We fairies dance, we fairies sing,
And we have pleased our Fairy Queen.’
“Then the bell rings, and the man who keeps order cries out, ‘Pass out! pass out!’
“The performance generally takes from one hour and a half to an hour and three-quarters, and we do three of ’em a night. It makes the perspiration run off you, and every house I have a wet shirt. The only rest I have is with my boy singing ‘Hot codlins.’ When they call for the song I say, ‘Yes, yes; all right; you shall have them; only there’s a chip of mine will sing it for me,’ and I introduce my little boy—of four then—to sing.
“The general pay for Clowns at penny exhibitions is averaging from twenty to twenty-five shillings a-week. You can say without exaggeration, that there are twenty of these penny exhibitions in London. They always produce a new pantomime at Christmas; and all the year round, in summer as well as winter, they bring ’em out, when business is shy, for a draw, which they always find them answer.
“A Clown that can please at a penny gaff, is capable of giving satisfaction at any theatre, for the audience is a very difficult one to entertain. They have no delicacy in ’em, and will hiss in a moment if anything displeases them.
“A pantomime at a penny exhibition will run at Christmas three weeks or a month, if very successful; and during that time it’s played to upwards of twelve hundred persons a-night, according to the size of the house, for few penny ones hold more than four hundred, and that’s three times a-night. The Rotunda in the Blackfriars’-road, and the Olympic Circus in the Lower Marsh, Lambeth, do an immense business, for they hold near a thousand each, and that’s three thousand spectators the night.
“When the pantomime is on we only do a little comic singing before it begins playing.”
The Canvas Clown.
A tall, fine-looking young fellow, with a quantity of dark hair, which he wore tucked behind his ears, obliged me with his experience as a clown at the fairs. He came to me dressed in a fashionable “paletot,” of a gingerbread colour, which, without being questioned on the subject, he told me he had bought in Petticoat Lane for three shillings.