Before the war, as I remember it

Before 1914 was the time of his youth and now, like Thétard, I also tend to favour another pre-war period in my own memory, pre-1939. I lived in a small provincial town, Dax, and my parents, intellectuals who didn’t look down on the circus, tried never to miss the tents when they passed through. They would take me with them, of course, and the first circus show I attended was the Zoo Circus, where Alfred Court introduced the unforgettable mixed group he had put together. That magnificent mingling of lions, tigers, polar bears, brown bears and Great Danes has gone down in history, but I must have been three at the time and the only thing I remember from that matinée performance is the giant dogs in a cage and the acrid aroma of the wild beasts, which has stayed with me and, from that day on, became synonymous with the circus for me.
Another smell that transports me in the same way is that of the stables, the prerogative of a medium-sized big top with a serious reputation back then. It was there that, as a child, I had the opportunity to learn about the circus, but one without wild animals, where the horse was king.
The Cirque Bureau stopped under the ramparts in the Place Saint-Pierre every year, proud to justify its slogan: “The circus without bluff”. A respected circus, it was run by Anna Ferroni and her husband Jules Glasner. I would later learn that Anna was the granddaughter of Jean Bureau, founder of that particular circus, and that her husband was descended from Louis Delafioure, who ran a monkey theatre in the late nineteenth century. Every season they would present a large riding school, both “free style” and haute école”. The couple who ran the circus were always named in the programme with a respectful “Madame Glasner and Monsieur Glasner”, no first names. Decked out in feathers, Madame Glasner was always in a long dress, sometimes grey lamé, in her haute école sulky, an act I was happy to see again, convinced that this elegant woman had the innate gift of class.

The programme doesn’t specify the date, but it was before 1936 that a circus with a huge menagerie stopped in Dax for the first time: Amar, then at the peak of its popularity, with polar bears, lions, tigers and sixteen elephants that paraded through the town. I was amazed, but what I remember even more clearly was Germain Aéros, the drunkard acrobat, who seemed to me to possess the gift of exceptional humour. If the programme wasn’t there to confirm it, I would have forgotten “Le Jockey d’Epsom par les deux Chotachen”, one of whom must have been Chotachen Courtault, whose role as a teacher left its mark at the École Fratellini-Etaix. A year later, in 1937, “Medrano voyageur”, “Le Cirque de Paris”, was in Bayonne, and my parents took me. The whiff of a distinguished circus floated on the air under the big top. It struck me that if, at Amar, it was the multitude of wild animals that counted more than anything, at Medrano, the elegance of the presentation prevailed, with Vojtech Trubka’s tigers. This disciple of Alfred Court was very chic in white and the movements performed by his tigers created real harmony. Top of the bill were Paul, François and Albert Fratellini, and, as far as I was concerned, they lived up to their considerable reputation. Medrano sacrificed itself to the fashion for champions in vogue in the circus at that time, with Jules Ladoumègue, as Bureau would do in 1938, with Charles Rigoulet “The strongest man in the world”, and Pinder with the Tour de France’s ace cyclists in 1937 and the boxer Marcel Thil in 1938, on the same programme as the Saut de la mort des Clerans, whose tragic end would come at the Gaumont Palace in Paris on 7 July 1946. The Léonards, Cirque Pinder’s clowns, brought with them a good mood that was infectious. I remember, in particular, the “Pompiers de Nanterre”, who splashed plenty of water around.