ACROBATICS AND EQUESTRIANISM.
Nearly every man connected with the ring work of a circus is an acrobat
of one kind or other. His ability may be limited to turning a single
somersault, still he will be brought into the arena with the rest of
the company and opportunity will be afforded him to do his best. It is
not expected, however, to recruit the ranks from such a class. Children
must be trained to the profession, and a long and arduous training it
requires. If their parents are professionals their studies will be all
the more severe, and cuffs and blows will be the only encouragement
given their struggling children. Fathers have been known to beat their
sons, to kick them in the presence of the audience, and to add other
and severer punishment when the young acrobat reaches home. The Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children could find plenty to do in
preventing brutal parents from abusing their little folks, if not in
putting an end entirely to the swift and rough training that boys are
put through in order that they may be hired out or leased to circus
managers. In New York I understand that broken-down ring performers
have schools in which boys are taught every branch of the circus
business, just as there are riding schools where young men and young
women may learn pad-riding and go even as far as riding bareback. The
schools for acrobats are usually conducted by cruel, heartless fellows
who urge the pupils to their tasks with a club, and while forgetting
to say a kind word when the pupil has done well, will never fail to say
a harsh one when any mistake has been made. These places are filled
up with all the appliances of a gymnasium--bars, ropes, weights,
trapezes, tight-rope, etc. Circus managers in want of talent for small
shows going South or West apply here and take their choice of the boys.
A bargain is quickly made and the child, for many of them are still
mere children, goes forth to join the throng engaged from April until
October in amusing the public in the sawdust arena.
[Illustration: BAREBACK RIDING.]
When the child gets into the circus ring there need be hope of no
further sympathy. Its task is set and must be done at all hazards. A
failure one time to accomplish a feat must be followed by another and
another attempt until the feat is at last satisfactorily presented.
Olive Logan was at a circus performance at Cincinnati at which she
witnessed an extraordinary instance of cruelty on the part of a
circus proprietor to a child rider. The circus was owned and managed
by a certain clown. The clown-proprietor, Miss Logan goes on to say,
introduced a little girl to the audience, saying that she would
exhibit her skill in riding. He stated that the horse was somewhat
unused to the ring and if it should happen that the rider fell, no
one need entertain any apprehension of serious accident, as the arena
was soft and injury would be impossible. It was surely an unhappy
introduction for the child, and calculated to fill her with fear and
doubt. The child whirled rapidly round the ring two or three times,
using neither rein nor binding strap. She stood on one foot, then
changed to the other. After this she was called upon to jump the
stretchers. Had her horse been well trained, the feat would have been
no very difficult one. But she became entangled in the cloth and fell
to the ground, under the horse's feet. She was placed again on the back
of the horse and compelled once more to try the feat. Her fall had
not given her new confidence and she fell a second time. Evidently
much against her inclination and in spite of her trembling and her
tears, nature's protest against barbarity, she was tossed again to her
place. But her nerve had gone. She was utterly demoralized. Judgment
of distance, and faith in herself were lost. Again she attempted to
execute the leap. Again she fell to the ground, striking heavily upon
her head. She rolled directly under the horse's feet and only by a
sheer chance escaped a terrible death. The audience,--more merciful
than those within the ring, by this time had been thoroughly aroused
and indignant. Cries and shouts were heard from all quarters: "Shame!
shame!" "That'll do!" "Take her out! take her out!" came up from every
side. It would not answer to disregard such commands, and with a smile
the ring master went to the child, raised her from the dust where she
lay, and led her, crying and sobbing, to the dressing-tent.
[Illustration: TRAPEZE.]
The men and women who perform at dizzy heights on the trapeze
and flying rings frequently meet with terrible accidents. Still
the difficulty of these feats is being constantly increased, and
performers, not satisfied with having their eyes open during their
perilous flight from one trapeze to another, envelope their heads in
sacks, and although not wholly blinding themselves, very materially
interfere with the vision, which in all such instances should not
be obstructed. A typical accident of the trapeze kind happened at a
performance of old John Robinson's circus at South Pueblo, Colorado, on
June 12, 1882. While the Alfredo Family were performing on the trapeze,
the stake which supports the rope pulled out of the ground, which had
been softened by the afternoon storm, and let the performers--three in
number, William, Lewis, and his wife, Emma Alfredo--suddenly to the
ground. The act is a sort of double bicycle and trapeze performance.
William propels a bicycle back and forth on a line stretched from pole
to pole, and Lewis and Emma perform on two trapeze-bars suspended from
the bicycle. When the stake pulled up last night the rope collapsed
just at the moment that Lewis was hanging by his feet from the lower
bar and Emma from the upper, both straight down, with arms folded. Emma
caught herself on the lower bar and the side ropes, but her husband
fell straight to the ground, alighting on the back of his head, the
fall being twelve or fourteen feet. He was at once removed to his
dressing-room, and the physicians who were summoned said that his spine
was injured. Half an hour later he was removed to a hotel, where he
died at four P. M., June 13th.
A gymnast who fell from a trapeze in New Orleans gave the following
account of his sensations: "Amid the sea of faces before me I looked
for a familiar one, but in vain, and, turning, I stepped back to the
rope by which we ascended to the trapeze, and going up hand over hand
was soon seated in my swinging perch. As I looked down I caught sight
of a face in one of the boxes, that at once attracted my attention.
It was that of a beautiful girl, with sweet blue eyes, and golden hair
falling unconfined over her shoulders in heavy, waving masses. Her
beautiful eyes, turned toward me, expressed only terror at the seeming
danger of the performer, and for the moment I longed to assure her
of my perfect safety, but my brother was by my side and we began our
performance. In the pauses for breath I could see that sweet face,
now pale as death, and the blue eyes staring wide open with fear, and
I dreaded the effect of our finish, which--being the drop act--gives
the uninitiated the impression that both performers are about to be
dashed headlong to the stage. Having completed the double performance
I ascended to the upper bar, and, casting off the connect, we began
our combination feats. While hanging by my feet in the upper trapeze,
my brother being suspended from my hands (the lower bar being drawn
back by a super), I felt a slight shock, and the rope began slowly
to slip past my foot. My heart gave a grand jump, and then seemed to
stop, as I realized our awful situation. The lashing which held the bar
had parted, the rope was gliding round the bar, and in another moment
we should be lying senseless on the stage. I shouted 'under' to the
terrified 'super,' who instantly swung the bar back to its place, and
I dropped my brother on it as the last strand snapped and I plunged
downward. I saw the lower bar darting toward me and I made a desperate
grasp at it, for it was my last chance. I missed it! Down through
the air I fell, striking heavily on the stage. The blow rendered me
senseless and my collar bone was broken. I was hurried behind the
scenes, and soon came to my senses. My first thought was that I must go
back and go through my performance at once, and I actually made a dash
for the stage--but I was restrained, and it was many weeks before I was
able to perform again."
[Illustration: MDME. LASALLE.]
The circus-goers of a decade ago were accustomed to tight-rope and
slack-wire performances in the ring, when old men and young women,
emulative of the celebrated Blondin, went through some wonderful
evolutions in mid-air. Now the tight-rope and loose wire have both
almost entirely disappeared from the ring, and only in the small
shows are they given a place in the programme. Still there are many
excellent performers in this line who find employment on the variety
stage among specialty people. The best of these is Zanfretti, the
pantomime clown, who though an old man displays wonderful agility
when with balance-pole in hand he finds himself at the half-way point
on his rope. Ladies who have taken to the hempen path have attained
prominence as rope-walkers. One of the most beautiful and at the
same time dangerous, of the performances that the small shows offer
to their audiences is that of Madame Lasalle, who places her little
eight-year-old daughter in a wheelbarrow filled with flowers, and on a
rope thirty feet above the ground without net beneath and with nothing
but hard ground to receive both in case of a fall, trundles the barrow
over a long rope while the people below look up in breathless fear
lest the barrow tip and a dreadful accident result before the feat is
accomplished. Tight-rope walking, however, is not nearly so difficult
as it appears to be. The performer needs steady nerves, a cool eye,
firm limbs and a balance-pole, the last-named article being the most
essential. Training is required, of course, but it is not of the
rigorous and protracted kind that other feats demand.
The training of riders is not so difficult or attended with such
dangers, although it is perilous enough. If a circus rider has a son or
daughter he wishes to bring up for the ring he will begin by carrying
the child, as soon as it is strong enough, upon the horse with him,
thus accustoming it to standing upon the animal in motion; but if a
boy or girl is taken up at an age when it is no longer easy to carry
him around the ring on the back of a horse, he is put in training with
what the circus people call "the mechanic." This is a beam extending
out from a pivoted centre-pole and having a rope hanging down at the
edge of the ring with a strap at the end which is fastened around the
pupil's waist. The rope is long enough to allow the pupil to stand
upon the back of an animal, and by means of its support he is kept in
an upright position until he gets accustomed to the motion of a horse,
and is prevented from falling should he miss his footing. He begins
with a pad on the back of a gentle animal, and keeps on with "the
mechanic" until he is able to stand alone on the horse, from which time
on the pad is discarded and the pupil goes it bareback. Ed. Showles, a
good rider and prominent in his line, told me that it takes about six
months to break a boy in so that he will be able to ride fairly, but
that a girl may be taught in three months.
This training goes on during the winter months while the circus is in
quarters. A small ring is always a department of the winter quarters,
and in this the trained animals are kept in practice and new ones are
broken in, the whip being freely used upon all in giving them their
lessons. A horse that is intended for the educated class after having
acquired the ordinary manœuvres, for instance, must learn to get up
on his hind legs and paw the air with the fore legs, as we see them
in pictures of the Ukraine stallions, etc. To do this the animal must
have his haunches strengthened. By whipping the fore legs he is made
gradually to rise on the hind ones. The horse finds it difficult at
first, but judicious whipping gets him up in the air at last and the
sight of the threatening whip keeps him there as long as there is
strength in his haunches to keep him up.
[Illustration: ANNIE LIVINGSTONE.]
"The work of the leading equestrienne is one of the most laborious
in the whole range of the circus profession. It requires physical
courage of the highest order, combined with great power of endurance
and a capacity for adopting oneself to a constant change of scene and
surrounding. People who witness only the brilliant performances in
the ring in an atmosphere laden with light and music, little dream of
the wearisome toil and drudgery which precede them."
The speaker was Miss Lilly Deacon, a fair-haired English lady, with the
form of a Juno, who arrived in this country from London sometime ago
to fill an engagement as leading equestrienne in Forepaugh's circus.
As she appeared in the parlor in an interview with a Philadelphia
reporter, she might naturally have been taken for the preceptress of
some fashionable English boarding-school, or the daughter of some stiff
old country squire of Kent or Sussex--or anybody, in fact, rather than
the daring rider whose performances have bewildered and startled the
circus-going multitude of London, Paris, and Berlin. In feature and
manner her appearance was that of the English gentlewoman, while her
conversation throughout revealed a delicacy of thought and expression
common only to the well-bred lady.
[Illustration: CIRCUS RIDERS.]
"The training necessary to success in equestrian performances,"
continued Miss Deacon, "is monotonous in the extreme and in some parts
very dangerous. None but those in rugged health ever withstand it, and
no one without a perfect physical organization should undertake it. The
ordinary exercises of the riding-school are trifles as compared with
the tasks imposed in professional training. When a woman has obtained
all the knowledge to be acquired in a riding-school, she has only got
the rudiments of real equestrian art. She must then enter the circus
ring and familiarize herself with the duties required of her there. She
must be prepared to endure falls and bruises without number, together
with frequent scoldings and corrections from the instructors. No
woman, unless she be possessed of extraordinary natural skill, ought
to appear in the ring before an audience until she has graduated from
a riding-school, and then practised in the ring four or five hours
every day for at least six months. Those six months will be a period of
torture and weariness to her, but she must undergo them or run the risk
of almost certain failure and humiliation upon her first appearance in
public.
"The best equestrian instructor in Europe--in fact the only one of
established reputation--is M. Salmonsky of Berlin. He is one of the
grandest horsemen in the world, and in his great circus includes some
of the finest stock on the continent. He saw me first in London, my
native place, many years ago when I was performing with my brothers
and sisters in Henley's Regent Street circus, and offered to take me
with him to Berlin and complete my training. I accepted, and entered
his circus at the German capital, where I received the most careful
instruction he could give me.
"M. Salmonsky would send me into the ring with his most spirited
horses every day and stand by to direct my exercises. Sometimes I
thought I should never survive the terrible discipline, and often
thought I should go back to London and content myself with being a
second-rate rider, but the kindness of my good old instructor softened
the innumerable bumps and bruises I received, and I at last triumphed.
Emperor William and the crown prince attended the circus the night I
made my debut, and complimented me formally and personally from their
box.
"M. Salmonsky's course of training is very rigid, and that accounts for
its thoroughness. The pupil must surrender wholly to the instructor and
become very much as a ball of wax in his hands. At the outset, however,
the scholar must obtain complete mastery of her horses. Fear is a
quality utterly hostile to successful equestrianism, and unless the
pupil can banish it at the start, she had better give up her ambition
and abandon the profession. She will never succeed so long as she is
afraid either of herself or her horses.
"But, as I said before, no one unacquainted with the dangerous
preparatory instruction of an equestrienne has any proper estimate of
the toil and weariness which her performances represent. One never
knows the boundless capacity of the human frame for pains and aches
until one has gone into training for circus-riding. What, with unruly
horses, uncomfortable saddles, and the violent exercise involved,
five or six hours of practice every day for months is certain to do
one of two things--it either kills the pupil or brings her up to the
perfection of physical womanhood. The hours for practice adopted by M.
Salmonsky were in the forenoon--generally from eight to twelve, with,
perhaps, another hour or two in the evening. To withstand this course
one must dress loosely and become a devotee to plain living and the
laws of hygiene. Any neglect of those principles, or any great loss of
sleep usually results in broken health and professional failure.
"A great many persons who have the idea that the life of a circus
star is a happy one--that it is a round of gorgeous tulle, tinsel,
and ring-master-embellished splendor--would be sadly shocked if they
could get a glimpse of the real thing. These people are mistaken. It is
really a life of hard work at pretty much all hours of the day. When
the splendid Mlle. Peerless isn't speeding around the ring, lashing
her spirited bareback horse to fury, amid the plaudits of admiring
thousands, she is mending her tights, stitching tinsel on her costume,
anointing her bruises with balsam, or practising. The practice of
the circus rider is like the rehearsal of the actor, only more so,
for while the actor has only to rehearse until his first performance
and then can go on playing a part without further trouble, the rider
must put in an hour or two every day to keep her joints limber and her
muscles in proper trim. But for this daily practice the performances
of our circuses would be the theatre of many a tragedy instead of the
scenes of mirth and gladness that they are.
The fascination that the circus has for people who know nothing about
its hardships, is illustrated in the case of a Georgia lady, who lived
in luxury, and whose husband was numbered among the most prominent of
the State's citizens. She became imbued with a desire that she would
like to sport tights and gauze dresses, and whirl about the ring on a
spirited horse, so she struck up acquaintance with an equestrian, who
happened to come along with a fly-by-night show, and eloped with him.
The husband followed the show to Texas some months afterwards, and had
an interview with his wife, who had became an equestrienne in a small
way, doing a pad-riding act in each performance. An interview with the
lady failed to make her see her folly. The husband now grew desperate,
went away and hired a lot of cowboys whom he took to the show with the
understanding that as soon as Mlle. Eulalia (the wife's adopted name)
put in an appearance they were to rush forward, and seizing her carry
her from the tent. When the lady appeared and had been lifted upon the
horse by the clown, and the ring-master was touching up the heels of the
animal to get him into a funeral jog, the husband and cowboys advanced.
The husband seized his wife, dragged her from the horse, and while
the cowboys fought back the performers and attaches he got her into a
carriage and drove her away, leaving the audience in the wildest state
of excitement. Kind words and gentle treatment brought the woman back
to her senses, and she is now in her Georgia home and does not want any
more circus experience.
[Illustration: DAN. RICE.]
A Paris correspondent tells us that the funeral of that charming circus
rider, Emilie Loisset, who was killed in April, 1882, was a Parisian
event. The poor girl had long inhabited the United States, and had
the freedom of manner and self-respect which so often distinguish the
American young lady. She was on horseback one of the most graceful
creatures imaginable. The figure was lithe, but without meagerness.
Her poses in the saddle were simply exquisite, and they appeared
unstudied. The features were elegantly formed, and the eyes expressed a
brave, kind soul. Emilio Loisset was more popular than Sarah Bernhardt
had ever been in Paris. Her less successful rivals in the circus were
brought by her exceeding amiability to pardon her public triumphs. She
did not seem ever to excite jealousy. On the days and nights on which
she performed the circus was crowded with fashionable people. There
was no amount of wealth that she might not have possessed had she not
been a proud, strong-willed, self-respecting girl. She had no carriage
and used to walk from the hippodrome to the Rue Oberkampf, where she
had a small lodging on the fifth floor. A number of aristocratic and
plutocratic admirers used to escort her to the door, through which none
of them were allowed by her to pass. She aspired to create for herself
a happy home and to marry somebody whom she could love and esteem.
Her sister, Clotilde, is the morganatic wife of the Prince de Reuss,
brother of the German ambassador at Constantinople, and is looked up
to in her family circle. The admiration of the Empress Elizabeth for
Emilie was increased by the fact that the charming circus rider spurned
the address of the crown prince of Austria.
He was very much in love with her when she was in Germany, a couple of
years ago, and would have forsworn marriage if she would have consented
to be his Dubarry. She did not like the young man, and told him so.
The empress, when she was here, used to make appointments to ride in
the Bois with Emilie. Her majesty thought the ecuyere charming to look
at, but wanting in firmness of hand. The horse on which she rode with
imperial Elizabeth in the shaded alleys of the Bois was the one that
occasioned her death by rolling over on her and driving the crutch of
the saddle into her side. The august lady noticed the hardness of the
brute's mouth, and the teasing and at the same time irresolute way in
which Emilie held her bridle.
Emilie Loisset aimed at classic purity of style. There was nothing
sensational in her manner. Her imperial friend Elizabeth thought her
the most ladylike person she had seen in Paris. Her gestures were
simple, her address amiable, and there was seriousness even in her
smiles. Members of the Jockey Club spoke to her hat in hand. Her death
was entirely due to the hard mouth of her horse. At a rehearsal the
horse turned round, made for the stable, and, finding the door shut
against him, reared up on his hind legs. Balance was lost, the horse
rolled over, and the crutch of the saddle smashed in the ribs upon the
lungs and heart. Poor Emilie had the courage in this state to walk to
the infirmary, and when she was taken home to mount five flights of
stairs.