W.F. Wallett

William Frederick "W.F." Wallett (November 1806 in Hull, England – 13 March 1892 at Beeston, Nottinghamshire, England) was a popular circus clown in Victorian England, who also enjoyed modest celebrity in the United States. After he performed before Queen Victoria in 1844 at Windsor Castle, Wallett began promoting himself as "the Queen's Jester," and described himself this way in the title of his 1870 autobiography. For many years, he performed in the circus owned by his good friend Pablo Fanque (whose name is familiar to many today from his mention in The Beatles song, Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!) Wallett also helped manage Fanque's circus.

In his 1870 autobiography, Wallett shares many anecdotes that reflect the powers of observation, humor, and pathos of an effective clown. While often a rolling stone, Wallett frequently found himself working with Pablo Fanque, and thus, many of his most noteworthy stories either concern Fanque or his time performing in Fanque's circus. Wallett speaks of a routine he devised for a show in Oxford concerning freehold land rights:

I remained in Oxford till Pablo's benefit came on, when I appeared for that night only, and delivered a mock electioneering speech. In it I proposed to solve the vexed question of freemen's right to vote for the county as well as for the city. I had primed myself with facts and figures, had compared the number of freemen with the number of acres of freehold land belonging to the corporation, and consequently their property, and was able to show that there was land enough, in fact more than twice enough, to constitute each freeman a forty-shilling • freeholder. This I intended for a joke, but it turned out something better—it was good law. Some ten or fifteen years afterwards, when the question came before a high tribunal, the judge came to the same decision that I had delivered in jest.

He claims to have observed the following while fishing with Fanque on The Isis, the stretch of The Thames that runs through Oxford:

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