THE CLOWN.
The clowns are the most popular members of the motley crowd that
attracts the audience of the circus, hippodrome and other places
of amusement, where strength and beauty form the basis of the
entertainment. Their pirouettes fill the house, they are the
“attraction,” the great success of the programme. As they are not
very numerous, for there are not more than thirty of them scattered
over the globe, [p278] the directors compete for them at very high
salaries. Like the star-tenors they contract engagements for many
years in advance, and receive the emoluments of an ambassador, and
their requirements increase with their success. I am told by the
agents that their commissions have never been so high as in the last
few years.
Although much appreciated in France, the clown is not a creation of
the Latin genius. It only invented the three personages of the comedy
_dell’arte_, the three typical masks from which every expression
of the human face arise: Pierrot the coward, Arlequin the crafty,
and between them, the perverse Columbine. During many centuries
these three puppets have moved through every shade and variety of
psychological pantomime.
At the present time Italian pantomime is an extinct art. In the time
of Watteau the poor masks had already lost their definite outlines,
and their idiosyncrasies had become misty and dim. They are now
effaced, dispelled by the cloud of powder which the clown, launched
from the other side of the Channel, scattered in the air as he
tumbled upon the French stage.
Etymologically the clown is the rustic, the rough peasant,
pugnacious, ignorant and silly, who enlivens the sombre dramas of
Shakespeare by his foolish quibbles. In England this ludicrous
personage was the indispensable accessory of every play; he is
nearly related to the French Jocrisse, who also wears the garb of a
well-to-do countryman, and is equally ridiculed by the city folk.
The Shakesperian clown has not yet disappeared. He is to be found
with all his traditional attributes in the three [p279] companies
of Hengler’s Circus, which travel all over England, and at Christmas
time give simultaneous performances in London, Liverpool, and Dublin.
[Illustration]
I remember entering the arena of this national circus one Sunday
morning in London, and being considerably surprised to find the
whole company in morning dress assembled in the ring. A black-coated
individual, Bible in hand, was addressing the acrobats. He was a
clergyman. I have been told since that Mr. Hengler exacts punctual
attendance at the Sunday services from every member of his troupe.
In this traditional house, the Shakesperian clown, the _jester_, as
he is called in the profession, appears in white tights, [p280]
ornamented with blue or red patches indiscriminately arranged, with
a short drapery round the hips, and a fool’s cap on his head. Thus
attired, he does not caper and joke, but declaims passages from
Shakespeare and sings Irish songs which delight the public in the
cheap places.
You can easily imagine that such a figure could not be moved from
its native surroundings. The dialect of Old Tom, the tirades of King
Lear, would not please any audience, except in the United Kingdom.
Some other work must be found for foreign engagements.
The _jester_, therefore, looked round to see if he could not gather
some useful hints from his stage companions, that might help to
fill his travelling bag, and naturally he studied the coloured
_minstrels_. It is impossible to write a serious history of the clown
without making some allusion to these negro singers. The modern
clown, acrobat, magician, and pantomimist was produced by the union
of the _jester_ and the _minstrel_.
Lovers of old books, who strolled round the Quai Voltaire last winter
may have noticed in the window of a dealer in curious prints, a
collection of bad chromolithographs from New York which attracted and
amused the passers by. They depicted the misfortunes of “coloured
men,” caricatured by their old masters; ridiculous falls into buckets
of water; a horse kicking a negro in the jaw; a gun exploding, blows
a negro into a thousand pieces like Captain Castagnette. The mouths
with their gleaming teeth are always split by a foot placed across
them, the legs are thrown above the woolly heads in grotesque dances,
which seem performed in rhythm to the blows of a whip. These coarse
pictures were not signed [p281] by the artist, they bore the names
of the publishers only, Currier and Ives of New York.
[Illustration]
English pantomime, the extraordinary pantomime of the Hanlons,
Pinauds, Renards, Leovils, Ramys, and Leopolds, is considerably
influenced by these slave gaieties, by the monkey-like tricks of the
negroes capering for the amusement of their cruel masters.
Freedom has been granted, the whip no longer inspires the [p282]
epileptic dances of the blacks, but their jerky gambols so greatly
diverted the “massa,” that they have survived slavery itself in an
essentially American and English institution: the _Christy Minstrels_.
Visit _music halls_ you will find on occasional stages a curious
chorus of men in evening dress, sitting in a semicircle, their faces
blackened with soot. In St. James’s Hall the effect is particularly
curious, for it is here that Messrs. Moore and Burgess, who have
carried negro minstrelsy to the highest perfection, exhibit their
company of coloured minstrels. The back of the stage is occupied by
the orchestra. From an artistic point, no pains is spared to seek out
and engage the best musicians who come before the public both vocal
and instrumental. Among the vocalists may be reckoned some of the
finest voices obtainable in England or in America. The singers are
seated in a semi-circle, the comic men are placed at either end of
the row, and these furnish the life and humour of the entertainment;
they are the comic vocalists, the propounders of quips and tellers of
droll stories; their instruments are the bones and tambourines.
They play, sing, dance a jig and make jokes. This is the duty of the
two leaders of the band, the jester and his butt.
Messrs. Moore and Burgess confine their well-recognised original
Christy Minstrel Entertainments to the St. James’s Hall. It is the
key-note of their programme that they “never perform out of London.”
On the other hand, their commonplace imitators become out of the
London season itinerant humourists.
In the summer you will find them on the sands [p283] of every sea
side town. Banjo in hand, arrayed in the cotton trousers worn by the
old slaves, always accompanied by the black dress coat, an eyeglass
in one eye, straw hats on their blackened heads, they call themselves
the _Ethiopian serenaders_. They travel in bands and perform in the
open air.
[Illustration]
Very agile and supple, they repeat in violent dances a [p284]
species of gymnastics which a little resembles the “_chahut_” of the
lower classes in France. The great “split” is as familiar to them as
the somersaults, etc; and these two exercises form the greater part
of the pantomime, which the minstrels perform when they are tired of
playing on the banjo.
The acrobatic success of the minstrels pointed out a road for these
clowns, who were anxious to place a girdle of somersaults round
the terrestrial globe. The pirouette had the advantage of being
understood by the spectators in every land.
The clown therefore started without any other luggage.
This English emigration dates from about 1865. This was the time of
the clever entries of vaulting clowns, who starred the whole ring
with their capers. They vaulted from the “carpet,” and from the great
and little _batoude_, that is to say, performed a somersault from a
spring-board over a wall of horses.
In the course of his travels the _jester_, now an acrobat, learnt the
idiom of several countries. From a few words interspersed through his
performance, he at once saw that his English pronunciation easily
roused the laughter of the audience. His accent amused the Parisians
particularly, and he thought that great capital might be made of his
broken French, and a large salary earned whilst sparing his physical
labour. The corporation at once divided into two branches.
The clowns who found that their inclinations prompted them to become
“patterers” renounced the “carpet” and the “spring-board” to speak to
the public.
Those whom gymnastics had fascinated turned towards acrobatic
pantomime. [p285]
And here we must weave a crown of laurels and immortal flowers for
Billy Hayden, the incarnate type of a patterer clown, and you may
be sure that some day his place in the history of the stage will be
quite as important as that of the late Deburau.
[Illustration]
Billy related the history of his life to me. He was born in
Birmingham, and his vocation dates from his early childhood. He was
one day mounted upon his father’s shoulders to watch an acrobat
performing in the open air, who ascended a movable perch. The
spectacle made a deep impression upon the [p286] child, and nothing
could prevent him from following his vocation.
Billy is a pupil of the minstrels. At the opening of his career,
he travelled through the world besmeared with black. In Germany,
the idea first occurred to him to powder himself like Pierrot, and
at once found that the change produced a great success. The clever
expressive features previously concealed by the soot were suddenly
disclosed by the powder. And the audacity of the clown increased with
the encouragement of public applause.
Nearly all the jokes with which he has amused us are borrowed from
the minstrels. They always repeat the scene of a jester and his butt,
the stock-in-trade of the old show. At the circus, the ring-master is
the butt, the sensible man who corrects the childish nonsense of the
clown.
The clown Footeet plays one of these traditional scenes very
naturally. Mounted upon a horse, with his face to the tail, he calls
out:
“Oh, this horse hasn’t got a head.”
The ring-master gravely answers:
“It is on the other side, clown.”
“Turn it round then.”
“That is impossible, clown, you must turn round yourself.”
Footeet prefers vaulting to talking. But Billy Hayden is as lazy as
his donkey, and prefers jokes to somersaults. His repertoire includes
an amusing story of a stolen child.
When the star equestrian dismounts from her horse, Billy turns to M.
Loyal and says:
“Môa aussi, jé été oun cholie pétit démoisel.” [p287]
“Allons donc! clown!”
“Vô n’étiez pas là quand jé suis né? Môa, j’y été. Alôrs jé dois
savoir mieux que vô!”
[Illustration]
And in a lamentable voice he relates the misfortune which befell him:
“Labonn’ mé proménait dans oun vouâture d’enfant, et ell’ [p288]
s’assoit sur le bi-du-bout-du-banc à causer avec oun militair’. Et
alors oun vieil’ sorcière é venue avec oun pétit garçon. Et ell’ a
pris môa la choli pétit’ fill’ de la vouâture d’enfant’, et ell’
a mis à la place môa, le vilain petit garçon, dans la vouâture
d’enfant. Et depuis ce temps-là jé oun souis vilain pétit garçon!”[13]
With this Billy draws out an indescribable pocket-handkerchief and
bursts into tears.
Those whom this clown does not amuse, who prefer drama to comedy,
will reserve their approbation for the acrobat-clown, who has
inherited the genius of the Hanlon-Lees.
This radical transformation of style tempted the _jester_ by many
advantages: first, by replacing words by gestures, it suited the
natural taciturnity of the Anglo-Saxon character, which cannot
dispose of the resources of Italian loquacity; then it evoked great
applause by the unexpected contrast between the somersault suddenly
executed precisely according to rule, following the ridiculous
knockabout performance of the tumbling scenes.
In making this evolution the clown exposed himself to the danger
of being confused with the professional gymnast whose exercises he
reproduced. This danger however was more [p289] apparent than real.
The work of a gymnast is of a special traditional character which no
whimsical variation is ever allowed to tamper with. Its immediate aim
is the display of daring movements and harmonious attitudes of the
human body, and above all it is a plastic performance. The clown’s
art, on the contrary, should aim at evoking laughter, not applause.
It appeals less to the sense than to the intelligence, and, unlike
gymnastics, it is not confined by classic fixed rules. It has the
right to follow the wildest fancies of a whimsical imagination. It
is not a Greek art, but an English one, and it reflects all the most
curious characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon people.
[Illustration] [p290]
The prevailing note in the Anglo-Saxon character is melancholy.
This produced the spleen, the gloomy ideas and the systematic
calculated first tinge of madness which the English themselves call
“eccentricity.” To this habitual sadness the Anglo-Saxon joins a
certain brutality, which is visible in all his games, sullies all
his pleasures, and even gives to his vices a peculiarly sombre hue.
In England gymnastics are cultivated, not for the beauty which they
bestow upon the body, but for the murderous weight which they give to
the fists of a boxer. England is the cruel country, where men first
formulated the law of the “struggle for life.”
[Illustration] [p291]
The clown, the direct son of the Saxon genius, said to himself:
[Illustration]
“To please my fellow-countrymen, who worship strength more than
anything else, I must first of all be strong, before I can excite
their admiration. I will therefore commence by developing my
muscles. As to my pantomime, if I wish it to succeed, it must, by
the incoherence of its actions, the whimsicalness of its pointless
gestures, the automatism of its movements, imitate the terrible
spectacle of insanity.”
With this idea, the English clown has adopted a mourning livery of
black and silver, and has broken the powdered mask [p292] of Pierrot
by two red spots, two bloody patches; the insignia of boxing and of
English consumption.
[Illustration]
This gloomy clown crossed over to France upon the steamers that
carried Darwin’s books and the commentaries of Schopenhauer. For one
hour the French imbibed the sadness of their insular neighbours, the
black acrobat was well received.
Every one will remember the welcome which the Magiltons and the
Hanlon-Lees received in Paris. It was the first time [p293] we had
seen English pantomime. The exotic art upset all our ideas of logic,
it was in direct opposition to all our innate taste for clearness and
delicate performances. However, it succeeded, for it evoked the only
laughter of which we were at that time capable, a laughter without
merriment, convulsive, full of terror.
The Hanlon-Lees! How many pleasant artistic feelings the name evokes
in the memory of Parisians. The troupe is scattered now, throughout
the world, there are the Hanlon-Lees on one side, the Hanlon-Volta on
another, three of the brothers are dead, and their comrade Agoust has
abandoned them to become manager of the Nouveau Cirque.
[Illustration]
This intelligent and amiable man, who intends some day writing
the memoirs of his eventful life, has told me the details of the
history of the Hanlon-Lees—their true history, not the account of
them which you will find in a little book published under the title
of the _Memoirs of the Brothers Hanlon-Lee_, [p294] with pretty
illustrations by Regamey and a splendid preface by the master,
Theodore de Banville.
The six brothers Hanlon, Thomas, George, William, Alfred, Edward,
and Freddy, first met Agoust in Chicago, about 1865. They were then
working as trapeze and carpet acrobats. Thomas and Alfred, two
splendidly built men, were the “underneath men,” the carriers in the
pyramid. The other brothers were—rather puny; they always wore double
tights. Under the silk tights—worn outside—was another suit, called
in the acrobatic vocabulary, a _thirty-two franc_. In the place of
muscles this suit was arranged with fine woollen fringes, which were
carefully combed upwards so as to obtain good curves; and one of the
favourite jokes amongst artists, is to stick pins, provided with
little white flags, into these false muscles.
At Chicago the Hanlons were vaulters, and Agoust juggled. A
tight-rope dancer, and Tanner with his dogs, had joined the company,
but the entertainment was still too short.
Agoust, who had been manager of the Young Henry Theatre, pantomimist
and leader of the ballet, suggested to the Hanlons that they should
perform a pantomime. He made them rehearse two old pieces by Deburau,
_Harlequin Statue_, and _Harlequin Skeleton_. The experiment
succeeded, and in 1867 the little company went to Paris, where it
made its reputation by the pantomime of the _Village Barber_.
The war of 1870 divided every one. The Hanlons returned to America
with the Strandges company, which had been installed at the Châtelet.
Agoust enlisted in a marching regiment.
They met again in 1876, at the Walhalla in Berlin. The [p295]
Hanlons were trying to mount a scene borrowed from the minstrels, the
celebrated _Do, mi, sol, do_. They were made up like negroes.
“What can you do in this piece?” they asked Agoust.
He replied, “You have no conductor. I will place myself in the desk.”
The five Hanlons then accepted their old comrade as a partner in the
place of their brother Thomas, who had died in America. Thomas Hanlon
had fallen at Cincinnati whilst making the _spring for life_, and had
broken his head against the balustrade. It had been mended somehow,
but he suffered intense pain when his brothers jumped with both feet
upon his head. He had complained, saying that he could not bear it,
but he still continued this performance. At the end of a few months
he went mad.
The brothers Hanlon were always a band of terribly hard workers.
Every day, except Sunday, they rehearsed from ten in the morning,
till two—and from four till six in the afternoons. When they were
tired of vaulting they sat down and worked mentally.
“My boys, never drink before a performance,” George (the leader)
would say to them. “After it is over, do whatever you like.”
The Hanlons were Irish, and were supposed to drink deeply sometimes
after leaving the theatre. But if there were excesses they were
utilised, for when they met on the following day, they related their
dreams to each other and endeavoured to construct a play out of them.
_Do, mi, sol, do_ met with extraordinary success at the
Folies-Bergères. The Hanlons had been engaged for one [p296] month
at a salary of £360, but the first evening after the performance,
they signed an agreement for £600 per month, and played their
pantomime for thirteen months running.
_Do, mi, sol, do_ and the _Journey in Switzerland_ were performed in
Belgium and England with extraordinary success. In the latter country
Agoust separated from his companions.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: ENTRY OF CLOWNS]
English pantomime does not require any tragic incidents in order to
fill us with admiration and wonder. We have lately seen two companies
of artists in Paris, the Leopolds and the Pinauds, who recalled the
best days of the Hanlon-Lees. I am thinking chiefly of the Pinauds,
who are exceptionally clever. I made the acquaintance of these three
talented American actors whilst they were at the Folies-Bergères.
They are not brothers, but friends, and they are thorough gentlemen.
I say this quite earnestly, for if you [p297] meet them in the
American Minister’s drawing-room you will not feel at all surprised
to find them there.
[Illustration]
They are devoted to their art, extol it with much enthusiasm, and
discuss it like artists who have deliberately adopted it, and who
exert all their inventive faculties in the production of their
pantomime and in bringing their unique idea into full relief. I saw
this strange performance several times running and should find great
difficulty in analysing it. It consists of a series of disjointed
actions placed side by side, accompanied by rapid changes of costume,
mad pursuits, and grotesque disguises.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A gentleman is playing a guitar, but he is constantly [p298]
interrupted by the entry and exit of strange individuals leading
animals, which are all musical instruments. Everything is musical in
this pantomime—the pig that the peasant drags after him, the carriage
of the cannon with which a malefactor fires a shell at the back of
the guitarist. The last part of the farce [p299] is filled with
the misfortunes of the peasant with the pig. In the first place the
rustic is roughly attacked by a bull, which aims violent blows at
his umbrella with its horns. The peasant valiantly resists the blows
from the horns and tail of the animal, drives it off, and proud of
his victory, sits down to rest with a triumphant air. But, alas, an
ill-disposed jester sets fire to John Bull’s hat, it explodes like
a petard and flies into the friezes. In despair the peasant lifts
his arms to heaven. His prayer is answered immediately. As though
the ceiling were a horn of plenty, a rain of hats and caps descends
upon the stage. But they are the crushed shabby hats of bookmakers
and poor Irishmen, a lot of those formless head-gear, which are only
seen in London, where the workman has no distinctive head-dress, but
puts on the cast-off garments of [p300] the rich, thus giving to his
poverty the appearance of a masquerade. The peasant quickly tries on
about twenty of the hats, but not one of them fits his head. Again he
lifts his arms to heaven with a gesture of despair, and the curtain
falls.
[Illustration]
With the mania which we Frenchmen have of insisting that everything
should have a meaning in spite of all appearances, I asked the
Pinauds what their pantomime signified. “Absolutely nothing,” replied
one of them. “On the contrary, we try to destroy all connection
between the scenes of our entertainment. We only wish to produce
upon the audience the impression of violent terror and madness. And
therefore we represent a man, alarmed by the successive apparitions
of animals which play music when they are touched.” I listened
[p301] quietly, but I could not help remembering the invariable
question, which I had heard the doctor at the police station ask the
drunken maniacs whom the police had picked up in the streets—
“You see beasts, do you not, animals that swarm round you?”
[Illustration]
They all reply in the affirmative, hanging down their heads.
These drunken hallucinations, these apparitions of animals, are
the framework of the English pantomime, the terrible visions of a
gin-drinker who has rolled into a gutter at the door of a drinking
bar.
The Craggs, “gentlemen acrobats,” also appeared at the
Folies-Bergères.
They came from New York, where they had made a great success.
They had also made large profits during their six [p302] weeks’
engagement, for they received 100 dollars a night. They enter the
stage in Indian file, all the seven, wearing evening dress and white
ties. They come forward in a line to the front of the stage, and
bend their heads; you think that they are going to bow, simply like
you or I. Instead they make a somersault. Seven somersaults forward.
They are so quickly executed that every one present asks if he is
dreaming. Very correctly executed, notwithstanding, very correctly!
Not one smooth head is ruffled, not one white tie unloosed, not a
shirt front creased.
[Illustration]
We must however believe that the coat inconveniences the gentlemen in
their work, for with very leisurely movements, [p303] and perfect
indifference, the seven Craggs go to the back of the stage, and
there, one, two, three, in time, as though performing an exercise,
they take off their coats and appear in fourteen shirt sleeves.
[Illustration]
And from that moment, for the space of half an hour, they execute the
most wonderful acrobatic feats.
The seven Craggs mount upon each other, then fall away like houses
built of cards. MM. Craggs senior turn MM. Craggs junior round their
arms. One half of the Craggs always has the legs in the air, whilst
the other half is head downwards. And what deportment! how completely
it differs from the smiles, kisses thrown to the public, and rolling
eyes [p304] of the Italian acrobat! We shall see that in the Molier
Circus, authentic gentlemen have been converted into passable clowns.
Messrs. Craggs have proved to us, a more unexpected fact, that
perfect gentlemen can be made from professional clowns.
[Illustration]
Since it is my mission to betray the secrets confided to me, I will
tell the public, the whole world, that the Craggs are not seven
brothers, as we might be tempted to believe, but a family consisting
of the father, six sons, and one little sister Cragg.
Mr. Cragg, the father, is nearly forty-two years old, he looks like
the brother of his eldest son, who is not yet twenty-four. The
little girl who so bravely wears the black coat asserts that she is
fourteen. I kissed her, after the performance, and complimented her
most sincerely. [p305]
“She is a little Australian,” said her father, smiling kindly at her.
“An Australian, Mr. Cragg?”
“Yes, she was born at Sydney, whilst her brothers and I were
performing in New Zealand and China.”
The Craggs have just returned from Pekin.
They have travelled round the world, with gardenias in their
buttonholes, and Barnum has thrown golden bridges across the ocean
for them.
I told you that the time had come for writing a monograph of the
clown-king!
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[13] “I too was once a pretty little young lady.”
“Come now! clown!”
“You weren’t there when I was born? Well, I was. So I ought to know
better than you! . . . . . .
“The nurse had taken me out in a perambulator, and she sat down on
the end of a bench to talk to a soldier. And then an old witch came
by with a little boy. And she took me, the pretty little girl, out
of the perambulator, and she put in my place, me, an ugly little
boy, into the perambulator. And ever since then I’ve been an ugly
little boy!”
[Illustration]
[p307] [Illustration: Cirque Molier]