This English emigration dates from about 1865. This was the time of the clever entries of vaulting clowns, who starred the whole ring with their capers. They vaulted from the “carpet,” and from the great and little _batoude_, that is to say, performed a somersault from a spring-board over a wall of horses. In the course of his travels the _jester_, now an acrobat, learnt the idiom of several countries. From a few words interspersed through his performance, he at once saw that his English pronunciation easily roused the laughter of the audience. His accent amused the Parisians particularly, and he thought that great capital might be made of his broken French, and a large salary earned whilst sparing his physical labour. The corporation at once divided into two branches. The clowns who found that their inclinations prompted them to become “patterers” renounced the “carpet” and the “spring-board” to speak to the public. Those whom gymnastics had fascinated turned towards acrobatic pantomime. [p285] And here we must weave a crown of laurels and immortal flowers for Billy Hayden, the incarnate type of a patterer clown, and you may be sure that some day his place in the history of the stage will be quite as important as that of the late Deburau. [Illustration] Billy related the history of his life to me. He was born in Birmingham, and his vocation dates from his early childhood. He was one day mounted upon his father’s shoulders to watch an acrobat performing in the open air, who ascended a movable perch. The spectacle made a deep impression upon the [p286] child, and nothing could prevent him from following his vocation. Billy is a pupil of the minstrels. At the opening of his career, he travelled through the world besmeared with black. In Germany, the idea first occurred to him to powder himself like Pierrot, and at once found that the change produced a great success. The clever expressive features previously concealed by the soot were suddenly disclosed by the powder. And the audacity of the clown increased with the encouragement of public applause. Nearly all the jokes with which he has amused us are borrowed from the minstrels. They always repeat the scene of a jester and his butt, the stock-in-trade of the old show. At the circus, the ring-master is the butt, the sensible man who corrects the childish nonsense of the clown. The clown Footeet plays one of these traditional scenes very naturally. Mounted upon a horse, with his face to the tail, he calls out: “Oh, this horse hasn’t got a head.” The ring-master gravely answers: “It is on the other side, clown.” “Turn it round then.” “That is impossible, clown, you must turn round yourself.” Footeet prefers vaulting to talking. But Billy Hayden is as lazy as his donkey, and prefers jokes to somersaults. His repertoire includes an amusing story of a stolen child. When the star equestrian dismounts from her horse, Billy turns to M. Loyal and says: