“It takes a wise man to be a fool” | [Frontispiece] |
| FACING PAGE | |
“Every step in the making of a clown is hardwork” | [10] |
“Laughter loosens the fetters of the brain” | [18] |
“The tall peaked hat was a great aid to clowning” | [28] |
“To produce laughs you must make a seriouseffort” | [38] |
“Behind the jests of the clown is the sear ofsorrow” | [46] |
“To be a successful clown you had also to be agood pantomimist” | [58] |
“Every clown act must tell a story” | [64] |
“I become the friend and confidant of all” | [78] |
“To be a good clown a man must be a studentand in earnest” | [84] |
“I have made countless children clap theirlittle hands with glee” | [96] |
“It is good to be a clown” | [100] |
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CLOWN
I
I AM BORN IN A CIRCUS WAGON
I SUPPOSE it was destiny that I should be a clown because I was born in a circus wagon. It happened in this way. My mother had been a première dancer on the French and English stage and had appeared in many of the great Covent Garden and Drury Lane Christmas pantomimes, but she grew stout, which is always fatal to that kind of dancing. She did not want to leave my father, who was also a dancer and general acrobat, so they invested their savings in a small circus.
In those days—it was more than fifty years ago—Europe was alive with small circuses; most of them very modest, but all furnishing a very popular form of amusement. There were few, if any, theaters scattered throughout the country. Only city folk could enjoy the benefits and pleasures of plays. It followed that the great mass of the country people flocked to the circus, and the coming of one of them was an event. Often the circus showed in a large inclosure built for meetings and public entertainments. There was no top to the structure and in case of rain the people either went home or ran the risk of spoiling their clothes for the privilege of remaining. The shows traveled from town to town in wagons, much smaller but not unlike the big red creaking wagons of the modern American circus.
Up to that time the menagerie was not considered necessary to the circus, but it was good business to have at least one cage with a wild beast in it. My mother’s circus had a performing lion who was a sort of patriarch. He was so amiable that he would eat out of the hand of a child and he was so gentle that he had to be prodded into a roar. The circus bill included several acrobatic acts, a juggler, a sleight-of-hand worker, and the faithful lion who was both useful and ornamental. My mother, who was as clever in business as she had been with her toes, managed the show and my father was the principal performer. It was a happy-go-lucky life, this wandering from town to town, in the pleasant sunshine by day and under the stars by night.