- Text & Photography by John Gladdy / Magnesium
Being in a church for a funeral service and thinking about a clown might be weird. Looking around and seeing actual clowns would be surreal.
Many people tend to equate clowns with the circus, but there was one man who took clowning around from its origins in the Commedia dell’Arte- with which he shared his Italian origins- and into the world of the Pantomine, eventually culminating into the modern clown seen all over the world today. That man was Joseph Grimaldi, born in London in 1779, the son of a ballet master. An invalid from the years of intense physical effort his act required, he was introduced to the stage before he was two and retired at forty-five years-old. The rest of his life was spent in poverty, yet comedians – and particularly clowns – are, perhaps surprisingly, a group of serious folks and many came together to finance their inspirational father’s remaining years. “Like vaulting audition, I have overleaped myself and pay the penalty in advanced old age. It is four years since I jumped my last jump, filched my last oyster, boiled my last sausage and set in for retirement,” Joseph Grimaldi would say in 1828 at Covent Garden, London, during a show meant to raise money for his benefit. He passed away some years later, after being carried home by his friend George Cook from his spot close by the chimney of a pub he frequented daily.
Nearly two hundred years later, clowns still memorialize him on the first Sunday of February. It is indeed a surreal experience attending a church service for a pantomime clown. Stranger still when, as hinted, many of the congregation are themselves clowns, in full costume and make-up, drawn to this service from all over the world. Young and old, though mainly old, gather at the All Saints’ Church in Dalston, East London, to remember and celebrate the life of Joseph Grimaldi, the clown Joey.
Though it might surprise most people to hear that this still rolls on, Grimaldi’s legacy continues to live.
“A little old woman,
her living she got by selling hot codlins,
hot, hot, hot.
And this little old woman,
who codlins sold,
tho’ her codlins were hot,
she felt herself cold.
So to keep herself warm she thought it no sin to fetch for herself a quartern of ……..”
“Gin” the crowd shouted.
“Oh, for shame!” the clown answered mockingly.
Famous routine song of JOSEPH GRIMALDI (1779-1837)
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