Acrobats and Mountebanks

BY HUGUES LE ROUX & JULES GARNIER.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY A. P. MORTON.
WITH 233 ILLUSTRATIONS .
LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LIMITED , 1890.
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited , LONDON AND BUNGAY.
The Banquistes was the first title chosen for this book: it has been altered for two reasons which appeared conclusive after some consideration: the general public would have misunderstood it, and it would certainly have wounded those interested in it, who would have known what it meant.
But if we consult an etymological dictionary we shall find that the word SALTIMBANQUE , which is more generally used than BANQUISTE , is derived from a definite root: SALTIMBANQUE , s. m. , from the Italian word SALTIMBANCO : who vaults on a bench (Latin, SALTARE IN BANCO ). In Italian we also find the word CANTIMBANCO , a platform singer. I must add that when, after tracing out the etymology of the words SALTIMBANQUISTE and banquiste , we search for the origin of the word banker , we shall find that the same radical, BANCO , is the root of these three derivatives. In the old fairs two personages were allowed to erect a small platform, a “banc”—the money-changer and the acrobat. Perhaps the “banc” already served as a spring-board, giving both the BANKER and the BANQUISTE a greater impetus in their leap; perhaps we must even look back to the same date to find the exact origin of the now common expression “ LEVER LE PIED ” (to abscond).
However this may be, after the perusal of this book, it will be readily understood that the contemporary acrobat, established, enriched, emerging into the middle classes, indignantly rejects a slang term which apparently assigns to him the same origin as that of our modern financiers. This intolerance is certainly not the only surprise reserved for the reader of these pages. We claim to lead him to the threshold of an unknown world.
Before commencing this work, which has absorbed us during at least three years, I made a thorough investigation of the bibliographic and monographic information now existing upon the banquiste question, and I came to the conclusion that no French or foreign author worth attention or quotation had yet interested himself in this original people. M. Houcke, the manager of the Hippodrome, had kindly placed at our disposal a series of lithographs published in Germany. But the text and the correctness of the work were so defective, that the drawings were of no use to us. It was the same with the Saltimbanques , which M. Escudier published at the close of the Empire through Michel Lévy. The sole merit of M. Escudier’s work lies in his discovery of an unknown subject. He made the mistake of writing without information, picturesqueness, or philosophy, in the light, insufferably trifling tone, which is common to most of the publications of that epoch.