The Dickens/Grimaldi book continues with further interesting events. At a time when Grimaldi's takings were a pretty decent £4 a week, he found a small fortune in the street -- £599! He tried hard to find the owner, but didn't succeed. By the way, eventually he could make £155 for two nights' work away from London. I think that would've been as much as some impoverished clergymen cleared in a year.
Anyone who's read Dickens knows of his antipathy for corrupt small officials and the like, and he doesn't lose the opportunity to give us an account of Old Lucas, a bad Clerkenwell constable. Old Lucas, however, gets a public rebuke from the magistrate after he attempts to pin a false accusation on Grimaldi. This happens in or near Pentonville, which, for us Arthur Machen fans, is an evocative name!
Grimaldi's wife died in childbirth late int he year after they married. He found some consolation in a hobby of homing pigeons. The account here made me interested in this activity. Does anyone here know anyone involved in this hobby?
Our old friend J. D. Worthington would probably have appreciated the memoirs' glimpse of "Monk" Lewis, the Gothic author. I was more curious about a six-foot-six world traveller known as the Patagonian Samson.
A fascinating event: Grimaldi's brother reappeared unexpectedly after many years of being unknown. The brother was accompanied by a friend and carried with him a lot of money, about which Grimaldi was uneasy. But he saw his brother only that one night. The brother never showed up for a meeting the next day. His disappearance remains a mystery. The account is teasingly like something out of a Sherlock Holmes story. Of course, it's anachronistic for me to say that, since Grimaldi died long before the first Holmes story was written. The account is so intriguing, though, that I'm tempted to write some kind of continuation or story derived from it.
