The Golden Chain of Reading: The Circus

The circus in children's literature evokes the exotic, the opportunity of escape, the promise of adventure. It is interesting though, that the image of the circus has such durability. The modern circus was the child of cheap transportation with canals, railroads, and highways from the 1870's making it possible to transport the cornucopia of exoticisms from one isolated small town to another. After a span of barely three quarters of a century, the death knell tolled again and again from the 1920's to the 1950's with the advent of cheap individual transportation as Americans took to the road and distances disappeared. Film, radio and then TV began to fill up the hours with the type of entertainment previously only offered by the circus and evolving judgments began to turn a more jaundiced eye towards the perceived exploitation of both animals and the people of the circus, the carnies.

Today a child is most likely only to encounter a circus in their story books - real circuses are few and far between. I think the first circus I ever attended was in Woking, England in the mid-1960's when I was seven or eight years old. I can remember clearly the excitement of such a strange conglomeration of sights, smells and events. The smell of sawdust, the acrid reek of dung of animals from far away continents, the sweet smell of children's treats such as toffee apples, the musky old canvas from the big tent, etc.

There was the rigid attention to all the animal performances. Striking to young eyes were the horse acrobats; four or five women riding white horses around the ring - except they were not riding them at all but rather standing on their backs doing acrobatic tricks. There was the lion master. I don't remember his putting his head in the lion's mouth but I do remember the thrill of the lions rushing into the ring through a special cage tunnel.

Most memorable of all, and for what reason I do not know as in hindsight it does not seem all that remarkable, were the elephants. The ringmaster put them through their paces, doing all sorts of tricks such as kicking a ball, picking up tiny things with their trunks and so on. But what really stuck in my eight year old brain was the sight of the five elephants each and simultaneously sitting their massive bulks down on their respective circular platforms, with their improbably massive forelegs stuck out in the air like a little terrier sitting up and begging.

It can't have been the first time I was thrilled in that awful way as you watch the flying acrobats high above your short self, sailing through the air and being saved from a disastrous fall by the frailest of hand clasps. But it is the first time I remember being so conscious of that awful thrill. For some reason, the high-wire walkers remain most clear in my mind.

Beyond the performance in the big tent there were buskers for pitch and toss, for air rifle shooting, for all sorts of intriguing things in small tents and shelters on the grounds around the main ring. If you were not captured by the shouted pitches, you might follow all the colored strings of lights, so glorious on a beautifully dark autumn evening.

What child could remain unaffected by an event so completely disassociated with the routine of school, homework, and playing with your neighborhood friends. All these were good things of course, but did not hold a candle to that promise of a different world offered by the very idea of the circus.

And then they were gone. The circus left town, leaving only the memories and the speculation and children talking about what they had seen and incorporating ideas captured from the circus into playground games and activities.

I have had the good fortune to see a number of other circuses over the years in England, one in Sweden and a couple in the US. In some cases, they have made the attempt to evolve themselves into something more refined, perhaps "educational" or at least seemly. This evolution has culminated in such shows as Cirque de Soleil. I have greatly enjoyed the two different Cirque shows I have seen and they are well worthwhile on their own merits, but they are not a circus as a child would know the meaning of that word.

For all that a circus is the promise of adventure and escape and the experience of the exotic, it also has, even in many children's stories, a touch of the macabre, the sad, the downtrodden. The circus is one of the most two-faced standards of children's literature. For the very youngest, it is usually all about the adventure and the excitement as for Jill in the poem above. With books for older independent readers and for young adults, the dark side of a circus is more visible.

Don McLean wrote a song, very loosely based on a real event, about the circus which captures that other side, the grizzly side, the freak show aspect with which you are fascinated but embarrassed by your fascination. The Legend of Andrew McCrew is on his Homeless Brother album:

The Legend of Andrew McCrew (by Don McLean)

There was a mummy at the fair,
All crumpled in a folding chair,
The people passed, but didn't care
That the mummy was a man
So tell me if you can.

Chorus:
Who are you, who are you?
Where have you been,
Where are you going to?
Well Andrew McCrew must have lost his way
Cause though he died long ago
He was buried today

Now down on Nightmare Alley,
Where the shady people sway
A hobo came a-hikin' on a salty summer day.
He hopped a freight in Dallas,
And he rode it out of sight.
But on a turn he slipped,
And he lost his grip,
And he fell into the night.

Chorus

Well Andrew had one leg of wood,
The other leg, was small.
But when he fell off of the train that night
He found he had no legs at all
They found him in a thicket,
And the undertaker came
And they mummified his body
For a relative to claim.

Chorus

Well no one came to claim him
'Til the carnival passed through
The carnies took him to their tent,
And they decided what to do.
They dressed him in a worn-out tux,
And put him on a stand.
And millions saw the legend
Called the famous mummy man.

Chorus

Well what a way to live a life,
And what a way to die.
Left to live a living death
With no one left to cry.
A petrified amazement,
A wonder beyond worth
A man who found more life in death
Than life gave him at birth.

Chorus

But what about the folks who live
And wish that they could go?
Whose lives are lost to living
And performing for the show.
Well at least you got the best of life,
Until it got the best of you.
So from all of us,
To what's left of you,
Farewell, Andrew McCrew.

Words and Music by Don McLean

But let's not finish on such a dark note. Young children see the positive and the exciting. Eleanor Farjeon captured the feeling of enthrallment in a poem titled Jill Came from the Fair.

Jill came from the Fair

Jill came from the Fair

With her pennies all spent;

She had had her full share

Of delight and content;

She had ridden the ring

To a wonderful tune,

She had flown in a swing

Half as high as the moon,

In a boat that was drawn

By an ivory swan

Beside a green lawn

On a lake she had gone,

She had bought a gold packet

That held her desire;

She had touched the red jacket

Of one who ate fire,

She had stood at the butt,

And although she was small

She had won a rough nut

With the throw of a ball,

And across the broad back

Of a donkey a-straddle,

She had jolted like Jack-

In-the-Box on a saddle -

Till mid frolic and shout

And tinsel and litter,

The lights started out

Making everything glitter,

And dazed by the noise

And the blare and the flare,

With her toys and her joys

Jill came from the Fair.