ACROBATS.
The following sketch of a certain gymnast’s professional origin and career may not be without interest to the reader, since it presents an entire departure from the usually recognised methods of training athletes—a departure which, though exceptional, is by no means unique. The performer who furnished me with the narration is one of the best flying trapezists of the day, and has invented several novel and clever specialities of a ‘lofty’ character, in which he takes part with his wife and a female apprentice. Taking the liberty of excising much collateral, not to say irrelevant, detail, with which the history was interspersed throughout, I will allow the gymnast to tell his own tale.
‘I was the best gymnast in the school when I was a boy. Horizontal bar, parallel bars, pole, ladder, rope, swinging-bar—anything that could be done on the rough bit of a gymnasium that we had in the playground, I could do. All the coppers I got—and they weren’t many, for my parents were hard-working people who had enough to do to make both ends meet—I used to save up until they made a sixpence. Cakes and apples never drew a halfpenny out of my pocket. Then I used to treat myself to a visit to whatever circus or theatre gave most tumbling for the money; and when I got back to school next day, I used to begin to practise all the new tricks I’d seen the night before. It’s a wonder I didn’t break my neck at it! As it was, I used to be black and blue and grazed all over sometimes—got caned for it too, now and then; but nothing stopped me. Born in me, I suppose. Anyhow, I always liked exercises on the bar a good deal better than exercises on a slate or copy-book, even if I got black marks for one and good marks for the other; for I wasn’t so bad at school-work as you might think, and could show you a writing prize now that I got over seventy other boys.
‘When I left school, I joined a gymnastic club, and soon took the lead there too. But then my father died, and mother fell ill. I had to put my shoulder to the wheel in earnest to get bread for myself and help her all I could, and I had enough to think of without gymnastics. I was a shop-boy, but through writing a good hand was promoted to keeping the books. In a short time I left that, and got a regular clerkship at a very fair salary. I seemed to be in luck’s way; but before I’d been in the berth a month, my master failed, and I found myself out of a situation.
‘They were rough times after that for a long while. Try as I would, I could get nothing; and at last I started off, and worked my passage over to America. There I got a job, something between a junior clerk and a porter, in a merchant’s office in New York.
‘One summer’s evening, I was passing the entrance to one of the minor entertainment gardens, when a flaming poster with a picture of some acrobats caught my eye. I hadn’t quite lost my old taste; so, as the price of admission wasn’t very high, I went in and saw the performance. Why, thinks I to myself, I used to be able to do better than that in the old playground at Hoxton! Why shouldn’t I turn a few dollars that way now? I liked the idea so much, that, going home to my lodgings, I bought a few yards of rope; and that very night, without ever going to bed, I fixed up a bit of apparatus among the beams of the attic where I slept, making the foot-rail of the bedstead do duty for a trapeze bar. I had lost a lot of the neatness; but all the old tricks came back one by one before morning; for I practised all that blessed night, and never slept a wink. Before the week was out, I had an engagement at that same garden; the salary wasn’t a big one, certainly, but it was three times what I was getting in the office. In less than a month I made my first appearance in fleshings and spangles.
‘For a little while I managed to keep on the office-work and this too; then it got to the chief clerk’s ears, and I was dismissed. “Of course you were,” says everybody, though I have never been able to see why exactly. However, it didn’t matter much, for just afterwards I was wanted for two turns a day instead of one, which more than made up the lost money.
‘Well, I had several engagements after this at small halls and gardens; for I wasn’t a big “draw” at that time, and could only do what a score of other gymnasts were doing in the city; but the style I worked in gave satisfaction; and I kept on improving on the old tricks and practising new ones, for my heart and soul was in the business. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, either; for sometimes I was out of an engagement for a good while, and began to think it would have been better to have stuck to the quill-driving. All the spare cash I had went home to the mother, and—flush or hard up—I still slept in the same attic, though I had put the bed-rail back in its place.
‘At last I joined a circus and came to England. I learnt fancy riding, and took a turn at clowning and the rope at times; but the low bar and single trapeze or rings was what I was wanted for most. You see, I had been nearly three years regularly at it by that time, and was beginning to make a mark. We started on a provincial tour, and pitched for a week at Norwich. I don’t notice the public much; but there was a girl there that came two or three nights’ running and sat close to the ring, that somehow struck my fancy. The last night but one, I caught myself looking round for her, as I sat on the bar before swinging off; and sure enough, there she was, just alongside the outer upright of my apparatus. Whether it was that that made me miss my tip or not, I can’t say, but that night I had a slip—nothing of any consequence; it marked my knee and shoulder next day; but I was able to finish my performance as if nothing had happened. In fact, the public would hardly have noticed it, but for the girl’s screeching out, “Oh, he’s killed!” and fainting. It made a bit of a fuss; but I liked her for it. Two days afterwards, when we were on the march at five o’clock in the morning, there she stood at the door of her father’s cottage, an old farm-place just out of the town, to see us go by. That’s my wife, sir!
‘Eighteen she was, when she married me, and I was twenty-two. But she didn’t begin to train till a year later; and six months after that we got our first double engagement. It was her idea, not mine. She suggested it. I said it was impossible. She insisted; and it was done. I get as many pounds weekly now in some places as I did quarter-dollars at starting. I’ve got a snug little bit of money in the bank, and I’ve got a snug little place of my own out at Wood Green; and soon, maybe, we shall give up business, and go in for agency or catering. And it’s all through her idea and pluck. And am I going to risk her life for the want of a few yards of safety-netting and the trouble of setting it, to please a manager or the public either?
‘It was her idea, too, to take an apprentice for the same business, as she had got on so well herself. So we looked about, not for a young child, but for a grown girl; and at last we found one of sixteen years of age, small and half-starved, helping her mother at the wash-tub. I hope to train a good many more, but I shall always look out for one that’s been half-starved. The first thing we did was to feed her up—beefsteaks and porter, strong broth, essence of meat, and eggs beaten up in port wine. Now, all that would have turned to fat and done her no good, only I made her take exercise with it. I hung up a pair of rings about seven feet high in a doorway, and used to keep her drawing herself up and down by the arms all day long, on and off. We used to sit in the room to watch her and tell her when to leave off; and my wife would promise her a new tie or a hat or a pair of earrings as soon as she could pull up a certain number of times. For the first month, she used to complain of pains at the back of the shoulder-blades, but a little embrocation soon eased it. That’s all the work she did for three months, and by that time she had arms nearly as big as mine! Then we took her up on the bars with us. She’s been with us three years now, and won’t be out of her time for another two; and then I shall take her into the firm as a partner, or engage her at a good salary; for she’s as strong as a man, and yet light enough for my wife to catch. I have paid her mother five shillings a week ever since we have had her, and we have made her presents, besides feeding and clothing her. When she is perfect in the business we are practising now, I am going to give her a five-pound note.’
Mrs Gymnast was a graceful, slender woman of exquisite symmetry, some seven-and-twenty years old. Miss Apprentice, though nineteen, was no taller than many girls five years her junior, but had the limbs and muscles of a young giantess.