François Bidel

François Bidel

Jean Baptiste François Bidel (born October 23, 1839 near Rouen , † December 24, 1909 in Asnières-sur-Seine ) was a French animal tamer and menagerie owner.

Life

François Bidel was the son of a showman from Normandy . His sister Jeanne Pauline later appeared under the name Pauline de Bigorre and presented wolves and hyenas. At the age of five, Bidel lost his father in an accident and was placed with an uncle after his mother remarried. After finishing school, François Bidel learned to deal with wild animals from the age of 14 , probably from his Italian stepfather Opilio or Upilio Faimali . After this stepfather became jealous of Bidel's successes, the sixteen-year-old ran away. He first worked as a groom and drum beater for a traveling tooth breaker, then managed to get by as a shop assistant and lover of the widow of a grocer's and finally became the crier of a wandering wax museum . Eventually he switched back to his traditional genre and started working at a menagerie. His own account after he became famous by a broken Bengal Tiger in Bayonne caught again, and carried back to his cage. Bidel presented itself mainly in the south of France and Italy. King Vittorio Emanuele II. , Who visited the menagerie several times, invited Bidel to breakfast and had his life story told. After Bidel was able to save the life of a servant in Rome who had got caught in a lion cage, although the cage inmate had already started to eat the man's arm, the king awarded him a medal of bravery. In 1878 Bidel exhibited his menagerie in Paris, making him a millionaire.

One of Rosa Bonheur's lion pictures

In Bidel's menagerie, Rosa Bonheur studied lions. The tragedy Roselia Roussel declaimed a ballad called The Death of the Lion inside the lion cage while Bidel held the animals in check . It became fashionable to enter the lion cage in the company of François Bidel. After suffering a minor stroke during a demonstration in the cage, Bidel separated from his animals and retired to an estate in Nice .

A street nearby was named after him. In addition to the property in Nice, he also owned a villa in Asnières, the dining room of which was decorated with a number of lions by Rosa Bonheur.

Bidel's children from his marriage to Marie Lécuyer chose other professions.

François Bidel's memoirs appeared in Paris in 1888 under the title Les Mémoires D'un Dompteur . The illustrations were by Paul Cousturier . Bidel is one of the initiators of social security for showmen in France.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Jörn Merkert, Circus, Zirkus, Cirque , Nationalgalerie Berlin 1978, p. 163
2. ↑ linterforainonline.fr Biography on linterforainonline.fr ( Memento of the original from December 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Quoted from Signor Saltarinos Artisten-Lexikon , p. 22.
4. ↑ This is how the situation is presented in Signor Saltarino's Artist Lexicon . According to a biography on linterforainonline.fr ( Memento of the original from December 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Bidel traveled with his animals until 1902 and then suffered an injury that led to an amputation. His menagerie was only sold by his daughter and son after his death in 1910. 
5. ↑ ^{a b} Signor Saltarino, Artist Lexicon. Biographical notes on horse riders, tamers, gymnasts, clowns, acrobats, specialties etc. from all countries and times , 2nd edition, Düsseldorf 1895, pp. 22–24
6. ↑ Jules Garnier and Hugues le Roux, Acrobats and Mountebanks , Mau Publishing, undated , undated
7. ↑ Les Mémoires D 'and Tamer on archive.org