who has had the honor to exhibit, with universal applause, the most
surprising performances that were ever attempted by mankind, before His
Royal Highness William, late Duke of Cumberland, at Windsor Lodge, May
7th, 1752; before His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, at
Gloucester House, January 30th, 1769; before His Royal Highness the
present Duke of Cumberland, at Windsor Lodge, September 25th, 1769;
before Sir Hans Sloane and several of the Royal Society, March 4th,
1751, who made Mr. Powell a compliment of a purse of gold, and a fine
large silver medal, which the curious may view by applying to him; and
before most of the Nobility and Quality in the Kingdom.
He intends to sup on the following articles: 1. He eats red-hot coals
out of the fire as natural as bread. 2. He licks with his naked tongue
red-hot tobacco pipes, flaming with brimstone. 3. He takes a large
bunch of deal matches, lights them altogether; and holds them in his
mouth till the flame is extinguished. 4. He takes a red-hot heater out
of the fire, licks it with his naked tongue several times, and carries
it around the room between his teeth. 5. He fills his mouth with
red-hot charcoal, and broils a slice of beef or mutton upon his tongue,
and any person may blow the fire with a pair of bellows at the same
time. 6. He takes a quantity of resin, pitch, bees'-wax, sealing-wax,
brimstone, alum, and lead, melts them all together over a chafing-dish
of coals, and eats the same combustibles with a spoon, as if it were a
porringer of broth (which he calls his dish of soup), to the great and
agreeable surprise of the spectators; with various other extraordinary
performances never attempted by any other person of this age, and there
is scarce a possibility ever will; so that those who neglect this
opportunity of seeing the wonders performed by this artist, will lose
the sight of the most amazing exhibition ever done by man.
The doors to be opened by six and he sups precisely at seven o'clock,
without any notice given by sound of trumpet.
If gentry do not choose to come at seven o'clock, no performance.
Prices of admission to ladies and gentlemen, one shilling. Back Seats
for Children and Servants, six pence.
Ladies and children may have a private performance any hour of the day,
by giving previous notice.
N. B.--He displaces teeth or stumps so easily as to scarce be felt. He
sells a chemical liquid which discharges inflammation, scalds, and
burns, in a short time, and is necessary to be kept in all families.
His stay in this place will be but short, not exceeding above two or
three nights.
Good fire to keep the gentry warm.
This shows how little advance had been made in the art in a century.
Richardson had presented practically the same programme a hundred years
before. Perhaps the exposure of Richardson's method by his servant put
an end to fire-eating as a form of amusement for a long time, or until
the exposure had been forgotten by the public. Powell himself, though
not proof against exposure, seems to have been proof against its
effects, for he kept on the even tenor of his way for sixty years, and
at the end of his life was still exhibiting.
Whatever the reason, the eighteenth century fire-eaters, like too many
magicians of the present day, kept to the stereotyped programmes of
their predecessors. A very few did, however, step out of the beaten
track and, by adding new tricks and giving a new dress to old ones,
succeeded in securing a following that was financially satisfactory.
In this class a Frenchman by the name of Dufour deserves special
mention, from the fact that he was the first to introduce comedy into
an act of this nature. He made his bow in Paris in 1783, and is said
to have created quite a sensation by his unusual performance. I am
indebted to Martin's Naturliche Magie, 1792, for a very complete
description of the work of this artist.
Dufour made use of a portable building, which was specially adapted to
his purposes, and his table was spread as if for a banquet, except that
the edibles were such as his performance demanded. He employed a
trumpeter and a tambour player to furnish music for his repast--as well
as to attract public attention. In addition to fire-eating, Dufour
gave exhibitions of his ability to consume immense quantities of solid
food, and he displayed an appetite for live animals, reptiles, and
insects that probably proved highly entertaining to the not overrefined
taste of the audiences of his day. He even advertised a banquet of
which the public was invited to partake at a small fee per plate, but
since the menu consisted of the delicacies just described, his
audiences declined to join him at table.
His usual bill-of-fare was as follows:
Soup--boiling tar torches, glowing coals and small, round, super-heated
stones.
The roast, when Dufour was really hungry, consisted of twenty pounds of
beef or a whole calf. His hearth was either the flat of his hand or
his tongue. The butter in which the roast was served was melted
brimstone or burning wax. When the roast was cooked to suit him he ate
coals and roast together.
As a dessert he would swallow the knives and forks, glasses, and the
earthenware dishes.
He kept his audience in good humor by presenting all this in a spirit
of crude comedy and, to increase the comedy element, he introduced a
number of trained cats. Although the thieving proclivities of cats are
well known, Dufour's pets showed no desire to share his repast, and he
had them trained to obey his commands during mealtime. At the close of
the meal he would become violently angry with one of them, seize the
unlucky offender, tear it limb from limb and eat the carcass. One of
his musicians would then beg him to produce the cat, dead or alive. In
order to do this he would go to a nearby horse-trough and drink it dry;
would eat a number of pounds of soap, or other nauseating substance,
clowning it in a manner to provoke amusement instead of disgust; and,
further to mask the disagreeable features--and also, no doubt, to
conceal the trick--would take the cloth from the table and cover his
face; whereupon he would bring forth the swallowed cat, or one that
looked like it, which would howl piteously and seem to struggle wildly
while being disgorged. When freed, the poor cat would rush away among
the spectators.
Dufour gave his best performances in the evening, as he could then show
his hocus-pocus to best advantage. At these times he appeared with a
halo of fire about his head.
His last appearance in Paris was most remarkable. The dinner began
with a soup of asps in simmering oil. On each side was a dish of
vegetables, one containing thistles and burdocks, and the other fuming
acid. Other side dishes, of turtles, rats, bats and moles, were
garnished with live coals. For the fish course he ate a dish of snakes
in boiling tar and pitch. His roast was a screech owl in a sauce of
glowing brimstone. The salad proved to be spider webs full of small
explosive squibs, a plate of butterfly wings and manna worms, a dish of
toads surrounded with flies, crickets, grasshoppers, church beetles,
spiders, and caterpillars. He washed all this down with flaming
brandy, and for dessert ate the four large candles standing on the
table, both of the hanging side lamps with their contents, and finally
the large center lamp, oil, wick and all. This leaving the room in
darkness, Dufour's face shone out in a mask of living flames.
A dog had come in with a farmer, who was probably a confederate, and
now began to bark. Since Dufour could not quiet him, he seized him, bit
off his head and swallowed it, throwing the body aside. Then ensued a
comic scene between Dufour and the farmer, the latter demanding that
his dog be brought to life, which threw the audience into paroxysms of
laughter. Then suddenly candles reappeared and seemed to light
themselves. Dufour made a series of hocus-pocus passes over the dog's
body; then the head suddenly appeared in its proper place, and the dog,
with a joyous yelp, ran to his master.
Notwithstanding the fact that Dufour must have been by all odds the
best performer of his time, I do not find reference to him in any other
authority. But something of his originality appeared in the work of a
much humbler practitioner, contemporary or very nearly contemporary
with him.
We have seen that Richardson, Powell, Dufour, and generally the better
class of fire-eaters were able to secure select audiences and even to
attract the attention of scientists in England and on the Continent.
But many of their effects had been employed by mountebanks and street
fakirs since the earliest days of the art, and this has continued until
comparatively recent times.
In Naturliche Magie, in 1794, Vol. VI, page 111, I find an account of
one Quackensalber, who gave a new twist to the fire-eating industry by
making a "High Pitch" at the fairs and on street corners and exhibiting
feats of fire-resistance, washing his hands and face in melted tar,
pitch and brimstone, in order to attract a crowd. He then strove to
sell them a compound--composed of fish glue, alum and brandy--which he
claimed would cure burns in two or three hours. He demonstrated that
this mixture was used by him in his heat resistance: and then,
doubtless, some "capper" started the ball rolling, and Herr
Quackensalber (his name indicates a seller of salves) reaped a good
harvest.
I have no doubt but that even to-day a clever performer with this "High
Pitch" could do a thriving business in that overgrown country village,
New York. At any rate there is the so-called, "King of Bees," a
gentleman from Pennsylvania, who exhibits himself in a cage of netting
filled with bees, and then sells the admiring throng a specific for
bee-stings and the wounds of angry wasps. Unfortunately the only time
I ever saw his majesty, some of his bee actors must have forgotten
their lines, for he was thoroughly stung.