“I am the father of two little girls who perform on the tight-rope
and on stilts. My wife also performs, so that the family by itself
can give an entertainment that lasts an hour and a half altogether.
I don’t perform myself, but I go about making the arrangements and
engagements for them. Managers write to me from the country to get up
entertainments for them, and to undertake the speculation at so much.
Indeed I am a manager. I hire a place of amusement, and hire it at
so much; or if they won’t let it, then I take an engagement for the
family. I never fancied any professional work myself, except, perhaps,
a bit of sculpture. I am rather partial to the poses plastiques, but
that’s all.
“Both my little girls are under eight years of age, and they do the
stilt-waltzing, and the eldest does the tight-rope business as well.
Their mother is a tight-rope dancer, and does the same business as
Madame Sayin used to appear in, such as the ascension on the rope
in the midst of fireworks. We had men in England who had done the
ascension before Madame Sayin came out at Vauxhall, but I think she was
the first woman that ever did it in this country. I remember her well.
She lodged at a relation of mine during her engagement at the Gardens.
She was a ugly little woman, very diminutive, and tremendously pitted
with the small-pox. She was what may be called a horny woman, very
tough and bony. I’ve heard my father and mother say she had 20_l._
a-night at Vauxhall, and she did it three times a-week; but I can’t
vouch for this, as it was only hearsay.
“My eldest little girl first began doing the stilts in public when
she was three-and-a-half years old. I don’t suppose she was much more
than two-and-a-half years old when I first put her on the stilts. They
were particularly short, was about four foot from the ground, so that
she came to about as high as my arms. It was the funniest thing in the
world to see her. She hadn’t got sufficient strength in her knees to
keep her legs stiff, and she used to wabble about just like a fellow
drunk, and lost the use of his limbs. The object of beginning so soon
was to accustom it, and she was only on for a few minutes once or
twice a-day. She liked this very much, in fact so much, that the other
little ones used to cry like blazes because I wouldn’t let them have
a turn at them. I used to make my girl do it, just like a bit of fun.
She’d be laughing fit to crack her sides, and we’d be laughing to see
her little legs bending about. I had a new dress made for her, with a
spangled bodice and gauze skirt, and she always put that on when she
was practising, and that used to induce her to the exercise. She was
pleased as Punch when she had her fine clothes on. When she wasn’t
good, I’d say to her, ‘Very well, miss, since you’re so naughty, you
shan’t go out with us to perform; we’ll teach your little sister, and
take her with us, and leave you at home.’ That used to settle her in a
moment, for she didn’t like the idea of having the other one take her
place.
“Some people, when they teach their children for any entertainment,
torture the little things most dreadful. There is a great deal of
barbarity practised in teaching children for the various lines. It’s
very silly, because it only frightens the little things, and some
children often will do much more by kindness than ill-usage. Now there
are several children that I know of that have been severely injured
whilst being trained for the Risley business. Why, bless your soul, a
little thing coming down on it’s head, is done for the remainder of
it’s life. I’ve seen them crying on the stage, publicly, from being
sworn at and bullied, where they would have gone to it laughing, if
they had only been coaxed and persuaded.
“Now my little things took to it almost naturally. It was bred and born
in them, for my father was in the profession before me, and my wife’s
parents were also performers. We had both my little girls on the stilts
before they were three years old. It’s astonishing how soon the leg
gets accustomed to the stilts, for in less than three months they can
walk alone. Of course, for the first six weeks that they are put on we
never leave go of their hands. The knees, which at first is weak and
wabbly, gets strong, and when once that is used to the pad and stump
(for the stilts are fastened on to just where the garter would come),
then the child is all right. It does not enlarge the knee at all, and
instead of crooking the leg, it acts in a similar way to what we see in
a child born with the cricks, with irons on. I should say, that if any
of my children have been born knock-kneed, or bow-legged, the stilts
have been the means of making their legs straight. It does not fatigue
their ankles at all, but the principal strain is on the hollow in the
palm of the foot, where it fits into the tread of the stilt, for that’s
the thing that bears the whole weight. If you keep a child on too long,
it will complain of pain there; but mine were never on for more than
twenty minutes at a time, and that’s not long enough to tire the foot.
But one gets over this feeling.
“I’ve had my young ones on the stilts amusing themselves in my
back-yard for a whole afternoon. They’ll have them on and off three or
four times in a hour, for it don’t take a minute or two to put them on.
They would put them on for play. I’ve often had them asking me to let
them stop away from school, so as to have them on.
“My wife is very clever on the stilts. She does the routine of military
exercise with them on. It’s the gun exercise. She takes one stilt
off herself, and remains on the other, and then shoulders the stilt
she has taken off, and shows the gun practice. She’s the only female
stilt-dancer in England now. Those that were with her when she was a
girl are all old women now. All of my family waltz and polka on stilts,
and play tamborines whilst they dance. The little girls dance with
their mother.
“It took longer to teach the children to do the tight-rope. They were
five years old before I first began to teach them. The first thing I
taught them to walk upon was on a pole passed through the rails at
the back of two chairs. When you’re teaching a child, you have not
got time to go driving stakes into the ground to fix a rope upon. My
pole was a bit of one of my wife’s broken balance-poles. It was as
thick as a broom handle, and not much longer. I had to lay hold of the
little things’ hands at first. They had no balance-pole to hold, not
for some months afterwards. My young ones liked it very much; I don’t
know how other persons may. It was bred in them. They couldn’t stand
even upright when first they tried it, but after three months they
could just walk across it by themselves. I exercised them once every
day, for I had other business to attend to, and I’d give them a lesson
for just, perhaps, half an hour at dinner time, or of an evening a bit
after I came home. My wife never would teach them herself. I taught
my wife rope-dancing, and yet I could not do it; but I understood it
by theory, though not by experience. I never chalked my young ones’
feet, but I put them on a little pair of canvas pumps, to get the feet
properly formed to grasp the rope, and to bend round. My wife’s feet,
when she is on the rope, bend round from continual use, so that they
form a hollow in the palm of the foot, or the waist of the foot as some
call it. My girls’ feet soon took the form. The foot is a little bit
tender at first, not to the pole, because that is round and smooth, but
the strands of the rope would, until the person has had some practice,
blister the foot if kept too long on it. I never kept my young ones on
the pole more than twenty minutes at a time, for it tired me more than
them, and my arms used to ache with supporting them. Just when they got
into the knack and habit of walking on the pole, then I shifted them
to a rope, which I fixed up in my back-yard. The rope has to be a good
cable size, about one-and-a-half inches in diameter. I always chalked
the rope; chalk is of a very rough nature, and prevents slipping. The
sole of the pump is always more or less hard and greasy. We don’t rough
the soles of the pumps, for the rope itself will soon make them rough,
no matter how bright they may have been. My rope was three feet six
inches from the ground, which was a comfortable height for me to go
alongside of the children. I didn’t give them the balance-pole till
they were pretty perfect without it. It is a great help, is the pole.
The one my wife takes on the rope with her is eighteen feet long. Some
of the poles are weighted at both ends, but ours are not. My young ones
were able to dance on the rope in a twelvemonth’s time. They wern’t a
bit nervous when I highered the rope in my yard. I was underneath to
catch them. They seemed to like it.
“They appeared in public on the tight-rope in less than a twelvemonth
from their first lesson on the broom-stick on the backs of the chairs.
My girl had done the stilts in public when she was only three years
and six months old, so she was accustomed to an audience. It was in a
gardens she made her first performance on the rope, and I was under her
in case she fell. I always do that to this day.
“Whenever I go to fairs to fulfil engagements, I always take all my
own apparatus with me. There is the rope some twenty yards long, and
then there’s the pulley-blocks for tightening it, and the cross-poles
for fixing it up, and the balance-poles. I’m obliged to have a cart to
take them along. I always make engagements, and never go in shares, for
I don’t like that game. I could have lots of jobs at that game if I
liked. There’s no hold on the proprietor of the show. There’s a share
taken for this, and a share for this, so that before the company come
to touch any money, twenty shares are gone out of thirty, and only ten
left for the performers. I have had a pound a-day for myself and family
at a fair. At the last one I went to, a week ago, we took somewhere
about 25_s._ a-day. When it isn’t too far from London, we generally
come home at night, but otherwise we go to a tavern, and put up there.
“I only go to circuses when we are at fairs. I never had a booth of my
own. The young ones and my wife walk about the parade to make a show
of the entire company, but unless business is very bad, and a draw is
wanted, my little ones don’t appear on the stilts. They have done so,
of course, but I don’t like them to do so, unless as a favour.
“In the ring, their general performance is the rope one time, and then
reverse it and do the stilts. My wife and the girls all have their
turns at the rope, following each other in their performances. The
band generally plays quadrilles, or a waltz, or anything; it don’t
matter what it is, so long as it is the proper time. They dance and
do the springs in the air, and they also perform with chairs, seating
themselves on it whilst on the rope, and also standing up on the chair.
They also have a pair of ladders, and mount them. Then again they dance
in fetters. I am there underneath, in evening costume, looking after
them. They generally wind up their tight-rope performance by flinging
away the balance-pole, and dancing without it to quick measure.
“One of my little girls slipped off once, but I caught her directly
as she came down, and she wasn’t in the least frightened, and went on
again. I put her down, and she curtsied, and ran up again. Did she
scream? Of course not. You can’t help having a slip off occasionally.
“When they do the stilts, the young ones only dance waltzes and
polkas, and so on. They have to use their hands for doing the graceful
attitudes. My wife, as I said before, does the gun exercise besides
dancing, and it’s always very successful with the audience, and goes
down tremendously. The performances of the three takes about twenty
minutes, I think, for I never timed it exactly. I’ve been at some fairs
when we have done our performances eighteen times a-day, and I’ve been
at some where I’ve only done it four or six, for it always depends upon
what business is being done. That’s the truth. When the booth is full,
then the inside performance begins, and until it is, the parade work is
done. There are generally persons engaged expressly to do the parade
business.
“I never knew my girls catch cold at a fair, for they are generally
held in hot weather, and the heat is rather more complained of than
the cold. My young ones put on three or four different dresses during
a fair--at least mine do. I don’t know what others do. Each dress is a
different colour. There is a regular dressing-room for the ladies under
the parade carriages, and their mother attends to them.
[Illustration: STREET-PERFORMERS ON STILTS.
[_From a Sketch._]]
“Very often after their performances they get fruit and money thrown to
them into the ring. I’ve known seven or eight shillings to be thrown
to them in coppers and silver, but it’s seldom they get more than a
shilling or so. I’ve known ladies and gentlemen wait for them when they
went to take off their dresses after they have done, and give them five
or six shillings.
“When we go to fairs, I always pack the young ones off to bed about
nine, and never later than ten. They don’t seem tired, and would like
to stop up all night, I should think. I don’t know how it is with other
kids.
“I send my young ones to school every day when there is no business
on, and they are getting on well with their schooling. When we go to a
country engagement, then I send them to a school in the town if we stop
any time.
“Ours is, I think, the only family doing the rope-dancing and
stilt-vaulting. I don’t know of any others, nor yet of any other
children at all who do it.
“Stilt-vaulting is dying out. You never see any children going about
the streets as you did formerly. There never was so much money got as
at that stilt-vaulting in the streets. My wife’s family, when she was
young, thought nothing of going out of an afternoon, after dinner,
and taking their three or four pounds. They used to be as tall up as
the first-floor windows of some of the houses. It must be very nearly
twenty years since I remember the last that appeared. It isn’t that
the police would stop it, but there’s nobody to do it. It’s a very
difficult thing to do, is walking about at that tremendous height. If
you fall you’re done for. One of my little ones fell once--it was on
some grass, I think--but she escaped without any hurt, for she was
light, and gathered herself up in a heap somehow.
“There used to be a celebrated Jellini family, with a similar
entertainment to what I give. They were at the theatres mostly, and
at public gardens, and so on. They used to do ballets on stilts, and
had great success. That must be forty years ago. There used to be the
Chaffs family too, who went about the streets on stilts. They had music
with them, and danced in the public thoroughfares. Now there is nothing
of the kind going on, and it’s out of date.
“I have been abroad, in Holland, travelling with a circus company. I’ve
also visited Belgium. The children and my wife were very much liked
wherever they went. I was on an engagement then, and we had 11_l._
a-week, and I was with them seven weeks. They paid our travelling
expenses there, and we paid them home.”