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Marius Kwint
Evidence of audience responses to these shows, although heavily mediated by
graphic artists and fiction-writers, suggests that the “emotions of surprise and
delight” were indeed “vivid.” Charles Dickens fondly recalled taking his seat at
Astley’s as a part of childhood Christmas ritual, the “vague smell of horses
suggestive of coming wonders.” 29 He later elaborated in The Old Curiosity Shop
on the way that one working-class matriarch in the gallery wore out the tip of her
umbrella after hammering it on the floor in her excitement at the hippodrama.
Throughout the classes, behavior at the theatre was generally more casual than it
is today, allowing plenty of opportunity for socializing, eating, drinking, and showing
off, including wise-cracks and collective banter with certain star performers. 30
However, the equestrian routines appear to have been moments for comparative
rapture. Much of the wonder seems to have stemmed from the transfigured quality
of the horses, which escaped their typical roles as beasts of burden and labour,
becoming ethereal and, as many critics commented, appearing almost to fly along
with their riders in acts of gleeful freedom and transcendence. “One of his horses
– a short tailed bay,” wrote one commentator of Ducrow, “is a beautiful creature –
‘a beast for Perseus; he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of the earth and
water never appear in him’.” 31
As in all circus turns, whether such thrilling effects were the result of nature or
nurture was deliberately left ambiguous, since it is a fundamental technique of
spectacle to obscure the historical origins of what one displays. Conjuring – or, in
Astley’s words, “Natural Magic” – was, after all, a central part of the circus
repertoire. 32 This was all the more the case in a culture that was coming to terms
with curiosity as something of both commercial and intellectual value, and spent
much time toying with the distinctions between “natural” and “artificial” phenomena.
33 Much literate commentary indicates that Astley’s captivated many of the
cognoscenti as well as the populace, demonstrating feats of cultivation that were
widely thought to be a credit to the present age of intense scientific and technological
experiment. However, circus performers remained coy about their
techniques and disclosed them only in calculated fragments. Some newspaper
readers were informed that Astley’s horses were the product of at least six months
and sometimes two or three years’ painstaking work, but ultimately it did not
matter whether the effects were known to be natural or artificial. Humankind was
so powerful as to make the artificial seem natural.
In a similar spirit, but with added ideological irony, equestrian culture congratulated
itself on its achievements in training and selective breeding while
treating those differences as divinely ordained. This vagueness about the origins
of hierarchy was useful for representing the human class system, as circuses
purported to give lessons on social deference and duty. The supreme arbiter of
equestrian culture was the gentleman on horseback, so the riding master (originally
his servant) served as teacher of stewardship and duty. His sensitive work
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