CHAPTER VIII.
Pablo Fanque—James Cooke—Pablo Fanque and the Celestials—Ludicrous affair in the Glasgow Police-court—Batty’s transactions with Pablo Fanque—The Liverpool Amphitheatre—John Clarke—William Cooke—Astley’s—Fitzball and the Supers—Batty’s Hippodrome—Vauxhall Gardens—Ginnett’s Circus—The Alhambra—Gymnastic Performances in Music-Halls—Gymnastic Mishaps.
When Wallett, the clown, returned from his American tour, he had arranged to meet Pablo Fanque at Liverpool, with a view to performances in the amphitheatre there; but when the Shakspearian humourist arrived in the Mersey, his dusky friend was giving circus performances in the theatre at Glasgow, with James Cooke’s large circus on the Green, in opposition to him. London was not, at that time, thought capable of supporting more than one circus, and it was not to be expected that Glasgow could support two, even for a limited period. Pablo Fanque retired from the contest, therefore, and removed his company and stud to Paisley. Doing a good business in that town, he returned to Glasgow with a larger circus, a stronger company, and a more numerous stud, and Cooke retired in his turn.
Wallett, who had been clowning in Franconi’s circus, then located in Dublin, joined Pablo Fanque in Glasgow, and between them they devised an entertainment which was found attractive, but which produced most ludicrous consequences. There was a posturer in the company, whose Hibernian origin was concealed under the nom d’arena of Vilderini; and it was proposed that this man should be transformed, in semblance at least, into a Chinese. The Irishman did not object, though the process involved the shaving of his head, and the staining of his skin with a wash to the dusky yellow tint characteristic of the veritable compatriots of Confucius. The metamorphosis was completed by arraying him in a Chinese costume, and conferring upon him the name of Ki-hi-chin-fan-foo, which appeared upon the bills in Chinese characters, as well as in the English equivalents. Whether his sponsors had recourse to a professor of the peculiar language of the Flowery Land, or took the characters from the more convenient source presented by a tea-chest or a cake of Indian ink, I am unable to say; but the strange scrawl served its purpose, which was to attract attention and excite curiosity, and the few Celestials in Glasgow were either more unsophisticated than the ‘heathen Chinee’ immortalized by Bret Harte, and suspected no deception, or they were too illiterate to detect it.
It happened that an enterprising tea-dealer in the city had, some time previously, conceived the idea of engaging a native of China to stand at the shop-door, in Chinese costume, and give handbills to the Glasgowegians as they passed. A Chinese was soon obtained, and posted at the door, where, in a few weeks, he found himself confronted with a fellow-countryman, who was similarly engaged at a rival tea-shop on the other side of the street. The two Chineses—Milton is my authority for that word—could not behold the circus bills, with their graphic design of a Chinese festival and the large characters forming the name of the great posturer who had performed before the brother of the sun and the moon, without being moved. They went to the circus, and, in a posturing act, to which a Chinese character was imparted by a profuse display of Chinese lanterns and a discordant beating of gongs, thumping of tom-toms, and clashing of cymbals, by supernumeraries in Chinese costumes, they beheld the great Ki-hi-chin-fan-foo.
On the conclusion of the performance, they went round to what in a theatre would be termed the stage-door, asked for their countryman, and evinced undisguised disappointment on being informed that he could not be seen. They repeated their application several times, but always with the same result; and, the idea growing up in their minds that their countryman was held in durance, and only liberated to appear in the ring, they went to the police-court, and made an affidavit that such was their belief. Pablo Fanque was, in consequence, called upon for an explanation, and found himself obliged to produce the posturer in court, and put him in the witness box to depose that he was not a countryman of the troublesome Chineses, but a native of the Emerald Isle, who could not speak a word of Chinese, and had never been in China in his life.
Pablo Fanque moved southward on leaving Glasgow, but he fell into difficulties, and borrowed money of Batty, giving him a bill of sale upon the circus and stud. Going into the midland districts, and finding Newsome’s circus at Birmingham, he went on to Kidderminster, where, failing to carry out his engagements with Batty, the latter took possession of the concern, and announced it for sale. Becoming the purchaser himself, he constituted Fanque manager, thus displacing Wallett, who had been acting in that capacity for the late proprietor.
Wallett endeavoured to make an arrangement for the company and stud to appear in the amphitheatre at Liverpool, but could not obtain Batty’s acquiescence. Having engaged with Copeland to provide a circus company and horses, Batty’s refusal to allow the Fanque troupe to go to Liverpool put him to his shifts. Having to form a company in some way, he engaged two equestrians, Hemming and Dale, who happened to be in Liverpool without engagements; and hearing that John Clarke, then a very old man, was in the neighbourhood, with three horses and as many clever lads, he arranged with him for the whole. He then started for London by the night train, roused William Cooke early in the morning, and hired of him eight ring horses and a menage horse, at the same time engaging Thomas Cooke for ring-master, with his pony, Prince, and his son, James Cooke, the younger, as an equestrian. These were got down to Liverpool with as little delay as possible, and the amphitheatre was opened for a season that proved highly prosperous.
In 1851, the expectation of great gains from the concourse of foreigners and provincials to the Great International Exhibition in Hyde Park induced Batty to erect a spacious wooden structure, capable of accommodating fourteen thousand persons, upon a piece of ground at Kensington, opposite the gates terminating the broad walk of the Gardens. It was opened in May as the Hippodrome, with amusements similar to those presented in the Parisian establishment of the same name, from which the company and stud were brought, under the direction of M. Soullièr. Besides slack-rope feats and the clever globe performance of Debach, there was a race in which monkeys represented the jockeys, a steeple chase by ladies, an ostrich race, a chariot race, with horses four abreast, after the manner of the ancients, and the feat of riding two horses, and driving two others at the same time, the performances concluding with one of those grand equestrian pageants, the production of which subsequently made the name of the Sangers famous, in connection with the Agricultural Hall.
Fitzball wrote some half-dozen spectacular dramas for Batty during the latter’s management of Astley’s, one of the earliest of which was The White Maiden of California, in which an effect was introduced which elicited immense applause at every representation. The hero falls asleep in a mountain cavern, and dreams that the spirits of the Indians who have been buried there rise up from their graves around him. The departed braves, each bestriding a cream-coloured horse, rose slowly through traps, to appropriate music; and the sensation produced among the audience by their unexpected appearance was enhanced by the statue-like bearing of the men and horses, the latter being so well trained that they stood, while rising to the stage, and afterwards, as motionless as if they had been sculptured in marble.