Coco Looks Back

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23053, 22 June 1940, Page 14

Coco Looks Back

Coco the Clown. By Himself, Nicol: 243 pp. Some years ago, after a season in the great Circus Busch, Berlin, Coco accepted a contract in the Bertram Mills circus; and since then, until the war broke all his engagements, this famous Russian clown has been England’s favourite. It was a case of love on both sides: Coco found, when he returned to Riga to fetch his children, ’ that his “mind was on England.” Having lived there once, nothing would ever be the same again for me when I wasn’t there. There are people in England who do not seemi to realise what a wonderful place it is. Its cities, so big and clean. And the beautiful countryside. Life can be lived there freely, and there is no cause to be afraid. And that makes its people kind. That is one of Coco’s gifts, a touching, earnest- simplicity of feeling, expressed like a child’s, moved like a child’s. His story shows through what distressing experiences it has been preserved—or won. Nicolai Poliakoff plunged into public performance, tumbling and singing, when he was five. His father was in Siberia, fighting the Japanese; his brothers and sisters were famished; and the coppers Nicolai earned fed them. But when his soldier-father came home again, N'colai had a long battle to win his wish. He ran away more than once, riding to remote places under the seat of a railway carriage and begging a job when he found a circus. But at last he convinced his father; and by the time the Great, War broke out Nicolai was already Coco, with a training in the Circus Truzi behind him, appearances in St. Petersburg, and many amazing adventures, including a year of inexplicable imprisonment. He served, a mere boy, in a Siberian regiment; he saw the revolution break out; he was forced into the Red Army, into the White, into the Latvian forces fighting the Reds. The confusion, terror, and suffering of these years are pictured with extraordinary

A Poliakoff. J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. [lO/6 nek) vividness. The recollections are brief, but every fact is keen ana quick. It takes only a few words to bring up the scene when the Reas break in on the Poliakoffs, drag on Nicolai’s .elder brother to the back garden, and shoot him and leave him in the snow. It takes f only a few words to describe Cocos swm courtship and marriage, in the midst of fear and bitter hardship: Valentina and I were married at the Orthodox Church. We went back to my mother-in-law’s house, and for our wedding feast we had on the table a pound of bread and one salt herring- “ You eat, Valentina,” I said. “No, Nicolai, you eat; you have to go to work.” r-J “Listen, I will cur ft in half,” I said. I did so, and that was our \veddm o party. But these memories are alive, with old pain and old happiness. Better days came, though not without disastrous mishaps; and then at last Coco’s fortune carried him to England and opened for hint his brightest years. His description of circus life, routine, companionship, and hazards is fascinating, especially in its references to bis own art. He is not„ it seems, truly a “clown.” The “white clown” is always dressed in the traditional white conicaP hat and sequinsd w T hite suit; the “carpet clown” is. a “perpetual” turn, always ready i° the ring or among the audience 1° fill an empty moment with his gagsCoco is an “auguste,” once the proper clowm’s “buffo” or foil, but now an independent character “act, though still true to tradition in being ahvays wrong, maladroit, and victimised. When the circus stopped, _ m September, Coco’s merry-making stopped. He has dug drains for. 3 grs-company, he has been a hall' porter, now he is a soldier in the British Army. Everyone who has seen him, everyone who reads W® book, will wish him well and swiftly out of war into his right place u» » new Merry England.