CINQUEVALLI: PRINCE OF JUGGLERS 1

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVII, Issue 1000, 6 May 1909, Page 9

CINQUEVALLI: PRINCE OF JUGGLERS 1

HOW HE CAME TO HIS’ KINGDOM. A STORY WORTH READING. (“Sporting and Dramatic Review” Special.) “Cinquevalli, the Incomparable!” So the playbills term him; and, on his own lines, so I found him. I was introduced to him on the stage of His Majesty’s Theatre, shortly after his arrival in Auckland on Tuesday morning. He was playing with a wooden ball belonging to Mr. Lawson. Having discovered it on the stage, and finding that it had a little hole in it, he was not satisfied until he had tossed it up and down and caught it on a pointed stick lie held in his hand. I didn’t know it then, but I found out afterwards that was characteristic of the man. Cinquevalli never rests satisfied with attempting a thing. He keeps on till he conquers it, and that is the secret of his success.

“An interview? Certainly; only too pleased to meet you,’’ said the Prince of Jugglers, the formal introductions over. “ What do you want me to talk about? Myself? How I took to juggling? Well, let me see! How long have I been before the public? Thirty-seven years.”

“And your first appearance?” “ Was made in Russia, the Southern portion. I was a tumbler, as my father was before me, and used to take part in aerial flights. Conjuring and juggling and the things attending them that I have since taken up were merely hobbies with me. I juggled to amuse my fellow artistes ‘ between the acts.’ I was the Entertainer of the Entertainers- That was what tfiey called me. As a boy I had a perfect mania for juggling and such things.”

“ Call it genius—talent, rather,” murmured the interviewer. “No! I call it a mania. A man must be a maniac, at least I think so, now that I have grown older and look back upon the past, to spend, as I did, four or five hours, day after day, in perfecting little tricks that take only a few seconds to perform on the stage. But it was all done in a fighting way. I remember my old dad, when he took me in hand and started to make a tumbler of me, and told me to do the ‘ flick-flack.’ If I didn’t do it properly or moved too slowly I got a crack over the head or the arm to keep me up to the mark. When I got outside to play—l was only a boy, remember —I would take a bottle and stand it on the back of my hand, and would make it do the balancing tricks I was called upon to do. I was the bottle, and when it didn’t respond, I used to give it a crack with my disengaged hand. That was my father! In time I took to balancing the bottle on my arm. And so with other things that I picked up. I made them do tricks, and when they failed corrected them, as my father corrected me. When I was quite a child if an orange was given to me I never ate it like other children did, but waited until it had grown so soft and juicy by much throwing about that I couldn’t throw it any more without its falling to pieces. Then I would eat it. In school I would play with a pencil, throw it up in the air and try to catch it in the pencil case to which it belonged. You saw what I was doing with Mr. Lawson’s ball a little while ago. I saw the ball there and simply couldn’t let it rest till I had fitted it on the stick. See (smiling) how the mania—habit you call it—has grown upon me !”

Mr. Cinquevalli’s father is a Russian Pole; his mother an Italian, hence his name Paolo Cinquevalli. For years he travelled with his father through Poland and Russia. When he paid his first visit to Germany he was announced as Paul Cinquevalli. His friends rather liked the change in the spelling of his Christian name, and he has been “ Paul” ever since. He was six or seven years of age when his father began his training as a tumbler, or acrobat, and his daring flights and intrepid acts gained him, as a youth, a great reputation throughout Southern Russia, where he was called Malinke Chort —“The Little Devil.”

In 1874 Cinquevalli met with a very serious accident, one that changed the whole course of his life, and that incidentally led up to the cultivation and development of those balancing

and juggling tricks that have since made him famous. He was appearing at the Zoological Gardens, St. Petersburg, in a flying trapeze act. and through the neglect of the attendant, whose duty it was to clean and wipe all the moisture off the bars, he fell a distance of 72 feet and was very badly hurt. Explaining to the interviewer how the accident happened, Mr. Cinquevalli said that when he swung across and caught the opposite trapeze he felt the moisture on the bar and knew that the attendant had failed in his duty. He felt his hands slipping and exerted himself to the utmost to retain his hold, but when the rebound came he was only clinging by his finger tips, and down he went. He had been taught to fall, however, and would even then have escaped more easily but for striking a guard wire 20 feet off the ground. That upset all his calculations and sent him hurling downwards, so that when he was lifted after his fall he was simply a mass of broken bones and bruised flesh. They carried him to an apartment adjoining the monkey house, where he lay on a couch unconscious for three days, and was then removed to the hospital on the couch upon which he was lying. He remained in the hospital for eight and a-half months, and during the weary days of waiting he amused himself with his old juggling tricks on his uninjured right hand and arm, making use of a cup, a plate, or anything that came his way until the nurse would come along with a gentle remonstrance.

When Cinquevalli left the hospital he found that his occupation as a tumbler was gone. His left arm and hand had lost their cunning and failed to respond to the demands made upon them, and it became a question what he would do in the future. “My friends,” he told the writer, “urged me to take up as a business what I had previously done for practice. I thought the matter over and came to the conclusion that I would try what could be done in that line

“I made my reappearance,” he continued, “in the same gardens where I had met with the accident, and about 13 months after that event. There was a tremendous crowd of about 12,000 people fronting my platform; and the reception they gave me was one I shall never forget. Usually when the people are pleased to see an artiste in Russia they make a great fuss over him, shouting and welcoming him with all their might. But this night they were quite quiet and still. I got to the centre of the platform before they made a move, and I was feeling very nervous and anxious when I saw their heads bowed down and the whole crowd fell on their knees, made the sign of the Cross and thanked God for restoring me. And then the music struck up arid the whole crowd joined in a Thanksgiving hymn, and all I could do was to stand there amazed and wonderstruck till old Mr. Rost, the proprietor of the gardens, a fine old man, very much like the Salvation Army General Booth in appearance, came up and addressed the audience, and then I went off with him sobbing and crying like a baby ! After the tumult was over I went back and was starting to show them my tricks when they all shouted “ No, no; we only want to see you; we don’t want you to work to-night.” But the second night! Ah! that was a big success ! The novelty of the thing; the tricks with cigar, matchbox, handkerchief, anything that I took hold of—that interested them, and I have been going ever since.” Mr. Cinquevalli is well known in all the European capitals—Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna, etc. He struck London first at the Christmas season of 1886, and then received his first offers from America- Once the long sea journeys began they grew upon him in interest. He has twice visited Australia, and is now on his second visit to New Zealand. Whether he likes New Zealand or not may be judged by his closing remark to the interviewer: “In my present standing I have no need to go where I do not want to. The New Zealand people have always given me the kindliest of welcomes.”

Mrs. Cinquevalli and their little daughter, who, as her father says, is never happier than when running around the stage, accompany Mr. Cinquevalli on his present tour.