Memoirs Of Joseph Grimaldi

212 MEMOIRS OF JOSEPH GBIMALDI.

This was the ruin of Bradbury as a pantomimist. He did
not appear again in London for many years, and, although he
played occasionally in the country theatres, never afterwards
regained his former rank and celebrity in the profession. As
far as pecuniary matters were concerned, it did not matter much
to him, the annuity affording him a handsome independence;
but whether he afterwards sold it and dissipated the money,
or whether the annuity itself was discontinued in the course of
years, this at least is certain, that when he died, which he did
in London, in 1828, he was in very indifferent circximstances, if
not in actual want.

In October, Coyent Garden commenced the new campaign,
and brought forward " Mother Goose," which ran, with the same
degree of success as before, until nearly Christmas, and was
played altogether twenty-nine times.

On the 15th of this month, a most frightful accident occurred
at Sadler's "Wells. The pantomime was played first that night,
which, joined to his haying nothing to do at Coyent Garden,
enabled Grimaldi to go home early to bed. At midnight he was
awakened by a great noise in. the street, and loud and repeated
knocks at the door of his house: at first he concluded it might
be some idle party amusing themselves by knocking and running
away; an intellectual amusement not at that time exclusively
confined to a few gentlemen of high degree; but finding that it
was repeated, and that the noise without increased, he hastily
slipped on a morning-gown and trowsers, and hurried to the
street-door.

The people who were clamouring outside, were for the most
part friends, who exclaimed, when he appeared, that they had
merely come to assure themselves of Ms personal safety, and
were rejoiced to find .that he had escaped. He now learned, for
the first time, that some vagabonds in the pit of the theatre had
raised a cry of " Eire!" during, the performance of the last
piece, "The Ocean Fiend," and that the audience had risenm the stage.