Opening of the Holborn Amphitheatre—Friend’s season at Astley’s—Adah Isaacs Menken—Sanger’s Company at the Agricultural Hall—The CarrÉ troupe at the Holborn Amphitheatre—Wandering Stars of the Arena—Albert Smith and the Clown—Guillaume’s Circus—The Circo Price—Hengler’s Company at the Palais Royal—Re-opening of Astley’s by the Sangers—Franconi’s Circus—Newsome’s Circus—Miss Newsome and the Cheshire Hunt—Rivalry between the Sangers and Howes and Cushing.

After the lapse of several years, during which no equestrian performances were given in the metropolis, though gymnastic and acrobatic feats were exhibited nightly at a score of music-halls, a new amphitheatre was, in 1868, erected on the north side of Holborn. There, under the excellent management of Messrs Charman and Maccollum, have been exhibited some of the finest acts of horsemanship, and the most striking gymnastic feats, ever witnessed by this or any other generation. Alfred Bradbury’s wonderful jockey act; James Robinson’s great feat of hurdle-leaping on the bare back of a horse with a boy standing upon his shoulders; the marvellous leap through a series of hoops of George Delavanti; the astounding gymnastic performances of the Hanlons and the Rizarelis; the extraordinary somersaulting and rocket-like bound of the young lady known as Lulu; and the graceful riding of Beatrice Chiarini, without saddle or bridle, will not soon be forgotten by those who had the gratification of witnessing them.

In the same year that the Holborn Amphitheatre was opened, Astley’s was re-opened as a circus by Mr Friend. The chief attraction upon which Mr Friend relied was the impersonation of Mazeppa by Adah Isaacs Menken, a young lady of Jewish extraction, who came from America with the reputation of a female Crichton of the nineteenth century. According to a biographical sketch prefixed to a Paris version of the drama, The Pirate of the Savannah, in which she appeared in that city, she had written verses and essays at an age at which other girls are occupied with dolls, and translated the Iliad in her thirteenth year. In Latin and Hebrew, Spanish and German, she was as proficient as in Greek; French, her enthusiastic Gallic biographer does not seem to consider it necessary to mention. Her mother being left in reduced circumstances at her second widowhood, Adah resolved to devote her natural talents and acquired accomplishments to the stage, and made her appearance as a dancer at the opera-house at New Orleans, of which city she was a native.

After achieving the greatest artistic triumphs there and at Havanna, she abandoned the boards for the literary profession, publishing a volume of poems, and contributing for some time to two New Orleans journals. In 1858, being then seventeen years of age, she made her dÉbut as an actress in her native city, and subsequently performed in the chief towns of the West. In 1863 she went to San Francisco, and afterwards made a professional tour of the Eastern States, raising her reputation, according to her biographer, to the highest pitch.

Unfortunately for the maintenance of the exalted fame which she brought from the United States, this versatile lady appeared, not at the Italian Opera as a dancer, nor at Drury Lane or Covent Garden as an actress, which such fame should have entitled her to do, but at Astley’s in the character of Mazeppa; and it was still more unfortunate that the management pinned their faith in her powers of attraction, not upon her talent as an actress, but upon her beauty and grace, and her ability to play the part without recourse to a double for the fencing and riding. Enormous posters everywhere met the eye, representing the lady, apparently in a nude state, stretched on the back of a wild horse, and inviting the public to go to Astley’s, and see ‘the beautiful Menken.’ Young men thronged the theatre to witness this combination of poses plastiques with dramatic spectacle, and ‘girls of the period’ dressed their hair À la Menken, that is, like the frizzled crop of a negress; but the theatrical critics looked coldly and sadly upon the performance, and accused the management of ministering to a vitiated taste.

Adah Menken was at this time in her twenty-seventh year, and had a few years previously become the wife of Heenan, the pugilist, whose fine figure had won her regards when the wealthiest men in California were competing for her favours. The union was not a happy one, for which result both the parties have been blamed; and the cause of difference was probably one in respect of which neither could reproach the other without provoking recrimination. Heenan, who was then in London, might often have been seen at Astley’s during his wife’s engagement, and it was said that both desired a reconciliation, and that Adah had come to England with that view; but nothing came of it. ‘The beautiful Menken’ went to Paris, and was said to be on terms of tender intimacy with the elder Dumas. She died in Paris shortly afterwards, and her remains rest in the cemetery of PÈre La Chaise.

Adah Isaacs Menken was undoubtedly a woman of rare natural talents and great accomplishments. While in London, she published a volume of poems, with the general title of Infelicia, which correctly describes their tone and character. Some of them are as wild as anything which has emanated from Walt Whitman, and more are replete with the weird fancies and wayward genius of Poe; but all are pervaded by a deep and touching melancholy, which seems to shadow forth the spectre that haunted the author’s gay and brilliant life, like the garlanded skeleton at the festive board of the ancient Egyptians. From the suggestive title to the last of the little head-and-tail pieces, designed probably by Adah herself, everything in the book impresses a lesson which may be read in Ecclesiastes. In the first of these tiny engravings we seem to read the moral of the author’s life-story. It represents a woman stretched on the shore of a stormy sea, with her face to the earth, and her dark hair flowing over her recumbent form, which is faintly illuminated by the fitful light of a moon half-obscured by drifting masses of black clouds. The book was dedicated to Dickens, and contains a photographic reproduction of a letter from the great novelist, thanking ‘Dear Miss Menken’ for her portrait, and giving the desired permission to the dedication.

On the legal principle, it would seem, that two lawyers will live where one would starve, the Sangers brought their company and stud to the Agricultural Hall, where, for several successive winters, their performances attracted thousands of spectators. This establishment continues to travel during the summer, however, only resorting to a permanent building in the metropolis when the approach of winter renders ‘tenting’ as unpleasant as it is unprofitable. The Agricultural Hall, not having been constructed for equestrian entertainments, is not so well adapted for them as for the purpose for which it was especially designed, and the locality is far inferior, as a site for a circus, to that of the Holborn Amphitheatre, of the circus subsequently erected by Charles Hengler, or even Astley’s.

It was at the Holborn Amphitheatre that the first female trapezist appeared, in the person of a beautiful young woman rejoicing in the nom d’arena of Azella, the attractiveness of whose performances, as in the case of female lion-tamers, soon produced many imitators. Azella was announced to appear on the flying trapeze, and to turn a somersault; but this feat, which created such a sensation when performed by Leotard and Victor Julien, was exhibited by the fair aspirant to the highest gymnastic honours in a manner which caused some disappointment to those who had witnessed the performances of those renowned gymnasts at the Alhambra. Instead of throwing off from one bar, turning the somersault, and catching the next bar, Azella threw off, and somersaulted in her descent from the bar to the bed placed for her to alight upon. The grace with which all her evolutions were performed combined, however, with the beauty of her person and the novelty of seeing such feats performed by a woman, to secure her an enthusiastic reception whenever she appeared.

Azella was succeeded at the Amphitheatre by Mdlle Pereira, who performed similar feats, which she had exhibited in 1868 at Cremorne. Imitators soon appeared at all the music-halls in the metropolis. At some of these the long flight of Jean Price was emulated by a lady named Haynes, who transformed herself, for professional purposes, into Madame Senyah by the device of spelling her real name backward. A variation from Price’s mode of performing the feat was presented by this lady, whose husband appeared with her in a double trapeze act, and hanging from the bar by his feet, caught her with his arms as she swung towards him on loosing her hold of the stirrups.

The company with which the Amphitheatre was opened was succeeded, after a long and successful career, by the CarrÉ troupe, which introduced to the metropolis Alfred Burgess, who unites the qualifications of a clown with those of an accomplished equestrian and clever revolving globe performer. Clowns would seem to be precluded, by the nature of their business, from the cosmopolitan wanderings of other circus performers; but the name of Burgess is almost as famous on the continent as that of Charles Keith, who has performed in nearly every European capital, though Albert Smith has given a picture of clowning under difficulties which might well deter those who cannot crack a ‘wheeze’ in half a dozen languages from venturing into lands where English is not spoken.

‘One evening,’ says the humourist, ‘I went to the Grand Circo Olympico—an equestrian entertainment in a vast circular tent, on a piece of open ground up in Pera; and it was as curious a sight as one could well witness. The play-bill was in three languages—Turkish, Armenian, and Italian; and the audience was composed almost entirely of Levantines, nothing but fezzes being seen round the benches. There were few females present, and of Turkish women none; but the house was well filled, both with spectators and the smoke from the pipes which nearly all of them carried. There was no buzz of talk, no distant hailings, no whistlings, no sounds of impatience. They all sat as grave as judges, and would, I believe, have done so for any period of time, whether the performance had been given or not.

‘I have said the sight was a curious one, but my surprise was excited beyond bounds when a real clown—a perfect Mr Merriman of the arena—jumped into the ring, and cried out, in perfect English: “Here we are again—all of a lump! How are you?” There was no response to his salutation, for it was evidently incomprehensible; and so it fell flat, and the poor clown looked as if he would have given his salary for a boy to have called out “Hot codlins!” I looked at the bill, and found him described as the “Grottesco Inglese,” Whittayne. I did not recognize the name in connection with the annals of Astley’s, but he was a clever fellow, notwithstanding; and, when he addressed the master of the ring, and observed, “If you please, Mr Guillaume, he says, that you said, that I said, that they said, that nobody had said, nothing to anybody,” it was with a drollery of manner that at last agitated the fezzes, like poppies in the wind, although the meaning of the speech was still like a sealed book to them.

‘I don’t know whether great writers of Eastern travel would have gone to this circus; but yet it was a strange sight. For aught that one could tell we were about to see all the mishaps of Billy Button’s journey to Brentford represented in their vivid discomfort upon the shores of the Bosphorus, and within range of the sunset shadows from the minarets of St Sophia! The company was a very fair one, and they went through the usual programme of the amphitheatre. One clever fellow threw a bullet in the air, and caught it in a bottle during a “rapid act;” and another twisted himself amongst the rounds and legs of a chair, keeping a glass full of wine in his mouth. They leaped over lengths of stair-carpet, and through hoops, and did painful things as Olympic youths and Lion Vaulters of Arabia.

‘The attraction of the evening, however, was a very handsome girl—Maddalena Guillaume—with a fine Gitana face and exquisite figure. Her performance consisted in clinging to a horse, with merely a strap hung to its side. In this she put one foot, and flew round the ring in the most reckless manner, leaping with the horse over poles and gates, and hanging on, apparently, by nothing, until the fezzes were in a quiver of delight, for her costume was not precisely that of the Stamboul ladies—in fact, very little was left to the imagination.’

I quote this passage for the purpose of showing that the wanderings of the men and women whose vocation it is to entertain the public as equestrians, clowns, acrobats, and jugglers are not confined to the limits within which actors and singers obtain foreign engagements. There are very few men or women of eminence in the profession who have not visited nearly every European capital, and many of them have made the tour of the world. Price’s circus was for many years one of the most popular institutions of Madrid, and the Circo Price was to English circus artistes what Cape Horn is to American seamen. Tell an equestrian or an acrobat that you think you have seen him before, and he will ask, ‘Was it at the Circo Price?’ just as a Yankee sailor will snuffle, ‘I guess it was round the Horn.’ To have appeared at the Hippodrome or the Cirque Imperiale is a very small distinction indeed, when so many have performed in Madrid and Naples, Berlin and St Petersburg, and not a few have traversed the United States from New York to San Francisco, and then crossed the ocean, and performed in Sydney and Melbourne, or Yokohama, Hong Kong, and Calcutta.

Circus performers wander about the world more generally, and to a greater extent, than the acrobats and jugglers who perform in music-halls, from whom they are separated into a distinct class by the requirements of circus engagements. All aspirants to saw-dust honours being engaged for ‘general utility,’ it is necessary for them to understand the whole routine of circus business, whether their specialty is riding, vaulting, clowning, or any other branch. They are required to take part in vaulting acts, to hold hoops, balloons, banners, &c., which requires some practice before it can be done properly, and to line the entrance to the ring when a lady of the company flutters into it, or bows herself out of it. For this last duty, the proprietors of the best appointed circuses provide uniform dresses, which are worn by all the male members of the company, when not engaged in their performances, from the time the circus opens until they retire to the dressing-room for the last time. I am speaking, of course, of those who form the permanent company of a circus, and not of those engaged, as ‘stars,’ for six or twelve nights.

The ‘bright particular star’ of the Amphitheatre, during the season of 1870, was the young lady known as Lulu, and who was recognized by frequenters of that popular place of entertainment as the agile and graceful child who had appeared, a few years previously, with her father, at the Alhambra and Cremorne, as ‘the flying Farinis,’ in a performance somewhat resembling that of the Brothers Hanlon and the child called ‘Little Bob.’ She was then supposed to be a boy, and much amusement was created after her appearance at the Amphitheatre as an avowed woman, by the recollection of her having, after descending from the lofty arrangement of trapezes and ladders on which she performed at the Alhambra, advanced to the footlights, and sang a song, each verse of which ended with the words, ‘Wait till I’m a man.’ The secret of her sex was at that time unknown even to the performers at the Alhambra, at least to the masculine portion, among whom the circumstance of her being accompanied by her mother, and performing the operations of the toilet in the ladies’ dressing-room, was a frequent subject of wonder and speculation.

There was a doubt also about the sex of the child who for a long time did a gymnastic performance at the London Pavilion, very similar to that given by Olmar at the Alhambra. The child was announced as ‘Little Corelli,’ and was generally supposed to be a boy; but I have since heard that it was a girl.

The performances of Azella and Pereira had not satiated the public appetite for the feats of female gymnasts, and the manager of the Amphitheatre secured in Lulu a star of the first magnitude. Her triple somersault is a feat in which she is still unrivalled; and though George Conquest has since achieved her wonderful vertical spring of twenty-five feet from the ring-fence, the means by which it is accomplished is still a mystery. Lulu was succeeded by the Brothers Rizar, as they now chose to be called, though they had gained immense applause a few years previously at the Alhambra as the Brothers Rizareli. The double trapeze of these clever gymnasts is perfectly unique, and must be seen to be believed.

The Amphitheatre did not continue without a competitor for the patronage of that portion of the public which delights in witnessing feats of equestrianism and gymnastics. Hengler’s circus, after being located for some time in Bristol, and afterwards in Dublin, settled down at the Palais Royal, in Argyle Street, and introduced to the metropolis all the Henglers and Powells, male and female, whose praises had been sounded by the provincial press all over the kingdom. The most noteworthy members of the company were Louise Hengler, an admirable horse-woman, who, like Adele Newsome, rides and leaps in a ‘cross country’ fashion, over hurdles and six-barred gates; James Lloyd, most experienced in his art, and one of the neatest, as well as of the boldest, of riders; John Milton Hengler, who danced on a tight-rope with a grace and skill which fully justified the warmth of the applause with which the performance was received; and Franks, the clown, who, before joining the Hengler troupe, had been the chief exponent of fun and humour attached to Newsome’s circus.

The circumstance of John M. Hengler dispensing with the balancing-pole in his performance was mentioned by some of the newspaper critics as if it was unique; but every frequenter of the London music-halls must have observed the same feature in the similar performance of a member of the clever Elliott family.

Scarcely had the lovers of circus entertainments had time to solve the problem of the possibilities of success for two amphitheatres in London when Astley’s was re-opened as a circus by the Sangers. Circus performances are necessarily so much alike that it is only by the production of a constant succession of novelties, as was done at the Holborn establishment, or by combining hippo-dramatic spectacles with the ring performances, as Ducrow and Batty did, that any distinctive character can be established. The Sangers followed the example of their predecessors, and preceded the acts in the arena by an equestrian drama of the kind which had been found attractive in the palmy days of Astley’s. The ring performances were good, but presented no novelty. Lavinia Sanger deserved her tribute of applause as a skilful rider, who gracefully leaped over banners and boldly dashed through ‘balloons;’ and her brother’s, or cousin’s, feat of riding, or rather driving, a number of horses at once, in emulation of Ducrow, was very creditably performed, but who has not seen similar feats as well performed in every circus he has entered? We should be sorry to miss them; but they should be the ‘padding’ of the programme, and not its staple.

I have often heard the question asked, ‘What can be done upon a horse which has not been done before?’ The question has been answered again and again by the equestrian feats of such masters or the art of equitation as Andrew Ducrow, Henry Adams, John Henry Cooke, Henry Welby Cooke, George Delavanti, James Robinson, and Alfred Bradbury. It is only by doing something which has never been done before, or by performing some feat in a very superior style to that of previous exhibitors, that a circus artiste can emerge from the ruck, whether he is a rider, a tumbler, a juggler, or a gymnast.

‘If you want to get your name up,’ I said, several years ago, to a young gymnast, ‘you must do something that has not been done before, and not be content with performing such feats as may be seen every night, in every music-hall in London.’

‘What can we do?’ he inquired.

‘Ay, “there’s the rub!” Only a gymnastic genius can answer the question. You may be sure that question was asked of themselves by Leotard, and Olmar, and Farini, and all the other fellows who have made their names famous, as the first performers of a skilful and daring feat. You know how they answered it, and what salaries they got. As in the story of Columbus and the egg, when a trick has once been done, there are many who can repeat it, but it is the first performer that gets the greatest fame and the highest salary.’

I must conclude this chapter with a brief notice of the changes and movements of the principal travelling circuses during the last ten years. In 1864, Franconi’s was at Nottingham for a time, with Charlie Keith as clown and the Madlles Monfroid holding a conspicuous place among the equestrian members of the company. Newsome’s circus was, later in the year, at Chester, as I find by the following passage in a local journal descriptive of a foxhunt:—‘The pace was terrific, and the country the stiffest in Cheshire. This description would be incomplete if I omitted to mention Miss Newsome, of the Chester Circus. This young lady astonished the whole field by the plucky way in which she rode. She unquestionably led the whole way, and never came to grief once. Straight was her motto, and straight she went; brook, hedge, and cop were cleared by her in a style never seen in Cheshire before, and when Reynard was deprived of his brush, it was most deservedly presented to her amidst the cheers of all present.’

The movements of this circus during the following year are related, in another chapter, by a gentleman who was at that time a member of the company. In the spring of 1870, Messrs Sanger, whose circus is the largest and most complete tenting establishment travelling in this country, were threatened with a formidable rivalry by the appearance in the field of the great American circus of Howes and Cushing. How they met it is thus told by Mr Montague, who was then their agent in advance:—

‘It is well known that two large tenting concerns will not pay in England. Under these circumstances, Messrs Sanger determined to drive the Yankees off the road, which we ultimately succeeded in doing. Our mode of fighting them was to bill all the towns taken by them as though we were coming the following day, it being known to us that English people will always wait for the last circus, when two or more companies are advertised at the same time. Our next move was to take all the best towns in the North first. We succeeded so well with this mode of operation that we ultimately performed in the same town with them, namely, Preston, in Lancashire. On this memorable occasion, showmen came from all parts of England, two such concerns never having been seen in one town on the same day. Messrs Howes and Cushing acknowledged themselves beaten, and shortly afterwards returned to America.’

William Darby, better known as Pablo Fanque, died in the following year, at the ripe age of seventy-five. Charles Hengler had adopted the plan so successfully followed by Newsome, of locating his circus in permanent buildings, maintaining several for the purpose, and remaining several months at each place. The principal members of his company in 1873, were Miss Jenny Louise Hengler, Miss Cottrell, John Henry Cooke, Hubert Cooke, William Powell, Herr Oscar, the Hogini family, the Brothers Alexander, and the clowns, Bibb and ‘Little Sandy.’ Newsome’s company comprised, at the same time, in addition to the clever ladies of his family, Charles and Andrew Ducrow (descendants of the great equestrian of that name), Hubert Mears, Fredericks, and the gymnast known as Avolo.

Sanger’s is the only great circus which follows the tenting system, which can be successfully pursued only by those who possess a numerous stud of showy horses. A less powerful company than Hengler or Newsome finds necessary will do, because, the performances being given only two nights in a town, the programme does not require to be changed so frequently as when the company perform every night for a period of three months in the same place; and the horses may be ridden in parades by the grooms and their wives or daughters. But the public do not believe in a tenting circus, unless its resources are put forth in a parade, for which purpose a large number of horses are required, with a handsome band-carriage, an elephant, and a couple of camels. The cost of maintaining such an establishment is so great that the system cannot be successfully pursued without a large capital, and the most complete and efficient organization. Without both these requisites a bad season will ruin the proprietor, as many have found by sad experience.