The Autobiography of a Clown

by Isaac Frederick Marcosson

During the year so fateful to me our little show had traveled through the south of France and made its way into Spain. On a clear, hot July Sunday we reached Galicia and camped on the edge of a wood. It was there that I was born. My mother and father cooked, ate, and slept in one of the wagons which was for years the traveling home of the family. My mother always told me that the first thing I saw when my little eyes gazed out of the wagon was old Albro, the French clown, who sat in the sun whitening his face for the afternoon performance. More than once my baby cries mingled with the rude jests he hurled at the audiences. He was often my nurse and he told me wonderful stories of his travels in foreign countries. I toddled about the wagons and often slept under the very hoofs of the horses. When I cried late at night my mother would take me out near the lion’s cage and tell me that the old fellow would come out and roar if I did not stop. I never cried during the performances, but lay in my little bed in the wagon charmed by the music. I was, in truth, a child of the circus.

As I grew older I became a problem. The circus grew larger and my mother was so much occupied with the details of its management that she had little time for me. A nurse with the show was out of the question. So I was sent to Lisbon, where my father had relatives. I remember very little of my early childhood there. The circus scenes are much more vivid. I do recall that my nurse told me many times that I was to be a circus performer when I grew up. That of course pleased me. In the winters, when the little show was packed away and the old lion rented out to a menagerie in Toulon, my father and mother came to see me. On my fifth birthday I got my first lesson in the alphabet. Instead of teaching me the word cat, the old nurse taught me how to spell lion. You see I knew all about lions and very little about cats.

My parents were very thrifty. It is the French habit. It is, or was, part of the old unwritten French circus law, that as soon as a child was strong enough to stand on his hands he must be put out to work. Likewise it is a tradition that the name of a family in a circus must be carried on by the children and by their children’s children. It followed that when I was six years old my father came one January day and took me to London. On the way there he told me that the time had come when I should begin my career. I was only six, but to this day I recall my father’s words.

When we got to London it was wet and cold and I was afraid. I hardly knew my father, we had been separated so long. We went to a small hotel much frequented by circus and theatrical people. My father was known to most of them, and more than one big broad-shouldered man clapped me on the shoulder so hard that it hurt. In those days the circus people were rude and a hard lot, and they thought I was as tough as they were.

The very night that we reached London a brawny, red-faced man came to see my father at the hotel. I recall that he was addressed as “Mr. Conrad.” I had a sort of shiver when he came into the room. It was curious, too, how he should have affected me, for he was destined to play a very important part in my life. He and my father talked a long time. Every once in a while I heard my name mentioned. Finally the man came over to me, picked me up in one hand (he was a giant in strength), and flung me up in the air. He caught me easily and then let me slide to the floor. After he left my father said:

“Jules, henceforth you are to live with that man. He is to be your father and your teacher. Be a good boy.”

Then he told me that I had been apprenticed to the Conrads, who were a famous acrobatic family. The following day my father took me to another hotel where the Conrads were living, for they were performing in the Hippodrome, and he went back to Spain to join my mother. I had made a start in the big business of life and I felt very lonesome.

Perhaps I had better explain right here just what being apprenticed to an acrobatic “family” means. The same thing has gone on in Europe for a hundred years and will go on as long as acrobats keep up their work. Every great group of performers that you see in the circus or elsewhere, no matter if they perform on the flying trapeze, tumble, or ride on bicycles or on horseback, is called a “family.” They may be known as the Sensational Sellos or the Marvelous Revellis. Now the interesting thing about it is that they are not real families at all. They develop into groups simply because they take in young apprentices, train and develop them, and make them part of their troupes. Six or seven real families may be represented in one circus “family.”

The head of the “family” is always the biggest man of the lot. In circus or acrobatic speech he is known as the “under-stander,” because literally he stands at the bottom of the act, as for example in the human pyramid, and holds up all the rest. He must be broad, strong, and powerful in every way. He makes all the contracts, receives all moneys, and is the general manager of the combination. The Conrads were a very well-known “family” and much in demand for circuses all over the Continent and England. Shortly after I became a member of the Conrads the London engagement ended and we went to the famous Circus Rentz in Berlin.