Off The Beatle Track

John wrote Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! based on a 1843 circus poster (a reproduction of which you should be able to find pretty easily online).*

I always interpreted “for the benefit of Mr. Kite” to mean that the show was staged to raise money for Mr. Kite. In modern usage, benefits are often staged to raise money for charitable causes.

Burt this doesn’t seem to be that kind of benefit, in that Kite was among the performers. John sings that “Mr. Kite performs his feat on Saturday,” “Mr. Kite flies through the ring,” “Mr. K performs his tricks without a sound,” and “Mr. Kite is topping the bill.” Did Mr. Kite perform at, or for, his own benefit?

How many Hendersons?

According to the poster, Mr. Kite was in fact scheduled to perform at the February 14, 1843, gig, but not as many feats as John ascribed to him. The poster says that “Mr. Kite will appear, for the first time this season, on the tight rope.”** Oh, and Kite introduced the horse–named Zanthus, not Henry.

The real star of the evening seems to be “Mr. J. Henderson, the celebrated somerset thrower, wire dancer, vaulter, rider, &c.” But the poster mentions only one Henderson, whereas John wrote that “the Hendersons will all be there.”

Notably, Henderson, not Kite, “challenges the world” by making “trampoline leaps and somersets over men & horses, through hoops, over garters, and lastly through a hogshead of real fire!”***

Kite was how old?

The poster makes it clear that Henderson is the star of the show, though Kite seems to have been the more famous performer. According to Wikipedia,**** William Kite hailed from a circus family; his father, James Kite, formed Kite’s Pavilion Circus around 1810.

How old would you guess Mr. Kite was in 1843? I have a mental image of a middle-age man in a top hat, once a renowned performer, now restricted mostly to emcee duties, maybe even smoking a cigar throughout the proceedings. That image may have something to do with the actor who played Mr. Kite in the 1978 “film” Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band: George Burns.

Well, if Wikipedia is right, William Kite was only about 18 in 1843.

And Kite benefited how?

In Victorian England, the phrase “being for the benefit of” seems to have meant that the person both performing and benefiting would receive the show’s proceeds. So the answer to the question as to whether Mr. Kite performed for his own benefit seems to be “yes.”

But what about poor Henderson? He had to roll on the solid ground and jump through fire. Maybe the next show was a benefit for Henderson, and if John had found that poster instead, he would’ve written a different melody to accommodate the two extra syllables.

As always, I don’t pretend that either the facts that I’ve presented here or my understanding thereof are correct. If you know more than I do about the genesis of Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! (and it would be difficult for you to know any less), email me at beatletrack@gmail.com.

*Paul now plays the song at his shows, claiming that he wrote it with John. Eh, I wasn’t there, but. . . .

**I’ve cleaned up the punctuation in all the quotations from the poster.

***A somerset is a somersault, but surely Mr. H wasn’t just rolling around on the ground, right? Maybe he was doing flips. Garters appear to be banners that other members of the circus held aloft for Mr. H to jump over. A hogshead is a cask or barrel.

****I know, I know, but you try to find information about the real Mr. Kite.