MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
ALL really nice people assert that they enjoy a visit to the circus. It is certainly agreeable, in this harsh and angry world, to sur- render for a while to the mauve and silver of illusions, to be trans-
ported back to our own childhood, and to recapture for an hour or so our damaged sense of wonder. Undoubtedly the pervading excite- ment, the distant but emphatic band, the smell of the tan, the glare and glitter of light and tinsel, induce even in the most alert minds a temporary suspension of disbelief. Nor should I deny that of all the comforts which Nature can provide the unrestrained laughter of
children is one of the loveliest and most solacing. Dead must be the souls of those who can without delight watch a little girl twisting her hands between her knees and throwing back her head in a twisted ecstasy of laughter. Of arid heart must be the man who, at such, a sight, does not forget for the moment all that Tiridates may threaten. Yet when the lights go out, when the taut bearing reins are loosened from the horses' necks, when the elephants in, shuffling obedience return to their stalls, and when the crowd streams out into the winter night—in this after-vacancy the enquiring mind will insist upon asking questions. Is this momentary mass enjoyment but another instance of that infantilism of which, by the more adult Continental critic, we are so harshly accused ? Is the_ple.asure which we derive from a reversion to childhood quite as simple or as inno- cent as we like to believe ? Is the whole elaborate apparatus much more than an organised and expensive day-dream, in which we float away from the realities of our perplexed life ? I cannot refrain from asking myself whether I enjoy a visit to the circus quite as much as I pretend to, or quite as much as I should like to think.
* * * * This week I visited the Bertram Mills circus at Olympia. I experienced all the appropriate emotions. We sat and waited in that rounded 0 while the orchestra in the roof played circus tunes and the performers grouped themselves at the two entrances. We admired the bright red coats of the ring masters and we admired the powdered wigs and aiguillettes of the attendants. The lights went up, the band burst into a triumphal march, and the performers processed across the arena with the self-conscious arrogance of toreadors. The audience broke into rapturous and expectant applause. Punctually the Several turns followed each other. Con- tortionists twisted their feet behind their necks, ceasing thereby to retain any semblance of the human form, assuming the shapes of toads or iris rhizomes. A woman in a silver top hat decorated with feathers introduced a string' of fine white horses, their necks arched tightly by bearing reins, their plumes swinging above and below. A string of little black ponies then entered, and as the woman uttered short sharp cries at them and flicked with her whip, they performed meaningless gyrations in and out of their white colleagues. My pleasure at the sight of these superb and charming animals was damped by the tightness of their' bearing reins ; no horse should be so tightly laced ; and when the woman finished her performance with idiotic gestures of self-approval I did not join in the applause. The band then struck up a Spanish tune and a troupe of jugglers entered making Laura Knight effects with the white hoops that they threw. Three sea-lions then shambled into the ring accom- panied by a gentleman dressed in a marine uniform. The largest of the sea-lions was in an indifferent, not to say a sulky, mood ; he refused to play ball ; and when eventually he was tempted to do so by horrible slices of fish which the marine officer took from a white casket, he assumed an expression of angered contempt. His master, having at last induced him to balance a ball for a few seconds, emphasised this achievement by greeting the audience with a naval salute. * * • Thereafter we had a herd of elephants accompanied by a trainer dressed in the tropical uniform of a Colonial Governor. Upon the backs of the elephants girls reclined in Oriental costume with sparkling turbans on their heads. The Colonial Governor, who did not seem to be a conciliatory man, induCed his elephants to perform all manner of cumbrous evolutions. They slowly and with an expression of marked repugnance placed their enormous feet upon the indifferent, and indeed pachydermous, backs of their comrades.
They stood upon round tubs while a girlish mahout swung,. upon a rope between them, making the while friendly gestures to the audience. In an orgy of self-immolation the Colonial Governor then doffed his topee and stretched himself on the ground. Guided by a mahout, while the band played Oriental music, an elephant stepped gingerly upon his chest. The mahout in her turban appeared in- different to the white-robed figure upon whom her elephant seemed about to stamp ; she smiled enticingly and with wide ballet move- ments of her arms upon the awed rows of children by whom she was surrounded. Then followed a comic interlude. An Italian family produced a taxi which proceeded to disintegrate, to boil, to ex- plode before our startled eyes ; and Coco thereafter, with his pails of water—refilled with alert patience by the attendants—set all the children into tinkling peals of laughter. And at the end we had the " Fearless Trio de Riaz," whose naked bodies glistened high up in the roof while they turned and twirled in the arc-lights, throw- ing fantastic shadows of legs and arms upon the awning of the roof. Perhaps the most skilled and beautiful trapeze artists that I have ever seen.
* * * * I was conscious, as I swayed away in the packed coach of the Addison Road Underground, of a certain sense of dissatisfaction. It was not, I think, that I felt humiliated by the reflection cast by such agility and daring upon my own clumsiness, timidity and unsupple joints. It was not, I think, the reaction which sets in when one leaves the dream-world for the world of fact. It was quite simply that I do not really enjoy watching animals perform. Elephants, with their slow and massive obedience, were not intended by nature to stand on tubs. Fine horses were not by nature intended to have their jaws restricted by bearing reins, or to stand upon their hind legs. I admit that these evolutions give to them for the moment a certain aesthetic quality ; the shapes of the Panathenaic festival or of an auriga recur. But all this is fictitious, adventitious and unreal. I am not suggesting that cruelty occurs- in the training of these animals ; their physical condition and their lack of fear prove that no brutality can be used. Yet it must indeed be a low type of humour which derives pleasure from seeing animals behaving in the guise of human beings. I admit that amusement is derived by the contrast between the real and the unreal ; but surely it is a low sense of fun which derives pleasure from patient and long attempts to make the real appear fantastic instead of making the fantastic seem real. I well know that dogs, for instance, actually enjoy being made to jump through hoops. But nobody who has any understanding of dogs would deny that they possess an acute sensitiveness to ridicule. When I see a little dog dressed in a crinoline and prancing with a parasol in its paw, I cannot but feel that it is being humiliated in a senseless and obtuse way. I derive, not pleasure, but pain. * * * I do not, I repeat, enjoy seeing animals forced to perform un- natural movements, which they cannot possibly enjoy. I am pre- pared to believe that these animals are treated by their trainers with real kindliness and affection. But that is not the point. The Nazis enjoyed forcing their human victims to crawl about naked and on all fours; ought we really to enjoy seeing animals dressed in crino- lines and straining with trembling limbs to maintain an erect position? The thoughtless laughter, even of adults, which greets and encourages these performances fills me with sadness. Our national love of animals may, as foreigners aver, be sentimental ; but it is certainly based on real understanding of animal psychology, and upon respect for their natural dignity. To force them to move and dress and act as human beings is seriously to violate that dignity. Let human beings in our circuses perform their acts of agility and daring ; but surely it is not good to rejoice when animals are forced to make fools of themselves in public.
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