Mr. Myers was for seventeen months engaged with Messrs. Howes and Cushing, and at the expiration of that time he again formed a company of his own, and performed with great success at Birmingham and other English towns. Leaving England for the Continent he commenced the career which has culminated in the formation of an establishment of unprecedented magnitude.
The Mecca of Mr. Myers’ long pilgrimage was, of course, Paris; and a Paris journal gives a characteristic account of the interview in which the entrepreneur acquired possession of the Magasins Réunis, which he has transformed into the vast establishment which has been the sensation of the capital of the world of pleasure during the last six months. The Paris Figaro states that on a certain day in last autumn the proprietor of the Magasins Réunis, Baron E——, was visited by a stranger who expressed his desire to hire the structure, till then a drug in the market. Baron E—— was startled for a moment, but, soon recovering his self-possession, replied that he was willing to let, but only on a twenty years’ lease. “Be it so,” answered the applicant. The owner believed himself the sport of a dream, and could only feebly articulate “75,000 francs (£3,000) a year.” “I’ll give you 75,000 francs a year,” answered the visitor, “and here’s a year’s rent in advance.” The bargain was struck, and the applicant announced himself as Mr. J. W. Myers, the proprietor of a peripatetic hippodrome. Mr. Myers set himself with all possible speed to adapt his new acquisition to his purposes, and the great range of warehouses at the Château d’Eau was in a very few weeks transformed, at an outlay of not less than a million of francs, into a place of entertainment which has been one of the wonders of Paris since December 19, 1875, when it was first opened to the public. The great circus into which the central court was converted accommodates an audience of more than 8,000 persons, and the establishment is described by La France as a complete world in itself. In fact, the Paris press is singularly unanimous in pronouncing it to be not only the greatest hippodrome which has ever visited Paris, but (what is perhaps synonymous) the greatest in the world, unparalleled in grandeur and magnificence.
For the Hippodrome of Mr. Myers has attained its present unequalled proportions by gradual and steady growth. There is an eclecticism even in Circus business, and Mr. Myers has excelled the doings of his predecessors and contemporaries, not merely by employing nine elephants where they used to employ one performer and three or four “dummies”; by doubling the usual number of the band, of the horses, and other component parts of such an establishment: but he has taken care that his horses shall be the best bred; that his elephants shall be the most highly trained; that his equestrians shall be the most finished and daring; that his clowns shall be the most amusing; that his acrobats shall be the most graceful that have ever been seen in public. If the patronage of the great ones of the earth be a test of merit, Mr. Myers may claim to possess that merit in a supereminent degree. The Emperor William of Germany, the Empress Augusta, the Emperor Francis Joseph and the Empress of Austria, King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, King Alfonso of Spain, the King and Queen of the Belgians, the King and Queen of the Netherlands, the King and Queen of Saxony, the Queen of Greece, the Khedive of Egypt, the President of Switzerland, the late Emperor Napoleon III., the Empress Eugenie, the ex-Queen Isabella of Spain, the King and Queen of Hanover, and the unfortunate Abdul Aziz of Turkey, have all, at various times and places, honoured Mr. Myers with their presence at his performances. Lyons, Bordeaux, Toulon, Dijon, Nimes, St. Étienne, Nice, Grenoble, Avignon, Toulouse, and all the great towns in France; Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfort, Breslau, Dresden, Königsberg, Leipsic, Cologne, Mayence, Vienna, Nuremberg, Munich, Bremen, Dantzic, Stettin, Regensburg, Strasburg, Metz, in Germany; Rome, Turin, Milan, Florence, Genoa, Verona, Venice, Padua, in Italy; Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the Hague, Utrecht, in Holland; Brussels, and other towns in Belgium; Berne, Aarau, Schaffhausen, Zurich, Lausanne, Geneva, Zug, Basle, St. Gallen, in Switzerland, have all been visited by Mr. Myers; and the press of these places has been unanimous in its laudatory notices of his establishment and its performances.
Animal Performances in Ancient Times.
The love for spectacles in which animals take part is inherent in human nature, and directed the current of popular amusements at a very early period of the world’s history. There is a natural pleasure in witnessing performances which illustrate the sovereignty which man’s intellect enables him to obtain over the largest and fiercest of the brutes. Some of the most beautiful of the classic myths are based on this dominion of man over the animal creation. The Centaurs were but early trainers and riders of horses, the vulgar imagination amalgamating the horse and its rider into one strange creature whose beneficent deeds rendered him worthy of deification. The chariot race is described by Homer as the most important item in the series of funeral games in honour of Patroclus. Chariot-racing was introduced at the 25th Olympiad (about B.C. 680), and racing by single horses in the 33rd Olympiad (about B.C. 648). Elephants were first introduced in the Roman circus in the year B.C. 251, when Lucius Metellus exhibited them as part of the spoil of his victory over the Carthaginians. Lions and panthers were first exhibited in B.C. 186 by M. Fulvius, after the Ætolian war. After this date wild beasts became a regular feature of the Roman entertainments. Scaurus, in B.C. 58, exhibited a hippopotamus and five crocodiles. Julius Cæsar introduced giraffes into Italy for the first time in B.C. 45; Augustus, a rhinoceros in B.C. 29. But these animals were used mainly for the venatio, or exhibition in which they fought against each other, or against man—the contrast between the old Circensian games and the modern performances being all in favour of our own times as regards humanity.
The Performing Elephants.
Elephants have, from a very early period in the history of circus entertainments, played a leading part in the performances. They were, in fact, the first animals (except, of course, horses) introduced into the ancient amphitheatre, Lucius Metellus having (as stated above) paraded them as part of the spoils of the Carthaginian war. In the time of Pompey’s rule at Rome there was an attempt on the part of the elephants to break down the barriers which separated them from the public, an act of insubordination which led Cæsar to alter the form of the circus. We hear of elephants as rope-walkers in the time of Galba and Nero, and, in the reign of the latter emperor, an elephant mounted an arch and thence walked on a rope with a man on his back. Pliny, in his “Natural History,” has an account of an exhibition given by Germanicus, in which elephants walked the tight-rope, fought with javelins, and executed the Pyrrhic dance; and Seneca, Suetonius, Dion Cassius, and Œlian bear testimony to their talents and high training. Pliny says that the elephant is able to walk up the rope backwards, and down it head foremost. Elephants are peculiarly susceptible to the influence of music, and the Romans took full advantage of this susceptibility. They were trained to march into the amphitheatre to the rhythm of musical instruments; and we have in Arrian an account of an elephant who, with cymbals fastened to his knees and trunk, beat time to which his comrades danced. They also took part in mimic representations of a banquet, reclining at which, in suitable costume of ladies and gentlemen of the period, they behaved very much like those they represented, eating and drinking with due decorum. Elephant performances have been a feature of modern hippodromes, but it was reserved for Mr. Myers’ coadjutor, John Cooper, to rediscover the lost art of elephant training and performing, as understood by the ancients. Music has played an important part in the education of Mr. Myers’ troupe of elephants. They waltz with pachydermatous grace, and in perfect time; they execute complete ballets with an accuracy and confident knowledge of their respective rôles, which many a human performer might envy. They perform dramatic scenes with a perfect appreciation of the situation. An anecdote or two will illustrate their intelligence. It is recorded that, while performing in a certain town, the troupe had each evening, while on the road from the stables to the place of representation, to pass in front of the tap of a brewery. One day, as they were en route, one of the drinkers held out his glass of beer to an elephant. The elephant gracefully accepted the compliment, took with the utmost delicacy the glass from the hand of the donor, poured the contents down its throat, and politely returned the empty vessel to its owner. The bystanders were so amused, that in an instant a crowd of glasses was tendered to the crowd of trunks, and the same ceremony was performed by all the elephants present. The proprietor of the establishment, in an excess of generosity, brought out a barrel of beer, which was soon emptied by the combined efforts of the trunks, and the troupe went on its way rejoicing to its duties. But the next evening the elephants, to the surprise of their keepers, unanimously refused the ordinary beverage which was provided before starting to their tasks. They were not pressed, and the cortége took its way to the theatre; but, on arriving in front of the brewery, the elephants, to the consternation of their guides, refused to budge a step until the performance of the preceding day had been repeated. The brewer, with less satisfaction than on the preceding evening, provided a second barrel of beer, and begged the superintendent of the procession to take another road for the future. But he had reckoned without his host. In spite of all the efforts of the keepers, at the same hour the next evening an array of trunks was again extended in front of the brewery, and a third barrel went the way of its predecessors. In despair the brewer related his sad case to Mr. Myers, who indemnified him, ordered a barrel of beer to be delivered at each passage of the troupe, and, it is said, has ever since, when travelling, taken care that his elephants shall avoid all streets in which stands temptation in the shape of a brewery. Another story is told of one of the sagacious animals whose keeper, returning fatigued at night, fell asleep on a truss of straw, and was uplifted by the trunk of his faithful four-footed valet, and placed in a manger; the elephant not contenting himself with this delicate attention, but proceeding to take off the boots of the sleeper, and cover him carefully with two or three trusses of straw!
One of the most interesting of Mr. Myers’ exhibitions, is the bathing and swimming of the elephants, which takes place in the lakes of the Crystal Palace. The sight is a most amusing one; in fact, one day’s casual bathe of the elephants in the Rhine, when Mr. Myers was at Cologne, so excited the curiosity of the townspeople, that a guarantee of some thousands of thalers was raised to ensure its repetition on successive days. The great beasts play hide-and-seek with each other, and, with their keepers, they turn somersaults in the water; they are as uncontrollable and spontaneous in their mirth as a pack of boys turned loose into a playground after school hours with carte blanche to amuse themselves. Indeed the only drawback to their being allowed to enter the water is the difficulty of getting them back for their more serious duties. Pursuit with boats is attendant with the risk of the sudden elevation of the vessel and its occupants some ten or twenty feet into the air; and even when one is captured and seemingly brought to a sense of its duties, the temptation to rejoin its sporting comrades is too strong for it, and if unwatched for an instant, it takes the opportunity of plunging in again. Nothing but the firm though mild rule of John Cooper then avails to bring them up to the time and place for their other performances.
John Cooper and Lion Taming.
With the lions of Mr. Myers’ Hippodrome the name of John Cooper is inseparably associated. This foremost animal trainer in the world, was born at Birmingham in 1838, and entered upon his present career under the auspices of George Batty (brother of the Batty of hippodromatic fame of 1851), who was then travelling on the Continent with his circus and menagerie. Cooper commenced lion-taming at the early age of twelve, and has followed the profession of trainer of wild animals without cessation till the present time. He remained with George Batty about fifteen years, and at the expiration of that time bought some lions, and started on his own account. In 1866-67 he met Mr. Myers, who ultimately bought Cooper’s lions, and engaged the services of their owner at a salary unprecedented in the profession. The secret of Cooper’s success is his love of animals, allied with a temperament in which fear is no element, and a calm sense of superiority which is felt by his brute servants no less than by himself.