Death and Mr. Pickwick (17 page)

1828

A retired scenery painter, who had worked on many of Joseph Grimaldi's shows, decided to pay a visit to the old clown, as he happened to be in the area. Grimaldi hobbled to the door and was evidently pleased to see the man, but all the same did not invite him in, despite a heavy hint that it was a bit cold on the doorstep and that it was silly not to have worn a scarf. They continued chatting in the doorway – until there came a strange muffled cry from below. Grimaldi appeared immediately uncomfortable.

‘What is that?' said the visitor. ‘Have you got yourself a dog, Joe?'

‘No, it is not a dog,' said Grimaldi.

‘What, then?'

The noise came again.

‘What is that, Joe?'

‘I suppose I must show you. Come in.'

They descended to a basement. Grimaldi opened a door – and the horrified visitor was met with the sight of JS in a dim room, straitjacketed and belted to a chair. The moment the door opened, JS flexed his hands under the restraints, and his face adopted a pose of theatrical shock with the mouth exaggeratedly open; but the next instant, he drew his chin shyly into his chest. ‘Go away,' he said in a weak, pitiful voice.

Around him were pieces of discarded furniture, including a wardrobe with a missing door, which revealed a rack of old stage costumes. There were also chairs with abraded upholstery and broken legs, one with a label saying ‘Seddon's' hanging down from underneath the seat. In a corner were dusty bales of velvet recognisable as old theatrical curtains, and a pile of coal beneath a chute. The windows were greasy and admitted little light. Slops of food lay all over the floor, apparently spat out, and food also stained JS's front. Suddenly he clenched his teeth and snarled.

‘This is my son,' said Grimaldi, and he observed the mingling of disbelief and disgust in the visitor's face.

‘It cannot be, it
cannot
be. I remember you training him, when he was a boy.'

‘It is not hopeless. In time, we believe, he will recover, and return to the stage.'

‘How often is he this bad?'

‘Sometimes he calms, and if my wife and I believe it is safe, we loosen the restraints. It is worst at night, when he is strapped down in bed. Dreams come to him, and he howls at what he sees.'

*   *   *

In the summer of the following year, JS Grimaldi had recovered enough for posters to be displayed outside Sadler's Wells Theatre, informing the public that the management had recruited JS to perform twelve favourite scenes from his father's repertoire.

‘I've seen plenty of actors have a drink to steady their nerves,' said the curtains man to the props man, in the wings, just before the performance was due to start, ‘but I have
never
seen a clown in that state.' He looked in the direction of JS, whose blue plumed wig stood lopsidedly to the left, and whose make-up was asymmetrically applied, with the left eye smudged and the lip paint in a more pronounced curve to the right. JS wandered around aimlessly, talking to himself.

‘What's he got to do first?' said the props man.

‘A song – and one which is a godsend. It is
just
possible the audience will think his drunkenness is part of the act.'

The orchestra struck up, the curtains man pulled on the rope, and JS staggered on stage. He bowed to the audience. The orchestra gave him his cue, and JS looked towards the back rows – his painted mouth opened, but no song emerged. He waved to the conductor to stop, and said: ‘Again.' The cue was missed a second time. Once more, Grimaldi waved for the music to stop. Murmurs began in the audience. Then JS half sang and half spoke a few lines he recalled, without the accompanying music:

She swallowed one glass, and it was so nice,

She tipp'd off another in a trice;

The glass she fill'd till the bottle shrunk

And this … this little woman … they say got …

An irate man stood up in the second row. ‘
You're
bloody drunk!'

Catcalls and boos came in squalls. Another man in the audience stood and threw a bottle of stout at the clown, hitting him in the badly daubed eye.

‘You could have blinded me!' screamed JS. He bent, with difficulty, and picked up the bottle, which by some miracle had not broken, and hurled it with a madman's strength towards the ceiling. It spun, hit an upper tier and shattered, spraying glass over the tier below. There were shrieks, and cries of being cut.

‘Serves you right!' shouted JS. ‘Ha ha!'

The manager had no choice. Going on stage, he grabbed JS by the neck and pushed him into the wings. The audience cheered and hooted their approval.

‘You're finished, Grimaldi.'

‘No – let me get back on stage!' There was terror in the clown's face, and he stretched out his arms, as though he could clutch the show as a physical object.

‘Kick him out into the street,' the manager said to his deputy. ‘I'll quieten the audience down.' With a wide smile, and a hand raised in friendliness, he walked on stage.

*   *   *

It was an afternoon in Whitechapel two summers on, and there was hope, commerce and energy. Carts pulled by man, dog and horse, all laden with goods from the wharves, gave a businesslike buzz, while local breweries and sugar refineries scented the air. The sound of hammering and sawing emerged from numerous small workshops. There were fine public houses too, whose large doors welcomed in the customers, as did all their decorations, which caught the sun – the etched glass, the chandeliers, the mirrors, the smiling landlords on the doorsteps. Tanned faces of rivermen sitting by beers gave the impression of happy souls who had just finished their working day. Few on the streets of Whitechapel manifested imminent despair. The son of Joseph Grimaldi was one who did.

He wandered the pavement, on which the soles of his worn-out napless slippers flapped. His face was wasted and pale. In between these lower and upper limits of the physical man were trousers worn through at the knees, a scuffed belt which hung loosely from the hips, and a stained shirt. He had been dismissed from the Whitechapel Pavilion two days before.

‘Don't have to go far to get blued these days,' he muttered to himself. He had spotted a residential house ahead, with a man on its steps flourishing a jug of beer, beckoning to passers-by. He purchased a glassful, swallowed lustily, wiped his mouth, licked his fingers, thanked the man and drifted on.

He approached the Black Bull public house in Aldgate High Street. The gateway was a fine piece of wrought iron surmounted by a lamp, which Grimaldi swayed before and admired for a few moments, as though its sturdiness met with his approval, and the lamp implied its hospitality. He walked underneath, smiling at a pictorial sign of the house's name nailed to the wall, and entered a coffee room. Here, coachmen stood smoking, drinking and laughing. One of the coachmen, a smart, stout fellow with large buttons on his jacket, took a single look at the newcomer, sneered, and then called out in a Suffolk accent: ‘Anne! You're needed.' From a doorway behind the bar a fearsome-looking landlady emerged. The coachman pointed with his pipestem towards Grimaldi's son.

‘Out!' she said. ‘This is a respectable house.'

‘Now now, Abbess,' said Grimaldi.

‘Don't you dare call her Abbess!' said the coachman. He pushed Grimaldi out of the door.

JS eventually found a shabby establishment in a back street, and sat at a far table away from other customers, where the landlord said he would allow him to drink. Here, in conversation with no one, he discussed the events that had brought him to this point.

‘Too good for the Wells. Drury Lane – same! Whitechapel, the Pavilion, they'll have you. Have a fresh start. Long way out, not much competition. They'll take someone the big places don't want. Not a large audience, but if they like you at the Pavilion, they like you. Nice boxes. May get a part in a nautical drama.' He sniffed, aware of the odour of fried fish straying through an open window. ‘Always liked a flounder. Not much in my stomach today.' Another swallow. ‘So I went to the daddy of the Pavilion, I know all about him. Used to sell cats' meat. And it showed. A cats' meat man – that is what he will always be. Well, he took me on, then he says, only three weeks later, he says, “I saw your father. You are his
dregs
.” Should stick to selling cats' meat.'

He tipped back his head to drain every drop from his glass, and went on to the street, stumbling in the direction of the Pavilion. Eventually he came to a rest against the drunkard's traditional support, a lamppost, near the theatre. ‘Cats' meat,' he said. He continued to stand against the lamppost, the metal warmed by the sun. He fell asleep, still propped against the post. When he awoke the crowds were emerging from the theatre. It was night and the lamp was lit, and he had some recollection of the lamplighter giving him a prod. He heard a young woman saying to an older: ‘Wasn't that character horrible?'

‘He deserved all he got,' said the other.

‘I will
not
be beaten,' said JS, pushing himself away from the lamppost.

*   *   *

Over a year passed. It was late November 1832. Mrs Walker, the plump widow who ran the guest house at Pitt Street, Tottenham Court Road, had lodged many actors in the past. As long as they kept their noise down she didn't mind. Her latest lodger was more talkative, and friendlier, than most.

From the time they had met, he had teased her about her surname, saying, according to the common phrase: ‘I'll pay my rent on time, or my name's Walker.' In due course, she had spoken to Mr J. S. Grimaldi about his roles as Scaramouch in
Don Juan
and Black Caesar in
The Slave's Revolt
, both on the same bill at the Tottenham Street Theatre. Before long, she had taken quite a fancy to him, and when she gave him a bowl of mutton-head soup, he said to her as he supped: ‘This is the best jemmy soup I have ever had.'

‘Do you really think so?'

‘It is. The strength is coming back to me, Mrs Walker. I shall be ready for my next performance because of your soup.'

‘Oh Mr Grimaldi, such flattery!'

‘I shall get you a complimentary ticket for a show – my name is good enough for that.'

‘I'm not one for theatregoing, Mr Grimaldi. But just this once, for you, I shall.'

‘You shall see the strength your soup brings to my limbs.'

The next day she found a ticket on her kitchen table; and, intrigued by the theatrical ability of her soup, she attended the performance and concluded that, if ever a boiled sheep's head could perform the great Shakespearean roles, it would be hers.

Two days later, early on the Sunday evening, she sat in her parlour and she heard the street door open and close, followed by footfalls on the stairs. They were heavy and irregular, and as she had found liquor in Mr Grimaldi's room, she suspected her lodger to be intoxicated. This was acceptable, as long he was quiet. Once his room was shut, she heard nothing more, and she presumed he was in bed.

There came the most terrible howling from above.

Running upstairs, she knocked on Grimaldi's room, but the howling continued unabated. Receiving no answer, she opened the door, and saw her lodger vomiting into a chamberpot, his body shaking with a violence she had never witnessed in her life.

Grimaldi moaned, uttered incoherent syllables, and fell back on the bed. He was feverish, with face, neck and hands all inflamed.

‘Oh Mr Grimaldi, you are burning up,' she said, feeling his forehead.

He screamed, and insofar as she could understand his words, they were of being consumed by flames from within. Then his arms lashed out randomly against the bed, to right and to left, and she was terrified.

The lodger from the ground floor, disturbed by the noise, came upstairs to investigate and poked his head round the door. Mrs Walker told him to fetch the local physician, Dr Langley, without a moment's delay.

Upon arrival, the doctor looked calmly through his silver spectacles and said he would try Indian herbs. When these had no effect, he said: ‘I would notify his family.'

Opening the chest of drawers, she found a letter signed ‘Your father', with an address at the top. She scribbled a note, ran next door, and asked a boy – whom she knew worked in a stable, and so might be fast – to deliver it.

*   *   *

It was late when Joseph Grimaldi heard the knock. In another five minutes, he would have attempted the painful ascent of the staircase to bed. As the knock did not cease, he made his way slowly to the door, where a sullen youth he did not know thrust a scrap of paper into his hand. He read the few lines of pencil, which stated that his son was ill in a house in Pitt Street. The note urged him to come as soon as possible.

‘But I cannot leave my wife,' he said. ‘She is ill herself, upstairs in bed. She is not able to use her limbs, and can barely speak. I couldn't leave her even if I had the strength to do so.'

The boy shrugged, and said: ‘Well, I have done my part.' He turned away.

‘Wait – there is a friend of mine, Mr Glendinning, who has a printing business near Tottenham Court Road. Sometimes he works through the night. Would you be so good as to deliver a message to him?'

*   *   *

At Pitt Street, Dr Langley and Mrs Walker remained by the younger Grimaldi's bedside. He had been quiet during the previous half-hour, as though the raging fire had burnt itself out. The doctor closed his bag, and added that there was nothing else to do but allow the patient to rest. ‘I will look in tomorrow morning,' he said. ‘Eh? What's that?'

Grimaldi's cracked lips moved with an incomprehensible whisper. The doctor put his ear close to the mouth. ‘He seems to be saying something about “my poor master”. Who could that be?'

‘I have no idea, Doctor.'