Clowns -- Great Britain -- Biography; Grimaldi, Joseph, 1779-1837
He used to assert that old Grimaldi died in Lambeth, at his apartments,
up a court within a door or two of the Pheasant public-house in
Stangate-street. Reference to the burial-register of St. Mary's,
Lambeth, elicited nothing as to his interment there; but on searching
the register belonging to Northampton Chapel, in Exmouth-street, we
found it there recorded "March 23, 1788, Mr. Joseph Grimaldi, from
Lambeth, aged 75." It will be observed, there is a difference of three
years in the age, as stated in the daily papers of the time, and in the
register of his burial. No stone, or other memorial, marks the spot
where his ashes lie.
The court in which Grimaldi died, in poverty, not wealth, was, till the
last destruction of Astley's Amphitheatre, under the tenancy of Ducrow,
called Theatre-court, or place; but the fire consumed the greater part,
and its site is now occupied by that portion of Batty's Amphitheatre
which is in the Palace New-road.
[13] The original Editor has been misinformed. We are sorry to have
to record that Signor Grimaldi had nothing to bequeath to any one; he
made no will; and a search at the Prerogative Office, Doctor's Commons,
for the two years following his death, is evidence of this, no probate
having issued thence.
[14] The season of 1788, at Sadler's Wells, was one of no common
interest. On Whitsun Monday, May 12, in a musical piece, entitled
"Saint Monday; or, a Cure for a Scold," Mr. Braham, then Master
Abrahams, made his first appearance. He is named in the bills of August
18, but appears soon after to have left Sadler's Wells, and on the 30th
of the same month had a benefit at the Royalty Theatre, Well-street,
near Goodman's-fields, as "Master Braham," when the celebrated tenor
singer, Leoni, his master, announced that as the last time of his
performing on the stage. Miss Shields, who appeared at Sadler's
Wells in the same piece on Whitsun Monday, became towards the end of
May, Mrs. Leffler. Two Frenchmen, named Duranie and Bois-Maison, as
pantomimists, eclipsed all their predecessors on that stage. Boyce, a
distinguished engraver, was the Harlequin, and by those who remember
him, he is eulogised as the most finished actor of the motley hero,
either in his own day, or since. On the benefit night of Joseph Dortor,
Clown to the rope, and Richer, the rope dancer, Miss Richer made her
first appearance on two slack wires, passing through a hoop, with a
pyramid of glasses on her head; and Master Richer performed on the
tight rope, with a skipping rope. Joseph Dortor, among other almost
incredible feats, drank a glass of wine backwards from the stage-floor,
beating a drum at the same time. Lawrence, the father of Joe's friend,
Richard Lawrence, threw a summerset over twelve men's heads, and Paul
Redigé, "The Little Devil," on October 1, threw a summerset over two
men on horseback, the riders having each a lighted candle on his head.
Dubois, as Clown to the Pantomime, had no superior in his time; and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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