The greatest comedian no one's ever seen (no one alive, that is)? Andrew McConnell Stott's enthusiasm is at first absurd, then infectious, in this hugely entertaining biography of a celebrated but sorrowful entertainer. Grimaldi (1778-1837), says Stott, not only invented the clown as we know him but embodied the clown as tragic symbol. It was Grimaldi who first wore the costume and makeup that now seem folkloric – the baggy suit, the ruff, the big red lips, the red diamonds on the cheeks. Grimaldi, he says, was also the prototype sad clown, the performer whose heart was breaking while he capered for the crowds.
Grimaldi's father handed down the family tradition of entertaining and suffering, often both at once. A third-generation comic player, the elder Grimaldi was a brute who so terrorized his children that one of them clapped and sang when he died, and a philanderer whose syphilis led to insanity. Before he was three, little Joe – his training enforced with regular beatings – was performing at Sadler's Wells, and, when he was nine, he took on, with the death of his famous but feckless father, the role of supporting the family, working 14 hours a day. In a career of dangerous stunts, he frequently fell, he broke bones, he caught fire. The result was increasing pain and partial paralysis, along with "nervous irritation and morbid sensibility." The famous joke on his name – "I make you laugh at night, but am grim all day" – was no joke to him.
In Grimaldi's time, producers competed to see who could mount the most thrilling spectacle, with colored lights, acrobats, animals, transformations, and re-enactments of naval battles that produced real casualties. Like the theatres, the audiences were overheated, and riots could be ignited as easily as fires; at Drury Lane, a row of spikes was installed across the orchestra pit to keep troublemakers at bay. In this tumultuous atmosphere, Grimaldi stood out by creating a character, Joey, who for the first time was a clown with a distinct persona. (Previously, a clown, like those in Shakespeare's plays, was merely a servant or peasant.) His Joey, instead of just tumbling and pulling faces, inspired laughs of empathy instead of mere ridicule, on one occasion so hearty that a mute found he was suddenly restored to speech. George IV was convulsed by Grimaldi. Byron and Sarah Siddons were not only admirers but friends, and Dickens, who edited his memoirs, saw that the anguish he displayed for fun was not altogether feigned. Stott thinks Grimaldi to be the source of the "countless images of derelict performers that wend their sorry way through his fiction."
If Grimaldi the man is often a shadowy figure, other members of Stott's huge cast often take over the stage. The book throngs with naughty actresses, infant phenomena, rogues and villains (i.e., theatre owners), "d'Egville, the dancing pimp," and a mad bull elephant, among others. Throughout, one hears the ecstatic cheers or ominous hum of the audience, more robust than that of today – when one management raised ticket prices, the result was 67 performances drowned out by fights, bells, catcalls, and barrages of rubbish until prices went back down. The audience was often a more worrying beast than a mad bull elephant, and the managers knew they provoked it at their peril. When 18 people were killed as the result of a false fire alarm, the performance was reluctantly declared over, but, on another occasion, when only one man was trampled to death in the rush for seats, he was removed, the band started playing, and the show went on.
