Mr. Simon Paap.
“The celebrated Dutch dwarf, 26 years of age, weighs 27 pounds, and only 28 inches high; had the honour of being presented to the Prince Regent and the whole of the Royal Family at Carleton House, May 5th, 1815, and was introduced by Mr. Dan. Gyngell to the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, Sept. 1st, 1815; and was exhibited in the course of 4 days in Smithfield to upwards of 20,000 persons; is universally admitted to be the greatest wonder of the age.”
Another portrait, engraved by Cooper, and published by Robins and Co., is better executed; but the third is a poor sketch, taken three years later, and unsigned.
Richardson presented this year, on the first day of Bartholomew Fair, The Maid and the Magpie, and a pantomime, “expressly written for this theatre,” entitled Harlequin in the Deep, terminating with a panorama, “taken from the spot, by one of our most eminent artists,” representing Longwood, in the island of St. Helena, and the adjacent scenery, interesting to the public at that time as the place of exile selected by the Powers lately in arms against France for Napoleon I. Pocock’s drama was, of course, greatly abridged, for drama and pantomime, with a comic song between, were got through in half an hour, and often in twenty minutes, when the influx of visitors rendered it expedient to abbreviate the performance. Shuter’s signal, corrupted into John Orderly, was used by Richardson on such occasions.
A daily change of performances had at this time become necessary, and Richardson presented on the second day “an entire new Chinese romantic melodrama,” called The Children of the Desert, and a comic pantomime, entitled Harlequin and the Devil. On the third day the pantomime was the same, preceded by “an entire new melodrama,” called The Roman Wife.
This year there first appeared in the fair an eccentric character named James Sharp England, known as “the flying pieman.” He was always neatly dressed, with a clean white apron before him, but wore no hat, and had his hair powdered and tied behind in a queue. Like the famous Tiddy-dol of a century earlier, he aimed at a profitable notoriety through a fantastic exterior and a droll manner; and he succeeded, his sales of plum-pudding, which he carried before him on a board, and vended in slices, being very great wherever he appeared. The present representative of the perambulating traders of the eccentric order is a man who has for many years strolled about the western districts of the metropolis, wearing clean white sleeves and a black velvet cap placed jauntily on his head, and carrying before him a tray of what, in oily and mellifluous accents, he proclaims to be, “Brandy balls as big as St. Paul’s! Oh, so nice! They are all sugar and brandy!”
The following year is memorable among showmen, and especially among menagerists, for the attack of Ballard’s lioness on the Exeter mail-coach. On the night of the 20th of October, the caravans containing the animals were standing in a line along the side of the road, near the inn called the Winterslow Hut, seven miles from Salisbury, to the fair of which city the menagerie was on its way. The coach had just stopped at this inn for the guard to deliver his bag of local letters, when one of the leaders was attacked by some large animal. The alarm and confusion produced by this incident were so great that two of the inside passengers left the coach, ran into the house, and locked themselves in a room above stairs; while the horses kicked and plunged so violently that the coachman feared that the coach would be overturned. It was soon perceived by the coachman and guard, by the light of the lamps, that the assailant was a large lioness. A mastiff attacked the beast, which immediately left the horse, and turned upon him; the dog then fled, but was pursued and killed by the lioness about forty yards from the coach.
An alarm being given, Ballard and his keepers pursued the lioness to a granary in a farm-yard, where she ran underneath the building, and was there barricaded in to prevent her escape. She growled for some time so loudly as to be heard half a mile distant. The excited spectators called loudly to the guard to despatch her with his blunderbuss, which he seemed disposed to attempt, but Ballard cried out, “For God’s sake, don’t kill her! She cost me five hundred pounds, and she will be as quiet as a lamb if not irritated.” This arrested the guard’s hand, and he did not fire. The lioness was afterwards easily enticed from beneath the granary by the keepers, and taken back to her cage. The horse was found to be severely lacerated about the neck and chest, the lioness having fastened the talons of her fore feet on each side of his throat, while the talons of her hind feet were forced into his chest, in which position she hung until attacked by the dog. Death being inevitable, a fresh horse was procured, and the coach proceeded on its journey, after having been detained three-quarters of an hour.
A coloured print of this encounter adorns, or did thirty years ago adorn, the parlour of the Winterslow Hut, and was executed, according to the inscription, from the narrative of Joseph Pike, the guard, who, next to the lioness, is the most conspicuous object in the group. The lioness has seized the off leader by the throat, and the guard is standing on his seat with a levelled carbine, as if about to fire. In the foreground is the dog, which looks small for a mastiff, as if diminished by the artist for the purpose of making the lioness appear larger by the comparison, as the human figures on the show-cloths of the menageries always are. The terrified faces in the inside of the coach, and at the upper windows of the inn, and the blue coats and yellow vests of the outside passengers, each grasping an umbrella or a carpet-bag, as if determined not to die without a struggle, make up a vivid and sensational picture, which would have found immediate favour with the conductor of the ‘Police News,’ had such a periodical existed in those days.
The following year was signalised by the first appearance at Bartholomew Fair of the learned pig, Toby, who was exhibited by a showman named Hoare. There seems to have been a succession of learned pigs bearing the same name, on the same principle, probably, as Richardson’s theatre continues to be advertised at Easter or Whitsuntide as at the Crystal Palace, or the Agricultural Hall, or the Spaniards, at Hampstead Heath, twenty years after the component parts of the structure were dispersed under the auctioneer’s hammer.