14 leave a puppet show: John de Castro, The Memoirs of J. de Castro, Comedian, ed. R. Humphreys (London, 1824), pp. 187–8.
14 ‘I must give you Harlequin’: Cyril W. Beaumont, The History of Harlequin (New York: Blom, 1967), p. 91.
14 insisted on being paid: Findlater, Joe Grimaldi, p. 35. For the jubilee procession, see Martha Winburn England, Garrick and Stratford (New York: New York Public Library, 1962), p. 67.
14 ‘ye worst behav’d Man’: BDA, vol. 6, p. 391.
15 ‘cut his head into two parts’: Maurice Willson Disher, Clowns and Pantomimes (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), p. 90.
15 ‘will not end so comically’: Disher, Clowns and Pantomimes, p. 90.
15 ‘a certain class of Londoner’: C. A. G. Groede, A Stranger in England; or, Travels in Great Britain (London, 1807), vol. 2, p. 268. For a thorough account of the theatre career of Charles Dibdin, see Robert Fahrner, The Theatre Career of Charles Dibdin the Elder (New York, et al.: Peter Lang, 1989).
15 ‘intended to act speaking pantomimes’: David Worrall, Theatric Revolution: Drama, Censorship and Romantic Period Subcultures, 1773–1832 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 254.
15 ‘conceived himself under the highest obligations… would rather die’: Charles Dibdin, The Royal Circus Epitomised (London, 1784), p. 29.
16 dangle for hours: de Castro, Memoirs, p. 16.
16 ‘playing at top’: de Castro, Memoirs, p. 16.
16 ‘a compleat investigation’: Charles Dibdin, Royal Circus Epitomised, p. 29.
17 to steal the lead from the roof: The Times, 9 May 1785. See also George Raymond, The Life and Enterprises of Robert William Elliston, Comedian (London: Routledge, 1857), p. 157.
17 ‘he knows, in himself, exactly, the degree of merit’: Charles Dibdin, The Professional Life of Mr. Dibdin, Written by Himself, Together with the Words of Six Hundred Songs Selected From His Works, Interspersed with Many Humorous and Entertaining Anecdotes Incidental to the Public Character, 4 vols (London, 1803), vol. 2, p. 112.
17 she just thirteen: William Van Lennep, Emmett L. Avery, Arthur H. Scouten, George Winchester Stone and Charles Beecher Hogan (eds), The English Stage, 1660–1800: A Calendar of Plays, Entertainments and Afterpieces Together With Casts, Box-Receipts and Contemporary Comment, 11 vols (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–79) (hereafter ‘English Stage’), lists ‘Miss’ Blagden’s first appearance in the bills as 1759 (pt 4, vol. 2).
18 ‘began to behave cruelly towards her’: This section draws heavily from, and is deeply indebted to, Richard Findlater’s original research in the Greater London Council archive, then in County Hall. Some of this material, including copies of birth and marriage certificates and the signed papers in which the Signor devolves power of attorney to his solicitor, now resides in the London Metropolitan Archives, though sadly, I have been unable to locate the divorce petition itself. See Charles Dickens, The Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi, ed. Richard Findlater (New York: Stein and Day, 1968), Appendix A, p. 296 (hereafter, ‘Dickens, Memoirs’).
18 ‘very much abuse and ill-treat her’: Dickens, Memoirs, Appendix A, pp. 296–7.
18 affairs with the young dancers. Arundell, Sadler’s Wells, p. 19. Findlater (Joe Grimaldi, p. 38), states: ‘In the Sadler’s Wells seasons of 1761 and 1765, he publicly carried on affairs with three sisters, the Wilkinsons, of whom one at least (later Mrs Mountain), was his apprentice.’ There is some confusion here, as, though Rosemund Wilkinson, later Mrs Mountain, was indeed the Signor’s pupil at the Royal Circus, she wasn’t born until c.1768, and would have been only four or five years old at the time of his association with Dibdin’s project. It is also Findlater’s assertion that Caroline Wilkinson gave Grimaldi syphilis.
19 ‘chiefly lived in the kitchen’: Dickens, Memoirs, Appendix A, p. 297.
19 ‘occasional fairy’: Gerald Frow, ‘Oh Yes It Is!’: A History of Pantomime (London: BBC, 1985), p. 59.
19 ‘exercises in music, dancing, oratory, etc.’: BDA, vol. 6, p. 392.
19 ‘contracting herself in matrimony’: Deed of Covenant between Joseph [Giuseppe] Grimaldi and Rebecca Brooker. Dated [by another hand?] October 1773. Grimaldi Scrapbook, Harvard Theatre Collection, p. 4.
20 ‘Oh dear’: James Boaden, The Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons, Interspersed with Anecdotes of Authors and Actors (Philadelphia: Carey et al., 1827), p. 88; Alan Kendall, David Garrick: A Biography (London: Harrap, 1985), p. 208.
21 ‘a great round cloud’: Louis Simond, An American in Regency England: The Journal of a Tour in 1810–1811, ed. Christopher Hibbert (London: Robert Maxwell, 1968), p. 33. Walter Besant, London in the Nineteenth Century (New York and London: Garland, 1985), p. 217. The houses in the Clare Market were so close together that it wasn’t possible to build a sewer until 1802; until then, residents had to make do with a cesspit in their cellar.
21 Islington Road: The announcement that advertised the Signor’s benefit night at Sadler’s Wells on 18 September 1780 stated that tickets may be had ‘of Mr. Grimaldi, at his house, opposite Sadler’s Wells gateway, Islington Road’. Whether or not he moved there with Anne Perry is unknown. Percival Collection of Material Relating to Sadler’s Wells, 1683–1849 [hereafter ‘Percival’], 14 vols, vol. 1. For the Lambeth garden, see Dickens, Memoirs, p. 31.
21 ‘in dis hose dere be no religion at all’: Angelo, Reminiscences, vol. 2, p. 116.
22 ‘three or four female servants’: Dickens, Memoirs, p. 41.
22 ‘three young Grimaldis’: Findlater, Joe Grimaldi, p. 49; English Stage, pt 5, vol. 2. More intriguing still, especially given the repetition of names across various generations of Grimaldis, is that ‘William’ was one of the names Joe gave his only son.
22 ‘never known to be inebriated’: Dickens, Memoirs, p. 31. As Nigel Hamilton reminds us (Biography: A Brief History [Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007], pp. 100–28), reputation was the all-important factor guiding biographical accounts in the Victorian period. Reputation was doubly important for a person like Grimaldi, who, though he had earned great celebrity and public affection during his lifetime, possessed very little in the way of material comforts that could define him as a middle-class gentleman. Indeed, with his disability and constant financial worries, it was only reputation that prevented him being aligned with the indigent urban poor.
22 lifting them by their hair: Dickens, Memoirs, p. 34.
23 ‘trebled, or quadrupled the punishment’: Dickens, Memoirs, p. 41.
23 ‘a street or two long’: Dickens, Memoirs, p. 40.
24 ‘inexpressible torment’: Jacques-Bénigne Winslow, The Uncertainty of the Signs of Death, and the Danger of Precipitate Interments and Dissections, Demonstrated (Dublin, 1746), pp. 44, 61. The Uncertainty of the Signs of Death is not just relentless gore, as by constantly scanning its pages the Signor would have picked up any number of useful tips, including detailed instructions on how to revive a drowned man by blowing tobacco smoke into his anus (p. 161).
24 ‘appears as dead’: Findlater, Joe Grimaldi, p. 32.
24 ‘safe for anoder month’: de Castro, Memoirs, pp. 192–3. Joe’s Memoirs, however, claim the Signor was mortally afeared of the fourteenth of every month.
24 ‘visitant from the world of spirits’: ‘Reminiscence of Grimaldi, Written by Tom Matthews’, Kentish Independant [sic], 29 May 1858, clipping in Grimaldi Scrapbook, no page number.
25 ‘Honest Joe Miller’: J. Milling, ‘Miller, Josias (1683/4–1738)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2005 (hereafter ‘DNB’).
The Wizard of the Silver Rocks
27 ‘serio-comic, prophetic, political, musical piece’: Advertisement in the Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, 16 April 1781; Arundell, Sadler’s Wells, p. 34. Joe danced with one of his stepsisters, though which one remains unknown. Mary, Findlater’s candidate, is dismissed quite reasonably by BDA on the grounds that she
had been married to Lascelles Williamson for three years by this time and was therefore no longer billed as ‘Miss Grimaldi’. For Placido Bussart, see Percival, vol. 1, f. 215.
28 ‘first bow and first tumble’: Dickens, Memoirs, p. 33.
28 ‘eloquent legs’: Miles, Grimaldi, p. 5.
28 début as Little Clown: While both the Memoirs and Miles’s Grimaldi state that Joe’s pantomime début was in Sheridan’s Robinson Crusoe; or, Harlequin Friday, I follow Findlater (Dickens, Memoirs, p. 33, fn. 4) in preferring The Triumph of Mirth as a more likely candidate, first for the date, as Robinson Crusoe débuted on 29 January 1781, when Joe had just turned two, and second, if we are to believe the many stories that Joe débuted as ‘Little Clown’, then The Triumph of Mirth makes more sense because Signor Grimaldi played Clown in that piece, and Friday in Crusoe.
28 he was in his seventies: BDA, vol. 6, p. 392.
29 ‘a mere baby ting’: Miles, Grimaldi, p. 24.
29 an apprentice of Iron Legs: This claim is based on Miles’s report of Delpini’s assertion that he had been an apprentice of ‘Nicolini’.
29 ‘he runs all hazards’: The Times, 2 August 1788.
30 ‘dampened the remainder of the day’s entertainment’: Percival, vol. 2, f. 44.
30 ‘dat is your vortune’: Dickens, Memoirs, pp. 37–8.
30 anchors of reason and authority: Modern studies into the family backgrounds of children identified as jokers or class-clowns reveal parents who, like the Signor, fall significantly short of the ideals of love and nurture. Specifically, these parents have difficulty maintaining a sense of consistency and adult equilibrium. They are prone to pettiness, physical or verbal bouts of aggression, and behaviour that seeks constantly to undermine other family members and score points against them. They will often emphasise the great sacrifices they have made on behalf of their children, encouraging them to be more independent while simultaneously criticising the child’s lack of polish, and lament their own problems while remaining unsympathetic to other people’s. Most importantly, indeed critically so, for the development of a sense of humour within the child is that they were found to hold views that were consistently inconsistent, frequently irrational, and liable to change with little warning. Funny children are used to contradictory instructions and information, such as receiving indiscriminate praise or blame irrespective of their behaviour, or engaging in conversations in which the terms of the discussion could be reshaped at any moment. Though immersion in a world of confused information and emotional volatility might be thought to result in deep anxiety, it appears that funny children grow quickly wise to the erratic behaviour of their parents and are able to see beyond it, learning in particular not to internalise their parents’ views of them, but understand them as changeable whims rather than as fundamental truths. Although a healthy way of coping, it does mean that the child develops an understanding of the world as a shifting plane of ambiguities, void of the anchors of reason and the authority a parent conventionally provides, resulting in a heightened sense of the ludicrous. Such children become pathologically dedicated to maximising unpredictability, and thus naturally gravitate towards comedy as they find it exploits all the mechanisms to which they’ve been most consistently exposed: surprise and uncertainty, refused expectations, unexpected outcomes, paradox and suspended causality. See, for example, Seymour and Rhoda Fisher, Pretend the World is Funny and Forever: A Psychoanalysis of Comedians, Clowns and Actors (Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1981) and Samuel Janus, ‘The Great Comedians: Personality and Other Factors’, American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 35:2 (1975): 169–74.
31 ‘opium is to the Turk’: Miles, Grimaldi, p. 25.
32 systematically suppressing any theatre: The King’s Theatre held a similar patent for opera, and the Haymarket for out-of-season summer shows.
32 ‘part of our political system’: Fintan O’Toole, A Traitor’s Kiss: The Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (London: Granta, 1997), p. 116.
32 ‘openly selling and delivering’: Simond, An American in Regency England, p. 45. Exposure to explicit solicitations and bawdy commentary was all part of the evening: ‘Not a night passes but these wretched out-casts enter into a dialogue with the Gods of the galleries,’ wrote a correspondent for the Theatrical Inquisitor, ‘and the conversation is not managed with much delicacy on either side.’ Theatrical Inquisitor, November 1812, p. 144. Auditoria were frequently used as metaphors for social stratification. ‘We have three … different and distinct Classes,’ wrote one London guide, ‘The first is called the Boxes, where there is one peculiar to the King and Royal Family, and the rest for the Persons of Quality, and for the Ladies and Gentlemen of the highest Rank, unless some Fools that have more Wit than Money, or perhaps more Impudence than both, crowd in among them. The second is call’d the Pit, where sit the Judges, Wits and Censurers … in common with these sit the Squires, Sharpers, Beaus, Bullies, and Whores, and here and there an extravagant Male and Female Cit. The third is distinguished by the Title of the Middle Gallery, where the Citizens’ Wives and Daughters, together with the Abigails [maids], Serving-Men, Journey-Men and Apprentices commonly take their places.’ Roy Porter, ‘Material Pleasures in the Consumer Society’, in Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Roy Porter and Marie Mulvey Roberts (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 19–35, pp. 29–30.
33 ‘imitating the lowing of a cow’: A big laugh encouraged him to try a range of animal impressions, though none of them proved as popular as the first, prompting his friend Hugh Blair to advise, ‘My dear sir, I would confine myself to the cow!’ James Boswell, Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763, ed. Frederick A. Pottle (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), p. 236, fn. 1.
33 ‘hush men’: Boaden, Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons, p. 374.
33 ‘unless the play is stopped’: Linda Kelly, The Kemble Era: John Philip Kemble, Sarah Siddons and the London Stage (London et al.: Bodley Head, 1980),
p. 84. This is quite probably one of those theatrical anecdotes that has been attributed to any number of well-known actors. It’s certainly similar to one appearing in Thomas Dibdin’s Reminiscences, though this time involving an eccentric actor named Newton, who performed on Mrs Baker’s Kent circuit. Confronted by the crying child, Newton said, ‘Ma-dam, I assure you, upon the veracity of a man and a gentle-man, that unless you instantly adopt some method of keeping the play quiet, it will be morally impossible for the child to proceed.’ Thomas Dibdin, The Reminiscences of Thomas Dibdin of the Theatres Royal Covent Garden, Drury Lane, Haymarket, etc., 2 vols (London, 1837), vol. 1, p. 226.
33 ‘exuberance of liberty’: Simond, An American in Regency England, p. 46.
33 a piece of brass … apple skewered on a knife: Charles Beecher Hogan, The London Stage, 1776–1800: A Critical Introduction (Carbondale et al.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968), p. cc; Benjamin Crosby, Crosby’s Pocket Companion to the Playhouses, Being the Lives of All the Principal London Performers (London, 1796), p. 341. In 1789, a violinist was hurt at Sadler’s Wells when a drunken sailor fell from the gallery and landed on his head.
34 ‘a regular entertainment’: Hogan, London Stage, p. ccv.
34 thunderous laughter on its opening night: Frederick Reynolds, The Life and Times of Frederick Reynolds, 2 vols (New York and London: Benjamin Blom, 1969), vol. 1, p. 110.
34 a train of black velvet: Linda Kelly, Richard Brinsley Sheridan: A Life (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1997), p. 88.
34 ‘an eye of peculiar brilliancy’: O’Toole, Traitor’s Kiss, p. 196.
35 ‘funeral pile’: James Boaden, Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble, esq., Including a History of the Stage from the Time of Garrick to the Present Period (Philadelphia: Small, et. al., 1825), p. 116.
35 ‘pay us our salaries!’: Kelly, The Kemble Era, p. 111.
35 first borrow fifty pounds: The particular victim of this piece of charm was Sarah Siddons, see Clare Tomalin, Mrs. Jordan’s Profession (London: Pengu
in, 1995), p. 38, and Kelly, The Kemble Era, p. 86.
35 ‘So cordial were his manners’: Boaden, Life of J. P. Kemble, p. 117.
36 ‘vat a clevare fellow dat Sheridan is!’: According to Frederick Reynolds, who encountered the Signor when one day out walking with Tom King, the full story, straight from the horse’s mouth, goes as follows: ‘O vat a clevare fellow dat Sheridan is! Shall I tell you? Oui, yes, I vill. Bein donc. I could no never see him at de theatre, so je vais chez lui – to his house in Hertford Street, muffled up in great coat, and I say “Domestique! You hear?” “Yes.” “Vell, den, tell you master dat M. –, de Mayor of Stafford, be below.” Domestique fly – and on de instant I be shown into de drawing-room. In von more minute, Sheridan leave his dinner party, enter de room hastily, stop suddenly, stare, and say, “How dare you, Grim, play me such a trick?” Then putting himself in a passion, he go on, “Go sare! Get out of my house.” “Begar,” say I, placing my back against the door, “not till you pay me my forty pounds,” and then I point to de pen, ink, and paper, on von small tables in de corner, and say, “Dere! Write me the check, and de Mayor shall go vitement entendez vous? If not, morbleu, I vill–” “Oh!” interrupted dis clevare man, “if I must, Grim, I must,” and as if he were très pressé – very hurry – he write de draft, and pushing it into my hand, he squeeze it, and I do push it into my pocket. Vell den, I do make haste to de bankers, and giving it to de clerks, I say, “Four tens, if you please, sare.” “Four tens!” he say with much surprise. “De draft be only for four pounds!” O! vat a clevare fellow that Sheridan is!’ Reynolds, Life, vol. 2, pp. 231–3.
36 ‘magnificent and appalling creature’: See Leigh Hunt, The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, with Reminiscences of His Friends and Contemporaries, 2 vols (New York: AMS, 1965), vol. 1, p. 158.
37 ‘Was it a miserable day?’: Reynolds, Life, vol. 2, p. 317.
The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi Page 36