



Produced by KD Weeks, deaurider and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)






------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          Transcriber’s Note:

This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_.

The few minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected.
Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details
regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its
preparation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            CIRCUS LIFE AND
                           CIRCUS CELEBRITIES

                                   BY

                              THOMAS FROST

      AUTHOR OF ‘THE OLD SHOWMEN AND THE OLD LONDON FAIRS,’ ‘LIVES
                        OF THE CONJURERS,’ ETC.

[Illustration]

                            _A NEW EDITION_

                            =London=

                     CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY

                                  1881




                                PREFACE.

                                -------


There are probably few persons who do not number among the most pleasant
recollections of their youth their first visit to a circus, whether
their earliest sniff of the saw-dust was inhaled in the building made
classical by Ducrow, or under the canvas canopy of Samwell or Clarke. In
my boyish days, the cry of ‘This way for the riders!’ bawled from the
stentorian vocal organs of the proprietor or ring-master of a travelling
circus, never failed to attract all the boys, and no small proportion of
the men and women, to the part of the fair from which it proceeded.
Fairs have become things of the past within twelve or fifteen miles of
the metropolis; but ever and anon a tenting circus pitches, for a day or
two, in a meadow, and the performances prove as attractive as ever. The
boys, who protest that they are better than a play,—the young women, who
are delighted with the ‘loves of horses,’—the old gentlemen, who are
never so pleased as when they are amusing their grandchildren,—the
admirers of graceful horsemanship of all ages,—crowd the benches, and
find the old tricks and the old ‘wheezes,’ as the poet found the view
from Grongar Hill, ‘ever charming—ever new.’

What boy is there who, though he may have seen it before, does not
follow with sparkling eyes the Pawnee Chief in his rapid career upon a
bare-backed steed,—the lady in the scarlet habit and high hat, who leaps
over hurdles,—the stout farmer who, while his horse bears him round the
ring, divests himself of any number of coats and vests, until he finally
appears in tights and trunks,—the juggler who plays at cup and ball, and
tosses knives in an endless shower, as he is whirled round the arena?
And which of us has not, in the days of our boyhood, fallen in love with
the fascinating young lady in short skirts who leaps through ‘balloons’
and over banners? Even when we have attained man’s estate, and learned a
wrinkle or two, we take our children to Astley’s or Hengler’s, and enjoy
the time-honoured feats of equitation, the tumbling, the gymnastics, and
the rope-dancing, as much as the boys and girls.

But of the circus _artistes_—the riders, the clowns, the acrobats, the
gymnasts,—what do we know? How many are there, unconnected with the
saw-dust, who can say that they have known a member of that strange
race? Charles Dickens, who was perhaps as well acquainted with the
physiology of the less known sections of society as any man of his day,
whetted public curiosity by introducing his readers to the humours of
Sleary’s circus; and the world wants to know more about the subject.
When, it is