VICTORIAN FAIRS

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 August 1936, Page 3

VICTORIAN FAIRS

CENTURY OF SIDE-SHOWS

A hundred years ago the .Tennisons opened Belle Vue Gardens to a public which expected much less for its money than that of our own day. The great change which has taken place on the amusement side of fairs and shows and exhibitions since 1836 is that our ancestors were content, for the most part, with looking on, while we must be part of the show. Cremorne about ninety years ago was exactly what the Victorians liked. Though it became congested with sideshow’s, boxing booths, shooting galleiies. and the like later on, it was originally “a real pleasaunce, surrounded by magnificent trees, with well-kept lawns and lovely flowers and melodious singing birds.” But there was plenty of amusement besides the fireworks essential to all Victorian shows. There were balloon ascents, and in order that there might be the necessary spice of danger dear to crowds there were parachute descents. A development from these, which helped to provide the “sensation” beginning to be essential, was an Italian who entered a “flaming furnace.” There was a show later on which was too much even for the Victorians—a balloon ascent, with “Europa,” seated on a heifer as the nearest thing to a bull procurable, attached to the car. When a pony was taken up the authorities interfered. How-1 ever, a new’ sensation was staged i a feminine tightrope walker who was to walk across the Thames. She escaped with her life, but the crowd got its thrills as it did with another balloon ‘‘sensation.” A trapeze was attached to the car and a gymnast performed all manner of evolutions “to the mingled alarm and pleasure of the spectators.” They were thrilled still more in the early seventies when De Groof, the flying man, killed himself.

“YANKEE DEVICE’’ The great attraction at the first Earl’s Court Exhibition was “that peculiar Yankee device the switchback.” The switchback will sound mild enough to the Edwardian, but we must look at it carefully, because from it was developed a host of more elaborate "thrills” and because from its first appearance it imposed on the showman the necessity of giving to the fairgoers the illusion of personal danger while assuring them that there was no danger at all. We have two pictures of the switchback it had various, names— fifty years ago. Here is a passage from an enthusiastic catalogue: — , We soon learn from the passengers shouts of delight that we are not Lar from the Switchback Railway, which, embedded in pretty scenery, continues to hold its own as an immensely enjovable form of popular amusement. But in the early days there were accidents sometimes, and here is the Pall Mall Gazette dryly ironical, so that, across the years, those who remember E. T. Cook can almost see him passing the note for the press: — The Switchback at the “Italian Exhibition” has killed its man, or, rather, its woman, and now the Roller Coaster at the Crystal Palace has had a bad accident. We suppose some people will see in that a reason for stopping switchbacks. Why the addition o£ the spice of danger which con-

stitutes so much of the charm of foxhunting to our popular amusements should be regarded with such hostility is difficult to understand. The popularity of the switchback is due to exhilaration and excitement of a jerky rush through the air at a speed over varying angles suggestive of danger. The fact that one person in 100,000 gets killed will strengthen the suggestion, intensify the excitement, and make the switchback more popular than ever —at least among those who like their amusement fortified with risk of death. There we have the difference between the early and the late Victorian; the one was satisfied with watching others undergo the “risk of death,” his grandchildren wanted a share in the risk. Sensation had taken its modern shape. It was some way from this to the “motor racing track” of the White City in 1908. Increasing demand for excitement was satisfied again in the development of the chute —in its simplest form a tea-tray down the banisters, but as time went on the Boyton water chute, the Canadian Toboggan, and so forth. Here was a Victorian view of the joys of the toboggan long before the horrors of the Wiggle-Woggle: “We step into a long, low sledge with a gracefully curved front guard and constructed to hold three persons; an attendant starts us on our journey—a whirr, a glimpse of objects on either side flying by us with j lightning speed, and before we rea-, lise that we are fairly started we find ] I ourselves being politely assisted j from the car at the lower end.” > As befits our island race, boats i havo played a part in the develop-1 ment of sensation from the mimic warfare of 1851 to the languorous charm of summer nights in “Venice.”

with the boatman chanting, according to legend, '‘'Gondolier! drinki biere,” to the submarine excursion to the> “Whirling Waters,” with their adventures —“mysterious happenings, humorous, but harmless and safe and the witching waves guaranteed not to produce seasickness. Prom the United States came the Ferris Wheel, which became the Great Wheel of the eighteen-nineties. The; emotions which the Victorians were, expected to discover on the wheel weie various: . | ••The pleasure derived consists partly in the movement through | space upwards and outwards and partly in the exhilaration which the view down from a sheer height produces on the imagination of the majority. The ecstasy of aerial i motion and the moment of sublime poise appeal to the primitive instincts. The orbicular climb and descent of the wheel combine into one soaring whole the fitful joy of a thousand imperfect vibrations in the swing of boyhood, and we find ourselves growing younger and younger and willed with that wonderful spirit of vitality that we only know when life is young and free from care ” But the great moment in the life of the Wheel was when it refused to soar or descend, and cynics declared that thousands of errant husbands claimed, to have been the victims of its immobility. But development goes on—switchbacks become scenic railways and mountain railways, slides become wiggle-woggles, the steam-organ of the old fairs becomes the elaborate “riding” machines of to-day.