CHAPTER XIV.
SOME ACCOUNT OF AN AMERICAN SHOWMAN, WITH A LITTLE INSIGHT INTO THE SHOW BUSINESS.
Right in the heart of London--if London may be said to have any heart--is a tavern kept by an American, which is the headquarters of American "professionals," as showmen delight to call themselves. You can never go there without meeting managers, nigger minstrels, song-and-dance-men, unappreciated actors, and all sorts of people who prefer living from hand to mouth and wearing no shirts, in this way, than to making a fortune in any regular business. I go there frequently from sheer loneliness, and to hear the kindly American language spoken; and, besides, a man alone is generally in bad company, for the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked. Any company that is fair to middling is better than none at all. Even a hostler can tell you something you don't know. You may excel him in the philosophy of finance, but when it comes to horses you are nowhere.
I met one circus manager who is over here, as he expressed it, to "secure talent," and he proved a delight. He was short and very thick, and wore a sack coat, of rough material, and a little mastiff followed him about constantly. His hat and necktie were something too utterly gorgeous for description, his face was of a peculiarly puffy purple, and his nose blazed like a comet. And he would sit and talk of his business by the hour, keeping before him all the time a glass of British brandy and water, which he pronounced "goodish." You could be sure he was a showman as far as you could see him. My first interview with him was something like this:--
"I shall have the biggest list of genooine attractions that ever was taken across the Atlantic, and if I don't astonish the showmen of our great country, as well as the people, I'm a sinner. I have got a baby elephant, and a genooine Babulus, capchered by Stanley in the interior of Africa, at a great loss of life, and I am after a performer sich as the world never seen. She does an act on the trapeze that is so risky, that sooner or later she _must_ be killed. There ain't any doubt about it. I have seen her. She runs up a rope like a squirrel, and jumps from a horizontal bar, twenty feet, catching hold of her pardner's hands, and then plunges down from his body head-fust, at the frightful altitood of seventy feet, catchin' a rope twenty feet from the ground. If the lights are ever wrong by a half inch, or if she ever miscalculates a hair's breadth, she is a goner, sure."
And the enthusiastic old gentleman rubbed his hands in glee, as though the death of a performer was a consummation most devoutly to be wished.
[Sidenote: THE TRAPEZE ARTIST.]
"Do people enjoy such perilous feats?"
"Enjoy em! Enjoy em! Why, bless your innocent soul, a feat ain't nothin'--won't dror a cent onless it's morally certain that the performer will break his neck. This woman I'm after draws crowds every night, because she _must_ kill herself. The trick is so dangerous that men make bets every night she will miss her lucky, and be carried out a corpse. I'm a goin' to have that woman, no matter what the salary is. She does this trapeze act, and then goes on in the first part of the minstrel entertainment after the big show. Oh, she's got talent into her."
"But if the performance is so hazardous, and she should be killed, would it not entail a heavy loss upon you?"
"Killed! Loss! Where was you born? My child, there never was a feat so dangerous that there ain't a thousand waitin' to attempt it, and they'll do it. When Mamselle Zhoubert gits killed, as she will, I'll hev to hold a lev-vee to decide atwixt the dozen who will want to take her place. I'll select one of 'em, give her a French name--yoo can't get on in the perfesh with a English name--and she'll go on and do it, and do it jist as well. And then wat an advertisement it is! This will be about the size of it:--
"The management begs to state that since the untimely death of Mademoiselle Zhoubert, at Cincinnati, it was doubtful if another lady competent to fill her place could be found. The feat was so difficult, so dangerous, and required such arduous training and such wonderful nerve, that it was feared that this leading attraction of the World's Aggregation would have to be omitted. There was only one other such artiste in the world--Mademoiselle Blanche, but she was engaged at the Cirque Imperial, Paris. The management knows no such word as fail, and a commissioner was dispatched at once to Paris, with unlimited powers to treat for this stellar attraction, this acme of talent. At an expense which would bankrupt any other establishment, conducted by narrow-minded managers who advertise more and perform less, she was secured and is now with us. Mademoiselle Blanche not only performs the original feat of the sincerely mourned Zhoubert, but adds to it one so much more dangerous as to make hers seem insignificant and commonplace. Mademoiselle Blanche will appear at each and every performance, all reports to the contrary notwithstanding."
"That'll fetch 'em."
"Dangerous feats! why, I run a whole season on a lion that had once eaten a keeper. The people come in crowds, expecting every day to see him make a breakfast of his trainer."
"Was he actually dangerous?"
[Sidenote: THE TRAINER'S WIDOW.]
"Dangerous! He et another trainer, and then I lost him. His widder was actilly in love with her husband, and she swore the animal shood be killed, and the people sided with her, and as the broot was gettin' old, and the killin' made a sensation, I did it. But I made all there was out of it. I insisted that the husband should have a gorgeous funeral. The woman kicked at the idea of a funeral, for she sed there was nothing to berry, as the lion had eaten her husband. But ain't the dear departed inside the lion? If we berry the lion, don't we berry the dear deceast? Cert. And we hed it, and it was gorgeous. We hed a percession, with all our wagons in it--the regelar street parade--only all the riders hed black scarfs on 'em, and the wagons and hosses and elephants and sich was draped in black (mourning goods is cheap,), and the band played a dead
march. The widder was in an open carriage, in full mournin' with a white handkerchief, with a black border, to her eyes lookin' on his minatoor. There wasn't no minatoor, but she held a case jist the same. That nite the canvass coodent hold the people, and we run on that two weeks to splendid biz. In two weeks, the woman got over her grief and went into the lion trainin' line herself, ez 'Senorita Aguardiente, the Lion Queen.' I give her some old lions to practis on, and in less than a month she could do jest as well as the old man. She was a good woman, too. She rid in the grand entree, and rid in the 'Halt in the Desert,' did the bar'l act, rid a good pad act, and is now practisin' bare-back. She juggles tollable, and does a society sketch song and dance in a side-show. When I git talent I pay it and keep it. My treasurer changes the names of my people every season, so as to have always fresh attractions. Oh, I know my biz. But that wuzn't all I made out uv that afflictin' event. I went and hed a moniment made and sot up over his grave. This is the vig., inscription and all:
And on the back uv the monument, I had this:--
"His sorrowing widow still does her unapproachable act of Equitation and Prestidigitation, in the Great International Aggregation, with which her devoured husband was so long connected, and may be seen at each and every exhibition.
"While mourning the loss of our friend, the Great Aggregation travels as usual, and exhibits without regard to weather, twice each day. Lion Kings may die, but the Great International Aggregation is immortal."
"The widder insisted on hevin a Scriptural quotashen on the moniment, and it took me a good while lookin up suthin approprit. I know more about circus than I do about Bible, but when I set out to do a thing I do it. Ez the two hed lived together and died together, ez the lion et him for cert, it struck me that this wuz about the racket, and I put it on the base:--
They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in death they were not divided.--2d Sam. 1:23.
"I had the monument did in galvanized iron, and it will stand there for forty years, and every visitor to that cemetery will know suthin about the Great International. I wrote it modest, for I didn't want it to look too much like an advertisement, though, of course, I wanted to get all I could out of the afflictin event."
Ordering another brandy cold, the pleasant old gentleman murmured more reminiscences. He had always had a penchant for wild Indian troupes, and, since the Zulu war, for Zulus, and he flowed on about them:--
"Foggarty," said he, "was the best Zulu I ever had, and I have had a hundred of 'em. He laid over the lot. He entered into the spirit of the thing, and did the bizniss conscientiously. When he came outside with a iron girdle about him, and a pizen spear, he lept in dead earnest, he