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CHAPTER 1
Life before Astley
Philip Astley did not invent the circus. Generic physical skills had been in existence for thousands of years before his time. The origins of many of these will never be known. We do not know who was the first person to balance across a thin rope or walk upon stilts or manipulate objects in time and space and begin to juggle, or, more importantly, why. Many of these skills will have had their origins in practical needs, and I have an image in my mind of some primitive person raking potatoes or roots from the hot embers and then tossing them from hand to hand because they were too hot to hold. Who knows? Many circus skills are rooted in ancient folk cultures. On the island of Crete, Minoan frescoes show young acrobats vaulting over charging bulls, but it is not just the Minoan culture that shows us physical 'circus' activities being exhibited. A wall painting in the fifteenth tomb at Beni Hassan in Egypt depicts female jugglers and acrobats, and dates from about 1900 BC. A century earlier, also in Egypt, the young Pharaoh Pepi gave the first recorded performance of a clown. In the ancient Greece of 700 BC, wandering clown figures were seen in Sparta. Meanwhile in China, the tradition of circus goes back some 4,000 years and is steeped in symbolism; traditional plate spinning was thought to be a way of man communicating with the gods. During the Han dynasty, plate spinning and acrobatics were used to impress visitors to the Emperor's court. In parts of Africa, traditional stilt dancers used their magical powers to reach up high to drive away evil spirits from the village. Many of these skills had a religious or ritualistic context. There is still something quite magical about someone who can juggle or stilt walk or ride a unicycle, and their skills seem to transcend the human experience. For us mere mortals these people are beyond human, imbued with magic. Little wonder that in ancient Japan an army was put to flight by the sight of one soldier juggling with seven swords.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the tradition of the itinerant performer continued. They appeared under a variety of names from the ninth to the seventeenth centuries: jongleurs, gleemen, troubadours and jesters. These would be adept in a diversity of skills: acrobatics, juggling, legerdemain and foolery. Sometimes they were skilled in music and song as well. They performed where they could, at fairs and markets and anywhere else a crowd might gather, such as depicted in the seventeenth-century painting The Village Fair, by Pieter Brueghel the Younger. At a time when social mobility was very constrained – farmers begat farmers, carpenters begat carpenters and so on – the jester could, and sometimes did, move beyond his class. Occasionally, these performers would be engaged or retained by noblemen, and their displays of physical skills we would acknowledge in a circus today. One unidentified jongleur is referred to by G. Speaight (1980), who described his ability to sing a song well, and make tales to please young ladies. He could throw knives into the air and catch them without cutting his fingers. He could balance chairs and make tables dance; he could somersault and walk upon his hands.
However, jongleurs were not always desirable people. The fourteenth-century Italian poet Petrarch referred to them as 'people of no great wit and impudent beyond measure'. If jongleurs were not well accepted then there was another form of entertainer who accorded even less respect – the gleeman. As entertainers, they were very much considered the lowest of the low. Female counterparts to these male entertainers were also recorded at this time. These were known as gleemaidens and could be as skilled as the men. It is thought that female performers were not as uncommon during the medieval period as we might imagine. In her book The King's Fool: A Book about Medieval and Renaissance Fools (1993), Dana Fradon maintains that buffoonery was one of the few professions open to women at that time. Certainly there were female jesters, or jestresses, at courts right up until the beginning of the eighteenth century. One such jestress, named La Jardinière, served the court of Mary Queen of Scots, and in 1536 it is recorded in state papers that another, Lucretia the Tumbler, be appointed as a Chamberer to attend on the Princess Mary. Later, in 1544, records show that included in the Queen's Payments is a sum of 'three geese for Jane Foole'. Jane the Foole, or Jane Foole as she was commonly referred to, is perhaps the only female jester to ever be depicted in a painting. In the collection of paintings at Hampton Court is one of Henry VIII and his family. In the far right corner is the figure of Will Somers, the court jester, and on the left is a figure that is thought to be Jane.
By the middle of the seventeenth century, things were to change drastically for itinerant performers. With the ending of the Civil War and the execution of Charles I, the English Commonwealth was established under the control of Oliver Cromwell. During the period of the Interregnum, from 1649–60, performances of dancing and plays by live actors were forbidden but the state did not challenge performances by puppets or other entertainers such as the jongleur and the rope dancer. It is a little known fact that Cromwell himself had in his service at least four 'buffoons'. All the skills of the jesters and other itinerant performers endured chiefly because of their popular nature. They were entertainers of the people, and people still needed to be entertained during those turbulent times. They survived in gatherings such as borough fairs like Bartholomew Fair, Southwark Fair and other May fair gatherings. Bartholomew Fair was first created by a character named Rahère, jester to Henry I in the twelfth century.
William Hogarth gives us a vivid picture of what a borough fair would have looked like in his 1733 engraving Southwark Fair or The Humours of a Fair. A multitude of people are taking in the amusements and entertainments. People are pushing and shoving in their efforts to see what is going on. In the middle of the square is a very pretty woman playing a drum, accompanied by a small black boy on a trumpet. Above and behind them a man performs tricks on a slack rope slung between two buildings. This man is well known as Violante. Between the church tower and a nearby tree another aerial performer called Cadman, known as the 'flying man', has fixed a rope. With his arms outstretched he descends the rope headfirst. Placards advertising forthcoming entertainments are all around. Behind the rope dancer is one advertising Maximillian Muller, the famous German Giant, who is reputed to have stood over 8 feet tall. On the right of the square another placard shows two contortionists. Beneath that placard, on a balcony, is a drumming monkey accompanying the famous Isaac Fawkes, a noted juggler and magician of the period. He is demonstrating a magic trick to the crowd. A dwarf drummer leads a man upon a horse. The man is holding a fearsome looking sword in his hand and it is said that he will later be giving a demonstration of swordsmanship. Behind the gamblers and near a blind piper with his puppets, there is a dancing dog. Complete with hat, sword and cane, he is a very miniature of the gallants in the crowd. To the left of the picture a balcony collapses. These temporary booths were quite often thrown up very quickly just for the fairs and are were not at all well constructed. Men and women begin to tumble to the ground onto the heads of those below as a small monkey clings desperately to one of the uprights. In his detailed engraving, Hogarth has given us what must have been a bustling, chaotic assault on the senses.
By the turn of the seventeenth century, these markets had become less focused on business and increasingly more on pleasure, with myriad entertainments, and now lasted for up to four weeks. Diarists such as John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys both visited Southwark Fair and commented on the sights to be seen. Evelyn describes seeing monkeys and asses dancing on a tightrope. He observed an Italian girl dance and perform tricks on the tightrope to much admiration, so much so that the whole court went to see her. Another interesting exhibition that he saw, which could be taken directly from a modern circus, was that of a strong man who lifted up a piece of an iron cannon weighing about 400 pounds using only the hair of his head.
In 1668, Pepys referred to visiting a 'very dirty' Southwark Fair, where he went to see Jacob Hall dancing on the rope, 'to visit the mare that tells money and many things to admire – and then the dancing ropes ... and so to Jacob Hall's dancing of the ropes; a thing worth seeing, and mightily followed ...'
He later met Hall in a nearby tavern and struck up a conversation with him. Pepys asked Hall if there had ever been times when he had fallen during his shows, to which Hall said, 'Yes, many, but never to the breaking of a limb.' During his visits to Bartholomew Fair from 1663 to 1668, Pepys records seeing many rope dancers, clearly a popular entertainment. In each of these fairground entertainments can be found the elements of circus as we may recognise it today. Perhaps the beginning of the 'modern' circus would have started here, had it not been for the intervention of the English Civil War and the ensuing period of the Commonwealth, in which the arts and entertainment were almost wiped from the face of the country.
There is an old saying, 'Wherever the crowd, there a performer', and the London borough fairs such as Southwark, Bartholomew and the Greenwich May Fair became a magnet for all kinds of itinerant performers and their followers. But as well as being places of entertainment, these fairs had a darker and seedier side. They could also be places of drunkenness, prostitution and crime, and some people were very wary when visiting them. In the same year that Hogarth produced his engraving, a woman was trampled to death by the crowd at Southwark Fair, and earlier, in 1702, at the May Fair in Greenwich, a constable was fatally wounded during a riot. Because of the growth of urbanisation within London many of the boroughs were becoming more residential. There was increasing opposition from residents as the annual fairs caused much congestion and an increase in crime. There was great opposition to the fairs in general, and in 1763 Southwark Fair was banned by the authorities, although Bartholomew Fair continued well into the nineteenth century.
When the monarchy was restored in 1660, King Charles II brought with him a new era for the arts. Having been exiled in the French court during the period of Cromwell's rule, Charles had acquired a taste for the more artistic pursuits of the theatre, music, opera and art. He reopened the theatres and encouraged and supported performances. Nell Gwynne, one of the more well known of his several mistresses, was an actress herself. Charles also brought with him all the fashionable ideas of the French court, including that of the pleasure garden, very much influenced by what he had seen at the garden at the Palace of Versailles. At a time when London and other major cities were overcrowded, dirty and odious, these gardens were created on the edges of the urban sprawl to provide a space where people could go to 'take the airs'. More importantly, these became places for those of rank and fashion to display themselves. These pleasure gardens provided ample opportunity to swagger or stroll through the carefully manicured leafy walks of a romantic rustic idyll. This was a sensual, visual era and people liked to see and be seen, especially if they deemed themselves above the common classes. They went to the ever-increasing number of theatres; they began to wear elaborate and fanciful costumes that mirrored those of the theatre; and they liked to promenade in the growing number of pleasure gardens of the period.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, there were more than sixty pleasure gardens in the whole of London. Some were licensed to present music and dancing whilst those without a licence provided spaces for the playing of bowls or the taking of tea. As they became more and more fashionable, other provincial cities copied London. These were places designed for pleasure; places of intrigue and assignations.
New Spring Gardens opened to the public in 1661 in Lambeth, South London. John Evelyn, the diarist, called it a 'prettily contrived plantation' and Samuel Pepys picnicked on cakes, powdered beef, and ale during a visit to the gardens. On another trip, Pepys recalled, 'There came to us an idle boy to show us some tumbling tricks, which he did very well, and the greatest bending of his body that ever I observed in my life.'
In 1732, under the management of Jonathan Tyers, New Spring Gardens was reinvented as the new Vauxhall Gardens and people were charged a one shilling admission fee. Now the pleasure garden was not exclusive and anyone could enter who could pay the entrance fee. The garden extended over 12 acres and set into the leafy hedgerows along the walks were recessed bowers where one could rest or take tea. Royalty were regular visitors and Tyers built the Prince of Wales Pavilion for Prince Frederick. This was the age of the celebrity, with many aristocrats, actors, writers and artists using the pleasure gardens for recreation. In 1781, the presence of the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland attracted more than 11,000 visitors, and in 1784, the centennial celebration of the birth of George Frederick Handel drew a vast crowd. So people now had the possibility of rubbing shoulders with aristocrats or even royalty.
Amongst the walks and greenery, small pavilions and booths were erected so that the visitors could rest awhile from their walking to sit, eat, drink and converse. With gravelled walks bordered by fragrant bushes and overhung with trees, within which hundreds of glowing oil lamps were hung at night, it must have been a fairytale sight for the pleasure seekers. However, Tobias Smollett, in his 1771 work The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, gives us a very different picture through the eyes of his character Matthew Bramble:
What are the amusements of Ranelagh? One half of the company are following at the other's tails, in an eternal circle; like so many blind asses in an olive-mill ... while the other half are drinking hot water, under the denomination of tea, till nine or ten o'clock at night, to keep them awake for the rest of the evening. ... Vauxhall is a composition of baubles, overcharged with paltry ornaments, ill conceived, and poorly executed. ... The walks, which nature seems to have intended for solitude, shade and silence, are filled with crowds of noisy people, sucking up the nocturnal rheums of an anguish climate; and through these gay scenes, a few lamps glimmer like so many farthing candles.
As they developed, the gardens became places of entertainment and pleasure, art works were displayed in pavilions and music was played. In June 1764, even an eight-year-old Mozart gave a performance on the harpsichord in Chelsea's Ranelagh Gardens. Masquerades were always popular and recitals were given, very often accompanied by firework displays later in the century. But the gardens now also became venues for performers of physical feats. In the late seventeenth century, at the gardens on the site of the present-day Sadler's Wells theatre, rope dancers were engaged to entertain the public.
Performances also took place inside the building itself. From 1750 to 1800, there are several recorded performances of what we might term circus-style entertainments. Michael Maddox performed wire dancing and 'tricks with a long straw'. In 1768, a Mister Spinacutti and his performing monkey made an appearance. There were tumblers such as Paul Redigé, also known as the 'Little Devil', and another named Placido, as well as the Bologna and sons' act of feats of strength, and Costello and his performing dogs. One of Smollett's other characters, the maid Winifred Jenkins, gives a very vivid description of a visit to Sadler's Wells:
I was afterwards at a party at Sadler's Wells where I saw such tumbling and dancing on ropes and wires that I was frightened and ready to go into a fit – I tho't it all inchantment [sic]; and believing myself bewitched, began to cry.
In Marylebone Gardens in 1738, a tall tower was erected so that a performer could walk across a stretched rope with a wheelbarrow, something that Charles Blondin was to do much later when he famously crossed Niagara Falls. These acts inspired as much awe and wonder then as they do today but there was one particular style of performance that came to the fore during the eighteenth century that would have a lasting influence.
Clowns are synonymous with the circus. Although there were several clowns performing at this time, the nickname Joey owes much to one particular clown, Joseph Grimaldi. Born in 1778 in Clare Market, a slum district of London, he came from a long line of Italian performers. His father, Joseph Giuseppe Grimaldi, was an actor and dancer, known often as 'the Signor'. As well as a noted performer, he was also the ballet master at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. Joseph's young mother had been an apprentice to his father, who was a strict disciplinarian and often beat his children. He had a morbid fascination with death and would often feign death to see how his children would react. He even gave his eldest daughter strict instructions that he was to be decapitated after his death, and this to be actually carried out before a group of onlookers.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Father of the Modern Circus 'Billy Buttons'"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Steve Ward.
Excerpted by permission of Pen and Sword Books Ltd.
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