The Great Farini: The High-Wire Life of William Hunt
Penguin Books Canada, 1995

Excerpt from Chapter 8 …

“The Invincible Signor Farini!” shouted his broadside, “Will not be Outdone.” He would surpass the Master, not only by virtue of the length and slackness of his cable but by the greater height and weight of the man he would carry and the fact that he would unload and reload his companion as he walked, turn around at midwire, cross beneath him and then take him back to the shore. It was an alarming proposition.

That same week the newspapers, a little shocked by the dangerous sack walk, began to show increased respect for Farini, as though they were coming around to the idea that he had inordinate courage. Not generally concerned about Blondin’s safety, they feared Farini was a different sort of man, who would push himself to the limit and perhaps beyond, a formidable foe indeed. “Blondin has met a rival worthy of him,” said the Newark Daily Advertiser. “DeLave and a host of others, though perhaps equal to the great originator of the rope-walking mania, have unfortunately failed to convince the public of the fact. Blondin has regarded them from his Niagara wire with supreme contempt. [But] one Signor Farini ... has already outdone Blondin.”

Their frightful challenge took place on a beautiful day at Niagara, perhaps the best of the entire season, and the green cataracts glistened in the sunlight, The people, who came in droves, twenty-eight train-cars full from Buffalo alone, and crowded steamers from Toronto and southern Ontario, felt a tension in the air when they arrived. Though some of Farini’s fans now believed he was superior, others chose to watch from his enclosures because they still felt he and his companion were more apt to fall.

Both artistes were scheduled to begin at four o’clock, but Blondin got off to a quicker start and maintained his advantage from then onward. After showing off a few stunning acrobatics on the rope (including dislocations of his limbs), he moved quickly to the centre and lowered himself to a short slack rope slung about twenty feet under his cable. The very fact that he wanted to perform on this kind of a wire indicated the pressure he was feeling from Farini. On his new rope he stood on his head, lay face down and imitated a swimmer (perhaps displaying a skill he thought Farini would need), and then performed a startling series of a dozen or more lightning-fast somersaults. Hoisting himself back onto the main cable, he walked briskly to the Canadian side. After a pause, there was a sudden stirring in the crowd and there he was again, on the platform loading his little manager onto his back.

Harry M. Colcord had been Blondin’s manager for about two years, having met him in Boston during the Ravels days. He was a seasoned show-business man, adept enough that Blondin had sought him out when considering a solo career. Legend had it that Colcord had no idea he would be the man on Blondin’s back when they first surprised much of the world with their hair-raising feat the previous year. He had been much in favour of Blondin’s idea of keeping the identity of his passenger unknown, but more than a little unnerved when it was revealed that he would be the human baggage. However, the stories about him being nearly paralyzed with fear are exaggerations: he was well aware of what was called for, and of the flawless skill of his transporter, and public pronouncements to the contrary, he had likely practised many times on Blondin’s back. He was the perfect weight and height: slightly taller than the little monsieur and somewhere around 140 pounds, light for sure, but still heavier than Blondin, therefore appearing to be a substantial load.

Looking pale and rather drawn from a recent illness, Colcord climbed aboard. Blondin had two straps around his waist and horns that stuck out near his hips, into which Harry placed his thighs. Then he wrapped his arms around the muscular little neck and set his chin down on a shoulder. He was still wearing his felt hat and everyday clothes. The great artiste now proceeded to show his mettle. He stepped onto his cable and walked calmly out over the whirlpool until he reached a point not far from mid-wire where he stopped and let Colcord down in order to rest. In a short while he was ready to move again, so he lifted his manager back up and started off at a steady pace and stopped only once more before he completed his fourteen minute stroll. It was a magnificent performance, much better than even his 1859 walk, and the crowd was ecstatic.

Now it was time for the rookie.

Farini actually arrived at his platform at four o’clock, but problems with his swaying rope made it nearly five before he was ready to hoist up his man. He was wearing his regular circus tights but had discarded his usual rubber shoes in favour of moccasins covered with rosin, hoping they would keep him from slipping. Though he always claimed he had not met his passenger until that day (and their only practice was that morning in his hotel room where they tried out the harness), it is more than likely that he knew him well. This man, waiting in the enclosure, struck everyone as strangely unaffected by what was facing him. He was a curious man indeed.

Rowland McMullen was the son of a tailor from Port Hope. He was twenty-three years old and had a nineteen-year-old wife and two very small children to support. Why he ever consented to be part of this death-defying act, and further why he was so disarmingly cool about it from start to finish, is difficult to understand. Farini commented: “I never could quite fathom this man, never could make out whether he possessed real courage or whether he was proud of my belonging to the same town or whether he was seeking notoriety or not quite right in the upper stories or a damn fool. But I do know this, he had unlimited confidence in me.”

Though it would not prove to be a perfect feat, McMullen was certainly a perfect passenger. This “insane individual,” as one spectator called him, sat as calmly on Farini’s back as a stuffed dummy and obeyed every instruction to the letter. He had been advertised as standing about five feet ten inches and weighing around 150 pounds, but for once Farini may have actually understated things because when McMullen placed his long legs into the truss-like harness and was carried across the platform to the edge with his feet almost touching the ground, it was obvious that the man on the Signor’s back was all of that size, and maybe more.

As people in the enclosure watched them starting out, Farini’s legs were noticeably shaking. An unnerved spectator shouted out that he had no right to endanger another’s life. The Signor seemed to agree: after just a few steps he stopped and edged back to the platform. Was Farini giving up?

He let McMullen down, adjusted the harness, reloaded, and started out again, just as shaky as before. It was terrifying to watch. Farini picked his way so slowly and deliberately with his more than two-hundred-pound load (including balance pole) that each step seemed life-and-death and when they reached a point about fifty feet out the pole again became entangled in the guys. Farini halted. McMullen, apparently unconcerned, took off his hat and waved to his friends in the crowd. Then they executed a perilous dismount. Farini recalled: “I asked him to descend from my shoulders and stand on the rope. He replied that he would do so if he knew how, whereupon I instructed him to bear on my shoulders, to release one thigh from the stirrup at my hip, to carefully place his foot sideways on the rope and follow with the other and to stand motionless with his arms round my neck while I did the balancing for both.” People on the shoreline noticed that the two were talking again. Farini remembered that at that moment McMullen said to him “... that we were not over the water yet, to which I returned the reassuring reply that if we fell we would be dashed to atoms on the stones.”

They started walking step for step, McMullen behind with his hands on his pilot’s shoulders, until they reached the quarter point where they sat down momentarily and then got up again and alternately walked and rode all the way to the centre. Here they sat for a longer rest, Farini motioning for the Maid of the Mist to come over and McMullen, amazed to see it looking the size of a toy beneath him, taking off his hat again and waving to the passengers. They discussed fear for a moment, Farini saying that his friend seemed to show none and McMullen replying that there was no need for it since his only job was to remain motionless. According to program, Farini lowered himself beneath the rope, passed McMullen and reappeared in front of him facing back toward the American side. Then he reloaded and started home, going a long way before stopping again. They performed their unloading act a few more times (now in part because Farini’s feet were becoming sore) until they reached the point where the cable started rising steeply toward the shore. Here Farini steeled himself, loaded McMullen, and made a desperate attempt to climb the remaining distance, perspiring profusely and his legs quivering. People shouted that he looked unsteady, but slowly he made his way up the rope and finally reached the platform, his legs nearly buckling as he landed.

“Bravo Long Legs! Bravo tailor! Bravo Port Hope! Canada forever!” shouted the crowd as McMullen dismounted on to firm ground, pulled on his coat and accepted a glass of beer from a friend. He was as calm as ever. Farini claimed that the cheering was loud and seemed endless, but it was mostly from relief and in appreciation of a daring show, because as an attempt to exhibit more skill than Blondin it had been a failure.

He never questioned Blondin’s greatness as an artist of the wire. “I ... compliment him on being the cleverest tightrope dancer in the world ... for as such he was superior to me who not having been brought up to the line of business (to become proficient at which one must almost live for years on a rope), never competed with him as regards the terpsichorean art.” Farini’s forté was terror, and inventiveness, which was why he carried a heavier, inexperienced man on a rope Blondin wouldn’t dare try. In 1859 Blondin had taken thirty-five minutes to cross with Colcord and had unloaded him many times, but even then his artistry was evident. Farini, a restless young man of red-blooded emotions, had no time for such subtle impressions.

Both men gave evening performances the day of their passenger-walks. This was the first time they ascended their cables at night and these exhibitions were wonderful: ghostly ascensions in the soft glow of the moon. Blondin was noticed about eight o’clock that cool, clear evening driving down to the Suspension Bridge with a wheelbarrow full of fireworks in his wagon. Promptly, at half-past eight, he mounted his cable pushing the wheelbarrow and eerily vanished into the night. Spectators could only guess where he was as he made his way over the river in darkness, the sound of the falls in the background.

The Signor made his appearance carrying one of his earliest inventions attached to his pole: four paper lamps and a number of “Farini Candles.” A match was put to the “candles” and he started out at a rapid pace, his body disappearing into the darkness, the row of lights glowing, bouncing perceptibly to his gait as they made their way across the river. A short distance out there was a loud bang like gunfire, so loud it was felt by people on the banks. They looked out and saw one of his candles completely enflamed, and his lamps still moving quickly through the air. Then there was another bang and another and another, until they could see Signor Farini, a great distance out, surrounded by fire. Before he reached the centre all the fireworks had gone out, and with only the light from his lamps, he proceeded the rest of the way at a rapid pace and landed on the Canadian side to cheers. Almost immediately he started back, this time without a light. People caught only glimpses of him in the moonlight. Suddenly, in a moment remembered by all who saw it, Blondin’s firecrackers went off in the distance over a mile away, and for an instant, in the glow of a beautiful lunar bow, the daring artists silhouetted each other in the night.

Then it was time for a little humour. For his September 5th walk Farini the iconoclast was determined to take another rip at the superhuman Frenchman. He would show people that it wasn’t just a rookie who could walk the Niagara gorge like the mighty Blondin, so could a lowly washerwoman, in fact, she could even carry her washing machine with her and do her laundry at midwire. Local businessmen Messrs. Philpot and Hinckley provided the apparatus while Farini supplied the woman: an Irish laundry worker named Biddy O’Flaherty. Like his earlier persona, Mickey Free, the Irish Pedestrian, this character’s traits travelled with her onto the cable.

The tone of the performance was irreverent right from the start. His broadsides called him “Farini the Comical, the Inexhaustible” and his Biddy was described as a “Wonderful and Laughable” character. He promised that the washerwoman would clean handkerchiefs two hundred feet above the gorge and hang them out to dry, leaving them all night if she so chose, having no fear that they might be stolen. She also generously offered anyone the chance to come out and check her work, to see if it was thoroughly done.

It was an Empire Washing Machine with a large wooden tub at its base, a pole rising from its centre and two others going from bottom to top with a rope strung across from the uppermost tips. It was six feet high and weighed about one hundred pounds. Farini, dressed in dark leg tights, a high-collared woman’s blouse and a lady’s dainty hat, arrived at his cable at four o’clock and made a show of receiving several handkerchiefs from a number of ladies. Then he lifted the washing machine onto his back and strapped it over his shoulders and around his waist. His heavy load adjusted, he picked up his balance pole, stepped out onto the cable and walked deliberately until he was nearly at mid-wire. Here he fastened his pole and the washing machine to the rope, took a pail and a cord out of the tub, lowered them down to the river and brought up some Niagara water for his chores. It took Biddy several minutes to do her laundry and when she was finished she wrang it out and tied each item to the cross-ropes and uprights. Her job done, she went through the tricky manoeuvre of getting the machine up onto her back again and her pole into her hands. But this she did without incident and soon was heading home again, the hankies flapping wildly in the winds. The ladies on the shoreline reported no dissatisfaction with the quality of the washerwoman’s work.

Then he readied himself for what he hoped would be an eventful weekend: the heir to the throne of the British Empire was coming to Niagara and the whole world would be watching.