THE PARADE
Breakfast over, active preparations are on for the parade. Well-fed
horses and ponies in shining harness and waving plumes take their
places before glittering vehicles; the sound of music is heard from
bands perched hazardously high; clowns, charioteers, jockeys, Roman
riders join the line; camels and elephants, some bearing a weight of
feminine beauty in Oriental costume, make appearance, and a picturesque
cavalcade nearly a mile long is in motion.
One of the managers leads the line down to town and back. He has
already been over the course once, noting its conditions with caution
born of long experience. Sometimes his foresight bids him change the
route. A corner is too sharp for the forty-horse team, a hill may be
dangerously steep, a bridge too low or unsafe, the road too rough, or
perhaps the advance man did not appreciate that at a certain point the
parade would “double” on itself.
Behind him a drum corps blows and beats, and then Jeanne d’Arc, in
polished armor, with clanking curtains of chain mail. The flush of tan
is beginning to tint ears and cheeks under her helmet and her two
mounted knights are very happy and proud. She is a young woman who was
adopted by a wealthy aunt in Pittsburg, who sent her to Europe to keep
her from entering circus life. Her sudden return, romantic marriage
with a tattooed man, enlistment as a jockey rider in Cedar Rapids, Ia.,
and rapid rise to the front ranks of equestriennes is a matter circus
folk never tire of discussing.
Through densely crowded streets the procession measures its gaudy
passage, a handsome lovelorn young acrobat yearning for the return to
the tent, where an eighteen-year-old girl somersault rider eagerly
awaits him; the stepmother behind, who doesn’t approve of their
devotion; a uniformed marshal, whose thoughts are for his wife,
seriously ill in a Philadelphia hospital; a brother who fears for
his sister; a bicycle rider at the performance, now high on the back
of an elephant whose temper has been bad for several days; Sultan,
a majestic lion, viewing it all calmly from the top of a high cage;
bands playing, horses prancing, wagons rumbling, calliope screaming,
clowns frollicking--truly a fantastic panorama. And sometimes ahead,
then behind, again on the side, a tramp bicyclist, darting up steps and
down, scaling fences, into stores and houses, often one wheel off the
ground, seldom on both, but never dismounting.
By the side of the band wagons and behind the shrieking calliope a
cloud of boys keeps tireless pace, reeling off mile after mile, but
gorged with happiness. Street cars make time with the procession,
jammed with passengers and scores hanging to platforms, paying no fares
but this eloquent testimony to the passing show. The tigers and lions
look bored, and the hyena yawns with accumulated ennui. Behind, the
gorgeously caparisoned riders, men and women in tights and spangles
and breastplates of shining gold and steel; behind, the richly-decked
camels with riders from the great desert and the elephants swaying to
and fro with monotonous tread, and near the end of the gaudy line, the
fairy outfit of Santa Claus, the old woman of nursery fame, Bluebeard
in decapitation attitude and the other tableau wagons of burnished gold
and flaming red.
The clowns are very much in evidence. Behind all manner of steeds, from
the camel treading like a dusty spectre with his cushioned feet, to the
proud pony, and from the four-horse teams to the decrepit agricultural
equine; on foot and on elephant and on bicycle; in costume weird and
wonderful, they are an amusement-affording part of the cortege. Boys
flock by their sides, and their ready wit is equal to all exigencies.
Well has the press agent written:
Clowns on four legs,
Clowns on two,
Clowns the cutest you ever knew;
Clowns on the earth,
Clowns in the air,
Clowns in the water,
Clowns everywhere;
Clowns in seal-skins,
Clowns in hair,
Clowns with whom no others compare;
Clowns in motley,
Clowns with wings,
Clowns that accomplish marvellous things;
Clowns in dress suits,
Clowns in kilts,
Clowns in long skirts,
Clowns on stilts,
Clowns that mimic every fad,
Clowns that make the millions glad,
Clowns that cause the buttons to fly,
Clowns at whom you laugh till you cry;
Clowns of every nation and clime,
Clowns uproarious all the time,
Clowns and more than you ever saw,
Clowns that make the world haw-haw.
The clowns’ band is near the end. In grotesque attire, the “musicians”
blow and beat on the top of one of the chariots. The production is what
the alliterator of the show calls “a slaughter of symphonies, a murder
of melodies, a wrecking of waltzes, a massacre of marches, a strangling
of songs, a total of terrific tonal tragedies!”
The inevitable hay wagon is in the column, and nimble acrobats
toss lightly on its fresh-mown burden. Their costumes are bucolic
throughout, but offer no impediment to their agile movements. Country
boys look on and marvel. The clown in dilapidated wagon behind
tottering horse is not absent. His countryman disguise is so perfect
that his identity is not suspected. He narrowly escapes being run
down by the big circus wagons; he is always in the way and impeding
the smooth progress of the parade; he becomes involved in all sorts
of plights, but emerges unscathed. It furnishes great fun for the
spectators. Sometimes policemen threaten and oftener take him in
custody. Then he tells who he is and the crowd roars again, this time
at the bluecoat’s expense. Hilarity reigns wherever is his presence.
Above the shrill tones of the fife and the blast of the cornet and the
clamor of drums and cymbals, rises the oft-repeated admonition, “Look
out for your horses, the elephants are right behind!” A clarion-voiced
equestrian rides up and down the line of bespangled magnificence with
this warning to those who view the spectacle in wagon or saddle. A
quick, keen, trained glance reveals to him the probable effect the
“led” animals will have on each equine within eye and scent. He knows,
too, what the man who holds the reins is not aware of, that the
animal with the hump alarms horses more than his ponderous companion.
Often the parade is brought to a standstill while this precautionary
person insists that a horse displaying the initial signs of disquiet
be removed to a place of safety, or, while with the skill of long
practice he assists in subduing a beast whom the distant approach of
the procession has already alarmed. Women are his _bête noir_. They
have full faith in their horsemanship, they tell him, and, anyway,
their horses have been thoroughly trained and broken. Then he is gently
but firmly obdurate, accepts with good grace the denunciation to which
he is subjected, but sees that the possibility of disaster has been
removed before he permits the line to pass. He is a saver of life and
limb whose services few but showmen appreciate.
Once the tents are pitched, no weather can be so unpropitious as to
thwart the parade. Rain may fall in copious measurement; mud, perhaps,
is deep to the knees. But on with the parade! A much weather-beaten and
woe-begone lot of performers, to be sure, and a drenched and blinking
lot of drivers, but all forgotten when the sunshine comes again. This
display is what circus folk call a “wet day” parade. Women and children
are excused, much of the finery is kept in the shelter of the tents,
men wear mackintoshes and rubber boots, and protecting canvas hides the
gilt and glory of the chariots. It has been advertised as “positive,”
however, and the management must keep faith with the public or lose its
confidence. Then, too, it serves to show some of the glory and fame of
the organization, whets public curiosity and the possible return of
clear skies will draw to the grounds the multitude which, without its
promise, would have returned home for the day. Business instinct bids
there be a parade without fail.
Down in the town the press agent is paying the newspaper bills for
advertising, distributing tickets, and seeing to it that editors and
reporters are put in good humor, and arranging as far as it is in his
power that notices before and after the performances are complimentary.
Sometimes he accompanies a body of reporters to an advantageous
position and they survey the parade together. He buys cigars and
refreshment--at the circus’s expense--and impresses his companions as
being affable, courteous and a good fellow generally. They part company
on fine terms of friendship, and he assures them that he will consider
it a personal affront if they don’t all come to the show and bring
their friends. Sometimes his hospitality has been so affecting that
they will be tempted to write pretty things about him; that the “genial
press agent” is with the circus, or, “the circus is fortunate to have
so efficient an employee” and, following a description of his virtues.
But his prudence begs them to desist, for he knows “the boss” doesn’t
approve. The owner takes the view that newspaper space devoted to the
circus itself is more to pecuniary advantage than an enumeration of the
qualities of the press agent.
The keen eye of the general manager follows the parade on its tortuous
journey. If there be accident or delay, or any other unforeseen
trouble, he is at the scene promptly and takes command. A two-seated
carriage follows the line. In it he, the press agent, and the circus
detective are conveyed back to the lot. It is a convenience which
dispenses with a hot, dusty walk or an uncomfortable journey in packed
trolley cars.
The “$10,000 Beauty” was a parade feature of one of the big circuses
for several years. The owner, a man deep in many schemes for
advertising his tented organization, boldly asserted that he paid that
amount of salary to a young woman who proceeded through the streets
striving to live up to her reputation for grace and charm, on the back
of one of the largest elephants. She wore a pained and anxious look
as she clutched grimly to the animal’s canopied hide, and there was
little appeal to aesthetic nature. Later she exhibited her harmonious
proportions in the menagerie tent. She is now embellishing the variety
stage, whence she emerged upon the circus world, and where, perhaps,
her costly beauty is better appreciated.
Many will remember the telescopic affair which P. T. Barnum exhibited
in his parades for several seasons in the early ’70’s. It was a
massively carved chariot, and he called it the “Temple of Juno.” When
extended to its full height, by means of internal machinery, it
reached an altitude of forty feet. A gorgeous effect was given it by
the precious metals which studded it and by numerous mirrors. Upon an
elevated seat, just beneath a rich and unique oriental canopy of the
most elaborate finish, sat, in perfect nonchalance, the representative
queen, surrounded by gods and goddesses in mythical costume. Elephants,
camels and dromedaries completed the tableau. During that period of his
career, a season of great prosperity, Mr. Barnum used frequently to
lecture on temperance in his tents. He was shrewd enough to appreciate
how much to his pecuniary advantage was his devotion to what he called
the “noble cause.” Crowds came as much to get a glimpse at him and to
hear him talk as for a sight at the circus.