EDMUND KEAN.
"It is, perhaps, not generally known," says Macaulay, when closing
his narrative of the death of the great Lord Halifax, in 1695, "that
some adventurers who, without advantages of fortune or position,
made themselves conspicuous by the mere force of ability, inherited
the blood of Halifax. He left a natural son, Henry Carey, whose
dramas once drew crowded audiences to the theatres, and some of whose
gay and spirited verses still live in the memory of hundreds of
thousands. From Henry Carey descended that Edmund Kean who, in our
own time, transformed himself so marvellously into Shylock, Iago,
and Othello."
This reminds me of an anecdote of Louis Philippe, when Duke of
Orleans, who happened one day to speak of Louis XIV. as "my august
ancestor." The remark was made to a young clerk in his household,--a
future novelist and dramatist, Alexandre Dumas. This gentleman
opened his eyes in amazement, knowing that the duke was legitimately
descended from the brother of the "Grand Monarque." The duke,
however, was thinking of the inter-marriages between members of his
family and the illegitimate descendants of Louis XIV.; but he noticed
the surprise of Dumas, and then calmly added:--"Yes, Dumas; _my
august ancestor, Louis XIV.!_ to descend from him, only through his
bastards, is, in my eyes at least, an honour sufficiently great to be
worth boasting of!"
In like manner Edmund Kean might have boasted of his descent from
George Saville, Marquis of Halifax; but I think he was prouder of
what he had achieved for himself through his genius, than of any
oblique splendour derived to him from the author of the _Maxims_ and
the great chief of the Trimmers,--if, indeed, he knew anything about
him.
A posthumous son of Henry Carey, well known as George Saville Carey,
inherited much of his father's talents. After declining to learn
the mystery of printing, he tried that of playing; produced little
effect, but by singing, reciting, and above all by his imitations,
lived a vagabond life, and managed to keep his head above water, with
now and then a fearful dip into the mud below, for forty years; when
paralysis depriving him of the means to earn his bread, he contrived
to escape further misery here by strangling himself.[101] He was a
man of great genius not unmixed with a tendency to insanity.
He was cursed in one fair and worthless daughter, "Nance Carey,"
whose intimacy with Aaron Kean,--a tailor,--or as some say, Edmund
Kean, a builder, but at all events brother to Moses Kean, a tailor,
and as admirable a mimic as George Carey himself,[102]--resulted in
her becoming the mother of a boy, her pitiless neglect of whom seems
to have begun even before his birth.
[Illustration: (Edmund Kean)]
Whether that event took place in an otherwise unoccupied chamber in
Gray's Inn, which had been lent to her vagabond father, or in a poor
room in Castle Street, Leicester Square, or in a miserable garret in
Ewer Street, Southwark,--for all of which there are respective
claimants, Miss Carey's son had a narrow escape from being born in
the street. But for Miss Tidswell, the actress, and another womanly
gossip or two, this would have happened. It seemed all one to "Nance
Carey," who having performed _her_ part in this portion of the play,
deserted her child, and left him to the cruelty, caprice, or humanity
of strangers.
Little Edmund Kean, born in 1787, or in the following year,[103]
for the date is uncertain, had a hard life of it from the first.
In a loving arm he never was held,--a loving eye never looked down
upon him. Had he not been a beautiful child, perhaps the charity of
Miss Tidswell and of whomsoever else extended it to him, would have
failed. It is certain that they took the earliest opportunity of
deriving profit from him; and before he was three years old, Edmund
Kean figured as a Cupid in one of Noverre's ballets at the Opera
House. He owed his election to this dignity to his rare personal
beauty, an endowment which went for nothing in his subsequent
appointment, when four or five years of age, to act as one of the
imps attendant on the witches in "Macbeth." John Kemble was then
supreme at Drury Lane, and, of course, little conscious that among
the noisy and untractable young imps, the wildest by far would prove
to be, what Mrs. Siddons would have called, one of those new idols
which the public delight to set up, in order to mortify their old
favourites!
One night the goblins fell over one another in the cavern-scene,
Edmund going down first, out of weakness, or of mischief. This led
to the dismissal of the whole troop; and some good Samaritan then
sent young Kean to school. In Orange Court, Leicester Square, was
the fountain whence he drew his first and almost only draught of
learning. In that dirty locality may be found the shrine of three
geniuses. There, Holcroft was born, Opie was housed, and Edmund Kean
instructed.
Thereafter comes Chaos; and it is only by glimpses that the
whereabout of the naturally-gifted but most unhappy lad can be
detected. A little outcast, with his weak legs in "irons," day and
night, he sleeps between a poor married couple whose sides are hurt
by his fetters. Miss Tidswell takes him, ties him to a bedpost,
to secure his attention, teaches him elocution, and corrects him
a little too harshly, though out of love. He dances and tumbles
at fairs and in taverns, performs wonderful feats, is kicked and
starved, thrives nevertheless,--and conceives that there is something
within him which should set him above his fellows in hard work and
lean fare. And then, when he is becoming a bread-winner, he is
claimed by his evil genius, Nance Carey.
His mother has been a stroller; she is a vagabond still; tramps the
country with pomatums, and perfumes, and falballas, and her son is
her pack-horse;--and the bird, to boot, that shall lay golden eggs
for her. He is savage at having to plod through mud and dust, but
he has a world of his own beyond it all; and he not only learns
soliloquies from plays, but recites them in gentlemen's houses. To
the audiences there, he goes confident but sensitive; proud and
defiant, even when wounded by many a humiliation. By reciting,
selling the wares in which Nance Carey dealt, and exhibiting in every
possible and impossible play and posture, at fairs, he earned and
received some small but well-merited wage. "She took it _all_ from
me!" cried the boy, in his anguish and indignation.[104]
A London Arab leads an easier life. It was a dark and hard life to
Edmund,--Miss Tidswell occasionally appeared to do him a kindness, to
give him bread, and more instruction for the stage. Of his father,
we hear nothing save his rascal gallantry with Miss Carey; of his
mother, nothing but her rapacity; of his uncle, Moses Kean, only that
Miss Tidswell turned his wooden leg to account. When her young pupil,
studying Hamlet, had to pronounce the words, "Alas, poor Yorick!"
she first made him say, "Alas, poor uncle!" that the memory of the
calamity the latter had suffered might dispose Edmund's face to
seriousness!
And then he is abroad again; not easily to be followed. His sensitive
pride renders him hasty to take offence, and then he rushes from some
friendly roof, and disappears, sinks down some horrible gulf, issues
not purified, nor softened, nor inclined to give account of himself.
A more sober flight took him to Madeira as a cabin-boy, whence he
returned, disgusted with Thalatta. Finally, he runs the round of
fairs again, and starves and has flashes of wild jollity, as such
runners have; and pauses in his running at Windsor. He was just then
the property of crafty old Richardson, and at Windsor Fair made such
a local reputation by his elocution, that King George sent for him,
and so enjoyed a taste of his quality that the young player carried
away with him the bright guerdon of two guineas,--either to his
manager or his mother, I forget which.
I think, however, this speaking in presence of royalty was the
getting the foot on the first round of the slippery ladder which he
was so desirous to ascend. He spoke a speech or two at some London
theatres, when benefit nights admitted of extraordinary performances;
and he now went the round of country theatres, and not of country
fairs. It was not a less weary life; he starved as miserably as
before, and he began to find a means of reinvigoration in "drink."
Had his labour been paid according to its worth, the devil could not
have flung this temptation in his way. "A better time will come by
and by," said the poor stroller, who was always promising to himself,
or to others, a happy period in which all would be right.
In the course of his wanderings he played at Belfast. Mrs. Siddons
passed that way too, and acted Zara and Lady Randolph. Edmund Kean,
not then, I believe, nineteen, played Osmyn and Young Norval. In
the first part I think he was imperfect, and the Siddons shook her
majestic head at the apparent cause. Nevertheless, her judgment was,
that he played "well, _very_ well; but there was too little of him
wherewith to make a great actor!"
If painstaking could do it, he was resolved to be one. No amount of
labour to this end daunted him. However poor the task entrusted to
him, he did his utmost for it. When playing some worthless fifth-rate
character at the Haymarket, a generous colleague remarked:--"Look at
the little man, he is trying to make a part of it."
I find by the bills of the Haymarket Theatre, which Mr. Buckstone
kindly placed at my disposal, that Dubbs, in the "Review" to
Fawcett's Caleb Quotem, was about the best character he played.
Considering that he was at this time under twenty, his position was
not a very bad one; but it seemed to him to promise no amendment--and
he again passed to the country, to play first business, and to be
hungry three or four days out of the seven.
He could not earn enough to enable him to travel from one place of
engagement to another. He journeyed on foot, and when he came to a
river, swam it (particularly when a press-gang was near), as readily
as an Indian would have done. In some towns his Hamlet was not
relished, but his Harlequin filled the house. The Guernsey critics
censured his acting, on the ground that he would rudely turn his
back on the audience, and make no more account of them than if they
were the fourth side of a room in which he was meditating! When the
Guernsey pit hissed him in Richard III., his cry, pointedly addressed
to them:--"Unmannered dogs! Stand ye, when I command!" rendered them
silent. He tried the same trick, and not without effect, when the
pit of Drury Lane was hissing him, not for being a bad actor, but an
immoral man.
"Who is that shabby little man?" said Mary Chambers, a young
Waterford girl, who had been a governess, and who was going through
her probationary time as an actress in Gloucester. "Who the devil is
she?" asked Kean, after being soundly rated by her, for spoiling her
performance through his unsettled memory. She was what Kean never
thoroughly knew her to be--his good genius--worth more than all the
kinsfolk he had ever possessed, including Miss Tidswell, who once
gave him a home and the stick. The imprudent young couple, however,
fell in love; they married; and the manager paid his congratulations
to them, by turning them out of his company.[105]
They loved, slaved, and starved. The misery of their lives is
unparelleled, except by the heroic uncomplainingness with which
it was endured by Mrs. Kean. _His_ industry was really intense;
his study of every character he had to play careful, earnest,
conscientious; and after acting with as much anxiety as if he had
been performing before a jury of critics, he would return to his
miserable home, saddened, furious, and unsober. "I played the part
finely; and yet they did not applaud me!"
Gleams of good fortune occasionally lit up their path. An engagement
at Birmingham, at a guinea a week to each, was comparative wealth
to them; and there Kean found the applause for which he sighed. His
Octavian was preferred to Elliston's; and Stephen Kemble told him
that his Hotspur and Henry IV. were superior to those of his brother,
John Kemble. Kean thought of London. "If I could only get there, and
succeed! If I _succeed_, I shall go mad!"
There was much to be suffered by Kean and his wife before that
triumph came. For lack of means, they have to walk from Birmingham
to Swansea. Two hundred miles, and that poor lady may be a mother
before she accomplishes half of them! They wend painfully on, pale,
hungry, and silent; twelve miles a day; not asking alms, but not
above receiving that hospitality of the poor which is true, because
self-denying, charity. Needing many things, and obtaining none of
those she most needed, Mrs. Kean reached Bristol more dead than
alive. A cast in a boat, more weary suffering, a son born, and an
audience at Swansea who preferred Bengough, an elephantine simpleton,
with large unmeaning eyes, to Edmund--tells the outline of his tale
before they crossed from Wales to Waterford.
Soon in this troop, under Cherry, at Waterford, there were two men,
destined to be at the very head of their respective vocations, as
player and dramatic poet--Edmund Kean and Sheridan Knowles. At
present they are only strolling players. The training of the two men
had been totally different. Kean was "Nobody's Son," and had passed
through the misery, degradation, and blackguardism attendant on such
a parentage--his genius not slumbering, but ready to flash, like the
diamond, when light and opportunity should present themselves.
Knowles, on the other hand, was the son of a scholar and a trainer of
scholars. He came of a literary race. His sire compiled a dictionary;
Sheridan, the lexicographer, was his uncle; Richard Brinsley, his
cousin. At an early age he was removed from his native city, Cork, to
London, where the boy wrote boyish plays, and the youth grew up in
friendship with Hazlitt, Coleridge, and Lamb. Then he went into the
world, to fight his fight, and at four and twenty, that is, in 1808,
I find him a tolerable actor, on the old Dublin stage in Crow Street,
and a very acceptable guest at firesides where merit, wit, and a
harmonious voice were appreciated. Subsequently he joined the troop
of vivacious Cherry, in Waterford. There he met with the little,
bright-eyed, swarthy young man, who was Richard in the play, and
Harlequin in the pantomime, on the same evening; who, in short, could
do anything and did everything well. For him, Edmund Kean, Knowles
wrote his first serious play, a melo-dramatic tragedy, "Leo, the
Gipsey;" and in that piece Kean achieved so notable a triumph, that
he would have chosen it for his first appearance in London, but that,
luckily for him, he had lost the copy.
Edmund seems to have worked steadily in the ancient Irish city. Of
the general business I can say nothing, except that Mrs. Kean played
a Virgin of the Sun, at a time when the character least suited her;
but for a reminiscence of a benefit night, I take half a page from
Mr. Grattan.
"The last thing I recollect of Kean in Waterford, was the performance
for his benefit. The play was Hannah More's tragedy of "Percy," in
which he of course played the hero. Edwina was played by Mrs. Kean,
who was applauded to her heart's content. Kean was so popular, both
as an actor, and from the excellent character he bore, that the
audience thought less of the actor's demerits than of the husband's
feelings; and besides this, the _débutante_ had many personal friends
in her native city, and among the gentry of the neighbourhood, for
she had been governess to the children of a lady of good fortune,
who used all her influence at this benefit. After the tragedy, Kean
gave a specimen of tight-rope dancing, and another of sparring
with a professional pugilist. He then played the leading part in a
musical interlude, and finished with Chimpanzee, the monkey, in the
melo-dramatic pantomime of La Pérouse, and in this _character_ he
showed agility scarcely since surpassed by Mazurier or Gouffe, and
touches of deep tragedy in the monkey's death scene, which made the
audience shed tears."
What cause broke the connection of the Keans with Cherry, I do not
know; but the former were one day without an engagement, and among
the separations that ensued was that of Kean and Knowles. They were
both to find what they thirsted for in London; but for the former
many were the trials, and terrific the ascent, before he was to
reach that pinnacle which he occupied so gloriously and so briefly.
From Waterford, Edmund and his wife took with them no more than they
had brought, except an additional son, the day of whose birth was a
happy day in the mother's calendar of sorrows. They suffered, and
the children with them, all that humanity could suffer and yet live.
I find them at Dumfries, depending for food and shelter upon the
receipts at an "entertainment," given by Kean, in a room at a tavern.
There was _one_ auditor, and he paid sixpence! There were even worse
disappointments than these; and, under their accumulation, I do not
wonder that Kean broke into curses at his perverse destiny; or that
Mrs. Kean, looking at her children, prayed to God that He would
remove them and her!
And so from town to town they pursued their hapless pilgrimage.
_He_ sometimes driven to fury and to drink; she only asking for
death to her and the two younger sufferers. Now and then a divine
charity enabled them to rest and refresh; and _once_, a divine by
profession, in a country town, forbade them the use of a school-room,
because they were actors! The reverend gentleman himself, probably,
thought it very good amusement to listen to his own boys enacting the
"Eunuchus" of Terence.
Famine, rage, drink, and tears, mark the way of the wanderers. Brief
engagements enabled them to exist, just to keep themselves out of
the grave; and then came vacation and want to let them slip back
again to the very brink of that grave. Amid it all, Kean _did_
succeed in making a reputation. Passing through London he saw John
Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, in Wolsey and Constance--and he registered
a vow that _he would_ be there a great actor, too! And so again to
the country, to work hard, gain little, and wait; but also to enjoy
some antepast of metropolitan triumph at Exeter, where his success
was great, but not remunerative; where, with a greatcoat flung over
his stage-dress, he might too often be seen at the bar of the tavern
near the theatre, and where he enlarged his means by teaching dancing
and fencing, elocution and boxing--or "a word and a blow," as some
wag styled the latter two accomplishments. Exeter foretold that he
would not have to wait long, but all the prophetic patronage of
Exeter did not furnish him with means to get to Dorchester by any
other process than on foot, and with his son Charles on his back. The
poor sick little Howard, the elder son, had to be conveyed thither
by his mother. Howard had shown some promise of histrionic talent
already, and he helped to win a little bread for the family before
he died. For this, perhaps, the father loved him; and toiled on till
the tide came in his affairs which promised to raise him at its flood
to highest fortune. That tide began to flow, after Dr. Drury had
seen him act, and reported well to the Drury Lane Committee of his
acting; it was running fast in the same direction when Kean saw a
gentleman, in the boxes at Dorchester, so attentive to his playing,
that Edmund acted to him alone, as Booth had done in his day, but
under other influences, to Mr. Stanyan, the judicious gentleman from
Oxford. Kean's gentleman was Arnold, stage-manager from Drury Lane,
and he commenced negotiations with Kean for an engagement, before
they parted for the night. The poor player rushed home, hysterical
with agitation and delight, and all his good impulses uppermost.
He announced the glad intelligence to his wife, with the touching
comment--"If Howard only get well, we shall be all happy yet!"
Howard died, and Kean played, danced, sorrowed, and hoped--for the
time at which he was to go up to London was at hand; and thither
they went at the close of the year 1813. When that season of 1813-14
opened, Drury was in a condition from which it could be relieved
only by a genius;--and there he stood, in that cold hall, a little,
pale, restless, dark-eyed man, in a coat with two or three capes, and
nobody noticed him. In Cecil Street, his family was living on little
more than air; and he was daily growing sick, as he stood, waiting
in that hall, for an audience with the manager; and subject to the
sneers of passing actors. Even Rae, handsome and a fool, affected
not to know him, though they had played together, when Rae's mother
was matron at St. George's Hospital, and they had acted together at
the Haymarket, in 1806, when Rae led the business, and Kean was but
a supernumerary. Arnold treated him superciliously, with a "_young
man!_"--as he condescended to speak, and put him off. Other new
actors obtained trial parts, but there was none for that chafed,
hungry, restless little man in the capes. Even drunken Tokely, like
himself, from Exeter, could obtain a "first appearance," but Kean was
put off. Stephen Kemble played Shylock, and failed! why not try a
new actor? The Committee did so, and Mr. Huddart, from Dublin, went
on as Shylock, and was never heard of more. And the poor stroller
looked through the darkness of that miserable passage the while, and
murmured, "Let me but get my foot before the floats, and _I'll_ show
them--!"
The permission came. Would he,--no, he _must_ play Richard. "Shylock,
or nothing!" was his bold reply. He was afraid of the littleness of
his figure,--which he had heard scoffed at, being exposed in the
"trunks" of Glo'ster. He hoped to hide it under the gown of Shylock.
The Jew, or nothing! The young fellow, he was not yet six and twenty,
was allowed to have his way.
At the one morning rehearsal he fluttered his fellow-actors, and
scared the manager, by his independence and originality. "Sir, this
will never do!" cried Raymond, the acting manager. "It is quite an
innovation; it cannot be permitted." "Sir," said the poor, proud man,
"I wish it to be so;" and the players smiled, and Kean went home,
that is, to his lodgings, in Cecil Street, on that snowy, foggy, 26th
of February 1814,[106] calm, hopeful, and hungry. "To-day," said he,
"I must _dine_."
Having accomplished that rare feat, he went forth alone, and on
foot. "I wish," he remarked, "I was going to be shot!" He had with
him a few properties which he was bound to procure for himself, tied
up in a poor handkerchief, under his arm. His wife remained, with
their child, at home. Kean tramped on beneath the falling snow, and
over that which thickly encumbered the ground,--solid here; there
in slush; and, by and by, pale, quiet, but fearless, he dressed in
a room shared by two or three others, and went down to the wing by
which he was to enter. Hitherto no one had spoken to him, save Jack
Bannister, who said a cheering word; and Oxberry, who had tended to
him a glass, and wished him good fortune. "By Jove!" exclaimed a
first-rater, looking at him, "Shylock in a black wig! Well!!"
The house could hold, as it is called, £600; there was not more
than a sixth of that sum in front. Winter without, his comrades
within;--all was against him. At length, he went on, with Rae, as
Bassanio, in ill-humour; and groups of actors at the wings, to
witness the first scene of a new candidate. All that Edmund Kean ever
did, was gracefully done; and the bow which he made, in return to
the usual welcoming applause, was eminently graceful. Dr. Drury, the
head-master of Harrow, who took great interest in him, looked fixedly
at him as he came forward. Shylock leant over his crutched stick,
with both hands; and, looking askance at Bassanio, said: "Three
thousand ducats?" paused, bethought himself, and then added: "Well?"
_He is safe_, said Dr. Drury.
[Illustration: (Edmund Kean as Shylock)]
The groups of actors soon after dispersed to the green-room. As they
reached it, there reached there, too, an echo of the loud applause
given to Shylock's reply to Bassanio's assurance that he may take
the bond. "I _will be_ assured I may!"--later came the sounds of the
increased approbation bestowed on the delivery of the passage ending
with, "and for these courtesies, I'll lend you thus much moneys."
The act came to an end gloriously; and the players in the green-room
looked for the coming among them of the new Shylock. He proudly kept
aloof; knew he was friendless, but felt that he was, in himself,
sufficient.
He wandered about the back of the stage, thinking, perhaps, of the
mother and child at home; and sure, now, of having at least made a
step towards triumph. He wanted no congratulations; and he walked
cheerfully down to the wing when the scene was about to take place
between him and his daughter, Jessica, in his very calling to
whom:--"Why, Jessica! I say"--there was, as some of us may remember,
from an after night's experience, a charm, as of music. The whole
scene was played with rare merit; but the absolute triumph was
not won till the scene (which was marvellous in his hands) in the
third act, between Shylock, Solanio, and Salarino,--ending with
the dialogue between the first and Tubal. Shylock's anguish at his
daughter's flight; his wrath at the two Christians who make sport
of his anguish; his hatred of all Christians, generally, and of
Antonio in particular; and then his alternations of rage, grief, and
ecstasy, as Tubal relates the losses incurred in the search of that
naughty Jessica, her extravagances, and then the ill luck that had
fallen upon Antonio;--in all this, there was such originality, such
terrible force, such assurance of a new and mighty master,--that the
house burst forth into a very whirlwind of approbation. "What now?"
was the cry in the green-room. The answer was, that the presence
and the power of the genius were acknowledged with an enthusiasm
which shook the very roof. How so select an audience contrived to
raise such a roar of exultation, was a permanent perplexity to Billy
Oxberry.
They who had seen Stephen Kemble's Shylock, and that of Huddart,
this season, must have by this time confessed that the new actor had
superseded both. He must himself have felt, that if he had not yet
surpassed Cooke, and Henderson, and Macklin, he was tending that
way; and was already their equal. Whatever he felt, he remained
reserved and solitary; but he was now sought after. Raymond, the
acting manager, who had haughtily told him his innovations "would
not do," came to offer him oranges. Arnold, the stage manager, who
had _young-manned_ him, came to present him, "sir!" with some negus.
Kean cared for nothing more now, than for his fourth and last act;
and in that his triumph culminated. His calm demeanour at first; his
confident appeal to justice; his deafness, when appeal is made to him
for mercy; his steady joyousness, when the young lawyer recognises
the validity of the bond; his burst of exultation, when his right
is confessed; his fiendish eagerness, when whetting the knife:--and
then, the sudden collapse of disappointment and terror, with the
words,--"Is _that_--the LAW?"--in all was made manifest, that a noble
successor to the noblest of the actors of old had arisen. Then, his
trembling anxiety to recover what he had before refused; his sordid
abjectness, as he finds himself foiled, at every turn; his subdued
fury; and, at the last (and it was always the crowning glory of his
acting in this play), the withering sneer, hardly concealing the
crushed heart, with which he replied to the jibes of Gratiano, as
he left the court,--all raised a new sensation in an audience, who
acknowledged it in a perfect tumult of acclamation. As he passed to
his dressing-room, Raymond saluted him with the confession, that he
had made a hit; Pope, more generous, avowed that he had saved the
house from ruin.
And then, while Bannister was dashing through Dick, in the
"Apprentice," I seem to see the hero of the night staggering home
through the snow, drunk with delicious ecstasy, all his brightest
dreams realised, and all his good impulses surging within him. He may
be in a sort of frenzy, as he tells of his proud achievement; but, at
its very wildest, he exclaims: "Mary, you shall ride in your carriage
yet!" and, taking his son Charles from the cradle, swears he "shall
go to Eton;" but therewith something overshadows his joy, and he
murmurs, "If Howard had but lived to see it!"
That poor wife and mother must have enjoyed, on that eventful night,
the very brightest of the few gleams of sunshine that fell upon her
early, hapless life. Thenceforth, there was never to be misery or
sorrow in that household again! Poor lady! She did not, perhaps,
remember that Edmund had said, "_If_ I succeed,--it will drive me
mad!"
But not yet: all was triumph for awhile; and worthily it was won.
His audiences rose, from one of a £100 to audiences of £600; and £20
a week rewarded efforts, for far less than which he subsequently
received £50 a night. He was advanced to the dignity of having a
dressing-room to himself. Legislators, poets, nobles, thronged his
tiring-room, where Arnold took as much care of him, as if on his life
hung more than the well-being of the theatre. Friends flocked to him,
as they are wont to do, where there is an opportunity of basking in
pleasant sunshine, imparted by genius. And old Nance Carey turned up,
to exact £50 a year from her not too delighted son, and to introduce
a Henry Darnley, who _would_ call Edmund, "dear brother!"
Some years later, in 1829, Moore was talking with Mrs. Kean of
this critical period in Edmund's career. The poet suggested, that
some memorial of his first appearance should be preserved. "Oh!"
exclaimed Mrs. Kean; "will you write his life? You shall have half
the profits;" adding, as she probably remembered the dark time which
had come upon her since the sunshine,--"if you will only give me a
little."
But success was not to be considered as achieved, by playing one
character supremely well. Kean had, in the general memory, shaken
Macklin from his supremacy in Shylock. He was now summoned to show
himself worthy of being the successor of Garrick,--by acting Richard
III. A few nights before he played that part, it was performed at
Covent Garden, by John Kemble; and a short time after Kean had
triumphed, it was personated by Young; but Kemble could not prevent,
nor Young impede, the triumph of the new actor, who now made Richard
his own, as he had previously done with Shylock.
His Richard settled his position with the critics; and the criticism
to which he was subjected was, for the most part, admirably and
impartially written. He is sometimes spoken of as "this young man;"
at others, "this young gentleman." "Even Cooke's performance," says
one, "was left at an immeasurable distance." A second adds, "it was
the most perfect performance of any that has been witnessed since
the days of Garrick." Of the grand effects followed by a storm of
applause, a third writes that "electricity itself was never more
instantaneous in its operation." They are, however, occasionally
hypercritical. The able critic of the _Morning Chronicle_ objected
that in the young man's Richard "too great reliance was placed on
the expression of the countenance, which is a language intelligible
only to a part of the house;" and a contemporary thought that when
the young gentleman, as Richard, crossed his hands behind his back,
during his familiar colloquy with Buckingham, the action was
altogether _too natural_! Others point to attitudes which Titian
might have painted. Such use of eye, and lip, and muscle, had never
had anything comparable to it since the best days of Garrick. Even
Sylvanus Urban aroused himself, and declared, that Mr. Kean's success
had given new interest to the biography of Richard III.
Indeed, this second glory was greater than the first, for the
difficulties were greater, and they were all surmounted. Joyous and
sarcastic in the opening soliloquy; devilish, as he passed his bright
sword through the still breathing body of Lancaster; audaciously
hypocritical, and almost too exulting, in the wooing of Lady Anne;
cruelly kind to the young Princes, his eye smiling while his foot
seemed restless to crush the two spiders that so vexed his heart;--in
representing all this there was an originality and a nature which
were entirely new to the delighted audience. Then they seemed to
behold altogether a new man revealed to them, in the first words
uttered by him from the throne.--"Stand all apart!" from which period
to the last struggle with Richmond, there was an uninterrupted
succession of beauties; even in the bye-play he found means to extort
applause, and a graceful attitude, an almost silent chuckle, a
significant glance,--even so commonplace a phrase as "Good night, my
lords," uttered before the battle of the morrow, were responded to by
acclamations such as are awarded to none but the great masters of the
art.
The triumph was accumulative, and it was crowned by the tent-scene,
the battle, and the death. Probably no actor ever even approached
Kean in the last two incidents. He fenced with consummate grace and
skill; and fought with an energy that seemed a fierce reality.
Rae had sneered at the "little man," but Rae now felt bound to be
civil to the great tragedian, and referring to the passage of arms in
"Richard III.," he, having to play Richmond, asked, "Where shall I
hit you, sir, to-night?" "Where you can, sir," answered Kean; and he
kept Richmond off, in that famous struggle, till Rae's sword-arm was
weary with making passes.
His attempt to "collar" Richmond when his own sword had fallen from
him was so doubtful in taste that he subsequently abandoned it;[107]
but in the faint, yet deadly-meant passes, which he made with his
swordless arm, after he had received his death-blow, there was the
conception of a great artist; and there died with him a malignity
which mortal man had never before so terribly pourtrayed. Young, in
his dying scene of Richard used to fling his sword at Richmond, a
trick which the critics very properly denounced.
They who said that Mr. Kean's figure and voice were against him,
unconsciously exalted the genius which had triumphed over the
difficulties of Shakspeare and Cibber's Richard. They who accepted
rather than rejoiced in his triumph, called him "The Fortunate
Actor!" They did not know that under slavery, starvation, and every
disadvantage but despair, Kean had silently and solitarily studied
these characters, and had come to conclusions which he hoped would
enable him to achieve a success which, _if_ accomplished, he was,
after all, afraid would drive him mad.
At this time, 1814, Moore speaks of "poor Mr. Kean," as being "in the
honeymoon of criticism;" and then the bard speaks disrespectfully of
the critics. "Next to the pleasure," he says, "of crying a man down,
your critics enjoy the vanity of writing him up; but when once up,
and fixed there, he is a mark for their arrows ever after."
His other characters this season were Hamlet, when to John Bannister
was assigned the first of the two Grave-diggers, whom he had restored
to the stage from which they had been abolished by Garrick; Othello,
to the Iago of Pope; and Iago, to the Othello of Sowerby, Pope,
Rae, and Elliston; Miss Smith, who refused to play the Queen, in
"Richard," being his Desdemona. He also acted Luke, in "Riches"
("City Madam"), to the Lacy of Wallack; and the Lady Traffic of Mrs.
Edwin. Of these, he was always inclined to think Hamlet his best
character. He had, perhaps, studied it more deeply than the others,
and Mrs. Garrick took such especial interest in his representation
of it, that on comparing it with her husband's, she saw only one
great defect,--in the closet scene. Garrick was severer with the
Queen of Denmark than Kean, and Mrs. Garrick persuaded him, though
unconvinced by her, to throw more sternness into this celebrated
scene. The good old lady merited _some_, yet not _such_ concession;
but then she invited Kean to Adelphi Terrace, and sent him fruit from
Hampton, and made him a present of Garrick's stage-jewels. The young
man was in a fair way of being spoiled, as Pope said of Garrick,
when thinking of the laborious, but splendid time of his friend and
favourite, Betterton.
Tenderness to Ophelia, affection for his mother, reverential awe of
his father, and a fixed resolution to fulfil the mission confided to
him by that father, were the distinct "motives," so to speak, of his
Hamlet.
The critics especially dwell on the tender vibration of his voice
when uttering the word "father" to the Ghost; they approve of his
sinking on one knee before the solemn spirit, and they are lost in
admiration of his original action when, instead of keeping the Ghost
off with his sword, when he bids it, "go on," he pointed it back at
his friends to deter them from preventing his following the visionary
figure. This, and another original point, have become stage-property.
I allude to the scene in which he seems to deal so harshly with
Ophelia. At the close of it, Kean used to return from the very
extremity of the stage, take Ophelia's hand, kiss it with a tender
rapture, look mournfully loving upon her, with eyes full of beautiful
significance, and then rush off. The effect never failed, and the
approbation was tumultuous.
Gracefully and earnestly as his Hamlet[108] was played, it yielded
in attractiveness to his Othello, which despite some little
exaggeration of action, when told to beware of jealousy, was,
perhaps, the greatest of his achievements. In the tender scenes, and
love for Desdemona was above all other passion, even when for love
he jealously slew her, he had as much power over his "bad voice," as
his adversaries called it, as John Kemble over his asthmatic cough,
and attuned it to the tenderness to which he had to give expression.
In the fiercer scenes he was unsurpassable, and in the great third
act none who remember him will, I think, be prepared to allow that he
ever had, or is ever likely to have, an equal.
John Kemble himself said of Kean's Othello:--"If the justness of
its conception had been but equal to the brilliancy of execution
it would have been perfect; but," added the older actor, with some
sense, perhaps, of being disturbed by the younger player, "the whole
thing is a mistake; the fact being that Othello was a slow man,"--to
be moved, he was; but being moved, swift and terrible in moving to
consequent purpose.
Iago, curiously enough, was not so welcome a part to Kean as Othello.
Its characteristic was the concealment of his hypocrisy, and in the
delineation of such a part Kean was usually unrivalled. Some of his
admirers considered his Iago as fine as his Richard, but he never
played the two with equal care and equal success. On the other hand,
he was pleased with the strong _oppositions_ in the character of
Luke, but his audiences were not satisfied in the same degree, and it
fell out of his repertory. He of course thought them in the wrong;
lamented on the few competent judges of acting, and limited these to
lawyers, doctors, artists, critics, and literary men. He was then the
(often unwilling) guest of noblemen who, I doubt not, were excellent
judges too; but Kean thought otherwise: "They talk a great deal," he
said, "of what I don't understand,"--politics, and equally abstruse
matters; "but when it comes to plays, they talk such nonsense!"
I am not about to follow this actor through his score of seasons,
but as a sample of his value to the treasury of Drury Lane, at this
time, and therefore to the stage, I may just make record of the fact
that in this first season, he played Shylock fifteen times, Richard
twenty-five, Hamlet eight, Othello ten, Iago eight, and Luke four;
and that in those seventy nights, the delighted treasurer of Drury
Lane struck a balance of profit to the theatre, amounting in round
numbers to £170,000.[109] Previous to the appearance granted to him
so tardily, there had been one hundred and thirty-nine nights of
continual loss. Mr. Whitbread, a proprietor, might well say of him
that "he was one of those prodigies that occur only once or twice in
a century."
In this same season, Kemble stood his ground against Kean in the
one character played by both--Hamlet; but two new actors--tall,
earnest, handsome, but ungainly Conway, from Dublin, and Terry, from
Edinburgh--only took a respectable position. The Othello of the
first, and the Shylock of the second, were never heard of after Kean
had played and made them his own.
In Kean's second season, he added to his other characters, Macbeth,
which had some magnificent points, but in which Kemble had personal
advantages over him: Romeo, which continues the traditional glory of
Barry; Reuben Glenroy and Penruddock, in neither of which he equalled
Kemble; Zanga, played in a style which made the fame of Mossop pale,
and shook Young and Kemble from an old possession; Richard II.,
in an adaptation by Merivale,[110] acted with a new grace to the
expression of melancholy; Abel Drugger, concerning which he answered
the legendary--"I know it," to the "you can't play it," of Mrs.
Garrick; Leon, performed with moderate success, and Octavian, with
rare sweetness, but not with such rare ability as to make John Kemble
uneasy.
Kean also acted his first original character, Egbert, in the tragedy
of that name,[111] by Mrs. Wilmot. His prestige suffered a little
in consequence, for Egbert was condemned on the first night. He had
compensation enough in Zanga. As one who stood among the crowd in the
pit passage heard a shout and clamour of approbation within, he asked
if Zanga had not just previously said, "Then lose her!" for that
phrase, in the country, when uttered by Kean, used to make the walls
shake; and he was answered that it was so. I remember having read
that some one was with Southey, when the "Revenge" was played, and
that when Zanga consummated his vengeance in the words, "Know then
'twas I"--lifting up his arms, as he spoke, over the fainting Alonzo,
and seeming to fill the theatre--the same image was simultaneously
presented to the minds of the two friends. "He looks like Michael
Angelo's rebellious Archangel!" thought one. "He looks like the
Arch-Fiend himself," said the other.[112]
Covent Garden struggled nobly, with its old and strong company,
against the single power of Kean at the other house; but found
its best ally in a new actress. On the 13th of October 1814,[113]
Miss O'Neill made her first appearance in Belvidera. It is not
my intention to do more than record the names of the players who
made their _début_ after the coming of Edmund Kean, but there is
something so singular in the lucky chance which led to Miss O'Neill's
well-merited fortune, that I venture to tell it in the words of
Michael Kelly.[114]
Let me first remark that, no doubt, some of us are old enough to have
seen, as many of us have heard, of Miss Walstein, that "sort of Crow
Street Bonaparte," who struggled so bravely, though so briefly, at
Drury Lane against Miss O'Neill, when the latter carried the town
by her superior charms and talents. Miss O'Neill was furnished by
her undoubtedly great rival with the means of supplanting her. Had
not Walstein been arrogant, the famous Juliet of our infantine days
might never have sighed on the Covent Garden balcony. Her first step,
however, was made on the stage at Crow Street, and Miss Walstein
unwittingly helped her to obtain a secure footing. The story is thus
told by garrulous Mike Kelly:--"Miss Walstein, who was the heroine of
the Dublin stage, and a great and deserved favourite, was to open the
theatre in the character of Juliet. Mr. Jones received an intimation
from Miss Walstein that without a certain increase of salary, and
other privileges, she would not come to the house. Mr. Jones had
arrived at the determination to shut up his theatre sooner than
submit to what he thought an unwarrantable demand, when Mac Nally,
the box-keeper, who had been the bearer of Miss Walstein's message,
told Mr. Jones that it would be a pity to shut up the house; that
there was a remedy if Mr. Jones chose to avail himself of it. 'The
girl, sir,' said he, 'who has been so often recommended to you as a
promising actress, is now at an hotel in Dublin with her father and
brother, where they have just arrived, and is proceeding to Drogheda,
to act at her father's theatre there. I have heard it said by persons
who have seen her, that she plays Juliet extremely well, and is very
young and very pretty. I am sure that she would be delighted to have
the opportunity of appearing before a Dublin audience, and if you
please I will make her the proposal.' The proposal was made, and
accepted; and on the following Saturday, 'the girl,' who was Miss
O'Neill, made her _début_ on the Dublin stage as Juliet.[115] The
audience was delighted; she acted the part several nights, and Mr.
Jones offered her father and brother engagements on very liberal
terms, which were thankfully accepted. In Dublin," adds Kelly, "she
was not only a great favourite in tragedy, but also in many parts of
genteel comedy. I have there seen her play Letitia Hardy; she danced
very gracefully, and introduced my song, 'In the rough Blast heave
the Billows,' originally sung by Mrs. Jordan, at Drury Lane, which
she sang so well as to produce a general call for its repetition from
the audience. She was in private life highly esteemed for her many
good qualities. Her engagement in Dublin wafted Miss Walstein from
Dublin, where she had been for many years the heroine of Crow Street,
to Drury Lane, where she made her appearance as Calista, in 'The Fair
Penitent,' on the 15th November 1814, but only remained one season."
It would seem as if Drury Lane were weary by this time of its
success, for early in 1815-16 that excellent actor, Dowton, who
disliked seeing Kean's name in large type, tried to extinguish him
by playing Shylock! The Kentish baker's son could play Sheva and
Cantwell, and many other parts admirably; but Shylock!--No, let us
pass to more equal adversaries; in a contest between whom, Kean did
fairly extinguish his antagonist. In this season Kean acted all
his old and many new parts, among the latter, Shakspeare's Richard
II.,[116] Bajazet, Duke Aranza (in which Elliston had the better of
him), Goswin ("Beggars' Bush"), Sir Giles Overreach, and Sforza.
Among these, Sir Giles stands pre-eminent for its perfectness, from
the first words, "Still cloistered up," to the last convulsive breath
drawn by him in that famous _one_ scene of the fifth act, in which,
through his terrible intensity, he once made so experienced an
actress as Mrs. Glover faint away,--not at all out of flattery, but
from emotion.
Now, Sir Giles had been one of Kemble's weaknesses; and he affected
it as he might have done Coriolanus. He had played it since Mr.
Kean had come to London, but as no comparison could be drawn, his
performance was accepted, as even an indifferent but honest effort
by a great artist deserves to be. But after Edmund Kean had added
another rose to his chaplet, by his marvellous impersonation of Sir
Giles, Kemble played it again, as if to challenge comparison. I am
sorry to say it, but John Kemble was hissed! No! It was his Sir Giles
that was hissed. Two nights later he acted Coriolanus, the merits
of which were acknowledged with enthusiasm by his audience. But he
never ventured on Sir Giles again! In this last character, all the
qualities of Kean's voice came out to wonderful purpose, especially
in the scene where Lovel asks him,
"Are you not moved with the sad imprecations
And curses of whole families, made wretched
By your sinister practices?"
to which Sir Giles replies:--
"Yes, as rocks are
When foamy billows split themselves against
Their flinty ribs; or as the moon is moved
When wolves with hunger pined, howl at her brightness."
I seem still to hear the words and the voice as I pen this passage;
now composed, now grand as the foamy billows; so flute-like on the
word "moon," creating a scene with the sound; and anon sharp, harsh,
fierce in the last line, with a look upward from those matchless
eyes, that rendered the troop visible, and their howl perceptible
to the ear;--the whole serenity of the man, and the solidity of his
temper, being illustrated less by the assurance in the succeeding
words than by the exquisite music in the tone with which he uttered
the word "brightness."
It was on the night he played Sir Giles for the first time in London,
that Mrs. Kean, who seems to have been too nervous to witness his new
essays, asked him what that hanger-on at the theatres, Lord Essex,
had thought of it. You know the jubilant reply:--"D---- Lord Essex,
Mary! The pit rose at me!"
But to Sir Giles were not confined Kean's triumphs of this year.
He created the part of Bertram, in Maturin's tragedy of that
name; and he alone stands associated with the part. It suited him
admirably,--for it is full of passion, pathos, wild love, and
tenderness. One great point made by the actor (whose Imogine was Miss
Somerville, afterwards Mrs. Bunn) was in the exquisite delivery of
the words, "God bless the child!" They have made many a tear to flow,
and he acquired the necessary pathos and power by first repeating
them at home, while he looked on his sleeping boy; and I do not know
a prettier incident in the life of this impulsive actor. Would there
were more of them!
In the season of 1816-17 John Kemble withdrew, full of honours,
though his laurels had been a little shaken. As opponents to the now
well-established actor at Drury Lane, two gentlemen were brought
forward, Mr. Macready, from Dublin, and Mr. Junius Booth, from
Worthing. The former is the son of the respectable actor and dramatic
author, whose abandonment of upholstery, in Dublin, did something
towards giving to the stage the son who long refined and adorned it.
Mr. Macready made all the more progress by not coming in contrast,
or comparison with Kean. He was of the Kemble school, but with ideas
of his own, and he made his way to fame, independently. But Booth
was so perfectly of the Kean school that his Richard appeared to be
as good as his master's. Indeed, some thought it better. Whereupon,
Kean counselled the Drury Lane management to bring him over to
that theatre. It was done. They played in Othello,--the Moor, by
Kean; Iago, by Booth. The contact was fatal to the latter. He
fell ingloriously, even as a Mr. Cobham had done before him in an
audacious attempt on Richard; but both gentlemen became heroes to
transpontine audiences.
Kean's other achievements this season were his fine interpretation of
Timon, after Shakspeare's text, "with no other omissions than such
as the refinement of manners has rendered necessary;" his creation
of Maturin's "Manuel," and his last triumph over Kemble, in doing
what the latter had failed to do, stirring the souls, raising the
terror, and winning the sympathy of his audience by one of the most
finished of his impersonations,--Sir Edward Mortimer. Oroonoko,
Selim, and Paul were the other characters newly essayed by him during
this season. The last two were for his benefit,[117] and therewith he
closed a season,--the last very fruitful in great triumphs, but not
the first in the chronicle of his decline.
He was now the oft-invited guest of people with whom he did not
particularly care to associate. Moore chronicles his name as one
of the guests with Lord Petersham, Lord Nugent, the Hon. William
Spencer, Colonel Berkeley, and Moore, at an "odd dinner," given
by Horace Twiss, in Chancery Lane, in 1819, in "a borrowed room,
with champagne, pewter spoons, and old Lady Cork." Lord Byron
was reluctant to believe in him, but after seeing him in Richard,
he presented the actor with a sword, and a box adorned by a
richly-chased boar-hunt; when Lord Byron had seen his Sir Giles, he
sent to the player a valuable Damascus blade. His compliments, at
Kean's benefit, took the shape of a fifty-pound note; and he once
invited him to dinner, which Kean left early, that he might take the
chair at some pugilistic supper!
[Illustration: Mr. Weston as Dr. Last.]
FOOTNOTES:
[101] Henry Carey hanged himself. I am not aware that his son
committed suicide.
[102] "I was born in the year 1787, and if anybody asks you who
was my mother, say Miss Tidswell, the actress; my father was the
late Duke of Norfolk, whom they called _Jockey_. I am not the son
of Moses Kean, the mimic, nor of his brother, as some people are
pleased to assert, though I bear the same name. I had the honour of
being brought up at Arundel Castle till I was seven years old, and
there they sometimes, I do not know why, called me _Duncan_! After I
quitted Arundel Castle, I was soon put upon the stage by my mother.
The very first part in which I appeared was the Robber's Boy in the
'Iron Chest,' when it was originally brought out at Drury Lane in
1796.... I was at Arundel Castle a few years ago, and, as I showed to
the people who had charge of it, I knew every room, passage, winding
and turning in it. In one of the large apartments hung a portrait of
the old Duke of Norfolk, and the man who was with me said, 'You are
very like the old Duke, sir.' And well he might. I am his son!"
The above is said to have been taken down from Kean's words by a
gentleman who showed it to Payne Collier. Kean named his first boy
_Howard_, in support of the Norfolk legend.--_Doran MS._
[103] Miss Tidswell gives the date as 17th March 1789; but there can
be little doubt that 1787 is the correct year.
[104] In _Notes and Queries_, 4th series, iii. 535; Kean's real name
is said to have been Carter.--_Doran MS._
[105] At Stroud, in Gloucestershire, July 17, 1808. The bride and her
sister Susan, witness, wrote their names Chambres.--_Doran MS._
[106] 26th of January (second edition).
[107] Dyce called him "a pot-house Richard."--_Doran MS._
[108] When Rae played Hamlet in 1806, at the Haymarket, Kean was his
Rosencrantz.--_Doran MS._
[109] There is a cipher too many here. In the 2d edition the sum is
given as £17,000. Barry Cornwall says, "Upwards of £20,000."
[110] The adaptation was by Wroughton.
[111] The name of the tragedy was "Ina."
[112] Barry Cornwall relates a precisely similar circumstance, to
which Dr. Doran probably refers.
[113] Miss O'Neill played Juliet on the 6th October (corrected in 2d
edition).
[114] Miss O'Neill (Lady Becher) died 29th October 1872, aged 80.
[115] After Miss O'Neill married Becher and left the stage, she
affected not even to know at what time the play began, and once, when
some one quoted a line from one of her popular parts, she pretended
not to know from whence it came. So says Payne Collier, but I know
she went to see Kate Terry's Juliet, and that she sent to her the
praise of "one who had played Juliet."--_Doran MS._
[116] I see no reason to suppose that it was not Wroughton's
alteration that was performed this season also.
[117] He played Achmet and Paul for his benefit. He played Eustace
de St. Pierre ("Surrender of Calais") for the first time during this
season.
[Illustration: J. B. BOOTH.]