THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF A CLOWN

AS TOLD TO
ISAAC F. MARCOSSON

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
1910

Copyright, 1909, by
THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

Copyright, 1910, by
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
New York

Published March, 1910

TO
THE CHILDREN WHO LOVE
THE CLOWNS

A WORD ABOUT JULES

This story of Jules Turnour interests me more than I can say. I have known him for more than twenty years; have seen him at very close range in all the shifting movement of a great circus organization, and I have yet to find a man with a cleaner, higher aim. Mr. Marcosson, I think, has admirably brought out the contrast between his whitened and motley face and his patient, serious purpose to make his life helpful. The world has been made better by the presence and work of Jules, and I am glad that at last the real story of his somewhat unusual career is now told.

Alfred T. Ringling.

PREFACE

When the article on which this little book is based appeared in the Saturday Evening Post we were amazed at the response it evoked. It simply proved that all the world loves a clown. In most of the comment and communication, however, there was a question as to the authenticity of the subject. I beg to say that Jules is a real personage and still the nimble producer of many laughs.

It was while writing a series of articles on an entirely different phase of the circus that I first met Jules. I heard of him the moment I stepped into the circus world. So thoroughly had he impressed his personality; so deeply had he become attached to its life, and so profoundly had he gained the respect of its people, that not to have heard of him argued that I was deaf and blind to everything about me. I found him the friend, philosopher, and guide of the nomadic city of tents that rose with the dawn and slipped away into the night. Despite its transiency, there was much permanency of character in its varied inhabitants. No one contributed more to its moral structure than Jules, the clown.

We who live in this breathless era are wont to look upon the circus as a temporary amusement makeshift. It is here to-day and gone to-morrow. Yet behind its spangled, tinseled array and restless movement are real traditions. Why has the circus endured in an age that craves new diversion? Simply because it is basic; because it fills a fundamental need; because it is a staple like wheat. Laughter is one of the few eternal things; therefore the circus which produces it takes on something of the same quality. More than this, the circus is as much an expression of art as the drama. Like art, it is universal. The clown being a world citizen interprets a world humor in which there is neither border line, race, nor creed. Most of the great humorists have been sad men, and thus the clown, clothed in his right mind, is grave and reflective. Though he wear cap and bells, he has not wanted for recognition among the great. Garrick, Kemble, and Booth have been glad to claim him as fellow-artists. But it is in the heart of the child that he has found his most grateful friend, and in a larger sense all the world is a child when it goes to the circus.

In my work I have had to be, on many occasions, the biographer of the great and the chronicler of much timely achievement. In all this swift march of people and events I have yet to meet a man whose devotion to the ideals of his art is more sincere than that which has animated Jules Turnour through the long years of his clowning. I have been with him in the tumult of tented travel and watched him in the roofed arena before the multitudes. Always I have found him proud to be a clown. To know him has indeed been a liberal education in character and loyalty.

Isaac F. Marcosson.

New York, January, 1910.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS