New names are presented to us in Wells and Miller, in whose circus, then located at Wakefield, Wallett first assumed the distinctive designation of ‘the Shakspearian Jester.’ Tom Barry, afterwards so well known in connection with Astley’s, was then clowning in Samwell’s circus. Wells and Miller soon dissolved their partnership, and the former started a separate concern, opening a very fine circus at Dewsbury.
Thomas Cooke, after a professional tour in the United States, returned to England and opened at Hull, afterwards visiting the principal towns in the northern and midland counties. Van Amburgh also, obtaining a partner with capital, started a circus with his performing lions, tigers, and leopards as an adjunct of no inconsiderable attractiveness. One of John Clarke’s daughters was his principal equestrienne, and he engaged Wallett as clown.
Edwin Hughes brought out one of the largest establishments of the kind which, at that time, had ever been seen; but he could not make headway against William Batty, who now came into notice, and to ample means joined the indomitable energy and enterprise of Astley and Ducrow. We find Batty in 1836 at Nottingham, with a company which included Pablo Fanque, a negro rope-dancer, whose real name was William Darby; Powell and Polaski, for principal equestrians; Mulligan, as head vaulter; and Dewhurst, as chief clown, with capacities for every branch of the profession, being an admirable vaulter and acrobat, and a good rider. The stud was as good as the company, and included a pair of zebras, a wild ass, and an elephant, all of which, with a contempt of local colouring worthy of Ducrow, Batty introduced on the stage in Mazeppa!
Batty did not limit his movements to any part of the United Kingdom. In 1838 we find him at Newcastle and Edinburgh, and in 1840 at Portsmouth and Southampton. Some changes had been made in the company, of which James Newsome, now proprietor of one of the best of the provincial circuses, Lavater Lee, the vaulter, and Plége, the French rope-dancer, were prominent members. At the time when Astley’s was burnt for the third time, Batty’s circus was in Dublin, where a good stroke of business had been done. On hearing of the conflagration, Batty started for London by the next steamer, made arrangements for the immediate rebuilding of the Amphitheatre, and returned to Dublin. The receipts were beginning to decline there, and, pending the completion of the new Amphitheatre in Westminster Road, Batty resolved to construct a temporary circus at Oxford. To that city he accordingly proceeded, leaving the circus under the management of Wallett, who, after travelling for several years with Cooke, and two years with Van Amburgh, had joined Batty in Dublin. On the termination of the season in the Irish capital, Wallett took the company and the stud to Liverpool, and, as the circus at Oxford was not yet ready for opening, arranged with Copeland for twelve nights at the Amphitheatre. This engagement, being made without the knowledge and sanction of Batty, caused a warm dispute between the latter and Wallett, which did not, however, have the immediate effect of terminating the clown’s engagement.
Wallett tells a humorous story of Pablo Fanque, with whom he became intimately acquainted, and who used to fish in the Isis. The black was a very successful angler, and would pull the golden chub, the silvery roach, and the bearded barbel out of the river by the dozen when Oxonian disciples of Walton could not get a nibble. One intelligent undergraduate came to the conclusion that the circus man’s success must be due to his dusky complexion, and astonished his brothers of the rod by appearing one morning on the bank of the stream with a face suggestive of the surmise that he must have been playing Othello or Zanga at some private theatricals the preceding night, and have gone to bed, as Thornton—well known in the annals of provincial theatres at the beginning of the present century—once did, without wiping the black off. The Oxonian caught no more fish, however, than he had done before.
While Batty’s circus was still at Oxford, Pablo Fanque terminated his engagement, and started a circus on his own account. Wallett, always a rolling stone, joined him, and they proceeded to the north together, opening at Wakefield, where, for the present, we must leave them.
CHAPTER VI.
Conversion of the Lambeth Baths into a Circus—Garlick and the Wild Beasts—Batty’s Company at the Surrey—White Conduit Gardens—Re-opening of Astley’s—Batty’s Circus on its Travels—Batty and the Sussex Justices—Equestrianism at the Lyceum—Lions and Lion-tamers at Astley’s—Franconi’s Circus at Cremorne Gardens—An Elephant on the Tight-rope—The Art of Balancing—Franconi’s Company at Drury Lane—Van Amburgh at Astley’s—The Black Tiger—Pablo Fanque—Rivalry of Wallett and Barry—Wallett’s Circus—Junction with Franconi’s.
While waiting for the reconstruction of Astley’s, Batty obtained possession of the Lambeth Baths, a spacious building in the immediate vicinity of the Amphitheatre, and converted them, without loss of time, into a circus, which he was enabled to open at the close of November, 1841. Though the process of conversion had been hastily carried out, the accommodation and decorations left little to be desired; and, as Dewhurst, the clown, observed on the opening night, ‘it, like a punch-bowl, looked all the better for being full.’
‘The performances last night,’ said a critic, ‘were multifarious. First, there was the phenomenon rider, the volant Mr T. Lee, who, while riding one or more fiery steeds, made “extraordinary and wonderful leaps,” as the play-bill says, round the arena, and whose sinewy and symmetrical form, and untiring activity, drew forth the admiration of the audience. The clown, however, thought proper to pass a criticism upon his leg, declaring it was like a bad candle, having more cotton than fat. Next came Herr Ludovic’s “celebrated extravaganza of Jim Crow and his granny,” in which the old trick of carrying two faces under one hat is ludicrously exemplified. Mr Walker followed, with his wonderful feats on the flying rope and his celebrated tourbillions, in which he proved himself to be anything but a walker. He was speedily displaced by M. Leonard, the great French rider, on two fleet steeds, who was miraculously adventurous,—“hazarding contusion of neck and spine.” A group of ponies was then introduced, and delighted the spectators with a variety of amusing and sagacious tricks; they fought, they leaped over poles, and through hoops, they sat down and stood up at command, they wore cocked hats and cloaks, lace caps and mantles, and supped with the clowns on oaten pies, sitting at the table with all proper decorum; they fetched and carried, they played at leap-frog, they marched, they danced, they walked on their hind legs, they bowed, and they went down on their knees, for here that was an accomplishment, and not a detriment, to any nag.