Opening of the Holborn Amphitheatre—Friend’s season at Astley’s—Adah
Isaacs Menken—Sanger’s Company at the Agricultural Hall—The Carré
troupe at the Holborn Amphitheatre—Wandering Stars of the
Arena—Albert Smith and the Clown—Guillaume’s Circus—The Circo
Price—Hengler’s Company at the Palais Royal—Re-opening of Astley’s
by the Sangers—Franconi’s Circus—Newsome’s Circus—Miss Newsome and
the Cheshire Hunt—Rivalry between the Sangers and Howes and Cushing.
After the lapse of several years, during which no equestrian
performances were given in the metropolis, though gymnastic and
acrobatic feats were exhibited nightly at a score of music-halls, a new
amphitheatre was, in 1868, erected on the north side of Holborn. There,
under the excellent management of Messrs Charman and Maccollum, have
been exhibited some of the finest acts of horsemanship, and the most
striking gymnastic feats, ever witnessed by this or any other
generation. Alfred Bradbury’s wonderful jockey act; James Robinson’s
great feat of hurdle-leaping on the bare back of a horse with a boy
standing upon his shoulders; the marvellous leap through a series of
hoops of George Delavanti; the astounding gymnastic performances of the
Hanlons and the Rizarelis; the extraordinary somersaulting and
rocket-like bound of the young lady known as Lulu; and the graceful
riding of Beatrice Chiarini, without saddle or bridle, will not soon be
forgotten by those who had the gratification of witnessing them.
In the same year that the Holborn Amphitheatre was opened, Astley’s was
re-opened as a circus by Mr Friend. The chief attraction upon which Mr
Friend relied was the impersonation of Mazeppa by Adah Isaacs Menken, a
young lady of Jewish extraction, who came from America with the
reputation of a female Crichton of the nineteenth century. According to
a biographical sketch prefixed to a Paris version of the drama, _The
Pirate of the Savannah_, in which she appeared in that city, she had
written verses and essays at an age at which other girls are occupied
with dolls, and translated the _Iliad_ in her thirteenth year. In Latin
and Hebrew, Spanish and German, she was as proficient as in Greek;
French, her enthusiastic Gallic biographer does not seem to consider it
necessary to mention. Her mother being left in reduced circumstances at
her second widowhood, Adah resolved to devote her natural talents and
acquired accomplishments to the stage, and made her appearance as a
dancer at the opera-house at New Orleans, of which city she was a
native.
After achieving the greatest artistic triumphs there and at Havanna, she
abandoned the boards for the literary profession, publishing a volume of
poems, and contributing for some time to two New Orleans journals. In
1858, being then seventeen years of age, she made her _début_ as an
actress in her native city, and subsequently performed in the chief
towns of the West. In 1863 she went to San Francisco, and afterwards
made a professional tour of the Eastern States, raising her reputation,
according to her biographer, to the highest pitch.
Unfortunately for the maintenance of the exalted fame which she brought
from the United States, this versatile lady appeared, not at the Italian
Opera as a dancer, nor at Drury Lane or Covent Garden as an actress,
which such fame should have entitled her to do, but at Astley’s in the
character of Mazeppa; and it was still more unfortunate that the
management pinned their faith in her powers of attraction, not upon her
talent as an actress, but upon her beauty and grace, and her ability to
play the part without recourse to a double for the fencing and riding.
Enormous posters everywhere met the eye, representing the lady,
apparently in a nude state, stretched on the back of a wild horse, and
inviting the public to go to Astley’s, and see ‘the beautiful Menken.’
Young men thronged the theatre to witness this combination of _poses
plastiques_ with dramatic spectacle, and ‘girls of the period’ dressed
their hair _à la Menken_, that is, like the frizzled crop of a negress;
but the theatrical critics looked coldly and sadly upon the performance,
and accused the management of ministering to a vitiated taste.
Adah Menken was at this time in her twenty-seventh year, and had a few
years previously become the wife of Heenan, the pugilist, whose fine
figure had won her regards when the wealthiest men in California were
competing for her favours. The union was not a happy one, for which
result both the parties have been blamed; and the cause of difference
was probably one in respect of which neither could reproach the other
without provoking recrimination. Heenan, who was then in London, might
often have been seen at Astley’s during his wife’s engagement, and it
was said that both desired a reconciliation, and that Adah had come to
England with that view; but nothing came of it. ‘The beautiful Menken’
went to Paris, and was said to be on terms of tender intimacy with the
elder Dumas. She died in Paris shortly afterwards, and her remains rest
in the cemetery of Père La Chaise.
Adah Isaacs Menken was undoubtedly a woman of rare natural talents and
great accomplishments. While in London, she published a volume of poems,
with the general title of _Infelicia_, which correctly describes their
tone and character. Some of them are as wild as anything which has
emanated from Walt Whitman, and more are replete with the weird fancies
and wayward genius of Poe; but all are pervaded by a deep and touching
melancholy, which seems to shadow forth the spectre that haunted the
author’s gay and brilliant life, like the garlanded skeleton at the
festive board of the ancient Egyptians. From the suggestive title to the
last of the little head-and-tail pieces, designed probably by Adah
herself, everything in the book impresses a lesson which may be read in
Ecclesiastes. In the first of these tiny engravings we seem to read the
moral of the author’s life-story. It represents a woman stretched on the
shore of a stormy sea, with her face to the earth, and her dark hair
flowing over her recumbent form, which is faintly illuminated by the
fitful light of a moon half-obscured by drifting masses of black clouds.
The book was dedicated to Dickens, and contains a photographic
reproduction of a letter from the great novelist, thanking ‘Dear Miss
Menken’ for her portrait, and giving the desired permission to the
dedication.
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.
The ‘bright particular star’ of the Amphitheatre, during the season of
1870, was the young lady known as Lulu, and who was recognized by
frequenters of that popular place of entertainment as the agile and
graceful child who had appeared, a few years previously, with her
father, at the Alhambra and Cremorne, as ‘the flying Farinis,’ in a
performance somewhat resembling that of the Brothers Hanlon and the
child called ‘Little Bob.’ She was then supposed to be a boy, and much
amusement was created after her appearance at the Amphitheatre as an
avowed woman, by the recollection of her having, after descending from
the lofty arrangement of trapezes and ladders on which she performed at
the Alhambra, advanced to the footlights, and sang a song, each verse of
which ended with the words, ‘Wait till I’m a man.’ The secret of her sex
was at that time unknown even to the performers at the Alhambra, at
least to the masculine portion, among whom the circumstance of her being
accompanied by her mother, and performing the operations of the toilet
in the ladies’ dressing-room, was a frequent subject of wonder and
speculation.
There was a doubt also about the sex of the child who for a long time
did a gymnastic performance at the London Pavilion, very similar to that
given by Olmar at the Alhambra. The child was announced as ‘Little
Corelli,’ and was generally supposed to be a boy; but I have since heard
that it was a girl.
The performances of Azella and Pereira had not satiated the public
appetite for the feats of female gymnasts, and the manager of the
Amphitheatre secured in Lulu a star of the first magnitude. Her triple
somersault is a feat in which she is still unrivalled; and though George
Conquest has since achieved her wonderful vertical spring of twenty-five
feet from the ring-fence, the means by which it is accomplished is still
a mystery. Lulu was succeeded by the Brothers Rizar, as they now chose
to be called, though they had gained immense applause a few years
previously at the Alhambra as the Brothers Rizareli. The double trapeze
of these clever gymnasts is perfectly unique, and must be seen to be
believed.
The Amphitheatre did not continue without a competitor for the patronage
of that portion of the public which delights in witnessing feats of
equestrianism and gymnastics. Hengler’s circus, after being located for
some time in Bristol, and afterwards in Dublin, settled down at the
Palais Royal, in Argyle Street, and introduced to the metropolis all the
Henglers and Powells, male and female, whose praises had been sounded by
the provincial press all over the kingdom. The most noteworthy members
of the company were Louise Hengler, an admirable horse-woman, who, like
Adele Newsome, rides and leaps in a ‘cross country’ fashion, over
hurdles and six-barred gates; James Lloyd, most experienced in his art,
and one of the neatest, as well as of the boldest, of riders; John
Milton Hengler, who danced on a tight-rope with a grace and skill which
fully justified the warmth of the applause with which the performance
was received; and Franks, the clown, who, before joining the Hengler
troupe, had been the chief exponent of fun and humour attached to
Newsome’s circus.
The circumstance of John M. Hengler dispensing with the balancing-pole
in his performance was mentioned by some of the newspaper critics as if
it was unique; but every frequenter of the London music-halls must have
observed the same feature in the similar performance of a member of the
clever Elliott family.
Scarcely had the lovers of circus entertainments had time to solve the
problem of the possibilities of success for two amphitheatres in London
when Astley’s was re-opened as a circus by the Sangers. Circus
performances are necessarily so much alike that it is only by the
production of a constant succession of novelties, as was done at the
Holborn establishment, or by combining hippo-dramatic spectacles with
the ring performances, as Ducrow and Batty did, that any distinctive
character can be established. The Sangers followed the example of their
predecessors, and preceded the acts in the arena by an equestrian drama
of the kind which had been found attractive in the palmy days of
Astley’s. The ring performances were good, but presented no novelty.
Lavinia Sanger deserved her tribute of applause as a skilful rider, who
gracefully leaped over banners and boldly dashed through ‘balloons;’ and
her brother’s, or cousin’s, feat of riding, or rather driving, a number
of horses at once, in emulation of Ducrow, was very creditably
performed, but who has not seen similar feats as well performed in every
circus he has entered? We should be sorry to miss them; but they should
be the ‘padding’ of the programme, and not its staple.
I have often heard the question asked, ‘What can be done upon a horse
which has not been done before?’ The question has been answered again
and again by the equestrian feats of such masters or the art of
equitation as Andrew Ducrow, Henry Adams, John Henry Cooke, Henry Welby
Cooke, George Delavanti, James Robinson, and Alfred Bradbury. It is only
by doing something which has never been done before, or by performing
some feat in a very superior style to that of previous exhibitors, that
a circus _artiste_ can emerge from the ruck, whether he is a rider, a
tumbler, a juggler, or a gymnast.
‘If you want to get your name up,’ I said, several years ago, to a young
gymnast, ‘you must do something that has not been done before, and not
be content with performing such feats as may be seen every night, in
every music-hall in London.’
‘What can we do?’ he inquired.
‘Ay, “there’s the rub!” Only a gymnastic genius can answer the question.
You may be sure that question was asked of themselves by Leotard, and
Olmar, and Farini, and all the other fellows who have made their names
famous, as the first performers of a skilful and daring feat. You know
how they answered it, and what salaries they got. As in the story of
Columbus and the egg, when a trick has once been done, there are many
who can repeat it, but it is the first performer that gets the greatest
fame and the highest salary.’
I must conclude this chapter with a brief notice of the changes and
movements of the principal travelling circuses during the last ten
years. In 1864, Franconi’s was at Nottingham for a time, with Charlie
Keith as clown and the Madlles Monfroid holding a conspicuous place
among the equestrian members of the company. Newsome’s circus was, later
in the year, at Chester, as I find by the following passage in a local
journal descriptive of a foxhunt:—‘The pace was terrific, and the
country the stiffest in Cheshire. This description would be incomplete
if I omitted to mention Miss Newsome, of the Chester Circus. This young
lady astonished the whole field by the plucky way in which she rode. She
unquestionably led the whole way, and never came to grief once.
_Straight_ was her motto, and straight she went; brook, hedge, and cop
were cleared by her in a style never seen in Cheshire before, and when
Reynard was deprived of his brush, it was most deservedly presented to
her amidst the cheers of all present.’
The movements of this circus during the following year are related, in
another chapter, by a gentleman who was at that time a member of the
company. In the spring of 1870, Messrs Sanger, whose circus is the
largest and most complete tenting establishment travelling in this
country, were threatened with a formidable rivalry by the appearance in
the field of the great American circus of Howes and Cushing. How they
met it is thus told by Mr Montague, who was then their agent in
advance:—
‘It is well known that two large tenting concerns will not pay in
England. Under these circumstances, Messrs Sanger determined to drive
the Yankees off the road, which we ultimately succeeded in doing. Our
mode of fighting them was to bill all the towns taken by them as though
we were coming the following day, it being known to us that English
people will always wait for the last circus, when two or more companies
are advertised at the same time. Our next move was to take all the best
towns in the North first. We succeeded so well with this mode of
operation that we ultimately performed in the same town with them,
namely, Preston, in Lancashire. On this memorable occasion, showmen came
from all parts of England, two such concerns never having been seen in
one town on the same day. Messrs Howes and Cushing acknowledged
themselves beaten, and shortly afterwards returned to America.’
William Darby, better known as Pablo Fanque, died in the following year,
at the ripe age of seventy-five. Charles Hengler had adopted the plan so
successfully followed by Newsome, of locating his circus in permanent
buildings, maintaining several for the purpose, and remaining several
months at each place. The principal members of his company in 1873, were
Miss Jenny Louise Hengler, Miss Cottrell, John Henry Cooke, Hubert
Cooke, William Powell, Herr Oscar, the Hogini family, the Brothers
Alexander, and the clowns, Bibb and ‘Little Sandy.’ Newsome’s company
comprised, at the same time, in addition to the clever ladies of his
family, Charles and Andrew Ducrow (descendants of the great equestrian
of that name), Hubert Mears, Fredericks, and the gymnast known as Avolo.
Sanger’s is the only great circus which follows the tenting system,
which can be successfully pursued only by those who possess a numerous
stud of showy horses. A less powerful company than Hengler or Newsome
finds necessary will do, because, the performances being given only two
nights in a town, the programme does not require to be changed so
frequently as when the company perform every night for a period of three
months in the same place; and the horses may be ridden in parades by the
grooms and their wives or daughters. But the public do not believe in a
tenting circus, unless its resources are put forth in a parade, for
which purpose a large number of horses are required, with a handsome
band-carriage, an elephant, and a couple of camels. The cost of
maintaining such an establishment is so great that the system cannot be
successfully pursued without a large capital, and the most complete and
efficient organization. Without both these requisites a bad season will
ruin the proprietor, as many have found by sad experience.