Chevalier Blondin (1824-1897), born Jean Francçois Gravelet, was a French rope dancer, or tight-rope walker, celebrated for making 17 separate passages on a 3-inch rope strung across the Niagara Falls gorge. In 1861, he pushed his young daughter in a wheelbarrow across the Centre Transept of the Crystal Palace in London. His other Crystal Palace performances, during one of which he almost fell, included stilt walking and cooking an omelette. (Abbot; “Chevalier Blondin”). (Image: Blondin’s Fall.)
a play by Harriet Hosmer