CHAPTER XVI
A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN
To muse over the dust of those about whom we have read so much—the great actors, thinkers, and writers, the warriors and statesmen for whom the play is ended and the lights are put out—is to come very near to them, and to realise more deeply than ever before their close relationship with our own humanity; and we ought to be wiser and better for this experience. It is good, also, to seek out the favourite haunts of our heroes, and call them up as they were in their lives. One of the happiest accidents of a London stroll was the finding of the Harp Tavern,† in Russell Street, Covent Garden, near the stage door of Drury Lane theatre, which was the accustomed resort of Edmund Kean.
† An account of the Harp, in the Victuallers' Gazette, says that this tavern has had within its doors every actor of note since the days of Garrick, and many actresses, also, of the latter part of the eighteenth century; and it mentions, as visitants there, Dora Jordan, Nance Oldfield, Anne Bracegirdle, Kitty Clive, Harriet Mellon, Barton Booth, Quin, Cibber, Macklin, Grimaldi, Eliza Vestris, and Miss Stephens—who became Countess of Essex.
Carpenters and masons were at work upon it when I entered, and it was necessary almost to creep amid heaps of broken mortar and rubbish beneath their scaffolds, in order to reach the interior rooms. Here, at the end of a narrow passage, was a little apartment, perhaps fifteen feet square, with a low ceiling and a bare floor, in which Kean habitually took his pleasure, in the society of fellow-actors and boon companions, long ago. A narrow, cushioned bench against the walls, a few small tables, a chair or two, a number of churchwarden pipes on the mantlepiece, and portraits of Disraeli and Gladstone, constituted the furniture. A panelled wainscot and dingy red paper covered the walls, and a few cobwebs hung from the grimy ceiling. By this time the old room has been made neat and comely; but then it bore the marks of hard usage and long neglect, and it seemed all the more interesting for that reason.
Kean's seat is at the right, as you enter, and just above it a mural tablet designates the spot,—which is still further commemorated by a death-mask of the actor, placed on a little shelf of dark wood and covered with glass. No better portrait could be desired; certainly no truer one exists. In life this must have been a glorious face. The eyes are large and prominent, the brow is broad and fine, the mouth wide and obviously sensitive, the chin delicate, and the nose long, well set, and indicative of immense force of character. The whole expression of the face is that of refinement and of great and desolate sadness. Kean, as is known from the testimony of one who acted with him,† was always at his best in passages of pathos.
† The mother of Jefferson, the comedian, described Edmund Kean in this way. She was a member of the company at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, when he acted there, and it was she who sang for him, when he acted The Stranger, the well-known lines, by Sheridan,—
"I have a silent sorrow here,
A grief I'll ne'er impart;
It breathes no sigh, it sheds no tear,
But it consumes my heart."
To hear him speak Othello's farewell was to hear the perfect music of heart-broken despair. To see him when, as The Stranger, he listened to the song, was to see the genuine, absolute reality of hopeless sorrow. He could, of course, thrill his hearers in the ferocious outbursts-of Richard and Sir Giles, but it was in tenderness and grief that he was supremely great; and no one will wonder at that who looks upon his noble face—so eloquent of self-conflict and suffering—even in this cold and colourless mask of death. It is easy to judge and condemn the sins of a weak, passionate humanity; but when we think of such creatures of genius as Edmund Kean and Robert Burns, we ought to consider what demons in their own souls those wretched men were forced to fight, and by what agonies they expiated their vices and errors. This little tavern-room tells the whole mournful story, with death to point the moral, and pity to breathe its sigh of unavailing regret.
Many of the present frequenters of the Harp are elderly men, whose conversation is enriched with memories of the stage and with ample knowledge and judicious taste in literature and art. They naturally speak with pride of Kean's association with their favourite resort. Often in that room the eccentric genius has put himself in pawn, to exact from the manager of Drury Lane theatre the money needed to relieve the wants of some brother actor. Often his voice has been heard there, in the songs that he sang with so much feeling and sweetness and such homely yet beautiful skill. In the circles of the learned and courtly he never was really at home; but here he filled the throne and ruled the kingdom of the revel, and here no doubt every mood of his mind, from high thought and generous emotion to misanthropical bitterness and vacant levity, found its unfettered expression. They show you a broken panel in the high wainscot, which was struck and smashed by a pewter pot that he hurled at the head of a person who had given him offence; and they tell you at the same time,—as, indeed, is historically true,—that he was the idol of his comrades, the first in love, pity, sympathy, and kindness, and would turn his back, any day, for the least of them, on the nobles who sought his companionship. There is no better place than this in which to study the life of Edmund Kean. Old men have been met with here who saw him on the stage, and even acted with him. The room is the weekly meeting-place and habitual nightly tryst of an ancient club, called the City of Lushington, which has existed since the days of the Regency, and of which these persons are members. The City has its Mayor, Sheriff, insignia, record-book, and system of ceremonials; and much of wit, wisdom, and song may be enjoyed at its civic feasts. The names of its four wards—Lunacy, Suicide, Poverty, and Juniper—are written up in the four corners of the room, and whoever joins must select his ward. Sheridan was a member of it, and so was the Regent; and the present landlord of the Harp (Mr. M'Pherson) preserves among his relics the chairs in which those gay companions sat, when the author presided over the initiation of the prince. It is thought that this club grew out of the society of The Wolves, which was formed by Kean's adherents, when the elder Booth arose to disturb his supremacy upon the stage. But there is no malice in it now. Its purposes are simply convivial and literary, and its tone is that of thorough good-will.†
† A coloured print of this room may be found in that eccentric book The Life of an Actor, by Pierce Egan: 1825.
One of the gentlest and most winning traits in the English character is its instinct of companionship as to literature and art. Since the days of the Mermaid the authors and actors of London have dearly loved and deeply enjoyed such odd little fraternities of wit as are typified, not inaptly, by the City of Lushington. There are no rosier hours in my memory than those that were passed, between midnight and morning, in the cosy clubs in London. And when dark days come, and foes harass, and the troubles of life annoy, it will be sweet to think that in still another sacred retreat of friendship, across the sea, the old armour is gleaming in the festal lights, where one of the gentlest spirits that ever wore the laurel of England's love smiles kindly on his comrades and seems to murmur the charm of English hospitality—
"Let no one take beyond this threshold hence
Words uttered here in friendship's confidence."
