THE EQUILIBRISTS.
The equilibrists are the most artistic acrobats, the true Olympians.
The gymnast excites our admiration by the marvellous development of
his thorax and limbs, and by the epic relief of his muscles. The
equilibrist does not require the same effort in his work. The beauty
of the performance lies in the delicacy, variety, facility, and
grace of the artist’s movements, and on this account women excel as
equilibrists, for men cannot reconcile themselves to the suppression
of their [p210] strength in the feats they achieve, and therefore
take a second rank in equilibrium.
They prefer special branches of the art, and are usually jugglers,
bicyclists, or antipodeans. . . .
A proverb is current behind the scenes of the circus, to the effect
that love destroys the centre of gravity in tight-rope dancers, and
as a rule equilibrists—that is to say the true artists, not the
pretty girls who use the cord as a springing-board—might rank with
the Roman vestals. Their reputation is their fortune, and they are
carefully guarded by their parents. It is not only a question of
averting the danger of maternity, which ends the artistic career of
an equilibrist. No risk must be encountered of anything that could
damage the artist’s health; and, therefore, those who are particular
on these points can enjoy the performance of an equilibrist without
any uneasiness about her private life.
The children of acrobats are equilibrists and jugglers from their
birth. Stroll into a circus some morning during rehearsal, you
will see all the corners filled with boys and girls, who, on every
tightened rope and round the iron bars, are imitating the paternal
exercises for their own amusement. I remember, one day in London,
witnessing a curious scene in a seventh-floor garret. Under the roof
two cords were stretched across the attic; a young boy was practising
walking on one of them without a balance; on the other a monkey was
faithfully copying the gestures of his companion. The professor had
probably gone out to buy some tobacco; in his absence the two dancers
silently continued their parallel work. I can tell you that acrobats
learnt the value of mutual instruction before the schoolmasters!
[p211]
[Illustration]
The lowest step of equilibrist art is the _globe performance_.
Walking upon the rolling ball, forward or backward, vaulting
[p212] and dancing upon it, are the A B C of the profession. This
old-fashioned accomplishment is, therefore, never used, unless some
new invention is added to increase the difficulty.
[Illustration]
This has happened with Lady Alphonsine and the Russian Frankloff,
whom we saw walking upon the water at the Neuilly _fête_, standing
upon a ballast-tub, which he rapidly turned round with his feet.
Lady Alphonsine ascended a small spiral upon her globe. It resembled
the winding turn upon a screw, and was twisted round a mast fifteen
or eighteen feet high. The ascension is not so bad, but I assure
you that the descent gives you some trouble. It is necessary to
restrain the enormous wooden ball, always on the verge of escaping,
and the feet patter frantically, vibrating like the sounding-board
of a mandoline. Here the effect produced is out of proportion to the
exertion forced upon the artist; and this performance has another
inconvenience: if [p213] it be continued for too long it spoils
the shape of the leg by undue development of the calf—two reasons why
the globe should not be reinstated in the esteem of the public.
[Illustration: THE SLACK WIRE.]
However, here as elsewhere, fashion rules the world, and _tight-rope
dancing_, after falling into abeyance for a time, is now apparently
returning to favour.
If, some fine morning, we may find ourselves globe spiral
ascensionists with little previous exertion, no one can become a
tight-rope dancer without much patient labour. You see how easily
the rope-dancer runs across her narrow path, and may feel tempted to
say, “Really, it only requires nerve to do as much.” But it is a pity
that, for your own edification, you were not present at the artist’s
first experiments.
All the strength of the dancer lies in the back and in the rigidity
of the legs. On this account children cannot be placed upon the
cord before they are ten years old. The apparatus used in these
performances is very simple, and has not changed since antiquity. The
cord is raised upon “_croisés_,” two crossed sticks, at each end,
which form two ╳ of different size. The ╳ at the back is the highest,
so that it may support the back of the dancer during the intervals of
rest. The second ╳, or “_croisé de face_” which bears the “_guidon_”
or _object of sight_, from which the dancer never moves his eyes, is
not higher than the cord, which is attached at each end by cross bars
of flexible wood. In Europe we use the ash, but the Americans use a
still more pliant wood, the _ixry_.
The whole apparatus is fixed by an arrangement called a “_cadrolle_”
of pulleys. The first time the dancer attempts to cross the
cord he is supported by straps on either side. [p214] With the
balancing-pole carefully held in both hands, his eyes fixed upon
the point of sight, he endeavours to turn his feet out as much as
possible, treading first on the heel and then upon the great toe.
After a few months’ practice he can dance the “_sabotière_” which
does not wound his still tender feet. The other exercises which he
must slowly acquire are the _walk forward_, the _walk backward_,
the _dangerous spring forward_, the _dangerous spring backward_ the
_horse spring_, and the art of _springing from one foot to the other_.
[Illustration]
This is the classic series of exercises. When the dancer has once
mastered them his own imagination must aid his performance. He must
attempt some new feat upon the cord that no one else has yet tried,
and this “novelty” is [p215] more difficult to find than you would
suppose. Artists like Ada Blanche, who inherit the talents of Madame
Saqui and Blondin, have a right to repeat La Bruyère’s melancholy
words, “We have come too late.”
[Illustration]
I have purposely given very little space in this book to former
artists. The skill of our living gymnasts, acrobats, equestrians,
and clowns, prevents our regretting the dead; but amongst the arts
practised in the circus, that of the equilibrist has been in vogue
longer than any other, and it is also the most limited in its
resources.
It is therefore expedient, Saqui, to place your charming picture in
this place, who forced the Great Emperor to raise his eyes to watch
your aerial exploits, whom he called his _enragée_, whose chimerical
daring he secretly admired for its [p216] resemblance to his own
audacity. The astronomers of our time, less gallant than the ancient
poets, have not yet placed you amidst the stars; yet, on the other
hand, I fear that you have not been received into Paradise: for,
little pagan, you once desecrated the sacred towers of Notre Dame
with your little sabots. May this sin be remitted some day! I know,
in one corner of Paris, an old centenarian Italian woman, who still
has masses said for the repose of your restless soul, and believes
that in expiation of your pride you are condemned to wander for two
hundred years between heaven and earth, without any amusement except
that of playing with the rainbow as a hoop when there is no storm.
The pleasant memory of this peri is closely allied with the name
of Émile Gravelet, called Blondin. Is there any place in the world
where the famous crossing of Niagara has not been spoken of? The two
Americas hastened to see the feat, and every day Blondin added some
novelty to his performance. Sometimes, seated on a little chair,
he would cook an omelet upon his cord, and eat it amidst shouts of
applause. Sometimes he took his son on his back and ran from one bank
to the other. One day Blondin caught sight of the Prince of Wales
amongst the spectators. He was presented to him, and proposed that
the Prince should make the journey across the Falls with him. His
Royal Highness alleged that his rank obliged him to remain on the
bank.
This offer was one of Blondin’s favourite jokes.
Pierre Véron told me that on the day that the rope-dancer crossed the
Seine he suggested to Cham, who had come to make a sketch, that he
should cross with him. [p217]
[Illustration]
“I am perfectly willing,” replied the caricaturist, “but I will carry
you on my back.”
“Nonsense! Monsieur Cham, you cannot think of doing that!” [p218]
“You see you are the one to refuse,” coolly answered the unsmiling
jester.
[Illustration]
The sudden discredit into which rope-dancing has fallen during the
last few years dates from the appearance of Oceana.
This young woman, anxious to adopt a “novelty” which [p219] would
exhibit her beauty without too much exertion, chose a _wire_,
which, hanging slacker than the cord, enabled her, with a little
oscillation, to assume the attitude of reclining in a hammock, the
voluptuous indolent postures of _Sarah la baigneuse_. But the genuine
rope-dancers at once determined to reproduce all the exercises of
the cord upon the wire, which Oceana had so easily brought into
fashion, and, with the exception of the horse-spring, they can all
be performed upon it. The difficulty of preserving the equilibrium
on a support that is even more unstable than the cord delighted the
equilibrists.
[Illustration]
A young Oriental, Lady Ibrahim, in the winter of 1888, at the Folies
Bergère, showed us the advantages a clever equilibrist could derive
from the flexibility of the wire.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A little too tall, with the almost thin arms of a dancer, she allowed
herself to be raised by one hand to a rather high platform, from
which she started, far above all heads. Once there, she opened a
Chinese parasol, which she used as a balance; then, with a very
serious expression, an anxious [p220] rigidity of the whole face,
her eagle eyes fixed on the point of sight, she stepped upon the
wire, which, brilliantly plated with nickel, looked like the slippery
floor of a skating-rink under her feet. When she reached the centre
of her wire, Lady Ibrahim caught a steel hoop in its flight; for one
second she placed it behind her head; it was the starlit night: then
she slipped it over her head, and slowly, with graceful precautions,
she made it glide down the whole length of her [p221] body to her
feet. Some flags arranged in a small wheel, so that their folds waved
as she moved, afterwards replaced the parasol in her hand, and then,
suspended between the draperies of undulating silk, Lady Ibrahim
violently swung herself from right to left on one leg; suddenly she
closed her feet, raised herself in the air on the points of her toes,
turned, and went towards the back _croisé_. The performance was
crowned by a promenade on a plank balanced on the wire. Lady Ibrahim
repeated upon the plank the various exercises that I have already
described, until at last, amidst loud [p222] applause, she picked it
up and carried it off upon her shoulder.
The wish to conquer increasing difficulties has raised the
equilibrists from the slack wire to the trapeze. The danger of this
work lies in the instability of the support. The slack wire and cord
are less steady than the ball; the trapeze, although weighted by
lumps of lead at the ends of the two cords, oscillates perceptibly
more than the cord.
It is like a thoroughbred, a nervous, supple, and rebellious horse,
which must be mounted with infinite care and delicacy of movement.
Therefore the equilibrists who have once tried the trapeze will never
abandon it. Through the meshes of their net they disdainfully look
down upon the poor slack wire-dancers, who are with difficulty raised
two yards above the sand of the arena by the _croisés_.
Globe, cord, slack wire, trapeze—this is the complete cycle, and we
have already seen that these graceful exercises are performed chiefly
by women. A man has not the same æsthetic reasons for exhibiting his
body in a work which provides no use for his masculine strength, and
he therefore rarely leaves the “carpet;” he is a _juggler_ or an
_antipodean_. All the _banquistes_ juggle, and all their children
too. It is their leisure work between the exercises that exhaust
their strength. They sit in a corner, pick up whatever is near their
hands—a key, an orange, a stone—and throw them into the air. But
daily practice is necessary before they can surpass the average skill
and attain the dexterity which excites our wonder on the stage.
[Illustration]
The true juggler, who is usually left-handed, never juggles on
horseback, nor on a cord or trapeze; he performs with [p223] balls
standing on the ground. This is a speciality of the Japanese. One
was seen this winter in drawing-room performances whose dexterity
approached sorcery. He only used a large white ball and a small red
one, but in his hands they seemed like living things. They ran over
his face, up [p224] and down his arms, and stopped on his nose or
the tip of a finger.
[Illustration]
Our friend Agoust was celebrated in America as a juggler before
he became a comic clown and manager of the Nouveau Cirque. I have
seen him juggle simultaneously with an egg, a ball, and a bottle of
champagne; and this is a miraculous feat, through the difference in
the muscular effort required in throwing back each object as it falls
into the juggler’s hand.
The Dane Sévérus is also one of the present celebrities of carpet
equilibrism. He appears on the stage like Hamlet, in a black velvet
tunic. One expects him to commence the monologue spoken on the
terrace of Elsinor. No. He orders a small velvet chair to be brought
to him, and perches himself upon it head downwards, feet in air. But
he has first balanced a lighted lamp, with its glass and globe, upon
the nape of his neck. He then moves it forward upon his skull by tiny
jerks of the skin of the hair. It reaches his forehead; from there it
travels down his profile, and finally descends to his chest.
This Sévérus has made a speciality of juggling with fragile objects.
He replaces balls and knives by basins, salad-bowls, lamp-glasses,
and plates of all sizes. [p225] Whilst seeing his performance one
cannot but regret having left the cook at home, instead of giving her
one good lesson in the art of skilfully handling a dinner-service.
Sévérus has a remarkable _iron arm_. The biceps of the arm develop
very strongly in jugglers, and the crural muscles attain an
extraordinary expansion and strength in the _antipodeans_.
The _banquistes_ use this term for the jugglers who work with their
legs. For instance, the Japanese Yotshitaro and the Mexican Frank
Maura.
I have seen Maura perform one of the most extraordinary bounds that
I ever witnessed on the stage. It did not excite much applause from
the audience, who little suspected the immense force of the exertion.
Frank Maura knelt at the edge of the stage, seated himself upon his
heels and crossed his arms, then, without assisting himself by one
movement of the bust, by one effort of the loins he threw his body
into the air, and did not return to the ground until he had completed
the revolution of a dangerous somersault.
After seeing the performance of this antipodean, one can understand
the wonderful vigour of his muscles.
Frank Maura places in the middle of the theatre a metal handle about
two yards high, which supports a small saddle. The equilibrist
balances his shoulders and nape upon it, and then raises both legs at
a right angle. An assistant throws to him successively three enormous
balls, a barrel, and a bench long enough to seat six persons. Maura
catches these objects, throws them into the air, recatches them,
passes them from his hands to his feet, turns them violently round
and then suddenly stops their rotation from time to time. [p226]
With this extraordinary strength the faculty of “prehension” is so
curiously developed amongst antipodeans, that many of them can pick
up a ball or an orange with their feet, and throw these objects, like
a projectile, towards a given mark.
[Illustration]
We must add to the group of equilibrists two classes of acrobats,
whose appearance in the Hippodrome dates from the grand spectacular
pantomimes which rendered it necessary to cover the arena with a
_parqueterie_ floor. These new comers are _bicyclists_ and _skaters_.
[Illustration]
The bar used to guide the bicycle was certain to attract the
attention of the equilibrists sooner or later, and we can understand
how the idea suggested itself of reproducing upon this unsteady
support some of the exercises which the gymnast performs upon the
fixed bar. Since the number of these borrowed “acts” is necessarily
very restricted, the wish to introduce variety into his “novelty act”
led the bicyclist to add a companion to his [p228] performance, who
springs upon his shoulders whilst he is in motion, and executes there
some of the acrobatic feats which the pad equestrians perform in the
_pas de deux_.
The summit of the limited performance possible on a bicycle is
attained when the artists attempt on a _monocycle_ the exercises
which are now frequently seen on the two wheels.
As for the skaters, they appear upon the _parqueterie_ in order to
provoke laughter by their falls; their performance belongs to comic
acrobatics.
You who in former days have tested the asphalte of the Skating Rink
in the Rue Blanche, with your shoulders, back, and knees, are well
acquainted with the horrible sprains which followed your attempts.
The clown-skaters have found means of avoiding those inconveniences
by the suppleness of complete dislocation. At the same time they
make great capital out of the natural perversity which impels us
to laugh at our neighbours’ falls. I shall not astonish you when
I tell you that these comic equilibrists are looked down upon by
“professionals.” They are held a little aloof, and are regarded as
entertainers rather than artists. For they have not been forced
to conquer an enemy in whose defeat lies all the glory of an
equilibrist—the vertigo.
Can we say that the equilibrist is really victorious over the
vertigo? After much observation I am convinced that it would be more
accurate to write that the vertigo conquers the equilibrist.
[Illustration]
You all know the experiment which plunges a hen into a state of
immobility and renders it more or less completely [p230] insensible
by placing its beak upon the ground and drawing a straight chalk line
towards which its eyes forcibly converge. In the same way, if any one
take a brilliant object between two fingers and hold it a few inches
from the eyes and a little above the forehead of a somewhat nervous
person, first engaging him to look at it fixedly and to concentrate
his attention on what follows, there is every chance of sending the
person who is victim of the experiment into an hypnotic sleep.
The series of phenomena which then take place are familiar to all:
First, the eyes water a little through the fixed gaze, the pupils
dilate and contract alternately, the members become extended, rigid,
in some degree cataleptic. . .
Now recall the succession of acts which the equilibrist accomplishes
in his work. He too, fixedly, obstinately gazes upon a single
spot—the point of sight. All those who perform upon the cord have
acknowledged that the same peculiar phenomena are produced at the
end of the first seconds of this intense gaze; the equilibrist feels
a sensation of _absolute isolation_, and at the same time a curious
_attrahent_ feeling towards the point of sight. In this nervous state
the muscles assume a species of rigidity which assists the acrobat in
his work.
Must we then conclude that the phenomena found here border upon
hypnotism? This is a delicate question. I know that it will soon be
laid before the Académie de Médecine by two clever _savants_ of the
Faculty of Montpellier. I commend these remarks to their attention,
for they may feel some interest in them, owing to the difficulty
which impedes close [p231] observation of these wandering artists,
whose confidence is so hard to win.
[Illustration]
Those who study this question of hypnotism amongst equilibrists
should notice:
1. That as a rule they are _female subjects_,
2. That the most skilful equilibrists come to us from the land of the
fakirs, from India, Japan, the East;
3. That all the European subjects that attain exceptional dexterity
are at least neurolopathic. [p232]
[Illustration]
To quote but one instance: Erminia Chelli, the queen of equilibrists
upon the trapeze, is a natural somnambulist.
From May till July, 1887, Paris possessed this charming [p233] young
girl at the Cirque d’Été, and her departure has left us inconsolable.
I shall never forget the emotion which her performance caused me at
our first meeting.
I at once begged M. Franconi to introduce me to her father.
M. Chelli and I exchanged cards.
I have copied the document here as an extraordinary monument of
acrobatic and paternal pride:
EMILIO CHELLI,
EX-ARTIST, GYMNAST, AND CLOWN,
FATHER
OF THE CELEBRATED AERIAL EQUILIBRIST,
SIGNORINA ERMINA CHELLI.
The wife’s card said “Madame Mère.”
Erminia Chelli is not more than nineteen; she is a Venetian, and by
lengthening her legs in the trapeze she has acquired the supreme
grace in walking, the elegant proportions, which are usually rather
lacking in Italians The bust is youthful yet charming, the neck
delicate; the little dark head is proudly carried upon shoulders
which the trapeze has rendered supple without unduly developing
the shoulder blades. Since the appearance of Oceana no one of
such perfect proportions has been seen in either of the circuses
or the Hippodrome. The beauty of Oceana was, perhaps, a little
more individual and original; but Erminia is better bred and more
typical. [p234]
“She is her father’s pupil,” Madame Chelli, her mother informed me,
as she assisted Erminia in putting on a large pelisse. “She began to
appear in public when she was quite a little girl. . . .”
[Illustration]
As she spoke an equestrian came in to tell them that the net was
being prepared for Mademoiselle Chelli’s performance.
Erminia threw off her mantle, and with the caressing tones [p235]
of a young girl, a little seriously and gravely, she went up to her
mother and put her arms round her neck:
“Addio, mamma,” she said, kissing her.
A little surprised, I inquired:
“Is this a superstition, Madame Chelli?”
“No one knows,” the mother answered. “It has been her custom since
childhood.”
Truly, in spite of the net extended beneath her, she might well
be excused, poor little girl, for having one moment’s uneasiness
whenever she was fetched for her dizzy work on the trapeze.
For one whole month I strained my neck watching her extraordinary
performance in the friezes. Without the assistance of her hands,
which she used as a counterpoise, she bent low enough to pick up
with her teeth a handkerchief laid upon the trapeze. She mounted a
ladder which was only poised upon the round oscillating piece of
wood. Lastly, she balanced an immense ball still upon this frail
support, and then, without leaning upon anything, she mounted upon
it. And thus, lost in space, the globe beneath her feet, she seemed,
the little acrobat, so beautiful, so unconscious of danger, like
a goddess travelling through the air with the earth for a movable
pedestal.
The enthusiasm with which I had praised the beauty and talents of
Erminia Chelli in several newspapers procured for me at that time
the letter which I reproduce here with great pleasure. It is from a
literary man, and throws a genuine light upon the customs of some of
those acrobats who as a class are so misunderstood by the public.
[p236]
“SIR,
“The article in which you allude to Mademoiselle Chelli recalls to
me a souvenir which I have much pleasure in relating to you.
“Three or four years ago the Chelli family came to Vichy and took
part in the performances at the Eden Theatre. The father went
through some acts of strength and equilibrium; the daughter was
commencing on the flying trapeze the work for which she is now
distinguished. The mother watched them both, admired them, and
trembled.
“At that time the child, who might have been fourteen years old,
already placed a ball upon a movable trapeze, steadied it as far as
possible with her feet whilst holding by the cords, then loosening
her grasp of the cords, she rose, bowed, stood upon one foot, and
threw kisses to the crowd, visibly directing some of them towards
her mother, who usually occupied the second chair in the second row
of the orchestra stalls; the first chair being reserved for the
child, who came back to her mother as soon as her performance was
over.
“My usual place was in the first chair in the first row. I soon
began to talk to the mother and her daughter, whose modest manners
and childish affection for her parent were perfectly free from all
affectation, and attracted me immensely.
“One evening I ordered a bouquet to be thrown to Erminia as she
left the trapeze. On the following day I asked her mother if this
attention, which the audience warmly applauded, had pleased her
daughter.
“‘Oh! yes,’ she said, ‘and this morning Erminia carried it to the
Virgin’s chapel.’ [p237]
[Illustration]
“‘She is pious, then?’
“‘Certainly; it is only a fortnight since she received the
communion; she often communicates.’ [p238]
“I will not point out the contrast which presents itself to the
mind. There are some facts like the drop of water, in which, as
Mademoiselle de Gournay has already said, the whole sun is reflected.
“Poor child! has she travelled so far in safety on the rough voyage
of the life which she leads? I hope so; it is the sincere wish of an
old and unknown friend.
“C. LIVET.”
The “old and unknown friend” of Erminia Chelli may feel reassured. I
have eaten macaroni in the society of Mademoiselle Erminia and her
family, and since her departure from France we live in the friendly
intercourse of letters: the pretty equilibrist is still just the same
as when he knew her. The horse filled the thoughts of poor Émilie
Loisset, and so the trapeze fills the whole life of Erminia Chelli.
It is her vocation; when quite small she would go under the table
and swing her dolls upon a trapeze made of a hairpin and the elastic
from her hair net. And, on the other hand, whenever she is not in
the circus she passes her time in making bonnets for herself and
her friends. This talent for millinery replaces Ingres’ violin. One
has much more chance of pleasing her by saying, “How becoming your
bonnet is, Erminia!” than by complimenting her upon her talent as an
equilibrist.
Erminia is likely to amass a very large dowry. Do you know that £120
per month may be earned by walking head downwards upon the ceiling of
a circus? In four or five years’ time she will marry. [p239]
“But there is no hurry,” she said, shaking her head, when some one
mentioned this contingency to her.
[Illustration]
She was right. The sight of her youthful form flying through the
friezes is a delight to those pagans who appreciate pure curved
lines, and it is also a subject for meditation to those philosophers
to whom the little acrobat unconsciously gives a symbolic lesson
when she has exhausted in an ascending [p240] scale of difficulties
all the most unexpected combinations of equilibrist art, upright
upon her globe, supported by the trapeze only, she pauses, and upon
this vantage point of unsurpassable perfection, feeling sure that
nothing more is possible, she smiles, sends a kiss from the tip of
her fingers to her admirers, then abruptly, as though struck by
lightning, she falls into the net.
[Illustration]
[p241] [Illustration]