Death and Mr. Pickwick (14 page)

There was a burst of dramatic chords from the orchestra, and two men clashed on stage with swords – one was run through and died. On loped a howling mad-boy; then a beautiful woman, who lamented her fickle lover. A poor wretched man rattled his chains, bemoaning that he rotted in prison for a crime he did not commit. There was a fugitive escaping from barking dogs. Then a dagger through the heart for a dishonoured man and the rising of a ghost. There was a singsong of the cheerfullest sort. All the time the scenery changed, becoming, in extraordinary succession, a sinister forest, a haunted castle, a crumbling church, a thriving market – all these could be seen during the half-hour at Richardson's show, and all were painted to the highest theatrical standards. A specially triumphant scene, earning great applause, occurred when a black-hearted villain was dragged through a trapdoor into hell – the demons bore pitchforks, horns and arrowhead tails, and the villain's face was lit up from below as he screamed at the prospect of damnation. This was in contrast to the quiet dignity of the spectral lady in her diaphanous dress, as she overlooked his descent. When the villain reappeared to take his bow, a clown poked his face through the curtain, and, much to the feigned indignation of the actor playing the villain, the clown shouted out: ‘Don't believe any of this! It's gammon! All gammon! Don't believe it at all!' The audience screamed with laughter and the clown pulled his head back behind the curtain, while the villain completed his bow.

 

*

THERE IS A RED AND
black ringbinder in Mr Inbelicate's library, whose spine bears the label ‘CLOWNS'. Inside is a montage of greasepainted faces, and a paragraph pondering the question of why a clown might appear evil – noting that, with just a slight alteration of expression, a clown's eyes and mouth could seem to be gloating at another's misfortune.

An image of the clown in Richardson's show is on the next page, with his face poking through the curtains. There follows a description of the tour of Richardson's show to Chatham in Kent: the wagons trundling down the roads, loaded with equipment and disassembled booths, all destined for a field. Men proceeded to nail red and black posters on hoardings and trees, all over Chatham.

A small boy, who shall play some part in the events of this history, once looked at such a poster. He held his father's hand, they approached the hoarding, he begged to be taken to the show!

Before long, that boy was in the audience, and on stage was that clown! The clown appeared at the end of the show, when Mr Richardson himself strode out from the wings – Richardson gave the crowd his sincere thanks, and announced that the performance would begin again in a quarter of an hour. It was then that the clown peeped out from the curtain, and said to the audience: ‘Don't believe a word! It's all gammon! Gammon!' The rows rocked with laughter, as did that boy. During the next weeks, he pestered his father to take him to London to see another clown, the greatest clown of all, the one and only Grimaldi!

Let us imagine the king of clowns in his dressing room, as he prepares for the show.

There is Grimaldi, scrubbing and drying his naked face. In a little while, with two fingers he starts applying white bismuth around his eyes and mouth. The fingers move to other parts of his face, whitening all except for the areas to be filled with different colours, principally a carmine triangle on each cheek. Grimaldi uses his hand as a palette, swirling his fingers around a little well in the centre, warming up the greasepaint so it can be applied more smoothly. Soon, in the mirror, is the finished face smiling back at him. Now he dons his costume, including a blue crest wig, a cutaway ornamental shirt, and white baggy knee breeches.

On stage he goes!

Merely to behold Grimaldi was to be entertained. Quite unlike the eyes of other men, the eyes of Grimaldi revealed more than one soul, and each soul vanished in a moment, and another came – sometimes the second appeared before the first had departed. One eye was the eye of the forbidding schoolmaster, while the other eye, independently, was the schoolboy up to mischief, then both eyes became the slimy frog sparkling in the light of a will-o'-the-wisp. The eyes were so loose in their sockets as to suggest they might easily escape and roll around the face.

Perhaps these were illusions created by the mobile eyebrows, for there were more muscles packed into the face of Grimaldi than the face of any normal human being. His nose could hook, it could shiver with fear, swirl with ecstasy and lengthen as the nostrils tugged down in contempt. His whole visage twitched and moved, and the cheeks pullulated, as though flexible egg-cases were inside his jowls, waiting to spawn a nest of snakes.

And what a mouth!

It gaped so wide that his lower jaw might have been a knight's visor that could swivel below his chin. Grimaldi would hold back his head and feed a string of sausages into that black hole circled by red, and such a long, long, long string that it could have reached down into the depths of his entrails. When the last sausage was past his lips, he would revolve his stomach and shimmy, and the drums would play a roll, as though the sausages were spinning inside his belly. Even then his appetite was not satisfied! He placed a stolen platter of tarts at his lower lip, and the tarts slid, one after another, finding oblivion in that vast mouth.

And his laugh!

Other men laugh with the lips, and the lungs, and the stomach; with Grimaldi, it was all these too,
but it was the whole body that laughed –
a quivering laughter-wave that passed through his frame, and threatened to crumble him apart. No human being should laugh like this and survive.

The audience howled and rocked with pleasure, just as they did outside the print shops, as the performance of the great Grimaldi continued. A fragile vase was broken by the clown. A coal scuttle was worn as a hat. A painting was defaced. A valuable book was scribbled upon. Anyone else who walked on stage was mimicked with a Grimaldi swagger and a stealing of a pocket watch, which was then deposited in the clown's amazingly expansive pocket.

That astonishing pocket! That incredible, infinite pocket! What could it not hold or bring forth? Not only stolen sausages, but a lighted candle, even a kettle of boiling water!

The boy from Chatham clapped and nodded his head in approval as though he were a connoisseur of clowning, as if the great clown had done things exactly right. In the lobby, when the show was over, the boy assaulted his parents with questions on one subject: clowns.

‘Do clowns
always
eat so many sausages?'

‘Goodness me!' said his father. ‘I suppose so.'

‘But if they do – where do they get them?'

The mother smirked to the father. ‘Well, answer him.'

‘They buy them at the butcher's, like anyone else.'

‘But what if they do not have the money to buy sausages?' said the boy. ‘Are they forced to steal?'

‘Then they would be doing wrong.'

‘I expect people would forgive them. Do you think they are born with a big mouth?'

‘Perhaps they stretch it by putting two fingers in and pulling on each side for five hours a day,' said his father.

‘Do you think they are ever sad?'

‘I don't know – perhaps.'

*   *   *

Let us try to answer the boy's last question.

 

*

17 August 1801

JOSEPH GRIMALDI WAS NOT ALWAYS
the clown on stage. One August night, in a pantomime at Sadler's Wells, he made a showy entrance on the boards by means of leather, weaponry and bluster, sporting a gigantic belt, sword, pistols, scarlet bandana and boots, as the second in command of a gang of Genoese desperadoes. One of his pistols, however, was concealed within his boot – and at a certain point in the action, this pistol was required for use. So Grimaldi's fingers delved into the boot, and he pulled on the firearm within.

It was unfortunate that the handle snagged on a loose stitch, and the trigger alone received his pull. The pistol fired straight into Grimaldi's boot.

How the audience laughed!

Grimaldi, ever the performer, limped as though the script demanded a limp, and then, for further comedy, he sniffed with great ostentation the fog rising from his boot, for the explosion of the charge had set fire to the stocking, and he wafted the smoke towards his nostrils. He asked the front row, in an aside, if anyone had a nice piece of haddock he could smoke on his toes. Thus he continued, as the clown, even when not a clown, until the curtain fell.

The moment the curtain struck the floor – as though he had been held up only by the gossamer of pantomime – Grimaldi collapsed. He cried out in agony.

Desperadoes and stagehands carried Grimaldi to the dressing room. So great was the pain, he could not bear for the boot to be pulled off, and the leather had to be cut away. His foot was half-cooked.

This was the worst single injury in the great clown's career, but just one in a long series, which gradually took their toll upon his constitution. There was always a broken thumb, a muscle pulled, an arm in a sling.

‘How do you put up with it, Mr Grimaldi?' asked a naturally friendly, freckly young stagehand, when bandaging Grimaldi's ribs.

‘I couldn't be a clown without pain,' he said. ‘Every tumble costs.'

The one universal balm for the trials of clowning was the joy provided by his son. Grimaldi adored his boy. Born a little over a year after the accident with the pistol, the child was christened Joseph Samuel William Grimaldi, and always called either ‘Young Joe' or ‘JS' after his first two initials.

But in contrast to the resilience of the father's constitution, the boy grew up weak and sickly. If the father was known for a gaping mouth, then the son was known for a muffler, even on sunny days. The boy's complexion also developed unpleasant greenish tints, which led his father to remark, when his son was ten: ‘That's not the sort of make-up we want for you, my lad.'

Once, after a show, the stagehand, who continued to bandage the clown's injuries, asked Grimaldi whether he wanted his son to become a clown. This was met with a most scoffing laugh. How could such a weak boy withstand the rigours of clowning?

Instead, Joseph Grimaldi concentrated on his son's education. Tutors came to visit, and each brought some new accomplishment for the junior Grimaldi.

Oh the pride of the father when he heard his son, at twelve years old, speaking French! And not just rote learning of verbs – but French spoken with great fluency and panache. The boy even gestured as he spoke, exactly in the manner his father believed a Frenchman would. The violin tutor said it was rare to see such proficiency in a small boy, and that from the moment he saw the slender fingers grasp the instrument, he knew he had found a natural musician. The father beamed with pride again.

It was when the boy showed a nimble-toed love of dancing, agile as a squirrel, fast as a gazelle, poised as a flamingo, that it seemed possible – at least, not absurd – that the boy might aim for the stage; and then – oh then, Grimaldi's heart leapt at the very thought! – could his son conceivably become a
clown
?

The idea became even more conceivable as the boy gradually shook off his childhood weakness. Grimaldi watched his son's flashing heels in a dance, and the deft stroking of the violin strings, and the melodramatic gestures during a recitation of Racine, and clowning seemed not only a possible future, but likely, and then inevitable.

One day Grimaldi whispered to the dance tutor, as the boy hopped back and forth: ‘When I am too old to lift these bones on to the stage, there will be a new Grimaldi, wearing my make-up. The clown I am will not die.'

Soon Grimaldi made his son play imitative games in the parlour. These were not a complete success. Grimaldi moved one ear, in a definite flap, and then the other ear – the boy strained, and both his ears moved a little, but together. Try as the boy might, he could not move the ears independently like his father.

‘You will have the natural ability because it's in the blood,' said Grimaldi. ‘You must simply practise. Try the eyes.' The father rolled both eyeballs independently. ‘Now you.'

The boy could roll the left eye, but the right simply stared ahead.

Then the father gaped his mouth, and the boy did the same – but the son's gape, though large for his age, was not in the same proportion as the father's.

Undeterred, Joseph Grimaldi took his son to the dressing room before the next performance and said: ‘Now watch me carefully as I mug up.'

The boy took up his position on a stool at the side of his father's dressing table.

‘Always make-up before outfit,' said Grimaldi. ‘Always take your time. Never rush.'

The boy watched as his father dipped fingertips in the greasepaint, and made natural flesh vanish under the stark white. ‘Don't miss here,' Grimaldi said, as his finger went inside the nostrils. ‘And don't miss here,' he said shortly afterwards as he stroked within his mouth. The boy gave a queasy look. ‘If you were working the fairs, then the paint wouldn't have to be so thickly applied, but that won't ever happen to a Grimaldi.' Then he pulled a cotton sock from a drawer, which he filled with white powder. He slapped it several times on the edge of the dressing table, before shaking it above his head so that the powder snowed down.

‘Now with the lips, my boy, always remember that the smile on the left must look
exactly
like the smile on the right. You would be a very strange clown indeed if the two didn't match.' He drew on the mouth in bright red, and smacked his lips. The boy made the same sound, and that made the father smile.

Other details followed. Eyes outlined; arches pencilled on as brows; red triangles added to the cheeks. Then the entire costume, surmounted by a three-plumed wig in dazzling blue.

Grimaldi the clown was ready for the stage!