Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 3 of 3)

Subsequently, Kemble attained the management of Drury Lane, succeeding King, who had been merely the servant of the proprietor, in 1788-89. He could now play what parts he chose, – and his first character was Lord Townly; his second, Macbeth.68 In the first, he was second only to Barry; in Macbeth, from the weakness of his voice, he failed to rise to an equality with Garrick. Leon followed, with some state; Sciolto, in which he rendered the stern paternal principle sublime; Mirabel, in which he was to be altogether distanced by his brother, Charles; and Romeo, in which he never approached the height of Barry. On his first revival of "Henry VIII.," he left Bensley in possession of his old part, Wolsey, and for the sake, it is said, of giving a "duteous and intelligent observance" to his sister in the heavier scenes, doubled the parts of Cromwell and Griffith, in his own person. His great Wolsey triumph was a glory of a later time; so was the triumph of his Coriolanus, – not yet matured; but in which he was not only never surpassed, but never equalled. His first season as manager was a decided success, as regards the acting of himself and sister, and also the novelties produced.

His second was marked by some revivals, such as "Henry V." and the "Tempest," and adaptations of the "False Friend" of Vanbrugh, and the "Rover" of Aphra Behn. In the first piece, in which Kemble played the King better than he did his other Kings, – Richard and John, he made a fine point in starting up from prayer and expression of penitence, at the sound of the trumpet. In lighter pieces he was less successful. His Don John, the Libertine, was as far beyond his powers as were the songs of Cœur-de-Lion in Burgoyne's pretty recasting of "Sedaine". How he cared to attempt such a feat as the last is inexplicable – but did not droll little Quick, George III.'s favourite actor, and almost personal friend, once play the Hunchback Richard? and did not Kemble play Charles Surface? and also take as a compliment Sheridan's assurance that he had "entirely executed his design?"

Nevertheless fortune attended the Kemble management, although George III.'s especial patronage was bestowed on the rival house. It had its perils, and once brought him to a duello with James Aikin, a spirited actor, who had caused the destruction of the Edinburgh Theatre through his refusal to beg pardon of the audience on his knees. His only offence was in having succeeded a favourite, but discharged actor, named Stayley. In this duel, fought in Marylebone Fields, with Jack Bannister as sole second to both combatants, Aikin's fire was not returned by his manager, and the adversaries were soon reconciled.

With a short interval John Kemble was manager of Drury Lane till 1801.69 In the following year he went abroad, the affairs of Drury having fallen into confusion; and in 1803, having purchased a sixth share of Covent Garden, he succeeded Lewis in the management of that theatre, and remained there till his retirement in 1817, at the close of the season in which Mr. Macready made his first appearance in London, as Orestes; and Lucius Junius Booth, as Richard, flashed promise for a moment and straightway died out.

With Kemble's departure from Drury Lane closes the first part of his career. He had begun it with £5 per week, and ended it with a weekly salary strangely reckoned of £56, 14s. He had borne himself well throughout. He had a lofty scorn of anonymous assailants; was solemn enough in his manners not to give a guinea, for drink, to the theatrical guard, without stupendous phrases; but he could stoop to "knuckle down" at marbles with young players on the highway; and to utter jokes to them with a Cervantic sort of gravity.

He addressed noisy and unappreciative audiences with such neat satire that they thought he was apologising, when he was really exposing their stupidity. I do not know if he were generous in criticism of his fellow actors; he said of Cooke's Sir Pertinax, that comedy had nothing like it. This had been called "liberal;" but it looks to me satirical; and he certainly never praised Cooke's tragedy. The utmost, indeed, he ever said of Kean was, that "the gentleman was terribly in earnest." On the other hand, his own worshippers nearly choked him with incense. Boaden may not have been far wrong when he said that Kemble was at the head of the Academics, but he certainly was so in describing Cooke as merely at the head of the vulgar; and he approached blasphemy when he tells us that Kemble's features and figure as the Monk in "Aurelio and Miranda" reminded him, and could only be compared with, those of One, to name Whom would be irreverent!

Kemble's secret of success lay in his indefatigable assiduity. In studying the part of the Stranger he neglected for weeks, that for which he was particularly distinguished, – neatness of costume. Whatever the part he had to play, he acted it as if it were the most important in the piece; and, like Betterton, Booth, Quin, Barry, and Garrick, he made his impersonation of the Ghost70 as distinct a piece of art as Hamlet, when that character fell to him, in its turn. Even in Earl Percy, in the "Castle Spectre," an inferior character, he took such pains as nearly to break his neck, and in the scene of the attempted escape, fell back, from the high window to which he had climbed, to the sofa below, from which he had painfully ascended, with the agility and precision of a harlequin.

Rolla would have seemed to me unworthy of him, but that I remember Pitt, on seeing him in that character, said, "there is the noblest actor I ever beheld!" Sheridan had almost despaired of Kemble's success in Rolla; but Kemble felt that everything was in his favour, and gave all his own admiration to his sister, who, in Elvira, rendered so picturesque "a soldier's trull."

I have heard eyewitnesses describe his Octavian, not as a heart-rending, but a heart-dissolving display, the feelings of the spectators being all expressed by tears; and yet he could win a laugh from the same spectators in Young Marlow, and shake their very hearts again in that mournful Penruddock, his finest effort in comedy; but in comedy full of tragic echoes.

Next to Penruddock, Boaden classes his Manly, for perfection; I have heard that parts of his Lord Townly surpassed them both. There the dignity and gravity were of a quality quite natural to him.

In Henry V. he was so much the King that an earl, Guilford, wrote an essay by way of eulogy on it; and his Hotspur had but one fault, that of being incorrectly dressed. In Roman parts, and in the Roman costume, he seemed native and to the manner born. His Coriolanus and Hamlet are the characters the most associated with his name. Nevertheless, I do not discern any great respect, on Kemble's part, for Shakspeare, in his revival of Coriolanus or of any other of the plays of the national poet. The revival of Coriolanus was a mixture of Thomson and Shakspeare's tragedies, with five of the best scenes in the latter omitted, and what was judicious in the former, marred. I cannot help thinking that Kemble had only that sort of regard for Shakspeare which people have for the picturesque, who tear away ivy from a church tower in order to whitewash its walls.

Then, again, in that matter of Ireland's forgery of "Vortigern," as Shakspeare's, it is not clear what opinion Kemble held of it previous to the night of its performance. Mrs. Siddons declined to play Edmunda; but Kemble's consenting, or rather resolving, to play the principal character in the tragedy, would seem to indicate that, at the best, he had no opinion, and was willing to leave the verdict to be pronounced by the public. I take from a communication to Notes and Queries, by an eyewitness, an account of what took place on that eventful night when an alleged new piece, by William Shakspeare, was presented to the judgment of a public tribunal.

"The representation of Ireland's tragedy took place on Saturday, April 2, 1796. Being one of those who were fortunate in gaining admittance and a seat on the second row in the pit, I am anxious, while my life is spared, to state what I saw and heard on this memorable occasion. The crowd and the rush for admittance were almost unprecedented. I do not think that twenty females were in the pit, such was the eagerness of gentlemen to gain admittance. Mr. Ireland's father, I remember, sat in the front box on the lower tier, with some friends around him. His son was behind the scenes. There was little or no disapprobation apparently shown by the audience until the commencement of the fifth act, when Mr. Kemble, it was probable, thought the deception had gone on long enough." Such, I think, was Ireland's own opinion; for in his Confessions, published in 1805, I find the following account of the disapproval of the audience given by himself.

"The conduct of Mr. Kemble was too obvious to the whole audience to need much comment. I must, however, remark, that the particular line on which Mr. Kemble laid such a peculiar stress was, in my humble opinion, the watchword agreed upon by the Malone faction for the general howl. The speech alluded to ran as follows; the line in italics being that so particularly noticed by Mr. Kemble: —

"'Time was, alas! I needed not this spur.But here's a secret and a stinging thorn,That wounds my troubled nerves. O Conscience! Conscience!When thou didst cry, I strove to stop thy mouth,By boldly thrusting on thee dire Ambition:Then did I think myself, indeed, a god!But I was sore deceived; for as I pass'd,And traversed in proud triumph the Basse-court,There I saw death, clad in most hideous colours:A sight it was, that did appal my soul;Yea, curdled thick this mass of blood within me.Full fifty breathless bodies struck my sight;And some, with gaping mouths, did seem to mock me;While others, smiling in cold death itself,Scoffingly bade me look on that, which soonWould wrench from off my brow this sacred crown,And make me, too, a subject like themselves:Subject! to whom? To thee, O sovereign Death!Who hast for thy domain this world immense:Churchyards and charnel-houses are thy haunts,And hospitals thy sumptuous palaces;And, when thou wouldst be merry, thou dost chooseThe gaudy chamber of a dying king.O! then thou dost ope wide thy bony jaws,And, with rude laughter and fantastic tricks,Thou clapp'st thy rattling fingers to thy sides:And when this solemn mockery is o'er,With icy hand thou tak'st him by the feet,And upward so; till thou dost reach the heart,And wrap him in the cloak of 'lasting night.'

"No sooner was the above line uttered in the most sepulchral tone of voice possible, and accompanied with that peculiar emphasis which, on a subsequent occasion, so justly rendered Mr. Kemble the object of criticism (viz., on the first representation of Mr. Colman's 'Iron Chest'), than the most discordant howl echoed from the pit that ever assailed the organs of hearing. After the lapse of ten minutes the clamour subsided, when Mr. Kemble, having again obtained a hearing, instead of proceeding with the speech at the ensuing line, very politely, and in order to amuse the audience still more, redelivered the very line above quoted with even more solemn grimace than he had in the first instance displayed."

During John Kemble's fourteen years' connection with Covent Garden, he created no new character that added to his fame, except, perhaps, Reuben Glenroy, in Morton's "Town and Country." His other original parts were in poor pieces, more or less forgotten. In old characters which he assumed for the first time during his proprietorship in Covent Garden, the most successful was Gloucester, in "Jane Shore," to which he gave a force and prominency which it had never previously received. His Prospero was a marvel of dignity and beautiful elocution, and his Brutus perfect in conception and execution. Of other parts his Pierre was good, but his Iago was below the level of more than one fellow-actor; his Eustace de St. Pierre was, perhaps, as fine as Bensley's, but his Valentine, in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," could have been better played, even then, by his brother Charles.

In judgment, he sometimes erred as Garrick did. He peremptorily rejected Tobin's "Honeymoon," which, with Elliston as the Duke Aranza and Miss Duncan as Juliana, became one of the most popular comedies of the day. He acknowledged his mistake; and he was as ready to acknowledge the sources of some of his best inspirations. His Wolsey, for instance, was one of his finest parts, but he confessed that his idea of the Cardinal was taken from West Digges. He was sensitive enough as to public criticism, and when about to try Charles Surface, he wrote to Topham, "I hope you will have the goodness to give orders to your people to speak favourably of the Charles, as more depends on that than you can possibly be aware of." The act was facetiously characterised as "Charles's Martyrdom," rather than "Charles's Restoration," and Kemble himself used to tell a story how, when offering to make reparation to a gentleman, for some offence, committed "after dinner," the gentleman answered that a promise on Mr. Kemble's part never to play Charles Surface again, would be considered ample satisfaction. Wine is said to have always made Kemble dull, but not offensive. Naturally dull he was not, though he was styled so by people who would have called Torrismond dull, because he said, "Nor can I think; or I am lost in thought!" Kemble was lively enough to make a good repartee, when occasion offered. He was once rehearsing the song in "Cœur-de-Lion," – which he used to sing to the blaring accompaniment of French horns, that his voice might be the less audible, – when Shaw, the leader, exclaimed, "Mr. Kemble, Mr. Kemble, you really murder the time!" "Mr. Shaw," rejoined the actor, taking coolly a pinch of snuff, "it is better to murder Time than to be always beating him, as you are."

He bore misfortune manfully. When Covent Garden, Rich's old house, with the royal arms in the centre of the curtain, which had hung on the old curtain at Lincoln's Inn Fields, was burnt down after the performance of "Pizarro," on the night of the 19th of September 1808, he was "not much moved," though, in the fire, perished a large amount of valuable property. Mrs. Kemble mourned over the supposed fact that they had to begin life again, but Kemble, after long silence, burst into a rhapsody over the ancient edifice, and straightway addressed himself to the rearing of that new building which has since gone the way of most theatres. In the completion of that second playhouse on this spot, he was nobly aided by his patron, the Duke of Northumberland, who lent him £10,000, and at the dinner by which the opening was celebrated, sent the actor his bond, that he might, as a crowning effect, commit it to the flames. It was a princely act, and he who was thought worthy of being the object of it, must have been emphatically a gentleman.

In earlier days, Kemble was accustomed to be with the first of gentlemen. One of the finest of the few left makes some record of him. Walpole notices Kemble twice; and we find that he held him superior to Garrick in Benedick, and to Quin in Maskwell. In September 1789, Walpole writes from Strawberry Hill to the Miss Berrys: "Kemble, and Lysons the clergyman, passed all Wednesday here, with me. The former is melting the three parts of 'Henry VI.' into one piece. I doubt it will be difficult to make a tolerable play out of them." The only other notice is dated April 1791; when the writer says to Miss Berry: "Apropos to Catherine and Petruchio, I supped with their representatives, Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, t'other night, at Miss Farren's …" at the bow-window house in Green Street, Grosvenor Square. "Mrs. Siddons is leaner, but looks well. She has played Jane Shore and Desdemona, and is to play in the 'Gamester,' all the parts she will act this year. Kemble, they say, shone in Othello."

Othello was one of Kemble's effective, yet not his most successful character; but his figure was well formed for it. He bore drapery with infinite grace, and expressed every feeling well, by voice, feature, and glance of the eye – though in the first, as with his brother Charles, lay his chief defect. It wanted strength. We are accustomed, perhaps, to associate him most with Hamlet, and old playgoers have told me of a grand delivery of the soliloquies; a mingled romance and philosophy in the whole character; an eloquent bye-play, a sweet reverence for his father, a remembrance of the prince, with whatever companion he might be for the moment, of a beautiful filial affection for his mother, and of one more tender which he could not conceal for Ophelia. When Kemble first appeared in Hamlet, the town could not say that Henderson was excelled, but many confessed that he was equalled. That confession stirred no ill-blood between them. "I never had an opportunity," said Kemble, later, "to study any actor better than myself, except Mr. Henderson."

Of the grandeur and sublimity of the passion-tossed Orestes he gave so complete a picture that it was said – by that single character alone he might have reaped immortal fame.

On the other hand, his Biron was only a respectable performance; his Macbeth on a level with his Othello; his Richard and Sir Giles very inferior to Cooke's, still more so to those of Edmund Kean; and in comedy, generally, he was a very poor actor indeed, except in parts where he had to exercise dignity, express pathos, or pronounce a sentiment of moral tendency.

"Whene'er he tries the airy or the gay,Judgment, not genius, marks the cold essay."

The judgment was not always sensibly exercised, for Kemble was undoubtedly

"For meaning too precise inclined to pore,And labour for a point unknown before."

I think, in the old Roman habit he was most at his ease; there art, I am told, seemed less, nature more. In this respect he was exactly the reverse of Garrick, who could no more have competed with him in delineating the noble aim of the stern Coriolanus, than Kemble could have striven successfully against Garrick's Richard, or Abel Drugger.

And yet all the characters originally played by him, and successfully established on the stage, are of a romantic and not a classical cast. The prating patriot Rolla, the stricken, murmuring, lost Octavian, by which he sprung as many fountains of tears as his sister in the most heart-rending of her tragic parts; his chivalrous Cœur-de-Lion, his unapproachable Penruddock, his Percy ("Castle Spectre"), his Stranger, his de l'Epée, his Reuben Glenroy (the colloquial dialogue of which character, however, was always a burthen to him), and his De Montfort, are all romantic parts, to many of which he has given permanent life; while more classical parts for which he seemed more fitted, and in plays of equal merit at least, such as Cleombrotus ("Fate of Sparta"), Huniades (which certainly is not romantic), – his Pirithous, and his Sextus ("Conspiracy"), are all forgotten. That his sympathies were classical, may in some sort be accepted from the fact, that he began his public life in 1776 (the year of Garrick's farewell), at Wolverhampton, with Theodosius, and closed it, at Covent Garden, in 1817, with Coriolanus. That Kemble's own departure from the stage did not, as was once expected, prove its destruction, is to be gathered from the circumstance that while his farewell performances were in progress, Sheil's tragedy of the "Apostate" was produced at the same theatre, with a cast including the names of Young, Macready, C. Kemble, and Miss O'Neill! – and Kean was then filling Drury Lane with his Richard, Shylock, and Sir Giles.

Kemble's nearest approach to a fiasco was on his playing Sir Edward Mortimer. The "Iron Chest" had been ill-rehearsed, and Kemble himself was in such a suffering condition on the first night that he was taking opium pills as the curtain was rising. The piece failed, till Elliston essayed the principal part; and, on its failure, Colman published the most insulting of prefaces to the play, in which he remarked that "Frogs in a marsh, flies in a bottle, wind in a crevice, a preacher in a field, the drone of a bagpipe, all – all yielded to the inimitable and soporific monotony of Mr. Kemble!"

In one class of character Kemble was pre-eminent. He was "the noblest Roman of them all." His name is closely associated with Coriolanus, and next with Cato. He was not a "general" actor, like some of his predecessors, yet he excelled in parts which Garrick declined to touch. A contemporary says of him, "He is not a Garrick in Richard, a Macklin in Shylock, a Barry in Othello, or a Mossop in Zanga," and adds, that "there is more art than nature in his performance; but let it be observed that our best actors have always found stage trick a necessary practice, and Mr. Kemble's methodical powers are so peculiar to himself, that every imitator (for there have been some who have endeavoured to copy his manners) has been ridiculous in the attempt." Nevertheless, there was a Kemble school, the last of whose members is Mr. Cooper, who made his first appearance in London, at the Haymarket, in 1811, and has not yet, after more than half a century of service, formally retired from the stage. Not the least merit of actors formed on the Kemble model, was distinct enunciation, and this alone, in our large theatres, was a great boon to a listening audience.

As a dramatic author, Kemble has achieved no great reputation; he was, for the most part, only an adapter or a translator, but in both he manifested taste and ability, save when he tampered with Shakspeare. His solemn farewell, on the 23d of June 1817, in Coriolanus, was made not too soon; his great powers had begun, after more than forty years assiduous service, to fail, and he becomingly wished, "like the great Roman i' the Capitol," that he might adjust his mantle ere he fell. The memory of that night lives in the heart of many a survivor, and it lived in that of its hero till he calmly died, after less than six years of retirement at Lausanne, in February 1823. The old student of Douay never formally withdrew from the Church, of which his father once destined him to be a priest, but he remained a true Catholic Christian, with a Protestant pastor for friend and counsellor, who was at his side, with a nearer and dearer friend, when the supreme moment was at hand. Such was the man. As an actor, he lacked the versatility and perfection of Garrick and Barry; and, says Leigh Hunt, "injured what he made you feel, by the want of feeling himself."

Of John Kemble's brothers, Stephen and Charles, the former was the less celebrated, but he was not without merit. The fame of his sister induced him to leave a chemist's, or an apothecary's counter, for the stage, as, later in life, the reputation of the eldest brother tempted Charles Kemble to abandon an appointment in the Post Office, in order to try his fortune as a player. In these respective trials Stephen was less fortunate than Charles. Born in 1758, on the night his mother played Anne Boleyn, he was by seventeen years the elder of the latter. His theatrical life commenced in Dublin, after an itinerant training; but there John extinguished Stephen; and when, in 1783, he appeared at Covent Garden, as Othello, to the Desdemona of Miss Satchell, afterwards his wife, whatever impression he may have made, Stephen was speedily swept from public favour by the greater merit of John. After subsequently playing old men at the Haymarket, Stephen opened a house in Edinburgh, against Mrs. Esten at the established theatre. The opposition led to, in some sense, a dignified strife. The Duke of Hamilton loved Mrs. Esten, and the Duke of Northumberland was a friend to the Kembles. In the law proceedings which followed, each Duke gave material support to his favourite, and here was the old feud of Douglas and Percy again raging in the north!

Ultimately Stephen left Edinburgh with no great amount of luck to boast of, and, after a wandering life, appeared, in 1803,71 at Drury Lane, as Falstaff, after the delivery by Bannister of a heavy set of jocular verses, making allusion to his obesity, which enabled him to act Falstaff without stuffing! He did not act it ill; but Henderson had not yet faded from the memory of playgoers, and Stephen Kemble could not attain higher rank than a place among the best of the second class of actors. Again he disappeared from the metropolis, but returned, and played a few of the parts to which he was suited, rather by his size than his merits; and in 1818, at Drury Lane, where he assumed the office of manager, opened the season by introducing his son Henry, from Bath, as Romeo. In 1819 he played Orozembo; and "therewith an end." The theatre was then let to Elliston; Henry Kemble sank from Drury to the Coburg,72 and Stephen withdrawing to a private life, not altogether ill provided, died in 1822.