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- [Juba is] jumping very fast at the Colosseum, but too fast is worse than too slow, and we advise [Juba] to be wise in time. It is easier to jump down than to jump up.’ [The following week] ‘Juba has jumped away--by the way of an earnest yet friendly caution, let us hope that he will not throw himself away. Be wise in time is a wholesome motto.
Era. August 4, 1850.
- The performances of Boz's Juba have created quite a sensation in the gallery, who greeted his marvellous feats of dancing with thunders of applause and a standing encore. In all the rougher and less refined departments of his art, Juba is a perfect master.
Huddersfield Chronicle & West Yorkshire Advertiser.
November 30, 1850.
- The Puppet-Show (1848, at Vauxhall Gardens):
...The principal feature in the entertainments at Vauxhall is Juba: as such at least he is put forth–or rather put first–by the proprietors. Out of complement to Dickens, this extraordinary nigger is called ‘Boz’s Juba,’ in consequence, we believe, of the popular writer having said a good word for him in his American Notes: on this principle we could not mention the Industrious Fleas as being clever without having those talented little animals puffed all over London as being under the overwhelming patronage of the SHOWMAN. Juba’s talent consists in walking round the stage with an air of satisfaction and with his toes turned in; in jumping backwards in a less graceful manner than we should have conceived possible; and in shaking his thighs like a man afflicted with palsy. He makes a terrible clatter with his feet, not owing so much to the activity on his part as to the stupidity on the part of his boot-maker, who has furnished him with a pair of clumsy Wellingtons sufficiently large for the feet and legs of all the Ethiopians in London: besides this, he sometimes moves about the stage o his knees, as if he was praying to be endowed with intelligence, and had unlimited credit with his tailor. As a last resource, he falls back on the floor.
Harvard Theater Collection, Vauxhall Microfilm
- [The writer meets, at a dance pavilion, the man he had recently replaced as entertainment reporter for the journal. He had been drinking:]
...Our discharged contributor was present during the dancing, and amused himself by tripping-up the danseuses at every opportunity, for the sake of exclaiming ‘pick up the bits,’ which, in his state of mind, he considered witty. When again we saw him he was labouring (like a horse–or, rather, an ass) under the influence of champagne. We understood that he was imitating Juba, and he behaved so ridiculously that he may actually be said to have surpassed him. When we addressed him (for, in spite of his conduct, we are still on speaking terms with him), he assured us that if he were not Our Discarded Contributor he would be Juba!
Harvard Theater Collection, Vauxhall Microfilm
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