On the legal principle, it would seem, that two lawyers will live where one would starve, the Sangers brought their company and stud to the Agricultural Hall, where, for several successive winters, their performances attracted thousands of spectators. This establishment continues to travel during the summer, however, only resorting to a permanent building in the metropolis when the approach of winter renders ‘tenting’ as unpleasant as it is unprofitable. The Agricultural Hall, not having been constructed for equestrian entertainments, is not so well adapted for them as for the purpose for which it was especially designed, and the locality is far inferior, as a site for a circus, to that of the Holborn Amphitheatre, of the circus subsequently erected by Charles Hengler, or even Astley’s.
It was at the Holborn Amphitheatre that the first female trapezist appeared, in the person of a beautiful young woman rejoicing in the nom d’arena of Azella, the attractiveness of whose performances, as in the case of female lion-tamers, soon produced many imitators. Azella was announced to appear on the flying trapeze, and to turn a somersault; but this feat, which created such a sensation when performed by Leotard and Victor Julien, was exhibited by the fair aspirant to the highest gymnastic honours in a manner which caused some disappointment to those who had witnessed the performances of those renowned gymnasts at the Alhambra. Instead of throwing off from one bar, turning the somersault, and catching the next bar, Azella threw off, and somersaulted in her descent from the bar to the bed placed for her to alight upon. The grace with which all her evolutions were performed combined, however, with the beauty of her person and the novelty of seeing such feats performed by a woman, to secure her an enthusiastic reception whenever she appeared.
Azella was succeeded at the Amphitheatre by Mdlle Pereira, who performed similar feats, which she had exhibited in 1868 at Cremorne. Imitators soon appeared at all the music-halls in the metropolis. At some of these the long flight of Jean Price was emulated by a lady named Haynes, who transformed herself, for professional purposes, into Madame Senyah by the device of spelling her real name backward. A variation from Price’s mode of performing the feat was presented by this lady, whose husband appeared with her in a double trapeze act, and hanging from the bar by his feet, caught her with his arms as she swung towards him on loosing her hold of the stirrups.
The company with which the Amphitheatre was opened was succeeded, after a long and successful career, by the Carré troupe, which introduced to the metropolis Alfred Burgess, who unites the qualifications of a clown with those of an accomplished equestrian and clever revolving globe performer. Clowns would seem to be precluded, by the nature of their business, from the cosmopolitan wanderings of other circus performers; but the name of Burgess is almost as famous on the continent as that of Charles Keith, who has performed in nearly every European capital, though Albert Smith has given a picture of clowning under difficulties which might well deter those who cannot crack a ‘wheeze’ in half a dozen languages from venturing into lands where English is not spoken.
‘One evening,’ says the humourist, ‘I went to the Grand Circo Olympico—an equestrian entertainment in a vast circular tent, on a piece of open ground up in Pera; and it was as curious a sight as one could well witness. The play-bill was in three languages—Turkish, Armenian, and Italian; and the audience was composed almost entirely of Levantines, nothing but fezzes being seen round the benches. There were few females present, and of Turkish women none; but the house was well filled, both with spectators and the smoke from the pipes which nearly all of them carried. There was no buzz of talk, no distant hailings, no whistlings, no sounds of impatience. They all sat as grave as judges, and would, I believe, have done so for any period of time, whether the performance had been given or not.
‘I have said the sight was a curious one, but my surprise was excited beyond bounds when a real clown—a perfect Mr Merriman of the arena—jumped into the ring, and cried out, in perfect English: “Here we are again—all of a lump! How are you?” There was no response to his salutation, for it was evidently incomprehensible; and so it fell flat, and the poor clown looked as if he would have given his salary for a boy to have called out “Hot codlins!” I looked at the bill, and found him described as the “Grottesco Inglese,” Whittayne. I did not recognize the name in connection with the annals of Astley’s, but he was a clever fellow, notwithstanding; and, when he addressed the master of the ring, and observed, “If you please, Mr Guillaume, he says, that you said, that I said, that they said, that nobody had said, nothing to anybody,” it was with a drollery of manner that at last agitated the fezzes, like poppies in the wind, although the meaning of the speech was still like a sealed book to them.
‘I don’t know whether great writers of Eastern travel would have gone to this circus; but yet it was a strange sight. For aught that one could tell we were about to see all the mishaps of Billy Button’s journey to Brentford represented in their vivid discomfort upon the shores of the Bosphorus, and within range of the sunset shadows from the minarets of St Sophia! The company was a very fair one, and they went through the usual programme of the amphitheatre. One clever fellow threw a bullet in the air, and caught it in a bottle during a “rapid act;” and another twisted himself amongst the rounds and legs of a chair, keeping a glass full of wine in his mouth. They leaped over lengths of stair-carpet, and through hoops, and did painful things as Olympic youths and Lion Vaulters of Arabia.
‘The attraction of the evening, however, was a very handsome girl—Maddalena Guillaume—with a fine Gitana face and exquisite figure. Her performance consisted in clinging to a horse, with merely a strap hung to its side. In this she put one foot, and flew round the ring in the most reckless manner, leaping with the horse over poles and gates, and hanging on, apparently, by nothing, until the fezzes were in a quiver of delight, for her costume was not precisely that of the Stamboul ladies—in fact, very little was left to the imagination.’
I quote this passage for the purpose of showing that the wanderings of the men and women whose vocation it is to entertain the public as equestrians, clowns, acrobats, and jugglers are not confined to the limits within which actors and singers obtain foreign engagements. There are very few men or women of eminence in the profession who have not visited nearly every European capital, and many of them have made the tour of the world. Price’s circus was for many years one of the most popular institutions of Madrid, and the Circo Price was to English circus artistes what Cape Horn is to American seamen. Tell an equestrian or an acrobat that you think you have seen him before, and he will ask, ‘Was it at the Circo Price?’ just as a Yankee sailor will snuffle, ‘I guess it was round the Horn.’ To have appeared at the Hippodrome or the Cirque Imperiale is a very small distinction indeed, when so many have performed in Madrid and Naples, Berlin and St Petersburg, and not a few have traversed the United States from New York to San Francisco, and then crossed the ocean, and performed in Sydney and Melbourne, or Yokohama, Hong Kong, and Calcutta.
Circus performers wander about the world more generally, and to a greater extent, than the acrobats and jugglers who perform in music-halls, from whom they are separated into a distinct class by the requirements of circus engagements. All aspirants to saw-dust honours being engaged for ‘general utility,’ it is necessary for them to understand the whole routine of circus business, whether their specialty is riding, vaulting, clowning, or any other branch. They are required to take part in vaulting acts, to hold hoops, balloons, banners, &c., which requires some practice before it can be done properly, and to line the entrance to the ring when a lady of the company flutters into it, or bows herself out of it. For this last duty, the proprietors of the best appointed circuses provide uniform dresses, which are worn by all the male members of the company, when not engaged in their performances, from the time the circus opens until they retire to the dressing-room for the last time. I am speaking, of course, of those who form the permanent company of a circus, and not of those engaged, as ‘stars,’ for six or twelve nights.