September 25, 2023 • 37 mins
Joseph Grimaldi was one of England’s most famous Regency-era entertainers. Sometimes he’s described as the first modern clown, because he established a lot of the hallmarks of clowning that still exist today.
Research:
- Boyle, Laura. “Joseph Grimaldi, King of Clowns.” Jane Austen Centre. 4/14/2014. https://janeausten.co.uk/blogs/uncategorized/joseph-grimaldi-king-clowns
- Grimaldi, Joseph. “Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi.” Edited by Charles Dickens (“Boz”), illustrated by George Cruikshank. London, George Routledge and Sons. 1838.
- Kaplan, Charles. “The Only Native British Art Form.” The Antioch Review , Summer, 1984, Vol. 42, No. 3, "Divine Goalie" Sport and Religion (Summer, 1984). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/461136
- Moody, Jane. "Grimaldi, Joseph [Joe] (1778–1837), actor and pantomimist." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. May 29, 2014. Oxford University Press. Date of access 7 Sep. 2023, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-11630
- Read, Leslie du S. "Grimaldi, Joseph [Giuseppe] (1709x16?–1788), dancer and dentist." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. September 23, 2004. Oxford University Press. Date of access 7 Sep. 2023, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-64341
- Simon, Ed. “Here We Are Again!—How Joseph Grimaldi Invented the Creepy Clown.” JSTOR Daily. 5/4/2022. https://daily.jstor.org/here-we-are-again-how-joseph-grimaldi-invented-the-creepy-clown/
- Stott, Andrew McConnell. “Clowns on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: Dickens, Coulrophobia, and the Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Fall 2012). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26899534
- Stott, Andrew McConnell. “The Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi.” The Public Domain Review. 11/14/2011. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-memoirs-of-joseph-grimaldi/
- Stott, Andrew McConnell. “The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comedian.” Canongate. 2010.
- Woods, Leigh. “The Curse of Performance: Inscripting the ‘Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi’ into the Life of Charles Dickens.” Biography , Spring 1991, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Spring 1991). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23539893
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracey V. Wilson,
and I'm Holly Frye. If you have read the graphic
novel Watchman, or if you've seen the two thousand and
nine film adaptation, I don't think this was in the
TV show, or if you've been on like the memier
parts of the Internet over the last few years, you
(00:32):
might be familiar with the one about the man who
goes to the doctor looking for help with his depression,
and the doctor says something like the great clown Pyliacchi
is in town tonight. Go see him and he'll make
you feel all better. And the man says, but doctor,
I am Palliacchi. Uh. Palliacchi is Italian for clowns, probably
(00:54):
pronouncing it not the greatest.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I totally have Enrico Caruso in my head now.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah. So that name and the punchline probably goes all
the way back to the eighteen teens, but this same
joke has also circulated with the names of other real
comedians and clowns, and one going back to at least
eighteen eighty seven. In this joke format is Grimaldi. So
(01:19):
the doctor wants him to go see Grimaldi to make
him all better. But doctor, I am Grimaldi. That's Joseph Grimaldi.
He was one of England's most famous Regency era entertainers.
Sometimes he has described as the first modern clown because
he established a lot of the hallmarks of clowning that
still exist today, specifically in terms of the whiteface clown.
(01:42):
Joseph Grimaldi, known as Joe, was born into a family
of entertainers, dancers and acrobats who are originally from Italy.
His great grandfather had a background in the Italian theatrical
form of comedia de l'arte. His grandfather, Giovanni Battista or
John Baptist Grimaldi, was nicknamed Gamba ti ferro or iron Legs,
(02:02):
and also worked as a dentist when he was not
on stage. I also find that funny, so it's unintentionally hilarious.
John Baptist apparently left the British stage in a criminal flourish,
convincing the manager of the Covent Garden Theater that he
was putting together an incredible new show, one that was
(02:24):
totally unique and would feature dancers wearing horseshoes, but he
vanished along with an advance on his pay before taking
the stage.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
On opening night.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Joe's father, Jsepa Grimaldi, was also kind of a piece
of work. He was a dancer and pantomimest known for
grotesque humor and practical jokes, and he had affairs with
a lot of women, some of whom were his apprentices.
He had children with at least two women, in addition
to his wife, Mary Blagden. One of those women was
(02:55):
Joe's mother, Rebecca Brooker, who was a dancer who had
started as Justepp as a prentice when she was still
a teenager. Rebecca gave birth to Joseph on December eighteenth,
seventeen seventy eight, and then had another son with Giuseppa,
named John Baptist. In addition to his many extramarital affairs,
Jisippa Grimaldy had a reputation for being a tyrant, both
(03:19):
with his theatrical companies and with his family. People called
him the Signor, and in his work as a ballet master,
he was known for beating and otherwise tormenting his dancers,
some of whom were his children. At times, he also
displayed a range of irrational beliefs and behaviors. He seems
(03:39):
to have maybe also used the iron Legs name, which
has made it really hard to figure out which things
are about him and which things are about his father.
Right Joe Grimaldi's autobiography, which was edited by Charles Dickens,
says almost nothing about this side of his father, and
it's not clear whether this was out of a sense
of loyalty or because it just wouldn't have been seen
(04:00):
as appropriate for him to be speaking ill of his
father in like a tell all memoir. But there are
some hints of what Joseeppa Grimaldy was like in this book.
For example, quote we have already remarked that the father
of Grimaldy was an eccentric man. He appears to have
been particularly eccentric, and rather unpleasantly so in the correction
(04:22):
of his son. The child, being bred up to play
all kinds of fantastic tricks, was as much a clown,
a monkey, or anything else that was droll and ridiculous
off the stage as on it, and being incited there
too by the occupants of the green room used to
skip and tumble about as much for their diversion as
side of the public. All this was carefully concealed from
(04:46):
the father, who, whenever he did happen to observe any
of the child's pranks, always administered the same punishment, a
sound thrashing, terminating in his being lifted up by the
hair of the head and stuck in a corn. Once
his father, with a severe countenance and awful voice, would
tell him to venture to move at his peril. Most
(05:09):
theatrical productions in England during this era were pantomime, which
was a hugely popular form of entertainment that could also
be seen as kind of lowbrow. This wasn't necessarily entirely silent.
There might be songs or catchphrases or bits of verse
here and there.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
While there were theaters which performed plays with actual dialogue,
these were subject to government censorship, whereas pantomime was not.
Pantomimests also were not regarded as real actors capable of
doing scenes with dialogue. So if you're imagining something like
French mime artist Marcel Marceau, when we say the word pantomime,
(05:48):
this wasn't really that either. British pantomime has roots in
Italian comedia del arte, and it started to become really
popular as a form of entertainment. During the Georgian era,
pantomime was particularly popular for Christmas time productions, but eventually
there were multiple theaters with overlapping seasons that were essentially
(06:08):
performing pantomime year round. I feel like in a lot
of literature from this era too, you'll see descriptions of
like families doing pantomimes for each other as entertainment. Like
that's my first exposure to this concept. The first part
of the performance was often a rendition of a fairy
tale or a fantasy or some other kind of well
(06:29):
known story. Then would come the Harlequinade, which, like Comedia
de l'arte, used a collection of stock characters that were
recognizable to the audience. Harlequin and Columbine were usually the
heroes and were devotedly in love with each other, and
their antagonist, Pantaloon, schemed to keep them apart. Pantaloon might
(06:50):
be Columbine's tyrannical father or a malicious rival for Columbine's affections.
Pantaloon often had some kind of servant or side kick
who could be known by any number of names, and
sometimes was just called clown.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Part of this production usually took place with the performers
wearing these oversized paper mache heads or masks, which would
then be removed at a transitional point in the performance.
The action often included a lot of physical comedy and slapstick,
including literal slapsticks that were primed with gunpowder so they
made a very sharp, cracking noise when they were struck
(07:27):
as part of the action. These were often really high
energy productions, with a lot of acrobatics, dancing, music, and
various other spectacles. Ji Sepa trained Joe and John Baptist
to be performers in This World from a very early age.
Joe took the stage for the first time on April sixteenth,
seventeen eighty one, for what his father described as his
(07:49):
first bow and tumble. He was not yet three years old.
Soon he was working as a child dancer in pantomime productions.
This can actually be dangerous times. He played the role
of a monkey, with his father holding a chain tied
to his waist and sometimes flinging him around by that chain.
In one performance, the chain broke and Joe was thrown
(08:11):
into the audience. When he was six, Joe fell through
a trapdoor and broke his collar bloom because no one
had cut eye holes in his mask. By coincidence, this
happened during his father's last public performance. He became ill
that night, and Giuseppa never returned to the stage. While
still a child, Joe Grimaldi started working at two London theaters,
(08:34):
Drury Lane and Sadler's Wells, both of which were established
in the seventeenth century. Both theaters performed some similar material,
but dury Lane catered to a somewhat more affluent audience
than Sadler's Wells did. The Jury Lane season went from
September to late spring, and then Sadler's Wells ran from
mid April to mid October. So during the weeks when
(08:56):
these two seasons overlapped, Joe often performed at both theaters
in one night, either taking a Hackney coach or running
from one to the other. He also went to school
for a time at a boarding school in Putney called
Mister Ford's Academy, which was for performers' children.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
In seventeen eighty eight, Joe's father died. We also mentioned
that Jisseppe could be irrational. For years, he had been
so preoccupied over the idea that he was going to
die on the first Friday of the month, that he
spent each first Friday locked alone in a room staring
at the clock. He was also terrified of being buried
(09:35):
alive and left instructions to prevent that from happening, including
waiting forty eight hours to bury him after his death
and applying lit candles to his feet. His will also
specified that his oldest daughter Mary had to cut off
his head before he was buried. She paid a surgeon
to do this and put her hand on the knife
(09:56):
so that she could say that she had fulfilled this
order and had done it. Giuseppa's death left Joe, who
was only nine years old, as the family's primary breadwinner,
so this is a terrible responsibility for a little boy,
and then to make things worse without the looming influence
of his father, who a lot of people were scared of.
(10:16):
Theater managers he worked for cut his pay. Since Joe
was making less money, and they also no longer had
any income from Giuseppa, the family couldn't afford to live
in their home anymore. They started lodging with a furrier
in an area that was described as a slum. While
Giuseppa had been paving the way for both of his
sons to follow him on stage. Joe's brother, John Baptist,
(10:39):
decided to go in his own direction. At the age
of eight, he used a false identity to get a
job as a cabin boy on a ship, and he
disappeared from his family's life for the next sixteen years.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
We'll have more about this after a sponsor break. Joe
Grimaldi spent most of his childhood and teens working, gradually
being cast in bigger and better roles and learning set
design while he was on the job. In seventeen ninety one,
(11:14):
the dury Lane Theater was demolished and Grimaldy did most
of his performing at the Haymarket Theater instead. When dury
Lane reopened three years later, it was the largest theater
in Europe, but it stopped doing Christmas pantomimes in seventeen
ninety eight, which meant Grimaldy had to find other work
than what he was usually doing. During those months, he
(11:35):
also started expanding his skills as a performer, including doing
more sword play and acrobatics. When he was about seventeen,
Grimaldy met Maria Hughes, daughter of Richard Hughes, who was
one of the proprietors of the Saddlers Wells Theater. Maria
had become friends with Joe's mother, Rebecca, who was a
dancer at the theater and also spent a lot of
(11:55):
time sewing in the dressing rooms. After a three year courtship,
Joe and Maria got married on May eleventh, seventeen ninety nine.
It's probably possible that she said this Mariah, because a
lot of folks back then did, but we don't really know.
As Grimaldi had progressed in his career, he'd gotten his
(12:16):
share of detractors. Some of this was because of his
father's reputation and some was because of the trajectory of
his own work. Joe also didn't get along with Jean
Baptiste Dubois, who was a very prominent pantomime performer and
had taken on some of Joseppa Grimaldi's roles after his death.
Joe had spent some time working with Dubois, and a
(12:38):
lot of people thought that Joe had learned all of
his techniques from the older performer. That's something Joe seems
to have resented and continually denied. The day after Richard
Hughes gave his permission for his daughter Rebecca to marry Joe.
Somebody came to the theater to warn him that Joe
Grimaldi had designs on her. Almost twenty years into his career,
(13:02):
Grimaldi made his stage debut in the role of clown
in the spring of eighteen hundred. This was in a
production of Peter Wilkins or Harlequin in the Flying World,
adapted from Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins by Robert Paltock.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
This is a story about a Cornish castaway who winds
up on an island where people can fly. This staging
had two actors in each of the harlequinad roles. The
two clowns were Joe Grimaldi and his rival Jean Baptiste
du Bois, as Guzzle, the drinking clown and Gobble, the
eating clown. On stage, they had something of a competition
(13:39):
to see who could drink the most beer or eat
the most sausages.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
While Grimaldy had occasionally performed clown roles as an understudy
or a stand in before this, this was the first
time that he had actually been cast in the role
of clown, and this production made some departures from the
way clown had been portrayed. Stretching back to the beginning
of British pantomime, clown had usually been kind of an
(14:04):
unsophisticated bumpkin with ruddy makeup and rustic, baggy clothes, but
theater manager Charles Dipden wanted to change things up. Grimaldi
and Dubois were both in dramatically colorful, flamboyant costumes, and
Grimaldy had gone to great links to completely change the
style of his makeup. He tinkered with this a lot
(14:25):
and revised it over time. All the exposed skin on
his face and neck were totally covered in white grease paint,
and he had a big, bright red smile and a
curving red triangle on each cheek. He also exaggerated his
eyebrows and made his hair really big and bushy, so
basically it was the white face clown makeup that still
(14:47):
exists today. There was a near disaster during this performance
when Divden realized a trapdoor was open on stage and
fell through it while rushing out to close it. O
yere Wise, it was an enormous success, particularly for Joe.
He seemed to embody the idea of clown. He and
(15:08):
Dubois continued to be cast together after this, sometimes playing
off each other as rivals, including Harlequin, Benedict or the
ghost of Mother Shipton. Sadly, Grimaldi's life took a tragic
turn just a few months later. His wife Maria died
giving birth to their daughter on October eighteenth, eighteen hundred,
and the baby died as well. Joe had been at
(15:30):
rehearsal when Maria went into labor, and although somebody was
sent to get him, she had died by the time
he got home. Maria's pregnancy had been difficult, and deaths
during childbirth at this time were just extremely common. She
had actually left burial instructions and a poem to be
inscribed on her headstone. Her last words were reportedly poor Joe.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Joe was devastated. Although he threw himself into his work
to distract himself from his grief, he was also prone
to disappearing, sometimes for days at a time, and people
would find him wandering inconsolably. During this time, he accidentally
shot himself in the foot during a performance and had
to recuperate in bed for five weeks. His mother was
(16:16):
so concerned about his well being that she hired Mary Bristow,
who was in the chorus at Drury Lane to look
after him while he recovered from this injury. They wound
up falling in love and they got married in eighteen
oh two. They had a son on November twenty first
of that year, who they named Joseph Samuel William Grimaldy.
They called him JS. By eighteen oh two, Jean Baptiste
(16:39):
Dubois had left Sadler's Wells Theater and Grimaldy was being
called King of Clowns. Grimaldi had really established all of
the hallmarks of his signature clown character, with its slap
in motley or grease paint makeup and party colored costume.
He became so associated with the idea of clown that
soon all Harlequanod clowns were being called Joey. He also
(17:02):
had a couple of catchphrases, here we are again and
shall I, which he said with a mischievous or even
sinister intonation. I have obviously never seen one of his performances,
but I can just imagine this clown and like whiteface
clown makeup going, shall I?
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Uh. This was not always what he wore, though. Another
stock character in British pantomime was the so called Noble Savage,
who was usually a black or indigenous character played by
a white actor. Grimaldi's black face performances included Friday and Robinson,
Crusoe and Canto in La Peruse or The Desolate Island.
(17:46):
In eighteen oh two, Grimaldi also joined the Dreary Lane
Theatrical Fund, which actors could pay into in order to
receive a pension when they retired. He was only able
to do this thanks to having done a number of
small speaking roles over the years, because this was not
open to people who only did pantomime. In eighteen oh three,
(18:06):
England declared war on France as the start of the
Napoleonic Wars. Although there have been periods when war just
put an end to theatrical productions, in this case, theater
became even more popular as a relief from the stresses
of wartime. Not long after, Joe Grimaldi very briefly reunited
with his brother, John Baptist after sixteen years. John showed
(18:30):
up by surprise at the theater one night, but then
disappeared when Joe went into his dressing room to get ready.
Joe looked for his brother for about a month, and
it is really not clear what happened to him. By
this point, most people in their lives had thought that
John was dead, so people wondered if Joe had hallucinated
the entire thing. During these same years, Grimaldi moved around
(18:52):
a bit as a performer as Sadler's Wells closed down
for refurbishment, and he also had a falling out with
management at Jury Lane. He started performing at theaters outside
of London, including going to Ireland. Then in eighteen oh
six he made his debut at Covent Garden Theater, which
was seen as one of the most prestigious theaters in England.
(19:12):
He was cast as orson the wild Man in Valentine
and orson a role that had previously been associated with
his old sort of nemesis, Jean Baptiste Dubois. The role
of Valentine was played by Charles Farley, who had also
played Valentine opposite Dubois. Farley knew that Grimaldi would be
apprehensive about stepping into Dubois's shoes in this role, given
(19:34):
their history, but he also thought Grimaldi had the potential
to turn it into something really incredible, and he did.
In this play, Valentine meets the wild Man while he's
out hunting for meat and attacks him, and then the
wild man fights back in just an astoundingly vigorous series
of leaps. He's also throwing rocks and swinging a club.
(19:55):
This role involved so much just explosive physicality, and Grimaldy
played it with such intensity that he was continually pushing
his own limits, and he repeatedly hurt himself. People described
him sobbing in a small room backstage in between his
on stage performances. Grimaldy's best known performance started in eighteen
(20:17):
oh six with Harlequin and Mother Goose or the Golden Egg.
This was a Christmas pantomime by Thomas Dibden that ran
for ninety six performances, and it was extremely successful and
well reviewed. In eighteen oh seven, The Monthly Mirror wrote, quote,
Grimaldy is the principal cause of crowded lobbies and scarcely
standing room. Many of our second and third rate tragedians
(20:41):
would give their ears to meet with half the plaudits
which are every night conferred on Grimaldi for his inimitable exertions.
His clown has not been equalled. We never expect to
see it surpassed. He has arrived at an acme of
all clownery, but Grimaldy. Apparently he hated his own performance
(21:01):
in Mother Goose and experienced a lot of depression and
self doubt about it. A series of disasters struck the
London theater world around this time. On October fifteenth, eighteen
oh seven, eighteen people died in a stampede at Sadler's Wells,
apparently after somebody yelled fight and people mistook it for
(21:23):
someone shouting fire. Grimaldi had performed earlier in the night
and had already gone home. Sadler's Wells had to close
for the season, and since alcohol had played a part
in this panic, it was allowed to reopen the following year,
only under the condition that it no longer sell wine.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
On September twentieth, eighteen oh eight, the Covent Garden Theater
caught fire, possibly due to a spark from a stage
firearm that had smoldered in a wall without anyone noticing.
Twenty three people died, including several firefighters who were killed
when the ceiling collapsed. The theater and all of its
contents and scenery were destroyed, including an organ belonging to
(22:04):
George Frederick Handel. And then on February twenty fourth, eighteen
oh nine, the Dreary Lane Theater also burned. There was
no performance that night, and the fire was believed to
have spread from a fireplace in an unattended room.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
These theaters did eventually reopen, which we'll get to you
after a sponsor break. When the Covent Garden Theater reopened
in eighteen oh nine, it staged a revival of its
previously successful Mother Goose, but it also raised its prices
(22:42):
to help cover the cost of rebuilding. This price hike
did not go over well. It led to more than
two months of fighting and rioting as audiences called for
op or old prices. As each of the theaters rebuilt and reopened,
they he increasingly competed with one another and tried out
(23:03):
new styles of productions. Grimaldy's performances started to become more satirical.
He was nicknamed Hogarth in action. He also started performing
a lot more songs, many of them written by Thomas
Dibden and featuring nonsensical lyrics, and he was famous and
became friends with people like George Gordon Lord Byron. In
(23:24):
Byron's words, he had quote great and unbounded satisfaction in
becoming acquainted with a man of such rare and profound talents.
Byron left England in the late eighteen teens, though, and
that left a hole in Grimaldy's off stage life. Grimaldy
was also really starting to struggle, both physically and financially.
(23:45):
His clown performances were just so athletic and vigorous, and
beyond the ongoing demands on his body, he experienced the
number of injuries. As one newspaper described it in eighteen thirteen,
quote is absolutely surprised that any human head or hide
can resist the rough trials which he volunteers. Serious tumbles
(24:07):
from serious heights, innumerable kicks, and incessant beatings come on
him as matters of common occurrence, and leave him every night,
fresh and free for the next night's flagellation. Over time,
he did start taking some parts that leaned more toward
acting than clowning, But while he was still working steadily,
(24:27):
including in some well paying roles, his wife Mary seems
to have had some really expensive tastes, and he also
lost some money to unscrupulous managers. In eighteen twelve, he
almost went bankrupt. Although Grimaldi had been performing in multiple
venues for most of his career, sometimes simultaneously. This seems
(24:48):
to have become an issue for some of the theater managers.
In the eighteen teens, he fell out with longtime collaborator
Charles Dibden after Dibden denied his request for time off
to perform at another Grimaldi had also become chief judge
and treasurer of the Saddler's Wells Court of Rectitude, which
enforced the theatre's code of conduct for its performers. Apparently,
(25:11):
Dipden thought Grimaldy was way too lenient in this role.
This all came to a head with a salary dispute
in eighteen sixteen, and Grimaldy left the theater and went
on tour. About two years later, Richard Hughes's widow, Lucy,
who had become majority shareholder in the theater after Richard's death,
convinced Grimaldi to return, and Grimaldy actually bought a small
(25:35):
stake in the theater as part of that deal. This
was after he had finished a tour of Scotland, Manchester
and Liverpool, during which he had repeatedly been injured, including
one injury that temporarily left him unable to walk.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
His first appearance back at Sadler's Wells was not a success. Though.
He played grimalda cat in an Easter pantomime called Marquis
de Carabas or Puss in Boots, and he wound up
being booed off the stage. This may have been in
part due to an extemporaneous gag in which he ate
a prop mouse, which the audience did not like at all.
(26:12):
In eighteen twenty, he played the wife of Baron Pompazini
in Harlequin and Cinderella or the Little Glass Slipper. At
this point, the pantomime dame or drag pantomime performance was
still fairly new. The first recorded example was in the
eighteen oh six Mother Goose at Covent Garden.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
That might not sound like it was that new, because
like fourteen years passed between eighteen oh six and eighteen twenty,
but like these seasons ran for a long time, so
there had not been that many people performing a role
in drag by that point. Uh that same year, though,
Grimaldi once again left Sadler's Wells, this time after a
dispute with management and his years as a performer were
(26:53):
just really really affecting him physically. He started having to
cut his rehearsal periods or even runs of shows short
because he just wasn't well enough to continue. In May
of eighteen twenty one, he collapsed after a performance and
a doctor told him he was suffering from premature old age.
In eighteen twenty two, he wound up handing over one
(27:14):
of his roles to his son JS when he couldn't
complete the run himself. Most sources cite his years of
performing as the cause of his illnesses and disabilities, but
it also just seems like there might have been some
kind of progressive muscular or skeletal condition involved, possibly a
digestive disorder as well.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Grimaldy mostly retired from the stage in eighteen twenty three
and started overseeing the pantomimes and clowns at Covent Garden.
He occasionally did cameos on stage, and his last public
performance was at Drury Lane in June of eighteen twenty five.
Joe and Mary Grimaldy lived mostly on charity starting in
(27:55):
eighteen twenty eight, and on June twenty seventh of that year,
a benefit performance was held in Grimaldi's honor. Although he
didn't do any clowning during that he did give a
speech written by journalist Thomas Hood, in which he said, quote,
I can no longer wear the motley. Four years ago
I jumped my last jumped, filched my last custard, and
(28:16):
ate my last sausage. I cannot describe the pleasure I
felt on once more assuming my cap and bells tonight,
that dress in which I have so often been made
happy in your applause. And as I stripped them off,
I fancied that they seemed to cleave to me.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I am not so rich a man as I was
when I was basking in your favor formerly. For then
I had always a foul in one pocket and a
sauce for it in the other. I thank you for
the benevolence which has brought you here to assist your
old and faithful servant in his premature decline. Eight and
forty years have not yet passed over my head, and
(28:53):
I am sinking fast. I now stand worse on my
legs than I used to do on my head. But
I suppose I am paying the penalty of the course
I pursued all my life. My desire and anxiety to
merit your favor has excited me to more exertion than
my constitution could bear, and like vaulting ambition, I have
(29:14):
overleaped myself.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Joe seemed dazed by the applause that he got after
he finished this speech, and a crowd followed his coach
all the way back to his home. Once he got out,
he bowed to that crowd from the steps. Grimaldi's son
JS died on December eleventh, eighteen thirty two, in what
was described as a sudden illness. This was likely alcohol related.
(29:38):
Joe had really been trying to train JS as his
theatrical successor, including having started doing father and son performances
in the eighteen teens, but over time JAS had become
increasingly estranged from his parents. It really can't have been
an easy position for him to have been in. Joe
was really encouraging JS toward a career on stage, but
(30:01):
JS could just never really get out of his father's shadow.
Joe's wife, Mary had a stroke not long before the
death of their son, and sometime after that she and
Joe both attempted suicide, which they both survived. Mary died
in eighteen thirty four.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Joseph Grimaldi died on May thirty first, eighteen thirty seven.
The coroner described his cause of death as died by
the visitation of God. By this point, theatrical tastes had
really started changing, and Grimaldi's style of pantomime and clowning
was falling out of fashion. Some of the obituaries were
dismissive or even insulting, like his death notice in Figaro
(30:42):
read in part quote, he certainly could cram more sausages
down his throat and make uglier faces than any man alive.
But as he had for so long rendered himself unfit
to do anything of this kind in public, we cannot
look upon his death as a national calamity harsh In
the last years of his life, Grimaldy had been working
(31:03):
on an autobiography. It was mostly a collection of notes
when he took it to Thomas Edgerton Wilkes to try
to get help shaping it into an actual book, but
Grimaldy died before Wilkes could finish the project. Wilkes sold
the manuscript to publisher Richard Bentley, who asked Charles Dickens
to edit it. Dickens had seen some of Grimaldy's performances
(31:25):
when he was a child. Really, a lot of people had.
He was an incredibly popular performer. Dickens sketches by Boss,
had this to say about pantomimes in general. Quote, before
we plunge headlong into this paper, let us at once
confess to a fondness for pantomimes, to a gentle sympathy
with clowns and pantaloons, to an unqualified admiration of harlequins
(31:47):
and columbines, to a chaste delight in every action of
their brief existence, varied in many colored as those actions
are and inconsistent that they occasionally be with those rigid
and formal rules of propriety which regulate the proceedings of
meaner and less comprehensive minds. But passages that specifically mentioned
(32:07):
Garibaldi are not as flattering, and Dickens wasn't impressed with
the manuscript at all. After reading it, he said to Bentley, quote,
I have thought the matter over and looked it over too.
It is very badly done, and so redolent of twaddle
that I fear I cannot take it up on any conditions.
But he did take it up. Dickens rewrote Grimaldi's first
(32:30):
person notes as a third person narrative that really reads
a lot more like a Charles Dickens novel than any
autobiography or memoir. The original notes seem to be lost
at this point, so we don't really know how they
compare to Dickens's finished product. Dickens also did this work
very quickly, dictating it to his father John. It was
(32:52):
published in eighteen thirty eight as Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldy,
with illustrations by George Crookshank. Something this book really select
is the idea that Grimaldy was full of energy and
made people laugh endlessly with his clowning and comedy, but
that inwardly he was depressed and had a life full
of tragedy. This was something that Grimaldy himself had alluded to.
(33:15):
He liked to say, quote, I make you laugh at night,
but I am grim all day. Some people had also
called his father grim all day, but for somewhat different reasons.
But the memoir really emphasizes this dichotomy, continually pairing Grimaldy's
success with his tragedies and the joy that he brought
audiences with his own depression and melancholy. So, for example,
(33:39):
after describing how Grimaldy was badly injured when a platform
fell on him, on the very same day that he
met his first wife, Maria Hughes. The autobiography reads quote,
it is singular enough that throughout the whole of Grimaldy's existence,
which was a checkered one, enough, even at those years
when other chills and are kept in the cradle or
(34:01):
the nursery, there always seems some odd connection between his
good and bad fortune. No great pleasure appeared to come
to him unaccompanied by some accident or mischance. He mentions
the fact more than once and lays great stress upon it.
In nineteen eighty nine, a blue plaque historical marker was
(34:23):
installed at the site where Grimaldy lived from eighteen eighteen
to eighteen twenty eight, and his burial site, at what
was formerly the burial ground of Saint James's is now
Joseph Grimaldi Park. His grave is still there in a
little fence decorated with a comedy tragedy theatrical masks. There
is also a clown church service honoring Grimaldi every year
(34:46):
the first Sunday in February at Holy Trinity in Dalston, London.
This was originally held at the church where Grimaldi was buried,
but it was later moved and that church has since
been demolished. At it's Joseph Grimaldy have a little bit
of listener mail.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Fantastic.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
This is from Samantha and it's about an episode. This
has been out for a while, our Packard versus Packard episode.
I don't actually I should have looked up when that
came out. I did not, so, Samantha, says Hollia Tracy. Hello,
just wanted to give you an update on previous podcast
subject Elizabeth Packard. There was a mental health facility here
in Springfield, Illinois that was named after the doctor who
(35:30):
abused her, doctor McFarland. There was a strong push to
rename it and that finally happened. It is now named
after Elizabeth in recognition of her being the true hero
for mental health with her activism following her release. I'd
also suggest maybe throwing in the nineteen oh eight Springfield
Race Riot as maybe an impossible episode edition, as it
(35:51):
had direct ties to Lincoln and also directly led to
the founding of the NAACP. I'm also attaching photos of
my pets. Mike Cat's name is Midna and my dog's
name is Navi. Yes, we are a legend of Zelda
fans haha, appreciate all you and your team do. Samantha,
Thank you Samantha for these pictures. I, as also a
(36:12):
fan of Zelda, did not need the pronunciation notes that
you very helpfully included about how to say their names.
I'm not knocking the like, I'm always happy to see
the pronunciation notes, but I immediately was like, Midna, yea,
these are so cute. Oh my goodness, a kitty cat,
a black kitty cat, lion in front of a in
(36:34):
front of a lap, and a puppy dog. Thank you
so much for this note. I had I had not
heard anything about this renaming of this mental health facility,
so thank you so much. If you would like to
send us a note, we're a history podcast at iHeartRadio
(36:55):
dot com. We're also on social media had Missed in
History Us, where you'll find our Facebook and our Pinterest
and our Instagram and that thing that used to be
Twitter that is now called x I guess. You can
also subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and
wherever else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you
(37:19):
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracey V. Wilson,
and I'm Holly Frye. If you have read the graphic
novel Watchman, or if you've seen the two thousand and
nine film adaptation, I don't think this was in the
TV show, or if you've been on like the memier
parts of the Internet over the last few years, you
(00:32):
might be familiar with the one about the man who
goes to the doctor looking for help with his depression,
and the doctor says something like the great clown Pyliacchi
is in town tonight. Go see him and he'll make
you feel all better. And the man says, but doctor,
I am Palliacchi. Uh. Palliacchi is Italian for clowns, probably
(00:54):
pronouncing it not the greatest.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I totally have Enrico Caruso in my head now.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah. So that name and the punchline probably goes all
the way back to the eighteen teens, but this same
joke has also circulated with the names of other real
comedians and clowns, and one going back to at least
eighteen eighty seven. In this joke format is Grimaldi. So
(01:19):
the doctor wants him to go see Grimaldi to make
him all better. But doctor, I am Grimaldi. That's Joseph Grimaldi.
He was one of England's most famous Regency era entertainers.
Sometimes he has described as the first modern clown because
he established a lot of the hallmarks of clowning that
still exist today, specifically in terms of the whiteface clown.
(01:42):
Joseph Grimaldi, known as Joe, was born into a family
of entertainers, dancers and acrobats who are originally from Italy.
His great grandfather had a background in the Italian theatrical
form of comedia de l'arte. His grandfather, Giovanni Battista or
John Baptist Grimaldi, was nicknamed Gamba ti ferro or iron Legs,
(02:02):
and also worked as a dentist when he was not
on stage. I also find that funny, so it's unintentionally hilarious.
John Baptist apparently left the British stage in a criminal flourish,
convincing the manager of the Covent Garden Theater that he
was putting together an incredible new show, one that was
(02:24):
totally unique and would feature dancers wearing horseshoes, but he
vanished along with an advance on his pay before taking
the stage.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
On opening night.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Joe's father, Jsepa Grimaldi, was also kind of a piece
of work. He was a dancer and pantomimest known for
grotesque humor and practical jokes, and he had affairs with
a lot of women, some of whom were his apprentices.
He had children with at least two women, in addition
to his wife, Mary Blagden. One of those women was
(02:55):
Joe's mother, Rebecca Brooker, who was a dancer who had
started as Justepp as a prentice when she was still
a teenager. Rebecca gave birth to Joseph on December eighteenth,
seventeen seventy eight, and then had another son with Giuseppa,
named John Baptist. In addition to his many extramarital affairs,
Jisippa Grimaldy had a reputation for being a tyrant, both
(03:19):
with his theatrical companies and with his family. People called
him the Signor, and in his work as a ballet master,
he was known for beating and otherwise tormenting his dancers,
some of whom were his children. At times, he also
displayed a range of irrational beliefs and behaviors. He seems
(03:39):
to have maybe also used the iron Legs name, which
has made it really hard to figure out which things
are about him and which things are about his father.
Right Joe Grimaldi's autobiography, which was edited by Charles Dickens,
says almost nothing about this side of his father, and
it's not clear whether this was out of a sense
of loyalty or because it just wouldn't have been seen
(04:00):
as appropriate for him to be speaking ill of his
father in like a tell all memoir. But there are
some hints of what Joseeppa Grimaldy was like in this book.
For example, quote we have already remarked that the father
of Grimaldy was an eccentric man. He appears to have
been particularly eccentric, and rather unpleasantly so in the correction
(04:22):
of his son. The child, being bred up to play
all kinds of fantastic tricks, was as much a clown,
a monkey, or anything else that was droll and ridiculous
off the stage as on it, and being incited there
too by the occupants of the green room used to
skip and tumble about as much for their diversion as
side of the public. All this was carefully concealed from
(04:46):
the father, who, whenever he did happen to observe any
of the child's pranks, always administered the same punishment, a
sound thrashing, terminating in his being lifted up by the
hair of the head and stuck in a corn. Once
his father, with a severe countenance and awful voice, would
tell him to venture to move at his peril. Most
(05:09):
theatrical productions in England during this era were pantomime, which
was a hugely popular form of entertainment that could also
be seen as kind of lowbrow. This wasn't necessarily entirely silent.
There might be songs or catchphrases or bits of verse
here and there.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
While there were theaters which performed plays with actual dialogue,
these were subject to government censorship, whereas pantomime was not.
Pantomimests also were not regarded as real actors capable of
doing scenes with dialogue. So if you're imagining something like
French mime artist Marcel Marceau, when we say the word pantomime,
(05:48):
this wasn't really that either. British pantomime has roots in
Italian comedia del arte, and it started to become really
popular as a form of entertainment. During the Georgian era,
pantomime was particularly popular for Christmas time productions, but eventually
there were multiple theaters with overlapping seasons that were essentially
(06:08):
performing pantomime year round. I feel like in a lot
of literature from this era too, you'll see descriptions of
like families doing pantomimes for each other as entertainment. Like
that's my first exposure to this concept. The first part
of the performance was often a rendition of a fairy
tale or a fantasy or some other kind of well
(06:29):
known story. Then would come the Harlequinade, which, like Comedia
de l'arte, used a collection of stock characters that were
recognizable to the audience. Harlequin and Columbine were usually the
heroes and were devotedly in love with each other, and
their antagonist, Pantaloon, schemed to keep them apart. Pantaloon might
(06:50):
be Columbine's tyrannical father or a malicious rival for Columbine's affections.
Pantaloon often had some kind of servant or side kick
who could be known by any number of names, and
sometimes was just called clown.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Part of this production usually took place with the performers
wearing these oversized paper mache heads or masks, which would
then be removed at a transitional point in the performance.
The action often included a lot of physical comedy and slapstick,
including literal slapsticks that were primed with gunpowder so they
made a very sharp, cracking noise when they were struck
(07:27):
as part of the action. These were often really high
energy productions, with a lot of acrobatics, dancing, music, and
various other spectacles. Ji Sepa trained Joe and John Baptist
to be performers in This World from a very early age.
Joe took the stage for the first time on April sixteenth,
seventeen eighty one, for what his father described as his
(07:49):
first bow and tumble. He was not yet three years old.
Soon he was working as a child dancer in pantomime productions.
This can actually be dangerous times. He played the role
of a monkey, with his father holding a chain tied
to his waist and sometimes flinging him around by that chain.
In one performance, the chain broke and Joe was thrown
(08:11):
into the audience. When he was six, Joe fell through
a trapdoor and broke his collar bloom because no one
had cut eye holes in his mask. By coincidence, this
happened during his father's last public performance. He became ill
that night, and Giuseppa never returned to the stage. While
still a child, Joe Grimaldi started working at two London theaters,
(08:34):
Drury Lane and Sadler's Wells, both of which were established
in the seventeenth century. Both theaters performed some similar material,
but dury Lane catered to a somewhat more affluent audience
than Sadler's Wells did. The Jury Lane season went from
September to late spring, and then Sadler's Wells ran from
mid April to mid October. So during the weeks when
(08:56):
these two seasons overlapped, Joe often performed at both theaters
in one night, either taking a Hackney coach or running
from one to the other. He also went to school
for a time at a boarding school in Putney called
Mister Ford's Academy, which was for performers' children.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
In seventeen eighty eight, Joe's father died. We also mentioned
that Jisseppe could be irrational. For years, he had been
so preoccupied over the idea that he was going to
die on the first Friday of the month, that he
spent each first Friday locked alone in a room staring
at the clock. He was also terrified of being buried
(09:35):
alive and left instructions to prevent that from happening, including
waiting forty eight hours to bury him after his death
and applying lit candles to his feet. His will also
specified that his oldest daughter Mary had to cut off
his head before he was buried. She paid a surgeon
to do this and put her hand on the knife
(09:56):
so that she could say that she had fulfilled this
order and had done it. Giuseppa's death left Joe, who
was only nine years old, as the family's primary breadwinner,
so this is a terrible responsibility for a little boy,
and then to make things worse without the looming influence
of his father, who a lot of people were scared of.
(10:16):
Theater managers he worked for cut his pay. Since Joe
was making less money, and they also no longer had
any income from Giuseppa, the family couldn't afford to live
in their home anymore. They started lodging with a furrier
in an area that was described as a slum. While
Giuseppa had been paving the way for both of his
sons to follow him on stage. Joe's brother, John Baptist,
(10:39):
decided to go in his own direction. At the age
of eight, he used a false identity to get a
job as a cabin boy on a ship, and he
disappeared from his family's life for the next sixteen years.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
We'll have more about this after a sponsor break. Joe
Grimaldi spent most of his childhood and teens working, gradually
being cast in bigger and better roles and learning set
design while he was on the job. In seventeen ninety one,
(11:14):
the dury Lane Theater was demolished and Grimaldy did most
of his performing at the Haymarket Theater instead. When dury
Lane reopened three years later, it was the largest theater
in Europe, but it stopped doing Christmas pantomimes in seventeen
ninety eight, which meant Grimaldy had to find other work
than what he was usually doing. During those months, he
(11:35):
also started expanding his skills as a performer, including doing
more sword play and acrobatics. When he was about seventeen,
Grimaldy met Maria Hughes, daughter of Richard Hughes, who was
one of the proprietors of the Saddlers Wells Theater. Maria
had become friends with Joe's mother, Rebecca, who was a
dancer at the theater and also spent a lot of
(11:55):
time sewing in the dressing rooms. After a three year courtship,
Joe and Maria got married on May eleventh, seventeen ninety nine.
It's probably possible that she said this Mariah, because a
lot of folks back then did, but we don't really know.
As Grimaldi had progressed in his career, he'd gotten his
(12:16):
share of detractors. Some of this was because of his
father's reputation and some was because of the trajectory of
his own work. Joe also didn't get along with Jean
Baptiste Dubois, who was a very prominent pantomime performer and
had taken on some of Joseppa Grimaldi's roles after his death.
Joe had spent some time working with Dubois, and a
(12:38):
lot of people thought that Joe had learned all of
his techniques from the older performer. That's something Joe seems
to have resented and continually denied. The day after Richard
Hughes gave his permission for his daughter Rebecca to marry Joe.
Somebody came to the theater to warn him that Joe
Grimaldi had designs on her. Almost twenty years into his career,
(13:02):
Grimaldi made his stage debut in the role of clown
in the spring of eighteen hundred. This was in a
production of Peter Wilkins or Harlequin in the Flying World,
adapted from Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins by Robert Paltock.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
This is a story about a Cornish castaway who winds
up on an island where people can fly. This staging
had two actors in each of the harlequinad roles. The
two clowns were Joe Grimaldi and his rival Jean Baptiste
du Bois, as Guzzle, the drinking clown and Gobble, the
eating clown. On stage, they had something of a competition
(13:39):
to see who could drink the most beer or eat
the most sausages.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
While Grimaldy had occasionally performed clown roles as an understudy
or a stand in before this, this was the first
time that he had actually been cast in the role
of clown, and this production made some departures from the
way clown had been portrayed. Stretching back to the beginning
of British pantomime, clown had usually been kind of an
(14:04):
unsophisticated bumpkin with ruddy makeup and rustic, baggy clothes, but
theater manager Charles Dipden wanted to change things up. Grimaldi
and Dubois were both in dramatically colorful, flamboyant costumes, and
Grimaldy had gone to great links to completely change the
style of his makeup. He tinkered with this a lot
(14:25):
and revised it over time. All the exposed skin on
his face and neck were totally covered in white grease paint,
and he had a big, bright red smile and a
curving red triangle on each cheek. He also exaggerated his
eyebrows and made his hair really big and bushy, so
basically it was the white face clown makeup that still
(14:47):
exists today. There was a near disaster during this performance
when Divden realized a trapdoor was open on stage and
fell through it while rushing out to close it. O
yere Wise, it was an enormous success, particularly for Joe.
He seemed to embody the idea of clown. He and
(15:08):
Dubois continued to be cast together after this, sometimes playing
off each other as rivals, including Harlequin, Benedict or the
ghost of Mother Shipton. Sadly, Grimaldi's life took a tragic
turn just a few months later. His wife Maria died
giving birth to their daughter on October eighteenth, eighteen hundred,
and the baby died as well. Joe had been at
(15:30):
rehearsal when Maria went into labor, and although somebody was
sent to get him, she had died by the time
he got home. Maria's pregnancy had been difficult, and deaths
during childbirth at this time were just extremely common. She
had actually left burial instructions and a poem to be
inscribed on her headstone. Her last words were reportedly poor Joe.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Joe was devastated. Although he threw himself into his work
to distract himself from his grief, he was also prone
to disappearing, sometimes for days at a time, and people
would find him wandering inconsolably. During this time, he accidentally
shot himself in the foot during a performance and had
to recuperate in bed for five weeks. His mother was
(16:16):
so concerned about his well being that she hired Mary Bristow,
who was in the chorus at Drury Lane to look
after him while he recovered from this injury. They wound
up falling in love and they got married in eighteen
oh two. They had a son on November twenty first
of that year, who they named Joseph Samuel William Grimaldy.
They called him JS. By eighteen oh two, Jean Baptiste
(16:39):
Dubois had left Sadler's Wells Theater and Grimaldy was being
called King of Clowns. Grimaldi had really established all of
the hallmarks of his signature clown character, with its slap
in motley or grease paint makeup and party colored costume.
He became so associated with the idea of clown that
soon all Harlequanod clowns were being called Joey. He also
(17:02):
had a couple of catchphrases, here we are again and
shall I, which he said with a mischievous or even
sinister intonation. I have obviously never seen one of his performances,
but I can just imagine this clown and like whiteface
clown makeup going, shall I?
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Uh. This was not always what he wore, though. Another
stock character in British pantomime was the so called Noble Savage,
who was usually a black or indigenous character played by
a white actor. Grimaldi's black face performances included Friday and Robinson,
Crusoe and Canto in La Peruse or The Desolate Island.
(17:46):
In eighteen oh two, Grimaldi also joined the Dreary Lane
Theatrical Fund, which actors could pay into in order to
receive a pension when they retired. He was only able
to do this thanks to having done a number of
small speaking roles over the years, because this was not
open to people who only did pantomime. In eighteen oh three,
(18:06):
England declared war on France as the start of the
Napoleonic Wars. Although there have been periods when war just
put an end to theatrical productions, in this case, theater
became even more popular as a relief from the stresses
of wartime. Not long after, Joe Grimaldi very briefly reunited
with his brother, John Baptist after sixteen years. John showed
(18:30):
up by surprise at the theater one night, but then
disappeared when Joe went into his dressing room to get ready.
Joe looked for his brother for about a month, and
it is really not clear what happened to him. By
this point, most people in their lives had thought that
John was dead, so people wondered if Joe had hallucinated
the entire thing. During these same years, Grimaldi moved around
(18:52):
a bit as a performer as Sadler's Wells closed down
for refurbishment, and he also had a falling out with
management at Jury Lane. He started performing at theaters outside
of London, including going to Ireland. Then in eighteen oh
six he made his debut at Covent Garden Theater, which
was seen as one of the most prestigious theaters in England.
(19:12):
He was cast as orson the wild Man in Valentine
and orson a role that had previously been associated with
his old sort of nemesis, Jean Baptiste Dubois. The role
of Valentine was played by Charles Farley, who had also
played Valentine opposite Dubois. Farley knew that Grimaldi would be
apprehensive about stepping into Dubois's shoes in this role, given
(19:34):
their history, but he also thought Grimaldi had the potential
to turn it into something really incredible, and he did.
In this play, Valentine meets the wild Man while he's
out hunting for meat and attacks him, and then the
wild man fights back in just an astoundingly vigorous series
of leaps. He's also throwing rocks and swinging a club.
(19:55):
This role involved so much just explosive physicality, and Grimaldy
played it with such intensity that he was continually pushing
his own limits, and he repeatedly hurt himself. People described
him sobbing in a small room backstage in between his
on stage performances. Grimaldy's best known performance started in eighteen
(20:17):
oh six with Harlequin and Mother Goose or the Golden Egg.
This was a Christmas pantomime by Thomas Dibden that ran
for ninety six performances, and it was extremely successful and
well reviewed. In eighteen oh seven, The Monthly Mirror wrote, quote,
Grimaldy is the principal cause of crowded lobbies and scarcely
standing room. Many of our second and third rate tragedians
(20:41):
would give their ears to meet with half the plaudits
which are every night conferred on Grimaldi for his inimitable exertions.
His clown has not been equalled. We never expect to
see it surpassed. He has arrived at an acme of
all clownery, but Grimaldy. Apparently he hated his own performance
(21:01):
in Mother Goose and experienced a lot of depression and
self doubt about it. A series of disasters struck the
London theater world around this time. On October fifteenth, eighteen
oh seven, eighteen people died in a stampede at Sadler's Wells,
apparently after somebody yelled fight and people mistook it for
(21:23):
someone shouting fire. Grimaldi had performed earlier in the night
and had already gone home. Sadler's Wells had to close
for the season, and since alcohol had played a part
in this panic, it was allowed to reopen the following year,
only under the condition that it no longer sell wine.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
On September twentieth, eighteen oh eight, the Covent Garden Theater
caught fire, possibly due to a spark from a stage
firearm that had smoldered in a wall without anyone noticing.
Twenty three people died, including several firefighters who were killed
when the ceiling collapsed. The theater and all of its
contents and scenery were destroyed, including an organ belonging to
(22:04):
George Frederick Handel. And then on February twenty fourth, eighteen
oh nine, the Dreary Lane Theater also burned. There was
no performance that night, and the fire was believed to
have spread from a fireplace in an unattended room.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
These theaters did eventually reopen, which we'll get to you
after a sponsor break. When the Covent Garden Theater reopened
in eighteen oh nine, it staged a revival of its
previously successful Mother Goose, but it also raised its prices
(22:42):
to help cover the cost of rebuilding. This price hike
did not go over well. It led to more than
two months of fighting and rioting as audiences called for
op or old prices. As each of the theaters rebuilt and reopened,
they he increasingly competed with one another and tried out
(23:03):
new styles of productions. Grimaldy's performances started to become more satirical.
He was nicknamed Hogarth in action. He also started performing
a lot more songs, many of them written by Thomas
Dibden and featuring nonsensical lyrics, and he was famous and
became friends with people like George Gordon Lord Byron. In
(23:24):
Byron's words, he had quote great and unbounded satisfaction in
becoming acquainted with a man of such rare and profound talents.
Byron left England in the late eighteen teens, though, and
that left a hole in Grimaldy's off stage life. Grimaldy
was also really starting to struggle, both physically and financially.
(23:45):
His clown performances were just so athletic and vigorous, and
beyond the ongoing demands on his body, he experienced the
number of injuries. As one newspaper described it in eighteen thirteen,
quote is absolutely surprised that any human head or hide
can resist the rough trials which he volunteers. Serious tumbles
(24:07):
from serious heights, innumerable kicks, and incessant beatings come on
him as matters of common occurrence, and leave him every night,
fresh and free for the next night's flagellation. Over time,
he did start taking some parts that leaned more toward
acting than clowning, But while he was still working steadily,
(24:27):
including in some well paying roles, his wife Mary seems
to have had some really expensive tastes, and he also
lost some money to unscrupulous managers. In eighteen twelve, he
almost went bankrupt. Although Grimaldi had been performing in multiple
venues for most of his career, sometimes simultaneously. This seems
(24:48):
to have become an issue for some of the theater managers.
In the eighteen teens, he fell out with longtime collaborator
Charles Dibden after Dibden denied his request for time off
to perform at another Grimaldi had also become chief judge
and treasurer of the Saddler's Wells Court of Rectitude, which
enforced the theatre's code of conduct for its performers. Apparently,
(25:11):
Dipden thought Grimaldy was way too lenient in this role.
This all came to a head with a salary dispute
in eighteen sixteen, and Grimaldy left the theater and went
on tour. About two years later, Richard Hughes's widow, Lucy,
who had become majority shareholder in the theater after Richard's death,
convinced Grimaldi to return, and Grimaldy actually bought a small
(25:35):
stake in the theater as part of that deal. This
was after he had finished a tour of Scotland, Manchester
and Liverpool, during which he had repeatedly been injured, including
one injury that temporarily left him unable to walk.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
His first appearance back at Sadler's Wells was not a success. Though.
He played grimalda cat in an Easter pantomime called Marquis
de Carabas or Puss in Boots, and he wound up
being booed off the stage. This may have been in
part due to an extemporaneous gag in which he ate
a prop mouse, which the audience did not like at all.
(26:12):
In eighteen twenty, he played the wife of Baron Pompazini
in Harlequin and Cinderella or the Little Glass Slipper. At
this point, the pantomime dame or drag pantomime performance was
still fairly new. The first recorded example was in the
eighteen oh six Mother Goose at Covent Garden.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
That might not sound like it was that new, because
like fourteen years passed between eighteen oh six and eighteen twenty,
but like these seasons ran for a long time, so
there had not been that many people performing a role
in drag by that point. Uh that same year, though,
Grimaldi once again left Sadler's Wells, this time after a
dispute with management and his years as a performer were
(26:53):
just really really affecting him physically. He started having to
cut his rehearsal periods or even runs of shows short
because he just wasn't well enough to continue. In May
of eighteen twenty one, he collapsed after a performance and
a doctor told him he was suffering from premature old age.
In eighteen twenty two, he wound up handing over one
(27:14):
of his roles to his son JS when he couldn't
complete the run himself. Most sources cite his years of
performing as the cause of his illnesses and disabilities, but
it also just seems like there might have been some
kind of progressive muscular or skeletal condition involved, possibly a
digestive disorder as well.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Grimaldy mostly retired from the stage in eighteen twenty three
and started overseeing the pantomimes and clowns at Covent Garden.
He occasionally did cameos on stage, and his last public
performance was at Drury Lane in June of eighteen twenty five.
Joe and Mary Grimaldy lived mostly on charity starting in
(27:55):
eighteen twenty eight, and on June twenty seventh of that year,
a benefit performance was held in Grimaldi's honor. Although he
didn't do any clowning during that he did give a
speech written by journalist Thomas Hood, in which he said, quote,
I can no longer wear the motley. Four years ago
I jumped my last jumped, filched my last custard, and
(28:16):
ate my last sausage. I cannot describe the pleasure I
felt on once more assuming my cap and bells tonight,
that dress in which I have so often been made
happy in your applause. And as I stripped them off,
I fancied that they seemed to cleave to me.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I am not so rich a man as I was
when I was basking in your favor formerly. For then
I had always a foul in one pocket and a
sauce for it in the other. I thank you for
the benevolence which has brought you here to assist your
old and faithful servant in his premature decline. Eight and
forty years have not yet passed over my head, and
(28:53):
I am sinking fast. I now stand worse on my
legs than I used to do on my head. But
I suppose I am paying the penalty of the course
I pursued all my life. My desire and anxiety to
merit your favor has excited me to more exertion than
my constitution could bear, and like vaulting ambition, I have
(29:14):
overleaped myself.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Joe seemed dazed by the applause that he got after
he finished this speech, and a crowd followed his coach
all the way back to his home. Once he got out,
he bowed to that crowd from the steps. Grimaldi's son
JS died on December eleventh, eighteen thirty two, in what
was described as a sudden illness. This was likely alcohol related.
(29:38):
Joe had really been trying to train JS as his
theatrical successor, including having started doing father and son performances
in the eighteen teens, but over time JAS had become
increasingly estranged from his parents. It really can't have been
an easy position for him to have been in. Joe
was really encouraging JS toward a career on stage, but
(30:01):
JS could just never really get out of his father's shadow.
Joe's wife, Mary had a stroke not long before the
death of their son, and sometime after that she and
Joe both attempted suicide, which they both survived. Mary died
in eighteen thirty four.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Joseph Grimaldi died on May thirty first, eighteen thirty seven.
The coroner described his cause of death as died by
the visitation of God. By this point, theatrical tastes had
really started changing, and Grimaldi's style of pantomime and clowning
was falling out of fashion. Some of the obituaries were
dismissive or even insulting, like his death notice in Figaro
(30:42):
read in part quote, he certainly could cram more sausages
down his throat and make uglier faces than any man alive.
But as he had for so long rendered himself unfit
to do anything of this kind in public, we cannot
look upon his death as a national calamity harsh In
the last years of his life, Grimaldy had been working
(31:03):
on an autobiography. It was mostly a collection of notes
when he took it to Thomas Edgerton Wilkes to try
to get help shaping it into an actual book, but
Grimaldy died before Wilkes could finish the project. Wilkes sold
the manuscript to publisher Richard Bentley, who asked Charles Dickens
to edit it. Dickens had seen some of Grimaldy's performances
(31:25):
when he was a child. Really, a lot of people had.
He was an incredibly popular performer. Dickens sketches by Boss,
had this to say about pantomimes in general. Quote, before
we plunge headlong into this paper, let us at once
confess to a fondness for pantomimes, to a gentle sympathy
with clowns and pantaloons, to an unqualified admiration of harlequins
(31:47):
and columbines, to a chaste delight in every action of
their brief existence, varied in many colored as those actions
are and inconsistent that they occasionally be with those rigid
and formal rules of propriety which regulate the proceedings of
meaner and less comprehensive minds. But passages that specifically mentioned
(32:07):
Garibaldi are not as flattering, and Dickens wasn't impressed with
the manuscript at all. After reading it, he said to Bentley, quote,
I have thought the matter over and looked it over too.
It is very badly done, and so redolent of twaddle
that I fear I cannot take it up on any conditions.
But he did take it up. Dickens rewrote Grimaldi's first
(32:30):
person notes as a third person narrative that really reads
a lot more like a Charles Dickens novel than any
autobiography or memoir. The original notes seem to be lost
at this point, so we don't really know how they
compare to Dickens's finished product. Dickens also did this work
very quickly, dictating it to his father John. It was
(32:52):
published in eighteen thirty eight as Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldy,
with illustrations by George Crookshank. Something this book really select
is the idea that Grimaldy was full of energy and
made people laugh endlessly with his clowning and comedy, but
that inwardly he was depressed and had a life full
of tragedy. This was something that Grimaldy himself had alluded to.
(33:15):
He liked to say, quote, I make you laugh at night,
but I am grim all day. Some people had also
called his father grim all day, but for somewhat different reasons.
But the memoir really emphasizes this dichotomy, continually pairing Grimaldy's
success with his tragedies and the joy that he brought
audiences with his own depression and melancholy. So, for example,
(33:39):
after describing how Grimaldy was badly injured when a platform
fell on him, on the very same day that he
met his first wife, Maria Hughes. The autobiography reads quote,
it is singular enough that throughout the whole of Grimaldy's existence,
which was a checkered one, enough, even at those years
when other chills and are kept in the cradle or
(34:01):
the nursery, there always seems some odd connection between his
good and bad fortune. No great pleasure appeared to come
to him unaccompanied by some accident or mischance. He mentions
the fact more than once and lays great stress upon it.
In nineteen eighty nine, a blue plaque historical marker was
(34:23):
installed at the site where Grimaldy lived from eighteen eighteen
to eighteen twenty eight, and his burial site, at what
was formerly the burial ground of Saint James's is now
Joseph Grimaldi Park. His grave is still there in a
little fence decorated with a comedy tragedy theatrical masks. There
is also a clown church service honoring Grimaldi every year
(34:46):
the first Sunday in February at Holy Trinity in Dalston, London.
This was originally held at the church where Grimaldi was buried,
but it was later moved and that church has since
been demolished. At it's Joseph Grimaldy have a little bit
of listener mail.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Fantastic.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
This is from Samantha and it's about an episode. This
has been out for a while, our Packard versus Packard episode.
I don't actually I should have looked up when that
came out. I did not, so, Samantha, says Hollia Tracy. Hello,
just wanted to give you an update on previous podcast
subject Elizabeth Packard. There was a mental health facility here
in Springfield, Illinois that was named after the doctor who
(35:30):
abused her, doctor McFarland. There was a strong push to
rename it and that finally happened. It is now named
after Elizabeth in recognition of her being the true hero
for mental health with her activism following her release. I'd
also suggest maybe throwing in the nineteen oh eight Springfield
Race Riot as maybe an impossible episode edition, as it
(35:51):
had direct ties to Lincoln and also directly led to
the founding of the NAACP. I'm also attaching photos of
my pets. Mike Cat's name is Midna and my dog's
name is Navi. Yes, we are a legend of Zelda
fans haha, appreciate all you and your team do. Samantha,
Thank you Samantha for these pictures. I, as also a
(36:12):
fan of Zelda, did not need the pronunciation notes that
you very helpfully included about how to say their names.
I'm not knocking the like, I'm always happy to see
the pronunciation notes, but I immediately was like, Midna, yea,
these are so cute. Oh my goodness, a kitty cat,
a black kitty cat, lion in front of a in
(36:34):
front of a lap, and a puppy dog. Thank you
so much for this note. I had I had not
heard anything about this renaming of this mental health facility,
so thank you so much. If you would like to
send us a note, we're a history podcast at iHeartRadio
(36:55):
dot com. We're also on social media had Missed in
History Us, where you'll find our Facebook and our Pinterest
and our Instagram and that thing that used to be
Twitter that is now called x I guess. You can
also subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and
wherever else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you
(37:19):
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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