Let me notice that he bore himself in presence of a cruel audience, with an almost ferocious courage. His pride was greater than his humiliation. As at Drury, he applied every strong epithet in his part to the howling pit, so, when running his erratic course through the minor theatres, he could treat audiences that were ignorant, as well as insolent, with strong terms and lofty contempt. He had one night played Othello to a "Coburg" public. Iago was acted by Cobham, the performer who had once vainly attempted to dethrone him, by acting Richard at Covent Garden, to a house, however, which would not listen to him to the end. The New-Cut costermongers adopted him; they applauded him, on this particular night, more than they did the great Kean, who received £50 for condescending to exhibit himself in Othello. Nevertheless, at the fall of the curtain, there was such an uproar in front, apparently a call for Kean, that he came slowly forward, and bluntly asked, "What do you want?" A thousand voices answered, "You! you!" Well, said Kean, after a slight peroration, "I have played in every civilised country where English is the language of the people; but I never acted to an audience of such unmitigated brutes as you are!" He walked slowly off as Cobham, to a shout for him from the sweet voices of his Lambeth-marsh patrons, rushed on the stage, proud and radiant, to tell Edmund's "unmitigated brutes" that they were the most enlightened and liberal audience that had ever sat as judges of acting, and that the happiest night of his life was that on which he had the opportunity of telling his friends and admirers that incontrovertible truth. A cry that might have been heard across St. George's Fields proclaimed him to be "a trump!"—and Cobham won the honours of the night!
Kean, as before recorded, betook himself again to America. Since his previous visit to the Northern States he was greatly changed; but that the seeds of insanity were in him at the earlier period, a passage from Dr. Francis's Old New York will mournfully show. Some hospitable friends exerted themselves to render his earlier stay agreeable, and this is an incident of the time—one out of many:—
"A few days after, we made the desired visit at Bloomingdale. Kean, with an additional friend and myself, occupied the carriage for a sort of philosophical exploration of the city on our way there. On the excursion he remarked, he should like to see our Vauxhall; we stopped, he entered the gate, asked the doorkeeper if he might survey the place, gave a double somerset through the air, and in the twinkling of an eye stood at the remote part of the garden. The wonder of the superintendent can be better imagined than described. Arriving at the Asylum, with suitable gravity he was introduced to the officials, invited to an inspection of the afflicted inmates, and then told if he would ascend to the roof of the building a delightful prospect would be presented to his contemplation; many counties, and an area of sea, rivers, and lands, mountains, and valleys, embracing a circuit of forty miles in circumference. His admiration was expressed in delirious accents:—'I'll walk the ridge of the roof of the Asylum,' he exclaimed, 'and take a leap! it's the best end I can make to my life;' and forthwith started for the western gable end of the building. My associate and myself as he hurried forward seized him by the arms, and he submissively returned. I have ever been at a loss to account for this sudden freak in his feelings; he was buoyant at the onset of the journey; he astonished the Vauxhall doorkeeper by his harlequin trick, and took an interest in the various forms of insanity which came before him. He might have become too sublimated in his feelings, or had his senses unsettled (for he was an electrical apparatus) in contemplating the mysterious influences acting on the minds of the deranged, for there is an attractive principle, as well as an adhesive principle, in madness; or a crowd of thoughts might have oppressed him, arising from the disaster which had occurred to him a few days before with the Boston audience, and the irreparable loss he had sustained in the plunder of his trunk and valuable papers, while journeying hither and thither on his return to New York. We rejoiced together, however, when we found him again safely at home at his old lodgings at the City Hotel."
That the fit had not decreased by lapse of time, another extract from the same volume will amply demonstrate. Kean was not so satisfied with the success he achieved professionally, as he was of a visit to an Indian tribe who had enrolled him among their chiefs. It was a freak which he took seriously, as will be seen by what follows:—
"Towards the close of his second visit to America, Kean made a tour through the northern part of the State, and visited Canada; he fell in with the Indians, with whom he became delighted, and was chosen a chief of a tribe. Some time after, not aware of his return to the city, I received at a late hour of the evening a call to wait upon an Indian chief, by the name of Alantenaida, as the highly finished card left at my house had it. Kean's ordinary card was Edmund Kean, engraved; he generally wrote beneath, 'Integer vitæ scelerisque purus.' I repaired to the hotel, and was conducted upstairs to the folding-doors of the hall, where the servant left me. I entered, aided by the feeble light of the room; but at the remote end I soon perceived something like a forest of evergreens, lighted up by many rays from floor-lamps, and surrounded by a stage or throne; and seated in great state was the chief. I advanced, and a more terrific warrior I never surveyed. Red Jacket or Black Hawk was an unadorned simple personage in comparison. Full dressed, with skins tagged loosely about his person, a broad collar of bear-skin over his shoulders, his leggings with many stripes, garnished with porcupine quills; his moccasins decorated with beads, his head decked with the war-eagle's plumes, behind which flowed massive black locks of dishevelled horse-hair, golden-coloured rings pendant from the nose and ears, streaks of yellow paint over the face, massive red daubings about the eyes, with various lines in streaks about the forehead, not very artistically drawn. A broad belt surrounded his waist, with tomahawk; his arms with shining bracelets, stretched out with bow and arrow, as if ready for a mark. He descended his throne, and rapidly approached me. His eye was meteoric and fearful, like the furnace of the Cyclops. He vociferously exclaimed, Alantenaida, the vowels strong enough. I was relieved, he betrayed something of his raucous voice in imprecation. It was Kean. An explanation took place. He wished to know the merits of the representation. The Hurons had honoured him by admission into their tribe, and he could not now determine whether to seek his final earthly abode with them, for real happiness, or return to London and add renown to his name by performing the Son of the Forest. I never heard that he ever after attempted in his own country the character. He was wrought up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm at the Indian honour he had received, and declared that even old Drury had never conferred so proud a distinction on him as he had received from the Hurons."
I shall not soon forget that January night of 1827, on which he reappeared at Drury Lane, in Shylock. A rush so fearful, an audience so packed, a reconciliation so complete, acting so faultless, and a dramatic enjoyment so exquisite, I never experienced. Nothing was heeded,—indeed, the scenes were passed over, till Shylock was to appear; and I have heard no such shout since, as that which greeted him. Fire, strength, beauty;—every quality of the actor seemed to have acquired fresh life. It was all deceptive, however. The actor was all but extinguished, after this convulsive, but seemingly natural effort. He lay in bed at the Hummums' hotel, all day, amusing himself melancholily with his Indian gewgaws, and striving to find a healthy tonic in "cognac." While immolating himself, he still clung to a hope of rescue; and he strove to create one more new character, Ben Nazir, in Mr. Colley Grattan's tragedy of that name. His power of memory was gone; but he had a fatuitous idea that he had mastered his part, and this is how he figured in it, as told by the author of that hapless drama, himself. The picture has been often exhibited; but it must needs be looked upon once more:—
"He did at length appear. The intention of the author, and the keeping of the character, required him to rush rapidly on the stage, giving utterance to a burst of joyous soliloquy. What was my astonishment, to see him, as the scene opened, standing in the centre of the stage, his arms crossed, and his whole attitude one of thoughtful solemnity. His dress was splendid; and thunders of applause greeted him from all parts of the house. To display the one, and give time for the other, were the objects for which he stood fixed for several minutes, and sacrificed the sense of the situation. He spoke; but what a speech! The one I wrote, consisted of eight or nine lines; his, was of two or three sentences,—but not six consecutive words of the text. His look, his manner, his tone, were to me quite appalling; to any other observer, they must have been incomprehensible. He stood fixed; drawled out his incoherent words, and gave the notion of a man that had been half hanged and then dragged through a horse pond. My heart, I confess it, sank deep in my breast. I was utterly shocked. And as the business of the play went on, and as he stood by, with moveless muscle and glazed eye, throughout the scene which should have been one of violent, perhaps too violent exertion,—a cold shower of perspiration poured from my forehead, and I endured a revulsion of feeling which I cannot describe, and which I would not for worlds one eye had witnessed. I had all along felt that this scene would be the touchstone of the play. Kean went through it like a man in the last stage of exhaustion and decay. The act closed; a dead silence followed the fall of the curtain; and I felt, though I could not hear, the voiceless verdict of 'damnation.' ... When the curtain fell, Mr. Wallack, the stage manager, came forward, and made an apology for Kean's imperfection in his part, and an appeal in behalf of the play. Neither excited much sympathy; the audience was quite disgusted. I now, for the first time during the night, went behind the scenes. On crossing the stage towards the green-room, I met Kean, supported by his servant and another person, going in the direction of his dressing room. When he saw me, he hung down his head, and waved his hand, and uttered some expressions of deep sorrow, and even remorse. 'I have ruined a fine play, and myself; I cannot look you in the face,' were the first words I caught. I said something in return, as cheering and consolatory as I could. I may say, that all sense of my own disappointment was forgotten, in the compassion I felt for him."
The descent now was rapid, but it was not made at one leap. Penniless, though he might have been lord of "thousands," he caught at an offer to provide for his son by a cadetship; but the son refused to accept the offer—as such acceptation would have exposed his mother to worse than the destitution of her earlier days—before hope of a bright, though closing future, had died away. To lose her son was to lose the best friend she had; for she had none now in her faithless and suicidal husband. Edmund Kean heard of his son's determination to go on the stage, in order to support his mother, with grim dissatisfaction, and, I should hope, some sense of reproach and abasement. They parted in anger, it is said, as far as the father was concerned; the more angry, perhaps, that in his temporary wrath he cast off the son whom he, in his heart, must have respected.
Consequently, the season of 1827-28, at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, had a singular incident to mark them;—the struggle of the son to rise, at the former; the struggle of the father not to fall, at the latter. Mr. Charles Kean opened the season, in Norval. Mr. Cole, in his biography of the son, quotes a letter, written by a friend of the father, to the latter, in which the writer, who watched the attempt, remarks:—"The speech, 'My name is Norval,' he hurried, and spoke as though he had a cold, or was pressing a finger against his nose."