Figure 1.--This photograph was taken at Bertram Mills Winter Circus in Olympia. It looks to hasve vbeen taken in the 1950s. |
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When I was kid my Mum and Dad took me to see Cecil B de Mille’s "The Greatest Show On Earth" when I was 6-years-old. The circus has fascinated me ever since, and for many years I fostered a childish fantasy of actually working in one. In his book, A Seat at the Circus Antony Hippisley Coxe writes that once someone has an interest in a circus then that interest stays with him or her for the rest of their lives, even though they think the interest is no longer there. I seem to recall when I was a boy there were a number of shows touring Britain. The big three were Billy Smarts, Chipperfields and Bertram Mills. There were a few smaller shows such as Robert Brothers, Lord George Sanger's and Robert Fossetts. But it was the big three that drew in the crowds. > Going to the circus was a very special treat. My first ever visit to a real circus was when Chipperfields came to town. I vividly remember that visit. My Dad took me to see the big top being erected on the Sunday. My Mum took me to see the show on the Monday evening; my jaw must have dropped several notches as I soaked up the atmosphere.
When I was kid my Mum and Dad took me to see Cecil B de Mille’s "The Greatest Show On Earth" when I was 6-years-old. The circus has fascinated me ever since, and for many years I fostered a childish fantasy of actually working in one. In his book, A Seat at the Circus Antony Hippisley Coxe writes that once someone has an interest in a circus then that interest stays with him or her for the rest of their lives, even though they think the interest is no longer there. He goes on to say that years later you could turn a corner and there before you is a circus and the sight of seeing it rekindles that lost interest. How true that is. You can shake the sawdust off your shoes, but you can’t shake it out of your heart.
I seem to recall when I was a boy there were a number of shows touring Britain. The big three were Billy Smarts, Chipperfields and Bertram Mills. There were a few smaller shows such as Robert Brothers, Lord George Sanger's and Robert Fossetts. But it was the big three that drew in the crowds.
As far as I recall my first visit to a circus was in 1955, when Chipperfields Circus played the town.Going to the circus was a very special treat. My first ever visit to a real circus was when Chipperfields came to town. I vividly remember that visit. My Dad took me to see the big top being erected on the Sunday morning and after lunch, we returned once more to the circus ground to see the parade. I’d never seen anything like it, the place was thronged with people and my Dad had to carry me on his shoulders so I could see everything. I loved the animals and I had a very soft spot for the big cats. The elephants, however, scared me to death especially when they came so close. My Mum took me to see the show on the Monday evening; my jaw must have dropped several notches as I soaked up the atmosphere. The first thing I could sense was the smell of the sawdust and the steady throb of the diesel generators outside. Then the band started playing and the show commenced with the parade around the ring. My Mum said if I got frightened then all I needed to do was look away. How could I have got frightened, I loved every minute of it? On the Evening of the following Sunday my Dad and I were walking over the ground where the circus had been and much of it had gone, only the four massive king poles that support the big top were still standing, the grass was damp and it had this smell of being newly cut, every time I smell newly cut grass, I’m transported back in time to that evening.
Even at the age of 8 years, I could sense the atmosphere was charged with the thought of what was to come in the way of entertainment. I remember wearing my black and white pinstripe short trousers suit, knee-length stockings and black shoes. On my head was my school cap.
It just occurred to me that if you look at the first picture on my Personal Experience pages, the suit I'm wearing including the cap is the very suit I had on when I went with my Mum to Chipperfields. I wish I could remember what the other boys were wearing. but it's well over 50 years and I only have hazy blurred images of the people I saw at the circus. I did have a photograph taken by my Dad when we went to see the parade, but it was lost years ago.
The evening was fine and sunny and as we got nearer to the circus ground I began to hear the steady throbbing of the Diesel generators. We eventually arrived at the circus ground and before us was the enormous white canvass big top. It towered over everything, the red and blue circus transport, with Chipperfields Circus emblazoned on the bodywork of the trucks. As I got nearer and nearer I felt like a dwarf compared to the vastness of the canvass that would shortly swallow me up into a thing known as circus.
“Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, welcome to the circus. We have for your entertainment tonight some of the finest acts ever assembled under the big top and now we bring before you the parade of the artistes.”
The show has begun. I settled back in my seat and thrilled to the acts before me. I laughed at he antics of the clowns and hid beneath my mother’s coat when a person charges through the audience wearing a gorilla costume. High above me a high wire or a trapeze act has me on the edge of my seat. I come back down to earth and watch spellbound as a man in sequined costume rides around the ring on a bike with one wheel, while juggling hoops at the same time. The first half comes to an end and five or six mastodons come through the ring curtains to perform before me. During the interval, I visit the toilet and then my Mom buys me some ice-cream. I return to my seat and find the cage has been erected in readiness for the wild cat act. It comes and goes and the clowns come into the ring to distract my attention while the cage is taken down. A crazy car comes into the ring, and clowns dressed as mechanics take it apart, while getting drenched with water as they do so. Things settle down again and some palomino ponies come into the ring and perform an equestrian ballet. All to soon the performance ends and the band plays a quick march to hurry me on my way home.
I arrives back home and get ready for bed. I put on my blue and white pajamas and snuggle up between the sheets and blankets. Very soon I feel my eyelids begin to get heavy and before I know it I’ve fallen asleep. In my dreams I am transported back to the smell of the sawdust and the sound of the generators. Only this time I’m the performer at the centre of that magical circus ring.
Well that’s how it went for me. I would have to wait until 1957 when Billy Smart Circus did a one-week stand in the town.. Once more my Dad took me to see the build-up on Sunday morning. In the afternoon we went to my Aunt’s home where I had a good view of the parade as we viewed it from the balcony, which was just above a bank. I had to wait until the final show on Saturday before I saw the performance. My Dad took me to see it and we stayed at the ground so I could watch the pull-down. That was the last show I ever saw with my parents as the next time I would be old enough to see it on my own.
I was coming home from school one lunchtime in June 1959 when my eye caught sight of a poster announcing that Bertram Mills Circus was coming to do a three-day stand on the Victoria Recreation Ground. At school that afternoon I got told off quite a few times for not paying attention. My thoughts were elsewhere, namely the impending visit to the circus. When I got home that evening I bolted down my tea as quick as I could, then I told my folks about the visit of the circus. I got on my bike and headed straight for Victoria about a mile from my home.
As I cycled home an idea came into my head, I had this vision of having my own circus, well a model of one. I could see it in my mind’s eye, my Dinky and Corgi toys sprawled out on the living room carpet, but what about the tents? It’s surprising what a child’s imagination can do. It can transform a box that once held a few cans of Heinz Baked Beans into a big top, two old shoeboxes into a tent for the animals and the main entrance to the big top itself. The living room carpet was green so that took care of the grass. I only had one caravan so my saloon cars had to double up as both caravans and cars. You can see how vivid an imagination I had.
If you’re wondering where I put my model circus on the living room carpet, it went between the sofa, which was in the middle of the room and the piano at the back. It was always identically laid out to one of the big three circuses, depending on how I felt. On Saturday night I would move my model circus from one part of the room to the next and reassemble it again on the Sunday morning just like they did in the real circuses.
After school next day I got on my bike again and headed for Victoria. Some of the kids, including me hung about the ground and annoyed the man in the box office. A few days later my Mum gave me the money for my ticket to see the show and I opted for the Tuesday so I could see the pull-down on Wednesday evening. One thing I must tell you is my Mum told me not to sit too near the front as they took all the kids from there and fed them to the animals. She had a wicked sense of humour!
As it was June most of us kids were wearing our summer clothes. Quite a few boys were in shorts, while a few others and I were wearing either jeans or in my case long trousers. One of those boys came over to me and asked if I was going to see the circus, I told him I was. He was wearing one of those corduroy outfits of shorts and lumber jacket in grey, which I loved wearing when I was much younger. We both had bikes and as we talked we had one foot on the peddle while the other was on the grass. Sometimes I would get flashes of the white lining of the shorts my friend was wearing. He was still wearing shorts when Billy Smarts came to town the following year, this time he wore a short trouser suit in the usual school grey colour.
I was never a lover of jeans always preferring trousers. Sometimes I would get dressed up to go to the cinema, but when I went to the circus I always went in my school clothes. Namely an old jacket and a pair of trousers. It seemed pointless getting dressed up to go to the circus, especially if the ground was muddy from a heavy down pour.
And a heavy rain Which is what happened when Billy Smarts Circus came to the town in 1960. Thanks to a very intense depression that hovered over the country heavy rain fell on the town two days before the circus was due to roll on to Victoria. As a result, most of the ground was waterlogged. The day was Friday and the evening was remarkably fine and sunny considering the amount of rain that fell earlier in the day.
I’m sure that I’ve been born with a sixth sense, as there was always something that told me when a circus was about to visit the town. The 1960 visit of Billy Smarts Circus is a fine example of this I was drawn to Victoria even before I’d seen the first poster advertising the circus’s visit to the town. I remember cycling to Victoria to find the four 40-foot long living wagons of the Smart family had already arrived. One of these was the ‘Royal Windsor’, which was the mobile home of Billy (The Gov’nor) Smart himself. As a precaution, my Mom suggested that I wore my Robert Hirst gabardine raincoat, just in case it clouded over and rained again. I’d had the coat for a couple of years and while most boys were glad to get rid of their gabardine raincoats, I hung on to mine until it eventually got too small for me to wear. Once again after tea on Monday evening I felt the urge to ride over to Victoria and was greeted by the sight of the advance booking office in the circus colours of green and white, which have since become my favourite colours. The following night I booked my seat for the show, I can still remember someone with the name of Valentine F. Hagger signed my ticket. The local evening paper had done a feature on ‘Smokey’ and one of the advance staff told me that he ate kids for breakfast. Yet another one with a wicked sense of humour.
It’s funny that my Mom had difficulty in getting me out of bed when I had to go to school. But on the day that the big top was erected, I would be up practically at the crack of dawn. After a quick wash and a mouthful of tea, I would cycle over to the circus and watch the action. I made myself a bit of money by running errands for some of the circus people to the shops up the road from where the circus was playing. Although I went to see the performance, I much preferred the equipment to watching the show. My favourite act was the trapeze. I kind of hero-worshipped those of the various trapeze acts I used to watch as a boy. They performed something I could never aspire to. One reason being my fear of heights. At sometime during the act, the music would cease playing, then a flyer would ascend the high rigging, while the catcher at the other end would swing to-and-fro on his trapeze. There would be a drum roll and then the flyer would take hold of the trapeze and perform the triple somersault. I would get shivers up my spine when I saw that happen in the act.
In 1961 Robert Brothers circus came to the town. It was much smaller than the others and I was a little bit disappointed because of this. The more rolling-stock a circus had the more I liked it. As I much preferred the equipment of a circus than watching the performance. What was even more disappointing was that the show did a three-day stand as opposed to the week that Billy Smarts Circus had the year previously.
Also in that year I found out about the Circus Friends Association (CFA), whose motto was ‘We pay as we go’ - I joined it sometime in September. I also found out about a weekly publication called “World’s Fair” and in it were a couple of pages dedicated to the world of circus. Now I was able to find out which town a circus was playing in. It was also the first time I saw my name in print as the CFA had a monthly slot in the paper. I was one of about six new members being welcomed into membership
Is primarily aimed at people involved with such things as fixed and travelling fairs. Also people who run amusement arcades, and of course, circuses. There is also a section in the paper called "Market Trader" here there are hundreds of ads from wholesalers selling their products to the retail trade. Some of those wholesalers sold clothing and I remember reading adverts like these. "We have stocks of boys' velvet corduroy shorts in the following colours, dark brown, light brown, navy, bottle, grey, red and fawn. These are fully lined and have button flies and are sized 0 to 12. £1 9s 11d per dozen box." "School grey and lovat green worsted shorts all fully lined with double seat. These shorts are ideal for school and come in sizes 0 to 12, they have button flies and waistband adjusters £1 2s 6d per dozen box." "Grey flannel suits with short trousers. Ideal fur Sunday best or that special occasion. The jacket is double breasted, while the shorts are fully lined with a double seat and have belt loops. Size 0 to 14 £4 19s 11d per dozen box."
One clown I admired was Coco who was with Bertram Mills Circus for many years. He brought tears of laughter to both child and adult a like. His real name was Nicolai Poliakoff, and he was born in Latvia in 1922, he died in 1974. It’s not so much his clowning that I admire him for, it was the way he taught road safety to the many kids he saw when he visited their schools in whatever town the show was playing in. Apart from his larger than life shoes, he always had with him a hand held version of a Belisha beacon, which is a flashing orange, globe atop a tall black and white pole. They appear on either side of the road at zebra crossings in the United Kingdom. I guess he was reminding the children to cross the road safely by using the zebra crossing.
Although I watched the animal acts I was never a great lover of them. Later I became acutely aware that the place for animals is not in a circus. I believed that animals like humans should be free to do whatever they want and not be subjected to cruel treatment. I’d much rather see an elephant in its natural surroundings than in a circus ring being made to do things, which we humans would find degrading.
Bertram Mills Circus paid its final visit to the town in 1962, a few years later the tenting show closed and in 1967 the winter show at Olympia ended. The reason being a lack of audiences due to television. I made one or two friends that year that worked at Bertram Mills. While I was chatting to one of them a couple of boys my age, which at the time was 15 approached. I remember one of them was wearing a windcheater jacket and grey short trousers, his friend was also wearing shorts. One of these boys told the person I was talking to that they were Scouts, although they weren’t wearing Scout uniform at the time. They asked for a ticket to go and see the animals and were charged half price. My friend told me he always treated the Boy Scouts. I’ve often wondered if they were telling the truth. A favourite dodge when you became too old for a half price ticket at the cinema or a bus and train ticket was to put on a pair of short trousers to make you look much younger than you were.
A few months later the circus came back to the region, this time to play in a large city about 10 miles from where I live. As luck would have it the visit coincided with my two weeks holiday from work. So on the last Saturday in September I made my way to Moor Park where the circus was going to be playing, to book my seat for the following Saturday. Once I had booked my seat I hung about for a while and got talking to a boy who lived nearby. I recall he wore a cream-coloured Aran sweater and grey corduroy shorts. I guessed him to be 3 years younger than myself. I found out that he too liked the circus, we sat for a while on the steps leading to the interior of the advance box office and annoyed the man who had just given me my ticket. I was going to go and watch the build-up on Sunday, but this had to be curtailed thanks to the weather. Monday dawned warm and sunny and after my breakfast I headed for the bus that would take me to the city. From the bus station I took a leisurely stroll up to Moor Park. When I got there I saw some of my friends from the circus and told them I’d booked my ticket for the Saturday evening performance. That came and went, and with it, my last visit to a circus until Billy Smarts Circus came to town in 1968.
I was very, very tempted to apply for a job with the circus that year. But as luck would have it another job came up and I settled into that. It seems strange how much a circus has played an important part of my life. My Mom told me that one of my great, great aunts married a travelling showman and I asked her if it was something in my genes, which made me like the circus so much. She doubted it and said that if it had been one of my great, great uncles who had a travelling show then there could have been something in it. On reflection, I think I owe my liking for the circus to Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Greatest Show on Earth”, when I saw the film at the tender age of six-years-old. Even now, I still have that interest in circuses, I’m sure there’s sawdust in my veins rather than blood.
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