Since the rebirth of the circus in Great Britain was begun as an equestrian show, it is no surprise than many animal species have long been the stars of the animal world. At first, the horse was supreme. Horse acts continued right through to the modern age.
But, along with clowns and acrobats, animals acts were added to entertain the audience between equestrian feats. And, before the exotic animals became a feature of the circus (the elephant was first brought to the United States in 1794), dogs, pigs and bears were pressed into service as acts. Again, similar to the horse, these animals have continued to mainstays of the circus.
Almost from the first, less common animals were featured. In 1779, Philip Astley (a Serjeant-Major who set up the first circus in Great Britain after a century), put a zebra on display. Other exotics, elephants, camels, monkeys, and eventually the big cats were added to the exhibitions.
With the expansion of the European powers into Africa, the types of animals employed expanded. Wild animals, especially the big cats, became a profitable business. It was not a big jump from exhibiting the animals to including them to performances. To the acrobats, jugglers and ropedancers was now added a menagerie of animals, many of them dangerous. Of course, with the animals, came animal trainers.
Some of these animal performers became big stars. In the 1940’s Jumbo, the elephant became so popular that jumbo, meaning colossal, became part of the language.
In The Circle of Dead Girls, my latest Will Rees mystery, the circus comes to this small Maine town. It is hard to believe, but the American circus was still in its infancy in 1799.
Although the circus has a long history – the Egyptians are commonly credited with inventing acrobatics – all forms of entertainment including the jugglers and the acrobats were banned during the Puritan era. It was not recreated in England until Sergeant-Major Philip Astley began exhibiting his equestrian prowess on the outskirts of London in 1768. He performed in a circle (a ‘circus’ in Latin).
In 1770 he decided to expand the appeal of his show by adding acrobats, ropedancers (or wire walkers) and jugglers. (The trapeze, which evolved from the high wire acts, had not yet been invented.) He finished the production with a pantomime, a farcical play that included characters from the Commedia del Arte: Harlequin, Columbine and Clown. His new circus was a huge success.
Like many parts of American culture, this new version of the circus came to the United States from England. As Europe prepared for war, one of the many between England and France, a pupil of the English equestrian tradition, John Bill Ricketts, brought the circus across the Atlantic. He set up a riding school in Philadelphia in 1792 and established the first circus the following year. It was not a traveling circus but was, like the Astley entertainment, housed in a wooden amphitheater.
From the first, despite the social and cultural mores that repressed women, they performed in the circus. They were career women before the term was invented. And they were frequently the stars. In 1772 Astley’s circus featured two equestriennes. The wives of Astley and another trick rider J. Griffin were so popular and famous they were invited to perform before the royal families of England and France. Following their lead Ricketts included a woman in his circus who not only worked as an equestrienne but also doubled as actress and dancer.
Many of the women who performed in circuses were the wives and daughters of male owners or performers. In Europe there was already a culture in which the children raised by circus parents became performers in their turn. A famous ropedancer, familiarly called Bambola, was one such in Italy. I borrowed the name for a character in A Circle of Dead Girls.
The circus allowed women to exhibit their bodies and their physical strength in public. The equestriennes certainly could not do tricks on the backs of galloping horses in long trailing skirts so, horrors!, they wore knee-length skirts that clearly showed the shape of their legs. To modern eyes, this reveal would look remarkably tame. But in the eighteenth century this was titillating. Women of that time were tightly corseted and completely covered. It was not proper for them to attend the circus, which was on a par with Burlesque. Until the Civil War (1861 – 1865) the audience of the American circus was predominantly male. The female performers, like actresses, to whom they were compared, were suspect, considered little better than harlots. But unlike the actresses, who only had to be pretty and seductive, the women in the circuses had to have talent and be willing to undergo the grueling training required for the acts. They, like their male counterparts, had to be unusually healthy and fit.
The circus proved extremely popular in the United States and Ricketts expanded to include New York and Boston and even cities in Canada. To reach more people, the circuses began to travel, building and then tearing down the wooden arenas as necessary. In 1825, Joshua Purdy Brown decided to present his show under a canvas tent instead of the temporary wooden structures. The modern circus was born.
Although there is no record of traveling circuses before the 1800’s, I suspect some enterprising fellows would set up their own small companies. Outside of the few big cities at that time, (which were primarily New York, Philadelphia and Boston, most of the U.S. was rural. Picture how exciting the arrival of such entertainment would be. And how exotic the performers would appear to the farmers and small shopkeepers who came to see them. And imagine how seductive such a beautiful ropedancer would be in a tiny town in Maine . . .
One of the main characters in A Circle of Dead Girls is a tightrope walker, Called rope dancers, the tightrope walkers have been a feature of the circuses for centuries. The Romans called them funambulists.
My rope dancer is nicknamed Bambola, a name that I borrowed from a famous Italian tightrope walker. These aerialists have always been popular acts. I imagine the excitement in a small farming community at seeing this act would have been high.
Many of the rope dancers were women but not all. In fact, as the circuses traveled around, dynasties that were known for aerial acts formed and became famous in their own right.
Will Rees and others in the audience of that time would not have seen an act that became arguably the most popular of all: the trapeze artists. The trapeze was developed from the tightrope; more accurately from a slack rope that the artist then hung from. The first tricks were done from a static trapeze; a rope that hung without moving. The flying trapeze was not invented until the mid-1800s by a young aerialist: Jules Leotard. He invented it by practicing over his father’s swimming pool.
For many decades, the flying trapeze was one of these most popular acts ever.
Why am I interested in tarot? These cards have been around since the mid 1500s. They were used as playing cards and like our deck, they had suits.
But aren’t they used for divination? That is certainly what I was most familiar with them as. Certainly, their use for that purpose is documented from about 1540. Manuscripts from shortly after document a system for laying out the cards. According to Wikipedia “Giacomo Cassanova wrote in his diary that in 1765 his Russian mistress frequently used a deck of playing cards for divination
Antoine Court de Gébelin, a French-born Protestant pastor and Freemason, published a dissertation on the origins of the symbolism in the Tarot in volume VIII of his unfinished fifteen volumes of the Le Monde Primitif. De Gébelin, who never knew the Tarot as the thought the Tarot represented Egyptian theology including Isis and Osiris. For example, he thought the card he knew as the Papesse and known today as the high priestess represented Isis.
The 1700s saw a rebirth of the circus.
I say rebirth because the kind of performances one thinks of have a long long history. The Egyptians had a tradition of acrobatics and juggling and they passed that onto the Greeks and the Romans. And these itinerant performers, called funanbuli – literally rope dancers – traveled throughout the expansive empire. During the middle ages, all the fairs boasted performers: jugglers and the like.
But all of this ceased in Great Britain and then in the new country with the Puritans who thought performances of all kinds were works of the Devil. Theaters in New England were forbidden right up until the late 1700’s. But in Europe traveling performers continued. In 1768 Sergeant-Major Philip Astley began exhibiing his equestrian prowess outside of London. Other equestrian acts followed. He called it a ‘circus’, the Latin word for circle because the riders rode around a ring. He struck gold. In 1779 he built a riding school. His ampitheater became the model for circuses everywhere.
At first these circuses were primarily exhibitions of trick riding but gradually acrobats, jugglers, rope dancers – tightrope walkers – were added. Family dynasties of circus performers were born.
A pupil of his, John Bill Ricketts, brought the circus to America. He first began a riding school in Philadelphia in 1792. It was wildly successful; people were hungry for entertainment. By 1793 he had begun bringing over European performers – including acrobats, clowns and rope dancers.
Other entrepreneurs followed suit, including a farmer from Brewster, New York , who found an elephant somewhere and brought it on tour. The display of exotic animals had been popular as early as the Bronze Age but this was a first in the U.S. Animal acts, primarily using dogs and pigs, followed.
Since tarot had been popular in Europe for centuries and had been used almost as long for divination, I wonder if some of these early circus performers didn’t bring the cards with them. Tarot would have predated the stereotypical circus fortune teller with the glass ball.
Now, with our jaded sensibilities, it is hard to imagine how exotic and wonderful these early circuses appeared. Farmers knew horses but not ones who allowed riders to stand on their backs. Pigs and dogs, animals they saw every day, performed the most amazing tricks. And any fortune telling would have seemed truly magical.
