visiting California. She arrived in San Francisco in May, 1864, in the steamship Golden City. During the time she has been there she has made six ascensions on the tightrope previous to accomplishing this, her greatest feat. She has appeared once at Alameda, once at Oakland, once at Platt's Hall, twice at the Willows and thrice at Haye's Park. On the last occasion, in which she appeared at Haye's Park, she wheeled a barrow on a half inch wire, seventy-feet in length to a height of twenty-five feet. In justice to Mlle. Celeste, I must state that she received no compensation for the foregoing ascension, but performed that feat for fame.
On next Sunday, the first of July, Mlle. Rose will perform the same feat and return from Seal Rock to the Cliff House which, if she is successful, will rival Blondin.
Chiarini
By James V. Chloupek. Circus Scrap Book, No. 16 (Oct), 1932, pp. 7-10.[Note: Enclosed find an historical write-up of G. Chiarini, owner of the World's Greatest International Circus. I am greatly indebted to Mr. A. Chiarini, son of G. Chiarini, for many dates and information. This article was translated from the Spanish by Mrs. Chloupek.]
Genius is what makes an artist and to become prominent requires practice and study. Mr. Guisseppe Chiarini was born in Rome, Italy, in 1823, and from his early childhood began his education under the tutelage of his father, Gaetano Chiarini, who was a prominent "Ecuesire" of that time. At the age of sixteen he was well known in his profession due to the excellence of his work for which he had many offers of contracts. He accepted one with the famous Guerra's Company, who had the best combination in Europe.
After glorious triumphs in the principal European capitals, he accepted a position as an equestrian instructor at Astley's in London, England, but his imagination longed for new worlds where he could be more free, see greater rivers and lakes and higher mountains and have more wild animals to tame.
Encouraged by his continuous triumphs he came to North America and organized an excellent company to make a tour around the world.
Right here we might state that in the Chiarini family there were three sons. Joseph by the first marriage, who has now passed away. He was a performer with his father, but he was too young to take over the show when Mr. Chiarini died. The other two sons, Carlos and Abeli, were by a second marriage and neither were in the show. They were non-professionals and also too young to take over the show when their father passed away.
Mr. Chiarini died in Panama in 1897. Carlos has passed away and Abeli is still living and resides in Oakland, where Mrs. Chiarini died on September 8, 1932.
We can only delve briefly into Mr. Chiarini's career. It is certain that when acts of the prominent are related in history, the idea is associated with horses. Caligula had "Incitatus"; Alexander the Great had "Bucefalo" and the Cid had "Babieca."
In poetic and mythological fiction the idea is incomplete without a horse. The Spanish novelist, Cervantes, presents to us "Rocinante" with D. Quijote and in mythology we have "Pegaso." The Turks from the nobility have their horses dressed to show their nobleness and display them in public parades. Even in heaven the horses have their own place. Who has ever seen St. George or Santiago on foot? If all these gentlemen historical, mythological and poetical owe a great part of their celebrity to their horses, then one understands the fame of Chiarini who had 23 horses from all parts of the world, among them pure-blooded Arabian horses, educated to the highest and most perfect point. These horses would have made Incitatus, Bucefalo and Pegaso jealous, elevated to theological horses they left Santiago and George behind; then Chiarini must be as great as Alexander; as noble as Caligula and as much of a Saint as Santiago and St. George and as audacious as the conception of Phidias.
The first visit Chiarini made to the United States commenced with Franconi in 1853. Afterwards he made an excursion to the interior with Van Amburgh, King of lion trainers. Later, he organized a company of the best talent to be had. He went to Havana where the Circus of Chiarini was given the use of their location gratis. Never again will there unite a nucleus of artists such as James Robinson, Ella Zoyara, Stickney, Melvin, Luci Watson, the Beautiful Hanlons, the Beautiful Risarelli and an array of artists of the highest rank. Afterwards he left for Mexico, during the period of the unfortunate Maximillian and the Archduchess Carlota of Austria, who were constant attendants of the circus. Chiarini cured for them a horse, Abel Kader, of the pure Arabian breed, of the vice of becoming frightened and in fifteen days he exhibited the horse to the public and in the presence of the audience they gave the horse to Chiarini. On another occasion during a celebration in the open, in Chapultepec, he received as a gift a magnificent sapphire surrounded with diamonds. He was the recipient in other countries of the world of various medals and other trophies of love and affection.
After visiting all of Mexico he left for San Francisco, Calif., and from there he left for Australia, playing first New Zealand, Tasmania, Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, Queenstown, Port Darwin and to the Straits of Torres of Batavia, Singapore, Calcutta, Alahabad, Benares, Campore, Agra, Lucknow, Delhi, Jehor, he crossed India to Jeipore, Amadahat, Agimic, Brasca and Carachi on the Gulf of Persia and later to Bombay, Pondichery, Madras, Hidrabad; later to Ahiab, Rangoon, Mulonein in Burma, Penang, Straits of Malacca, Siam, Cochinchina, Manila and all of the Philippine Islands, later to Hong Kong, Sivatavo, Emoy, Fuchow, Formosa, Shanghai, Tientsin and Wuhu in the northern part of China. Later to Japan visiting Nagasaki, Kobe, Osaka, Kioto, Bewa, Fujiyama, all great centers of immense population.
In the capital of Japan, Tokio, Chiarini performed by request of the Mikado, in one of his most beautiful gardens, the Tukiange, in the presence of the Mikado, the Empress and all of the other nobles of the Court and all of the diplomatic representatives of the European nations in Japan.
This celebration brought together two events of notable memory: The Chiarini Circus showing before all the nations of the world and the Emperor of Japan. It was the first Circus the Emperor had ever visited. He made a present to Chiarini the equivalent of five thousand dollars.
From Yokahama he sailed for the Hawaiian Islands and to the Sandwich Islands and from there to San Francisco, Calif., having completed his first voyage.
He took a special train to Mexico, visiting the larger cities until he reached Vera Cruz and from there he went to Havana, where he took a boat, the Villaverde, that took him to Porto Rico. He immediately visited Venezuela and Curazao, later Haiti where he found the country in a great upheaval and in a state of agitation. The same boat, the Villaverde, brought him to Cuba and Mr. Chiarini made this route with the object of amusing all of the cities of the world during his travels from New York to Brazil, beginning with Para in the Amazons to Rio Janeiro. The Emperor Pedro II and the Empress visited the Circus very often.
Later, in traveling to Paraguay and Uruguay, he passed through the Republic of Argentine where he had an incident with a famous tribe of Patagonian Indians. The Indians came into some of the smaller towns such as Langosta. The Circus was working in one of these interior cities when Chief Calcufuia arrived with all of his tribe. Chiarini trembled with fear for his horses. Chiarini offered to give a special performance at 3 o'clock in the afternoon for the Chief who was very much pleased and took nothing from the Circus and to the contrary he gave Chiarini two Indian suits.
He left Buenos Ayres for the Straits of Magellan, leaving the Atlantic for the Pacific, visiting Chila, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Central America, Honduras, San Salvador and Guatemala, where they suffered much from the terrific volcanoes. In Bolivia, while they were crossing Lake Titicaca, a zebra fell overboard and was drowned. They had it embalmed and presented to President Daza who returned the compliment by presenting Chiarini with four vicunas, two alpacas and two llamas. He took the train to Runo of Mollendo and at the station of Vincocayo, where the altitude is 17,600 feet above sea level, the highest point in the world where a railroad passes, the animals and the people all suffered from the high elevation.
They then traveled north to Panama, where Mr. Chiarini passed away. This was in the year of 1897.
He was a great showman of whom Italy and America can feel justly proud.
The Circus and Me
By Mabel Reed. Circus Scrap Book, No. 16 (Oct), 1932, pp. 15-18.One Sunday morning in January, 1884, there appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer, this advertisement:
Wanted: Three young girls to learn the circus business. Call before 4 p. m. Mr. Bibb Forepaugh, Hummel House.
I learned that the girls were needed to work with Bibb Forepaugh and his two daughters, Mamie and Pearl, who were working with the John Robinson Circus as the "Forepaugh Family," including his wife, Mme. Zola. Knowing that the Robinson Circus was one of the biggest shows on the road, and being anxious to become a member of such a wonderful organization, I hoped that I would do and my heart almost ran away with joy when I heard the words, "Well, Mabel, I guess you'll do."
It seems only yesterday that I heard the words. I started on my circus career with a great determination and soon learned that a circus life is not a bed of roses. Plenty of hard work before success reaches you, or you reach success. I practiced bicycle riding, roller skating, trapeze and walking the tight-rope, which later was used as a free act, for the benefit of the crowd which always followed the parade to the lot. We lived in Cincinnati on Vine Street over the old swimming-school and used the downstairs for all the acts. There was a huge net spread for the flying acts, for Mrs. Bibb Forepaugh who was known as a great "star of the air" by the name of Mme. Zola, one of the greatest women aerialists I ever met. It was while I was with the Forepaugh Family that Uncle John Robinson said: "My young lady, you are not meant for the things you are doing. You should be a rider and I predict that you will be a great one, too." Of course it made me feel good to hear praise from such an expert. I remained two years with the Forepaugh family and then was apprenticed to Mr. Robinson.
Through the winter of 1886 I worked in the Robinson's ring barn on John street in Cincinnati, Ohio, with John Wilson. The Robinsons had bought a great race horse by the name of Messenger. His day on the track was over, but he was a wonderful high jumper and we spent the winter breaking him for my act. I did five acts twice a day, three riding acts and two aerial acts, besides driving in the flat races and handling a pair of horses tandem over the hurdles. Then I took a fine resin-back belonging to John Robinson into the ring-barn and started in to be a real bareback rider. I will never forget that winter. How hard we worked. Johnny Wilson, himself an expert rider, was the instructor and teacher. He took quite an interest in me and I was called quite an apt pupil. The next spring I was ready to ride. Louise DeMott, Mamie Forepaugh and myself rode together and Josie DeMott being a somersault ride, rode by herself. When I dressed for my first appearance as a rider with those fluffy white skirts and little satin pumps, I could hardly realize that it was myself who was going into the ring, for I was still a mere girl. But I soon forgot everything and was determined to go out and do my best. The tent was crowded and there was great anxiety as we each rode to our respective rings to do our acts. I didn't see the crowd and my heart seemed to beat in time with the music. My horse seemed to know it was my tyro performance for he stepped with extra care, fearful that a mis-step might queer or spoil my act. When I finished the applause that greeted me on my side of the tent I assure you was pleasing to my ears. At last I had reached that place in circus life to which I had aspired. I had made good as a rider and I was ever so grateful to dear Mr. Robinson for giving me the chance. Then followed a friendship with the Robinsons which has lasted to this day. I was always like one of the family. They were happy years and I wish some fairy godmother would come along and with her wand turn back the pages of life and let me live them all over again.
I shall never forget the first year I ever met Gil Robinson. He came into the ring-barn wearing a pair of working pants, the legs stuck into a pair of high boots reaching almost to his thighs. He had on a slouch hat and a black cigar was stuck in the corner of his mouth. There was a merry twinkle in his deep blue eyes. He was the kind of a man who could take in everything at a glance. I asked Mr. Forepaugh who the rough-looking man was and he said, "That's Gil Robinson, the boss over everything and everybody. So ride your best." Mr. Forepaugh called him over and introduced me to him. That was how I met the man who made me a star with the Robinson Circus and helped me to a place where my name stood out on the billboards all over the country, as well as in the West Indies. There was another girl with the Forepaugh act by the name of Dolly Harrison. She and I did a double trapeze act and we rode in the races together. She was very dark and I was a decided blonde and this made a pretty picture side by side in the air twirling and turning together. Everybody used to take Mamie Forepaugh and myself for sisters as we were both blondes. It was in March, 1884, that. Mr. Robinson placed us for two weeks at the Vine Street Opera House to try out our bicycle act. We were there during the awful riots over the trial of Burner and Palmer, the white man and negro who were tried for murder during my circus career. I worked for B. E. Wallace and Irwin Brothers, but most of my years in the show business were spent with the John Robinson Circus. I was one of the very few women who rode a horse through the hoop of fire. Old Billie Monroe, Mr. Benton Houghs, John Cleveland and Mr. C. Sweeney handled my fire for me. I used the hoop as a finish to my hurdle act with the B. E. Wallace Show. Mr. John Robinson used to say to me, "Remember, Mabel, you are going into the ring to ride a horse, not the ring-bank."
And when my long circus career ended I was both sad and glad. Sad because there was a lot of glamour and romance under the white tops which I would miss, and glad because I made good. The finest people I ever met are connected with a circus. Most of them, of course, have passed to the Great Beyond, but many, fortunately, are still living, for which I am eternally grateful, for we still have the satisfaction of communicating with each other, living again those days we all loved.
I am now retired and living peacefully in my beautiful bungalow here in the little town where I was born, and I shall remain here until I hear the last bugle call for "lights out" and the Big Top is down.
Laugh Makers at the Circus
From the Sun, April 5, 1903. Reprinted in Circus Scrap Book, No. 16 (Oct), 1932, pp. 23-26."Sons of Momus" Tody Hamilton calls them, the new clowns of the Barnum and Bailey Show. They are a new generation of circus fun-makers.
It is no longer a fool's cap, a suit made in one piece with a bloomer effect with trousers; a face painted white and decorated with a few splashes of color, ambling with toes turned in around the sawdust ring, but a series of different pictures that does the business now. When the circus came to be an institution of fifteen thousand seats, all idea of amusing with jokes or facial contortions had to be given up, and with it the clown of the old times passed away.
In the time of the one and two rings, the clown told funny stories, sang amusing songs and got his popularity in that way. The highest type was the Shakesperean clown who went about mouthing quotations from Shakespeare while the band held its breath, the horses stood still and the lady waited for the balloon. As the head of the clowns of that period Joe Pentland got a salary of $500.00 a week, and Dan Rice they say got double that sum. Barnum and Bailey would probably find them useless to-day.
In an enclosure which embraces three rings, two stages and a hippodrome course, the clowns work must be solely pantomine; his voice could not be heard. Any scenic effects or mechanical tricks, such as might be employed in the theatres can be used for obvious reasons. Facial expression is of little service for to the larger part of the spectators the clown is so far away that they can hardly tell that he has a face.
Whatever the clowns do at the big show must be done without interfering with the acrobatic equestrienne or other specialties going on in the rings. Each antic must be repeated six or seven times as the clown works his way around the ring, else only a very small part of the people would see it.
Animals and birds are employed by the clowns to make their specialties attractive. Probably one of the laugh-makers at the circus has the rooster which refuses to be put into a basket. This is put on at a time when the arena is being prepared for aerial acts and the clown and his basket have the attention of the house. The rooster is trained to crow and apparently delights in it. The antic takes only three minutes.
Seven minutes is the limit for any of the circus comedians. James A. Bailey engaged one English clown who on his arrival here insisted that he must have-twenty minutes to go through his act. Mr. Bailey promptly paid his passage back to England.
Another innovation is clown work this year is the fantastic snake-charmer who comes in with a lot of weirdly clad attendants to the music of the Midway Plaissance. In the procession there is a great wicker basket. Having reached the platform in the center of the ring the snake-charmer, a tall person in stripes of green and yellow, opens the basket and begins to pull out snakes. He drags out whole armfuls, goes to sleep on a bed of them, and, arising, returns to the basket and brings out a huge and gorgeously painted imitation of a boa constrictor, opens its capacious cloth jaws and inserts his head. When the act is over, this clown goes away to the music of rattling applause, which his suite recognize in ludicrous fashion. The musicians who go about in black and white grotesque garments stare blankly up into the boxes until the occupants are forced to laugh, then move on by a series of somersaults, playing their fiddles meanwhile. One has a dog which he carries on his hands held above his head. The dog sits up on his hind legs on tour around the ring, keeping his balance with much grace.
A dozen clowns are carried with the show for one little bit of by-play which consumes only five minutes. That is the boat race. First from the shadows comes the judges boat, occupied by two clowns paddling hard. Then come the rival crews. A row between a man in the judge's boat and the captain of a crew brings them out of their boats into the imaginery water. After the boats are lined up for the race, the word is given and the clowns vanish again behind the scenes.
As on the stage men made up as animals win out at the circus. New York has recently seen animals act at three Broadway Shows at once and in each case the animal has been one of the distinct hits of the show. In the circus you see a crafty bull attended by a matador who kills him after a prepared spiel at pantomine and then they proceed around the circle doing the same little stunt six times in making the tour.
A never-failing laugh maker is the troupe of ball-playing dogs. All the world has laughed its sides sore at it. This trick started with the Barnum and Bailey Show at the Garden and every circus in the world has since introduced it. No dog will do entirely just what the little French bulldog did the first night it followed its master into the ring unseen and got the chance at the ball. For a time the dog was allowed to have more time, space and action than any human clown but now it has come into the time limit of seven minutes.
Some of the antics of the clown are the result of a winter's thought and others are the outcome of accident. One season when Paul Boynton was giving his tank exhibition with the Barnum and Bailey Show, a clown accidently fell into the tank while running around the ring. When he came out dripping, with his white suit clinging to him, he looked so funny that the people screamed with laughter at the sight of him. Thereafter he fell into the tank accidently at every performance with the same happy effect on the spectators, and got five dollars a day extra from the management for his duckings. That was Al Caron, a famous clown in his time, who saved up money enough to retire and is now a famous undertaker in a suburb of New York.
Seibert, a clown, did a tramp bicycle act one season that he was afraid would hardly do. When he made his entrance the first night on his ricketty machine, he rode toward a bunch of clowns and just as he reached them his front wheel got caught and tossed him headlong over the handle bars. Being a fine gymnast it was easy for him to convert his sprawl into a somersault and as he came up all right he shook hands with each of the others, as if it had been his usual manner of arrival. The action struck the spectators as comical and the act went through that way the rest of the season.
When a clown has been engaged for the season he sets out to spend three months in plotting out a seven-minute or less performance. Tody Hamilton is the court to which he appeals for judgment on his work.
"What a lazy time you have of it in the winter," said the young woman who had been introduced to Mr. Hamilton and who had heard the tales of his busy life.
''Good lord!" exclaimed Mr. Hamilton thinking of the pyramids of adjectives and other things he constructs in the closed season, "Why, Miss, I am the man the clowns try their stunts on."
Stories of Oldtime Shows and Showmen
Written by W. C. Coup in 1891. Circus Scrap Book, No. 16 (Oct), 1932, pp. 26-41.Nothing can afford a better idea of the variety and picturesqueness of a showman's life than the medley of odd incidents, of strange experiences and homely happenings that crowd the thoughts of a veteran when in a reminescent mood. It is under this kind of inspiration that I have jotted down, in this scrappy and haphazard way, the episodes which sufficiently impressed me at the time of their occurrence to claim frequent rehearsal when talking over the "old days" with other pioneers of the tent and the ring. It is the clowns who in one way or another furnish most material for anecdotes, and the greatest clown America ever saw was Dan Rice, who at one time was the most famous circus performer in America, and, with the exception of John Robinson, the most daring. I have never met a more nervy man; he was without an equal in trying emergencies. He would face a mob at anytime and under any circumstances. Besides being a natural fighter he was a natural orator. He had a sonorous penetrating voice, his enunciation was clear and distinct, and he knew the secret of flattering and delighting his auditors. Dan had many competitors for the patronage of the river towns, the most prominent of whom were two veteran showmen who owned a floating palace. The "Palace" was simply a large boat fitted up as an opera house with the most elegant appointments. It would seat several hundred people and was provided with a complete stage and elaborate sets of scenery. This was towed by a tug called the "James Raymond" on which all the performers roomed and took their meals. They had besides, a steamer called the "Banjo" on which they gave a minstrel performance.
Dan had formerly been featured as one of their attractions, but, some trouble arising, he had left them and started in business on his own account. He experienced the usual ups and downs of a showman's life, finally "went broke" and was at last cleaned out to what he boldly announced as "Dan Rice's One Horse Show." With this little affair he courageously fought his former associates and did a large business. During the performances he was in the habit of singing a song entitled "My One-Horse Show," which took the popular fancy and materially helped him. In this song he told how the opposition had placed false buoys in the river, thereby misleading his pilots and throwing him on sand-bars where his craft stuck for days.
For the information of those unacquainted with river travel, I will say that buoys are placed by the government in dangerous parts of the river to point out the only safe channel. Now, whether or not the opposition was really guilty of this trick, Dan's verses gained him the sympathy of the people, and with that sympathy came their dollars. In fact, to such an extent did Dan work upon the sympathies of the people that, at many points, they actually refused to let the opposition boats to land. At some of these places the opposition had themselves incurred the displeasure of the people by touching at the landing only long enough to receive their audiences, and then going into the middle of the river to give their performances, thus avoiding the payment of the license fee.
This lasted through the winter, and when summer came both shows took to their tents and travelled toward New York State. There Dan's enemies succeeded on some charge or other in getting him in jail. While in his cell he composed "Blue Eagle Jail," in which he described the jailer, whom he disliked, as "Dot-and-Go-One" from the fact of his having a wooden leg. This song made the one-legged jailer notorious all over the country.
One thing I must say for Dan Rice: he was the only original clown I ever heard - with the single exception of Dilly Fay. The latter was an erratic individual who actually became a clown that he might save money to complete his studies in Paris. Fay was educated and original, but lacked the physical power and deep voice of Rice. I never heard of Fay after he started for Paris, but presume he never entered the ring.
Once when I was with Dan Rice on the river circus we showed at Memphis. At this place a certain fellow was loud in his denunciation of Dan and the show. He was a source of great annoyance to the showman and had also made himself very unpopular by declaiming against slavery. In retaliation Dan entered the ring and returned the compliment in kind. He capped the climax by singing a song in which he described his enemy as playing cards with a negro on a log, and so boldly was this done that the people believed it and the fellow became so exasperated that he threatened to shoot Dan. The clown, however, defied him, and continued ridiculing him until the man was actually obliged to leave the city in a hurry.
Dan also had trouble at Yazoo city, Mississippi. He had, it appears, on a former visit, flogged a prominent man there, and the latter had sworn to shoot him on sight. One night when Dan was clowning in the ring the prominent citizen entered and drew his revolver to kill. A plucky bystander, however, knocked the iron from his hand and prevented bloodshed. The scene that followed I shall never forget. Dan stood undaunted in the ring, called the man a coward and dared him to shoot. His audience went into ecstacies over such an exhibition of bravery and applauded to the echo. Whereupon Dan stimulated to further efforts, poured forth a torrent of the most stinging denunciation of cowards that ever fell from mortal lips. I have often wondered where Dan picked up such a command of language.
At that time he was not an educated man, although years after, when visiting him at his magnificent house at Girard, Pa., I found he had a well-stocked private library and he had certainly become an exceedingly well-read man.
My last experience with Dan Rice when he was in the circus business was at Elkhardt, Ind. It was a very stormy day during the war. The weather was too windy to permit the hoisting of the usual flags, and one pompous young fellow, inflated with conceit, appointed himself a committee and visited Dan, demanding that the flags be hoisted. He charged that Dan had made secession speeches in the South, with an ugly mob at his heels the fellow declared that if the flags were not hoisted, he would burn the whole outfit. Dan truthfully told the crowd that he had already erected, at Girard, Pa., a monument to the Union soldiers; that he owned more flags than the whole city of Elkhardt, and that he would show them if he desired; but he absolutely refused to hoist a stitch of bunting upon such a demand. Threats and arguments were alike powerless to move him from his stand. I thought him rather foolish, in those exciting times, and there appeared to me great danger in his action.
Dan, however, mastered the situation. He publicly announced that at the night show he would give a full history of the leader of the mob, and did so with a vengeance. He had learned by careful inquires something of the character of this fellow, who was a cashier in a bank, and at the evening performance, and in the actual presence of the man and his associates, Dan mounted a stool and gave his enemy such a verbal castigation as few persons have ever received. As he progressed in his speech he waxed eloquent, and in a marvellously deep, clear and pentrating voice pictured the vices and foibles of this "patriotic" cashier, until the audience was ready to mob the man. Suddenly a rush was made to where he had been sitting. But he was gone and the eloquent showman was a complete victor.
That night I roomed at the hotel where Rice was stopping, and in the morning he accompanied me to the depot, to see me off, for my home in the West. While waiting there the cashier appeared and begged Dan to retract his assertions of the night before, declaring that otherwise he would be run out of town. Dan replied that if he did not immediately leave him he would receive the worst thrashing of his life - and Dan would have kept his word, to the letter, had not the fellow beat a quick retreat. I saw Rice but once after that time, but always regarded him as a prince of the circus ring.
At one time we started our show through Kentucky, where we did a splendid business. On this journey through the South our horses were all caught in a fire and so charred and burned that we had to shoot many of them. In Mississippi we were greatly troubled and delayed on account of the deep mud. We were three days going a distance of only eighteen miles. At one point, where there was only one house, our tent was delayed on account of the deep mud, and we were forced to show without it, putting up the seats in the form of a circle, thus making a ring in which the performance was given. The people could see the performance without paying, but nearly all of them had principle enough to pay. A few ruffians, however, began abusing the showmen, and a genuine fight ensued, which was a repetition of most of the others, and some of the toughs were badly hurt. Our men had all gone to the farmhouse to bed, and I was alone on the grounds to look after my property, when, after midnight, a crowd began to gather and suddenly surrounded me, shoving the muzzles of their pistols and guns in my face. This crowd hung about until daylight, and I pleaded so heartily that they did not shoot. The fact that I was then little more than a boy in years was, I think, the only reason I was not instantly shot by the ruffians.
When our company began to gather in the morning these ruffians left, but I shall never forget that night sitting there surrounded by a half-drunken mob, in a drizzling fall of rain. I was completely exhausted and half frozen, and never before nor since was I so glad to see daylight come.
This trip led us through Georgia, Alabama, Florida and North Carolina. In those States we frequently travelled at night, and sometimes all night, illuminating our way by setting fire to the patches of gum on the pine trees at the spots where they had been "blazed" for their sap. In the mountains of North Carolina we encountered the "clay eaters." I was assured that they subsisted to a great extent upon a certain kind of clay which appears to be able to sustain life. The reader can imagine the character and intelligence of these beings. There was also, in a certain region, a strange people who held regular monthly fairs where they met to barter. They were said to be descendants of a certain Scottish clan, who, when they first came to this country, were fairly well civilized, but instead of settling in the fertile soils and lowlands, took up their homes in the mountains, because the latter reminded them of their native country. Here they became more and more isolated until, at length, they were governed solely by their own outlandish laws and customs, knowing nothing of the usages of civilization. Outside of the clay-eating districts these mountain people grew to an enormorous stature and possessed great strength. I found them very hospitable, always treating their guests with marked kindness.
When we went to New Orleans to close up and pay off a show that had been "flooded out" in one of my earliest ventures, it was our intention to take the New Orleans company to New York, but I found it impracticable. I thereupon called all the members to my rooms at the hotel and explained to them the situation. I proposed to pay them all off and let them remain idle until the opening in the following spring. To this all agreed save two, our principal riders, a woman and a man. These positively refused to make any compromise. The woman snapped her fingers in my face and said "No, I was engaged for a year and you will have to pay me my salary just the same. You are able to do it, and do it you shall." The man took precisely the same stand, and as they were not only our star riders, but also the best equestrians in America, I was at a loss to know what to do.
I took a little time for deliberation, and learned that both malcontents were very much in love with each other. This immediately helped me to determine what course to pursue. I first sent for the woman and told her to get ready at once to go to my farm in Wisconsin, where I intended to build a ring around a tree, to furnish her with a ringmaster, and to allow her to earn her salary by giving two performances daily to the birds and squirrels. She claimed that her contract did not call for such performances, but a reference to the contract proved that she was to ride in any part of America I might designate. Then I sent for the man and told him that he and his horses must take the next steamer for New York City. He refused to do this, but I quickly proved to him that his contract with us, though calling for transportation for himself and horses, did not specify of what nature that transportation should be; I had a perfect right to send him by sailing vessel if I chose. His refusal to go of course cancelled his contract, and I accordingly left him. The woman expressed heir willingness to go to Wisconsin, but I knew she could not leave her sweetheart - and I was right. In less than half an hour they proposed a compromise, but I refused. Finally I agreed to take the woman to New York and pay her half salary until the season opened.
Among the many men employed with the Barnum show was one large, handsome fellow who was superintendent of the equestrian department. As showmen are fond of having nicknames, someone called this man "Barnum." The poor fellow was wholly illiterate and tolerably fond of whiskey, consequently the name was decidely inappropriate, but, as a nickname will, it stuck to him hard and fast. One day, while Mr. Barnum was visiting the show, his namesake was lying asleep outside one of the horse tents on a pile of hay, and one of the hands, desiring to waken him, shouted at the top of his voice: "Barnum! Barnum! Wake up!" Mr. Barnum had been a witness to this scene and he came to me in a tremendous rage, saying: "Have you no respect for me at all?"
"What do you mean, Mister Barnum?"
"What do I mean?" he replied. "Why, I wish to know your intent in calling that drunken, illiterate brute by my name."
Of course, after an explanation, Mr. Barnum's rage cooled, but I think he was never so much annoyed in his life. It will illustrate how thoroughly he hated the vice of drunkenness. After that episode strict injunctions were given to refrain from calling the man 'Barnum.'
On one occasion when we had run to Joplin, Mo., the train was divided into three sections, the first having been switched on a siding to wait for the other two. I was sitting at the hotel, eating breakfast, when the superintendent of the road came in and announced, "I am afraid you will not show to-day."
"Why not?" I replied.
"Well," said he, "the section of your train that has already pulled out has run wild down a steep grade over an immense trestle with nothing but zigzags and reverse curves. We have to run over them with our passenger trains at a very slow speed, and, as your cars are top-heavy, I can see nothing but complete destruction for them."
"Well," said I , "can't you send an engine after the runaway section?"
He promised to do this and, as there was nothing more I could do, I finished my breakfast at leisure.
The locomotive went out and caught the train. It had passed safely over the trestle and had reached a heavy ascending grade. Here it naturally lost its momentum and began to back down the grade toward the city. I was unaware at that time, that a passenger train was then due and that the superintendent fully expected a collision to take place. I can assure my readers that I drew a long breath when the operator looked up from his key and remarked: "Thank the Lord! Number Six, the passenger, is an hour late." Thus a dreadful catastrophe was prevented. Two men were asleep on one of the platform cars of the circus train, and one of them in the stress of excitement, jumped off and was instantly dashed to pieces one hundred feet below. The man who stuck to the train was saved, although nearly frightened to death.
Mr. Barnum, although never particularly nervous about accidents usually refused to travel in the same train with me, giving as his reason that should we both be killed the show would be without a head. Really he regarded me as something of a "hoodoo." In the course of one trip from New Orleans to New York we were compelled to ride together, and on that occasion the sleeper caught fire and was very nearly destroyed. Fortunately this happened in the daytime.
Not only was Mr. Barnum quick to grasp a situation, but was also ready at repartee. Once, at the hotel at Block Island, the dining-room was crowded with people from all over America. One of the guests was a somewhat notorious Mayor of a well-known Western city. During a partial lull in the conversation, this politician had the temerity to bawl out; "Barnum, what is going to be your next humbug? Your last one, the White Elephant, was a failure!" Mr. Barnum, in a voice equally loud and without a moment's hesitation, replied:
"I think my next humbug will be the present Mayor of your city. I have been twice Senator of my State and three times Mayor of Bridgeport; but from what I have learned of politicians and their methods in the West I have come to the conclusion that I am now in a far more respectable business - that of showman - in which no man is either corrupted or injured."
The people who were patrons of the circus in early days were very "gullible." Every showman of ripe years has in his memory incidents from his own experience which fully corroborate this statement. The old-time show was an "event" of large importance in the life of the small village, no matter whether that village were hid among the hills or were a land-mark upon the open plains - in either instance it was as effectually separated from the rest of mankind as if it had been an isle at sea. The circus, to the villagers and the farmers, was an unending cause of wonder and curiosity.
Strange reports floated ahead and behind the circus - and, for the most part, were believed. The exact size of the coming wonder was a subject for animated discussion. Of course the people did not believe all that the billboards said; but they believed enough to credit the coming show with being two or three times as large as it really was in fact. When a circus proved to be smaller than the popular estimate, it was said to have split or divided, one section going to some other "small" place. As these rumors were never contradicted by the showmen they spread rapidly and the circus became near kin to some fabulous, hydra-headed sea serpent - a creature which has a habit of taking on more heads and bristling manes every time it is seen. As a matter of fact it would have been exceedingly impracticable to have divided a show and, so far as my knowledge goes this was never done. Showmen did not deny these reports for the simple reason that they had no time to answer questions. Many inquiries had hardened them, and, if they ever relented in this particular, it was only to fill their auditors' ears with bigger yarns because that course was the easiest way to get rid of the questioners. In explanation of this I may say that the questions which are "fired" at showmen in every town would go a long way toward filling a volume. Showmen in the early days had a habit of agreeing, without hesitation, to every story advanced by patrons. For example, I remember that, on coming into a certain town we selected our lot and began to pitch our tent. During the process of the work one of our men - a strong, burly Irishman - was approached by an angry countryman who demanded to know what had become of his calf which, it appeared, had been stolen from him during the run of the last circus which had stopped at the town. Of course the countryman had laid the blame at the door of the circus men and, although ours was an entirely different show, it was evident that all circuses looked alike to him, and that he believed them all to belong to a strongly knit brotherhood whose mission was for the accumulation of dollars and, incidentally, the promotion of general deviltry. He threatened our men with many things if they did not disclose the whereabouts of his lost calf. "Well," said big Pat, when the countryman had ceased his tirade; "now you spake av it, Oi belave Oi do remember thot calf. We took her down here to Jonesville and - domn me - she's a foine big cow now."
ln the days of the wagon shows - particularly before and just after the war - the advance agent of the show usually had many experiences to relate. Sometimes, when the show was travelling in the South, this genious would come upon some old negro who, with axe over his shoulder, was on his way to the woods to cut timber. When the agent came up he would call out to the negro:
"Uncle, where you going?"
"Ise gwine to chop fiah wood, boss," would be the reply.
Then the agent would say: "Did you hear about the fire last night? We had a big fire last night, and all our animals got away from us and took to the woods. They're running wild down there now, elephants, tigers, lions - they all got away."
Having finished relating this alarming bit of news the agent would reach under the seat of his buggy, take up the halter and say: "Here, Uncle, take this halter and if you see any of those animals catch them and take them to the tent - we will pay you a good reward for each and every animal. By this time the whites of the negro's eyes were the most prominent parts of his countenance.
"No Sah," he always managed to say as be backed off, "Ise not gwine t'dem woods dis day."
"All right," the agent would respond, and taking the reins, would start on his way. One of our agents had reached this point in the program when he heard the negro calling to him. He immediately reigned in his horse and looked back.
"Say boss," called the old uncle, "what animal have de mos' preference fo' a colored man - a lion or a tiger?"
Whenever our advance wagons came upon a field in which the negroes were picking cotton, the negroes would immediately be observed to edge toward the fence so that they would see the show go by. Then our men would advance on horseback and cry out lustily:
"Look out, boys, de elephants am comin'; climb yore trees - dem elephants get you shore!" The cotton-pickers seldom needed a second warning, but, as one man, they would turn and make for the other end of the field as if they were possessed of demons. They were a very superstitious and impressionable race. The managers of our show had great difficulty in preventing the candy boys from filling the negroes up with ghost stories, hoodoo stories and the like, a course that tended to scare them away and reduce our receipts. One day a young fellow, an attache of our show, went up to a group of plantation negroes and commenced to go through a series of outlandish contortions and crazy antics. Finally one of the negroes asked:
"What yo' all doin'?"
"Now keep still," he replied, "I'm hoodooin' that girl there." Finally the girl herself thought she was hoodooed and fell to the ground kicking and screaming. The rest of the negroes did not care to linger in so dangerous a quarter.
In the early days in the South the country was so sparsely settled that we did not content ourselves with showing in the towns, but were in the habit of putting our tents up on any large plantation which appeared to be centrally located for a region in which we believed we could make a good "stand." It was invariably our custom to show in the afternoon. In the evening the attaches of the show were quite apt to be invited to a plantation dance or "hoe-down." The "acting" at these impromptu gatherings was of no mean order. The negroes would bring out all their finery and there was sure to be a "Miss Sue" or a "Miss Lucinda" to carry off the honors.
Many people - and this was particularly true in the South - entertained the notion that circuses secured most of their performers by stealing children. One time when we were showing down in Texas an incident occurred which will illustrate under what strong suspicion we were held in certain locations. It so happened that at the time we were showing in a certain Texas town, a little colored chap named "Josh" became lost. Of course there was a great hubbub over this incident, and we were immediately blamed for having a hand in th« matter. A thorough search of all our belongings however, failed to reveal to the angry inhabitants the whereabouts of the missing boy. At intervals during the excitement the boy's mother, a great negro "Mammy," went about among her people moaning and wailing:
"Ain't dat horrible, ain't dat sorrowful, the old showman done stole little Josh away from his paw and maw." This incensed the crowd and for the time being we were in imminent danger of being torn limb from limb by the enraged crowd. Finally, however, the missing boy turned up, and, to make amends, the old negress went about exclaiming: "Little Josh done got home, little Josh done got home."
Just after the war many of the Southern people regarded a "Yankee" as an unending wonder. They had heard so much of Yankee ingenuity that they came to regard a Northerner as a curiosity. We conceived the scheme of utilizing our knowledge of this fact to swell our receipts. We advertised that we had with our show a number of Yankees from various states. The crier dilated upon the wonderful ingenuity of the Yankee and told the people that if they had any old clocks or other things which needed fixing that they might bring them and watch the Yankees fix them. Our first attempt to put this scheme into operation turned out somewhat disastrously. It was Saturday and the people flocked to see the Yankees. When they saw, however, that Yankees are a good deal like other people we narrowly escaped a riot. The attaches of our show got into trouble with the quarrelsome element of the crowd and ended by boasting that they were all Yankees. Only by the exercise of great diplomacy was a combat avoided.
As I stated in the beginning of this chapter, our patrons at this early day were very gullible. At one place the people had a great curiosity to know how the circus performers slept at night. After filling these questioners up with outlandish stories the attaches of the show decided to have a little fun at their expense. To bring this about they bribed the hotel keeper to let them have for a sleeping room one of the front rooms which faced the streets. When it became rumored about the town that the circus men would occupy this room a crowd composed of the curious assembled on the sidewalk outside. When night came each and every showman stood on his head. They ranged themselves in rows and the countrymen who caught glimpses of them were told that this was the way all showmen slept.
The advertising agents for a large circus of the present day would, no doubt, get a good deal of amusement from the tales of experiences of the advertising men who travelled in advance of the old-time wagon show. One time when I was travelling with a show owned by a man named Yankee Robinson we discovered that we were almost entirely out of show-bills. We were for a time in a serious quandary - but we were not to be downed in this manner. We finally hired a "democrat" wagon and with a single bill in our possession started out to bill the country from which we hoped to draw our patrons. At the gate of every farmer we stopped and called loudly. When the king of the soil appeared we would hand him the bill and allow him to read it and then we would take the bill and ride on to the next house. It was tedious work, but we succeeded in drawing our crowd and felt repaid for our efforts.
It was doubtful if there was to be found a more interesting character than the circus crier in the days of the wagon shows. He was often a man of ability - many men who were circus criers have attained substantial success in the world of affairs. They were chosen for this position largely on account of their good "talking" qualities, and were, as a rule, resourceful and given to witty jests. The show once had a "Little Man" whom they exhibited as Tom Thumb. He was in reality a boy of about eleven years of age. But he was fitted out with a little carriage and ponies, and filled the bill very well. When the crier took his stand in front of the tent he would call out:
"Ladies and gentlemen: we have little Tom Thumb inside. More than this, we have the carriage which was presented to him by her Majesty, Queen Victoria of England. Ladies and gentlemen, Queen Victoria gave this superb outfit to him with the words: 'Here, Tom Thumb, is the little carriage, together with the horses, together with the harness - here, Thomas, take it. Take these to America; show it to your countrymen. Tell the people of America that it cost three thousand pounds in our money or $15,000 in their money. Take it, Thomas, take it.' "
Showmen were often given names for the city or county in which they were hired. Thus "Cincinnati Bill" or "Chicago Jim" would not only serve as well as any other name, but they possessed this advantage, that they indicated in a breath where Bill or Jim had been picked up by the circus. When the show was touring Texas we chanced to hire a man in Bastrop county. Of course we called him Bastrop. He proved to be an "all around" handy man, and, while he had no professional training for any particular feat or "turn," he proved a capable man in whatever position he was placed. One of his early duties was that of driving; but there came a time when he was given a chance to distinguish himself. After we had "opened our doors" for business in a certain town our crier was taken sick and we could think of no better man to take his place than Bastrop. Our position was particularly trying from the fact that an opposition show had started up soon after we had got under way, and there promised to be some lively music between us before we left town. For some reason or other the opposition show seemed to be doing the biggest business and we were unable to account for it save by the fact that they had a big snake which seemed to attract the crowds. In every crowd of countrymen visiting a circus there is sure to be some sympathetic chap who is quick to catch the pathos of a thing of this kind and try to console the one that is being worsted. There was such an one in this crowd. This man came over to Bastrop, stood watching the latter's lips and drinking in the marvelous flow of words that proceeded therefrom. Finally he blurted out: "Well, you don't appear to be gettin' 'em fast as that young man over there." ;
"No," replied Bastrop. "I don't because I'm no damned Yankee liar. But I've got the best show. I am from Bastrop, Bastrop County, Texas. I have got a human family - Master Eastwood of Ohio, the lonely star that is now shining for you. If I had the merits and qualifications of Master Eastwood (Eastwood could write and Bastrop couldn't) I would now fill the President's chair. Then I have the "Little Man" with the chariot and horses presented by Queen Victoria. Then I have the tall man. The great curiosity is why one should grow so small and the other remain so large. Why, ever since Adam, people have been of the human family, and if it were not for the human family where would the show be?" This sort of talk given out with a showman's gusto would be sure to draw a crowd.
In the days when one large tent answered for both the circus and menagerie we once met with an experience that seemed to reverse all the laws relative to the handling of animals. We were stopping at a small place in Indiana. The crowd which we had managed to get under the canvas was a large one, and they were taking in the show with all the eyes they had. Suddenly one of our leopards, made uneasy by something or other, managed to make his escape from the cage. With a snarling cry the creature ran into the ring where the ponies were doing their "turn." The presence of this ferocious animal almost threw the crowd into hysterics women screamed and men shouted; some of them made a hasty exit under the canvas wall. Meanwhile the leopard had crouched for a spring. All the wildness of the jungles seemed to have returned to his veins and shone out in the flashes from his cat-like eyes in a way to send terror to the heart of the veteran trainer. The crowd seemed to hold its breath for an; instant as the critical moment came. With a peculiar scream; the creature leaped into the air and landed squarely upon the back of the nearest pony. At this exciting juncture a drunken countryman was seen making his way toward the ring. People shouted to him, but to no avail; the fellow swaggered on into the ring and made straight for the leopard. The pony was rearing frantically and crying piteously. As the madman ran he grabbed up a whip which had been lying in the ring and approached the leopard with upraised hand. The creature was too busily engaged with the pony to take notice of its new enemy. Soon the air was filled with the sound of resounding blows, that fell upon the back of the leopard. Soon the creature was compelled to loosen its hold; but the man did not stop. With an awful frenzy he rained the blows upon the creature until the animal whined with terror. By this time the trainers had arrived on the scene and the creature was driven back to its cage thoroughly cowed. But the madmad was not satisfied. He continued to prance about in the ring, kicked up his heels and shouted: "Turn yer elephants and lions loose." Of course he was the hero of the hour.
We used to have many amusing experiences with hotel proprietors, particularly when we were showing in regions in which the Irish or Germans comprised the greater part of the population. For policy we made a practice of humoring these peoples and made it a rule always to be friendly with them.
One of our showmen once had an educated pig that he had named Bismarck. The pig was carried in a sort of box cage on the side of which was printed "Hotel de Bismarck." Coming into one town, the population of which was largely German, we found that we had pulled a storm over our heads. The German residents were insulted that a pig should be named after the beloved founder of their empire, and threatened summary vengeance. It was only by making many promises that we escaped with whole skins.
But speaking of hotels: In billing a town in which there were several hotels run by Irishmen our advance agent usually promised each hotel proprietor that his particular hotel should be patronized by the show. As a result of this I usually found myself in an extremely embarrassing position when the show arrived at the town. Of course I could not patronize all of the hotels, and, at the same time, it was necessary for us to keep the good will of the proprietors. I usually went around to all of the disappointed ones, gave them free tickets, praised their children, their wives; berated our advance agent and promised better things for next time. In the end I managed to make friends with them and left them with no bad tastes in their mouths. I have always found them a jovial and reasonable people. Of course the hotel that did secure our patronage always had something to look back upon. It was a day of hustling, of real business, that came only once or twice in a lifetime. In those days napkins were entirely unknown. At one place some of our showmen asked the waitress to bring them napkins, and she answered: "I am sorry, sirs, but the last show that was here ate them all up."
It was often necessary for the showmen to have their breakfast at three o'clock in the morning, and this, as the reader may well imagine, made it impracticable for the keeper of the little country hotel to go to bed at all. He usually stayed up all night on a "star" occasion of this kind and cooked for his deluge of boarders. The following little incident may illustrate the situation better, perhaps, than I can tell it: We had just hired a man to travel with our wagons. He was a "green" hand; but he felt it necessary, of course, to fill the proprietor of the little hotel where we stopped with an appreciation of a showman's importance. He got up about two o'clock to attend to the horses. As he passed out he came upon the hotel keeper who, with sleeves rolled up, was working for all he was worth.
The new attache stretched himself, yawned and said: "I'll tell you what, this is the last season that I'm goin' to travel with a show." "Yes, replied the other, "I guess - next to keeping a tavern - the circus business is about the hardest goin.' "
We once had with our show a woman whom we were exhibiting for her immense size. To enhance her value as a feature in the eyes of the countrymen she wore a gorgous crown set with cheap but flashy stones. The crier would tell the people that the crown had been presented to the woman by the Prince of Wales and that it cost, in England, 5,000 pounds. Then the people would go in, examine it, and exclaim: "See the green diamonds and the blue diamonds and the red diamonds." Once, when I was in a hotel in Wisconsin, I heard two waitresses talking about the show. One said she did not believe the crown cost such an amount. The other said:
"Well, we can't tell, of course; we only know what we hear - but wasn't it beautiful!"
Social Side of the Circus
By Karl Edwin Harriman, from Cosmopolitan Magazine, July, 1906. Reprinted in Circus Scrap Book, No. 16 (Oct), 1932, pp. 43-50.It chanced that as I dropped from the rear platform of the red "sleeper" wherein I had spent the night, together with forty performers, ranging in circus prominence from a lad who rode a jumping pony among the "hippodrome events" to an incline rider who received one thousand dollars each week for an act that required three and one-half seconds for its accomplishment, a woman stepped down from the platform of the sleeper ahead. The equestrian director had named me to her at the conclusion of the performance the afternoon before, so, as I caught up with her, I asked,
"Are you walking, to the lot?"
"Yes," she replied simply, but I thought I detected a note of embarrassment in her voice.
"May I accompany you?" I inquired.
She hesitated an instant, then, nodding, said, "If you care to."
Until we had left the siding, where the sixty cars of the five circus trains stood glistening under the sun of an early August morning, the young woman said nothing further; but as we came out into the street she seemed to pluck up her courage.
"Perhaps you do not understand," she began, "that I am the only 'lone woman,' as it were, with the show."
Her voice was low and cultivated.
It was only two days since I had "joined out," in the circus vernacular, and I was a bit puzzled. I confessed as much as we walked on.
"Every other girl with the show is working either with one of her parents or her husband or at least a brother; but I am alone. The rules are very rigid, you know."
But I did not know, quite, and begged her to tell me what rules she referred to.
"If you haven't noticed thus far you will before long that I always walk to and from the lot alone. If I were to allow any of the single men with the show to walk with me, to carry this" - she held out her little seal traveling-bag - "I would first be warned, and for a second offense would be fined ten per cent of my salary."
She smiled up at me, ingenuously, and nodded her head with vigor. "And for the third offense," she added, "I should very probably be discharged."
"So that is why you were inclined to dismiss me when I caught up with you?"
She blushed very prettily and nodded. "You see I cannot afford the fine."
Then I told her why I was with the show - for the purpose of learning just such phases of circus life as she had given me in a little way - and assured her that I should make it my business the instant the directing manager appeared to explain to him my walk with her from the cars.
"I wish you would," she said; "and if you don't mind I'd a little rather you would leave me now; the other performers might not quite understand.
She was still a little uncomfortable and I acted upon the suggestion. Thereafter for the period of my visit to the circus she never more than nodded to me when we met on the lot of a morning, or when I passed her in the cook tent.
However, the incident, slight though it was, gave me something of an idea how rigid are the rules of conduct as enforced among the people of a great American circus.
And the fact, as stated to me by herself, that this girl - she could not have been more than twenty-four - was, among the one hundred and fifty women of the show, the only one unaccompanied by a husband, father or brother, suggested to me a line of investigation along the social side of the circus that promised to result in data that might prove disillusioning as well as interesting to the general reader. And that the general reader is more or less interested in the circus, which with the exception of negro minstrelsy is the only genuinely American type of entertainment, had clearly been proved by the fact that, since the beginning of the season in April, the show had exhibited to upward of twenty-four thousand persons daily.
It is safe to say that fully ninety per cent of circus performers, whether equestrians, aerialists or acrobats, are foreign born. I recall the answer made me by a little English trapeze performer whom I asked why this should be the case.
"I dare say," he said, "it is because your country is so young. Generally," he explained, as I expressed surprise, "we come of a long line of performers. Take our own case, for instance; that is, my brother's and sister's and my own. For six generations to our knowledge our ancestors have been performers of various kinds. So we have always been in the business you see. And I dare say there will be American-born circus performers of the first rank two hundred years hence. I am quite sure that any facility my brother and sister and myself possess in our work is, fundamentally, an inheritance."
Perhaps there is something in the young Englishman's explanation of the reason why all our circus people are foreigners. And one is inclined to wonder if the same might hold good in the case of museum and side-show midgets. Oddly enough nearly all these little people spring from Austrian stock; indeed Vienna has for many years been looked upon by circus agents as the capital of Lilliput.
That the family is the circus unit may in great measure explain the really high level of morality among these people who, that we may receive a new sensation, twice each day from April until November take their lives in their hands. Of course the very nature of their work precludes anything like dissipation. To the men and women who work aloft on trapeze or bar, to those who have won reputations as ground-tumblers and bareback riders, even the simplest of so-called bad habits are foreign. Were you to take breakfast in a cook tent of a morning you would see fully eighty per cent of the performers in these classes shun coffee as they might poison. Each will have his bottle of milk. Perhaps a little tea will be drunk with the breakfast and again in the dressing-tent later - between the afternoon performance and supper time if the performer be of English birth - but coffee, never. So far as the commoner alcoholic drinks are concerned I venture the assertion that the circus performer is more temperate by far than the average man engaged in commercial pursuits. And even in the matter of smoking there is less among the three hundred and fifty people comprising the acting force of a certain great American circus than there is in the usual boys' school having a like number of pupils.
Perhaps, however, if those holding this opinion were told that the circus performers are always glad when Sunday comes, they might be charitable enough to conclude, and properly, that this is due to their desire to attend church. I recall one Sunday with the circus when the only church in a tiny town where the show was billed to exhibit on the following day, was filled to the doors with such a congregation as the good minister's eyes had never beheld before. If I were to say what the collection totaled that morning the reader would smile; but that it was a goodly amount the aged minister understood, for at the end of the service he came down from the pulpit and, mingling among his extraordinary congregation, held out to right and left the warm hands of welcome and of fellowship.
Apropos of the moral make-up of the circus man I recall this little incident, perhaps slight in itself, but, so at least it seems to me, none the less significant.
Across the aisle from my berth in one of the performers' sleepers, was that occupied by the two young Englishmen above referred to. One Sunday morning early, after a hot and stuffy night, I was emerging from my berth when the curtains of the boys' berth fell apart. There in their pajamas lay two of the highest salaried trapeze performers ever brought to this country, reading from their well-thumbed Testaments. They gave me a cheery nod, that was all. And later I learned that both the young men, whose deep affection and care for their sister, an equilibrist, were patent to the most casual observer, were members of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, and that somewhere on the blouses of their tights when they were drawn to their apparatus up at the top of the tent, were fixed the little red crosses of the order.
If the circus be a family or rather a community of families, there must of course be children. Perhaps it is saddening to contemplate the lives of little ones with the show; yet there are few children better loved by their "neighbors" than are the boys and girls of the circus. I recall a tiny lad perhaps ten years old who is the ever-present sunshine of one of the great circuses. Dressed in red tights just like his father's and his older brother's, but wearing a curly flaxen wig to give him the appearance of a girl, he goes aloft afternoon and evening to where the trapeze hangs invitingly from the top of the tent. And there, above a safety net, high in the air, he is tossed back and forth from father to brother as they hang heads down, swinging far from the flying bars.
I came upon the bright-eyed little chap in the dressing-tent one afternoon just before supper. He was playing checkers on a folding board spread upon a blue property chest. His opponent was a dark-eyed little maid of ten whose part in the performance was necessary to the success of the carrying act of her father and mother, who are bareback riders. She looked up and nodded as I seated myself on a camp stool beside the blue chest. And in another instant she had "cornered" Tommy and the game was done.
"Tommy," I said to the lad, "how does it feel to be tossed about away up there in the air? Aren't you ever afraid?"
Little Margaret laughed; as for Tommy he regarded me with distinct wonder.
" 'Fraid of what?" he asked.
"That you might fall."
Margaret laughed again.
"Do you suppose my father or my brother would let me fall?"
And he said it in a way that ended further inquiry along that line at once.
"And do you both go to school in the winter?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," Margaret made haste to reply. "Tommy's in the fifth reader and so am I. We go in the winter always and we have lessons in the car, too. Tommy's father hears his lessons in the morning three days every week. He practices the other days; don't you, Tommy?"
"Uh-huh," Tommy replied.
And then, hand in hand, we all went across the lot to the cook tent, for Tommy had spied the red flag which meant supper was ready. Really they were quite like other children; indeed their work as performers was still play to them. Margaret was always ready to enter the ring with her father and mother long before the dappled horses were there; and as for Tommy, when the music that sifted into the dressing-tent from the "big top" apprised him that in just a few minutes he would go up, he was wont to give expression to all the signs of childhood impatient for its pleasures.
But what, you ask, are the interests of circus people apart from the day's work? They are as broad as are the interests of other men and women. The foreigners, who may this year be having their first experience of America, are obtaining impressions of our country and our common life that, owing to the fact that they see so much of the country and its people from day to day, must of necessity be largely educational. And the experiences, humorous, tragic, thrilling, that most circus people have at some time in their lives undergone, make of them, when they fall into a reminiscent mood, quite the most entertaining people I have ever known. In the dressing-tent of a morning, when the men are unpacking their wardrobe trunks and, between stitches upon a fractured tight-leg, have a moment to themselves, the visitor may hear tales that for interest and the dramatic quality rise vastly superior to the short stories of our professional fictionists. A clown may tell the story of an elephant stampede in New Orleans, as a clown once told it to me; and the head animal man, a broad-shouldered, cheery-eyed giant who long since lost his voice from shouting commands to half-tamed beasts, may "go the clown one better" with the old tale of the entire menagerie that was upset one summer day in a mountain town of Idaho by a rampant elephant. And quite as likely as not, one of the women on the other side of the canvas wall, who has heard the stories the while she whirred her little hand sewing-machine, which is a necessary adjunct to every feminine performer's outfit, will shout that her experience in Java when she was there "in '92 with the Bill Jarvis show" was far more thrilling. Some of the best stories I have ever heard have been told me by women of the circus the while they went on with their embroidery in the shade of the dressing-tent, the bustling life of the show eddying about us.
For the women of the circus are women. Their interests apart from their work are precisely the interests of other women. The bearded lady, who is the owner of a splendid farm in Michigan which is operated by her father the while she travels the country over as a "freak," may drop into the dressing tent of an afternoon just before supper for a cup of tea with the Russian acrobats, who must have their tea, rain or shine, precisely as though they were at home and attached to the permanent Imperial Circus of St. Petersburg, instead of being a single cog in the complex machinery of an American touring show. And mostly the women of the show talk of "home." More often than not that home is in Paris, London, or Berlin, though there are American equestrians who maintain ring barns in New England where during the winter months they materialize new acts evolved during the season on the road. For the circus performer, man, woman, or child, must ever be up and doing, else he may find himself superseded by some one else who has been. However, success or failure, whichever it may be, this one rule holds good, proved perhaps by its rare exceptions: Once of the circus, always of it. The leading equestrienne of today, bright, charming, graceful, may, ten years hence, be the woman who drives the "four-abreast" in the Roman-chariot races. The superlative aerialist of today may in a decade be a clown with a trained pig. Only when the manager says, on a day of gloom, "Charley" (or "Amy," as the case may be), "there's nothing for you next season," does the old circus man or woman retire. And the place of retirement seldom is a city. Rather it is a little spot in the country.
Precisely for the reason that the family is the social unit of the circus, is there caste in the little world of the sawdust rings. When first I became acquainted with the life of the circus I marveled that the performers should invariably walk to and from the trains and the lot. "Why," I asked my friend, "when the distance is great, do they not clamber upon the box beside the driver of a ten-horse team, say?" He looked at me with wondering surprise; and then he told me that there was not a performer with the show who would not trudge through five miles of mud rather than share the seat of a "wagon man." Caste, an arbitrary caste, is as well known to the circus as it is to the outer world. Odd as this may seem it is not an instinctive affair with the circus people themselves. It is maintained by the directorate. It is a part of the system of the circus, a phase of the discipline without which the big top which greets our eyes afar off as we wend lotward, could never be erected. And nowhere are the lines of the circus caste more apparent than in the cook tent, where thrice daily owner, manager, and loneliest 'ostler eat, though apart and with different service. But the food is the same - the soup comes from the one kettle, and the forty-cent-a-pound coffee is drawn from the one tank. When one has ice cream and strawberries so do all the rest. For everyone must be well fed, the laborer because he works harder while he is working than any other laborer on earth, the performer because he is, more likely than not, a five-hundred-dollar-a-week man and therefore in a position to demand that he be well fed. Moreover, every performer is "laid out," as the vernacular has it, in the hotels of the Sunday towns. This is done so that at least once a week that five-hundred-dollar solo trapezist may experience the ineffable joy of sleeping in a real bed in a room that is all his own, and that he does not have to pay for.
This perhaps leads to the inquiry, What do circus people do with their money? They spend it and save it, just as you and I do, when we have it to spend or to save. I know a man who was under contract with a great circus last year at a salary of eight hundred dollars a week and who allowed his salary, with the exception of ten dollars drawn weekly, to accumulate in the ticket wagon until he had four thousand dollars lying there. Then he bought a draft and mailed it to his bank of deposit in London, England. Another performer worth five hundred dollars a week told me it was a rare week on the road that necessitated the expenditure on his part of more than seven dollars. The balance was banked. Such thrift surprises you, and well it may. But I have said that all the men and women of the circus know the dangers that confront them daily. And knowing them they prepare for them. A fall, a broken spine - yet there must be money for the old father. A plunge, a limp form in the ring carried hurriedly back to the dressing-tent where the show physician feels the pulse, listens at the naked breast, and slowly shakes his head, saying, "Cover him,' boys; it's all over" - but a widowed mother must not want. A wheel from that rumbling chariot flies off, a woman's body is flung like a wet rag through the air, it strikes a blue quarter-pole, twists about it, then drops to the earth - but there must be money for the little son who will ride on, in an instant, astride a jumping pony. The people of the circus do know these things; they know them all too well, and that is why the money is saved for those whose bread depends upon the hardness of a forearm muscle, the clearness of an eye, or the quickness of a brain. And it is this knowledge that, to one who may know the circus from being with it though not of it, casts a pall over the life, a pall through which the sun, shining, falls dead and lusterless upon the tinsel trappings of the show.
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