“To please my fellow-countrymen, who worship strength more than anything else, I must first of all be strong, before I can excite their admiration. I will therefore commence by developing my muscles. As to my pantomime, if I wish it to succeed, it must, by the incoherence of its actions, the whimsicalness of its pointless gestures, the automatism of its movements, imitate the terrible spectacle of insanity.” With this idea, the English clown has adopted a mourning livery of black and silver, and has broken the powdered mask [p292] of Pierrot by two red spots, two bloody patches; the insignia of boxing and of English consumption. [Illustration] This gloomy clown crossed over to France upon the steamers that carried Darwin’s books and the commentaries of Schopenhauer. For one hour the French imbibed the sadness of their insular neighbours, the black acrobat was well received. Every one will remember the welcome which the Magiltons and the Hanlon-Lees received in Paris. It was the first time [p293] we had seen English pantomime. The exotic art upset all our ideas of logic, it was in direct opposition to all our innate taste for clearness and delicate performances. However, it succeeded, for it evoked the only laughter of which we were at that time capable, a laughter without merriment, convulsive, full of terror. The Hanlon-Lees! How many pleasant artistic feelings the name evokes in the memory of Parisians. The troupe is scattered now, throughout the world, there are the Hanlon-Lees on one side, the Hanlon-Volta on another, three of the brothers are dead, and their comrade Agoust has abandoned them to become manager of the Nouveau Cirque. [Illustration] This intelligent and amiable man, who intends some day writing the memoirs of his eventful life, has told me the details of the history of the Hanlon-Lees—their true history, not the account of them which you will find in a little book published under the title of the _Memoirs of the Brothers Hanlon-Lee_, [p294] with pretty illustrations by Regamey and a splendid preface by the master, Theodore de Banville. The six brothers Hanlon, Thomas, George, William, Alfred, Edward, and Freddy, first met Agoust in Chicago, about 1865. They were then working as trapeze and carpet acrobats. Thomas and Alfred, two splendidly built men, were the “underneath men,” the carriers in the pyramid. The other brothers were—rather puny; they always wore double tights. Under the silk tights—worn outside—was another suit, called in the acrobatic vocabulary, a _thirty-two franc_. In the place of muscles this suit was arranged with fine woollen fringes, which were carefully combed upwards so as to obtain good curves; and one of the favourite jokes amongst artists, is to stick pins, provided with little white flags, into these false muscles. At Chicago the Hanlons were vaulters, and Agoust juggled. A tight-rope dancer, and Tanner with his dogs, had joined the company, but the entertainment was still too short.