A Clown for All Seasons

Joseph Grimaldi was one of the great clowns of the early nineteenth century. His life story would have been fascinating no matter who recorded it. As luck would have it, though, his memoirs were put together by the greatest English writer of his day: Charles Dickens.

In 1838, the publisher Richard Bentley came out with two volumes of Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi that had been "Edited by 'Boz'," with the Boz in question being none other than Dickens. The cover page is perhaps misleading, since "Boz" had already "edited" The Pickwick Papers and was currently at work "editing" both Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. In those cases, "edited" meant wrote from scratch. However, Grimaldi did leave a manuscript behind recalling his life story, so in this case, Dickens actually did just edit it (though he took a strong hand in the job).

A "clown" in Grimaldi's day was one of a number of stock characters on the British stage derived from commedia dell'arte, including "Harlequins, Pantaloons, and Columbines," as Dickens notes in his introductory chapter. These characters appeared together in the elaborate shows known as pantomimes that were staged every year around Christmas, often lasting until Easter. As a boy, Dickens had loved these shows, which is why when he was given a chance to edit Grimaldi's memoirs, he was "in a perfect fever" to undertake the job. Changing Grimaldi's first-person narrative into a third-person biography, Dickens was able to utilize the actor's personal recollections while combining them with his own writing style.

According to the account in the Memoirs, Grimaldi's father was a native of Genoa who became both a dentist and a dancing master in England, as well as playing the role of clown himself. His son, young Joe Grimaldi, was born in 1779, the same year the famous actor David Garrick had died. He made his debut on the stage of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane at the age of one year and eleven months. He also began to perform at Sadler's Wells in 1783, appearing in the "arduous character of a monkey." He would frequently appear onstage with his father, and on one occasion, his father was so angered, he beat the boy in earnest right in front of the audience. As the memoir relates, "This was all taken by the audience as a most capital joke; shouts of laughter and peals of applause shook the house."

The artist George Cruikshank provided illustrations for the Memoirs. One of these shows a famous incident where Joe was playing a monkey and his father was supposed to swing him around by a chain. According to the story: "One evening, when this feat was in the act of performance, the chain broke, and he was hurled a considerable distance into the pit, fortunately without sustaining the slightest injury; for he was flung by a miracle into the very arms of an old gentleman who was sitting gazing at the stage with intense interest."

Grimaldi's father died in 1788 and was buried in the churchyard of Exmouth Street Chapel. While he provided handsomely for his two children, the executor of his will, Joseph Hopwood, invested all of the family's money in his own business and subsequently went bankrupt. The family was left destitute, and it was up to young Joey to support the family as a child actor. The following year, his younger brother set sail as a cabin boy on a ship and disappeared.

As a teenager, Joey fell in love with Maria Hughes, who also happened to be the daughter of his employer at Sadler's Wells. On the very day that Grimaldi delivered his first love letter to her, there was a tremendous accident at the theatre, and a heavy platform fell on him, injuring his shoulder. The next day, Maria rushed to his bedside, much to the delight of Joey. Eventually, he obtained the consent of her parents, and the two were married at St. George's in Hanover Square.

In 1799, things couldn't have been going better for Grimaldi. He had a successful career, a wife he adored, and what was more, the couple was expecting a child. Unfortunately, it was not an easy pregnancy, and after many difficulties, Maria died, leaving Joey with neither child nor wife. Maria's body was buried in the Hughes family vault at St. James's Church, Clerkenwell. Two months later, the Christmas season demanded another pantomime, and Grimaldi had to once again go onstage and play the clown.

Eventually, Joey did remarry. After he injured his foot onstage, a certain actress identified in the Memoirs as "Miss Bristow" tended him in his illness, and the two ultimately wed, spending more than thirty years together before the lady died. This was Mary Bristow, who married Grimaldi on Christmas Eve, 1801, and within a year bore him a son, Joseph Samuel, known as J.S. In 1803, Grimaldi's family life was momentarily turned upside down when his brother mysteriously returned from a life at sea, though Joey had long given him up for dead. Strangely, however, the brother appeared for only one evening, and then vanished again forever.

During the early part of his career, Grimaldi performed at Drury Lane, as well as minor theatres like Sadler's Wells. In 1806, however, he gave up Drury Lane to appear at the rival patent house at Covent Garden. His first appearance at that theatre was not as a clown, but as Orson in the Romantic melodrama Valentine and Orson by Thomas Dibdin. Grimaldi frequently appeared in melodramas and other entertainments as well as pantomimes, though it was always as a clown that he was best remembered.

Two years after he joined the Covent Garden company, the theatre burned down, and the company had to perform in smaller venues until it could be rebuilt. When the new building opened in 1809, its manager (John Kemble) tried to raise ticket prices, which had remained fixed by tradition for many years. The result was a massive protest known as the O.P. Riots. The Memoirs describe the disturbances as "the great O.P. Row" and note that "noises made by the audience utterly overwhelmed every attempt that the actors could make to render themselves audible." A few audience members even "brought live pigs, which were pinched at the proper times, and added considerably to the effect of the performances."

Given the impossibility of performing dialogue in such an environment, Kemble asked Grimaldi to perform in a pantomime version of Don Juan. Grimaldi took the role of Scaramouch, as he typically did in Don Juan, and the first night he performed the piece, there was great applause when he entered and very little disturbance afterward. Kemble thought he had finally found a way to win over the audience, and asked Grimaldi to play the same role the next night. However, on the second night of Don Juan, the disturbances recommenced, and they did not let up until Kemble agreed to lower the prices.

In 1812, Joey was invited to dine with nobility at Berkeley Castle, and it was there that he first met Lord Byron, who had usually patronized Grimaldi's benefit performances at Covent Garden. Byron praised the famous clown in such lofty terms, that at first he thought the lord was being facetious. Later, Byron gave Grimaldi an engraved snuff box, which the actor cherished for the rest of his life.

Joey's son was getting older now, and eventually the elder Grimaldi took on the role of Don Juan while J.S. played Scaramouch. In 1823 Joey's health took a turn for the worse, and he was forced to stop performing. J.S. became the company's principle clown, which greatly pleased his father. Unfortunately, upon finding success, J.S. "abandoned himself to every species of wild debauchery and riot," according to the Memoirs.

After years of hard living, J.S. died. The coroner said that "his body was covered with a fearful inflammation" and he had been found in "furious madness, rising from his bed and dressing himself in stage costume to act snatches of the parts to which he had been most accustomed." Two years later, Grimaldi's wife Mary died as well.

The concluding chapter Dickens provided for the Memoirs recounts how Grimaldi himself passed away on May 31st, 1837. The cause of death was apparently natural, and the coroner's jury declared that he "had died by the visitation of God." He was buried at St. James's Chapel on Pentonville Hill. The graveyard where his body was laid to rest is now a public space known as Grimaldi Park.

Review's Out!

My book review of The Oxford Handbook of the Georgian Theatre just came out in the most recent issue of Theatre Journal.

TJ is an official publication of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, so it has a circulation of a couple thousand people. I'm very happy my piece was included.

And yes, the Handbook is a great resource for anyone interested in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century drama. It officially covers British drama from 1737 to 1832, though it occasionally ventures outside that timeframe as well.

Julia Swindells, who passed away not long ago, and David Francis Taylor edited the volume, which contains 40 essays spanning the fields of acting, writing, scenic design, music, dance, and more. The book does a good job both of giving historical context and engaging with current theoretical ways of framing the past.

You might notice that on the cover is an image of Sadler's Wells, rather than one of the royal patent theatres in London at the time. As the use of an image of a popular "minor" theatre implies, the book is as much interested in popular culture as it is in high art, if not more so.

Unfortunately, the price tag is a bit hefty. The book retails from Oxford University Press at $170. Get your local library to order it, though. It's worth it!

The Golden Dustman

I was pleased to attend Danielle Cammarota's lecture yesterday at the Kips Bay branch of the New York Public Library. Speaking to the Friends of Dickens New York, Cammarota talked about garbage collectors, or "dustmen" as they are traditionally known in Britain, as well as their appearances on stage.

According to Cammarota, dustmen first became popularized onstage with with the play Life in London, W.T. Moncrieff's adaptation of Pierce Egan's popular novel about Tom and Jerry, two swells who get into trouble and have adventures together with the lower classes of society. The piece featured a dancing dustman named "Dusty Bob" who reappeared in a number of other plays as well.

Dusty Bob frequently caroused and danced with a black woman named African Sal. Together, they also had a mixed-race child named Mahogany Mary. You can see all three of them in this George Cruickshank illustration from the British Library:

Dustmen were such popular characters onstage that it should come as no surprise that when Sadler's Wells adapted the Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend in 1865, the theatre titled the play The Golden Dustman.

Cammarota also brought in a copy of a poster advertising The Golden Dustman. Clearly, spectacle was important, as the poster announces (in much larger type than the name "Charles Dickens") "ENTIRELY NEW SCENERY by MR. JOHN JOHNSON". The poster goes on to list all of the locations displayed on stage:

Prologue--Sailor's Boarding-House near Wapping

ACT I:
Boffin's Bower in Holloway
A Street near the Temple, Fleet Street
Chambers of Mr. Eugene Wrayburn, Barrister-at-Law
A Church Yard near Temple Bar, by Moonlight
A Room in the House of Rumty Wilfer, near Battle Bridge

ACT II:
A Drawing-Room in Mr. Boffin's New House, in Portland Place
Another Apartment in Mr. Boffin's House
Exterior of Boffin's Bower by Moonlight

ACT III:
The Lock on the Thames at Sunset

ACT IV
Another Room in the House of Rumpty Wilfer
Drawing Room in Mr. Boffin's New House

The sets must have been a draw, given how much space is given to advertise them. (Far more space than is given to the actors.) Alas, I have been unable to find any images of what they looked like!

Mary Warner

The eminent tragedian of the Victorian era, William Charles Macready, was often paired with an equally skilled leading lady, Helen Faucit. After Faucit went her own way, however, another actress stepped up to Macready's side. She was Mary Warner, and also an important performer of note.

Born Mary Amelia Huddart, she came from a family of thespians and began acting when she was around 15 years old. By 1829, she was making appearances in Dublin, and the following year Macready discovered her talents and began casting her whenever possible. She made her Drury Lane debut on November 22, 1830 in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved playing Belvidera opposite Macready's Pierre.

Initially, there seems to have been some romantic attraction between the two. Macready, however, was married, and a devoted husband and father. While he and Miss Huddart were performing together in Manchester, the actors were fortunately able to fall into a purely professional relationship, with Macready recording in his diary that he was relieved to be set free from a temptation.

As Miss Huddart, she frequently played secondary female roles to Macready's regular leading lady, Helen Faucit. For instance, she took the role of Paulina to Faucit's Hermione in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Around 1836 or 1837 (it's unclear which) she married the tavern keeper Robert Warner, and as Mrs. Warner she took on increasingly strong roles, such Regan in Macready's production of King Lear.

When Macready took over the management of Covent Garden in 1837, Warner joined his company, and she followed him when he moved to the Haymarket Theatre two years later. It was at the Haymarket that Warner originated the role of Lady Arundel in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's play The Sea Captain.

Eventually, Warner rose to performing Lady Macbeth with Macready. In 1844, she took on the management of Sadler's Wells, along with Samuel Phelps and T.L. Greenwood. Her final performance in England came in 1851 at Sadler's Well, acting the title role of Mrs. Oakley in George Colman the Elder's The Jealous Wife. After that, she departed for America, where British actors frequently thought they could make their fortunes.

Unfortunately, Warner had developed cancer, and she eventually returned to London, where the retired Macready kindly gave her some financial assistance. In 1853, she filed for bankruptcy, and the following year she died. Macready saw to the upbringing of her son, while the wealthy philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts took charge of her daughter.

Throughout her career, many actors and critics paid tribute to Warner's considerable talents.  One appreciation came in the form of this anonymous acrostic, which appeared in the Theatrical Journal of 1839:

M ild in your natural character, thou art
A n able actress of the fiery mood;
R ebundant action, frequent strut and start,
Y our judgement wisely tells should be subdued.

W ell do your death-black eyes their part fulfill,
A nd flash to fury, or in scorn strike awe;
R ich in Evadne's portraiture of ill.
N o critic e'er condemned it; all who saw
E steemed it noble, thrilling, awful, grand.
R evived and cleansed by great Macready's hand!

Did Macready REALLY try to revive the drama?

The Victorian actor William Charles Macready often spoke of "reviving the drama." To him, this meant one thing: the return of verse tragedy. Far from reviving the drama, however, Macready did his part to crush it.

Shirley S. Allen might have been a little biased. She was a biographer of one of Macready's rivals, Samuel Phelps. However, in her book Samuel Phelps and Sadler's Wells Theatre, Allen makes a strong case for Macready acting like the villain in one of the melodramas he claimed to have despised.

When he first saw Phelps act in 1837, Macready wrote that he "displayed intelligence, occasionally great energy, some imagination--not much." Rather ominously, he added, "His best scene decidedly was his death." Macready planned to take over Covent Garden, and in spite of his lukewarm opinion of Phelps, he arranged to hire him.

First, however, Phelps had to make his debut at the Haymarket in the role of Shylock. He was an unqualified success, but his strength as an actor scared Macready more than excited him. The great tragedian recorded in his diary that "an actor's fame and his dependent income is so precious, that we start at every shadow of an actor."

Once Phelps joined Macready's company at Covent Garden, Macready made sure this upstart actor would never upstage him. Phelps made his debut as Jaffier in Venice Preserved by Thomas Otway, opposite Macready's own Pierre. Though the production was a success, Macready gave up the role of Pierre rather than appear with another actor who had garnered greater acclaim from the audience.

Phelps then appeared as Othello opposite Macready's Iago. Again, Phelps won the laurels, and again Macready was petty. He made Phelps act the part of Macduff to his own Macbeth, and aside from that, gave him only one other role (in Rob Roy) for a considerable time. Though Macready was paying Phelps handsomely, he would rather the actor not play at all than become a rival for his own glory.

Macready did make some progress toward reviving the drama with a production of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Lady of Lyons in 1838. Phelps was not allowed to perform in that piece, and most critics credited its success not to Macready, but to Helen Faucit, who played Pauline, the titular heroine. The following year, Macready premiered another Bulwer-Lytton play, Richelieu, with a title role written expressly for Macready.

Unfortunately, Macready quarreled with the owners of Covent Garden, and he and Phelps both ended up at the Haymarket during the summer of 1839, alternating in the two leading roles in Othello. Much to Macready's pain, Phelps received the better reviews. Macready demanded that the play be withdrawn, despite the fact it was attracting full houses. He set about looking for a new piece, and approached Robert Browning. Surely, if anyone could revive poetic drama in England, Browning could.

But Macready did not think highly of Browning's play King Victor. Taking over the management of Drury Lane, Macready looked for other playwrights to produce. He decided to stage Gerald Griffin's tragedy Gisippus, but he made a bad play even worse, revising it to divide one character into two different parts, just so no one would have a chance to challenge his own preeminence as the lead. 

In was in October of 1842 that Macready introduced his famous production of King John. Later that year, he staged the premiere of another new play, Westland Marston's The Patrician's Daughter, with Helen Faucit in the title role. The reviewers praised Faucit, Phelps, everyone but Macready. The play only lasted 11 performances. Macready turned down another tragedy, William Smith's Athelwold, because he felt there was not a sufficient leading role for himself.

Then, Macready finally turned to Browning, who more than a year before had given him the script to A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. Macready treated the play with contempt, though. In the past, he had invited authors to read their plays aloud to the cast. In this case, he assigned that duty to the prompter and left the room. Though he hadn't been present for the reading, Macready told the author that it had been a disaster and demanded a revised second act. Browning complied.

Macready eventually divorced himself from having anything to do with A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, assigning Phelps to take his place. Toward the end of the rehearsal process, Macready inserted himself again, suggesting Browning change the ending so that Phelps would be deprived of a dramatic death scene. Browning declined, and in his diary, Macready called the author "a very disagreeable and offensively mannered person." For his part, Browning saw the suggestion for what it was, a plot to avoid giving Phelps the opportunity of acting in a true tragedy.

According to Allen, the play premiered to "tumultuous applause." Phelps called for the author to come take a bow, but Browning declined. Macready was not called to the curtain, a fact that made him angry. Reviewer after reviewer, even those hostile to Macready, praised the play. Audiences flocked to see it, packing Drury Lane. Yet Macready pulled the play at the height of its popularity, never allowing it to be performed again under his management. Writing in his diary after the whole affair was over, Macready called Browning a "wretched insect."

The year 1843 saw the end of the monopoly Drury Lane and Covent Garden had enjoyed on "legitimate" drama in London. Macready had always argued that the monopoly was necessary, but in 1843, he asked the owners of Drury Lane for a decrease in rent. (He was also asking each actor to accept a one-third reduction in pay.) The owners declined.

After that, Macready drafted a petition to end the monopoly for which he had fought, and within weeks, the monopoly was gone. Macready, who was so intent on reviving the drama by bringing in talented new playwrights not only marred the works of playwrights (as with Griffin), belittled playwrights (as with Jerrold), and insulted playwrights (as with Browning), he seemed not to even know what a playwright was. He had suggested some revisions for Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy, which eventually became an adaptation called The Bridal. Macready then claimed ownership of the piece as if he had written it.

Phelps successfully revived the adaptation at Sadler's Wells, presenting the play 30 times in his first season of managing the theatre. In 1848, however, Macready wrote to Phelps about the play, saying, "as I intend to act it myself during my present engagement, I do not consider it right to extend the permission for performance at present." Phelps must have been confused. Since when did he need Macready's permission to perform a play the actor had not written?

Perhaps trying to save face, Macready then magnanimously granted Phelps a permission he had not asked for nor required. "You will therefore receive this note, if you please, as the requisite permission to perform the play of the Bridal at Sadler's Wells," Macready wrote a few days later.

When Macready finally retired in 1851, he did give Phelps some credit, praising the "learned and tasteful spirit of his productions." According to Allen's account, Phelps, not Macready, had actually done the most to revive the drama.

At the end of the 1856-57 season, Phelps chaired the Theatrical Fund Dinner. Charles Dickens gave a tribute to the actor, praising his "sensible subservience of the scene-painter and the mechanist to the real meaning of the play."

Dickens was a good friend of Macready, but he, too, saw the value of what Phelps had done.

The French Revolution and the London Stage

I recently read George Taylor's book The French Revolution and the London Stage, which tracks theatre on both sides of the channel from 1789 to 1805. It tells a fascinating story that makes me want to read more of the plays of that period.

Taylor's first chapter covers England and France in the year 1789. It so happens that on July 14th, when the French were storming the Bastille, audiences at the Haymarket Theatre in London watched Inkle and Yarico, a play by George Colman the Younger that was critical of the slave trade. People in both countries seemed to be calling out for freedom.

Chapter Two discusses the staging of the Revolution, and it is interesting to me how quickly theatres began re-enacting the events of the 14th of July. In August, freedom-loving citizens of London had multiple opportunities to see what had been accomplished by their brethren in France. John Dent produced a spectacle called The Triumph of Liberty; or, the Bastille at the Royal Circus. Astley's Royal Grove Amphitheatre followed that up with Paris in an Uproar; or, the Destruction of the Bastille. By the end of the month, Sadler’s Wells had jumped into the fray with Gallic Freedom; or, Vive la Liberté.

In Paris, historical dramas echoed recent events. Marie-Joseph Chénier's play Charles IX, which he had written in 1787, went into production at the Comédie Français. The story, about how the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise used Marie de Medici to get the king to authorize the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, had clear parallels with the present day. Scheming churchmen and foreign queens certainly didn't look very good in the play. The revolutionary Danton even claimed that "If Figaro killed the aristocracy, Charles IX will kill the royalty."

The following chapter discusses theatre after the Revolution but before the Terror. Chénier’s anti-clerical Henry VIII, banned in 1789, became a hit in Paris in 1791. The next year saw his new play Caius Gracchus, which looked back to Republican Rome for inspiration. The French also turned to Shakespeare, and in 1792 Jean François Ducis premiered his adaptation of Othello (a play later adapted into French by Alfred de Vigny). The French also staged numerous fêtes which celebrated the Revolution in grand public ceremonies.

For the British, however, censorship made it difficult for the theatres to speak openly about a Revolution that was becoming increasingly controversial. Instead, producers turned to gothic dramas that reflected the heightened sense of anxiety. The Haunted Tower premiered in 1789, The Siege of Belgrade in 1791, and The Pirates in 1792. Then, in 1794, John Philip Kemble produced his spectacular Lodoiska, featuring villainous noblemen, imprisoned maidens, and burning castles.

In a chapter on dramatizing the Terror, Taylor discusses the quintessential gothic drama, Matthew G. Lewis's The Castle Spectre. He notes that Dora Jordan played the ingénue, Angela. In the play, men are ineffective, and it is Angela who must stab the villainous Osmond. This event, Taylor says, parallels Charlotte Corday's very real murder of Marat, with the spectre perhaps representing the spirit of the slain Marie Antoinette, looking on and aiding the action.

The following chapter discusses the performers of the era, who seemed to be moving toward a greater naturalism. Taylor also spends a good deal of time on William Betty, the so-called "Infant Roscius" who began his career at age 10, playing adult roles to great acclaim. Apparently, both Kemble and George Frederick Cooke, the leading tragedians of the day, took a brief break from the stage while Bettymania burned itself out, then returned to what they had been doing before the young curiosity came to town.

Taylor argues that the diminutive Master Betty was in some ways a stand-in for Napoleon, the subject of his next chapter. The big play here is Pizarro, Richard Brinsley Sheridan's adaptation of the Incan epic by August von Kotzebue. Jordan again played the ingénue role, Cora, while Sarah Siddons played the weightier role of Pizarro's mistress, Elvira. Apparently, Sheridan expanded this latter role from what Kotzebue had originally written.

The final chapter covers the feeling of alienation many people felt in the wake of the Revolution and how this was reflected on stage. Taylor argues this alienation helped to create the new form of melodrama. Whether or not he is right in this, he certainly gives one food for thought.