Billy related the history of his life to me. He was born in Birmingham, and his vocation dates from his early childhood. He was one day mounted upon his father’s shoulders to watch an acrobat performing in the open air, who ascended a movable perch. The spectacle made a deep impression upon the [p286] child, and nothing could prevent him from following his vocation.
Billy is a pupil of the minstrels. At the opening of his career, he travelled through the world besmeared with black. In Germany, the idea first occurred to him to powder himself like Pierrot, and at once found that the change produced a great success. The clever expressive features previously concealed by the soot were suddenly disclosed by the powder. And the audacity of the clown increased with the encouragement of public applause.
Nearly all the jokes with which he has amused us are borrowed from the minstrels. They always repeat the scene of a jester and his butt, the stock-in-trade of the old show. At the circus, the ring-master is the butt, the sensible man who corrects the childish nonsense of the clown.
The clown Footeet plays one of these traditional scenes very naturally. Mounted upon a horse, with his face to the tail, he calls out:
“Oh, this horse hasn’t got a head.”
The ring-master gravely answers:
“It is on the other side, clown.”
“Turn it round then.”
“That is impossible, clown, you must turn round yourself.”
Footeet prefers vaulting to talking. But Billy Hayden is as lazy as his donkey, and prefers jokes to somersaults. His repertoire includes an amusing story of a stolen child.