A journalistic report from England circa 1920

 

The tricks performed by jugglers afford a most wonderful example of the perfection that our senses and organs are capable of attaining under the influence of exercise.

 

The juggler is obliged to give impetuses that vary infitesimally. He or she must know the exact spot whither a ball will go, calculate the parabola that it will describe, and know the exact time that it will take to describe it. The eyes must take in the position of three, four or five balls that are sometimes several yards apart, and must solve these different problems in optics, mechanics and mathematics instantaneously ten, fifteen, twenty times per minute, and that, too, in the least convenient position - upon the back of a running horse, upon a tight rope, upon a ball, or upon a revolving barrel.

The dexterity is wonderful. Many jugglers are content to perform their feats of skill with their hands and, in addition, do balancing worthy of remark.

 

We can obtain experimentally some idea of the dexterity shown by a juggler by trying for ourselves the simplest of his tricks. Whoever is capable of throwing two balls into the air at once, and catching them in succession while standing steadily in the same spot, without being obliged to step to the right or left, or undergoing contortions, is endowed with an undoubted aptitude for juggling.

 

Anyone who can juggle with two balls in one hand 20 times without dropping one of the balls can treat the artist of the circus as a confrere.

 

To perform with three balls it is necessary to have been taught by a professor. Moreover, it should be remarked that the art of juggling has sufficient advantages as regards the development of the touch, the quick calculation of distances, the nimbleness of the fingers and the accuracy of the eye and of motion, to cause it to be added to those gymnastic exercises which children are taught in school.

 

It is to this art that the celebrated prestidigitateur Robert Houdini attributed the dexterity and accuracy that he displayed in his tricks. In his memoirs he relates that, while taking some lessons from an old juggler, he applied himself so closely to the exercises that at the end of a month he could learn nothing further from his instructor.

 

"I succeeded," said he, "in performing with four balls, but that did not satisfy my ambition. I wished, if it were possible, to surpass that faculty of reading by appreciation, which I had so much admired in pianists; so I placed a: book in front of me, and while the four balls were flying in the air, accustomed myself to read without hesitation. It could not be believed how much delicacy and certainty of execution this exercise communicated to my fingers, and what quickness of perception it gave my eye. "

 

In order to keep their hand in, professional jugglers have to exercise daily, since a few days of voluntary or forced rest would necessitate double work in order to give the hands their former suppleness and dexterity.

 

Some jugglers perform with objects of the most diverse nature, throwing up, for example at the same time, a large ball, an orange, and a piece of paper, and giving these articles of different size and weight such an impulsion that each falls and is thrown again at the moment desired.

 

Some jugglers, as a support, use merely a simple wooden bar held vertically, and upon the top of which they perform various feats of dexterity or contortion. It is the same apparatus formerly used by Greek acrobats, and, by reason of its form, called words meaning "perch for fowls."

 

Some jugglers even balance themselves on the head at the top of this perch, with their legs extended in lieu of a balancing pole. Their arms are free and they eat, drink, smoke, shoot off a pistol, perform with balls and daggers, and, in a word, perform the most diverse feats.