‘You misunderstand me, Mr Astley,’ returned the leader. ‘It is a chromatic passage; all the instruments have to run up the passage.’
‘The devil they do!’ exclaimed Astley. ‘Then I hope they’ll soon run back again, or the audience will think they are running away.’
Hitherto the quadrupeds whose docility and intelligence rendered them available for the entertainment of the public had been limited to the circle; but in 1811 the example was set at Covent Garden of introducing horses, elephants, and camels on the stage. This was done in the grand cavalcade in Bluebeard, the first representation of which was attended with a singular accident. A trap gave way under the camel ridden by an actor named Gallot, who saved his own neck or limbs from dislocation or fracture, by throwing himself off as the animal sank down. He was unhurt, but the camel was so much injured by the fall that it died before it could be extricated. The elephant, though docile enough, could not be induced to go upon the stage until one of the ladies of the ballet, who had become familiar with the animal during the rehearsals, led it on by one of its ears. This went so well with the audience, that the young lady repeated the performance at every representation of the spectacle.
Philip Astley died in Paris, at the ripe age of seventy-two, in 1814,—the year in which the celebrated Ducrow made his first appearance on the stage as Eloi, the dumb boy, in the The Forest of Bondy. The Amphitheatre was conducted, after the death of its founder, by his son, John Astley, in conjunction with Davis; but not without opposition. The Surrey had ceased to present equestrian performances under the management of Elliston; but in 1815, on his lease expiring, it was taken by Dunn, Heywood, and Branscomb, who were encouraged by the success of Astley to convert it into a circus. The experiment was not, however, a successful one.
In the following year, Vauxhall Gardens assumed the form and character by which they were known to the present generation; and the celebrated Madame Saqui was engaged for a tight-rope performance, in which she had long been famous in Paris. She was then in her thirty-second year, and even then far from prepossessing, her masculine cast of countenance and development of muscle giving her the appearance of a little man, rather than of the attractive young women we are accustomed to see on the corde elastique in this country. Her performance created a great sensation, however, and she was re-engaged for the two following seasons. She mounted the rope at midnight, in a dress glistening with tinsel and spangles, and wearing a nodding plume of ostrich feathers on her head; and became the centre of attraction for the thousands who congregated to behold her ascent from the gallery, under the brilliant illumination of the fireworks that rained their myriads of sparks around her.
Andrew Ducrow, who now came into notice, was born in Southwark, in 1793, in which year his father, Peter Ducrow, who was a native of Bruges, appeared at Astley’s as the Flemish Hercules, in a performance of feats of strength. Andrew was as famous in his youthful days as a pantomimist as he subsequently became as an equestrian, and was the originator of the poses plastiques, the performance in which he first attracted attention, and which was at that time a novel feature of circus entertainments, being a series of studies of classical statuary on the back of a horse. He appeared at the Amphitheatre during only one season, however, leaving England shortly afterwards, accompanied by several members of his family, to fulfil engagements on the continent. The first of these was with Blondin’s Cirque Olympique, then in Holland. He had at this time only one horse; but, as his gains increased with his fame, he was soon enabled to procure others, until he had as many as six. After performing at several of the principal towns in Belgium and France, he was engaged, with his family and stud, for Franconi’s Cirque, where he was the first to introduce the equestrian pageant termed an entrée. There he exhibited his double acts of Cupid and Zephyr, Red Riding Hood, &c., in which he was accompanied by his sister, a child of three or four years old, whose performances were at that time unequalled.
Simultaneously with the rise of Ducrow, the well-known names of Clarke and Bradbury appear in circus records. When Barrymore, the lessee of the Coburg Theatre (now the Victoria), opened Astley’s in the autumn of 1819 for a limited winter season, his company was joined by John Clarke, fresh from saw-dust triumphs at Liverpool, and Bradbury, who was the first representative on the equestrian stage of Dick Turpin, the renowned highwayman, whose famous ride to York had not then been related by Ainsworth, but was preserved in the sixpenny books, with folding coloured plates, which constituted the favourite reading of boys fifty years ago. Clarke’s little daughter, only five years of age, made her appearance on the tight-rope in the following year, when Madame Saqui re-appeared at Vauxhall, and was one of the principal attractions of that season.
John Astley survived his father only a few years, dying in 1821, on the same day of the year, in the same house, and in the same room, as his more famous progenitor. After his death the Amphitheatre was conducted for a few years by Davis alone; and by him hippo-dramatic spectacles, the production of which afterwards made Ducrow so famous, and which greatly extended the popularity of Astley’s, were first introduced there. Davis also signalized his management by the introduction of a camel on the stage for the first time in a circus, the occasion being the production of the romantic spectacle of Alexander the Great and Thalestris the Amazon.
In the circle a constant variety of attractive, and often novel, feats of horsemanship and gymnastics continued to be presented. All through the season of 1821 the great attraction in the circle was the graceful riding of a young lady named Bannister—probably the daughter of the circus proprietor of that name, whose name we shall presently meet with, and who had, shortly before that time, fallen into difficulties. During the following season the public were attracted by the novel and sensational performance of Jean Bellinck on the flying rope, stretched across the pit at an altitude of nearly a hundred feet, according to the bills, in which a little exaggeration was probably indulged. The great attraction of 1823 was Longuemare’s ascent of a rope from the stage to the gallery, amidst fireworks, which had been the sensation of the preceding season at Vauxhall Gardens, where, at the same time, Ramo Samee, the renowned Indian juggler, made his first appearance in this country.