ABSTRACT
This chapter shows what might proceed from understanding items in terms of the enfolding of subject and object, rather than through more established cultural geographic concerns for 'text' and 'representation'. Circus nomadism becomes appropriately British in part through a conservatism of social organization and cultural value. British Circus Life appeared at a time when the vernacular, in both culture and architecture, was emerging as central to a counter-modern culture of landscape. The Herald of the Golden Age was the journal of the Order of the Golden Age, 'A Philanthropic Society founded to proclaim Hygienic Truth, to advocate the Humane Life, and to promote Social Amelioration'. The Herald, and the Order, were dedicated to fruitarianism, centring identity on diet, and offering a peculiar ethical and aesthetic relationship to the world. British circus life also becomes a site of conservative value by virtue of being not a raggedy roving space but a site of strong self-regulation.
