Some ill-health he brought back with him too; but he rallied, drank, relapsed, and struggled into strength again. It was wasted on Miss Baillie's "De Montfort;" though parts of this were played in his grandest style. He seemed conscious that something was expected of him by the public, and he flung himself, as it were, at everything. He played Hastings to the Jane Shore of a Miss Edmiston—whose success was predicted by aristocratic poets, and who is now, I believe, painfully "strolling." With Sir Pertinax he did not move the dead Macklin as his Shylock may have done; though it was better played, save in the accent, than any living actor could have played it. His Osmond gave some dignity to the "Castle Spectre," and his Wolsey but little to "Henry VIII."
For Miss Tidswell's farewell benefit, after forty years of useful subalternship, he attempted Don Felix. He would have done more for her had he been asked; for in his breadless, boyish days, she had beaten, taught, fed, and clothed him—till Nance Carey claimed him for her own, and stole all his earnings. Edmund's good impulses made him fail in affection to this parent. Thinking of Miss Tidswell, he used to say—"If she wasn't my mother, why was she kind to me?"
For his own benefit, in this season of 1821-22, he played the Roman actor, Octavian, and Tom Tug—the songs in which last part he sang with great feeling. The whole proceeds of this benefit he gave to the fund for the starving Irish. It was not exactly like Mrs. Haller's charity, who gives her master's wine to the sick poor; but, that virtue, which is said to begin at home, might have sent the amount in a different direction.[118]
In November 1822 he played out the first of his two great struggles with Young at Drury Lane. Since Quin and Garrick, or Garrick and Barry, no conjunction of great names moved the theatrical world like this. Both men put out all their powers, and the public profited by the magnificent display. Kean and Young acted together Othello and Iago, Lothair and Guiscard, Jaffier and Pierre, Alexander and Clytus, Posthumus and Iachimo, eliciting enthusiasm by all, but by none so much as by Othello and Iago. The two great wrestlers won equal honour; but that was not enough for one of them. "How long, sir," said Kean to Elliston, the manager, "how long am I to play with that—Jesuit, Young?"
Certainly, if he feared competition with experienced actors, Kean was very encouraging to beginners. "You are the best Iago I ever played to," he once remarked to an earnest, youthful gentleman at Edinburgh. The latter smiled; and Kean asked him wherefore? "Because, sir," was the answer, "I know of seven poor Iagos, to whom you have kindly said the same thing!"
In a revival of Shakspeare's "King Lear," Kean showed good taste, sublime acting, and an appreciation of opportunity for self-distinction. He was not always equally in the vein, but on some nights he excelled all he had done before. Genest says, that "his personal appearance was better than Kemble's or Young's, and his manner more natural. In the mad scenes he seemed to copy Murphy's account of Garrick." The only drawback I have heard of to this noble, and last of his noble and complete performances was, that he was neither tall enough nor strong enough to carry off the body of Cordelia (Mrs. W. West).
He might have begun a fresh career, however, from this new starting-point, had he been so minded. But this success did not brace him to new effort, except a quietly ineffectual one to make the world forget the Stranger of John Kemble. His failing strength was probably the chief cause of his avoiding or refusing to appear in the same piece with Mr. Macready, of whom he rather rudely remarked—"He is no actor, sir; he is a player!"
But the satirist himself was fast ceasing to be either. He had never recovered from the madness which he prophesied would follow his success in London. Gradually he lost all self-control, plunged into terrible excesses, courted rather than fell into evil company, took tribute, indeed, most willingly of the noble and intellectual who heaped rich gifts upon him, but he scorned or feared their society. He affected to feel that they invited him simply to stare at him, and that they would have despised him as a poor actor. He had not common sense enough to see that when the noble and intellectual opened their doors to him they rendered graceful homage to his genius,—and I have heard that where he did accept such homage, and was himself subdued to the refinements of the society where it was liberally, yet delicately rendered, his easy bearing was that of a man who had not lost his self-respect, and his manners and conversation emphatically "charming."
But this was under restraint, and to be thus "charming" was irksome to Edmund Kean; by this time it had become almost impossible, and he could charm only those on whom the magic was not worth expending. He had not broken his word to his wife—that she should ride in her carriage, nor to his son—that he should go to Eton,—but he had not made the first happier, nor the second the more attached to him. His home, indeed, was broken up, and in the season of 1824-25, after failing in the poor melodramatic part of Masaniello, came out the great scandal—that he loved his neighbour's wife better than his own. All its necessary consequences followed,—a fierce, an almost ruffianly hostility on the part of his audiences, damage to his fortune, and irretrievable ruin to his reputation.[119] Reckless and defiant as he was, he was glad to endure exile, for such was his voyage to, and sojourn in, America during this and the following year.