Piccadilly Circus

“ The rain had ceased, but it was wet underfoot, and the motor buses plashed foot passengers from head to foot with liquid mud. In my walk I passed, outside the Piccadilly Hotel, two men I knew. One of them looked me straight in the face but failed to recognise me.
Piccadilly Circus, the centre of the night-life of London, is unique, with its jostling crowds on pleasure bent, its congestion of traffic, its myriad lights, its flashing, illuminated signs, and the bright façade of the Criterion on the one side and the Pavilion on the other. ”

“ All shops, streets, theatres, and traffic merge and congest in a perfect orgy of noise, motion, and color at Piccadilly Circus.
The first humorous story I heard in London was of the man who, returning from a festal function, inquired of the policeman, “Is this Piccadilly Circus, or is it Tuesday?” That story seems to me the epitome of London humor, and also a complete description of Piccadilly Circus. ”

“ It was a watery sun, but it shone brightly enough on Piccadilly as they drove along the splendid street. On either side great smoke-grimed buildings towered high: but above them the sky was blue, and in Piccadilly Circus there was a brave show of flowers, though the “flower-girls”—who are rather weird old women—shivered under their shawls among their baskets of violets and tulips. One had a basket that made Norah suddenly cry out.
“Why, it’s gum-leaves!” ”

“ She was quietly but richly dressed, and had one seen her there on foot in the morning, one would have surmised that she was out shopping, and looked for the carriage which would probably have been following her; but a lady, striking in appearance and of distinguished bearing, alighting composedly from an omnibus at Piccadilly Circus between nine and ten at night, and calmly taking her way alone up Regent Street was a sight which would have struck one as being anomalous even if she had been a stranger. ”

“ Theatre and music-hall are here “at grips” with their opposition entertainments. Everything comes in time to Piccadilly Circus. The man strolling out from the play in evening dress and crush hat may be hailed by a friend in ulster and shooting boots, whose hansom is the last stage of a journey from the Hebrides or the Himalayas; the east and the west meet here on common ground for that amusement which would seem to be taken in anything but the sad spirit predicated of it by Continental nations.
Site of LOWER REGENT STREET, FROM PICCADILLY CIRCUS, WITH
“Bull and Mouth.” ”

“ It's within a few yards of Piccadilly Circus."
"Really!" said Sir John. "You see my theatre is in Lower Regent Street, and I never go to Piccadilly Circus. I make a point of not going to Piccadilly Circus. Miss Taft, how long is it since I went to Piccadilly Circus? Forgive me, young woman, I was forgetting--you aren't old enough to remember. Well, never mind details.... And what is there remarkable about the Regent Theatre, Alderman?"
"I intend it to be a theatre of the highest class, Sir John," said Edward Henry. "Nothing but the very best will be seen on its boards." ”

“ I tried to laugh at my folly, and, as a temporary diversion, I even tried to picture the wet and glistening streets converging on Piccadilly Circus—that symbol of a great civilized city where Man was indeed omnipotent. ”

“ An inspiration came to me at Piccadilly Circus. I smothered a cry of delight, and entered an Oxford Street omnibus. The end seat was vacant. I took it, and gazed watchfully behind me. To even a trained observer like myself, it was no easy task to pick out of the great moving throng that followed my conveyance the man whose business was wrapped up in my own. But I did not despair, and set steadily to work. At Oxford Circus I was sure that he had not entered my 'bus. ”

“ People at Piccadilly Circus never appear to be there on business. They are either au rendezvous or bound for a restaurant or going shopping or booking theatre seats; and although Don had every reason for believing that a war was in progress, Piccadilly Circus brazenly refused to care. ”

“ Christian had been glancing across the Circus meanwhile—to where, in the misty vagueness of dawn, Piccadilly opened between its tall, shapely corners, and beyond, the curved yellowish sweep of Regent Street began. The dim light revealed some lurking figures to his eyes.
“Can you call over those women?” he asked the potato-man.
A tall, fresh-faced young policeman came upon the group round the Criterion corner. ”

“ The direct line of the thoroughfare is interrupted after Piccadilly Circus (the term “circus” is frequently applied to the open space—not necessarily round—at the junction of several roads) , but is practically resumed in the Strand, with its hotels, shops and numerous theatres, and continued through the City in Fleet Street, the centre of the newspaper world, and Ludgate Hill, at the head of which is St Paul’s Cathedral. ”

“ Life runs in Piccadilly Circus, say, from nine to one, and then, there also, ebbs into the small hours of the echoing policeman and the lamps and stars. But the Toll House is far up stream, and near its rural springs ”

“ At three o'clock they were to meet at Piccadilly Circus, but the girls were early on the scene, as they wished to have an hour first in Regent Street. To unaccustomed country eyes the art treasures displayed in the shop-windows there are as much to be admired as the canvases in Trafalgar Square. They passed a large drapery establishment with swinging doors standing open, and the sight of the rich interior seemed to have a fascinating effect on Fan. ”

“ One wild night began when the policeman on point duty in Piccadilly Circus thought that the last revelers had gone home in the last taxis, but he was a surprised man when life seemed to waken up again and there was the swish of motor cars through the circus and bands of young men walking in evening dress, not, apparently, on their way to bed, but just beginning some new adventure. [Pg 210] They advanced upon the Grafton Galleries singing a little ballad that marks the date:
“Hullo, hullo, hullo! ”

“ He had stopped for a few minutes outside the Palace, but had not spoken to any one, and then he had walked down Shaftesbury Avenue and back into Piccadilly Circus. In Cambridge Circus he had lighted a cigar with his last match; but it had gone out. Just outside the Monico he had stopped a man he did not know—“fellow came out of the place, he looked like a waiter, don’t you know”—and had borrowed a match and re-lighted his cigar. Then he had crossed the Circus again, and walked back down Piccadilly as far as the turning leading to Liskeard House. ”

“ But I do not want to spend a week-end with him and I will not travel down to Devonshire with him if I can find a seat in the luggage-van or standing room in the corridor.
TO AN UNKNOWN ARTIST
It is certainly an unequal world. As I was crossing Piccadilly Circus yesterday my eye fell on a man at work on the building that is being pulled down at the corner of Regent Street, next to the "Criterion." ”

“ And, after all, [Pg 217] was it not a millennium—the final triumph of science—the conquest of the irrational by the rational?
There was a good deal of drunkenness, and crowds of men and women, linked arm and arm, went by, singing senseless songs. In Piccadilly Circus the scene was unusually animated. Here, beyond doubt, the Jason press had produced a powerful impression. The restaurants and bars blazed with light. Crowds streamed in and out and a spirit of hilarious excitement pervaded everyone. Irresponsibility—that was the universal attitude ”

“ She fights people who are getting into 'buses. It is no mere accidental jostling, but a deliberate shouldering, poking with umbrellas, and clawing. It is her delight to go to the Regent Circus corner of Piccadilly, about half-past seven in the evening, accompanied by a genteel rout of daughters, and fill up whole omnibuses with them. ”

“ What I mean to say is, it's so much nicer than quarrelling or calling each other names."
They crossed the Circus and walked along Piccadilly. A closed brougham emerged from the block of traffic and drove swiftly Green Park way. ”

“ They don't know where they would go if they did escape, but they don't want anybody over them, to teach them morals, though when meal time comes the reform school boys and the menagerie animals eat like tramps, because the food is so good, and then kick because it isn't better. If your performers in the circus proper do not suit you can discharge them, and if they are sick you can leave them in a hospital, and go on with the show, and forget about them until they show up in a week or two, pale as ghosts, and weak as cats, and demand back salary ”

“ Phil stole into the menagerie tent, relieved to be away from the gaze and comments of the crowd that was massed in front.
“Gracious, I’m afraid I wouldn’t make a very good circus man. I hate to have everybody looking at me as if I were some natural or unnatural curiosity. Wonder if I will know any of the show people when they are made up, as they call it, and performing in the ring? I shouldn’t wonder if they didn’t know me in my best clothes, though,” grinned the boy. ”

“ The clown announces to the audience, just before the big show is over, that the entertainment will be given immediately after, and those who wish to witness it can keep their seats. Several parties then skirmish among the assembled multitude and cry “tickets for the concert, twenty-five cents,” and just before the entertainment commences the tickets are collected.’
New York and New Orleans are provided with permanent buildings in which circus performances are given during the winter by companies which travel in the tenting season. ”

“ I got a chance to talk with pa at supper, and asked him if he was really crazy, as the hands say he is, and how he liked zebras, anyway, and he said: "Hennery, zebras are just people, they stampede just like politicians and bankers, and business men generally, and never know enough to let well enough alone. The mule is the only draft animal that always pulls straight and gets there right side up."
If I was going to run a circus for easy money, and a picnic, I wouldn't have any menagerie connected with it, 'cause the animals make more trouble than all the rest of the show. ”

“ How in the name of heaven we ever got half the things on the cars is more than I know, but it seems as though the circus company had a man to look after everything, and he had men under him to look after his regular share of things, so when the cars were loaded, and the boss clapped his hands, and the engineer tooted his whistle, there wasn't a tent stake or a rope, or a board seat, or anything left behind. Every man knew exactly where the things were that he was responsible for, so he could lay his hands on them in the dark, and he knew just what wagon his stuff was to go in. ”

“ Stanislaus Buncombe, the Machiavelian Clown!" and so on; while the pictures of the Brothers distorting their boneless limbs, the Machiavellian Clown roaring with laughter at his own jests, and Mademoiselle Zepherina performing her feats in the Haute Ecole, were calculated to appal the stoutest beholder. By mid-day Bullocktown shook to its foundations--the Circus had arrived.
Most of us have seen that inexpressibly melancholy spectacle--a "Triumphal Entry by Circus Riders." We know the paint and powder, and long hair, and fillets, and piebald ponies, and big drums. ”

“ Everything about a circus is systematized so that the minute the evening performance is over, everybody jumps to his or her appointed task and works with a will, so that where there were tents with flags and banners flying at night, the next morning there is only a deserted sawdust ring. Circuses spring up over night like mushrooms and disappear as quickly as the dew on the grass when the sun comes up.
By midnight the circus train was well under way and Billy and Nannie found themselves in a cage between the zebra and giraffe. ”

“ For my own part I can honestly say that I never in my life heard a concert announcement made in my show without feeling like getting up and leaving in disgust; but all classes of show-goers must be pleased, and there is one class which demands the concert and another class that wants the side shows.
A SILENT PARADE FROM ALBANY TO THE STATE LINE
I am glad to know that the circus man who speaks of his patrons as "gillies," and who endeavors to obtain his wealth by fair or foul means, is becoming more and more rare. ”

“ Sparling.
It was instructive; it gave the boy a chance to see the people and to get a new view of human nature. If there is one place in the world where all phases of human nature are to be found, that place is the front door of a circus.
The Circus Boys, by this time, had both fitted into their new acts as if they had been doing them for years—Phil doing the bareback riding and Teddy tumbling in the leaping act, both lads gaining the confidence and esteem more and more every day of their fellow performers and the owner of the show. ”

“ But they had not yet reached the pinnacle of their success in the canvas-covered arena, though each had saved, as the result of his season's work, nearly twelve hundred dollars.
Phil and Teddy will be heard from again in a following volume entitled: "THE CIRCUS BOYS IN DIXIE LAND; Or, Winning the Plaudits of the Sunny South." Here they are destined to meet with some of the pleasantest as well as the most thrilling experiences of their circus career, in which both have many opportunities to show their grit and resourcefulness. ”