Fitzball adapted to the hippo-dramatic stage the spectacle of Azael, produced in 1851 at Drury Lane. At the first rehearsal, there was as much difficulty in drilling the gentlemen of the chorus into unison, to say nothing of decorum, as Ducrow had experienced at Drury Lane in instructing the small fry of the profession in the graces of elocution. There was an invocation to be chanted to the sacred bull by the priests of Isis, and the choristers, who seem to have been drawn from the stables, entered in an abrupt and disorderly manner, some booted and spurred, and carrying whips, others holding a currycomb or a wisp of hay or straw. Kneeling before the shrine, they shouted the invocation in stentorian tones, and with a total disregard of unison; and during a pause they disgusted the author still more by indulging in horse-play and vulgar ‘chaff.’
Fitzball made them repeat the chorus, but without obtaining any improvement. They would play, and they would not sing in unison. Fitzball glanced at his watch; it indicated ten minutes to the dinner hour of the fellows. He thereupon desired the call-boy to give his compliments to Mr Batty, and request that the dinner-bell might not be rung until he gave the word for the tintinnabulic summons. The choristers heard the message, and, as they wanted their dinners, and knew that Batty was a strict disciplinarian, it had the desired effect. There was no more ‘chaffing,’ no more practical jokes; they repeated the invocation in a chastened and subdued manner, and before the ten minutes had expired their practice was as good as that of the chorus at Covent Garden.
Mazeppa was revived at Astley’s during the season of 1851–2, and the acts in the arena comprised the fox-hunting scene of Anthony Bridges with a real fox; the great leaping act of John Bridges; the cachuca and the Cracovienne on the back of a horse, danced by Amelia Bridges; the graceful equestrian exercises of Mademoiselles Soullier and Masotta; the gymnastic feats of the Italian Brothers; and the humours and witticisms of Barry and Wheal, the clowns.
The Hippodrome re-opened in the summer of 1852, under the management of Henri Franconi, the most striking features of the entertainment being Mr Barr’s exhibition of the sport of hawking, with living hawks and falcons; the acrobatic and rope-dancing feats of the clever Brothers Elliot; and Mademoiselle Elsler’s ascent of a rope over the roof of the circus.
Batty, who was reputed to have died worth half a million sterling, was succeeded in the lesseeship of Astley’s by William Cooke, who, with his talented family, for several years well maintained the traditional renown of that popular place of amusement. Like the Ducrows, the Henglers, the Powells, and others, the Cookes are a family of equestrians; and not the least elements of the success achieved by the new lessee of Astley’s were the wonderful feats of equestrianism performed by John Henry Cooke, Henry Welby Cooke, and Emily Cooke (now Mrs George Belmore). Welby Cooke’s juggling acts on horseback were greatly admired, and John H. Cooke’s feat of springing from the back of a horse at full speed to a platform, under which the horse passed, and alighting on its back again, was quite unique.
Vauxhall Gardens re-opened in 1854 with the additional attraction of a circus, in rivalry with Cremorne, now become one of the most popular places of amusement in the metropolis. The sensation of the season was the gymnastic performance of a couple of youths known as the Italian Brothers on a trapeze suspended beneath the car of a balloon, while the aërial machine was ascending. The perilous nature of the performance caused it to be prohibited by the Commissioners of Police, by direction of the Home Secretary; a course which was also adopted in the case of Madame Poitevin’s similar ascent from Cremorne, seated on the back of a bull, in the character of Europa, though in that instance on the ground of the cruelty of slinging the bovine representative of Jupiter beneath the car.
Some years afterwards, the gymnasts who bore the professional designation of the Brothers Francisco advertised their willingness to engage for a trapeze performance beneath the car of a balloon; but they received no response, probably owing to the official prohibition in the case of the Italian Brothers.
‘Would not such a performance be rather hazardous?’ I said to one of them.
‘Oh, we should only do a few easy tricks,’ he replied. ‘We should soon be too high for anybody to see what we were doing, and need only make believe. Once out of sight, we should pull up into the car.’
‘Of course,’ I observed, ‘the risk of falling would be no greater than if you were only thirty or forty feet from the ground; but, if you did fall, there would be a difference, you would come down like poor Cocking.’