CHAPTER XXVL

EDMUND KEAN.

"Ir 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."

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This reminds me of an anecdote of Louis Phillippe, 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, Alexander 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 intermarriages 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 honor 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 splendor derived to him from the author of the Maxims and the great chief of the Trimmers, if, indeed, he knew any thing 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. 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 Kean himself, -resulted in her becoming the mother of a boy, her pitiless neglect of whom seems to have begun even before his birth.

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 cscape 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, 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 favorites!

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 whereabouts 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 breadwinner, 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 inpossible 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.

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!

His

And then he is abroad again; not easily to be followed. 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 labor 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 labor to this, end daunted him. However poor the task intrusted 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 at 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,