13. BORDEVERRY, THE MASTER MARKSMAN
Gaston Bordeverry was a young Frenchman, born in Pau, at the edge of the Pyrenees, sometime in the 1870s. He trained as an interpreter and moved to Bordeaux at an early age, setting up business as a wine merchant, albeit without much success. He was very fond of shooting and proud of his considerable talent as a marksman. After winning a number of prizes at provincial shooting displays, he went to Paris, where the Figaro newspaper had arranged a grand shooting competition in 1897. Bordeverry dazzled the Parisians with his prowess as a marksman, and he soon received offers to perform in the variety halls. Life as a music hall artist suited him very well, and his wife and daughter became his assistants, having small coins and other objects shot from their heads. In a rather risqué routine, the wife had the buttons in her dress shot away, becoming disrobed as a consequence.
In January 1898, Colonel Gaston Bordeverry, as he called himself in his show business career, made his debut at the Royal Music Hall in London. His well-aimed bullets broke glass balls suspended a few inches above his wife’s head, extinguished a cigarette she was smoking, and lit an erect Lucifer match. After two months in London, he went on to tour the provinces for two full years, visiting most larger cities. In January 1899, the Royal Magazine had a feature on ‘The Best Shot in the World’. The swaggering Bordeverry showed off his skills, shooting various objects from the head of his sturdy, uncomplaining wife, and posing for the magazine’s photographer.
In early 1902, he was back in Paris, where he presented an improved routine at a show sponsored by the Figaro newspaper. He first went through his ‘Wilhelm Tell’ act, shooting a lump of sugar and a 50-centime piece from the head of his servant. He then took several repeating carbines and stood 10 yards from a specially armoured piano, firing a fusillade of bullets to make it play a complicated selection from Cavalleria Rusticana, while a quartet party sang the words. Nothing even remotely like this show had ever been seen on the Parisian stage, and there were extraordinary scenes as the audience cheered the master marksman.
In 1904, Bordeverry left to conquer the United States. He was a great success at the New York Hippodrome. In May 1905, there was a mishap during the routine when he shot away his wife’s buttons to remove her outer clothes, and a bullet passed through her cheek. Bordeverry lodged a complaint with a former assistant of his for tampering with his rifle-sight. Shooting his wife did not deter the master marksman from trying other foolhardy displays, like shooting a lump of sugar from the head of a lady volunteer from the audience. While performing in Washington, he was received at the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt, who shook his hand and complimented him on his marksmanship. After spending three full years in America, Bordeverry was back in London in May 1908, advertising in the Era theatrical newspaper for further employment, and touring Hull, Manchester, Leeds and Exeter.
In 1913, he went on a tour of South Africa. His health was no longer good, and he suffered from gout and Bright’s disease. After having performed two nights at the Hall-by-theSea music hall in Durban, he suffered a severe paralytic stroke at the Hotel Lowther and died at a sanatorium three weeks later. His ‘wife’, named as ‘Ruby de Fontenoy,’ was currently on tour herself in the United States, and his adult daughter was a member of the Mirza Golem Troupe, performing in Germany. Ruby (real name Ruby Blackledge) was clearly not the same ‘wife’ Bordeverry had shown to the Royal Magazine back in 1899, but a good deal younger and more attractive, and a sharpshooter in her own right. Bordeverry had earned a good deal of money during his 15 years in show business, but he had spent it all on his various amusements: when his will was read in London on 29 October 1913, Ruby Blackledge, spinster, inherited just £96 and change. ‘Ruby de Fontenoy’ went on to tour the United States for several years as the ‘Champion Girl Shot of the World’, until the Great War ended her career in 1916.