Circus Life and Circus Celebrities

Transcriber’s Note:
Any corrections are indicated using an underline highlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce the original text in a tooltip popup.
Any corrections are indicated as hyperlinks, which will navigate the reader to the corresponding entry in the corrections tale in the note at the end of the text.
THOMAS FROST
AUTHOR OF ‘THE OLD SHOWMEN AND THE OLD LONDON FAIRS,’ ‘LIVES
OF THE CONJURERS,’ ETC.
A NEW EDITION
London
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1881
There are probably few persons who do not number among the most pleasant recollections of their youth their first visit to a circus, whether their earliest sniff of the saw-dust was inhaled in the building made classical by Ducrow, or under the canvas canopy of Samwell or Clarke. In my boyish days, the cry of ‘This way for the riders!’ bawled from the stentorian vocal organs of the proprietor or ring-master of a travelling circus, never failed to attract all the boys, and no small proportion of the men and women, to the part of the fair from which it proceeded. Fairs have become things of the past within twelve or fifteen miles of the metropolis; but ever and anon a tenting circus pitches, for a day or two, in a meadow, and the performances prove as attractive as ever. The boys, who protest that they are better than a play,—the young women, who are delighted with the ‘loves of horses,’—the old gentlemen, who are never so pleased as when they are amusing their grandchildren,—the admirers of graceful horsemanship of all ages,—crowd the benches, and find the old tricks and the old ‘wheezes,’ as the poet found the view from Grongar Hill, ‘ever charming—ever new.’
What boy is there who, though he may have seen it before, does not follow with sparkling eyes the Pawnee Chief in his rapid career upon a bare-backed steed,—the lady in the scarlet habit and high hat, who leaps over hurdles,—the stout farmer who, while his horse bears him round the ring, divests himself of any number of coats and vests, until he finally appears in tights and trunks,—the juggler who plays at cup and ball, and tosses knives in an endless shower, as he is whirled round the arena? And which of us has not, in the days of our boyhood, fallen in love with the fascinating young lady in short skirts who leaps through ‘balloons’ and over banners? Even when we have attained man’s estate, and learned a wrinkle or two, we take our children to Astley’s or Hengler’s, and enjoy the time-honoured feats of equitation, the tumbling, the gymnastics, and the rope-dancing, as much as the boys and girls.