THE CIRCUS

By CHARLES BELMONT DAVIS

drawings by martin justice

I T has been my good fortune to have seenthe moonlight cut out the brokenwall of the Coliseum against the

purple June sky of Italy; I have spentmany days wandering through the streetsof Pompeii and starting at the echo of myown footfalls over that deserted village: Ihave followed the ivy-covered walls andthe fighting turrets that Michael Angelaplanned, and of which the Florentines wereonce so proud, and which rise so impo-tently now before the knowing tourist inhis golf cap and red-backed guide book:I saw that greatest of American play-things, the Monmouth Park Race Track,fall into utter decay; but of all the tragicruins I ever saw, the one which made thedeepest impression on my memory wasa little round ring of earth on the out-skirts of a village I once knew.

If the circus had visitedyear, it would have been quite different,

our town every

and the little round mound would havebeen used annually; but I am afraid it wasan accident that that circus ever came toour town at all. It certainly never cameback in my time, and so the weeds grewover the mound, and the townspeopledumped their ashes and threw their tincans into the middle of it. Even the goatsof the neighborhood used to fight on theedge of the ring and gambol within itsborders, on the very spot where once thefour princesses rode in their velvet ridinghabits and white plumes and did anequine quadrille with their four cavaliersin spangled shortclothes. Ah! that littlerounded mound held many sacred mem-ories for us who remembered it buried insawdust and covered by the glisteningwhite canvas on the day the circus cameto our town. Our pleasures began theday we first saw the posters and we spelledout those wonderful words which arecoined by only the truly great press agents.It didn’t seem possible to our young brainsthat all we saw on the hoardings couldactually take place—there was such awonderful combination of lions and tigers,and acrobats and fairies, and elephantsand clowns; and yet we argued it out that

the man who made the pictures did it forthat particular circus, and he certainlyought to know. I suppose it does some-times rain on the circus, but we never ad-mitted that as a possibility; and so whenthe day of all the year arrived and the sunshone on the gilded chariots in the parade,it seemed just as it should have been andjust as we expected it would be.

They came in the night, and before wewere about the tent was up, and the flagsof all nations—and I imagine a good manythat didn’t belong to any nation at all—were cluttering from the blue-paintedpoles. The canvas-men were still drivingthe stakes with great sledge hammers, andothers were tightening the guy-ropes, andthe “boss” was driving about all over thelot in a little buggy and swearing at every-body—apparently just because he wasthe boss—because every man was workingjust as hard as he knew how. And at teno’clock, prompt to the hour, the paradecame down the main street, which waslined by the farmers who had walked anddriven in from their homes many milesfrom town. I don’t know what we likedbest—the wobbling chariot with the bandon top, that led the procession, or theline of gilded cages with the doors wellclosed but from behind which came forth.horrible growls, or the open cage showingus a beautiful lady with a real lion crouch-ing at her feet. And surely none of us willforget the elephants, one large and onesmall one, and the camels, and the lines ofponies and clowns, and the shrieking steamcalliope that marked the end of that won-derful procession.

When the afternoon actually came, itseemed as if the wealth of a king wasnecessary to see that particular circusproperly. The peanut stands and thefakirs’ booths stretched for blocks in alldirections about the great white tents.There were two large side shows whichcost ten cents each, and when we hadlooked at the wonderfully painted picturesoutside and the gentleman in the high boxpointed them out with a long stick andtold us all about the marvelous things

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these freaks did inside, “ten cents, or onlya dime,” seemed cheap enough. I shallalways remember the man who sold us thehard pasteboard tickets from the windowin the red wagon. He was in his shirtsleeves and was smoking a large blackcigar, and he had large rolls of bank notesstuck between his fingers, and I rememberhaving a general idea that it was all his;for which I envied him almost as much asI did for his being connected with a realcircus. We passed first into the animaltent with the cages running around thesides, and there was a platform in themiddle with a giant and an albino on it,and a tattooed man whose pictures in myyouthful mind did not seem to cover himsufficiently even on that warm day. ButI didn’t enjoy the freaks or animals anymore than I did a month ago at a circus,because the band was blaring out a regularcircus tune in the main tent and I was sureI was going to miss something. The per-formance that day was like the circus ofto-day, only it was divided by three. Therewas one ring and one trapeze and onegentleman and one lady bareback riderinstead of the three at one time as we havethem now. The clown especially had amuch better chance than he has to-day,for he carried on a fine line of reparteewith the ring master, particularly aboutthe lady who was dressed in pink tulleskirts and was seated on a fine broad-backed horse which was being slowly led

around the ring. The lady in the pinktulle skirts was very gracious and leanedforward and patted her horse’s neck, andeven condescended to smile at some of theclown’s finest witticisms—especially thosethat referred to herself. The argumentalways ended by the clown getting the bet-ter of it and a laugh on the ring master;but the latter evened things up by givingthe mummer a good cut of the long whiparound the legs. And then the bandwould strike up again, and the lady wouldonce more stand on the horse’s back andleap through hoops covered with paper, orover silken banners. We will never againsee the lady go cracking through thosehoops of paper. Now she wears a balldress and is too statuesque to jumpthrough a hoop or anything else.

I quite forget how that circus ended;but I know that I went back again atnight and loved the lady in pink tulle evenbetter by gaslight than I had in the glareof the afternoon sunshine. It was indeedall better and finer-that is, up to the be-ginning of the “concert.” That musthave been a very bad concert, for I re-member it did not seem to be quite right,even to me. Or perhaps it may have beenthat I knew it was the beginning of theend. As the clown finished his last song,they were even then taking down some ofthe poles; and as I walked out to have onemore look at my friends the animals, themenagerie tent had gone entirely, and there

Playing for a Knock-out.

Seen under the Big White Tent.

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was nothing overhead but the stars, andabout us one every side were the shadowyfigures of the canvas-men tugging at ropesand loading the poles and canvas boxeson great long wagons. The cages wereclosed, and there were no growls from thesleeping animals—nothing but the swear-ing of the manager and the pawing of thehorses tied to the cages they were soon todrag over the country roads to the nexthappy village.

Just as the opera, the legitimate dramaand the musical comedy have undergonemany changes in this country during thelast twenty years, so has the circus. Themen who have been chiefly responsiblefor such changes were that greatest of allshowmen, P. T. Barnum, Adam Fore-paugh and James A. Bailey. It is theywho have, during that time, held theirfingers on the public wrist and felt itsdesires and catered to its wishes. Whenit seemed advisable, they have eliminatedcertain of the old features and added newones to fill their places. Barnum hadreduced this to such a science that just-before he died he was authority for thestatement that the public wanted onlyfifty-five minutes of real circus. Theremaining time must be filled up withchariot races and spectacles. The highestpoint to which a circus can be broughtmay be seen every spring at the MadisonSquare Garden in New York. Througha gradual evolution it has been discoveredthat this is what the circus-going publicof to-day wants. It is a great and won-derful mixture of athletic skill, horseman-ship and a dash of comedy, which forms acombination absolutely mystifying in itsextent and variety. There are three ringsand two platforms, and for the greaterpart of the time these are all in constantuse. The one moment in which they arenot all doing service should be the crucialmoment of the performance. At thattime there should occur the thrill downeverybody’s back that is a pleasure whichis almost pain. There was a day whenwe were thrilled at the sight of a horse andrider leaping through a hoop of flame.But in time we became callous to this, andit was necessary to find a gentleman who,for an emolument, would dive from theroof of Madison Square Garden into asmall tank sunk in the floor many feetbelow. Later we had the one-legged

bicycle rider who flew down an absurdlynarrow plank, and later still the man wholooped the loop.

Some people think the day we celebrateis the Fourth of July; but on that joyousoccasion it has always seemed to me it isthe small boy who celebrates, and thefather stands ready to turn the hose on hisoffspring or the house, as the emergencymay require. At Christmas it is again thechild who enjoys the tree which the fatherstayed up all night to dress. At New Year’s,the youth it is who goes forth to the panto-mime, while the father stays at home to goover the annual accounts and see how farChristmas greetings have set him back.The day we celebrate, I think, is the daywe go to the circus. The boy and the girlare through school for that day, and thefather slips off from the office and motherdrops her sewing or her visiting list, as thecase may be, and they all go hand in hand,to laugh at the clown, to wonder at thefreaks, to admire the skill of the acro-bats, and to be thrilled sufficiently at theone-legged bicycle rider. In Paris theParisian goes to his circus as he dropsin at the Variétés or a café-concert. Hesmokes his after-dinner cigar, and hewanders through the stables and pats afew horses on the back with his white-gloved hand. He is languidly interestedin the high-school horse, but even more soin the latest scandal concerning the ladywho rides him. There, is no thrill, and heis glad of it. But how different it is here.We go to the circus as we do to a footballmatch—a keen dread in our hearts thatsome one, will be killed and a sore senseof disappointment when it is all over andboth elevens are left more than half alive.We sincerely hope the gentleman does loopthe loop as advertised; but if he is going tofall and break his neck sometime, it cer-tainly is hard luck if he doesn’t choose ournight. That was the only trouble with thecircus last year—everybody, seemed soperfectly protected by nets, and there waslacking that fearful five minutes of prep-aration when even the band stopped andthe announcer with the foghorn voice toldus from his place in the band stand how“The Demon” was about to perform histhrilling death-defying cycle act and ear-nestly craved our absolute silence. Itwasn’t necessary; for we all stop breathingat those times for minutes together, I am

A Moment of Real Life behind the Scenes.

sure. And how we watch “The Demon” out to the box office and demand that ouras he prepares aloft under the hot roof and dollar and a half be returned to us. No,wipes his hands on a clean handkerchief, there is no question, we missed the thrillerHow deftly he handles his bicycle and how last year. To be sure,, there was Mr.incomparably cool he is to all the rest of Cyclo, who “scorned fear and sportedus. We feel at that moment that we with the King of Terrors by wheeling atwould proffer him our gold watch and right angles on a perpendicular plane—achain if he would not try the death-defying seemingly impossible feat executed withact, and if he didn’t we should probably go deadly certainty and most fascinating skill

1 50 The Circus

and aplomb.” And in fact there was justone moment when there seemed to be agood chance of his flying out into theaudience; but it was only for a briefmoment, and we lacked that thrill of thefive minutes’ preparation. There was alsoa special feature, Mlle. Helene Gerardfrom the Cirque Nouveau—a most wel-come visitor to our sawdust rings. Shewas chic and Parisienne to her finger tips,and she drove her dappled horse with won-derful skill and grace. But Mlle. Gerardbelongs to the Boulevards. She needs thered plush seats and the gilded mirrors ofher own dainty cirque. Here we want thedeath-defiers, and the virility of the act ofthe one-legged bicylist. There is alwaysa good chance we may see him break hisother leg. Mlle. Gerard’s limbs encasedin that fine Paquin gown are altogether toosafe for the American circus-goer.

No one who ever attended the circus atMadison Square Garden, certainly if theywere grown-ups, failed to wonder at theapparent smoothness with which the pro-gram is carried out. At the last circusthere were eighty-five separate acts, andthey were executed twice a day withoutany delay or friction whatever. The actsincluded pretty much everything knownto the sawdust ring, in addition to aKiralfy spectacle employing about fourhundred men and women. Of coursethe most important part is the originalassignment of all these turns, and theextraordinary part of it all is, that this isnot done by general rehearsals, but onpaper. Six months before the circusopens, Mr. Bailey makes out a list of thenumber and the kind of turns he wants.Then he sends his agents broadcast overthe globe and collects them.

Every act is allowed seven minutes, butthe greatest ingenuity has to be shown inthe way they must occur so that the inter-est of the audience may always be kept up.Then many of the artists appear in severalturns, and time must be given them tomake the proper changes of costume.The clowns must be so placed as to appearat their best, but not so as to interfere withthe ring or trapeze turns. Propertiesmust be brought out and put in place forone act while the preceding one is takingplace, and the aërial acts must be such asto attract the attention of the audiencefrom the preparations which are going on

below, and vice versa. This is all arrangedbefore the first performance, and so skilledhas Mr. Bailey become in arranging thesedetails that he can tell within ten minutesjust how long a performance will run.Like a “proclucer” of a modern play, soMr. Bailey’s work ends with the rise of thecurtain on the first performance. Then itis up to Mr. Frank Melville, the ring mas-ter, who practically stage-manages theshow.

During a performance of the last circus,Melville had under his direct supervisionnearly two hundred performers, fortyproperty men, sixty canvas-men, fourhundred “extra” men and women for theKiralfy spectacle, besides innumerableherds of trained horses, elephants andanimals of every description. I met Mr.Melville “behind the scenes” just afterthe afternoon performance had begun,and I watched him for over two hours, andin that time I failed to see anyone who didnot have an apparently more vivid interestin the entertainment than himself. Hewas dressed in the conventional garb ofthe ring master—the dress suit and highsilk hat and the riding boots, just as hisfather and grandfather had worn thembefore him in the same capacity. In hishand he carried the badge of his office, thewhip with the long lash. This seemedto cause him considerable amusement andhe played with it continually. I have meta number of small men in high places atwork, and the pigeon-holes of their desksseemed to be always stuffed with papers,and they were always just signing docu-ments. The really big men I have knownwho held big places never seemed to haveanything on their desks at all—nothingbut plenty of time, and a row of electric-buttons near at hand. It seemed to methat Mr. Melville was in the electric-button class. He always seemed to havetime to talk and was forever smiling at thesnake-like movements of the lash on hiswhip. When a young woman white withfear approached him to apologize aboutsomething having gone badly in her act,he cracked his whip and smiled, and whentwenty of the seventy horses he himselfwas exhibiting broke loose and ran outof the ring, I found him still smiling. Sofar as I could tell, he had no right-handman. He was the whole show. Oc-casionally he wandered over to an electric

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button, which I happened to know ranga signal to the performers in their dressing-rooms to prepare for the next act, and ontwo occasions when horses became frac-tious, I noticed it was Melville’s whip thatbrought them into line. He remindedme of the best example of the tennisplayer—the kind you never see move, andyet who always seems to be in just theright place at the right time.

“Behind the scenes” at the circus at theGarden consists of a space about sixtyfeet broad, at the Madison Square end,shut off from the rest of the building by aboard partition, with two large doors lead-ing into the arena. It seemed an absurdlysmall amount of room for the purpose,especially as more than half of it wastaken up with the carriages, floats andchariots used in the performance. Thisleft an open space of perhaps thirty feetthe full width of the building. At eitherend are narrow staircases leading to thedressing-rooms above, and runways tothe lower floor for the animals. Alongthis thirty-foot space there constantlypassed a string of performers, herds ofhorses and elephants, and long lines ofproperty men carrying the paraphernaliainto the ring. Here, too, the performersmade their last preparations before theirturns. The men and women who ex-hibited the high-school horses weremounted here, the tumblers did a littlepreliminary tumbling, the acrobats lim-bered up with a few hand-springs, andthe clowns discussed new “business”for their turns. In addition to this therewere quiet little groups of Japanesejugglers with folded arms, and bicycleriders testing their wheels, and Mlle.Gerard, who required much time in beingtucked into her fête-des-fleurs runabout.The things that impressed me most aboutit all were the deathly stillness and theneedless waste of space in that thirty-footpassage. The big doors swung open, andon one side twenty acrobats ran out whileas many elephants lumbered in; andthrough the other doors Mr. Melville’sseventy horses, unguided, raced by in anunbroken line and quite heedless of theband of tumblers running out.

Circus people are called on the pro-gram artists, but among themselves theyare “performers,” and they certainlydeserve the title. Each man plays many

parts, and it is not an unusual thing for agood performer to be a first-class bare-back rider, a tumbler, wire-performer andtrapeze-artist. As a matter of fact, there arevery few new tricks in the circus business,and a good worker will in time practicallyacquire all of them. This is partly due, inall probability, to the fact that their lifeis confined to the circus absolutely, and.in the second place it was necessary inthe old-time circus, and to-day is oftenexpedient, to have one man attend to manyduties of all grades. As an example, Imet a gentleman who, when I was behindthe scenes, had just finished exhibitinga high-school horse. He was dressed ina cutaway coat and a high hat, and cer-tainly ranked as a performer of the firstclass. A little later I was sitting in anarena box, and I recognized my’ frienddressed in the red coat and velvet cap ofan ordinary ring attendant. He seemedto feel his loss of social position greatly,for he carefully avoided me; but a veryshort time afterwards he appeared in aRoman toga and driving four spiritedhorses. Then he was indeed restored tosocial distinction, and he gave me such asweeping bow that it almost threw himout of his chariot.

Before this visit to the circus, it hadnever been my good fortune to have per-sonally met a clown, although I mustadmit to having had a long-cherisheddesire to know something of the kind ofmen clowns really were outside of thering. The personal life of anyone whois at all in the public eye to-day is sothoroughly threshed out in the Sundaynewspapers that I have often wonderedhow the fashionable clowns of the circusescaped. Take, for instance, the tallyoung man in the show of last year, whoeasily led his fellow workers in the comedypart of the entertainment, and it seemedto me in his specialties, especially whenhe appeared as an Eastern snake-charmer,that he showed an amount of true comedy,both in conception and technique, whichvery few of our stage comedians possess.And so I sought out the young man andfound him leaning on the wheel of agolden chariot waiting for his first entrance.He was very, very tall, and this he hadaccentuated with large false feet. He hada silly straw bonnet on his head, and hisface was thick with white chalk and his

1 5 2 The Circus

mouth was painted to appear as if itstretched almost from ear to ear. Hewas yawning as I approached, and heseemed rather bored with things generally.I introduced myself and began to talk tohim about his work, which I had seenseveral times, and hence was more or lessfamiliar with. I must say my conversa-tion seemed to interest him, and so hestretched out a long arm and shook mewarmly by the hand.

“You can’t understand how far a littleencouragement goes,” he said.

“But,” I replied, “it seems to me, withten thousand people laughing at youtwice a day, you should not need any out-side encouragement.”

The young man looked out throughthe open door to the solid walls of facesabout the arena. Even through thegrease paint he had a particularly sweetsmile that was quite lovable.

“Yes,” he said, “we hear them laughand applaud, but they never speak to us.They are so far away from us. Andthen, too, you see we clowns work to-gether. It’s not like a comedian on thestage, who has his own scenes. Thereare twenty men working with me, French-men, Italians, Englishmen and Americans,and so you see it is difficult to know justfor whom the applause is meant.”

As he was unquestionably the premierclown, his modesty, which was evidentlygenuine, struck me as rather abnormal.

It seemed to me that the young manhad not been used to much sympathy,for he was very anxious to defend theprofession of clowning, and to tell me ofall its difficulties.

“I have to create all my own acts, yousee,” he said. “There is no librettistas there is for the actor. Mr. Melvillecomes to me one day and tells me to havea ten-minute act ready for the next day,and so the next morning I get the otherclowns together and we try something Ihave worked out the night before. Some-times it goes and sometimes it doesn’t;and when it doesn’t, I sit up the nextnight and work out something else. Wereally never know at rehearsals how funnyan act is, and I generally find the turns Iwork on during the winter, when we arelaying off, are never as funny as those thatI put on after one rehearsal. Of coursethe great trouble is that we are trying to

be funny to an audience a great part ofwhich is a block away from us, and inaddition to that, we are probably playingagainst a double trapeze and a bare-backact. Now you wait here, and when I comeback I will take you to my dressing-room.”

The attendants opened the doors and thetall, queer figure ambled out into the ring.For five minutes I could hear the audiencelaughing and applauding, and the childrenshrieking their pleasure at him. Andthen he came back, it seemed to me a littlemore depressed than ever, and led the wayup to his dressing-room, which he sharedwith about twenty other men. It was along,narrow room with low rafters, and dividedinto compartments not unlike stalls. Thewalls were hung with the circus clothesfour and five suits deep. The trunks werelined up against the walls of the com-partments, and on these the performers satwhile they made their changes. It washot and close, and there was little light andapparently no ventilation. When we firstwent in, the room was uncomfortablycrowded with a strange mixture of Frenchclowns, English acrobats, Japanese jug-glers, American jockeys, Cossack ridersand performers from every quarter of theglobe. The quiet of the big room downstairs was gone now, and everybody talkedand shouted at once, and each appar-ently in a different tongue. My friend,the clown, introduced me to many of hisco-workers, and I am sure they were allathletes—not only judging by their cos-tumes, but by the way they shook hands.When the introductions, which must havelasted two or three minutes, were over,my hand felt as if it belonged to the Presi-dent of the United States after a publicreception at the White House. When thebabble and confusion seemed to havereached its height, a bell sounded andthe crowd suddenly emptied itself outthrough a narrow doorway to the mainfloor below.

The clown led me to his own compart-ment, which seemed to be just like all therest and shared by many others, but hetold me with some pride that it was reallya place of some distinction on account ofits proximity to the one sink in which theentire company “washed up.”

“They allow me two trunks,” he said.“The little one is for my Sunday clothesand the big one for my costumes.”

The Circus 153

He proffered me the latter as the betterseat and he took the trunk containing theSunday suit. The room was quite de-serted now, and I always shall rememberthe queer, lanky figure sitting oppositeme, curled up against the spangled andtinseled clothes which covered the wallsof the compartment. It was late in theafternoon, and the little light there was,came through a dirty window pane. Theair was close and heavy with bad tobaccosmoke and the steaming “sweat clothes”of the performers. The clown wore thecostume of the Oriental snake-charmer,and as his work was over for that after-noon, he pulled off his red wig.

“He shows, as he removes the mask,A face that’s anything but gay.”

And in the same low voice and still inapparent need of sympathy he talked onabout the life of the circus clown. Howhe had drifted into the business as a cross-bar performer in a little circus, which hadvisited his town when he was fourteenyears old, and how a great clown had toldhim that he seemed to be a funny boy andhad better change from an acrobat to theprofession of clowning, in which there wasa real fortune. And so how for six monthsin the last twelve years he had been aclown twice a day. He spoke with muchpride of the men like Weber and Fields

and Grapewin, who had been clownsbefore reaching their present eminentpositions, and how he had once acted in atheater and of the delight of being so closeto an audience that he could recognizethe different faces. In those twelve yearshe had traveled all over this country andhad seen little beyond the circus groundsbecause he was always working. He hadfought everything from town toughs toelephants, and had performed with everyknown animal, and clowns from everycountry on the globe. The art of Mlle.Gerard was not lost upon him and he con-sidered her the “neatest of all performers.”

Those twelve years had certainly takenhim far and given him a wonderful knowl-edge of men and women and animals, buthis views had been confined to the worldwhich is ‘covered by the canvas walls ofthe circus tent. When I rose to go, Isaid: “I have one more question to askyou. After twelve years, how do you likethe circus?”

He glanced up at the faint light comingthrough the window and then about theroom covered with its soiled velvet clothesand tin armor and false faces, and the lineof trunks jammed against the walls of thenarrow room. Then the same sweet smilecame again through the face of chalk:

“Oh, it’s all right,” he said, “when thesun shines.”