Your clown, just as much as any other artist, is the product of tradition. Just as a painter knows how to use the experience of countless forerunners, just as an author who is an author largely owes his existence to the pioneer work of those who have gone before and influenced him, so every clown that is worth his salt is but carrying on the torch handed to him by all the eminent clowns who preceded him or who work with him still. Your painter will swear by Raphael, or Calame, or Stuck as the case may be, your author by Paul de Kock, Goethe, or Edgar Wallace, while your clown will acknowledge his debt to Bébé and Serillo, or Pippo and Toniloff, or Toto, or Willi and Adolf Olschonski, or La Water Lee, or Gobert Belling, or Les Briators, or Rico and Alex, or Seiffer, or Carlo and Mariano, or Little Walter, or Averino Antonio, or the three Fratellini, or Antonet.

Umberto Guilleaume, who goes by the name of Antonet, a leading clown of the Cirque de Paris, was my teacher.