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Marius Kwint
interlude, needed only “the gift of speech” to make his appearance complete and,
“while he is so laughably brandishing his sword, cry – ‘Who’s afraid?’” 56 In a
genteel precedent to the chimps’ tea party, Jackoo took an elaborate public
breakfast with a canine Mme de Pompadour, which included a glimpse of a world
truly upside down when they were waited on by humans. In similarly topsy-turvy
and grotesque fashion in 1829, two ponies would sit down to eat at the table,
dressed as Darby and Joan. Such acts provided comic antidotes to the adoration
of the horse as an object of beauty. As well as animals stepping into human shoes
(and sometimes vice versa), there were more complex exchanges between species.
In 1785, Astley travestied the horse with a “large” and “richly caparisoned” dog,
ridden by General Jackoo in a “Triumphal Entry” of 1785. 57 In 1788 he used “a
surprising Real Gigantic Spanish Pig, Measuring from head to tail 12 feet, and 12
hands high, weighing 12 cwt. Which,” again, was “rode by a MONKEY.” 58
Anthropomorphism tended to suppress the usual differences between species,
choosing instead to stress their common abilities as actors. In the Dancing Dogs,
for instance, dogs and monkeys played humans together in the same scenes:
mongrels carried monkeys to masquerades in sedan chairs, and simian executioners
dispatched canine deserters. Illustrations made it hard to distinguish
them. Other categories of human figured in the formula too: the child jockeys of
the 1795 pony races at Astley’s were, by 1848, supplanted by “5 Highly-Trained
Monkeys.” 59 In the circus, the category of the species became so important that
actual species frequently was not.
What always mattered, however, was the mental map of the natural world,
which defined the roles that animals could take. Animals (including people) were
generally categorized by their apparent closeness to, or distance from, the
gentlemanly norm. Horses or dogs, for example, qualified for the virtually human
class by merit of their domesticity, while monkeys obviously did so on the basis
of their anthropoid appearance. With its naked, pink skin, the pig conformed to
some extent on both counts. The closest animals were given the most versatile
roles: familiarity (as well as actual easiness to train) bred apparent complexity of
character. Indeed the whole spectrum – from domestic to wild – could be encapsulated
within a single species in the case of horses and dogs. Horses, most of all
could be “devils” or heroes; actors who could portray emotions from “distorted
fury” to “calm obedience.” 60 By contrast unfamiliar animals – “the beautiful
zebra,” the “elegant” camel – tended to be typecast as aesthetic objects or
irredeemable, if beautiful, monsters. 61
Here the logical structures have been separated out for the purpose of analysis,
but in reality they followed each other in quick succession, with interpretations
adjusted to political fashion and perceived audience taste. The circus was the
sequential version of the same fairground aesthetic that struck William Wordsworth,
in his famous passage on “Bartholomew Fair” in The Prelude of 1816. To
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