Joseph Grimaldi

1803.

Containing a very extraordinary incident well worthy of the reader's attention.

One evening in the second week of November, 1803,[33] Grimaldi then playing at Drury Lane, had been called by the prompter, and was passing from the green-room to the stage, when a messenger informed him that two gentlemen were waiting to see him at the stage-door. Afraid of keeping the stage waiting, he enjoined the messenger to tell the gentlemen that he was engaged at that moment, but that he would come down to them directly he left the stage. The play was "A Bold Stroke for a Wife:" Miss Mellon was Anne; Bannister, Feignwell; Aitkin, Simon Pure; and Grimaldi, Aminadab.

As soon as he could get away from the stage, he hurried down stairs, and inquiring who wanted him, was introduced to two strangers, who were patiently awaiting his arrival. They were young men of gentlemanly appearance, and upon hearing the words, "Here's Mr. Grimaldi—who wants him?" one of them turned hastily round, and warmly accosted him.

He looked about his own age, and had evidently been accustomed to a much warmer climate than that of England. He wore the fashionable evening-dress of the day—that is to say, a blue body-coat with gilt buttons, a white waistcoat, and tight pantaloons—and carried in his hand a small gold-headed cane.

"Joe, my lad!" exclaimed this person, holding out his hand, in some agitation, "how goes it with you now, old fellow?"

He was not a little surprised at this familiar address from a person whom he was not conscious of ever having seen in his life, and, after a moment's pause, replied that he really had not the pleasure of the stranger's acquaintance.

"Not the pleasure of my acquaintance!" repeated the stranger, with a loud laugh. "Well, Joe, that seems funny, anyhow!" He appealed to his companion, who concurred in the opinion, and they both laughed heartily. This was all very funny to the strangers, but not at all so to Grimaldi: he had a vague idea that they were rather laughing at than with him, and as much offended as surprised, was turning away, when the person who had spoken first said, in rather a tremulous voice,

"Joe, don't you know me now?"

He turned, and gazed at him again. He had opened his shirt, and was pointing to a scar upon his breast, the sight of which at once assured him that it was no other than his brother who stood before him,—his only brother, who had disappeared under the circumstances narrated in an earlier part of these memoirs.

They were naturally much affected by this meeting, especially the elder brother, who had been so suddenly summoned into the presence of the near relative whom long ago he had given up for lost. They embraced again and again, and gave vent to their feelings in tears.

"Come up stairs," said Grimaldi, as soon as the first surprise was over; "Mr. Wroughton is there—Mr. Wroughton, who was the means of your going to sea,—he'll be delighted to see you." The brothers were hurrying away, when the friend, whose presence they had quite forgotten in their emotion, said,

"Well, John, then I'll wish you good night!"

"Good night! good night!" said the other, shaking his hand; "I shall see you in the morning."

"Yes," replied the friend; "at ten, mind!"

"At ten precisely: I shall not forget," answered John.

The friend, to whom he had not introduced his brother in any way, departed; and they went upon the stage together, where Grimaldi introduced his brother to Powell, Bannister, Wroughton, and many others in the green-room, who, attracted by the singularity of his return under such circumstances, had collected round them.

Having his stage business to attend to, he had very little time for conversation; but of course he availed himself of every moment that he could spare off the stage, and in answer to his inquiries, his brother assured him that his trip had been eminently successful.

"At this moment," he said, slapping his breast-pocket, "I have six hundred pounds here."

"Why, John," said his brother, "it's very dangerous to carry so much money about with you!"

"Dangerous!" replied John, smiling; "we sailors know nothing about danger. But, my lad, even if all this were gone, I should not be penniless." And he gave a knowing wink, which induced his brother to believe that he had indeed "made a good trip of it."

At this moment Grimaldi was again called upon the stage; and Mr. Wroughton, taking that opportunity of talking to his brother, made many kind inquiries of him relative to his success and the state of his finances. In reply to these questions he made in effect the same statements as he had already communicated to Joseph, and exhibited as evidence of the truth of his declarations a coarse canvas bag, stuffed full of various coins, which he carefully replaced in his pocket again.

As soon as the comedy was ended, Grimaldi joined him; and Mr. Wroughton, having congratulated his brother on his return, and the fortunate issue of his adventures, bade them good night; when Grimaldi took occasion to ask how long the sailor had been in town.

He replied, two or three hours back; that he had merely tarried to get some dinner, and had come straight to the theatre. In answer to inquiries relative to what he intended doing, he said he had not bestowed a thought upon the matter, and that the only topic which had occupied his mind was his anxiety to see his mother and brother. A long and affectionate conversation ensued, in the course of which it was proposed by Joseph, that as his mother lived with himself and wife, and they had a larger house than they required, the brother should join them, and they should all live together. To this the brother most gladly and joyfully assented, and adding that he must see his mother that night, or his anxiety would not suffer him to sleep, asked where she lived.

Grimaldi gave him the address directly; but, as he did not play in the afterpiece, said, that he had done for the night, and that if he would wait while he changed his dress, he would go with him. His brother was, of course, glad to hear there was no necessity for them to separate, and Grimaldi hurried away to his dressing-room, leaving him on the stage.

The agitation of his feelings, the suddenness of his brother's return, the good fortune which had attended him in his absence, the gentility of his appearance, and his possession of so much money, all together confused him so, that he could scarcely use his hands. He stood still every now and then quite lost in wonder, and then suddenly recollecting that his brother was waiting, looked over the room again and again for articles of dress that were lying before him. At length, after having occupied a much longer time than usual in changing his dress, he was ready, and ran down to the stage. On his way he met Powell, who heartily congratulated him on the return of his relative, making about the thirtieth who had been kind enough to do so already. Grimaldi asked him, more from nervousness than for information, if he had seen him lately.

"Not a minute ago," was the reply; "he is waiting for you upon the stage. I wont detain you, for he complains that you have been longer away now, than you said you would be."

Grimaldi hurried down stairs to the spot where he had left his brother. He was not there.

"Who are you looking for, Joe?" inquired Bannister, as he saw him looking eagerly about.

"For my brother," he answered. "I left him here a little while back."

"Well, and I saw and spoke to him not a minute ago," said Bannister. "When he left me, he went in that direction (pointing towards the passage that led towards the stage-door). I should think he had left the theatre."

Grimaldi ran to the stage-door, and asked the porter if his brother had passed. The man said he had, not a minute back; he could not have got out of the street by that time.

He ran out at the door, and then up and down the street several times, but saw nothing of him. Where could he be gone to? Possibly, finding him longer gone than he had anticipated, he might have stepped out to call upon one of his old friends close by, whom he had not seen for so many years, with the intention of returning to the theatre. This was not unlikely; for in the immediate neighbourhood there lived a Mr. Bowley, who had been his bosom friend when they were boys. The idea no sooner struck Grimaldi than he ran to the house and knocked hastily at the door. The man himself answered the knock, and was evidently greatly surprised.

"I have indeed seen your brother," he said, in reply to Grimaldi's question. "Good God! I was never so amazed in all my life."

"Is he here now?" was the anxious inquiry.

"No; but he has not been gone a minute; he cannot have gone many yards."

"Which way?"

"That way, towards Duke-street."

"He must have gone," thought Grimaldi, "to call on Mr. Bailey, our old landlord." He hurried away to the house in Great Wild-street, and knocked long and loudly at the door. The people were asleep. He knocked again and rang violently, being in a state of great excitement; at length a servant-girl thrust her head out of an upper window, and said, both sulkily and sleepily,—

"I tell you again, he is not at home."

"What are you talking about? Who is not at home?"

"Why, Mr. Bailey: I told you so before. What do you keep on knocking for, at this time of night?"

He could not understand a word of all this, but hurriedly told his name, and requested the girl to come down directly, for he wished to speak to her. The head was directly withdrawn, the window closed, and in a minute or two afterwards the girl appeared at the street door.

"I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," she said, after pouring forth a volume of apologies. "But there was a gentleman here knocking and ringing very violently not a minute before you came. I told him Mr. Bailey was not at home; and when I heard you at the door, I thought it was him, and that he would not go away."

Grimaldi was breathless with the speed he had made, and trembling with vague apprehensions of he knew not what. He asked if she had seen the gentleman's face. The girl, surprised at his emotion, replied that she had not; she had only answered him from the window, being afraid to open the door to a stranger so long after dark, when all the family were out. The only thing she had noticed was that he had got a white waistcoat on; for she had thought at the time, seeing him dressed, that perhaps he might have called to take her master to a party.

He must have gone back to the theatre.

He left the surprised girl standing at the door, and ran to Drury Lane. Here, again, he was disappointed; he had not been seen. He ran from place to place, and from house to house, wherever he thought it possible his brother could have called, but nobody had heard of or seen him. Many of the persons to whom he appealed openly expressed their doubts to each other of his sanity of mind; which were really not without a shadow of probability, seeing that he knocked them out of their beds, and, with every appearance of agitation and wildness, demanded if they had seen his brother, whom nobody had heard of for fourteen years, and whom most of them considered dead.

It was so late now, that the theatre was just shutting up; but he ran back once more, and again inquired if his brother had been there. Hearing he had not, he concluded that, recollecting the address he had mentioned, he had gone straight to his mother's home. This seemed probable; and yet he felt a degree of dismay and alarm which he had never before experienced, even when there were good grounds for such feelings.

The more he thought of this, however, the more probable it seemed, and he blamed himself as he walked quickly homewards for not having thought of it sooner. He remembered the anxiety his brother had expressed to see their mother, the plan they had discussed for their all living together, and the many little schemes of future happiness which they had talked over in their hurried interview, and in all of which she was comprised. He reached home, and, composing himself as well as he could, entered the little room in which they usually supped after the play. His brother was not there, but his mother was, and, as she looked much paler than usual, he thought she had seen him.

"Well, mother," he said, "has anything strange occurred here to-night?"

"No; nothing that I have heard of."

"What! no stranger arrived!—no long-lost relative recovered!" exclaimed Grimaldi, all his former apprehensions returning.

"What do you mean?"

"Mean! Why, that John is come home safe and well, and with money enough to make all our fortunes."

His mother screamed wildly at this intelligence and fainted; she recovered after a time, and Grimaldi recounted to her and his wife the events of the evening, precisely as they are here narrated.

They were greatly amazed at the recital. The mother held that he would be sure to come before the night was over; that he had probably met with some of his old friends, and would be there after he had left them. She insisted that Grimaldi, who was tired, should go to bed, while she sat up and waited for her son. He did so, and the mother remained all through the long night anxiously expecting his arrival.

This may appear a long story, but its conclusion invests it with a degree of interest which warrants the detail. The running away to sea of a young man, and his return after a lapse of years, is, and ever has been, no novelty in this island. This is not the burden of the tale. It possessed an awful interest to those whom it immediately concerned, and cannot fail to have some for the most indifferent reader.

From that night in November, 1803, to this month of January, 1838, the missing man was never seen again; nor was any intelligence, or any clue of the faintest or most remote description, ever obtained by his friends respecting him.

Next morning, and many mornings afterwards, the mother still anxiously and hopelessly expected the arrival of her son. Again and again did she question Grimaldi about him—his appearance, his manner, what he said, and all the details of his disappearance; again and again was every minute fact recalled, and every possible conjecture hazarded relative to his fate. He could scarcely persuade himself but that the events of the preceding night were a delusion of his brain, until the inquiries after his brother, which were made by those who had seen him on the previous night, placed them beyond all doubt. He communicated to his friends the strange history of the last few hours, with all the circumstances of his brother's sudden appearance, and of his equally sudden disappearance. He was advised to wait a little while before he made the circumstance public, in the hope that he might have been induced to spend the night with some shipmates, and might speedily return.

But a week passed away, and then further silence would have been criminal, and he proceeded to set on foot every inquiry which his own mind could suggest, or the kindness of his friends prompted them to advise. A powerful nobleman who at that time used to frequent Drury Lane Theatre, and who had on, many occasions expressed his favourable opinion of Grimaldi, interested himself greatly in the matter, and set on foot a series of inquiries at the Admiralty: every source of information possessed by that establishment that was deemed at all likely to throw any light upon the subject was resorted to, but in vain; the newspapers were searched to ascertain what ships had arrived in the river or upon the coast that day—whence they came, what crews they carried, what passengers they had; the police-officers were paid to search all London through, and endeavour to gain some information, if it were only of the lost man's death. Everything was tried by the family, and by many very powerful friends whom the distressing nature of the inquiry raised up about them, to trace the object of their regret and labour, but all in vain. The sailor was seen no more.

Various surmises were afloat at the time regarding the real nature of this mysterious transaction; many of them, of course, were absurd enough, but the two most probable conjectures appear to have been hazarded many years afterwards, and when all chance of the man being alive were apparently at an end,—the one by the noble lord who had pursued the investigation at the Admiralty, and the other by a shrewd long-headed police-officer, who had been employed to set various inquiries on foot in the neighbourhood of the theatre.

The former suggested that a press-gang, to whom the person of the brother was known, might possibly have pounced upon him in some by-street, and have carried him off; in which case, as he had previously assumed a false name, the fact of his friends receiving no intelligence of him was easily accounted for; while, as nothing could be more probable than that he was slain in one of the naval engagements so rife about that time, his never appearing again was easily explained. This solution of the mystery, however, was by no means satisfactory to his friends, as it was liable to many very obvious doubts and objections. Upon the whole, they felt inclined to give far more credence to the still more tragical, but, it is to be feared, more probable explanation which the experience of the police-officer suggested.

This man was of opinion that the unfortunate subject of their doubts had been lured into some low infamous den, by persons who had either previously known or suspected that he had a large sum of money in his possession; that here he was plundered, and afterwards either murdered in cold blood, or slain in some desperate struggle to recover his gold. This conjecture was encouraged by but too many corroboratory circumstances: the sailor was of a temper easily persuaded: he had all the recklessness and hardihood of a seafaring man, only increased by the possession of prize-money and the release from hard work: he had money, and a very large sum of money, about him, the greater part in specie, and not in notes, or any security which it would be difficult or dangerous to exchange: all this was known to his brother and to Mr. Wroughton, both eye-witnesses of the fact.

One other circumstance deserves a word. It was, both at the time and for a long period afterwards, a source of bitter, although of most groundless self-reproach to Grimaldi, that he could not sufficiently recollect the appearance of the man who accompanied his brother to the stage-door of the theatre, to describe his person. If he could have been traced out, some intelligence respecting the poor fellow might perhaps have been discovered; but Grimaldi was so much moved by the unexpected recognition of his brother, that he scarcely bestowed a thought or a look upon his companion: nor, after taxing his memory for many years, could he ever recollect more than that he was dressed in precisely the same attire as his brother, even down to the white waistcoat; a circumstance which had not only been noticed by himself, but was well remembered by the door-keeper, and others who had passed in and out of the theatre during the time the two young men were standing in the lobby.

Recollecting the intimate terms upon which the two appeared to be, and the appointment which was made between them for the following morning, "at ten precisely," there is little reason to doubt that if the sailor had disappeared without the knowledge or privity of his companion, the latter would infallibly have applied to Grimaldi to know where his brother was. Coupling the fact of his never doing so, and never being seen or heard of again, with the circumstance of the lost man never having evinced the least inclination to take him home with him, to retain him when he was in his brother's company, or even to introduce him in the slightest manner, (from all of which it would seem that he was some bad or doubtful character,) the family arrived at the conclusion,—if it should ever be an unjust one, it will be forgiven,—that this man was cognizant of, if indeed he was not chiefly instrumental in bringing about, the untimely fate of the murdered man, for such they always supposed him. Whether they were right or wrong in this conclusion will probably ever remain unknown.