The Old Showmen and the Old London Fairs Part 17

The old showmen are now virtually extinct, and the London fairs have all ceased to exist. "Old Bartlemy" died hard, but its time must soon have come, in the natural order of things. Its extinction was followed closely by that of all the other fairs formerly held in the suburbs of the metropolis. Camberwell Fair was abolished in 1856, and the Greenwich Fairs in the following year. I cannot better express my opinion as to the causes which have led to the decline of fairs generally, but especially of those held within half an hour's journey from the metropolis, and the suppression of most of those formerly held within a shorter distance, than by quoting a brief dialogue between a showman and an acrobat in 'Bob Lumley's Secret,' a story which appeared anonymously a few years ago in a popular periodical:--

"'Fairs is nearly worked out, Joe,' said the red-faced individual, speaking between the whiffs of blue smoke from his _dhudeen_. 'Why, I can remember the time when my old man used to take more money away from this fair with the Russian giant, and the Polish dwarf, and the Circa.s.sian lady, than I can make now in a month. Them was the times, when old Adam Lee, the Romany, used to come to this fair with his coat b.u.t.tons made of guineas, and his waistcoat b.u.t.tons of seven-shilling pieces. Ah, you may laugh, Joey Alberto; but I have heard my old man speak of it many's the time.'

"'There's good fairs now down in the shires,' observed the younger man; 'but this town is too near the big village.'

"'That's it!' exclaimed the showman. 'It's all along o' them blessed railways. They brings down lots o' people, it is true; but, lor'! they don't spend half the money the yokels used to in former times.'

"'Besides which,' rejoined he of the spangled trunks, 'the people about here can run up to London and back for a shilling any day in the week, all the year round, and see all the living curiosities in the Zoo, and the stuffed ones in the Museum, and go in the evening to a theatre or a music-hall.'"

The fair referred to was the October fair at Croydon; and I may add that views similar to those which I have put into the mouths of the acrobat and the showman were expressed to me in 1846 by a showman named Gregory, who exhibited various natural curiosities and well-contrived mechanical representations of the falls of Niagara and a storm at sea. He had just received from the printer five thousand bills, which he carefully stowed away.

"This fair don't pay for bills," said he. "I want these for Canterbury Fair, where there's more money to be taken in one day than in this field in three."

"Which do you reckon the best fair in your circuit?" I inquired.

"Sandwich," he replied. "That's a good distance from London, you see, and though it's a smaller town than this, there's plenty of money in it. This is too near London, now the rail enables people to go there and back for a shilling, see all the sights and amus.e.m.e.nts, and get back home the same night."

The fairs within half an hour's journey from London which are still held are in a state of visible decadence. I walked through Kingston Fair last year, about three o'clock in the afternoon, at which time Croydon Fair would, even twenty or thirty years ago, have been crowded. The weather was unusually fine, the sun shining with unwonted brilliance for the season, and the ground in better condition for walking than I had ever seen the field at Croydon on the 2nd of October. Yet there were fewer people walking through the fair than I had seen in the market-place. The gingerbread vendors and other stall-keepers looked as if they were weary of soliciting custom in vain; the swings and the roundabouts stood idle; some of the showmen had not thought the aspect of the field sufficiently promising to be encouraged to unfurl their pictorial announcements, and those who had done so failed to attract visitors.

Day's menagerie was there, and was the princ.i.p.al show in the fair; but the few persons who paused to gaze at the pictures pa.s.sed on without entering, and even the beasts within were so impressed with the pervading listlessness and inactivity that I did not hear a sound from the cages as I walked round to the rear of the show to observe its extent. There was no braying of bra.s.s bands, no beating of gongs or bawling through speaking-trumpets. One forlorn showman ground discordant sounds from a barrel-organ with an air of desperation, and another feebly clashed a pair of cymbals; but these were all the attempts made to attract attention, and they were made in vain.

This was on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, too, when a large number of the working cla.s.ses are liberated who could not formerly have attended the fair at that time without taking a holiday. There was a good attendance in the evening, I heard; but, however well the shows and stalls may be patronised after six o'clock, it is obvious that their receipts must be less than half what they amounted to in the days when they were thronged from noon till night.

Fairs are becoming extinct because, with the progress of the nation, they have ceased to possess any value in its social economy, either as marts of trade or a means of popular amus.e.m.e.nt. All the large towns now possess music-halls, and many of them have a theatre; the most populous have two or three. The circuses of Newsome and Hengler are located for three months at a time in permanent buildings in the larger towns, and the travelling circuses visit in turn every town in the kingdom. Bristol and Manchester have Zoological Gardens, and Brighton has its interesting Aquarium. The railways connect all the smaller towns, and most of the villages, with the larger ones, in which amus.e.m.e.nts may be found superior to any ever presented by the old showmen. What need, then, of fairs and shows? The nation has outgrown them, and fairs are as dead as the generations which they have delighted, and the last showman will soon be as great a curiosity as the dodo.

THE END.