I have performed this feat on several occasions for the satisfaction of friends, and have always released myself in Redmond’s time, except on one occasion, when I failed entirely, and had to be released by the gentleman who had bound me. He had, unknown to me, made a noose at one end of the rope, and this he passed over my head, after binding my arms and knotting the rope behind me in such a manner that I could not move either hand without producing a lively sense of strangulation.
‘I learned that trick in Australia,’ observed the author of my discomfiture. ‘I tied up a black fellow like that in the bush; and he is there now.’
CHAPTER X.
Opening of the Holborn Amphitheatre—Friend’s season at Astley’s—Adah Isaacs Menken—Sanger’s Company at the Agricultural Hall—The Carré troupe at the Holborn Amphitheatre—Wandering Stars of the Arena—Albert Smith and the Clown—Guillaume’s Circus—The Circo Price—Hengler’s Company at the Palais Royal—Re-opening of Astley’s by the Sangers—Franconi’s Circus—Newsome’s Circus—Miss Newsome and the Cheshire Hunt—Rivalry between the Sangers and Howes and Cushing.
After the lapse of several years, during which no equestrian performances were given in the metropolis, though gymnastic and acrobatic feats were exhibited nightly at a score of music-halls, a new amphitheatre was, in 1868, erected on the north side of Holborn. There, under the excellent management of Messrs Charman and Maccollum, have been exhibited some of the finest acts of horsemanship, and the most striking gymnastic feats, ever witnessed by this or any other generation. Alfred Bradbury’s wonderful jockey act; James Robinson’s great feat of hurdle-leaping on the bare back of a horse with a boy standing upon his shoulders; the marvellous leap through a series of hoops of George Delavanti; the astounding gymnastic performances of the Hanlons and the Rizarelis; the extraordinary somersaulting and rocket-like bound of the young lady known as Lulu; and the graceful riding of Beatrice Chiarini, without saddle or bridle, will not soon be forgotten by those who had the gratification of witnessing them.
In the same year that the Holborn Amphitheatre was opened, Astley’s was re-opened as a circus by Mr Friend. The chief attraction upon which Mr Friend relied was the impersonation of Mazeppa by Adah Isaacs Menken, a young lady of Jewish extraction, who came from America with the reputation of a female Crichton of the nineteenth century. According to a biographical sketch prefixed to a Paris version of the drama, The Pirate of the Savannah, in which she appeared in that city, she had written verses and essays at an age at which other girls are occupied with dolls, and translated the Iliad in her thirteenth year. In Latin and Hebrew, Spanish and German, she was as proficient as in Greek; French, her enthusiastic Gallic biographer does not seem to consider it necessary to mention. Her mother being left in reduced circumstances at her second widowhood, Adah resolved to devote her natural talents and acquired accomplishments to the stage, and made her appearance as a dancer at the opera-house at New Orleans, of which city she was a native.
After achieving the greatest artistic triumphs there and at Havanna, she abandoned the boards for the literary profession, publishing a volume of poems, and contributing for some time to two New Orleans journals. In 1858, being then seventeen years of age, she made her début as an actress in her native city, and subsequently performed in the chief towns of the West. In 1863 she went to San Francisco, and afterwards made a professional tour of the Eastern States, raising her reputation, according to her biographer, to the highest pitch.
Unfortunately for the maintenance of the exalted fame which she brought from the United States, this versatile lady appeared, not at the Italian Opera as a dancer, nor at Drury Lane or Covent Garden as an actress, which such fame should have entitled her to do, but at Astley’s in the character of Mazeppa; and it was still more unfortunate that the management pinned their faith in her powers of attraction, not upon her talent as an actress, but upon her beauty and grace, and her ability to play the part without recourse to a double for the fencing and riding. Enormous posters everywhere met the eye, representing the lady, apparently in a nude state, stretched on the back of a wild horse, and inviting the public to go to Astley’s, and see ‘the beautiful Menken.’ Young men thronged the theatre to witness this combination of poses plastiques with dramatic spectacle, and ‘girls of the period’ dressed their hair à la Menken, that is, like the frizzled crop of a negress; but the theatrical critics looked coldly and sadly upon the performance, and accused the management of ministering to a vitiated taste.
Adah Menken was at this time in her twenty-seventh year, and had a few years previously become the wife of Heenan, the pugilist, whose fine figure had won her regards when the wealthiest men in California were competing for her favours. The union was not a happy one, for which result both the parties have been blamed; and the cause of difference was probably one in respect of which neither could reproach the other without provoking recrimination. Heenan, who was then in London, might often have been seen at Astley’s during his wife’s engagement, and it was said that both desired a reconciliation, and that Adah had come to England with that view; but nothing came of it. ‘The beautiful Menken’ went to Paris, and was said to be on terms of tender intimacy with the elder Dumas. She died in Paris shortly afterwards, and her remains rest in the cemetery of Père La Chaise.
Adah Isaacs Menken was undoubtedly a woman of rare natural talents and great accomplishments. While in London, she published a volume of poems, with the general title of Infelicia, which correctly describes their tone and character. Some of them are as wild as anything which has emanated from Walt Whitman, and more are replete with the weird fancies and wayward genius of Poe; but all are pervaded by a deep and touching melancholy, which seems to shadow forth the spectre that haunted the author’s gay and brilliant life, like the garlanded skeleton at the festive board of the ancient Egyptians. From the suggestive title to the last of the little head-and-tail pieces, designed probably by Adah herself, everything in the book impresses a lesson which may be read in Ecclesiastes. In the first of these tiny engravings we seem to read the moral of the author’s life-story. It represents a woman stretched on the shore of a stormy sea, with her face to the earth, and her dark hair flowing over her recumbent form, which is faintly illuminated by the fitful light of a moon half-obscured by drifting masses of black clouds. The book was dedicated to Dickens, and contains a photographic reproduction of a letter from the great novelist, thanking ‘Dear Miss Menken’ for her portrait, and giving the desired permission to the dedication.