3-008-352 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Blondin's Pantomimic Drama at the Crystal Palace: Planter's House on the coast of Brazil - Blondin, as an ape, nursing the Planter's Child, 1862. 'The pantomime is entitled "The Child of the Wreck, or the Faithful Ape"...The child is rescued by an ape, and concealed in a cavern...the monkey...is at last shot by Sam, the servant of the skipper, who tracks him to the grotto, and there discovers the child, who is restored to his parents at the moment that the faithful ape expires. In this piece M. Blondin's little daughter Adele that of the planter's child. Blondin's...representation of the ape could only have been the result of much observation and study of its habits...the heights to which he climbs, and the...apparently dangerous positions upon which he finds footing, astonish by their agility and daring. But the one feat in which he outdoes himself is when, hunted by his enemies, he creeps hand over hand along a rope from the back of the stage to the comer of the second gallery in the transept, from which, seizing another rope suspended from the roof, he launches himself across the whole width of the transept to the corresponding gallery opposite, whence, by a similar manoeuvre, he again lands on the stage'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.