It was at the Victoria Palace, London, where I was performing for the first time with a giant. I had also with me my contortionist, and I thought it would be a good gag for me, on my being suddenly confronted with the big man, to throw up my hands above my head, utter an exclamation of surprise, and fall over backwards.
This I did, having previously instructed my contortionist to be behind me, so as to catch me as I fell. But he didn’t do it. He forgot all about it, and walked away to the wings. The consequence was that I turned a half summersault, and alighted on the back of my head with a resounding thwack that was heard plainly all over the theatre.
There were shrieks of laughter from everywhere—pit, stalls, and gallery. I didn’t laugh though. Neither did my contortionist later on, when I got him by himself. Meanwhile I was suffering from slight concussion, and reeled to and fro about the stage like a drunken man. This caused more laughter. I had hardly ever made such a hit before; a “hit,” I may say, in a double sense.
I went through the rest of my show with a lump on the back of my head that was really the bigness of a hen’s egg, and which seemed to me to be about the size of an ostrich egg, and “still growing.” When I had finished, George Barclay, who was then my agent, and who chanced to be in front, came round on purpose to congratulate me.
“It was great,” he said. “I never saw a funnier or more natural fall in my life.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” I replied airily. “Didn’t you ever see me do that before?”
“No,” he said, “I never did.”
“No,” I thought to myself, “and you’ll never see me do it again.”
After that I cut that part of my show, nor did I ever again rely on being caught behind my back by a man I couldn’t see, and who might or might not be there.
Of course it is easy enough for a trained athlete to fall, if he knows he is going to fall. I myself can fall twenty or thirty feet without hurting myself. Only on this occasion I didn’t know. A man can give himself a nasty jar, or even injure himself pretty severely, by merely stepping off a kerb, if he doesn’t know the kerb is there.