Volume 1

Portraits and lives of remarkable and eccentric characters.

Date:
[1819?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Portraits and lives of remarkable and eccentric characters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    55/348 (page 27)
    JACOB HALL, THE ROPE-DANCER. JACOB HALL, the famous rope-Jancer^ was in his highest repute in London about the beofinninof of the reiefn of Charles II. His feats gained him celebrity and patronage, and even the court ladies vied with each other in his favour. His strength and agility charmed in public, so much so that many wished to know what he was in private, for he appeared, in his tumbling dress, to be quite of a different make, and to have limbs very different from the flimsy texture of enervated nobility. In this respect, if report may be believed, he is said to have perfectly satisfied the expectation of Lady Castlemaine. And ac¬ cording to the celebrated Grammont, he was the universal friend of every lady in distress. There were a symmetry and elegance, as well as strength and agility in his person, which