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Acrobats and Mountebanks

Chapter 16: Index
By Hugues Le Roux
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About This Book

A detailed study of traveling performers and circus folk documents their history, social organization, and professional practices, following careers from caravan life to circus stages. It describes fairground and permanent shows, the roles and techniques of trainers, tamers, equestrians, equilibrist, gymnasts, and clowns, and explains the institutions that support them, such as agencies, newspapers, and syndicates. The text combines eyewitness reporting, interviews, and photographic evidence to capture rare poses and operational secrets, while exploring customs, traditions, and economic realities. Chapters intersperse technical descriptions with cultural observations to present a comprehensive monograph of this itinerant community.

Molier and his friends have triumphed without noise, just as they resisted the ill-humour of foolish grumblers without bluster.

During the last ten years this clever troupe of amateurs has wonderfully increased. It now includes two new star equestrians—Mademoiselle Blanche Lamidey and Miss Anna. You have probably seen Mazeppa performed in a circus, at least once in your life, but, since Miss Ada Menken, you have never seen a very young girl, thrown on her back, held by one foot only, her loosened hair dragging in the sand, and in this dangerous position leaping with her galloping horse an arrangement of several barriers.

Nor since Jenny O’Brien left us for America have we ever seen a woman ride standing upon two horses with as much dainty jauntiness, self-possession and audacity as Miss Anna. And then how well she dresses! Lovers of Florentine bronzes will never forget a certain suit of grey tights, a harlequin’s [p324] costume, cut low and heart shaped at the neck, with greaves of the same grey tint below the knees.

Molier has grouped a number of pretty women, actresses, [p325] artists, and young men of the world round these two charming girls. Amongst the ladies are Mesdemoiselles Lavigne and Desoder from the Palais Royal, Mademoiselle Felicia Mallet, Mademoiselle Renée Maupin, from the Opera, Jeanne Becker, Léa d’Asco, etc.;—amongst the men: Messrs. Frédéric Vavasseur, Jules Ravaut, Arthus, Gerbaut, Adrien Marie, Craffty, Goubie, Pantelli, J. Lewis-Brown. I must apologize to those whom I forget to name.

With these resources the performance of a pantomime was easily arranged, and these spectacles are one of the chief [p326] attractions of the entertainments given in the Rue Benouville. It was here that Félicien Champsaur made the first trial of contemporary pantomime by which he amuses us without introducing the form of Pierrot or the bat of Harlequin.

“Why,” he reflected, “should we show the fashionable people who annually fill the boxes of the Molier, some old fairy story remounted in a new form? Men of the present day with money and audacity accomplish greater prodigies than the magicians of old.” [p327]

M. Champsaur resolved to show us his contemporaries at work—and this is the plot of his pantomime—

The charming Mademoiselle Rivolta, from the Eden, appeared disguised as a little Spring looking for her course. No one had thought of using her to fill a lake, rush down a waterfall or turn a mill. She therefore wandered about the Cirque Molier, shedding floods of tears.

Good Luck, who never likes to see pretty girls cry, led two speculators in the same direction. They remark to each other:—

“Look! here’s a little Spring! And there’s no casino on the bank!”

“No race game!”

“No gambling house!”

“Cannot this little Spring cure some illness?”

“If not, she is the only one of her kind!”

To satisfy themselves on this point they then take Mademoiselle Rivolta’s hand, lead her to the house of Madame Dezoder, a lady doctor in the same neighbourhood, and knock at the door.

Armed with a goblet, Madame Dezoder tastes Mademoiselle Rivolta.

After carefully testing her, her gesture says “Pooh!”

“What does that matter?” replied the bankers. “We will bottle Mademoiselle Rivolta and, with a good label, she will cure as well as her companions.”

No sooner said than it was done. And since a godmother was required for the new Spring launched upon the world, the bankers fetch Fortune, Mademoiselle Renée Maupin, from the Opera! [p328]

Ah! what a delightful person!

I always liked Fortune instinctively, before I knew her; but since I have seen her feet, figure, and eyes! . . . . .

“You shall cure everything!” Fortune assured the Spring.

They placed the bottle in the doctor’s house and in it Mademoiselle Rivolta, who looked like a saint in her shrine.

Then the procession of those wounded by Life (Ereintés de la Vie)—this is the title of the pantomime—commences. [p329]

They are all invalided by love: first, a number of pretty girls who have flirted too much; then all the gentlemen who have been wounded by these flirtations.

Love himself comes to the Spring.

He is very ill.

His poor little wings hang down his back in a lamentable way.

“Douche him! Douche him!”

The child is dipped in the water and is drawn out transformed into a Farnese Hercules, with enormous muscles which stand out in huge rolls upon his arms from the shoulder to the elbow.

The entertainment closes by a procession accompanied by a blast of trumpets, at the end of which appears the Golden Calf, led by Fortune with a leash.

I have quoted this pantomime by M. Champsaur in preference to others of more recent date which have been equally successful, because it clearly indicates the nature of the entertainment given in the Cirque Molier.

People see and perform in the Rue Benouville pieces that could not be played or shown elsewhere; for here the audience and the actors are all people of the same education, the same surroundings, who know each other.

The doors have been more widely opened than they formerly were. But they are still closely guarded, the members of the society intend to amuse themselves as they please in their own circle, and to exclude anything that offends them.

For instance, you will not find either at the rehearsals or at the performances in the Rue Benouville in the boxes or behind the scenes, the shadow of a professional actor. [p330]

The door is closed against theatrical men.

What! even “Chose” and “Machin?” [p331]

Even for them.

The “cross” and the banner are both useless. Monsieur le Sociétaire has vainly tried to force a door which is half open for the banquistes . . . . .

A voice has cried to him from the trapeze, “We are very sorry, sir! But we have retained the prejudices of the comedians.”

FOOTNOTES

[14] Baron de Vaux, Les Hommes de Cheval.

[15] Baron de Vaux, Les Hommes de Cheval.

[16] Jules Lemaître, Révoltée, Act I., Sc. 3.

INDEX.