Les Standiford - Battle for the big top : P.T. Barnum, James Bailey, John Ringling, and the death-defying saga of the American circus

Two things only the people actually desire. Bread and circuses.

Juvenal

When entertaining the public, it is best to have an elephant.

P. T. Barnum

I WAS ONE AMONG THE MANY IN THE SELLOUT CROWD AT N ASSAU C OLISEUM on the evening of May 21, 2017, there to witness the final performance of the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth. I had not dressed up as a clown or in the manner of a favorite performer, though many in the stands had. In addition to the acolytes in costume, it seemed that a cross section of society had turned out: grandparents with every age child, from toddlers to teens, in tow, families, gen-Xers, millennials, boomers, all cultures present and accounted for. The background music pumping from the coliseum speakers was a reasonable facsimile of a wheezing calliope, and all the people there seemed to be genuinely united as one, drawn to a far-flung nook on Long Island by a common, palpable purpose.

Before the show began, Kenneth Feld, the CEO of Feld Entertainment, which had purchased the circus from Ringling heirs a half century before, led a contingent of fifty or so family memberschildren, grandchildren, and great-grandchildrenout to the ring beneath the coliseums dome (the show hadnt been staged beneath an actual canvas big top since 1956) to bid America goodbye. The truth is that the Greatest Show on Earth had been a shadow of its former self since long before the Felds took over, but Feld still spoke of the joy that keeping the circus going all these years had brought him and the members of his family. It had always been a touch and go proposition, Feld said, but in 2015, the company had finally yielded to the pressure brought to bear by animal rights activists and had decided to retire their seventeen still-working elephants from the show. And following that decision, attendance fell off a cliffthe Greatest Show on Earth, featuring a hundred somewhat less impressive animals and requiring a crew of five hundred to move and stage, could no longer be supported.

There might have been a murmur of sadness concerning the elephantsoutside the arena gloating picketers shook signs reading Good Riddance, and the likebut inside the arena anger and outrage seemed on holiday. As one woman in attendance said, The circus is all about being happy. In closing, Feld told his audience, We must embrace change, and he and his family trooped out to wild applause.

Johnathan Lee Iverson, ringmaster for nearly twenty years, lamented that with the shows closing, the world was losing a place of wonder, a concept echoed by audience member Autumn Luciano, a thirty-something photographer who had flown from Lansing, Michigan, to see the last show, a reminder for her that humans can do anything. You go to the circus and see human beings doing insane things, but the truth is, we all have the ability to do crazy things.

During his performance, lion tamer Alexander Lacey turned his back on a dozen great cats, all of whom sat quietly at their places while he came to the edge of the big cage to address the audience. People are not really concerned with lots of wildlife until they can feel it and see it, enjoy it and love it as much as I do, until theyve seen it with their own eyes, Lacey said.

Support good, well-run circuses, he said. Support good, well-run zoos. Support good, well-run public parks that look after these animals. His passion so distracted him that he would finally turn to his patient cats to apologize. Im sorry, boys, I dont usually do that. Ive confused you. The cats seemed willing to oblige him, and the show went seamlessly on.

As the lions and tigers (and a single leopard) went through their jaw-dropping paces, and while acrobats performed triple somersaults, and motorcyclists roared about in circular cages suspended high above the audience, and the clowns did their clowny things, my attention kept returning to a section of the floor, off to one side, where earlier in the show a half-dozen or so giant pigs had been brought out by a trainer to improbably hop over one another, perform handstands on platforms, nudge beach balls back and forth with their snouts, and, perhaps most notably, climb a set of sturdy steps and launch themselveson their backsdown a ten-foot sliding board into a catch basin. The trainer had long since vanished, but the pigs were still at their acrobatics and were, one after another, still lining up for a turn down the slide.

At the end of the show, ringmaster Iverson called out to the crowd, You mean the circus isnt antiquated? They were already on their feet, but the noise grew. You mean you love the circus? A thunderous response, off the charts.

When it all died down, Iverson brought out some three hundred of the crew, including the animal wranglers, cooks, vets, stage technicians, schoolteachers, drivers, and others who composed what he called a town without a zip code. Everyone in the arena joined in a rendition of Auld Lang Syne, for the ages, and with that, a 146-year-old institution, older than Major League Baseball, one formed when there were still only thirty-seven states, was no more.

It would be the first time in a number of years that those many cast and crew members would not be scrambling to make connections for the next days setup location and performance, I thought, as I made my way to the parking lot past the still enthusiastic program and souvenir vendors. And though many of the performers and staff had long ago made preparations for retirement or transition to other jobs, it occurred to me that precious little accommodation had been undertaken for those of us who might not be out of a job but who were certainly now out of a circus.