A Substack called Lydwine recently posted a lovely evocation of the circus, with quotes by E. E. Cummings, E. B. White, and Robert Lax. The post, which can be found here, celebrates the one-time winter quarters of a circus contingent in Hugo, Oklahoma. Here’s a selection from it:
At Mount Olivet Cemetery in Hugo, Oklahoma, a small section of hallowed ground — called Showmen’s Rest — is set aside for the mortal remains of the circus folk who for generations have made tiny Hugo their winter haven. Buried there are impresarios like Jack Moore, who as a young man kept both a lion and a wrestling bear in his mother’s garage in Marshall, Texas; performers like Zefta Loyal, who could dance on pointe on the back of a galloping horse; or Herbert Weber, who as the Great Huberto walked the high wire with baskets on his feet.
Here’s the Lax section:
The poet Robert Lax, who himself travelled for a time with the Cristiani Brothers Circus, penned what seems a fitting epitaph for the dead of Showmen’s Rest, and for those of us yet left behind, who marvel at their witness:
Our dreams have tamed the lions, have made pathways in the jungle, peaceful lakes; they have built new Edens ever sweet and ever changing. By day from town to town we carry Eden in our tents and bring its won- ders to the children who have lost their dream of home.
If you go to the post, you’ll find many more wonderful pictures of circus performer headstones like those shone here.
I’ll end with one of Lydwine’s quotes:
“The circus,” wrote E.B. White, “comes as close to being the world in a microcosm as anything I know.”