By this stratagem he escaped the payment of the fine; but his engagement was not renewed, and, having saved some money, he started a circus, and opened with it at Yarmouth. Business was very bad there, and he proceeded to Colchester, where part of the circus was blown down by a high wind, and this accident created an impression of insecurity which damaged his prospects in that town beyond repair. At Bury St Edmunds and Leicester he was equally unsuccessful, and determined to proceed northward. Nottingham afforded good houses, but Leeds was a failure, and at Huddersfield the gallery gave way, and the alarm created by the accident deterred persons from venturing into the circus afterwards. Franconi’s company were doing good business at Manchester, in the Free Trade Hall, at this time; and Wallett, after two more experiments, at Burnley and Wigan, with continued ill fortune, effected an amalgamation with the French troupe. James Hernandez, one of the most accomplished equestrians who have ever entered the arena, made his début at Manchester while the combined companies and studs were performing there, and proved so sterling an attraction that he was engaged for the following season at Astley’s.
Crowther, who has been incidentally mentioned in connection with Wallett, married Miss Vincent, ‘the acknowledged heroine of the domestic drama,’ as she was styled in the Victoria bills. The union was not a happy one, though the cause of its infelicity never transpired. It was whispered about, however, that a prior attachment on Crowther’s part to another lady had something to do with it; and there were many significant nods and winks, and grave shakings of the head, at the bar of the Victoria Tavern, and at the Rodney and the Pheasant, over the circumstance of his strange behaviour in the church at which he and the fair Eliza were married. The talk was, that the bride’s position and worldly possessions had tempted him to break the word of promise he had plighted to another, and that compunction for his faithlessness was the cause of his strangeness of demeanour on the wedding-day, and of the domestic infelicity which it preluded. But nothing ever transpired to show that these rumours had any foundation in fact.
CHAPTER VII.
Hengler’s Circus—John and George Sanger—Managerial Anachronisms and Incongruities—James Hernandez—Eaton and Stone—Horses at Drury Lane—James Newsome—Howes and Cushing’s Circus—George Sanger and the Fighting Lions—Crockett and the Lions at Astley’s—The Lions at large—Hilton’s Circus—Lion-queens—Miss Chapman—Macomo and the Fighting Tigers.
The haze which envelopes the movements of travelling circuses prior to the time when they began to be recorded weekly in the Era cannot always be penetrated, even after the most diligent research. Circus proprietors are, as a rule, disposed to reticence upon the subject; and the bills of tenting establishments are seldom preserved, and would afford no information if they were, being printed without the names of the towns and the dates of the performances. I have been unable, therefore, to trace Hengler’s and Sanger’s circuses to their beginnings; but, having seen the former pitched many years ago in the fair-field, Croydon, I know that it was tenting long before its proprietor adopted the system of locating his establishment for some months together in a permanent building. Both Hengler’s and Sanger’s must have been travelling nearly a quarter of a century, and the career of both has been prosperous.
Indeed, the most successful men in the profession have been those who have lived from their infancy in the odour of the stables and the sawdust. Such a man was Ducrow, and such also are the Cookes, the Powells, the Newsomes, the Henglers, the Sangers, and, I believe, almost every man of note in the profession. They are not, as a rule, possessed of much education, which may account for the incongruities so frequently exhibited in the ‘getting up’ of equestrian spectacles, and the perplexities which so often meet the eye when the proprietor of a tenting circus parades in type the quadrupedal resources of his establishment.
I remember seeing a zebra in the Cossack camp in Mazeppa, and that, too, at Astley’s; for neither Ducrow nor Batty cared much for correctness of local colouring, if they could produce an effect by disregarding it. Lewis, when reminded of the incongruity of the introduction of a negro in a Northumbrian castle, in the supposed era of the Castle Spectre, replied that he did it for effect; and if an effect could have been produced by making his heroine blue, blue she should have been. The effect, however, is sometimes perplexity, rather than excitement, so far at least as the educated portion of the community is concerned.
I saw at Kingston, some years ago, immense placards announcing the coming of Sanger’s circus, and informing the public that the stud included some Brazilian zebras, and the only specimen ever brought to Europe of the ‘vedo, or Peruvian god-horse.’ Every one who has read any work on natural history knows that the zebra is confined to Africa, and that the equine genus was unknown in America until the horses were introduced there by the Spaniards. Not having seen the animal, I am not in a position to say what the ‘vedo’ really is or was; but it is certain that the only beasts of burden possessed by the Peruvians before horses were introduced by their Spanish conquerors were the llama and the alpaca, which are more nearly allied to the sheep than to any animal of the pachydermatous class, to which the horse belongs.
Leaving these wandering circuses for a time, we must turn our attention for a little while to the permanent temples of equestrianism in the metropolis. James Hernandez made his appearance at Astley’s during the season of 1849, in company with John Powell, John Bridges, and Hengler, the rope-dancer. Bridges exhibited a wonderful leaping act, and Powell’s acts were also much admired; but the palm was awarded by public acclamation to Hernandez, whose backward jumps and feats on one leg elicited a furore of applause at every appearance. His success, and consequent gains, enabled him, on leaving Astley’s, and in conjunction with two partners, Eaton and Stone, to form a stud, with which they opened on the classic boards of Drury Lane.
Among the company was an equestrian who appeared as Mdlle Ella, and whose graceful acts of equitation elicited almost as much applause as those of Hernandez, while the young artiste’s charms of face and form were a never-ending theme of conversation and meditation for the thousands of admirers who nightly followed them round the ring with enraptured eyes. It was the same wherever Ella appeared, and great was the surprise and mortification of the young equestrian’s admirers when it became known, several years afterwards, that the beautiful, the graceful, the accomplished Ella was not a woman, but a man! Ella is now a husband and a father.