And Such Comicalities
by William J. Thoms.
Originally published in Bentley's Miscellany (Richard Bentley) vol.3 (1838).
We must leave the subject of domestic fools and jesters for future consideration, and confine ourselves, in the following brief paper, entirely to the clowns of the modern pantomimes, which peculiar species of entertainment, be it observed in passing, is supposed by a learned antiquary to be derived from the old dumb shows formerly exhibited at fairs and inns, in which the fool was generally engaged in a struggle with Death, and which is distinctly alluded to by Shakspeare in his "Measure for Measure."[1]
To trace the gradual transformation of this dumb show into the splendid pageants now annually provided for the amusement of children of all ages by the metropolitan theatres would be a matter of laborious research, while the results would probably be far from satisfactory. "You shall seek all day ere you find it, and when you have it, it is not worth your search." The character of Harlequin alone has formed matter for weighty discussions among theatrical historians; and so varied have been the proposed derivations of his name, as to justify to the fullest the satirist, who described etymology as eruditio ad libitum.
The English stage is undoubtedly indebted to the Italian for Harlequin, as Italy is again to the lively Neapolitans, among whom the majority of what are styled pantomimic characters have assuredly had their rise. The Harlequin of the Italian stage does not, however, bear any very strong resemblance to the agile and particoloured gentleman who figures in our Christmas drolleries as the assiduous lover of the gentle Columbine, and the untiring tormentor of the Clown. In Italy he is at the present redolent of satire, full of sportive raillery, and jocose in the extreme. What he was formerly, let Addison describe.
"Harlequin's part is made up of blunders and absurdities: he is to mistake one name for another, to forget his errands, to stumble over queens, and to run his head against every post that comes in his way. This is all attended with something so comical in the voice and gestures, that a man who is sensible of the folly of the part can hardly forbear to be pleased with it."
Dominico, whose witticisms have been collected into a volume, under the title of "Arlequiniana," was one of the earliest and most celebrated performers of this peculiar character. Dominico was a great favourite of Louis the Fourteenth, and obtained by a well-timed joke permission for the Italian company to perform French plays in Paris. He it was who, going to see that monarch at supper, fixed his eyes so intently on a dish of partridges, that Louis, who was very fond of his acting, said to one of his attendants, "Give that dish to Dominico."——" And the partridges toa, sire?" was the shrewd inquiry of the Harlequin. Louis, penetrating his art, said, "And the partridges too." The dish was gold.
Thomassin was another distinguished performer in this line. But the greatest, perhaps, that ever existed was Bertinazzi, generally called Carlin, or Carlino. Carlino may perhaps be known to some of our readers, by some supposititious letters which have been published, purporting to have been interchanged between this actor and Pope Ganganelli. He was a native of Turin, and the son of an officer in the Sardinian service. He originally followed the profession of his father, on whose death, however, he devoted himself to the drama. The Harlequin of the Bologna company having suddenly taken his departure, to avoid the importunity of his creditors, Bertinazzi, to relieve the manager's embarrassment, undertook his characters unhesitatingly, and this with so much success, that, owing to his mask and costume, it was some days before the public suspected the change. In 1741, he visited Paris as the successor of Thomassin, whose loss the Parisians most deeply regretted; but, though he came before them with great disadvantages, Carlino, for such was the name he now adopted, instantly commanded their admiration. From this time forth, for a period of nearly forty years, during which he not only enacted Arlequin, but wrote very witty arlequinades in which to act, he enjoyed the undiminished favour of the good people of Paris. He was a man of great probity, and so universally esteemed both for his professional talents and private virtues, that it is said the whole city were unanimous as to the truth of two lines in his epitaph,—
"Toute sa vie il a fait rire;
Il à fait pleurer a sa mort."[2]
There is, we believe, no decided evidence as to the exact time when pantomimes were first introduced upon the English stage; but the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields has been supposed entitled to the exclusive honour of first bringing them forward. The harlequinades which the manager produced there in 1723 seem to have been so successful as to have excited the envy of his brethren of Drury Lane, who endeavoured either to ridicule or eclipse his performances by the introduction of a piece called Blind Man's Buff, supported by the freaks of eight harlequins. The Weekly Journal, speaking of it, says, "The thing was so ridiculous, there was no music to be heard but hissing."
In a pantomimic performance founded on the old story of Dr. Faustus, written by Monsieur Thurmond, with music by the celebrated Galliard, produced at Lincoln's Inn theatre in the December of this same year, and which was so successful, that on the first night of its performance the receipts of the house amounted to two hundred and sixty pounds, "Punch, Scaramouch, and Pierro enter in scholars' gowns and caps;" but though the publications of the day take repeated notice of it, and deem the piece so wonderful as to deserve a full account of the plot, no mention is made of Harlequin.
In a rapid but clever sketch of the state of theatrical amusement between the years 1700 and 1763, communicated to the London Chronicle, vol. xv, by a writer signing himself Theatricus,[3] we are told,—"Pantomime first dawned in the year 1702 at Drury Lane, in an entertainment called The Tavern Bilkers. It died the fifth night. It was invented by Weaver, a dancing master at Shrewsbury, who, from the encouragement of the nobility, invented a second, called The Loves of Mars and Venus, performed at the same theatre in the year 1716, with vast success; which occasioned Sir Richard Steele to write the following lines on the back of one of the play-bills at Button's Coffeehouse,—
'Weaver, corruptor of this present age,
Who first taught silent sins upon the stage.'
It was about this time that the taste of the town became vitiated. One remarkable instance I cannot forget. In January 1717, some dancers arrived from France, and with them one Swartz, a German. This man brought over two dogs, whom he had taught to dance the louvre and minuet. They were immediately engaged by Rich at ten pounds per night, and brought above twenty good houses, when the Othello of Booth, the Wildair of Wilks, and the Foppington of Cibber were neglected, and did not bring charges."
The popularity of these performances seems to have outlived the patience of the admirers of the legitimate drama; and the result was a riot in the year 1744, in which the philosopher of Strawberry Hill accidentally figured as a ringleader, who tells the story in his own admirable and lively style in a letter to Horace Mann.
"It costs me nothing, so I shall write on and tell you an adventure of my own. The town has been trying all the winter to beat pantomimes off the stage very boisterously, for it is the way here to make even an affair of taste and sense a matter of riot and arms. Fleetwood, the master of Drury Lane, has omitted nothing to support them, as they supported his house. About ten days ago he let into the pit great numbers of bear-garden bruisers (that is the term) to knock down everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces and drove them out: I was sitting very quietly in the side-boxes, contemplating all this. On a sudden the curtain flew up and discovered the whole stage filled with blackguards armed with bludgeons and clubs to menace the audience. This raised the greatest uproar, and amongst the rest, who flew into a passion but your friend the philosopher? In short, one of the actors, advancing to the front of the stage, to make an apology for the manager; he had scarce begun to say, 'Mr. Fleetwood—' when your friend, with a most audible voice and dignity of anger, called out, 'He is an impudent rascal!' The whole pit huzzaed and repeated the words; only think of my being a popular orator! But what was still better, while my shadow of a person was dilating to the consistence of a hero, one of the chief ringleaders of the riot, coming under the box where I sat, and pulling off his hat, said, 'Mr. Walpole, what would you please to have us do next?' It is impossible to describe to you the confusion into which this apostrophe threw me. I sank down into the box, and have never since ventured to set my foot into the playhouse. The next night the uproar was repeated with greater violence, and nothing was heard but voices calling out, 'Where's Mr. Walpole? where's Mr. Walpole?' In short, the whole town has been entertained with my prowess, and Mr. Conway has given me the name of Wat Tyler."[4]
But, heigh presto! now for the Clown, and he is sketched in a few words by the pencil of a master, "round-faced, goggle-eyed, knock-kneed, but agile to a degree of the dislocated, with a great smear from his mouth, and a cap on his head, half fool's, and half cook's." No one need ask from whose hand the picture is. There is Leigh Hunt in every touch. Nor who sat for the likeness, for there is Joe Grimaldi in every feature. Before, however, discoursing upon how pregnant with humour were those features, we must, as we have paid harlequin the compliment of inquiring into his family history, do the same by his merrier playmate. And this, too, if for no other reason, at least for that which induced Lord —'s gardener to put his unoffending son into the stocks by the side of the boy whom he caught pilfering apples, "just, ye see, for the sake o' uniformity!"
But this same family history is as intricate, if not as dry, as a Peerage case in the House of Lords. The Clown of the present day is indubitably descended from one common stock, the Vice of the earlier drama, with Mr. Punch, whose history has been collected with great industry and ability by Mr. Payne Collier, and illustrated by the magic graver of George Cruikshank. Indeed, so lately as the year 1800, the character of Punch was substituted for that of the Clown in the pantomime of "Harlequin Amulet, or the Magic of Mona." Those, too, who had the good fortune to witness Mazurier's admirable performance of Punch at Covent Garden Theatre, some few years since, will see the truth of this proposition.
Again, our clown can undoubtedly call cousins with Scaramouche, a character invented by Tiberio Fiorilli, whose extraordinary abilities may be judged of from one couplet of the verses subscribed beneath his portrait:
"Il fut le maitre de Moliere,
Et la nature fut le sien."
His life published by Constantini, who himself invented the character of Merzetin, and was ennobled for his talents by the King of Poland, is a curious little volume, to which further reference will be made upon some future occasion.
The more immediate relative, however, of the modern clown, is the Pierrot, a character now very rarely introduced upon the stage. Pierrot, who was in the Italian pantomimes nothing more than a simple-minded servant, had his intellects so sharpened upon the French stage, as to rival in wit, mischief, and malice the other heroes of harlequinade. Pierrot still figures occasionally in masquerade scenes, where he may be easily recognised by his flowing white dress, and the extreme length of his sleeves. A Pierrot was very properly produced in that scene of the little piece entitled "One hour, or the Carnival Ball," in. which Charles Mathews danced the Tarantêlla so cleverly; and another attended as Clown at an exhibition of rope-dancing, some two or three years since, at Astley's.
The Clown of the present day seems gradually to have appropriated to himself the peculiarities of these three characters, formerly so distinct, and which we have already seen figuring together in Monsieur Thurmond's pantomime of Doctor Faustus.
The first attempt at this incorporation was probably made by Follet, whose performance of the Clown was so highly relished by George the Third, that that monarch is said to have visited the theatre repeatedly, for the purpose of witnessing one of Follet's most celebrated tricks, namely, his swallowing a carrot, and which we may reasonably suppose, from its attraction, to have been a very ludicrous piece of acting.
Signor Delpini, who has been celebrated by Miles Peter Andrewes,
"I'm all for fun and frolic, whim and glee,
Signor Delpimi is the man for me,"
was the contemporary of Follet. Originally an actor of Pierrot, he very frequently played pantaloon to old Bologna's clown; this he did in the year 1801 in Harlequin Almanack, in which young Bologna played harlequin, and the well-known Mrs. Wybrow, columbine. He does not a to have adopted the character of the "Jean and slippered pantaloon" in his old age only, inasmuch as we find him showing his antics as clown in "Harlequin Teague, or the Giant's Causeway," produced in 1782, and in the following year playing pantaloon to old Grimaldi's clown in "Harlequin's Wedding."
Delpini, who was indicted, in 1787, for introducing speaking accompaniments, and threatened with
"Water and bread for calling out 'Roast Beef!'"
roast beef! being literally the offending words, was a favourite with George the Fourth when Prince of Wales. The Prince generally patronised his benefit; and indeed it would have been difficult for any reasonably good-natured man to have resisted so droll an appeal as Delpini used to make to him upon the occasion. "Ah, Mister Prince, you please come to my benefit. If you no come, I must go live inside your papa's big house!" The King's Bench has had many names bestowed upon it, but none more strictly correct than "your papa's big house."
Laurent, whose graceful performance of serious pantomime—a species of theatrical entertainment now rarely produced—was the admiration of the play-going public at the commencement of the present century, was also a very clever Clown. He has had the credit awarded to him of having given to the character its present shape, or, as it is said, of having Anglicised the Pierrot. But it would seem that this had been previously attempted, and with considerable success, by Follet.
Laurent was a very accomplished fencer, and an accident which he once met with in a fencing bout, is so remarkable as to deserve especial mention. It was during the performance of a serious pantomime, when, in the business of the stage, he was engaged in a combat with small swords. His adversary's foot slipping as he was making a pass, his foil struck Laurent on the cheek-bone so forcibly, as to snap off the button and a small portion of the foil, apparently inflicting no other injury upon him than a slight scratch by the side of one of his eyes, which had the effect, however, of turning the eye-ball on one side. The broken piece of the foil could nowhere be found, although the button of it had been picked up on the spot; and it was not until after the lapse of a week or two, that Laurent, finding himself disappointed in his hopes of the eye-ball resuming its natural position without surgical assistance, consulted an oculist upon the case, when the missing fragment was, upon examination, discovered in one corner of the eye, from whence it was immediately removed with as little pain as had been felt at its introduction.
Among the Clowns of the present century, Bradbury, Paulo, and Southby are perhaps, next to Grimaldi, the most remarkable.
Bradbury's Clown was distinguished more by violence of action than by that greatest of all requisites, humour. His leaps were of astonishing height and extent, and his performance altogether was characterised by a daring and reckless display of animal power little likely to be frequently rivalled. One of Bradbury's leaps, technically called the Lion's leap, used to bring down thunders of applause in Dublin, where it was he alone could perform it. But it is said that a certain clever musician, whose love of fun and pun is well known, and who was then in the orchestra of the Dublin theatre, took up the character of clown at the termination of Bradbury's engagement, and performed the whole of it!
Kean, it is well known, was an admirable harlequin; and the gentleman above alluded to is said, in the very same season in which he played in pantomime, to have displayed a versatility of talent which few can boast of. He was leader of the band, and composer of music. He produced a successful farce. At the termination of Braham's engagement, when Dublin was all for operas, he quitted the orchestra for the stage, and played all Braham's parts with considerable effect; and finally, as if to show that he could be everything by turns, and that to him might be applied what Johnson engraved upon the monument of his countryman, "Nihil tetigit quid non ornavit!" he took Bradbury's character of Clown, and with it the Lion's leap, to the unbounded delight of the Dublin audience.
Bradbury is dead, and so is Paulo, whose Clown, if more humorous than Bradbury's, was spoiled by that besetting sin, vulgarity.
From this fault Southby's performance of the character was remarkably free. He was, we believe, a pupil of Laurent's; at all events his performance bore strong marks of that neatness and finish for which Laurent's clown was distinguished. Southby was principally engaged at Astley's, but has now, we believe, quitted the stage, and devotes himself solely to his pyrotechnical pursuits. Instead of starring it in the provinces, he now stars it at Vauxhall, where his labours throw a very brilliant light upon that somewhat obscure passage in the Critic, in which the author speaks of "two revolving suns and three revolving moons." Southby beats Sheridan hollow, for he will show a dozen revolving suns and moons upon any night of the week on which Messrs. Gye will commission him to do so.
The equestrian Clown at Astley's, as the Mister Merryman who attends the horsemanship at that theatre is professionally designated, has, as the reader has before now no doubt painfully experienced, a certain series of standard jokes, which have remained unchanged any time these twenty years. It is, perhaps, not generally known that these jokes were for the most part coined originally by the Westminster scholars. The fact is so, however. The jokes were made by the Westminsters, and brought out at Astley's, whee the Clown, having been fee'd and properly instructed how to perpetrate them, used to fire them; the rival makers listening with the greatest anxiety to ascertain which told best. Those which were most successful became of course stock jokes.
What Boswell did for Johnson has Boz well done for Grimaldi.
The book which contains his Biography, edited by Mr. Dickens, is a good one; there is no straining after effect, no seeking to elevate the subject into a hero, but it tells with kindly feeling the varied story of a chequered life, and paints very vividly the hopes and disappointments, the histrionic glories and painful realities which fell to the lot of one of the simplest-minded and honestest men who ever won the fair favour of the public.
Alas, poor Yorick! He was indeed a fellow of infinite jest. How surely was every one of his hearty grins re-echoed by a thousand. What magic was there in his quiet mirth, making age and care throw off for awhile all thoughts that overburthened them. His courtships so seductive who could resist! Petty larceny with him were pretty larceny. He did appropriate unto himself purses, strings of sausages, and all such unconsidered trifles as fell in his way, with a grace which would have made the Lord Chief Justice himself sum up for his acquittal. And as for glozing and flattering, noble lords now-a-days need not quarrel for superiority in this respect, for Joe Grimaldi could outgloze them all. If his drollery had at times a smack of vulgarity, a breadth of colouring, the smallest spice, as it were, of that ruder mirth in which our grandfathers delighted, he did so varnish it over with his irresistible humour, that the veriest prude looked on and laughed, without once deeming it essential to hide her enjoyment behind her fan.
In none of his performances was this rare quality, which so distinguished Grimaldi from all other Clowns, more clearly manifested than in the pantomime of Harlequin Gulliver, which, to the best of our judgment, was one of his masterpieces. Cruikshank has immortalized the Brobdignagians of this piece in one of the admirable sketches with which he has illustrated Grimaldi's life; but this pantomime alone would have furnished him with subjects for a dozen such. There was the Brobdignagian Princess Glumdulditch in a go-cart with, if we recollect rightly, poor Joe as her doll. Then, again, there was the gigantic canary, which Grimaldi pronounced, in his unctious voice, to be a "Casso-wa-ry," and with which he sang the duet beginning,
"Say, little, foolish, fluttering thing,
If you're a cock-bird, why not sing?"
he being all the time quietly seated on a Brobdignagian quartern loaf into which he might have eaten his way like a mouse into a cheese.
Then who but Cruikshank could paint the inconveniences Joe endured from the bayonets of the Liliputian soldiery as they marched through the palace gate which he was bestriding? or show how, when the King of Liliput's palace was in flames, he plied the Liliputian engines, and extinguished the fire in a way which would have delighted Swift? and yet "without any offence in't, only in jest," as Hamlet says.
We ought not, perhaps, to insist so strongly on Grimaldi's merits in Harlequin Gulliver, as we never saw him in Mother Goose, in which he first established his reputation. The European Magazine for January 1807, speaking of this piece, says, "Grimaldi, whom we always believed to possess talents that were not sufficiently called into exercise at May Lane, made his first appearance at Covent Garden as the clown in this piece; and his performance astonished us by the variety of his tricks, and the neatness and promptitude with which they were executed."
From this criticism we may justly infer that Grimaldi's humour, like good wine, mellowed with age; for it was long after this period that old Chapman, who was regarded as the best theatrical teacher of his day, and the finest judge of acting, was heard to declare that the greatest enjoyment he knew at the theatre was to go in front, and see Grimaldi in a new pantomime! This was a compliment to Grimaldi's genius, which was not even surpassed by that paid to it by John Kemble; who, standing at the wings one night, watching with great delight Joe's drolleries, exclaimed in his musical and measured phrase,—"My sister never did any thing finer in her life than that man is doing now, in his way—in his way!"
We have said that Grimaldi's humour got richer and racier as he grew older. It was so: but, alas! while the spirits mellowed, the vessel that contained them was rapidly decaying; and, for some seasons before he quitted the stage, he whose nimble wit and ready drollery drew roars of laughter from all who witnessed his performances, sunk as he left the stage into a decrepid and enfeebled man.
And now farewell, Joe Grimaldi! We had thought to have told a tale or two which were once current touching your encounters with those who sought to despoil you. How, after being robbed one night, in those times when there were watchmen upon the face of the earth, thou didst follow the spoiler upon hands and knees until he came to his box, reassumed his great-coat and lantern, and walked forth, like any other guardian of the night, to look after bigger rogues than himself! How, on another occasion, in the neighbourhood of Bagnige Wells, thou didst escape the fangs of two footpads, who simultaneously clapped thee on either shoulder, by falling suddenly to the ground, and letting thy foes fall with thee, and how thou didst then escape from them by throwing a somerset, while they rightly swore thou must be either the devil or Joe Grimaldi.
But, as thou hast made no record of these tales, we must reject them as apocryphal, and substitute in lieu thereof a quatrain, which we would fain pass off for
JOE GRIMALDI'S EPITAPH.
Great once in droll scenes, in a grave
He doth now attention crave;
For, since death took Joe Grimaldi,
Who can doubt but we must all die!
1. "— merely, thou art Death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet run'st toward him still."
Measure for Measure, act 3, sc. 1.
2. Encyclopèdie des Gens du Monde, Tome iv.
3. Malcolm's "Anecdotes of London in the Eighteenth Century," vel. ii. p. 247.
4. The reader who would wish for further information on the pantomimical characters, is referred to the chapter so entitled in D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, where he will find abundance of materials collected upon the subject. Has Mr. D'Israeli never seen Mr. Collier's observations on the espee de boys bien dorée, given by Panurge to Triboullet, (see Punch and Judy, page 12,) that no other allusion is made to the "light sword of harlequin, which had hitherto baffled his most painful researches," than that Dr. Clarke had discovered it amongst the dark mysteries of Ancient Mythology?