CHAPTER I

My father and mother. My mother dies and my father marries again. A bad time with stepmother. When nine years old I run away. My first “engagement.” Odd experiences. I try to be a photographer and come to grief. Another engagement--“A living head without a body.” With Bedell’s show at Whitby. My first “panto” part. How I got to London. I make the acquaintance of Morris Abrahams, who sends me home. Am engaged by Pablo Fangue, the circus proprietor. My training. Thanks to my face I am made a clown. Pablo Fangue an admirable master.

I was born in Hull in the year--well, it doesn’t much matter what year it was. My mother kept a public house in Paragon Street with the odd name of the “March of Intellect,” and it happened that Cooke’s Circus, of which Robert Stanley Walker was manager, came to the theatre. Robert Walker fell in love with the hostess of the “March of Intellect,” married her, and so I was brought into the world.

I was three years old and my sister Rachel one year and three months younger, when my mother was taken ill. She was ordered to Torquay, where she died. Five years later my father married again, and giving up circus life became proprietor of Castle Farm, Mile End, Hazel Grove, Stockport.

At Castle Farm were cows, pigs, a horse, fowls, etc., and the familiarity with animals which afterwards served me in such good stead in later life began here. Something else must also have begun--my “whimsicality,” only it wasn’t called by that name. I must have been a wrong-headed urchin, always going my own way in preference to other people’s. Anyway, according to my stepmother, I could do nothing right; thrashings followed, and young as I was--only nine years--I made up my mind to run away.

One day I was sent with my stepmother’s mother to Stockport market to sell butter and eggs, and was left by her in charge of the stall. Here was the very chance and I took it. I sold the stock on my own account and went off with the money to Manchester.

The showman’s spirit must have been in my blood, for instinctively I turned towards Knott Mill Fair which was being held just off Deansgate. I chummed on with a boy I met; I treated him to hot peas, gingerbread and nuts until I was stony broke. My new friend was a lad of resource and introduced me to the proprietor of a tumbling booth who must have seen something funny in my face (I doubt if it was a lovely one) which took his fancy. “Put on some togs,” said he, “knock about on the front of the booth and let me see how you get on.”

It was my first engagement! My salary was plenty to eat, lodging and a penny or twopence a week. It wasn’t much, but I felt independent, and I tried to forget I had a father of whom I was horribly afraid.

Rigged up in comic clothes, my performance was to tumble about in any way I fancied. I suppose I must have been unconsciously “whimsical,” for the crowd laughed, and what was more to the purpose, so also did the show people.

I made a start at acrobatic training with the assistance of a broomstick, trying to bend back until my head touched my heels, but this did not suit my youthful fancy, and my ideas of a salary enlarging, I threw up my “engagement” at the tumbling booth and took up with a travelling photographer who gave me two shillings a week and my board, but as I had to pay for my bed I didn’t get much out of it.

Looking back, it puzzles me how a photographer could find a boy of nine or ten useful. For my duties were to talk to the gaping multitude and induce them to have their portraits taken! I suppose I was a “hit” or he wouldn’t have kept me on. I can only put it down to my innate “whimsicality.”

I had odd experiences with the photographer. Once a hurricane blew the whole show over. The proprietor flew into a passion, said it was my fault and was for “firing” me right away, but altering his mind he gave me some lessons in photography, and leaving me in charge, went off to find a “pitch” in another town.

I suppose I imagined I was a full-blown artist, and a woman with her baby coming along, I induced her to give me a sitting and sent her away with an awful production for which I charged her eighteenpence. The next day her husband descended upon me in the shape of a burly drunken collier who threatened to kill me unless I returned the money. Unluckily I’d spent it, but I pacified him by offering to take the lady and baby again. He vanished into a public house, and deciding that art was not my vocation, I fled and left the booth to its own devices. What became of it I never knew.

Ashton Fair was on and here I presented myself and was recognised by a showman named Randal Williams. Williams wanted a boy to play a part called “A living head without a body,” a sort of trick which anticipated a portion of Maskelyne and Cooke’s well-known entertainment years after. All I had to do was to put on a wig and old whiskers and go underneath the stage about a dozen times a day, and at a given signal put my head through a small trap door, my body of course being concealed. The exhibitor would then say, “Open your eyes--can you see?” “Yes,” was my reply. “Turn your eyes to the right--now to the left. Smoke a cigarette,” etc.

One day some mischievous urchin stuck a pin into my body. I dived down to punch the young rascal. It was the critical moment of the show and when the trap opened there was no head! The audience thought they had been swindled and went for the proprietor who went for me. That was the end of my “living head” engagement.

I then joined a hanky-panky show of conjurors. With my face blackened I was called “Jumbo”--the recognised name in those days for a comic nigger. I imagine I then “found” myself. I certainly was a huge success and suddenly became the greatest boy on the parade. By the time we reached Whitby in the winter of that year I had mastered the mysteries of conjuring.

At Whitby Mrs. Bedell, the proprietress, rented a ramshackle structure dubbed the “Theatre Royal,” which let in the rain to such an extent that sometimes there were two or three feet of water under the stage. We opened three nights a week with the “legitimate,” “Maria Martin,” “East Lynne,” etc., and we also produced a pantomime, “The Babes in the Wood.” I was one of the “Babes” and Polly Bedell, Mrs. Bedell’s daughter, the other; and the scene painter was the clown, Billy Baker, who also made the properties.

One wet night a dreadful fiasco came about. In the last scene the two little dears ascended to Heaven after being covered with leaves (which we collected every morning from the country) by the dear little robins, one of which, by the way, was a huge “property” bird that became a codfish in the harlequinade. On this particular night the box containing the babes was ascending to Heaven when one of the ropes broke and exit the babes under the stage into a watery grave! That was the end of the panto.

Young as I was I noticed that a company of strolling players always had its “character.” Bedell’s “character” was the cornet player, Stokes, who comprised the entire orchestra. He had a wooden tooth and he could only play when this tooth was in his mouth, and as he sometimes mislaid it there was an element of uncertainty in his performance, which lent it considerable charm.

The time came when I got tired of Bedell’s, and a friendly fisherman who had a son about my own age suggested that we should go to sea together. It was winter time and I didn’t much relish the idea. However, I sailed with him in his smack to London, and when I was in the crowded streets the old yearning for show life came back, and I said good-bye to my friend the fisherman.

What I did in London for some little time I don’t exactly remember, but one day who should I come across but an acrobatic troupe, the Carlos Brothers, whom I had met at Manchester Fair and who--thanks I believe to my “whimsical” face--remembered me. They were showing at the Effingham Saloon (now called “Wonderland”), Mile End Road, built by Morris Abrahams, who was also running the Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel Road.

It was a very miscellaneous entertainment that Morris Abrahams provided for his patrons of the Effingham. Sometimes it was lurid melodrama of the old “Vic” type and sometimes it was a variety show. Something of the latter kind was being run when the Carlos Brothers were engaged. My recollections of the Whitechapel and Mile End Roads of the early sixties are quite distinct. The very wide thoroughfare, probably the finest approach to the metropolis which London possesses, was still countrified in some parts. There was ample room in front of many of the inns not only for waggons to draw up, but benches and tables, arranged in rows, for _al fresco_ refreshments, and, clean and bright with the greenest of green paint, invited the weary traveller to sit and rest. Here on a fine evening could be seen working men and their wives enjoying themselves in modest fashion and taking their drink leisurely and in comfort, a thing impossible in these days of dirty four-ale bars. One never saw young girls take their beer or whisky as is too often the case now.

Tea gardens and dancing platforms flourished then. There was one favourite place of this kind on the opposite side of the Mile End Road to that where the Effingham was situated. It was called the Eagle, I think, and on its site the Paragon music-hall was subsequently built. Mile End toll gate was then in existence and that queer quaint old public house stuck almost in the centre of the road not far from the gate was a prominent and not unsightly object. It was in the winter when I was at the Effingham, so I did not see the glories of the Fairlop carnival and the fireworks let off in the road without any fear of police restrictions, which welcomed the return of the boats mounted on wheels from the fair at the Fairlop oak, Epping Forest.

To my boyish fancy a perpetual fair went on in the great stretch of no man’s land--afterwards I believe called Mile End “Waste”--extending nearly a mile along the side of the Mile End Road. Penny shows, stalls where everything which no one could possibly want was sold, hosts of penny merchants living on their wits--and most ingenious they were in tickling the fancy of the public--excited groups hotly discussing any topic which might be in the air at the time--it did not seem to matter much what--and above all, the Cheap Jack and his Dutch auction! The Cheap Jack with his glib tongue, ready wit, and unlimited stock of impudence, was a joy, and one could stand for an hour enjoying the fun and not spend a penny.

Unluckily I wasn’t allowed these delights for long. Morris Abrahams had been a “pro” nearly all his life--I believe he came out as a dancer--and it happened that he knew my father, so that when I told him that I’d run away he wrote home. The sequel was the arrival the next day of a gentleman in a tall silk hat who announced that he was a detective and that he had come to take me back to my father.

So back I went, very down, and of course was received with black looks all round. Three days went over and my old “whimsicality” showing itself in the shape of letting the pigs loose into the flower garden, my father had the sense to see that the ruling passion was too strong, and Pablo Fangue’s Circus chancing at the time to be at Stockport Fair, I was then and there sent to Fangue, engaged by him, and in this way my real professional life began.

Pablo Fangue, a coloured gentleman, was a thorough master of his profession, and I have to thank him for what I subsequently became--without vanity may I say it?--the greatest celebrity in my particular line in the circus business. He taught me to ride, to tumble, to perform on the trapeze, to vault over horses, and indeed all the intricacies belonging to circus life. I must admit that I was not over good at riding--you see, my face was not too beautiful--so I was made a clown. I confess that I like clowning, as the audience often threw oranges and money into the ring when I made them laugh, as I often did.

Training for the circus meant much harder work than people may imagine. There were three boy apprentices besides myself, and a girl (Fanny Bluring). We boys had to get up at 6 o’clock every morning to look after the horses, breakfast was at 8, practice at 8.30, and school at 9, excepting when we were performing at fairs.

Pablo Fangue did his duty towards us very conscientiously and sent us to church on Sunday mornings. Of course, we preferred playing marbles, and to satisfy our master, who always asked us what the text was, we used to learn one by heart beforehand. Maybe the good words came too trippingly off our tongues and so excited his suspicions, and he caught us out by going unseen by us to the same church. That day at dinner he was unusually nice and said quite amicably, “Well, my boys, have you all been to church?” “Yes, sir,” we chanted. “And was it a nice sermon?” “Oh, yes, sir.” “And what were the words?” “Jesus wept.” “Ah, and all of you will too”--and we did.

He certainly knew something about boys’ ways, did Pablo Fangue. We used to have sundry threepenny and fourpenny pieces given to us during the week, and clever little Fanny Bluring was our banker. All she had to do was to drop the little coins down the bag-like receptacle for the flat piece of wood in front of her old-fashioned stays, and there they remained in safety till we wanted them on Sunday, when we would gorge ourselves with ice creams, nuts, gingerbread, and anything we fancied. In Glasgow we spent no end of shillings with an ice cream merchant in the Saltmarket, and our master suspecting the reason why we couldn’t eat any dinner conspired with the iceman. The next time we had ice creams--but I draw a veil over the sequel. For months after I could never face an ice cream.

I was with Pablo until he died. I was then fourteen and I fancy I knew more about animals than most boys of my age. I was entrusted to buy the hay for the horses; I acted as veterinary surgeon, I could tell when a horse was lame, when he was ill I knew what was the matter with him; and all this useful knowledge I must say I owe to Pablo Fangue. He was certainly one of the best of masters.