Some years ago a short iron-built man used to balance a scaffold pole upon his chin; to whizz a slop-basin round upon the end of it; and to imitate fire-works with golden balls and gleaming knives, in the public streets of London. I am afraid his genius was not rewarded in his own country; for not long ago I saw him starring it in Paris. As I stood by to watch his evolutions, in the Champs Elysées, I felt a patriotic glow when they were rewarded with the enthusiastic applause of a very wide and thick ring of French spectators.
There was one peculiarity in his performance which distinguished him from French open-air artistes—he never spoke. Possibly he was diffident of his French accent. He simply uttered a grunt when he wished to call attention to any extraordinary perfection in his performance; in imitation, perhaps, of the “La!—la!” of the prince of French acrobats, Auriol. Whatever he attempted he did well; that is to say, in a solid, deliberate, thorough manner. His style of chin-balancing, knife-catching, ball-throwing, and ground and lofty tumbling, was not so agile or flippant as that of his French competitors, but he never failed. On the circulation of his hat, the French halfpence were dropped in with great liberality.
As the fall of the curtain denotes the close of a play, so the raising of the square of carpet signifies the end of a juggler’s performance; and, when my old acquaintance had rolled up his little bit of tapestry, and had pocketed his sous, I accosted him—“You are,” I said, “an Englishman?”
“What say you to a glass of something, and a chat?”
“Say?” he repeated, with a very broad grin, “why, yes, to be sure!”
The tumbler, with his tools done up in a carpet-bag closed at the mouth with a bit of rope, and your humble servant were speedily seated in a neighbouring wine-shop.
“What do you prefer to drink?” I inquired.
The epicure! Quality and not quantity was evidently his taste; a sign of, at least, a sober fellow.
“You find yourself tolerably well off in Paris?”
“I should think I did,” he answered, smacking his lips, “for I wos a wagabon in London; but here I am an artiste!”
“P’raps it is; but there’s a good deal of difference, mind you. In England (I have been a’most all over it) a feller in my line is a wagabon. He don’t take no standing in society. He may be quiet, never get into no trouble, and never give nobody else none; but that don’t help him. ‘He gits his livin’ in the streets,’ they say, and that’s enough. Well, ’spose he does? he ’as to work tremenjus hard for it.”