In one number of the programme he sat down on the ring bank and
balanced a bamboo pole, at the top of which little Massay went through
the regular routine of posturings. After years spent in this work, my
aged friend became so used to his job that he did it automatically, and
scarcely gave a thought to the boy at the top. One warm day, however,
he carried his indifference a trifle too far, and dropped into a quiet
nap, from which he woke only to find that the pole was falling and had
already gone too far to be recovered, but the agility of the boy saved
him from injury. As my knowledge of Japanese is limited to the more
polite forms, I cannot repeat the remarks of the lad.
Until a comparatively recent date, incredible as it may seem,
frog-swallowers were far from uncommon on the bills of the Continental
theaters. The most prominent, Norton, a Frenchman, was billed as a
leading feature in the high-class houses of Europe. I saw him work at
the Apollo Theater, Nuremberg, where I was to follow him in; and during
my engagement at the Circus Busch, Berlin, we were on the same
programme, which gave me an opportunity to watch him closely.
One of his features was to drink thirty or forty large glasses of beer
in slow succession. The filled glasses were displayed on shelves at the
back of the stage, and had handles so that he could bring forward two
or three in each hand. When he had finished these he would return for
others and, while gathering another handful, would bring up the beer
and eject it into a receptacle arranged between the shelves, just below
the line of vision of the audience.
Norton could swallow a number of half-grown frogs and bring them up
alive. I remember his anxiety on one occasion when returning to his
dressing-room; it seems he had lost a frog--at least he could not
account for the entire flock--and he looked very much scared, probably
at the uncertainty as to whether or not he had to digest a live frog.
The Muenchen October Fest, is the annual fair at that city, and a most
wonderful show it is. I have been there twice; once as the big feature
with Circus Carre, in 1901, and again in 1913, with the Circus Corty
Althoff. The Continental Circuses are not, like those of this country,
under canvas, but show in wooden buildings. At these October Fests I
saw a number of frog-swallowers, and to me they were very repulsive
indeed. In fact, Norton was the only one I ever saw who presented his
act in a dignified manner.
Willie Hammerstein once had Norton booked to appear at the Victoria
Theater, New York, but the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals would not allow him to open; so he returned to Europe without
exhibiting his art (?) in America.
In my earlier days in the smaller theaters of America, before the
advent of the B. F. Keith and E. F. Albee theaters, I occasionally ran
across a sailor calling himself English Jack, who could swallow live
frogs and bring them up again with apparent ease.
I also witnessed the disgusting pit act of that degenerate, Bosco, who
ate living snakes, and whose act gave rise to the well-known barkers'
cry HE EATS 'EM ALIVE! If the reader wishes further description of
this creature's work, he must find it in my book, The Unmasking of
Robert Houdin, for I cannot bring myself to repeat the nauseating
details here.
During an engagement in Bolton, Eng., I met Billington, the official
hangman, who was convinced that I could not escape from the restraint
he used to secure those he was about to execute.
Much to his astonishment, I succeeded in releasing myself, but he said
the time consumed was more than sufficient to spring the trap and
launch the doomed soul into eternity. Billington told me that he had
hardened himself to the demands of his office by killing rats with his
teeth.
During my engagement at the Winter Garten, Berlin, Captain Veitro, a
performer that I had known for years in America, where he worked in
side shows and museums, came to Berlin and made quite a stir by eating
poisons. He appeared only a few times, however, as his act did not
appeal to the public, presumably for the reason that he had his stomach
pumped out at each performance, to prove that it contained the poison.
This may have been instructive, but it possessed little appeal as
entertainment, and I rarely heard of the venturesome captain after that.
Years ago I saw a colored poison-eater at Worth's Museum, New York
City, who told me that he escaped the noxious effects of the drugs by
eating quantities of oatmeal mush.
Another colored performer took an ordinary bottle, and, after breaking
it, would bite off chunks, crunch them with his teeth, and finally
swallow them. I have every reason to believe that his performance was
genuine.
The beer-drinking of Norton was a more refined version of the so-called
water-spouting of previous generations, in which the returning was done
openly, a performance that could not fail to disgust a modern audience.
To be sure, in the days of the Dime Museum, a Negro who returned the
water worked those houses; but his performance met with little
approval, and it is years since I have heard of such an exhibition.
The first water-spouter of whom I find a record was Blaise Manfrede or
de Manfre, who toured Europe about the middle of the seventeenth
century. An interesting account of this man may be found in my book
The Unmasking of Robert Houdin.
A pupil of Manfrede's, by the name of Floram Marchand, who seems to
have been fully the equal of his master, appeared in England in 1650.
The following description of Marchand's performance is from The Book of
Wonderful Characters, edition of 1869, page 126:
In the summer of 1650, a Frenchman named Floram Marchand was brought
over from Tours to London, who professed to be able to "turn water into
wine," and at his vomit render not only the tincture, but the strength
and smell of several wines, and several waters. He learnt the
rudiments of this art from Bloise, an Italian, who not long before was
questioned by Cardinal Mazarin, who threatened him with all the
miseries that a tedious imprisonment could bring upon him, unless he
would discover to him by what art he did it. Bloise, startled at the
sentence, and fearing the event, made a full confession on these terms,
that the Cardinal would communicate it to no one else.
From this Bloise, Marchand received all his instruction; and finding
his teacher the more sought after in France, he came by the advice of
two English friends to England, where the trick was new. Here--the
cause of it being utterly unknown--he seems for a time to have gulled
and astonished the public to no small extent, and to his great profit.
Before long, however, the whole mystery was cleared up by his two
friends, who had probably not received the share of the profits to
which they thought themselves entitled. Their somewhat circumstantial
account runs as follows.
To prepare his body for so hardy a task, before he makes his appearance
on the stage, he takes a pill about the quantity of a hazel nut,
confected with the gall of an heifer, and wheat flour baked. After
which he drinks privately in his chamber four or five pints of
luke-warm water, to take all the foulness and slime from his stomach,
and to avoid that loathsome spectacle which otherwise would make thick
the water, and offend the eye of the observer.
In the first place, he presents you with a pail of luke-warm water, and
sixteen glasses in a basket, but you are to understand that every
morning he boils two ounces of Brazil thin-sliced in three pints of
running water, so long till the whole strength and color of the Brazil
is exhausted: of this he drinks half a pint in his private chamber
before he comes on the stage: you are also to understand that he
neither eats nor drinks in the morning on those days when he comes on
the stage, the cleansing pill and water only excepted; but in the
evening will make a very good supper, and eat as much as two or three
other men who have not their stomachs so thoroughly purged.
Before he presents himself to the spectators, he washes all his glasses
in the best white-wine vinegar he can procure. Coming on the stage, he
always washes his first glass, and rinses it two or three times, to
take away the strength of the vinegar, that it may in no wise discolour
the complexion of what is represented to be wine.
At his first entrance, he drinks four and twenty glasses of luke-warm
water, the first vomit he makes the water seems to be a full deep
claret: you are to observe that his gall-pill in the morning, and so
many glasses of luke-warm water afterwards, will force him into a
sudden capacity to vomit, which vomit upon so much warm water, is for
the most part so violent on him, that he cannot forbear if he would.
You are again to understand that all that comes from him is red of
itself, or has a tincture of it from the first Brazil water; but by
degrees, the more water he drinks, as on every new trial he drinks as
many glasses of water as his stomach will contain, the water that comes
from him will grow paler and paler. Having then made his essay on
claret, and proved it to be of the same complexion, he again drinks
four or five glasses of luke-warm water, and brings forth claret and
beer at once into two several glasses: now you are to observe that the
glass which appears to be claret is rinsed as before, but the beer
glass not rinsed at all, but is still moist with the white-wine
vinegar, and the first strength of the Brazil water being lost, it
makes the water which he vomits up to be of a more pale colour, and
much like our English beer.
He then brings his rouse again, and drinks up fifteen or sixteen
glasses of luke-warm water, which the pail will plentifully afford him:
he will not bring you up the pale Burgundian wine, which, though more
faint of complexion than the claret, he will tell you is the purest
wine in Christendom. The strength of the Brazil water, which he took
immediately before his appearance on the stage, grows fainter and
fainter. This glass, like the first glass in which he brings forth his
claret, is washed, the better to represent the colour of the wine
therein.
The next he drinks comes forth sack from him, or according to that
complexion. Here he does not wash his glass at all; for the strength of
the vinegar must alter what is left of the complexion of the Brazil
water, which he took in the morning before he appeared on the stage.
You are always to remember, that in the interim, he will commonly drink
up four or five glasses of the luke-warm water, the better to provoke
his stomach to a disgorgement, if the first rouse will not serve turn.
He will now (for on every disgorge he will bring you forth a new
colour), he will now present you with white wine. Here also he will
not wash his glass, which (according to the vinegar in which it was
washed) will give it a colour like it. You are to understand, that
when he gives you the colour of so many wines, he never washes the
glass, but at his first evacuation, the strength of the vinegar being
no wise compatible with the colour of the Brazil water.
Having performed this task, he will then give you a show of rose-water;
and this indeed, he does so cunningly, that it is not the show of
rose-water, but rose-water itself. If you observe him, you will find
that either behind the pail where his luke-warm water is, or behind the
basket in which his glasses are, he will have on purpose a glass of
rose-water prepared for him. After he has taken it, he will make the
spectators believe that he drank nothing but the luke-warm water out of
the pail; but he saves the rose-water in the glass, and holding his
hand in an indirect way, the people believe, observing the water
dropping from his fingers, that it is nothing but the water out of the
pail. After this he will drink four or five glasses more out of the
pail, and then comes up the rose-water, to the admiration of the
beholders. You are to understand, that the heat of his body working
with his rose-water gives a full and fragrant smell to all the water
that comes from him as if it were the same.
The spectators, confused at the novelty of the sight, and looking and
smelling on the water, immediately he takes the opportunity to convey
into his hand another glass; and this is a glass of Angelica water,
which stood prepared for him behind the pail or basket, which having
drunk off, and it being furthered with four or five glasses of
luke-warm water, out comes the evacuation, and brings with it a perfect
smell of the Angelica, as it was in the rose-water above specified.
To conclude all, and to show you what a man of might he is, he has an
instrument made of tin, which he puts between his lips and teeth; this
instrument has three several pipes, out of which, his arms a-kimbo, a
putting forth himself, he will throw forth water from him in three
pipes, the distance of four or five yards. This is all clear water,
which he does with so much port and such a flowing grace, as if it were
his master-piece.
He has been invited by divers gentlemen and personages of honour to
make the like evacuation in milk, as he made a semblance in wine. You
are to understand that when he goes into another room, and drinks two
or three pints of milk. On his return, which is always speedy, he goes
first to his pail, and afterwards to his vomit. The milk which comes
from him looks curdled, and shows like curdled milk and drink. If
there be no milk ready to be had, he will excuse himself to his
spectators, and make a large promise of what he will perform the next
day, at which time being sure to have milk enough to serve his turn, he
will perform his promise.
His milk he always drinks in a withdrawing room, that it may not be
discovered, for that would be too apparent, nor has he any other shift
to evade the discerning eye of the observers.
It is also to be considered that he never comes on the stage (as he
does sometimes three or four times in a day) but he first drinks the
Brazil water, without which he can do nothing at all, for all that
comes from him has a tincture of the red, and it only varies and alters
according to the abundance of water which he takes, and the strength of
the white-wine vinegar, in which all the glasses are washed.