Grimaldi died on the 31st of May, 1837, having survived the completion of the last chapter of his biography just five months, during which his health had considerably improved, although his bodily energies and physical powers had remained in the same state of hopeless prostration. Having gradually recovered the effects of the severe mental shocks which had crowded upon him in his decline, he had regained his habitual serenity and cheerfulness, and appeared likely to live, and even to enjoy life—incompatible with all enjoyment as his condition would seem to have been—for many years. He had no other wish than to be happy in the society of his old friends; and uttered no other complaint than that, in their absence, he sometimes found his solitude heavy and irksome. He looked forward to the publication of his manuscript with an anxiety which it is impossible to describe, and imagined that the day on which he exhibited it in a complete form to his friends, would be the proudest of his life.

He was destined never to experience this harmless gratification; the sudden dissolution which deprived him of it, mercifully released him from all the pains and sufferings which could not fail to have been, sooner or later, the attendants upon that state of death in life to which he had been untimely reduced.

It had been Grimaldi's habit for some time previous to his death, to spend a portion of each evening at a tavern hard by, where the society of a few respectable persons, resident in the neighbourhood, in some measure compensated him for the many long hours he spent by his lonely fireside. Utterly bereft of the use of his limbs, he used to be carried backwards and forwards (he had only a few doors to go) on the shoulders of a man.

On the night of his death,[95] he was carried home in the usual manner, and cheerfully bidding his companion good night, observed that he should be ready for him on the morrow at the customary time. He had not long been in bed, when his housekeeper fancying she heard a noise in his room, hurried down, but all was quiet: she went in again later in the night, and found him dead. The body was cold, for he had been dead some hours.

A coroner's inquest was held on the following day. The testimony of the medical gentlemen who had been promptly called in, fully established the fact that his death had arisen from causes purely natural; and the jury at once returned a verdict that he had died by the visitation of God.

He was buried on the ensuing Monday, June the 6th, in the burying-ground of St. James's Chapel, on Pentonville Hill. In the next grave lie the bones of his friend, Mr. Charles Dibdin,—so frequently mentioned in these volumes; the author of many of the pieces in which he shone in his best days, and of many of the songs with which he was wont to set his audience in a roar.[96]

Any attempted summary of Grimaldi's peculiarities in this place would be an impertinence. There are many who remember him, and they need not be told how rich his humour was: to those who do not recollect him in his great days, it would be impossible to convey any adequate idea of his extraordinary performances. There are no standards to compare him with, or models to judge him by; all his excellences were his own, and there are none resembling them among the pantomime actors of the present day.

This is not said with any view of depreciating the abilities of the many clever actors we have in this peculiar department. Among a variety of others, Smith and Payne of Covent Garden, (not of Lombard-street), and Wieland, of Drury Lane, may be mentioned as possessing grotesque humour of no ordinary kind; while for mere feats of tumbling dexterity, Brown, King, and Gibson of the Adelphi, perhaps stand unrivalled. It is no disparagement to all or any of these actors of pantomime, to say, that the genuine droll, the grimacing, filching, irresistible clown left the stage with Grimaldi, and though often heard of, has never since been seen.[97]

In private, Grimaldi was a general favourite, not only among his equals, but with his superiors and inferiors. That he was a man of the kindest heart, and the most child-like simplicity, nobody who has read the foregoing pages can for a moment doubt. He was innocent of all caution in worldly matters, and has been known, on the seller's warranty,[98] to give forty guineas for a gold watch, which, as it subsequently turned out, would have been dear at ten. Among many acts of private goodness may be mentioned—although he shrunk from the slightest allusion to the story—his release of a brother actor from Lancaster jail, under circumstances which showed a pure benevolence of heart, and delicacy of feeling, that would have done honour to a prince.

With far more temptations to indulge in the pleasures of the table than most men encounter, Grimaldi was through life remarkably temperate, never having been seen, indeed, in a state of intoxication. But he was a great eater, as most pantomime actors are, who enjoy good health, and abstain from dram-drinking; and it was supposed, at the time of his decease, that an attack of indigestion consequent upon too hearty a supper at too late an hour materially hastened, if it did not actually occasion, his death.

Many readers will ridicule the idea of a clown being a man of great feeling and sensibility: Grimaldi was so, notwithstanding, and suffered most severely from the afflictions which befel him. The loss of his wife, to whom he had been long and devotedly attached, preyed upon his mind to a greater or less extent for many years. The reckless career and dreadful death of his only son bowed him down with grief. The young man's notorious conduct had embittered the best portion of his existence: and his sudden death, when a better course seemed opening before him, had well-nigh terminated his unhappy father's days.

But although, in the weakened state in which he then was, the sad event preying alike upon his mind and body, changed Grimaldi's appearance in a few weeks to that of a shrunken, imbecile old man; and although, when he had in some measure recovered from this heavy blow, he had to mourn the loss of his wife, with whom he had lived happily for more than thirty years, he survived the trials to which he had been exposed, and lived to recover his cheerfulness and peace.

Deprived of all power of motion; doomed to bear, at a time of life when he might reasonably have looked forward to many years of activity and exertion, the worst bodily evils of the most helpless old age; condemned to drag out the remainder of his days in a solitary chamber, when all those who make up the sum of home were cold in death, his existence would seem to have been a weary one indeed; but he was patient and resigned under all these trials, and in time grew contented, and even happy.

This strong endurance of griefs so keen, and reverses so poignant may perhaps teach more strongly than a hundred homilies, that there are no afflictions which time will not soften and fortitude overcome. Let those who smile at the deduction of so trite a moral from the biography of a clown, reflect, that the fewer the resources of a man's own mind, the greater his merit in rising superior to misfortune. Let them remember too, that in this case the light and life of a brilliant theatre were exchanged in an instant for the gloom and sadness of a dull sick-room.

THE END.