Mirth-Maker.
"HERE we are again!" With a screech of laughter, the Clown jumps through the painted wall of time, turns a somersault head- first into the present, and comes down upon our stage with straddled legs and arms akimbo. 'With these merry and seasonable words, Mr. Richard Findlater begins his book, which is the first modern biography of Joseph Grimaldi. It is an odd fact that 'Joey,' the greatest of all English clowns, was, like Mr. Punch himself, of partly foreign extraction. He was the illegitimate son of an elderly Italian ballet master and a young English dancer. Grimaldi grew up in show business and was, in fact, an infant prodigy. His success as a mirth-maker and bouncing clown in Regency London was rapid and his popularity increased.
Mr. Findlater combines entertainment and studious detail in his accounts of Sadler's Wells and Drury Lane in a period when every joke had to be practical. 'Serious tumbles from serious heights, innumerable kicks, and incessant beatings, come on him as matters of common occurrence, remarked The Times, in a staid apprecia- tion of Grimaldi's pantomimic antics. Little wonder that the first Joey was stricken down with tragic suddenness by a mysterious complaint in his early forties. Grimaldi might almost be described
as the prototype of the sad clown for, in his domestic life, he was equally unfortunate. His first wife died at an early age and he never recovered completely from the shock.
AUSTIN CLARKE
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