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

"Beware, Olivia, of the wiles of man! —You've seen one suck an orange in the street;And when he's feasted, fling the rind away?So will a man, who has despoiled a woman, —When all's ta'en from her, cast her in the dirt."

Hayley was angry enough when the public damned his "Eudora," which act he thought, manifested only the bad taste of the public, seeing that his play had received the sanction of Lieutenant-General Burgoyne; but if Hayley knew little of practical triumphs of temper, and exhibited small discretion in printing his rejected tragedy, he at least showed that his tragedy was free from such nonsense as we find in Mr. Masterton's.

The two authors who most strongly contrast with each other as to their feelings under a disagreeable verdict, were Charles Lamb and Godwin. The former was present on the night that his farce, "Mr. H.," was played, and he heartily joined in the shower of hisses with which it was assailed by the audience. This was in juster taste than the conduct of Godwin, who sat in the pit, stoically indifferent, in all appearance, to the indifference of the audience to his tragedy – "Antonio." As the act-drop descended, without applause or disapprobation, the author grimly observed that such was exactly the effect he had laboured to produce. And as the piece proceeded amid similar demonstrations of contemptuous indifference, "I would not for the world," said poor Godwin, "have the excitement set in too early."

I question, however, if anything superior to "Antonio" was produced between 1800 and the first appearance of Edmund Kean. Soon after that event came Sheil, Maturin, Proctor, and a greater than any of them, Sheridan Knowles. Sheil wrote his tragedy, "Adelaide," expressly for Miss O'Neill; everything was sacrificed to one character, – and "Adelaide" proved a failure. The poem, however, contained promise of a poet. There was originality, at least there was no servile imitation, in the style, which was not indeed without inflation, and thundering phrases and conceits, – but there was, withal, a weakness, from which, if the writer ever extricated himself, it was only to fall into greater defect. The story is romantic, and something after the fashion of the day, in which there was an apotheosis for every romantic villain. Such a villain is Lunenberg, who, as he remarks in an early part of the play, had lured Adelaide's unsuspecting innocence, —

"And with a semblance of religious rites,Abused thy trust, and plunged thee into shame."

This sorry rascal treats the lady so ill that she is driven to take poison, and Lunenberg, after fighting her brother Albert, and heroically running on his sword, dies with sentimental phrases in his mouth of pure and hallowed happiness to come, and with the prophecy that "when the sound of heaven shall raise the dead," he and Adelaide would "awake in one another's arms," which is a very bold image, to say the least of it.

Adelaide herself is so feeble a personage, in nothing superior to the heroines of the Leadenhall Street romances of the time, that she fails to win or to exact sympathy. How very silly a young lady she is, may be seen by her dying speech to the villain who had deceived her by a false marriage —

"When I am dead,As speedily I shall be, let my graveBe very humble in that mournful spot.I pray thee, sometimes visit it at eve,And when you look upon the fading roseThat grows beside a pillar down the aisle,And watch it drooping in the twilight dews,Then think of one who bloomed a little while,E'en as that sickly rose, and bloomed to die."

There is more here of the small sweets of Anna Matilda than of the pathos and harmony of Otway, or the vigour of Lee.

Whatever promise this first tragedy gave, there was nothing of realisation in the author's next tragedy, the "Apostate." In this piece, Hermeya, the Moslem hero, renounces his faith, for love of the Christian lady Florinda, who is so perplexed between love and duty, even more than he between love and patriotism, that she at length finds expression for her condition in the unusually majestic line – "This is too much for any mortal creature!" – a line which was echoed by more than one critic. "Adelaide" was feeble; the "Apostate," in place of being stronger, was only furious. There was the bombast of Lee, but none of his brilliancy; the hideousness of his images without anything of their grand picturesqueness. Florinda, looking on at the execution of Hermeya, exclaims —

"Lo! they wrench his heart away:They drink his gushing blood!"

– and when a compassionate gentleman requests that the lady may be removed, she sets forth this series of screaming remarks: —

"You shall not tear me hence; No! – Never! never!He is my lord! – My husband! – Death! – 'twas death!Death married us together! – Here I will digA bridal bed, and we'll lie there for ever!I will not go! – Ha! You may pluck my heart out,I will never go! – Help! – Help! – Hermeya!They drag me to Pescara's cursed bed!They rend the chains of fire that bind me to thee!Help! – Help!"

– and so, screaming, she dies. Not thus, despite some raving, was Belvidera frantic, calling on Jaffier; – and the audience failed to see a second Otway in Lalor Sheil.

It has hardly fared better with Maturin, who wrote especially for Edmund Kean. The year 1816 produced this new dramatic writer, and also a new actress of great promise, in Miss Somerville, who made her first appearance at Drury Lane, in Maturin's tragedy of "Bertram, or the Castle of St. Aldobrand," which was played for the first time on May the 9th. The plot is of the romantic school. Imogine, loving and loved by an exiled ruffian (Bertram), marries, in his absence, Bertram's enemy, St. Aldobrand, in order to save her sire from ruin. Bertram, the outcast, is wrecked near the castle of the wedded pair; and of course the old lovers encounter each other. From this time, with some hesitations of decency, all goes wrong. Imogine forgets her duty to her husband, whom Bertram kills, after seducing his wife. He, moreover, treats the lady very ungallantly; and Imogine, gaining nothing by her lapse from righteousness of life, goes mad, and dies; whereupon, Bertram, finding the world emphatically unpleasant, kills himself, with considerable self-exultation that he, captain of a robber band, who had lived with desperate men in desperate ways, —

"Died no felon's death;A warrior's weapon freed a warrior's soul!"

There is no moral to this piece; but there is some beauty of language, with a load of bombast, and an old-world amount of fierce sentiment and grotesque horrors. Among the last may be enumerated, Bertram sitting with the body of the murdered Aldobrand; and Imogine sitting with that of her child, – who had been a good angel, of the best intentions, but never in time to save his mother from mischief. The German element – in story, style, speech, and minute stage-directions – prevails throughout the piece, which had a greater success than it deserved.

If Maturin, in this tragedy, followed the German model rather than strove to imitate the touching melody of Rowe, and the unaffected but energetic tenderness of Otway, – he brought back to the stage some of the grosser features of the dramas of the preceding centuries, which lowered the standard of woman, and made her not less eager to be won than dishonest lovers were to woo. The same villainous spirit marked the epilogue, furnished by the Hon. George Lamb (afterwards Viscount Melbourne). In it, the villainous Bertram was covered with the dignity of a hero; and of woman, generally, it was said by the writer, that – "Vice, on her bosom, lulls remorseful care."

As in the case of Sheil, Maturin's second tragedy, "Manuel," did not fulfil even the small promise of his first; and, after "Bertram," "Manuel" was found insipid, – but more pretentious, roaring, and bombastic. The interest of the play hangs on one incident. Manuel's son is reported as slain in battle; but Manuel accuses his kinsman, and once heir, before that son was born (De Zelos), of having murdered him. Trial by battle ensues, between Torrismond, son of De Zelos, and a stranger, who offers himself as champion of Manuel. This champion (Murad) is vanquished: and he confesses to have been the murderer, at the instigation of De Zelos; but, having been uneasy in his mind ever since, he had come to risk and render his own life, by way of expiation. The instigator stabs himself; Manuel dies; and of course there is no wedding for Victoria, the daughter of the latter, and her lover (Torrismond), the son of De Zelos.

A droll, minor incident, in this tragedy, is that in which De Zelos, when hiring the assassin, and very much desiring to be unknown, gives him a dagger, with the owner's name upon the haft. Thereby, of course, he is ultimately known and betrayed; and it was suggested, that the incident might have authorised the writer to call his tragedy a comedy, and to give it the name of the "Absent Man." For violation of nature, common sense, and I may add, sound, this tragedy of Maturin's equals anything of the kind produced in the earliest ages of the drama. To Edmund Kean, in the very bloom of his fame and best of his strength, was raving, like the following, consigned. De Zelos has just died, – hiding his face, – probably ashamed of the whole business, whereupon Manuel exclaims, spasmodically: —

"False! – False! – ye cursed judges! – do ye hide him?I'll grasp the thunderbolt! rain storms of fire!There! – There! – I strike! The whizzing bolt hath struck him.He shrieks! His heart's blood hisses in the flames!Fiends rend him! lightnings sear him! hell gapes for him!Oh! I am sick with death! (Staggering among the bodies.)Alonzo! Victoria! – I call, and none answer me!I stagger up and down, an old man, and none to guide me:Not one! (Takes Victoria's hand.) Cold! cold! That was an ice-bolt!I shiver! It grows very dark! Alonzo! Victoria! – Very – verydark! (Dies.)"

There is no such nonsense as this in the tragedies of Proctor, Milman, or Sheridan Knowles. "Mirandola," "Fazio," and "Virginius," will never want readers; and "Virginius," especially, will never want an audience, if it be but fittingly represented. The principal character in "Virginius" was written expressly for Edmund Kean; but mere and lucky accident conveyed it to Mr. Macready, who found therein golden opportunity, and knew how to avail himself of it. To the former, with a sketch of whose career I close my contributions towards a History of the English Stage, may be happily applied the lines of the French poet: —

"Ce glorieux acteur,Des plus fameux héros fameux imitateur;Du théâtre Anglais, la splendeur et la gloire,Mais si mauvais acteur dedans sa propre histoire."

CHAPTER XV

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.

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.