James Wild’s show was a small concern, combining a drama, à la Richardson, with the performances of a tight-rope dancer and a fortune-telling pony. Wallett, who had made his first appearance before the public as a ‘super’ at the theatre of his native town, Hull, when Ducrow was there, and had afterwards clowned on the outside of Charles Yeoman’s Royal Pavilion at Gainsborough fair, joined Wild’s show at Leeds, but soon transferred his talent to a rival establishment. Both shows were soon afterwards at Keighley fair, for which occasion Wild had engaged four acrobats from London, named Constantine, Heng, Morris, and Whitton. The popularity of Ducrow’s representations of Grecian statuary had induced Constantine to study them, and having provided himself with the requisite properties, he exhibited them very successfully in Wild’s show.
The proprietor of the rival establishment was in agony, for his loudest braying through a speaking-trumpet, and the wildest beating of his gong, did not avail to stop the rush to Wild’s which left the front of his own show deserted. Wallett ruminated over the situation, and at night sought Constantine, and made overtures to him for the purchase of his tights and ‘props.’ The acrobat entertained them,—perhaps the bargain was very liberally wetted,—and Wallett became the triumphant possessor of the means of personating Ajax and Achilles, and all the gods and heroes of Homer’s classic pages. Next day, the show in which he was engaged was crowded to see him ‘do the Grecian statues,’ while Wild’s was deserted, Constantine dejected, and his employer despairing.
Bannister’s circus travelled Scotland and the northern counties of England, and it is a noteworthy point in his history that David Roberts was engaged by its proprietor as scene painter when he added a stage and a company of pantomimists to the attractions of the ring. This was in 1817, when the circus was located in Edinburgh, and the future R.A. had just completed his apprenticeship to a house-painter. Roberts says, in his diary, that he could never forget the tremor he felt, the faintness that came over him, when he ascended to the second floor of the house in Nicholson Street in which Bannister lodged, and, after much hesitation, mustered courage to ring the bell. Bannister received him very kindly, looked at his drawings, and engaged him to paint a set of wings for a palace. The canvas was brought, and laid down on the floor, and Roberts began to work there and then. At the close of the circus season, he was engaged at a salary of twenty-five shillings a week to travel with the company into England, paint all the scenery and properties that might be required, and make himself generally useful. Roberts says that he found that the last clause of the contract involved the necessity of taking small parts in pantomimes, which, he says, he rather over-did than under-did. His circus experiences were brief, however, for Bannister became bankrupt before long, and Roberts betook himself to house-painting again until he was engaged by Corri to paint scenery for the Pantheon, at Edinburgh. It may be remarked that he received no higher salary from Corri than from Bannister, and did not reach thirty shillings a week until he was engaged as scene-painter to the theatre at Glasgow.
The tenting circuses of those days were on a more limited scale than those of the present time, and were met with chiefly at fairs. They had seldom more than three or four horses, of which perhaps only two appeared in the circle. Their proprietors were not so regardless of colour as Philip Astley was, and favoured cream-coloured, pied, and spotted horses. While the acrobats performed ‘flips’ and hand springs, and the clown cracked his ‘wheezes,’ on the outside, while the proprietor beat his gong, or bawled through a speaking-trumpet his invitations to the spectators to ‘walk up,’ the horses stood in a row on the platform; and when the proprietor shouted ‘all in, to begin!’ the animals were led or ridden down the steps in front, and taken round to the entrance at the side, whence they emerged on the conclusion of the performance, to ascend the steps, and resume their position on the platform. The performances were short, consisting of two or three acts of horsemanship, some tumbling, and a tight-rope performance; but they were repeated from noon till near midnight as often as the seats could be filled.
Even in the palmy days of fairs, the vicissitudes of showmen were a marked feature of their lives, owing, in part at least, to their dependence upon the weather for success, and the variability of the English climate. A wet fair was a serious matter for them, and the October fair at Croydon, one of the best in the south, seldom passed over without rain, which sometimes reduced the field to such a state of quagmire that hurdles had to be laid down upon the mud for the pleasure-seekers to walk upon. Saunders, as we have seen, was seldom out of difficulties; and Clarke had not always even a tent, but pitched his ring in a field, or on a common, in the open air, after the manner of Philip Astley and his predecessors, Price and Sampson, in the early days of equestrian performances. He did not, however, make a collection—called in the slang of the profession, ‘doing a nob,’—but made his gains by the sale, at a shilling each, of tickets for a kind of ‘lucky-bag’ speculation among the spectators whom the performances attracted to the spot. Sometimes additional éclat would be given to the event by the announcement that a greasy pole would be climbed by competitors for the leg of mutton affixed to the top, or a piece of printed cotton would be offered as a prize for the winner in a race, for which only girls were allowed to enter. Then, while the equestrian of the company enacted the Drunken Hussar, or the Sailor’s Return, or Billy Button’s ride to Brentford, the acrobats would walk round with the tickets; or the equestrian would condescend to do so, while the Polish Brothers tied themselves up in knots, or wriggled between the rungs of a ladder, or Miss Clarke delighted the spectators by her graceful movements upon the tight-rope. The business concluded with the drawing for prizes, which were few in proportion to the blanks, and consisted of plated tea-pots and milk jugs, work-boxes, japanned tea-trays, silk handkerchiefs, &c. This kind of entertainment was given within the last forty years; but Clarke was then an old man, and with his death the race of the mountebanks, as they were popularly called, became extinct.
The last section of a mock Act of Parliament published about this time gives a good idea of the clown’s business five-and-thirty years ago, and affords the means of comparing the circus wit and humour of that period with the laughter-provocatives of the Merrymans of the present day. It runs as follows:—
‘And be it further enacted, that when the scenes in the circus commence, the Merriman, Grotesque, or Clown shall not, after the first equestrian feat, exclaim, “Now I’ll have a turn to myself,” previous to his toppling like a coach-wheel round the ring; nor shall he fall flat on his face, and then collecting some saw-dust in his hands drop it down from the level of his head, and say his nose bleeds; nor shall he attempt to make the rope-dancer’s balance-pole stand on its end by propping it up with the said saw-dust; nor shall he, after chalking the performer’s shoes, conclude by chalking his own nose, to prevent his foot from slipping when he treads on it; nor shall he take long pieces of striped cloth for Mr Stickney to jump over, while his horse goes under; previous to which he shall not pull the groom off the stool, who holds the other end of the same cloth, neither shall he find any difficulty in holding it at the proper level; nor, after having held it higher and lower, shall he ask, “Will that do?” and, on being answered in the affirmative, he shall not jump down, and put his hands in his pockets, saying, “I’m glad of it;” nor shall he pick up a small piece of straw, for fear he should fall over it, and afterwards balance the said straw on his chin as he runs about. Neither shall the Master of the Ring say to the Merriman, Grotesque, or Clown, when they are leaving the circus, “I never follow the fool, sir;” nor shall the fool reply, “Then I do,”[do,”] and walk out after him; nor, moreover, shall the Clown say that “the horses are as clever as the barber who shaved bald magpies at twopence a dozen;” nor tell the groom in the red jacket and top boots, when he takes the said horses away, to “rub them well down with cabbage-puddings, for fear they should get the collywobbleums in their pandenoodles;” such speeches being manifestly very absurd and incomprehensible.
‘Saving always, that the divers ladies and gentlemen, young ladies and young gentlemen, maid-servants, apprentices, and little boys, who patronise the theatre, should see no reason why the above alterations should be made; under which circumstances, they had better remain as they are.’
CHAPTER IV.
A few words about Menageries—George Wombwell—The Lion Baitings at Warwick—Atkins’s Lion and Tigress at Astley’s—A Bull-fight and a Zebra Hunt—Ducrow at the Pavilion—The Stud at Drury Lane—Letter from Wooler to Elliston—Ducrow and the Drury ‘Supers’—Zebras on the Stage—The first Arab Troupe—Contention between Ducrow and Clarkson Stanfield—Deaths of John Ducrow and Madame Ducrow—Miss Woolford.