CHAPTER VIII.

EDMUND KEAN.

The Misery and Suffering of his Childhood.-Vicissitudes as a Strolling Player.-Makes his Début in London as Shylock.-Instant Recognition by the Town. His Career in England and America -Kean as an Actor and a Man.-Last Appearance in Conjunction with his Son.

Вотn the parentage and date of the birth of Edmund Kean are doubtful. There is not only an uncertainty about the father, a by no means uncommon circumstance in this world, but, what is much more rare, there is a suspicion concerning the mother. A Miss Tidswell, an actress, of whom we shall have occasion to speak immediately, has been accredited with bringing him into the world, and even Kean himself seems to have entertained this belief"for why," he says, "did she take so much trouble over me?"-while to no less a personage than a Duke of Norfolk has been given the honor of his paternity. One day in the lobby of Drury Lane Theatre, Lord Essex openly accused his grace of the fact, and asked him why he did not acknowledge his son. The duke protested his friend was mistaken, and added that if it were so he should be proud to own him. Edmund's reputed mother, however, was a strolling actress named Nance Carey. Her father was a strolling player; her grandfather, Henry Carey, dramatist and song writer, and author of the sweet old lyric, "Sally in our Alley," was the natural son of the great Lord Halifax. Edmund's reputed father was one Kean, who is variously represented as a tailor or a builder. Some say the child was born in Castle Street, Leicester Square, others in a miserable garret in Ewer Street,

Southwark; and 1787, 1788, and 1789 are variously assigned as the dates of that event.

We hear nothing about the father; whoever he might have been, he seems to have taken no heed of his son from the time the latter came into the world. Neither was the mother more natural in her conduct; she abandoned him to the care of the before-named Miss Tidswell, who seems to have been the only person who attended on her in her miserable confinement. At three years old he is said to have been a Cupid in one of the ballets at the Opera House. At five he was certainly one of the imps that John Kemble introduced into the witches' scenes in "Macbeth." But wild, mischievous propensities were early developed in the boy, and he and his companions, playing some tricks in the cavern scene one night, which were not in their parts, were all dismissed.

After this he seems to have been sent to school in Orange Court, Leicester Square, and Miss Tidswell taught him to recite, fettering his erratic propensities by tying him up to a bed-post, and by occasionally severely, though kindly, correcting him. He was a weakly, sickly child, with bent legs and grown-out ankles, which necessitated the use of irons; these fortunately strengthened and straightened his limbs and saved him from deformity. And so passed his infant years.

By-and-by his mother, discovering, we suppose, that he might be of use to her, turned up again, after a long disappearance, claimed him, and took him away from his protectress. A more disreputable vagabond than Nance Carey it would be difficult to conceive; when strolling failed she tramped the country with perfumes and face powders, and such like commodities. Edmund carried the merchandise, and when the opportunity pre

sented itself recited scenes and speeches from plays, as he had been taught by Miss Tidswell, at taverns and farms, and sometimes at gentlemen's houses, giving imitations of Garrick in " Richard," learned, of course, second-hand, but said to be very good.

Among Miss Carey's customers was Mr. Young, a surgeon, the father of the future great tragedian. And it is related in the life of the latter how once after a dinner-party in that gentleman's house the young vagrant was had in to recite, while his mother waited in the hall, and how beside his father's chair stood a handsome boy of ten, named Charles. And so, strangely, at the beginning of their lives met the two men who were thereafter to be the great rivals of the London stage. Mr. Young recommended Nance's wares to a Mrs. Clarke of Guildford Street. Wherever she went she talked about the talents of her son, which brought her in far more money than her perfume-bottles and pomatum, and her crafty eulogies soon excited the curiosity of Mrs. Clarke to see this prodigy. His first introduction to this lady is thus graphically described by Barry Cornwall in his "Life of Kean:"

"The door was thrown open, and a pale, slim boy of about ten years old entered, very poorly clad, ragged, with dirty hands, face unwashed, delicate skin, brilliant eyes, superb head of curled and matted hair, and a piece of hat in his hand. With the bow and air of a prince he delivered his message: 'My mother, madam, sends her duty, and begs you will be so good as to lend her a shilling to take her spangled tiffany petticoat out of pawn, as she wants it to appear in at Richmond to-morrow.' 'Are you the little boy who can act so well?' inquires the lady. A bow of assent and a kindling cheek were the sole reply. 'What can you act?' 'Richard the Third, Speed the Plough, Hamlet,

and Harlequin,' was the quick answer. 'I should like to see you act.' 'I should be proud to act to you.'"

And so it was arranged that he should give her a taste of his quality that evening. Several friends were invited to witness the performance. At a little after six there came

"The same thundering rap which had preceded his advent in the morning. His face was now clean, the delicacy of his complexion was more obvious than before, and his beautiful hair had been combed, and shone like a raven's wing. His dress had indeed suffered no improvement, but a frilled handkerchief of his mother's was stuck inside his jacket, and was more than a substitute for a shirt collar."

The lady takes him away to her dressing-room to make some improvement in his costume, puts on him a black riding-hat and feathers, which she turns up at one side with pins; a sword and belt are also found and buckled round his waist. These appendages to his everyday rags certainly give the boy a somewhat comical appearance, and would excite the risibility of the guests but for the intense earnestness with which he dashes to the farther end of the room which has been fixed upon for the stage, and where there are curtains and a door for exit, and before the people have time to laugh begins his recitation.

"It was no small task that lay before him," continues his biographer, "to face the smiles of an audience skeptical of his talents, and to conquer them. Yet he did this, nay, more; for the expression in the countenances of his audience changed from contempt or distrust into attention, from attention to admiration-to silent wonder-to tears."

A shower of sixpences and shillings rewarded his

efforts, but he refused to pick them up, and they were with difficulty forced upon him. Such was the boy's pride when free from the baleful influence of his vagabond mother.

This acting led to important consequences: Mrs. Clarke, struck by the boy's talents and pitying his condition, prevailed upon her husband to allow her to take him under her protection. She placed him at school, had him taught riding, fencing, dancing, and treated. him as though he had been her own child, and he in return continued to delight her and her friends by his recitations. This lasted nearly two years. One day a lady and gentleman and their daughters came on a visit to Guildford Street; it was arranged they were all to go to the theatre that night, and mention was made of young Edmund accompanying them. What, does he sit in the box with us!" exclaimed the snob, whom we have called gentleman above. They were at dinner when these words were spoken; the boy, crimson with mortification, dashed down his knife and fork, rose from the table, left the room and the house, resolving never again to enter it. He walked to Bristol, and tried to get on board a ship as cabin-boy, but all the captains pronounced him too small. Then he trudged back to London, supporting himself on the way by reciting at public-houses. One morning he was found by a man who knew him, ragged and foot-sore, upon a dung-heap in a mews near Guildford Street, and was taken back to his former home. But such an escapade could not be pardoned; some money being collected at a performance he gave, a sort of farewell benefit, the kind lady dismissed her unruly protégé, in whom were so strangely combined the pride of an aristocrat and the tastes of a gypsy.