On the Road With a Circus

by William Carter Thompson

It is easy to distinguish the performer from his fellow employee as the men leave the cars. The acrobats and gymnasts limp down the car steps as if every bone and muscle were lame and sore, and progress with halting tread toward the lot, very different in aspect from the firm, elastic-stepped men who entered the place the night before. It is an unhappy condition in which every one of the athletes finds himself the morning after the violent exercise of the ring or bar. None of them takes any unusual precaution to guard against physical affliction, and the wonder is that often they are not more seriously handicapped after sleep. After a few preliminary exercises their sound, strong, vigorous constitutions assert themselves and they are ready and eager for any required feat.

The veteran circus man is superficially acquainted with the physical features of most of the towns visited. Alighting from the car, he surveys the landscape and heads straight for the lot. He has been there before and he recalls it all. Here a sleeping car was burned two years ago; in another town two elephants had a thrilling duel to the death; there is the jail where a ticket taker was locked up without just cause; “Mr. Lew” remembers the bank where he secured bonds when a man with a claim for damages attached the ring horses with the mistaken notion that he would be bought off for a large sum of money; through that low bridge a heavy pole wagon once crashed. Every place in the country is associated with some personal incident in the circus man’s mind.

I walk often to the lot with a gray-haired man whose form is unbent by age, whose eye is undimmed, and whose active manner still evinces readiness to plan and will to execute. He is one of the ringmasters and has other duties of the arena and the business office. He has dwelt his long life in circus precincts, and for him the whole circus fraternity cherishes a peculiar veneration. Honesty and godliness mark his career, and his is the example pointed out to the circus young. Well may they imitate his virtues and walk in his footsteps! His presence recalls the faint memory of overland journey and one ring, and the stern hardships of the days of long ago. Those were times when his name was familiar wherever the show tent penetrated, and when his exploits made him the marvel of the profession and the prominent feature of performances—for none in all the world could equal his feats of horsemanship and acrobatic skill. From the haunch of the white circus beast he executed revolutions which even the modern show has not duplicated, and aloft he tumbled and turned in dare-devil accomplishments which now only the reassuring stretches of the net concede.

Simple modesty characterized his life of spectacular success, and now, when time has forbidden active participation and a new generation has entered upon the stage, he accepts with cheerful philosophy his relegation, to a uniform which bespeaks only the cracking of a whip. His wife, many years his junior, is one of the conspicuous performers, for he has taught her all the finish and art of bareback riding, and made her one of the cleverest wire-walkers with the show. He is always at her side when she performs, advising, correcting, praising, and, as she elicits admiring gaze, few in the audience recognize his figure as the one in whom so much sentimental interest centres. The press agent, extolling the youth and beauty and grace of the performer, points him out casually to the reporters as her “father” and flatters himself that he is subserving the interests of the show; but if the woman knew of the tale she would promptly put a stop to its circulation. She is proud of her kindly old husband and wants the world to know it. She boasts no circus pedigree, as do most of her comrades, and was schooled in the circus arena after she had reached her majority. She is a living refutation of the tradition that one must be born to the ring.

We watch her rehearsals in the spring with curiosity, and the other performers always profit by the directions and advice the veteran gives her. Sometimes, to his practised mind, she is awkward and slow of comprehension. Then I have seen him jump to his feet and leap to the horse’s back. He forgets his forbidding age, in the emotions of the past, and would fain give her the benefit of a demonstration. But his feet have lost their inspiration, his hold is unsteady and his muscles do not respond. He alights rather shamefacedly. The young athletes pat him kindly on the back and cheer him with words of his former glory; and his wife puts her arms around his neck and says he’s a dear old fellow. Love and loyalty will be his enduring memorial.

The inherent energy of the circus is never more fully demonstrated than when there is tardiness in arriving at the town of exhibition. The fault is seldom the circus’s and generally the railroad’s. Connections have been faulty, the engines inadequate to the requirements of the heavy trains, facilities for loading bad, or there has been delay in ferrying the sections. There are no faint hearts or falterers with the show and no weakness in these crises. Out of confusion worse confounded, order and convenience speedily reassert themselves, and the tremendous amount of preparation for the exhibition is rushed to wonderfully quick completion. Sometimes it has been nearly noon before we were able to drag a single wagon from the cars, but the programme for the day has been followed as implicitly as though there had been no hindrances. The parade emerged with customary roar and glare, the performance followed in regular sequence, and left behind was the same satisfactory trail of desolated pockets that the usual early coming would have accomplished.

Sunday is the circus man’s day of rest and relaxation. After the pitching of the menagerie and the smaller tents, necessary to the accommodation to the animals, the day is granted for freedom and enjoyment. The start from the Saturday stand is always made the same night, and the Sabbath respite is improved for long railroad runs. The route is so planned in advance that on no one night except Saturday is the journey so long that, everything favorable, there will be tardy arrival. It is not deemed expedient to risk a longer “jump” than eighty or ninety miles unless transportation facilities are unusually advantageous. The trips of one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles are reserved for the night which precedes the day of exemption. So it is that the circus folk, ending their slumber, find the train still on the move, with a possible prospect of several more hours in their cramped quarters. The sagacious ones have examined the railroad schedule the day before and laid in a supply of fruit and food for this contingency. They preconceive how sorely taxed will be the resources of the train restaurant, for circus appetites are voracious in the morning. Chairs are soon placed on platforms and at windows, and the workingmen gather in groups on car tops or under the ample spread of the wagons.

DISEMBARKING FROM THE CIRCUS TRAIN.

These Sunday morning railroad pilgrimages carry the circus through all climates and localities and, unless too protracted, afford a sense of keen enjoyment. There are inviting expanses of woodland and water, moor and mountain. Summer verdure clothes the scenery, and the view is often entrancingly beautiful to the crowd-surfeited vagrants. Smiling villages and beautiful cities pass in procession. The gazing native is bombarded with interrogations as to the proximity of the circus train’s ephemeral goal. Sometimes there are brief stops at wayside stations, while the engine takes water or gives place to another iron hauler. Then occurs an exodus from the cars. Men, women and children improve the opportunity to exercise their cramped bodies, for nothing is more distasteful to their active persons than restricted movement, or to invade with hurried dash the humble railroad restaurant. Never before has its composure been so rudely disturbed. Coffee is gulped down eager throats, and the return to the train is made with hands and pockets overflowing with sandwiches. Two sharp warning shrieks from the engine and the start is made anew.