37 ‘the sobs, the shrieks’: Boaden, Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons, p. 161.
38 ‘conscience … conshince’: See Hunt, Autobiography, vol. 1, p. 188.
38 ‘It is ojus’: Hogan, London Stage, p. cxiii.
38 ‘part baby-talk’: Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (New York: Modern Library, 2001), p. 45.
39 ‘persons who had rendered themselves … crime and danger for the gratification’: James Peller Malcolm, London Redivium, 4 vols (London, 1803–7), vol. 3, p. 233; Arundell, Sadler’s Wells, pp. 21–2. A letter from Winifred Jenkins, the young Welsh maid in Tobias Smollett’s novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), provides us with a fictional visitor’s view of the entertainment on offer, as well as the immoderate behaviour of its patrons: ‘I was afterwards of a party at Sadler’swells, where I saw such tumbling and dancing upon ropes and wires, that I was frightened and ready to go into a fit — I tho’t it was all inchantment; and, believing myself bewitched, began for to cry — You knows as how the witches in Wales fly upon broom-sticks: but here was flying without any broom-stick … and firing of pistols in the air, and blowing of trumpets, and swinging, and rolling of wheel-barrows upon a wire (God bless us!) no thicker than a sewing-thread; that, to be sure, they must deal with the devil! — A fine gentleman, with a pig’s-tail, and a golden sord by his side, come to comfit me, and offered for to treat me with a pint of wine; but I would not stay; and so, in going through the dark passage, he began to shew his cloven futt, and went for to be rude: my fellow-sarvant, Umphry Klinker, bid him be sivil, and he gave the young man a dowse in the chops.’ Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, ed. Lewis M. Knapp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 108; Arundell, Sadler’s Wells, p. 37.
40 a blunderbuss: See Dickens, Memoirs, p. 199, fn. 1.
40 ‘throwing in their dogs, etc.’: Arundell, Sadler’s Wells, p. 31.
40 ‘best made men in England’: Malcolm, London Redivium, vol. 3, p. 235.
40 ‘roast beef’: See Jane Moody, Illegitimate Theatre in London, 1770–1840
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 24.
41 ‘orchestral twinklings’: Moody, Illegitimate Theatre, p. 41.
41 The Battle of Fockschau: Arundell, Sadler’s Wells, p. 46.
42 ‘Opera House on a Saturday night’: ‘At the moment, when the gallant assailants seemed secure of victory, a retreat was sounded, and Moustache and his adherents were seen receding from the repulse, rushing down the ladders, and then, staggering towards the lamps, in a state of panic and dismay … These great performers having had no food since breakfast, and knowing that a fine, hot supper, unseen by the audience, was placed for them at the top of the fort, they naturally speeded towards it, all hope, and exultation; when just as they were about to commence operations, Costello, and his assistants commenced theirs, and by the smacking of whips, and other threats, drove the terrified combatants back in disgrace.’ Reynolds, Life, vol. 1, pp. 262, 264. Arundell, Sadler’s Wells, p. 37.
42 a singing duck: Arundell, Sadler’s Wells, p. 38.
42 ‘degrade a bagnio’: Sir Walter Scott, ‘Essay on the Drama’, in The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., 3 vols (Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1850), vol. 1, pp. 615–16, Ian Kelly, Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Man of Style (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 169.
43 ‘perceptible change in his countenance’: William Makepeace Thackeray, The Four Georges, in The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray, vol. xviii (New York: P. F. Collier, n. d.), p. 373.
43 ‘My wine bills were very large’: Michael Kelly, Reminiscences, ed. Roger Fiske (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 210.
43 ‘Composer of Wines’: James Robinson Planché, The Recollections and Reflections of J. R. Planché, 2 vols (London: Tinsley Bros., 1872), vol. 1, p. 38.
43 major lapses in judgement: See Kelly, Kemble Era, pp. 104–5.
44 ‘served up as a dessert’: See Worrall, Theatric Revolution, pp. 254–5.
44 ‘infant phenomenon’: Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (London: Mandarin, 1991), p. 322. In 1880, after the introduction of numerous child labour laws, and a general attitudinal shift in relation to child performers, Augustus Harris, under the pseudonym ‘Feraldt’, still defended the practice of employing children on the stage: ‘For all the School Board may advance, and serious families may oppose to the contrary, this engaging of children at the hardest season of the year helps many a father and mother over the winter, and without in any way doing harm to the child. They are fairly paid, look upon the whole thing, in spite of coercion and fatigue, as a game, and are taught their drill in addition to learning obedience and the pleasure of emulation.’ Michael R. Booth (ed.), English Plays of the Nineteenth Century, V: Pantomimes, Extravaganzas, and Burlesques (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), pp. 504–9, p. 506. In 1889, William Gardner, of the Crystal Palace Company, was fined 2s. 6d. at the instance of the London School Board for employing seven under the age of ten, and nine others over ten in the Christmas pantomime and keeping them from their studies. The Times, 28 January 1889.
44 ‘greatest Nursery of Misery and Vice’: Tomalin, Mrs. Jordan’s Profession, p. 50.
44 children were everywhere: See Tomalin, Mrs. Jordan’s Profession, p. 149; Findlater, Joe Grimaldi, p. 98; Robert Shaughnessy, ‘Siddons, Sarah (1755–1831)’, DNB.
45 flying chariot: de Castro, Memoirs, p. 36.
45 ‘they made such a terrible noise’: Kelly, Reminiscences, p. 208.
46 ‘an unfinished house’: Andrew Halliday, Comical Fellows; or, the History and Mystery of the Pantomime (London: Thomson, 1863), p. 73. See also ‘A stage-manager will tell you that it is as impossible to do without strong language during the performance of a pantomime, as it is to command a man-of-war without it, in a gale of wind’, Halliday, Comical Fellows, p. 93.
46 soles pressed flat: See A. H. Saxon, The Life and Art of Andrew Ducrow, and the Romantic Age of the English Circus (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon, 1978), p. 40.
47 intervened to stop one of the beatings: Saxon, Ducrow, p. 41.
47 ‘the avarice of unnatural parents?’: Findlater, Joe Grimaldi, p. 29.
47 a crank minority: Not until 1879 did an act come into force barring circuses, theatres, music halls and ‘other places of public amusement’ from using children under fourteen in performances or exhibitions that might be dangerous to life or limb. Any parent or guardian found in violation of the act was to be fined, the amount ‘not to exceed ten pounds’. See Brenda Assael, The Circus and Victorian Society (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2005), p. 159.
47 ‘the infant son of Grimaldi’: English Stage, vol. 6, pt 5, p. 703.
47 ‘with the utmost velocity’: Dickens, Memoirs, p. 37.
47 ‘camphorated oil and spirits’: Findlater, Joe Grimaldi, pp. 230–1, fn. 14.
48 ‘like Bottom the Weaver’: Monthly Magazine, August 1837, clipping in the Extra-Illustrated Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi (London: Richard Bentley, 1846), Harvard Theatre Collection, 2 vols (hereafter ‘Bentley ex-ill.’), vol. 1.
48 ‘laugh, scream, and speech’: William Robson, The Old Play-goer (Fontwell: Centaur, 1969), p. 239.
49 ‘scanty mutton scrags’: J. C. Drummond, Anne Wibraham and Dorothy Hollingsworth, The Englishman’s Food: A History of Five Centuries of English Diet (London: Jonathan Cape, 1958), pp. 114, 227. Small beer had an alcohol content of between two and three per cent, and was drunk at every meal. Fermented alcoholic drinks were often safer than drinking water.
Harlequin’s Frolics
51 ‘extremely ill’: BDA, vol. 6, p. 393.
51 ‘partly new and partly selected from old’: London Stage, pt 5, vol. 2, p. 766.
52–3 John Williams, pseud. Anthony Pasquin, The Children of Thespis. A Poem, 3 parts (London, 1786–8). On Pasquin, see DNB, James Sambrook, ‘Williams, John (1754–1818)’. The full section devoted to Giuseppe Grimaldi reads:
What monster is thi
s, who alarms the beholders,
With Folly and Infamy perch’d on his shoulders;
Whom hallow’d Religion is lab’ring to save,
Ere Sin and Disease goad the wretch to his grave,
‘Tis —! Alas, Nature starts at the name;
And trembles with horror, and reddens with shame!
Like the Ocean which weeps, when the tempests allay’d,
She shudders to look on the work she has made.
I marvel that God does not open the place,
To ingulph him, like Corah, and all his foul race.
In their hate of his principles, all are agreeing,
And the fruit of his loins curse the cause of their being.
Like a pestilent breeze, he infects these sad times,
A vile abstract of hell, and Italia’s crimes!
See Justice offended, exhibits a halter;
And the crucifix shakes as he crawls to the altar:
E’en Angels drop tears in such habits to find him:
As he throws Retribution with horror behind him.
When his soul disembogues each infernal transgression,
Sweet Mercy revolts at the sable confession.
And Honour and Truth form a strong combination
To kick such a miscreant thro’ the creation.
Lo! Eternity’s paths he with terror explores,
As dæmons look up from sulphureous shores:
While Tartarean bards chaunt the caitiff’s encomium,
And Satan sits hunger’d in deep Pandemonium.
His touch is contagious and preys on our sanity,
Offensive to life, and abhorr’d by humanity.
Like the plague-fraught embrace of a foul Alepponian,
Or the incrusted glove of a sick Caledonian;
It nips Virtue’s bud, like the winds from the east,
Or Circe’s fell wand, turns the fool to a beast:
Or that hot-bed of vagabonds, rais’d on the breast
Of fallen Britannia, to sing her to rest;
Where anticks Discretion can kick till she winces,
And rascal castratos strut prouder than princes:
Where Countesses fight, to kiss sapless Tenducci;
Or tie on the sandals of black Catenucci.
Is it wond’rous that you such antipathy see,
When the tyrant to Virtue’s a tyrant to me?
Go, shew me the den where a scoundrel’s confin’d,
I’ll strike his black heart, and unnerve his base mind;
I’ll goad him thro’ life with the rod of Correction,
Till his scull pendant locks shall turn grey with reflection;
From the arm of a Titan I’d tear him elate,
Tho’ guarded by all the artillery of Fate:
If I quit him, may Peace and my penitence sever;
And the smiles of Omnipotence leave me for ever.
It boots not with me if his infamous darings
Are hid by a star, or armorial bearings:
As Gregory made the proud Emperor wait,
Bare-footed and cold, at Canusium’s gate;
E’en thus shall the haughty bend low at my nod,
Confess their allegiance, and honour my rod.
Nefarious island! oh, besotted nation!
Where Folly, to Vice, runs in studied gradation.
See Guilt on the judgment seat, mark’d by pollution,
To watch the degrees of a mean prosecution;
To determine the outlines of right and of wrong,
As manacled Honour is led thro’ the throng;
To meet cunning Sophistry’s wily position,
And the half famish’d sons of illicit Ambition.
Say, who shall be bless’d, if a Howard’s unsainted!
Say, who is unsullied, if Curtius is tainted!
But his worth, like true gold, from the chemical fire,
Will rise less alloy’d, and be valu’d the higher;
And the lie of the moment, which Malice had sign’d,
Sweet Truth shall expunge from the national mind:
As the lion, awak’ning on Nemea’s plain,
Indignant shakes off the dank dew from his mane (pp. 88–90).
53 paid for his crimes in full: I give the date as 14 March, rather than the 16 Findlater provides, after the unidentified clipping in the Islington Local History Centre that reads ‘On Friday died Mr. Grimaldi ….’ 14 March 1788 was a Friday. Not only actors lived off Stangate Street. Rudolph Cabanel, the machinist who made all the elaborate stage equipment for Henry Holland’s new Drury Lane, also kept his workshops there.
54 clapping his hands: Dickens, Memoirs, p. 42.
54 ‘Don’t be such a fool’: Dickens, Memoirs, p. 42.
54 ‘jumped from the bier’: Dickens, Memoirs, p. 43.
54 ‘fallen from the cliff at Margate’: Thomas Goodwin, Sketches and Impressions: Musical, Theatrical, and Social, 1799–1885 (New York and London: Putnam, 1887), p. 16.
55 ‘disputes … for the teeth’: ‘The Will of Joseph Grimaldy, otherwise Grimaldi’, 25 February 1786, PROB 11/1163. See also BDA, vol. 6, pp. 388–97; Disher, Clowns and Pantomimes, p. 88.
55 ‘disagreements with managers’: ‘Obituary: Joseph Grimaldi’, Gentleman’s Magazine, September 1837, p. 319.
55 ‘Dancing Master, Dentist, Conjurer’: Unidentified newspaper clipping, Islington Local History Centre.
56 having had candles applied to their feet: Winslow, Uncertainty of the Signs of Death, p. 25.
56 ‘sever my head from my body’: ‘Will of Joseph Grimaldy’.
56 ‘a headstone’: Northampton Chapel, Exmouth Street, was demolished in 1886. The fate of the Signor’s remains is unknown.
56 ‘Grim-All-Day-at-Breakfast’: Burney Collection of Theatrical Portraits, vol. 6, no. 7435. British Museum, Prints and Drawings.
56 the Signor’s estate: In 1778, Sheridan purchased Willoughby Lacy’s half of the lease to Drury Lane for £31,500. See F. H. W. Sheppard (ed.), The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in Survey of London, vol. XXXV (London: Athlone, 1972), p. 16.
57 frequently changing address: This point is made by the editors, BDA (vol. 6, p. 396), who note that the Signor’s several addresses at that time included lodgings in the insalubrious Princes Street, Clare Market.
58 ‘in the likeness of a Monkey’: Findlater, Joe Grimaldi, p. 232, fn. 15.
58 ‘Mind, John’: Dickens, Memoirs, p. 46.
61 ‘like a Spanish play’: Foreman, Georgiana, p. 207. ‘I do not mean to accuse him of duplicity,’ wrote the Duchess of Devonshire, in addition, ‘… but he cannot resist playing a sly game.’
61 ‘something undefined, if not undefinable’: John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830, 10 vols (Bath: Carrington, 1832), vol. 6, p. 522–3.
62 ‘dare not innovate for my life’: Thomas Dibdin, Reminiscences, vol. 1, p. 15.
62 ‘To be critically exact’: Kelly, Kemble Era, p. 70.
62 it pained him greatly: Which is not to say that Kemble was himself a miserable ascetic. Sir Walter Scott recalled how Kemble was one of the few people who could induce him into getting drunk.
63 ‘laughable, and very cheap’: Thomas Dibdin, Reminiscences, vol. 1, p. 201.
63 ‘Bastille must bring money’: George Taylor, The French Revolution and the London Stage, 1789–1805 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 42.
63 The remainder of the evening: Dickens, Memoirs, p. 47.
64 in less than eight minutes: Dickens, Memoirs, p. 47.
64 deathbed confession of Pietro Carnevale: English Stage, vol. 2, pt 5, p. 1087, fn. 6.
64 ‘he would inherit that clown’s fame’: The Times, 13 August 1790.
64–5 ‘that excellent performer’: The Times, 20 August 1788.
65 ‘Goliath of clowns’: Dibdin, Memoirs, p. 41; The Monthly Mirror, April 1797; BDA, vol. 4, pp. 483–5.
65 a trick-ridi
ng clown: See BDA, vol. 4, pp. 483–5; Findlater, Joe Grimaldi, p. 55; The Times, 24 April 1786.
65 ‘in a manner far superior’: The Times, 22 May 1787; The Times, 15 January 1787.
65 ‘julking’: See Saxon, Ducrow, p. 31.
66 ‘dark, malicious and ambitious part’: Dibdin, Memoirs, p. 118.
66 ‘horror, guilt, confusion and revenge’: Malcolm, London Redivium, vol. 3, p. 236.
67 ‘human nature, debased’: Malcolm, London Redivium, vol. 3, p. 236.
67 ‘like a tiger of his prey’: Malcolm, London Redivium, vol. 3, p. 236.
67 ‘the Cymbals’: The Times, 10 August 1799; Arundell, Sadler’s Wells, p. 54.
68 safely to Holyhead: Dibdin, Memoirs, pp. 32–3.
68 ‘amusements under Dubois’: Bentley ex-ill., vol. 1, p. 10.
68–9 ‘little Marmozet’: The Times, 28 December 1789.
69 failure to pay the rent: Sheppard, Survey of London, p. 32.
70 ‘a handsome Italian’: Findlater, Joe Grimaldi, p. 54.
70 ‘well behaved honest people’: Arundell, Sadler’s Wells, p. 39.
70 flute through each nostril: Arundell, Sadler’s Wells, pp. 39–40. As a family, the Bolognas also did tableaux and posture work. The Times, 11 August 1792, carries an advertisement for ‘a pleasing Exhibition of Strength and Posture Work, entirely new called LE TABLEAU CHINOIS, by Signor Bologna and his Children. In which will be displayed a variety of curious and striking manoeuvres.’
70 ‘trick and expression’: BDA, vol. 2, p. 191.
71 ‘Satan arraying his Troops’: See Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, Massachusetts et al.: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 121–2.
72 Bartholomew Fair: Altick, Shows of London, p. 86.
72 ‘manager is the monarch’: Thomas Holcroft, The Life of Thomas Holcroft, ed. Elbridge Colby, 2 vols (New York: Blom, 1968), vol. 1, p. 153.
72 ‘not of the first rate’: BDA, vol. 8, p. 28.
73 ‘the most inconvenient in England’: Findlater, Joe Grimaldi, p. 69.
73 ‘industrious to an extreme’: BDA, vol. 8, p. 28.
73 ‘punctuality, propriety and attentiveness’: BDA, vol. 8, p. 28.
The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi Page 37