Circuses and menageries are now so frequently associated, and the inmates of the latter have at all times been so frequently brought into connection with the former, that it becomes desirable, at this stage of the record, to say a few words about the zoological collections of former times. Without going back to the formation of the royal menagerie in the Tower of London in the thirteenth century, it may be stated that, when that appendage of regal state was abolished, most of the animals were purchased by an enterprising speculator named Cross, who located them at Exeter Change. The want of sufficient space there subsequently induced Cross to remove the collection to the site afterwards known as the Surrey Gardens, where, under the more favourable conditions as to space, light, and air afforded by that locality, it long rivalled that of the Royal Zoological Society, which had, in the mean time, grown up on the north side of Regent’s Park.
The travelling menageries probably grew, on a small scale, side by side, as it were, with the royal collection at the Tower, until they developed into such exhibitions as, half a century ago, travelled from fair to fair, in company with Richardson’s and Gyngell’s theatres, Cooke’s and Samwell’s circuses, Algar’s dancing booth, and the pig-faced lady. Wombwell’s menagerie was formed about 1805, and Atkins’s must have begun travelling soon afterwards. These two shows were for many years among the chief attractions of the great fairs, in the days when fairs were annual red-letter days in the calendar of the young, and even the upper classes of society did not deem it beneath their dignity to patronize the itinerant menagerie and the tenting circus.
‘Wombwell’s,’ said the reporter of a London morning journal, about three years ago, by way of introducing a report of the sale of Fairgrieves’s menagerie, ‘had its great show traditions; for its founder was a showman of no ordinary enterprise and skill. He built up the menagerie, so to speak, and he made it by far the finest travelling collection of wild animals in the country. His heart was in his work, and he spared nothing that could help it forward. Tales of his enterprise are many. He never missed Bartlemy fair as long as it was held; once, however, he was very near doing so. His show was at Newcastle within a fortnight of Bartlemy’s, and there were no railways. He had given up all intention of going to the fair; but, being in London buying specimens, he found that his rival—a man named Atkins—was advertising that his would be the only wild beast show at the fair.
‘Forthwith Wombwell posted down to Newcastle, struck his tent, and began to move southward. By dint of extraordinary exertions he reached London on the morning of the fair. But a terrible loss was his. The one elephant in the collection—a fine brute—had so over-exerted itself on the journey that it died just as it arrived at the fair. Atkins thought to make capital of this, and placarded at once that he had “the only live elephant in the fair.” Wombwell saw his chance, and had a huge canvas painted, bearing the words that within his show was to be seen “the only dead elephant in the fair.” There never was a greater success; a live elephant was not a great rarity, but the chance of seeing a dead elephant came only once now and then. Atkins’s was deserted; Wombwell’s was crowded.’
It is not easy to reconcile the keen rivalry between the two shows which this story is intended to illustrate with the fact that they never visited Croydon fair together, but always agreed to take that popular resort in their tours in alternate years. The story may be true, or it may be as apocryphal as that of the lion and dog fights with which the readers of another London morning journal were entertained three months previously, when the tragical incident of the death of the lion-tamer, Macarthy, had invested leonine matters with more than ordinary interest.
‘Did you ever hear of old Wallace’s fight with the dogs?’ an ex-lion-tamer was reported as having said to the gentleman by whom the conversation was communicated to the journal.
‘George Wombwell was at very low water, and not knowing how to get his head up again, he thought of a fight between an old lion he had sometimes called Wallace, sometimes Nero, and a dozen of mastiff dogs. Wallace was tame as a sheep—I knew him well—I wish all lions were like him. The prices of admission ranged from a guinea up to five guineas, and had the menagerie been three times as large it would have been full. It was a queer go, and no mistake! Sometimes the old lion would scratch a lump out of a dog, and sometimes the dogs would make as if they were going to worry the old lion, but neither side showed any serious fight; and at length the patience of the audience got exhausted and they went away in disgust. George’s excuse was, “We can’t make ’em fight, can we, if they won’t?” There was no getting over this; and George cleared over two thousand pounds by the night’s work.’
In this account two different animals are confounded; the old lion, whose name was Nero, and a younger, but full-grown one, named Wallace. The blunder is strange and unaccountable in one who professes to have known the animals and their keeper, and renders it probable that he is altogether in error about the fight he describes. The newspapers and sporting magazines of the period—about fifty years ago—describe two lion-baitings, which took place in Wombwell’s menagerie in the Old Factory Yard, at Warwick; and some vague report or dim recollection of them seems to have been in the mind of the ‘ex-lion-king,’ when he dictated the graphic narrative for the morning journal. The fights were said to have originated in a bet between two sporting gentlemen, and the dogs were not mastiffs, but bull-dogs. The first fight, the incidents of which were similar in character to those described by the ‘ex-lion-king,’ was between Nero and the dogs; and, this not being considered satisfactory, a second encounter was arranged, in which Wallace was substituted for the old lion, with very different results. Every dog that faced the lion was killed or disabled, the last that did so being carried about in the lion’s mouth as a rat is by a terrier or a cat.
I may add, that I have a perfect recollection of both the lions, having made their acquaintance at Croydon fair when a very small boy. I remember the excitement which was once created amongst the visitors to that fair by Wombwell’s announcement that he had on exhibition that most wonderful animal, the ‘bonassus,’ being the first specimen which had ever been brought to Europe. As no one had ever seen, heard, or read of such an animal before, the curious flocked in crowds to see the beast, which proved to be a very fine male specimen of the bison, or American buffalo. Under the name given to it by Wombwell, it found its way into the epilogue of the Westminster play as one of the wonders of the day. It was afterwards purchased by the Zoological Society; but it had been enfeebled by confinement and disease, and died soon after its removal to the Society’s gardens in the Regent’s Park. The Hudson’s Bay Company supplied its place by presenting a young cow, which lived there for many years.
Atkins had a very fine collection of the feline genus, and was famous for the production of hybrids between the lion and the tigress. The cubs so produced united some of the external characteristics of both parents, their colour being tawny, marked while they were young with dark stripes, such as may be observed in the fur of black kittens, the progeny of a tabby cat. These markings disappeared, however, as they do in the cat, as the lion-tigers attained maturity, at which time the males had the mane entirely deficient, or very little developed. I remember seeing a male puma and a leopardess in the same cage in this menagerie, but am unable to state whether the union was fruitful.