Circus -- Fiction; Clowns -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Veterans -- Fiction
Andrew would laugh and give him all the credit. But when Bakkus, in the
morning, clamouring against insane punctuality, and demanding another
hour's sloth, refused to leave his bed, he came up against an
incomprehensible force, and, entirely against his will, found himself on
the stroke of eleven ready to begin the performance on the sands. Sometimes
he felt an almost irresistible desire to kick Andrew, so mild and gentle,
with his eternal idiotic grin; but he knew in his heart that Andrew was not
one of the idiots whom people kicked with impunity. He lashed him, instead,
with his tongue, which Andrew, within limits, did not mind a bit. To
Bakkus, however, Andrew owed the conception of their adventure. He also
owed to him the name of the combination, and also the name which was to be
professionally his for the rest of his stage career.
It all proceeded from the miraculous winning of the mare Elodie. Bakkus had
made some indiscreet remark concerning her namesake. Andrew, quick in his
dignity, had made a curt answer. Ironical Bakkus began to hum the old
nursery song:
_Il était une bergère
Et ron, ron, ron, petit patapon_.
Suddenly he stopped.
"By George! I have it! The names that will _épater_ the English
bourgeois. Ron-ron-ron and Petit Patapon. I'll be Ron-ron-ron and you'll be
dear little Patapon."
As the English seaside public, however, when he came to think of it, have
never heard of the shepherdess who guarded her muttons and still less of
the refrain which illustrated her history, he realized that the names as
they stood would be ineffective. Ron-ron and Patapon therefore would they
be. But Andrew, remembering Elodie's wise counsel, stuck to the "petit."
His French instinct guiding him, he rejected Patapon. Bakkus found Ron-ron
an unmeaning appellation. At last they settled it. They printed it out in
capital letters.
THE GREAT PATAPON AND LITTLE PATOU
So it came to pass that a board thus inscribed in front of their simple
installation on the sands advertised their presence.
Now, Lackaday in his manuscript relates this English episode, not so much
as an appeal to pity for the straits to which he was reduced, although he
winces at its precarious mountebankery, and his sensitive and respectable
soul revolts at going round with the mendicant's hat and thanking old women
and children for pennies, as in order to correlate certain influences and
coincidences in his career. Elodie seems to haunt him. So he narrates what
seems to be another trivial incident.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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