STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A SHOWMAN.

Auckland Star, Volume XX, Issue 58, 9 March 1889, Page 3 (Supplement)

STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A SHOWMAN.

VAN HASt&'S AUTQBIOGSAPHY.

(From Oue, Special Correspondent.)

London, January 18. I have referred in my " Topics of the Day " thi3 time to Van Hare's " Fifty Years of a Showman's Life," as being an unusually interesting work. Appended are a lew extracts :— Here is one of his circus anecdotes :— . A funny occurrence happened one night. One of the best horses in the stud waH in the ring, and when the aci; was finished and the horse being led out by the groom, one of the clowns caughb hold of his tail, pretending to pull him back, when the horse's tail came oif. This created quite a sensation in tho house. The audience thought it was a mosb cruel thing, and would, "no j doubt, have caused a disturbance had it noc been explained to them. The horse had the misfortune to be born with a rat tail, and to improve his appearance they had a raise tail made to fix on him before he had to appear in the arena; tho clown, nob being aware of the counterfeit tail, was tricked as well as the audience.

There is no trade which, flourishes so well upon dexterous advertisements as the trade of the showman. Mr Van Hare speedily recognised this ; and we quote one instance out of many of the good use to which he applied the noble art of advertising :—

I commenced advertising for private parties with Napoleon, the Wizard Dog;, which I had done very well with the Christinas before, and to increase his popularity he became lo3t, that is, he was not to be seen. I advertised 100 guineas reward for the celebrated Napoleon, the Wizard Dog, eulogising him to the utmost of my humble abilities, finishing with, • Anyone restoring him to his broken-hearted master would receive the above reward,' etc. I wad inundated with letters from all quarters, from people who had seen a dog that answered the description. 1 had one from a lady, desiring co console me in my bereavement, by wishing she might be allowed to pub her affections in the place of the beautiful Napoleon, for his loving and broken-hearted master, etc.

Presently Ml1 Van Hare found himself on the West Coast of Africa, endeavouring to find a gorilla. That noble animal was then practically unknown in Europe, and he shrewdly "imagined that the addition of a gorilla to his show would make its proprietor's fortune. Sometimes food was scarce, and on one occasion thero was nothing to eat but grilled monkey : — ' They looked very nice. I was hungry and faint; I put all squeamish thoughts aside, and tucked into a couple of legs with groat gusto ; if i had only had a bit of salt I thought what I would have given ; if they had been cooked like rabbits, without my knowing what they were, I should have thought them delicious.' A baby gorilla was ab lasb caughb and taken, to Europe, where, as we shall see, it was a very great success indeed. But before Mr Van Hare returned bo Spain, whence he had sailed, he got into an awkward difficulty. During his passage through the dominions of the King of the Fan Country he became—by a misunderstanding and, he is ungallant enough to insinuate, very much against his will—the accepted suitor of that monarch's sable daughter. He did not burn with ardour to marry a Fan Princess, and contrived, upon promising to return in a year's time, to get clear away without his Africjtn bride :—

The King tried to persuade me to remain with him, and said ho would find me plenty of hunting, which he thought I must be very fond of, having come so far across the big water —he did not know where—on purpose to hunt; tho white men must be an extraordinary tribe. I told him when I came back I would stay and live with him ; the Princess fretted very much, and I presented her Royal Highness with the very last pockethandkerchief I had left to dry up her teara and make herself happy till my return. I distributed numerous little presents to all from whom 1 had received any kindness. After much shaking of hands, etc., I took leave of his Majesty and his two queens, and mustered up courage to kiss the Princess, and she, poor, dear creature, cried as if her heart would break. 1 pat on a little hypocrisy, and struggled hard to shed a tear ; but it "was of no use, and, what was more unfortunate, I had not a handkerchief to pretend to dry away my tears. At Havana Mr Van Hare was compelled by the sudden death of a tamer, who performed daily with a cagefu.l of lions, to turn lion-tamer himself. He had never been at such close quarters with those beasts betore ; but after some very pardonable hesitation he determined to get over his tremours once and for all. 'I rushed in with the heart of a lion, whip in hand. The animals were at once struck with awe, and crouched into thenusual corner. I felt at once I was their master ; I placed the hoop against the iron bars for them to leap through ; the first came up with a growl. I gave him a good cut with a whip, which he answered pretty quickly by flying through the hoop like licrhtninP-, and the others followed suit. I fcTund I could do as I liked with tiiem, and put them through their performance, and backed out of the cage.' ' Returned to Spain, he tamed a gorilla and commenced the long and tedious task of training him. In course of time he became a highly accomplished ape, blossomed into'Hassan, the Gorilla Chief.' and long provided a vsry handsome income for hia owner They became much attached to each other ; but Master Ha.«san was a very mischievous gentleman. When his master was so much absorbed in a novel that he took no notice of his pet, ' he would bite a piece of the corner clean oft, and in a moment he would be at the other end of the room, looking perfectly satisfied that he had accomplished something.' This is how Hassan amused himself one evening when he had been left at home alone : — When I opened the door Master Hassan came to welcome me, grinning and laughing all over his face. I could not help laughing myself ; but if I had met him in any other place but where I left him, I certainly should nob have known it was my gorilla, bnt> should have taken it for a very extraordinary animal, the like, of which I had never before seen. He had found a packet of plaster of Paris, which he had rubbed all over his face and head, also a jar with some black paint, and another with red paint, which he had used in such an artistic manner it was really a capital makeup for a circus clown. Bub you can guess 1 did nob laugh when I got inside, for he evidently hadnob wasted all his time uponornamenting himself. Hehad emptied ahamper containing about five dozen turkeys eggs, which I had had in the previous day, by throwing i«i on the floor. How many he had eate°n I could not tell, bub there were very few left whole. He had emptied a sack of sawdust, also a bag of white sand, and a large bottle of cod-liver oil j; also a packet 'of flower of brimstone. This altogether, I thought, was a very nice mixture; and, to crown all, he had found my whips, which I kept on a shelf, and broken and bitten everyone of them into small bits, co that I could not chastise him if I wanted, for he would nob take a bib of notice of a stick I sat down and cried. Master Hassan did not fraternise with me in my arief, bub laughed, evidently believing that 'he had done a clever performance In addition to all this, Hassan swallowed and secreted in his pouch three sovereigns which had been left lying about, and did nob disgorge them until three months afterwarded It would be a poor compliment to say of this book that it is more interesting than most novels; but ib is ab least as entertaining as, let us say, a malicious autobiography.