On the Road With a Circus

by William Carter Thompson

Rates of admission are conspicuous everywhere. Children under two and a half years of age are admitted free; from that age to ten a half-ticket is required, and older persons must pay full charge. Wonderful and varied are the devices resorted to in the effort to evade legitimate payment. Children who at home are in their teens have dwarfed to babyhood at the circus entrance. Parents glibly insist that robust offsprings are under nine years, and panting fathers and mothers present themselves, in the palpable attempt to deceive, with an armful of boy or girl who has reached the full-rate limit. Watchful and inexorable door-keepers receive them, demand and finally are handed the correct sum, and composedly hear themselves styled “a pack of villains and swindlers.” Ill-grace characterizes those who would cheat the circus.

To the main entrance come the hundreds of written orders for tickets, issued by the advance agents who have covered the district with bills and posters. As a precautionary measure against imposition, two sets of keen-eyed employees have subsequently prowled over the routes and made note when storekeeper or householder has not kept faith. If the flaring advertisement has been removed, disfigured, or hidden under that of a rival show, a memorandum is made. Thus a list of those who are and who are not entitled to recognition is in the hands of the management when the doors open. Each claim presented to the ticket taker has a corresponding number on the large sheet of paper which the general manager holds, and whether or not the holder enters free depends on its report. Very crestfallen and embarrassed, generally, is the man who thought he could profit without rendering service in return. He had not calculated on the thorough business system with which he was in contact. If the applicant has kept his promise he is welcomed to the show, given what his order calls for in the way of seats and number of admissions, and passes inside.

Each one of the men at the main entrance understands his manifold duties perfectly and there is no confusion. Annoying problems enough present themselves, but the quick-witted, ready circus man solves them without hesitation. Complaints innumerable flow to the main entrance, but everybody receives a fair hearing and just treatment in so far as human effort can bring it about. Fault-finding women are the bane. There is almost no extreme of compromise to which the showman will not go to rid himself of the presence of a member of the other sex when she is wrought up over a conviction that she has been imposed upon. She blocks the passage way, gesticulating madly, protesting volubly and threatening all manner of things. She is generally tall and angular, wears spectacles, carries a cotton umbrella, has a crying child by the hand and is famous in the town as a virago. Dutch and Curley cower before her outburst, and the general manager promises her all she demands if she will only pass on. With a parting volley of abuse she flaunts into the menagerie tent and a feeling of great relief pervades all. Her reappearance, with a lament about the unsatisfactory locality of her seat, may be confidently expected later.

BEFORE THE CROWD COMES.

Vigilant canvasmen picket the stretches of cloth, alert lest the small boy or his older relative crawl under the fabric and gain free admission. The duty is one demanding keen eye and active body, for once the canvas folds after the invader he is generally secure from capture; a scamper under the low rows of seats or into the crowd eludes successful pursuit and recognition. So watchful, however, are these patrolmen and so obdurate against pleading juvenile persuasion that surreptitious entrance is effectually barred. The circus-fascinated but impecunious youngster must needs vicariously satisfy his longing by turning handsprings outside the barrier. The stirring band music carried to his ears conjures immeasurable pleasures in his mind and is madly irritating.

The press agent receives his newspaper guests at the main entrance. They have been provided with tickets bearing his name. To the reporter assigned to write up the circus and to the responsible heads of the newspaper he gives slips of paper passing them into an enclosure from which is afforded an undisturbed survey of all that is transpiring, and brings to closer view the excelling features of the performance. Later he joins them there, explains the show’s superiority over all competitors and is generally entertaining. He presses peanuts and lemonade upon them and sends them away in friendly mood.

That manly young fellow who appeared from the inner recesses of the festive tent for a whispered conversation at the main entrance with the general manager is Fred Ledgett, equestrian. He is one of the principals in the season’s romance of the circus. Dallie Julian, eighteen years old, who turns back somersaults from the broad, rosined haunch of her horse Gypsy, is the other party to the charming affair. What they dared and suffered before they could win the countenance and support of management and relative and carry out their matrimonial longing, only those who know intimately the prosaic circus institute can appreciate. If there is one thing frowned upon more than all others in tented life, it is adventures of the heart. But Fred and Dallie emerged triumphant and conquering, and the seed of love sown in April came to golden harvest in Iowa, many miles transplanted, where an earnest, curious company of show people witnessed the wedding ceremony and participated in the celebration.

My mind reverts to the early spring when little Dallie, done up in a heavy coat and sitting on one of the tubs which served as a seat for a trick elephant, was holding an informal reception in Madison Square Garden. Preparations for the opening of the circus were in full swing—literally in some instances—for the acrobats, practising for the first time in a new place, were suspended by “mecaniques”—the leather belts with rope attachments that made living pendulums of them when they missed their try. Even one of the bareback riders, forming a pyramid on her husband’s shoulders, while he went around the ring on three horses, had the life-saving apparatus around her waist. For she was new at the business and her husband was not letting her take any more chances than he could help. And while father and mother were doing their great aerial act on horseback, both of them looking as though only boy and girl, their two-year-old baby cooed down at the ringside, brought over from Boston to spend three weeks with them. She thought it was fine when her mother jumped and balanced, but her mother thought of nothing except not to fall off and not to hang her husband with the rope that was her safeguard. They were in the middle ring and beside it, swathed in top coats and wrappings of all kinds, were performers waiting for their turns to go in. From beneath their street clothes came glimpses of pink and white fleshings with slippers to match, and over the slippers were clogs, wooden-soled shoes, with leather tops, to prevent their feet from being injured while walking in the ring.

The circus was getting ready to open and everybody was practising to start in a blaze of glory. In one of the end rings a woman was riding bareback, “the best hurdle jumper in the business” said one of the men. It looks easy to run and jump on a horse, but it requires work and practice. Not being a dress rehearsal, every one was in working togs, and the women were wearing bloomer suits, with waists of red, pink and blue, and with that innate sense of decoration that is part of the true artist in the ring, each wore a rosette in her hair that matched the suit.