"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!
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.