A Clown's Legacy Is Magic For Museum

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday December 31, 1994

By GERALDINE O'BRIEN Heritage Writer

Jandy the clown died in 1971, aged 87, his glory days forgotten, the mementos stored in trunks, shared out among his few friends.

Cinema and television together had destroyed his way of life, the tradition of clowning which stretches back to the Middle Ages, linking Europe through the dark humour of commedia dell'arte.

Jandy - real name, Arthur Averino - had first come to Australia in 1891 with his family troupe, Do Re Mi. Then, they shared a bill with Sarah Bernhardt. In 1901, the troupe, now named Zig-Zag, returned to Australia and, for more than a generation, received top billing in circuses throughout the country.

But their fortunes declined with the slow demise of vaudeville after the Great War and, although Jandy continued performing as a clown into his 70s, he had to supplement his income by running a confectionery shop in Newtown and by training and selling racing pigeons.

By the time of his death, few would have recognised the humble immigrant who, as the heir to a great comedic tradition, refused to have a television in his house.

But a friend and confidant, to whom he left a lifetime of circus memorabilia, realised its historic value. This week, staff at the Powerhouse Museum started unpacking and cataloguing the entire collection of more than 200 items.

The donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, sold it to the Powerhouse, refusing a much larger sum for the collection from a Victorian museum, saying Mr Averino had wanted the collection to stay in Sydney.

Mr Peter Cox, the Powerhouse curator of social history, said the collection, rare ephemera from a bygone era, includes circus props such as the horn and lute used in Jandy's performances, posters, handbills, and personal possessions. There is Jandy's father's make-up case, perhaps over a century old, crammed with pots of rouge, eye colours, pencils and mask-white face powders.

The costumes are "more commedia dell'arte than Ronald McDonald", as the curator describes them, with lace-fringed period suits vying for hanger-space with a Dante-esque skeleton.

From a distance they glimmer with all the magic of circus nights; closer up, the darns and threads and patches become visible, evidence of how carefully they were tended and handed from father to son.

The Averino family can be traced back to Ivanov Averino Yantakievski, a member of the Russian regiment sent by Catherine the Great to help in the Greek revolution of 1821 against the Turks. Ivanov, like Byron, was killed at Missolonghi.

His son, Alexander Averino Jandeschewsky, was appointed overseer of the Tsarina's summer palace in Paris in 1844. His six children, brought up in Paris, all took up work in the theatre, with the youngest, Guillaume, marrying an Italian circus ballerina, Cristina Matice.

Their first son, Arthur, later to become Jandy, was born backstage at a Lisbon theatre in 1882. As a child he became part of the family troupe which, from 1885, toured Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia with the famous Grand Cirque Russe.

On one of their tours to Australia, in 1902, Arthur married a Spanish dancer, Icindra Santos y Fernandez, in Sydney and while the rest of the family returned to Europe, he, his brothers and their father Guillaume settled here.

"The Great Moving Vaudeville Entertainment", as they called themselves, grew to 35 performers who appeared at the Tivoli, Her Majesty's, and the Capitol Theatre in Sydney, as well as the great circuses touring the country.