CONTEMPORARY STRONG PEOPLE: CHARLES
JEFFERSON; LOUIS CYR; JOHN GRUN
MARX; WILLIAM LE ROY.--THE NAIL
KING, THE HUMAN CLAW-HAMMER; ALEXANDER
WEYER; MEXICAN BILLY WELLS;
A FOOLHARDY ITALIAN; WILSON; HERMAN;
SAMPSON; SANDOW; YUCCA; LA
BLANCHE; LULU HURST.--THE GEORGIA
MAGNET, THE ELECTRIC GIRL, ETC.;
ANNIE ABBOTT; MATTIE LEE PRICE.--
THE TWILIGHT OF THE FREAKS.THE
DIME MUSEUMS.
Feats of strength have always interested me greatly, so that in my travels around the world I have made it a point to come in contact with the most powerful human beings of my generation.The one among these who deserves first mention is Charles Jefferson, with whose achievements I became quite familiar while we were working in the same museum many years ago.I am convinced that he must have been the strongest man of his time at lifting with the bare hands alone.He had two feats that he challenged any mortal to duplicate.One was picking up a heavy blacksmith's anvil by the horn and placing it on a kitchen table; for the other he had a block of steel, which, as near as I can remember, must have been about 14 inches long, 12 inches wide, and 7 inches thick.This block lay on the floor, and his challenge was for anyone to pick it up with bare hands.I noticed that it required unusually long fingers to grasp it, since one could get only the thumb on one side.
Though thousands tried, I never saw, or heard, of anyone else who could juggle his anvil or pick up the weight.True, I saw him surreptitiously rub his fingers with resin, to assist in the gripping, but that could have been only of slight assistance to the marvelous grip the man possessed.
It is generally conceded that Louis Cyr was, in his best days, the strongest man in the known world at all-round straight lifting.Cyr did not give the impression of being an athlete, nor of a man in training, for he appeared to be over-fat and not particularly muscular; but he made records in lifting which, to the best of my knowledge, no other man has been able to duplicate.
John Grun Marx, a Luxemberger, must have been among the strongest men in the world at the time I knew him.We worked on the same bill several times; but it was at the Olympia, in Paris, that he shone supreme as a strongman--and at the same time as a weak one.
For, in spite of his sovereign strength, Mars was no match for a pair of bright eyes; all a pretty woman had to do was to smile and John would wilt.And--Paris was Paris.
Marx's strength was prodigious, and he juggled hundreds, and toyed with thousands, of pounds as a child plays with a rattle.He must have weighed in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds, and he walked like a veritable colossus.In fact, he reminded me of a two-footed baby elephant.
Always good-natured, he made a host of friends both in the profession and out of it.
After years of professional work he settled down as landlord of a public house in England, where, finally, he was prostrated by a mortal illness.Wishing to die in his native city, he returned to Luxemberg.He did not realize that he was bereft of his enormous strength, and those about him humored him: the doctor and the nurses would pretend that he hurt them when he grasped their hands.He died almost forgotten except by his brother artists, but they (myself among them) built a monument to this good-natured Hercules, whose only care was to entertain.
Among the strongmen that I met during my days with the museums, one whom I found most interesting was William Le Roy, known as The Nail King and The Human Claw-Hammer, whose act appealed to me for its originality.
So far as I could learn, it had never been duplicated.
Le Roy was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, October 3rd, 1873.He was about 5 feet 10inches in height, and well set up.The inordinate strength of his jaws, teeth, and neck, enabled him to push a nail, held between his teeth, through a one-inch board; or to nail together, with his teeth, two 3/4-inch boards.
He could draw with his teeth a large nail that had been driven completely through a two-inch plank.Then he would screw an ordinary two-inch screw into a hardwood plank with his teeth, pull it out with his teeth, and then screw it into the plank again and offer $100 to any man who could pull it out with a large pair of pincers which he proffered for the purpose.
When he had performed these stunts in various positions, he would bend his body backward till his head pointed toward the floor, and in that position push a nail through a one-inch board held perpendicularly in a metal frame.
I saw no chance for trickery in Le Roy's act.
Another nail act was that of Alexander Weyer, who, either by superior strength or by a peculiar knack, could hold a nail between the middle fingers of his right hand with the head against the palm, and drive it through a one-inch board.But since this act did not get him very far either on the road to fame, or toward the big money--he turned to magic and finally became one of the leading Continental magicians, boasting that he was one of the few really expert sleight-of-hand magicians of the world.
I met Weyer at Liege, Belgium, where we had an all-night match with playing cards.He admitted that there were some tricks he did not know, but he claimed that after once seeing any magician work he could duplicate the tricks.On this occasion, however, he was unable to make the boast good.
Another clever performer of those days was Mexican Billy Wells, who worked on the Curio platform.His act was the old stone-breaking stunt, already explained, except that he had the stones broken on his head instead of on his body.He protected his head with a small blanket, which he passed for examination, and this protection seemed excusable, considering that he had to do at least seven shows a day.
A strong man from the audience did the real work of the act by swinging the heavy sledge-hammer on the stone, as shown in the accompanying illustration.Usually the stone would be riven by a single blow; but if it was not, Wells would yell, ``Harder! harder! hit harder!'' until the stone was broken.
