Reminiscences of a Gymnast—Training and Practising—A Professional
Rendezvous—Circus Agencies—The First Engagement—Springthorp’s
Music-hall—Newsome’s Circus—Reception in the Dressing-room—The
Company and the Stud—The Newsome Family—Miss Newsome’s Wonderful
Leap across a green lane—The Handkerchief Trick—An Equine Veteran
from the Crimea—Engagement to travel.
The picture of circus life and manners which I have endeavoured to
portray would not be complete without a narrative of the professional
experiences of the performers engaged in circuses. I shall next,
therefore, present the reminiscences of a gymnast, as I heard them
related a few years ago by one who has since retired from the avocation;
and I shall endeavour to do so, as nearly as may be possible, in his own
words.
‘I was not born and bred a circus man, as most of them are—Alf Burgess,
for instance, who was born, as I may say, in the saw-dust, and brought
up on the back of a horse. Neither was my partner. He was a clerk in the
advertising department of a London evening newspaper, and I was an
apprentice in a London printing-office, and not quite out of my time,
when we went in for gymnastics at the Alhambra gymnasium. My partner was
practising the flying trapeze, and was just beginning to do his flights
with confidence, when that poor fellow fell, and broke his back, at the
Canterbury, and the proprietors of the London music-halls set their
faces against the flying trapeze, and would not engage gymnasts for it.
In consequence of that, he had to drop the flying trapeze, and practise
for the fixed trapeze; and, as the single trapeze doesn’t draw, he began
to look out for a partner, to do it double. Price was looking out for a
partner at the same time, but, as he was more advanced in his training
than Fred was, and was not disposed to wait till he was proficient, he
took Joe Welsh,—Alhambra Joe, as he used to be called,—and Fred had to
look out for somebody else.
‘The partnership of the Brothers Price, as they called themselves, did
not last long; for Price dropped in for a slice of luck, in the shape of
a thumping legacy,—twenty thousand pounds, I have heard,—and then he
turned up the profession, and Joe Welsh went in for the long flight. In
the mean time, I had made up my mind to follow Fred’s example, and to be
his partner; and, besides fixing up the ropes for the flying rings in my
grandmother’s orchard at Norwood, for practice on Sundays, we took our
fakements nearly every evening to the “ruins,” as they were called, in
Victoria Street. Do you know where I mean?’
I did know the place, and remembered that it conveyed the idea that a
Metropolitan Improvement Commission’s notions of street improvements
consisted in demolishing some three or four hundred houses, and creating
a wilderness of unfinished houses, yawning chasms, and heaps of rubbish.
The place remained in that condition for several years, and was the
rendezvous and free gymnasium of most of the gymnasts, acrobats,
rope-dancers, and other professors of muscular sensationalism in the
metropolis.
‘Well, we fixed our fakements up in the “ruins,” and when the evenings
began to get dark we had candles. A lot of us used to be there—Frank
Berrington, and Costello, and Jemmy Lee, and Joe Welsh, and Bill George,
and ever so many more. There used to be all kinds of gymnastic exercises
going on there; and there my partner and I went, night after night,
until we could do a tidy slang on the trapeze, the rings, or the bar.
Then we went to Roberts; he used to live in Compton Street then, and he
and Maynard, in York Road, Lambeth, were agents for all the circuses and
music-halls in the three kingdoms, and often had commissions from
foreign establishments to engage _artistes_ for them. They get
engagements for you, and you pay them a commission of fifteen per cent.
on the salary they get for you; so it is their interest to get you as
good a screw as they can, and it is your interest to keep the commission
paid regularly, because if you don’t, you will have to look out for
yourselves when you want another engagement. If you don’t act
honourable, and you try to get another engagement without the
intervention of an agent, the circus or music-hall proprietor or manager
says, “I engage my people through Roberts,” or Maynard, as the case may
be; and there you are—flummoxed!
‘Well, we went to Roberts, and had to wait our turn, while he did
business with other fellows who were before us. We looked at the framed
collections of photographs of gymnasts, acrobats, clowns, riders,
jugglers, singers, and dancers which hung against the wall, and then we
looked about us. There was Hassan, the Arab, a wiry-looking tawny man,
black bearded and moustached, and wearing a scarlet fez, a blue zouave
jacket, and baggy crimson breeches; and old Zamezou, with a
broad-brimmed felt hat overshadowing his face, and his portly figure
enveloped in the folds of a large blue cloak; and George Christoff, the
rope-dancer, buttoned up in his over-coat, and looking rather blue, as
if he had just stepped up from the chilly fog in the street; and Luke
Berrington, looking quite the swell, as he always does; and one or two
more that I didn’t know, or can’t remember. One by one, they dropped
out, and others came in, till at last our turn came.
‘“Well,” says Roberts, who is a nice sort of fellow—a smart
dark-complexioned man, with gold rings in his ears, “I want a couple of
good gymnasts for Springthorp’s, at Hull; but, you see, I don’t know
you: where have you been?”
‘That was a floorer; but, before my partner could answer, a young fellow
who had just come in, and who had seen us practising at the “ruins,” and
knew what we could do, says, “I know them; they have just come from the
Cirque Imperiale.”
‘“Oh!” says Roberts, “if you have been at the Cirque Imperiale, you will
do for Springthorp’s. The engagement will be for six nights, commencing
on Saturday next; and you will have five pounds.”
‘That was gorgeous, we thought. There was I, getting, as an apprentice,
a pound a week, with three-and-thirty shillings, or six-and-thirty at
the most, in perspective; and my partner, out of collar for months, and
receiving the munificent salary of twelve bob a week when in: and we had
jumped into fifty shillings a week each, for a nightly performance of
ten minutes or a quarter of an hour! It is no wonder that we fell to
work, building castles in the air, as soon as we got into the street. We
should go to the Cirque Imperiale some day, though we had not been there
yet, and then to Madrid or St Petersburg, and come back to England, and
be engaged for the Alhambra at fifty pounds a week. From the lofty
height to which we had soared before we reached the Haymarket we were
brought to the ground by considerations of finance. We were both at
low-water mark, and the denarlies had to be found for our tights and
trunks, and our expenses down to Hull. We got over that little
difficulty, however, and started for Hull with hearts as light as our
purses.
‘Do you know Springthorp’s? You were never in Hull, perhaps; but, if you
should ever happen to be there, and should lose yourself, as you are
very likely to do, in the neighbourhood of the docks, and should wander
into the dullest part of the town, towards Sculcoates, you will come
upon a dreary-looking building, which was once a chapel, and afterwards
a wax-work exhibition. That is Springthorp’s; and there, in the
dreariest, dingiest hall that was ever mocked with the name of a place
of amusement, we gave our first performance. The Vokes family were
performing there at the same time, and very agreeable people we found
them. The six nights came to an end too soon,—before we had got used to
seeing our name in the bills, in the largest type and the reddest ink.
Then we came back to London, and presented ourselves again before our
agent. We had given entire satisfaction at Springthorp’s, he told us;
but he couldn’t offer us another engagement just then. He should put our
name on his list, and, if anything should turn up, he would let us know.
‘The first offer came from a music-hall at Plymouth, but the screw was
too low for the distance, unless we had had other engagements in the
western towns to follow, and we didn’t take it. The next chance was at
the Hippodrome, in Paris, and we should have gone there, but another
brace of gymnasts, whose terms were lower than ours, cut us out of it.
As if to confirm the vulgar superstition about times, the third time was
lucky. Newsome wanted a couple of good gymnasts for his circus, and
offered the same terms we had had at Springthorp’s, and for twelve
nights. The distance was a drawback, for the circus was then at
Greenock; but we both desired a circus engagement, and hoped that
Newsome might be disposed to engage us to travel with him. So we
accepted the offer, and, reaching Edinburgh by steamer to Granton, went
on by rail to Greenock.
‘We had never seen any other circus than Hengler’s, except Astley’s,
and, as we did not expect to see a theatre, we expected to find a tent.
To our surprise, we found a large wooden building, well and
substantially built, though without any pretensions to elegance or
beauty of architecture; and we were still more surprised when we went
into the ring to fix up our trapeze. The boxes and balcony were as
prettily painted and gilded as in any theatre, and the ring-fence was
covered with red cloth, and a handsome chandelier hung from a canopy
such as Charman had at the Amphi. in Holborn.
‘“This is better than Hengler’s by a lump,” says my partner, as we
looked about us. “Why, it must look like Astley’s, when the chandelier
and those gas jets all round the balcony are lighted.”
‘We did not see many of the company till we presented ourselves in the
dressing-room on the first night of our engagement. As we walked in an
old clown was applying the last touch of vermilion to his whitened face,
and a younger one was balancing a feather on the tip of his nose. There
were seven or eight fellows in tights and trunks, ready for the vaulting
act, and two or three in the gilt-buttoned blue tunic and gold-striped
trousers which constituted the uniform in which the male members of the
company stood at the ring-doors when not engaged in their several
performances in the ring. They all stared at us as we went in, and I
heard one of them say, “Here are the star gymnasts from London!” One or
two said “good evening,” and one gave us a glance of inquiry as he
pronounced our professional name.
‘“That’s us,” returned my partner.
‘“Haven’t I seen your face before?” said another, looking hard at him.
‘“Very likely,” said Fred. “Were you ever at the Circo Price, in
Madrid?”
‘“No,” answered the other fellow, still looking hard at him.
‘“Then it couldn’t have been there,” said my partner, without a muscle
of his face moving, though I had to bite my lips to keep from laughing.
‘We found all of them very good fellows to pal with when we knew them.
There was Webster Vernon, the ring-master; Alf Burgess, the head vaulter
and revolving globe performer, who had been all over the continent, and
was supposed to have accumulated some coin; Coleman, the bare-back
rider, a brother, I believe, of the theatrical manager of that name,
well known in the north; Charlie Ducrow, a direct descendant of the
great successor of Astley, and emulating him in his rapid act on six
horses; old Zamezou and his boys; the Brothers Ridley, also acrobats,
and very good in their chair act and at hand-balancing—Joe Ridley’s
one-arm balance was the best I ever saw; Franks, the first clown, with a
fund of dry, quiet humour that earned his salary, which was higher than
any other man’s in the company, except Burgess’s; Joe Hogini, singing
clown, and better at comic singing than at clowning, though he could do
some clever balancing tricks; and old Adams, clown and property-man,
whose wife was money-taker at the gallery entrance, and whose daughter
took small parts in the ballets when required.
‘If I mention the gentlemen before the ladies, which isn’t manners, it
is because I saw them first, and saw them oftenest. The ladies, as is
often the case in a circus, were all members of the proprietor’s family.
Madame Newsome only appeared in the ring when her clever manege horse,
Brunette, was introduced. Miss Adele was great in leaping acts, and has
been repeatedly acknowledged by the leading gentlemen of the north
country hunts to be the finest horsewoman across country in England. One
of the wonderful stories related of her is, that a splendid black hunter
which she was riding leaped, in the excitement of the chase, over two
hedges, with a narrow lane between them, landing safely in the field
beyond. Miss Emma did double acts with Burgess, who is as good a rider
as he is a vaulter and a juggler on the globe. Miss Marie only appeared
in ballets at that time, but she is famous now for her daring acts of
horsemanship, without saddle or bridle, like Beatrice Chiarini, whom you
may have seen at the Amphitheatre. But there was Lizzie Keys, a bold and
graceful rider, who used to take her hoops and balloons beautifully;
they called her the Little Wonder, and she was said to be only fourteen
years of age, but she looked more like a diminutive girl of eighteen.
‘There was a capital stud. Newsome selected his horses as they say
Astley did, without caring much for the colour of them; they were not
chosen for show, like the cream-coloured, and spotted, and piebald
horses you see in circuses that do a parade, but every horse was a good
one in the ring, and had been selected for docility and intelligence.
There was Emperor, the handsome black horse which the governor, and
sometimes Miss Adele, used to ride; he was worth a hundred guineas, at
the very least, as a hunter, and was a clever trick horse besides. It
was a treat to see that horse find, with his eyes bandaged, a
handkerchief which was buried in the saw-dust; you might bury it as deep
as you could, and be as careful as you liked to make the saw-dust look
as if it had not been disturbed, but he would be sure to find it. He
would step slowly round the ring till he came to the place, and then he
would scrape the saw-dust away with his hoof, pick up the handkerchief
with his teeth, and carry it to Newsome. One night Franks took the
handkerchief out of the saw-dust, ran over to the other side of the
ring, and buried it in another place, chuckling and gesticulating in
assumed anticipation of the horse’s discomfiture. The horse found it as
easily as usual. In fact, I never knew him miss it but once; he then
passed the place, but Newsome said, “_En arrière_,”—circus horses are
always spoken to in the ring in French,—and he stepped back directly,
and found it. Then there was Brunette, a brown mare, the most docile and
intelligent creature that ever went on hoofs; and Balaklava, a
scar-covered veteran that had served in the Scots Greys, and had
received his name from having been wounded in the charge of the heavy
cavalry at the battle of Balaklava. Lizzie Keys used to ride him.
‘From the company and the stud, I must return to ourselves. The twelve
nights we were engaged for, like the six at Hull, came to an end too
soon; and my partner spoke to Henry, the manager, about our travelling
with the circus, as we had set on minds upon doing. Henry, who was a
very gentlemanly fellow, said he would mention it to the governor; and
Newsome called us to him.
“I am afraid,” said he, “you wouldn’t be of much use to me. You have not
been used to circus business, and you know nothing about it. The general
routine of a circus is very different to a starring engagement, or a
turn at a music-hall. You can’t vault, or hold a banner or a balloon.”
‘“We should soon learn,” said Fred.
‘“Well, look here,” said the governor, “it’s as I said just now, you are
not of much use to me at present; but you are good on the trapeze, and,
on the understanding that you are to make yourselves useful in the
general business as soon as you can, I will put you on the
establishment, the engagement to be terminable at any time by a week’s
notice on either side.”
‘“I should like travelling with a circus, of all things,” said Fred.
‘“Of course, I couldn’t give you the salary you have been having as
stars,” said the governor. “The best man in the company doesn’t get much
more than I have been giving each of you. But if two pounds a week for
you and your partner will satisfy you, you may consider yourself
engaged.”
‘Of course, we thanked him, and we accepted the offer, thinking that we
should be worth more some day, and that it would be better to have two
pounds a week regular than to have five pounds for a week or a fortnight
only, and then be for several weeks without an engagement.’