The performance had been given, and Cooper had shut the cages and retired, when an officer of high rank, a member of the suite of the Czarewitch, approached the cage, and induced the attendant—with something from his pocket—to let him slip aside the shutters. His silly vanity, however, quickly met its reward, for no sooner had he come within sufficient distance of the bars than a lioness reached forth her paw, and so mauled and tore his arm that it had to be amputated. In such a country as Russia an accident of this sort was like to prove an unpleasant thing for the innocent tamer, and, while an inquiry was being held, Cooper had to leave the province. The wounded officer, however, was so obviously to blame for his own misfortune, that the matter was soon cleared up; and a very severe Royal rebuke was administered him, after which the tamer carried on his performances as usual. The officer was some years afterwards sent to Siberia, being found to be connected with a Nihilist organisation.
In England, while performing at the Crystal Palace, Mr. Cooper became acquainted with the late Prince Imperial, who was completely fascinated by the wonderful command the tamer exhibited over animals which no other man dare approach, and who badly wanted to be allowed to enter the cage himself. "I wouldn't allow you to go into that cage, sir," said Cooper, "for all France itself!"
The lions whose claws ended the career of Macarthy at Bolton afterwards killed another trainer, named Lucas, in Paris. They had been bought by an Englishman, a banker in Madrid, who financed and ran a menagerie. Lucas was the trainer, and this unfortunate man was mauled to death while showing in Paris. It is characteristic of the man that, never having seen these dangerous animals before, Mr. John Cooper put them through a long and severe performance a day or two after Lucas's death, on the occasion of a benefit arranged for the dead man's widow and family. Cooper's opinion is that poor Lucas never had the animals fully under control—at all events never acquired that complete mastery of them which a lion-tamer must have.
It must not be supposed that Mr. Cooper has come through all these years of daily and hourly peril unscathed; and it is instructive to observe that even in so exceptional a case as his, where animals seem to have no will but that of their master, numberless claws and teeth have left their marks on the trainer's body from head to foot. His hands alone are an index to his profession—here a scar and there a scar, there a finger bitten short, and here a nail gone. The third finger of his left hand is shortened by half the top joint, and the nail grows, not up from the back of the finger as usual, but over the top, and, if allowed to keep growing, lengthens down in front of the finger, towards the palm. This mishap occurred in practice one morning in Italy, with a lion who had an especial distaste to having his mouth opened to admit the head of Mr. Cooper. The trainer took a jaw in each hand to "persuade" them open, when the lion, with no vicious intent, finding his teeth an inch or so apart, snapped them together again, with the finger between them. Felis leo was surprised and disgusted, perhaps pained, at the disaster, and promptly spat the finger-end out, while blood flowed freely from the shortened digit over his face till he turned his head from under it. Several medical students had been admitted to watch the practice, and they promptly cauterised the wound with a hot iron, and the day's business proceeded as usual. Cooper only mentions this incident as contradicting the notion often expressed that the taste of blood infuriates an animal and rouses his passion for more. As an accident, among so many others, it is scarcely worth speaking of—in the trainer's opinion.
His most serious mishap occurred at Brussels, while Myers's Circus was performing there. It was winter, and Cooper's lions were dying fast from the effects of the severe weather. On the day of the accident two new lions, perfectly wild, had arrived from Hamburg. Now, it was always one of Cooper's boasts that all his training went on openly before the eyes of the public, and that he could go among untrained animals equally well before the public or in private. So the new beasts were turned in among the others in the evening, and Cooper went into the cage. The theatre was full to overflowing, and the audience certainly witnessed a sensational performance. Scarcely had the tamer entered, than one of the new lions and one of the old ones began a desperate fight. Cooper took his whip and started to quell the disturbance. In striking at the old lion, however, he managed to give the new one a smart cut, and the savage beast immediately flew upon him, and, planting its claws on his left
