The Scrivener: Spangles And Sawdust - Part Eight
“In this age of television and instant entertainment, we have access to the most remarkable circuses and circus acts, which tend to make the smaller shows look tame. But, however tatty, however gaudy, the local tenting circus has the magic of the ‘live show…’’ Brian Barratt continues his splendid series on circuses.
For further intellectual stimulation visit Brian’s Web site, The Brain Rummager www.alphalink.com.au/~umbidas/
BIGGER AND BETTER
In this age of television and instant entertainment, we have access to the most remarkable circuses and circus acts, which tend to make the smaller shows look tame. But, however tatty, however gaudy, the local tenting circus has the magic of the ‘live show’ and the sort of thrills you can talk about on your way home instead of simply forgetting as you go into the kitchen at the end of the programme.
Mind you, circuses like Blackpool Tower set very high standards and expectations, which can be fulfilled only by the big shows. Having missed Billy Smarts and Bertram Mills during return trips to England, I was lucky enough to see Chipperfields in 1967.
Billed as the oldest established in Britain and the largest in Europe, it boasted origins in the days of Charles II when the Chipperfields used to travel the fairgrounds of Merrie England with puppets, monkeys and bears.
It was certainly large: Jimmy Chipperfield, who broke away from the family circus in 1955, lists statistics in his autobiography My wild life: 75 tons of seating; 20 tons of canvas; 15 miles of rope and rigging; 15,000 electric lights; 4000 yards of cable; and more than 200 animals. The Big Top itself (there were separate tents for the animals) appears in a photograph to have no less than eight king poles.
The Bullen tent that accommodated shows such as the Moscow Circus in Australia had 4 king poles, 4.5 tons of canvas, about 2.5 miles of wire and rope. It seated 4,000 to 6,000 people. The Chipperfield Big Top seated 8,000 to 9,000.
The standard one-pole circus tent is about ninety feet in diameter, and when a centre portion is added to make it into a two-pole tent it becomes about 130 to 150 feet long. Ringling Brothers started in 1884 with a tent that was a mere 90 by 55 feet, with two centre poles.
By the time Ringling ceased tenting, around 1955/6, they were using a 386 x 206 feet monster supported by six centre poles. This was just over twice the size of the current Bullen tent, and seated around 8,000 to 10,000 people. At one stage, they were using 60–70 miles of rigging, but it is difficult to make comparisons as rope, wire and cables are used for different purposes and perhaps on more than one main tent.
Chipperfields designed their own tent to withstand the rigours of the weather, and Jimmy Chipperfield writes that it actually had twenty ‘masts’ and special rigging to support the canvas. Certainly, in photographs in his book, and a photograph I took of the smaller version in 1967, the centre poles (call them king poles or masts) show complex supporting rope and tackle.
Bertram Mills, the grand English circus that rose and fell between the 1920's and the 1950's, had a tent seating 5,000.
Sixty-two feet seems to be the standard height of the circus tent, although some Big Tops that have outside support for the canvas, such as Bullen and Chipperfield, have king poles eighty feet in height.
And now we have Cirque du Soleil, which breaks away from tradition. They put on magnificent shows in unique tents, but something is missing. Plenty of spangles, but no sawdust, and not a horse in sight. Bigger isn’t always better.
© Copyright 2005 Brian Barratt
