While this boy snatched a triumph, there was another eagerly, painfully, yet hopefully and determinedly, struggling for one. This boy scarcely knew by what name to pass, for his mother was a certain Nance Carey, and his reputed father was one of two brothers, he did not know which, named Kean. This boy claimed in after years to be an illegitimate son of the Duke of Norfolk, and he referred, in a way, to this claim when he called his first child Howard. For Nance Carey the boy had no love. There was but one woman who was kind to him in his childhood, Miss Tidswell, of Drury Lane Theatre, and Edmund Kean used to say, ‘If she was not my mother, why was she kind to me?’ When I pass Orange Court, Leicester Square, I look with curiosity at the hole where he got a month’s schooling.
Born and dragged up, the young life experiences of Edmund Kean were exactly opposite to those of William Henry West Betty. He had indeed, because of his childish beauty, been allowed at three years old to stand or lie as Cupid in one of Noverre’s ballets; and he had, as an unlucky imp in the witches’ scene of ‘Macbeth,’ been rebuked by the offended John Kemble. Since then he had rolled or been kicked about the world. When Master Betty, at the age of eleven, or nearly twelve, was laying the foundations of his fortune at Belfast, Edmund Kean was fifteen, and had often laid himself to sleep on the lee side of a haystack, for want of wherewith to pay for a better lodging. He had danced and tumbled at fairs, and had sung in taverns; he had tramped about the country, carrying Nance Carey’s box of falbalas for sale; he had been over sea and land; he had joined Richardson’s booth company, and, at Windsor, it is said that George III. had heard him recite, and had expressed his approbation in the shape of two guineas, which Miss Carey took from him.
It was for the benefit of a mother so different from Master Betty’s mother that he recited in private families. It is a matter of history that by one of these recitations he inspired another boy, two years older than himself, with a taste for the stage and a determination to gain thereon an honourable position. This third boy was Charles Young. His son and biographer has told us, that as Charles was one evening at Christmas time descending the stairs of his father’s house full dressed for dessert—his father, a London surgeon, lived in rather high style—he saw a slatternly woman seated on one of the chairs in the hall, with a boy standing by her side dressed in fantastic garb, with the blackest and most penetrating eyes he had ever beheld in human head. His first impression was that the two were strolling gipsies who had come for medical advice. Charles Young, we are told, ‘was soon undeceived, for he had no sooner taken his place by his father’s side than, to his surprise, the master, instead of manifesting displeasure, smirked and smiled, and, with an air of self-complacent patronage, desired his butler to bring in the boy. On his entry he was taken by the hand, patted on the head, and requested to favour the company with a specimen of his histrionic ability. With a self-possession marvellous in one so young he stood forth, knitted his brows, hunched up one shoulder-blade, and with sardonic grin and husky voice spouted forth Gloster’s opening soliloquy in “Richard the Third.” He then recited selections from some of our minor British poets, both grave and gay; danced a hornpipe; sang songs, both comic and pathetic; and, for fully an hour, displayed such versatility as to elicit vociferous applause from his auditory and substantial evidence of its sincerity by a shower of crown pieces and shillings, a napkin having been opened and spread upon the floor for their reception. The accumulated treasury having been poured into the gaping pockets of the lad’s trousers, with a smile of gratified vanity and grateful acknowledgment he withdrew, rejoined his tatterdemalion friend in the hall, and left the house rejoicing. The door was no sooner closed than the guests desired to know the name of the youthful prodigy who had so astonished them. The host replied that this was not the first time he had had him to amuse his friends; that he knew nothing of the lad’s history or antecedents, but that his name was Edmund Kean, and that of the woman who seemed to have charge of him and was his supposititious mother, Carey.’ This pretty scene, described by the Rev. Julian Young, had a supplement to it of which he was not aware. ‘She took all from me,’ was Edmund Kean’s cry when he used to tell similar incidents of his hard youthful times.
While Edmund was thus struggling, Master Betty had leaped into fame. Irish managers were ready to fight duels for the possession of him. When the announcement went forth that Mr. Frederick Jones, of the Crow Street Theatre, Dublin, was the possessor of the youthful phenomenon for nine nights, there was a rush of multitudes to secure places, with twenty times more applicants than places. There was ferocious fighting for what could be secured, and much spoliation, with peril of life and damage to limb, and an atmosphere filled with thunder and lightning, delightful to the Dublin mind.
On November 29, 1803, Master Betty, not in his own name, but simply as a ‘young gentleman, only twelve years of age,’ made his début in Dublin as Douglas. The play-bill, indeed, did add, ‘his admirable talents have procured him the deserved appellation of the Infant Roscius.’ As there were sensitive people in Dublin who remembered that Dublin itself was in what would now be called a state of siege, and that it was unlawful to be out after a certain hour in the evening, these were won over by this delicious announcement: ‘The public are respectfully informed that no person coming from the theatre will be stopped till after eleven o’clock.’ This was the time, too, when travellers were induced to trust themselves to mail and stagecoaches by the assurance that the vehicles were made proof against shot. There was no certainty the travellers would not be fired at, but the comfort was that if the bullets did not go through the window and kill the travellers, they could not much injure the vehicle itself!
There was the unheard-of sum of four hundred pounds in that old Crow Street Theatre on that November night. The university students in the gallery, who generally made it rattle with their wit, were silent as soon as the curtain rose. The Dublin audience was by no means an audience easy to please, or one that would befool itself by passing mediocrity with the stamp of genius upon it. ‘Douglas,’ too, is a tragedy that must be attentively listened to, to be enjoyed, and enjoyment is out of the question if the poetry of the piece be a lost beauty to the deliverer of the lines. On this night, Dublin ratified the Belfast verdict. The graceful boy excited the utmost enthusiasm, and the manager offered him an engagement at an increasing salary, for any number of years. The offer was wisely declined by Master Betty’s father, and the ‘Infant Roscius’ went on his bright career. He played one other part, admirably suited to him in every respect, Prince Arthur, in ‘King John,’ and he fairly drowned the house in tears with it. Frederick, in ‘Lovers’ Vows,’ and Romeo, were only a trifle beyond his age, not at all beyond his grasp, though love-making was the circumstance which he could the least satisfactorily portray. A boy sighing like furnace to young beauty must have seemed as ridiculous as a Juliet of fifty, looking older than the Nurse, and who, one would think, ought to be ashamed of herself to be out in a balcony at that time of night, talking nonsense with that young fellow with a feather in his cap and a sword on his thigh! Dublin wits made fun of Master Betty’s wooing, and were epigrammatic upon it in the style of Martial, and saucy actresses seized the same theme to air their saucy wit. These casters of stones from the roadside could not impede the boy’s triumph. He produced immense effect, even in Thomson’s dreary ‘Tancred,’ but I am sorry to find it asserted that he acted Hamlet, after learning the part in three days. The great Betterton, greatest of the great masters of their art, used to say that he had acted Hamlet and studied it for fifty years, and had not got to the bottom of its philosophy even then. However, the boy’s remarkable gifts made his Hamlet successful. There was a rare comedian who played with him, Richard Jones, with a cast in one eye. Accomplished Dick, whose only serious fault was excess in peppermint lozenges, acted Osric, Count Cassel, and Mercutio, in three of the pieces in which Master Betty played the principal characters. What a glorious true comedian was Dick! After delighting a whole generation with his comedy, Jones retired. He taught clergymen to read the Lord’s Prayer as if they were in earnest, and to deliver the messages of the Gospel as if they believed in them; and in this way Dick Jones did as much for the church as any of the bishops or archbishops of his time.
It is to be noted here that Master Betty’s first appearance in Dublin in 1803 was a more triumphant matter than John Kemble’s in 1781. This was in the older Smock Alley Theatre. The alley was so called from the Sallys who most did congregate there. He played high comedy as well as tragedy; but, says Mr. Gilbert, in his ‘History of Dublin,’ ‘his negligent delivery and heaviness of deportment impeded his progress until these defects were removed by the instruction of his friend, Captain Jephson.’ Is not this delicious? Fancy John Kemble being made an actor by a half-pay captain who had written a tragedy! This tragedy was called the ‘Count of Narbonne,’ and therein, says Gilbert, ‘Kemble’s reputation was first established.’ It was not on a very firm basis, for John was engaged only on the modest salary of 5l. a week!
Master Betty’s progress through the other parts of Ireland was as completely successful as at Dublin and Belfast. Mrs. Pero engaged him for six nights at Cork. His terms here were one-fourth of the receipts and one clear benefit, that is to say, the whole of the receipts free of expense. As the receipts rarely exceeded ten pounds, the prospects were not brilliant. But, with Master Betty, the ‘houses’ reached one hundred pounds. The smaller receipts may have arisen from a circumstance sufficient to keep an audience away. There was a Cork tailor hanged for robbery; but, after he was cut down, a Cork actor, named Glover, succeeded, by friction and other means, in bringing him to life again! On the same night, and for many nights, the tailor, drunk and unhanged, would go to the theatre and publicly acknowledge the service of Mr. Glover in bringing him to life again! And it is said that he was the third tailor who had outlived hanging during ten years!
There was no ghastly interruption of the performance of the Roscius. The engagement was extended to nine nights, and the one which followed at Waterford was equally successful. As he proceeded, Master Betty studied and extended his répertoire. He added to his list Octavian, and on his benefit nights he played in the farce, on one occasion Don Carlos in ‘Lovers’ Quarrels,’ on another Captain Flash in ‘Miss in her Teens.’ Subsequently, in Londonderry, the flood of success still increasing, the pit could only be entered at box prices. Master Betty played in Londonderry long before the time when a Mr. MacTaggart, an old citizen, used to be called upon between the acts to give his unbiassed critical opinions on the performances. It was the rarest fun for the house, and the most painful wholesomeness for the actors, Frank Connor and his father, Villars, Fitzsimons, Cunningham, O’Callaghan, and clever Miss M’Keevor (with her pretty voice and sparkling one eye), to hear the stern and salubrious criticism of Mr. MacTaggart, at the end of which there was a cry for the tune of ‘No Surrender!’ Not to wound certain susceptibilities, and yet be national, the key-bugle gentleman, who was half the orchestra, generally played ‘Norah Creena,’ and thus the play proceeded merrily.
Master Betty played Zanga at Londonderry, and he passed thence to Glasgow, where for fourteen nights he attracted crowded audiences, and added to his other parts Richard the Third, which he must have learnt as he sailed from Belfast up the Clyde. Jackson, the manager, went all but mad with delight and full houses. He wrote an account of his new treasure in terms more transcendent than ‘the transcendent boy’ himself could accept. Had Young Roscius been a divinity descended upon earth, the rhapsody could not have been more highly pitched; but it was fully endorsed by nine-tenths of the Glasgow people, and when a bold fellow ventured to write a satirical philippic against the divine idol of the hour, he was driven out of the city as guilty of something like sacrilege, profanation, and general unutterable wickedness.