SACRED
TO THE MEMORY OF
MR. JOSEPH GRIMALDI,
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE,
May 31st, 1837,
AGED FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS.

Any attempted summary of Grimaldi's peculiarities in this place would be an impertinence. There are many who remember him, and they need not be told how rich his humour was: to those who do not recollect him in his great days, it would be impossible to convey any adequate idea of his extraordinary performances. There are no standards to compare him with, or models to judge him by; all his excellences were his own, and there are none resembling them among the pantomime actors of the present day.

This is not said with any view of depreciating the abilities of the many clever actors we have in this peculiar department. Among a variety of others, Smith and Payne of Covent Garden, (not of Lombard-street), and Wieland, of Drury Lane, may be mentioned as possessing grotesque humour of no ordinary kind; while for mere feats of tumbling dexterity, Brown, King, and Gibson of the Adelphi, perhaps stand unrivalled. It is no disparagement to all or any of these actors of pantomime, to say, that the genuine droll, the grimacing, filching, irresistible clown left the stage with Grimaldi, and though often heard of, has never since been seen.[97]

[97] Tom Matthews, perhaps, presents at this time the nearest approach.

In private, Grimaldi was a general favourite, not only among his equals, but with his superiors and inferiors. That he was a man of the kindest heart, and the most child-like simplicity, nobody who has read the foregoing pages can for a moment doubt. He was innocent of all caution in worldly matters, and has been known, on the seller's warranty,[98] to give forty guineas for a gold watch, which, as it subsequently turned out, would have been dear at ten. Among many acts of private goodness may be mentioned—although he shrunk from the slightest allusion to the story—his release of a brother actor from Lancaster jail, under circumstances which showed a pure benevolence of heart, and delicacy of feeling, that would have done honour to a prince.

[98] The seller's warranty was doubtless that of some Jew money-lender, by which class of persons he seems to have been almost devoured: when their pressure became insupportable, or they pushed their claims to a consummation not too devoutly to be wished, and sent a sheriff's officer to enforce the demand, Joe was wont to accompany them to the shop of Mr. Crouch, a pawnbroker, in Ray-street, Clerkenwell, by whom the sum was immediately paid. When the hour approached for his appearance at the Wells, the messenger belonging to the theatre, always knew where to find him; and being told the sum required to redeem him, Joe would wait patiently till he returned and released him; he would then proceed to delight an audience, who had but a few minutes before threatened to pull the house down if he did not appear.

With far more temptations to indulge in the pleasures of the table than most men encounter, Grimaldi was through life remarkably temperate, never having been seen, indeed, in a state of intoxication. But he was a great eater, as most pantomime actors are, who enjoy good health, and abstain from dram-drinking; and it was supposed, at the time of his decease, that an attack of indigestion consequent upon too hearty a supper at too late an hour materially hastened, if it did not actually occasion, his death.

Many readers will ridicule the idea of a clown being a man of great feeling and sensibility: Grimaldi was so, notwithstanding, and suffered most severely from the afflictions which befel him. The loss of his wife, to whom he had been long and devotedly attached, preyed upon his mind to a greater or less extent for many years. The reckless career and dreadful death of his only son bowed him down with grief. The young man's notorious conduct had embittered the best portion of his existence: and his sudden death, when a better course seemed opening before him, had well-nigh terminated his unhappy father's days.

But although, in the weakened state in which he then was, the sad event preying alike upon his mind and body, changed Grimaldi's appearance in a few weeks to that of a shrunken, imbecile old man; and although, when he had in some measure recovered from this heavy blow, he had to mourn the loss of his wife, with whom he had lived happily for more than thirty years, he survived the trials to which he had been exposed, and lived to recover his cheerfulness and peace.

Deprived of all power of motion; doomed to bear, at a time of life when he might reasonably have looked forward to many years of activity and exertion, the worst bodily evils of the most helpless old age; condemned to drag out the remainder of his days in a solitary chamber, when all those who make up the sum of home were cold in death, his existence would seem to have been a weary one indeed; but he was patient and resigned under all these trials, and in time grew contented, and even happy.