The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi

by McConnell Scott, Andrew

  It was a style that Mirza Abul Hassan Khan, the Persian ambassador to the British court who had visited Covent Garden in 1810, likened to that of the acrobats of his native country. Hassan had been particularly impressed by a routine in Harlequin Asmodeus in which Joe would leap ‘from a high window and just as easily leap back up again, returning each time as a different character … causing the noble audience to laugh uncontrollably’. It is no surprise, then, that a risky manoeuvre of any kind, whether it be personal, political or military, came to be known as ‘Grimaldi’s leap’. Confided Hassan Khan to his journal, it was ‘an act I shall never forget’.

  Throughout this period of ascendancy, Joe remained in the same precarious financial position he had been in since he and Mary had married. Henry Harris made sure to treat his miracle troupe well, bearing the expense of mending, pressing and washing their costumes, all of which at most theatres was the responsibility of the performers, and putting a pint of wine in their dressing room each night. Still, though, his weekly wages were meagre enough for one correspondent to claim that ‘Grimaldi, worth his weight in gold, is kept on bread and water.’ Other performers seemed to manage perfectly well. At Drury Lane, Jean-Baptiste Laurent received the same ten pounds a week as Joe and took the same number of benefits each year. Unlike Joe, he managed to save three thousand pounds, enough to lease part of the Lyceum and set up his own theatre, the Theatre of Mirth, although, admittedly, the venture did not end well.

  Things were particularly difficult in 1812, when Joe was close to bankruptcy, despite clearing £625 in benefits. As always, naïvety and lack of oversight were at the root of his misfortune. Constantly the victim of his own poor judgement, he would think nothing of entrusting his entire provincial earnings to an unnamed associate and be surprised when he robbed him. Then there was the cost of supporting the rural lifestyle that he wanted for his son, ‘the great expense consequence upon keeping a country as well as a town house’, as the Memoirs put it, not to mention the ‘great extravagance’ of Mary, ‘who although an excellent woman, had … a love of dress which amounted to a mania’. Though Joe blamed Mary for having to give up the lease of the Finchley cottage, there had been a run-in with the bailiff who had seized all the furniture at Baynes Row several months before they even took it. Such visits were becoming unnervingly familiar, and Joe took to having himself smuggled out of the theatre in a suitcase to avoid them. In time, he came to make light of his pitiful finances by transforming them into a piece of street-theatre: every afternoon he strolled to a pawn shop at the corner of the Liverpool and Islington roads and perched on a shelf until the manager came in to redeem him.

  The pinch on his finances forced Joe to accept whatever provincial engagements he was offered, though it made him doubly indignant as he hated travelling and longed for nothing more than the routine of London. In the autumn of 1812, he accepted an offer to play in Cheltenham in spite of Richard Hughes’s warnings that it was a ‘bad theatrical town’, unlikely even to cover his expenses. He arrived to find that he had just missed William Betty, on the come-back trail at twenty-one. Though still extremely young, Betty had been manhandled by time, transformed from a golden youth into a ‘hippopotamus’ with a voice like ‘the gurgling of an Alderman with the quinsey’. One critic who had seen him perform Alexander the Great described him as a ‘fat, fair, ranting, screaming fellow who might much better represent a Persian eunuch’; the Theatrical Inquisitor, meanwhile, thought he looked puzzled and out of his depth: ‘Judging from his manner of delivery we should think that a greater portion of what he is repeating remains a mystery to him.’

  Cheltenham was far kinder to Joe and even afforded an invitation for a day of hare-coursing in the Malvern Hills close to Berkeley Castle, the home of the keen amateur dramatist Colonel Berkeley, ‘a local deity, whose word was law’. A real-life Squire Bugle, a million miles from your typical stage-struck day-dreamer, Berkeley was coarse, bluff, devoted to his hounds, and had once horsewhipped a newspaper editor in his own living room for writing a critical article. He invited Joe to stay for dinner before the evening’s show, as he was entertaining a number of guests, including Lord Byron, there to take the waters – ‘very medicinal and sufficiently disgusting’ – and seek professional advice for his various complaints. Byron had chosen Cheltenham over the more established Tunbridge Wells as, under Berkeley’s influence, it had earned a reputation as a gay, fast-living town, where society could afford to be a little more liberal, thanks to its transient population of provincial heiresses and wife-hunting officers who had only a few short weeks to make a favourable impression.

  Byron and Grimaldi had met several years before, and though the intervening years had seen them both ascend the Olympus of celebrity, it was perhaps Grimaldi, and especially the vegetable monster of Harlequin Asmodeus, who had made the greatest impression. Byron greeted the Clown with appropriately pantomimic deference, ‘making several low bows’ and expressing ‘in very hyperbolical terms his “great and unbounded satisfaction in becoming acquainted with a man of such rare and profound talents”, etc.’ Joe played along, aware he was being lampooned and returning ‘the bows and congees three-fold’, before making a face behind Byron’s back that ‘mingled gratification and suspicion’ and raised a hearty laugh at Byron’s expense. This was tantamount to a challenge, and Byron saw to it that the score was evened at dinner, when he arranged for one of the guests to take Grimaldi aside and proffer a little friendly advice.

  ‘Byron is very courteous at the dinner-table,’ said this guest in a whisper, ‘but does not like to have his courtesy thrown away, or slighted; I would recommend you, if he asks you to take anything … no matter whether it be to eat or drink, not to refuse.’

  Grimaldi bowed his thanks, grateful for the chance to avoid committing an embarrassing faux pas at a table at which commoners were few.

  With the trap set, Byron proceeded to offer him a Trimalchio’s feast of wines and delicacies, none of which Grimaldi could refuse, until he was so utterly gorged that he doubted he’d be able to perform that night. It was then that Byron presented him with an apple tart, which Grimaldi eyed with dismay but to which, bravely, he set a fork nonetheless. Then Byron interrupted him: ‘Why, Mr Grimaldi,’ he said, ‘do you not take soy with your tart?’

  ‘Soy, my lord?’ said Joe.

  ‘Yes, soy,’ said Byron, passing over a bottle of salty black sauce. ‘It is very good with salmon, and therefore it must be nice with apple-pie.’

  Joe searched questioningly around the table, but an urgent nudge from his neighbour told him to get on with it. He dutifully poured soy over his dessert, took a couple of exploratory mouthfuls, and found himself quickly struggling against a tide of nausea. On the brink of vomiting, he lowered his fork and, in the most humble and beseeching terms, praised the great lord’s generosity but begged his forgiveness for his apparent display of ingratitude, a pathetic address that had Byron in stitches.

  This was fairly typical of Joe and Byron’s relationship. Back in London, they began to see each other regularly as the poet became increasingly involved in the London theatre scene with the resumption of productions at Drury Lane, for which he had been commissioned to write the opening address, and his subsequent election to its Sub-Committee of Management. He was drawn to the theatrical temperament and enjoyed its lifestyle and the intrigue of the green room, keeping the company of people like d’Egville, the dancing pimp, and the volatile Edmund Kean, who excited him greatly. It wasn’t always clear, though, how one was supposed to behave in his presence. For all the reconfigurations of the OP war, an actor’s social status remained far from certain, and fame provided little insulation against the social snobbery that meant even Dora Jordan had to put up with abuse from her cook, who would scold her and let it be known that she was too good to take orders from a mere player.

  Joe, too, had suffered censure in the first swell of his celebrity, for the ‘glaring instance of impropriety and indecency’ he had committed ‘
by presuming to come into the Salon of the Theatre in his zany habilments, and perform his antics’. ‘This’, said the correspondent, ‘is an insult which no Audience can tolerate; therefore, for the future, it may be prudent for Mr. Grimaldi, to play the fool – only upon the Stage!’ Given that Byron was part-enthusiast, part-patron, buying up fistfuls of benefit tickets and giving Joe elegant gifts, it was only natural that his overtures of friendship should leave Joe feeling wrong-footed. Though greatly honoured by the poet’s attentions – Byron sometimes sent for him in the early afternoon, stayed with him until the performance, then waited in the wings until the curtain so that they could continue their conversation – he intimidated him too. For a start, he was more in awe of the great man than might admit a truly equitable friendship, and often left stammering by the velocity of his language and strength of his oaths. He was also especially wary of the poet’s famous sarcasm, making a special effort never to contradict him in anything and going to extraordinary lengths to discover his views in advance to save himself the embarrassment of Byron’s scorn. And, despite being a fellow sufferer, he also found Byron’s sudden mood swings and propensity for despair alien and disconcerting. Yet there was obviously substance to Byron’s friendship with Grimaldi, for when he departed England for ever in 1816, he presented Joe with a fine silver snuff box inscribed with the words, ‘the gift of Lord Byron to Joseph Grimaldi’.

  In the summer of 1815, Joe performed Clown in three different theatres on a single night. The occasion was the benefit of Miss Dely, newly married to his friend Hayward at the Surrey Theatre (the renamed Royal Circus). With a cab on hand and Jack Bologna to accompany him, he played first at the Surrey, then across the river and up through the City to the Wells, before concluding the evening at Covent Garden, stopping only to change costumes and reapply his rain-smeared slap. Joe was very proud of this accomplishment, considering it ‘something out of the common way’, for which he ‘plumed himself very much’. For John Fawcett, however, it presented the opportunity to serve his long-awaited dish of revenge: he withheld Joe’s salary for not seeking the proper leave to perform at another theatre.

  Fawcett was not the only one losing patience with Grimaldi’s multiple engagements, for at Sadler’s Wells Joe was taking more and more nights off to recover from his various trips and benefit nights, and had just spent four weeks in bed at the end of the summer, suffering from chest pains and shortness of breath. Either this illness or another later in the year was sufficiently bad to result in a rumour that Joe had died. William Hazlitt, one of the many taken in by the news, searched London to find out if it was true: ‘We looked at the faces we met in the street, but there were no signs of general sadness; no one stopped his acquaintance to say, that a man of genius was no more … without the clown at Sadler’s Wells, there must be an end of pantomime in this country!’ Charles Dibdin was particularly irked by the state in which Grimaldi would return to Islington, attempting to solve the problem by manipulating engagements behind the clown’s back, warding off rival managers and even turning down work on his behalf. As early as 1810, he had refused to release him to Charles Farley. ‘He has complained so much of being unwell lately,’ he wrote to Farley, ‘has omitted his songs one night and for the last 6 nights has not played in the afterpiece [and] altho’ I have advertised him for Monday and following evenings I know not whether he will play.’ It was an action motivated in part by the pressure he was receiving from the shareholders: ‘They feel much hurt at it,’ he explained, ‘as it really does us injury, to put up his name and he not then play.’ Ultimately, though, he was protecting himself, for if he relented and Grimaldi then failed to report to the Wells, ‘our folks would naturally say he made himself ill by doing so much and would have an opening to censure me for giving him permission’.

  There was more to it than simply protecting an asset: Dibdin appears to have been equally rankled by the threat Grimaldi’s fame posed to his own influence. If the short and bilious memoir by the night watchman Richard Wheeler is to be believed, animosity between Dibdin and Grimaldi had been overt and long-standing, despite their working relationship: ‘From the first meeting of the stage manager and Grimaldi there was nothing but war,’ wrote Wheeler, ‘either open or concealed.’ Tensions had escalated following the death of Joe’s father-in-law and mentor, Richard Hughes, at Christmas in 1814, leaving Dibdin in sole charge.* Dibdin’s philosophy of management was simple – ‘A Theatre should be like an absolute Monarchy,’ he had written – and he resented Grimaldi’s rising status within the company, a position cemented when Joe had been elected as the Chief Judge and Treasurer of the Sadler’s Wells Court of Rectitude the previous year, a body charged with drawing up a code of conduct for the performers under its jurisdiction, and administering fines for offences that included drunkenness, swearing, arguing, stealing clothes from the dressing rooms, calling someone a ‘bugger’ and farting (‘1d. for the first offence, and 2d. for the second’). Such influence made it harder to submit Grimaldi to the various petty house rules that included prohibiting performers from speaking to each other except on stage and forbidding female singers to take encores and sacking others on the orders of Mrs Dibdin, who could ‘bear no rivalry’. Meanwhile, he cavilled at every expense, though living in rent-free accommodation, paying himself and his wife generous salaries with two free benefits a year, and issuing free admission to local tradesmen in exchange for personal discounts.

  With Grimaldi’s successes threatening to spoil Dibdin’s feudal comforts, conflict seemed certain, although without Wellington’s victory at the battle of Waterloo it might never have been so calamitous. Victory turned the people away from their familiar pastimes, and embracing the boom in Napoleonics, they devoured every wartime artefact they could find. Three separate museums opened near Piccadilly to meet the demand for memorabilia, everything from weapons, medals and uniforms, to Napoleon’s slippers, Josephine’s furbelows and the emperor’s knackered old charger, Marengo, who still had a bullet in his tail. The greatest draw was undoubtedly Napoleon’s bulletproof travelling carriage. Originally presented to the Prince of Wales by the Hussar General Blücher, it had been sold by the cash-strapped Prince to the showman William Bullock, who exhibited it first at his Egyptian Hall before taking it on a tour of the provinces, where he claimed it had been seen by more than eight hundred thousand people.

  In the glorious sunlight of peace, the old amusements looked worn and shabby. ‘All Theatres are bad now,’ complained Dibdin. ‘Drury Lane is a very ruinous Concern – the others struggling with every Difficulty.’ His was no exception, being pitched into a ‘state of declension’ before the battlefield could even be cleared of its dead. Economies needed to be made and the expensive aquadramas were the first thing to be cut. The drought proved only temporary, however, and the tanks were replenished after Dibdin discovered another talented Newfoundland, called Bruin, for whom he wrote an aquadramatic vehicle called Philip and His Dog. Bruin managed to turn a profit in 1816, but with things so uncertain, Dibdin was convinced that the water had to go. Expense was not the only problem. His aquatic inspiration was deserting him, and the novelty had worn off with the public who had long stopped marvelling at the effect and now saw only quarrelling perspectives, toy ships running aground and boys floundering in knee-high water. Added to the fact that Astley’s was rumoured to be installing a tank of its own, Dibdin decided to put his faith entirely in Bruin, and drafted in four more performing dogs to support his ‘Dog Star’.

  It was against these difficulties that Grimaldi began negotiations for a new contract, requesting two benefits, his salary raised from twelve pounds to twelve guineas a week, and leave to undertake a six-week tour of the provinces every July. Dibdin refused this last point flat out, and countered by agreeing to the salary increase, but only on the condition that the two benefits be reduced to one. Locked in a battle of wills, Joe stood firm, confident that as senior performer and ‘unquestionably the lion of the theatre’, Dibdin would have no c
hoice but to accede. Instead Dibdin fired him, giving the job of Clown to Signor Paulo, the son of Paulo Redigé and his mistress La Belle Espagnole, the Sadler’s Wells funambulists who had been so kind to Joe as a boy.

  Dibdin’s move not only shocked Grimaldi, it came as a complete surprise to the Sadler’s Wells faithful, a faction of whom fly-posted the neighbourhood with bills proclaiming, ‘No Paulo!’ and ‘Joey for ever!’ Some accused Joe of pasting them up himself, though if he had, his plan backfired when they were answered by bills that read, ‘No Grimaldi!’ In the event, the mob failed to mobilise on behalf of either clown, and when Joe slipped into the boxes on Paulo’s first night expecting to address a riot, he found the house only a quarter full. Conveniently ignoring the effects of the post-war recession, he took it as evidence of his own popularity, no doubt drawing additional pleasure from the tepid comments his rival received in the press. Paulo ‘stood his ground ably’, they said.

  Yet their indifference was to prove short-lived, as within a few weeks, Paulo had not only won over the critics but had been confirmed ‘a universal favourite’ at the Wells. To add insult to injury, he performed as a replica Joey, using the same costume and makeup Grimaldi had devised in the dressing rooms from which he was now an exile.

  * Despite their reputation for wit and composure, the dandies themselves liked nothing better than a spot of slapstick. The funniest among them was generally held to be a Colonel Mackinnon, who, according to Brummell’s great friend, Colonel Gronow (so short they called him ‘Colonel No Grow’), ‘used to amuse his friends by creeping over the furniture of a room like a monkey’. Even Grimaldi offered deferential praise of his ability, telling Gronow that ‘Mackinnon has only to put on the motley costume, and he would totally eclipse me.’