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Kitabı oku: «Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 685», sayfa 6

Various

Yazı tipi:

AN OLD SHOWMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS

Some fifty years ago I was entered, by permission of my father, a merchant tailor, as a pupil in the Duke of Cumberland's School. Among other branches taught, much attention was given to gymnastics, in which I soon surpassed all my schoolmates, and soon became such a proficient, that our training-master in that branch was dispensed with, and I, though but a boy, took his place. After completing our education, I, along with a select few of my old schoolmates, used to meet at the back of Primrose Hill on the Saturday evenings of summer for the purpose of practising posturing and trying to imitate the gymnastic feats we had seen performed at the fairs in London and the neighbourhood. On these occasions we used frequently to be patronised by 'The Champion Sword-swallower and Fire-king,' who was the proprietor of a penny show in Broad Street, Bloomsbury. The house was swept away when Bloomsbury Street was formed. One day he produced a dagger with a blade of six or seven inches in length, and passed the blade down his throat; and after removing it, challenged us to perform the feat. From my earliest boyhood I have always been somewhat of a dare-devil. I took the dagger, and soon found no difficulty in repeating what he had done.

That evening, on returning home, while my father was at supper, I went into the workroom and began experimenting with the yard-stick. I found that, in jugglers' phrase, I could swallow twenty-one inches of it. I thereupon determined to become the monarch of sword-swallowers; but domestic circumstances put an end for a time to my ambition. Instead of displaying my talents on the boards of a booth, I was compelled by necessity to tread the boards of a merchant-ship in the character of a sailor-boy. My early training at school was of great service to me, for my nimbleness and activity soon raised me high in the captain's favour.

My first appearance in public as a showman was at an entertainment in presence of the officers of the garrison at Tobago. I made a decided hit, and received many presents from them. On returning to England, our ship was wrecked off Margate, and with difficulty I managed to reach the shore, on which I stood the possessor only of a pair of canvas trousers with empty pockets, a belt, and a Guernsey shirt. Some kindly hearted persons presented me with an old straw-hat, a pretty decent pair of boots, and a good dinner. On the strength of the dinner I set out for Brighton, where I expected to find employment with a relative. Luckily the weather was dry and warm. My meals consisted of pilfered turnips, and I found comfortable lodging in the fields. I reached Brighton only to find that my relative was dead. His successor in business, who was a stranger to me, presented me with sixpence, and I then set my face towards London.

One evening I reached The Thorns, a small road-side inn at Hawley, in a very exhausted state, for I had passed no turnip-fields since morning. I made up my mind to spend my remaining two-pence on a pint of beer, and then to push on for a mile or two and look out for a comfortable hedge-side. I entered the public room of The Thorns. It was well filled with jovial farmers, as I afterwards ascertained them to be. I ordered my beer; and when it was brought in, one of the farmers insisted on paying, and ordered the servant to set a plate of bread and cheese before me. After my supper was devoured rather than eaten, another pint of beer was ordered for me, and I was asked by my kind entertainers to oblige them if I could with a song. I readily consented. I sang several songs, performed a few simple sleight-of-hand tricks, and finished up by swallowing half the length of the landlord's walking-cane. I then took my leave; but before I reached the door I was called back and asked where I intended putting up for the night, which was by this time far spent. I stammered out what answer I could; which not satisfying my worthy entertainers, they decided that at their expense I should remain where I was; should be supplied with breakfast, dinner, and tea, and that my beer should not be stinted. On the following evening they again returned, bringing with them a numerous company of their friends, and I went a second time through my performances. They wished me a hearty adieu and gave me a handful of silver.

On arriving in London I looked about for a professional engagement, and was not long in procuring one at a notorious penny theatre, known as Hayden's Gaff, in Newton Street, off Holborn, a short street now filled with handsome warehouses, but in those days a haunt of the vile and worthless of both sexes. My salary was paid nightly, and varied with the number of the audience and the sober or inebriated state of the lessee, manager, and money-taker, all which parts were played by Tom Hayden. From this gaff I emigrated to the Rotunda, now no more, in Blackfriars Road. After appearing at several of the music-halls (O how different from the flash and the flare of those of the present day), I got an appearance for a season at Vauxhall Gardens, which still retained some memories of their aristocratic youthhood.

During all this time I was eking out my means of living by doing odd jobs, for I was Jack-of-all trades. At last I recklessly plunged into a showman's life by signing a year's engagement with a Mr Spicer, proprietor and manager of a caravan and a travelling theatre, or in other words a booth; and in his booth I played for the first time before the merry-making lads and lasses at Bartholomew Fair. At this fair I met the sword-swallower of those days, who was then astonishing the audiences at 'Richardson's.' His sword was twenty-eight inches long. The longest sword I have ever performed with is twenty-seven and five-eighth inches. Keene used also to 'swallow' dinner knives and forks, but this was a mere sleight-of-hand trick.

About this time I met with the renowned Ramo Same, the Indian juggler and magician. He was performing at the Coburg (now the Victoria Theatre) in the Borough. He too was a sword-swallower, and very cleverly did he combine deception with reality. He used to come on the stage carrying three naked swords, with which he went through a clever performance. At the termination of this he stuck the swords upright in the stage, to shew the sharpness of their points, then pulling one of them with apparent effort out of the flooring of the stage, he slid it to a considerable depth down his throat. The swallowing part was genuine; but the sword he used for that purpose was provided with a false point, which was left in the wood on withdrawing the blade. I have never seen or heard of any sword-swallowing performed with a keen-edged or sharp-pointed weapon. I may add that Keene had advantage over me, he being the taller by nine inches of the two; and that my capacity of swallow is a marvel to the many leading medical gentlemen before whom, for scientific purposes, I have exhibited.

My engagement with Mr Spicer was rather peculiar. I was a single performer divided into three, and sometimes more. I occasionally appeared in the tragedy or melodrama which was 'supported by the entire strength of the company.' The entire strength numbered half-a-dozen including the driver of the caravan. The legitimate drama was every evening followed by a 'pleasing melange,' in which I made three appearances: first as 'Paul Blanchard the champion sword-swallower of the universe;' then after a brief interval, as 'Monsieur Le Bland the celebrated French acrobat, from the Royal Theatres of Paris;' and third and last, dressed in costume which may be described as a cross between the apparel of a Turkish Pacha and a stage Richard III., I made my bow as 'Victor Delareux the Fire-king, who has performed with great applause before the crowned heads of Europe.' In this character I 'swallowed' handfuls of tow and vomited smoke and flames from my mouth. This trick is easy of performance, and though not dangerous is very disagreeable to the performer. Then followed my feat of drinking boiling oil; which in its turn was followed by a draught of molten lead; and my performance was concluded by a dance, which I performed with my bare feet on a red-hot bar of iron, which I also, in an incandescent state, passed along my bare arms and legs, and licked with my tongue. The 'drinking' of the boiling oil, in which I used to dissolve before the audience a rod of metal, and the drinking of the molten lead, were simple and harmless tricks; and have, as far as my memory serves me, both been described and explained in the early editions of the Boy's Own Book, a copy of which was my constant companion thirty years ago and more. The iron bar performance necessitates the employment of a mixture of chemicals, with which the parts exposed to the red-hot metal are anointed. If the bar is not up to red-heat, the feat is dangerous, as the chemicals will not act. The dancing on the bar must be gone through rapidly, the heel of the foot never resting for a moment on the iron.

My acrobatic and fire-king feats I have long since discontinued, and for many years my sword-swallowing has been subordinate to the less romantic business by which I gain my living. Still I am an old showman at heart, and look back with a melancholy pleasure to the days when I wandered about in gipsy fashion boothing and tenting.

A RESTORED KEEPSAKE.

Lough Swilly, a harbour in the north of Ireland, is celebrated for the beauty of its scenery; but though, when inside the lough, the anchorage is safe, the entrance to the harbour is a very difficult and dangerous one, the coast being what is called iron-bound, and there being several reefs of rocks near the shore quite or partially covered by the sea.

The entrance to Lough Swilly is now protected by lighthouses, one on Fannet Point, and another on Dunree Head; and the various reefs and shoals are marked by buoys in such a manner as to render the entrance to the harbour safe. Formerly it was not so.

In the year 1811 the Saldanha frigate, Captain Packenham, was stationed in Lough Swilly as guardship; her usual anchorage was off the little town or rather village of Buncrana; but from time to time she weighed anchor, and cruised for a few days round the coast of the County Donegal. She had been stationed in Lough Swilly so long that some of the officers' wives had come to reside at Buncrana; one or two of the officers and several of the men had even married in the neighbourhood, and all had made friends with the gentry and other inhabitants of the surrounding country.

Early on the morning of the 11th of November the Saldanha left the moorings off Buncrana for a three days' cruise round the coast; but though the morning was fine and bright, about noon the weather became dark and lowering; and before the short November day closed, a fearful tempest raged over sea and land. That storm is still remembered as the 'Saldanha Storm;' and some old folks can recount the sad story of the anxious hearts that beat, and eyes that watched through blinding spray and rain for the lights of the returning ship. They were seen at last, not from Buncrana, but from the opposite shore, nearer the mouth of the lough, rapidly drifting into Ballymastocker Bay, along the strand of which the Fannet people eagerly thronged. In this bay there is a dangerous reef of rocks, and on it the ship was seen to strike. If a mighty cry went up, or if any effort was made to save the doomed vessel, no one can now tell. Of that gallant crew, one man only reached the shore alive. Him, the wild people (half-wreckers) placed across a horse, after giving him a draught of whisky; but whether it was done in ignorance or in order to hasten his end, could not be proved; suffice it to say, that before he could be taken from the strand to one of the country cabins, he died. Many bodies came ashore from time to time, and were reverently buried in the old churchyard of Rathmullan, where the grave and monument can still be seen. It is told that there were three widows that night in one house in Buncrana, two ladies and their servant.

Years passed by; and when the winter storms swept Lough Swilly, part of the sunken wreck of the Saldanha would burst up, and the yellow sands of Ballymastocker Bay be strewn with fragments of her planks and various relics of the unhappy crew. The night of the 6-7th January 1839 was marked by another mighty hurricane, as bad, the old men said, as the 'Saldanha Storm;' and in the morning, when the coast-guards made their rounds, the shores of the bay were strewn from end to end with timbers and broken chests, the last of the Saldanha.

Among other articles, one of the coast-guardsmen found and brought to his officer's wife a little worked case, such as ladies used to call a thread-paper. It was beautifully made and stitched, and still contained some skeins of sewing-silk and a few rusty needles. On the back were embroidered three initials. I remember the lady, Mrs H – , shewing it to me; and child as I was at the time, I grieved for the sad heart of the embroideress whose loving fingers had set the stitches.

More than twenty years passed away; Mrs H – , who had returned to live in Scotland, and had been left a widow, was spending a few days in the country-house of friends in one of the southern shires. Among the guests was a young gentleman to whom she took a particular fancy. One evening the conversation turned on Ireland and Irish scenery, and Lough Swilly was mentioned. Her young friend seemed much interested, asked some questions about it, and presently said that his mother had lost a brother many years before in Lough Swilly by the wreck of the Saldanha. Mrs H – related all she knew of the circumstances, and finally said she had in her workbox at the moment a relic of the ship; and taking out the thread-paper, asked the uncle's name; which, strangely enough, was found to agree with the three initials embroidered on the little case. It further transpired that her young friend's uncle had been a midshipman on board the ill-fated ship, and was his mother's favourite brother.

Mrs H – then put the little thread-case into his hand, and told him how she had become possessed of it. 'And now,' she added, 'take that home to your mother; shew it to her, and ask her if she ever saw it before. Should she recognise it, she is very welcome to keep it. If it did not belong to her brother, let me have it again.' The gentleman left next morning for his home; and a few days afterwards Mrs H – had a letter from him, saying that his mother had at once recognised it as her own work, given to her darling brother when he last had left his home. Surely this relic of one so loved and lost, thus restored after more than fifty years, must have been as precious as though it had been some costly jewel.

[From Poems and Ballads, by James R. Fergusson, son of Sir William Fergusson, Bart.]

To Frank Buckland, energetic protector of fish in particular, and of all dumb-animal creation, editor of Land and Water, son of an eminent geologist a former Dean of Westminster, belongs the merit of having suggested that the remains of John Hunter should be deposited in Westminster Abbey. An order having been issued that all coffins should be removed from the vaults beneath the Church of St Martin's-in-the-Fields, Mr Buckland thought of his great professional brother, long dead, and lying there with no 'storied urn or animated bust' to mark the spot; and in a short time his generous zeal carried to a successful issue all proceedings connected with the 'Reinterment of John Hunter.' The place selected is close below a stone that has the words 'O rare Ben Jonson!' and I may mention that, standing by the open grave, I held in my hand the skull that once contained the witty, learned brain of him who wrote the undying line about Shakspeare:

He was not for an age, but for all time.
Within the walls beneath whose shade
The noblest of our land are laid,
I stood and watched due homage paid
To genius bright —
To one whose fame shall never fade
Nor lose its light.
John Hunter, 'mongst the chief of those
Who study all the earthly woes
That 'gainst our bodies frail are foes,
And wound our breast,
Here in this Abbey finds repose
And honoured rest.
The resting-place that first he found
No fame sufficient did redound,
Though many worthy were around,
Most noble dust.
'Let's place him here;' that sentence sound,
All thought it just.
And here he lies, the man whose fame
Detraction ne'er can put to shame,
Whose glory well his works can claim —
His works that bear
The impress of his mighty name
And genius rare.
In mysteries of creation's plan,
In study of his brother man,
His mind all former minds outran,
And far excelled,
And by its strength and mighty span
His views upheld.
A Scot was Hunter, bright the hour,
When Heaven first gave his spirit power
To reach fair Science' highest bower,
And there remain.
May present Scots, in ample shower,
His fame sustain!