Monument to "Charles" Blondin (1824-1897) and his wife Charlotte
Red granite with marble portrait medallions, surmounted by angel.
Kensal Green Cemetery
London.
See additional photographs and commentary below.
Photograph, caption, and commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee 2007.
Dr Blondin, the French acrobat whose real name was Jean Francois Gravelet, is most famous for crossing Niagara Falls on a high wire in 1859. He crossed seemingly dozens of times. Once he lowered a rope to the Maid of the Mist, hauled up a bottle, then sat down to drink it. He's also said to have crossed blindfolded, pushing a wheelbarrow, on a bike, on stilts (he did a back somersault while on them), cooked an omelette. He nearly came to grief carrying another man over on his shoulders. He came to England in 1861 and turned back somersaults on stilts on a high wire in the Crystal Palace. No wonder the Victorians called their public works contraption a blondin!
Blondin steel was a steel cable stretched across a valley above a dam site; skips ran along it and were raised and lowered as needed. They carried away excavated rock and brought in material to make the dam. — Dick Sullivan
Additional photographs by Robert Freidus
[Click on these images for larger pictures.]
Related Material
- "Blindin steel" in "A Navvy's Glossary"
- Mention of Blondin in Max Beerbohm's "Dimuendo"
References
Coones, Paul. Kensal Green Cemetery: A Concise Introductory Guide & Select List of Notable Monuments, Together with a Plan. Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery, 1994.
Last modified 20 October 2006