No actor was ever better acquainted with poverty than that extraordinary man Edmund Kean. Endowed with rare genius, and a potency of will, that impelled him to surmount any obstacle lying in the pathway leading towards fame, this player’s fate was yet infelicitous. Maternal solicitude, moral training, and those circumstantial influences which induce regular habits, were alike denied him. All the regularities, vicissitudes, vexations, disappointments, sorrows, trials and romance common to the lives of strolling players, characterized the early career of Edmund Kean. Through his mother he was related to George Saville, Marquis of Halifax. That mother was Ann Carey, grand-daughter of Henry Carey, the reputed author of our National Anthem. The father of Edmund Kean was Aaron Kean, generally described as an architect, but described by some as a stage carpenter, and by others as a tailor. In a melancholy and miserable chamber of a house, situated at no great distance from Holborn, Edmund Kean first saw the light, on November 4th, 1787. It is stated by Miss Tidswell, the actress, that “about half-past three in the morning Aaron Kean, the father, came to me, and said, ‘Nance Carey is with child, and begs you to go to her at her lodgings in Chancery Lane.’ Accordingly my aunt and I went with him and found Nance Carey near her time. We asked her if she had proper necessaries, and she replied, ‘No—nothing’; whereupon Mrs. Byrne begged the loan of some baby-clothes, and Nance Carey was removed to the chambers in Gray’s Inn, which her father then occupied, and it was there that the future tragedian was born.” Ann Carey had been under the protection of Aaron Kean, and he afterwards abandoned her. She came of an unfortunate stock, for Henry Carey, as I have stated, notwithstanding his talents was always in difficulties, which only forsook him when he committed self-destruction; and his son, George Saville Carey—printer, mimic, scientific lecturer, and occasional poetaster and dramatist—would have been without a decent burial, but for the charity of a few friends. His daughter when only fifteen years old, quitted her home and became a strolling actress; but when out of an engagement she would return to London, and pick up a scanty home in its streets as a hawker. It was in such occupation that Aaron Kean first saw the woman.
In addition to her irregular habits, Edmund Kean’s mother was selfish, calculating, and cruel. It was not long after his birth that the child, with his strangely beautiful dark eyes and winning ways, was actually abandoned by his unnatural parent. Ann Carey quitted the metropolis to join a wandering troupe of Thespians, and when she next saw her child, he was three years old, and living under the protection of a poor man and his wife, in Soho. It is said that these worthy people had found little Edmund hungry and forlorn, and left in a doorway, one winter’s night.
Of the boy’s history, after the mother had abandoned him to the period when he found succour from the kind couple in Soho, nothing is known. Ann Carey demanded her child, and quickly turned her offspring to profit; getting him engaged to appear as a reposing Cupid in one of the Opera House ballets, and subsequently to appear in a Drury Lane pantomime—the boy was little more than three years old. When in 1794 at Drury Lane, John Kemble produced ‘Macbeth’ with exceedingly novel stage business, Edmund Kean was one of the goblin troupe, introduced for the purpose of giving additional impressiveness to the incantation scene. It was not long afterwards that he played the part of a page in the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor.’ His education was of the slightest, and intermittent; he was a pupil at a small school in Orange Court, Leicester Square, and at another place of instruction in Chapel Street, Soho; and the expenses for such education were defrayed by a few generously disposed people, who were impressed by the boy’s beauty and intelligence. Ann Carey, almost destitute, went away from Castle Street, Leicester Fields, and, with her boy found a lodging in Ewer Street, Southwark. Young Edmund, restive and adventurous, determined to run away from home, and with a few necessaries tied up in a bundle slung on a stick, made his way to Portsmouth, and engaged himself in the capacity of cabin boy for a ship bound to Madeira. Not sufficiently robust to do some of the work incidental to his duties, he resolved to be again free; which he accomplished by feigning deafness. Discharged at the end of the return voyage, he walked from Portsmouth to London, and hungry, footsore and heart-weary, made his way to the old lodging in Southwark. He found that his mother had left her shabby tenement for a place in Richardson’s show troupe, then perambulating the country.
He bethought him that he might find a shelter under the roof of his uncle, Moses Kean, who lived in Lisle Street, Leicester Square. This uncle, who was a mimic, ventriloquist, and general entertainer, received young Edmund Kean kindly, gave him a home, and became his preceptor in many of the mysteries belonging to the histrionic art. Miss Tidswell, the acquaintance of his mother, and an actress of respectable position at Drury Lane, also showed great interest in the welfare of the boy. He made progress in the arts of dancing, singing, declamation, and fencing, and even in those days he became familiar with the creations of Shakespeare. Through the influence of Miss Tidswell, he obtained an engagement for some parts at Drury Lane, Prince Arthur in ‘King John’ being one. The boy excited notice, as the following anecdote related by Mrs. Charles Kemble shows.
“One morning before the rehearsal commenced, I was crossing the stage, when my attention was attracted by the sounds of loud applause issuing from the direction of the green-room. I enquired the cause, and was told that it was only little Kean reciting ‘Richard III.’ My informant said that he was very clever. I went into the green-room and saw the little fellow facing an admiring group, and reciting lustily.”
On the death of Moses Kean, his nephew’s only real friend was Miss Tidswell. Under her he studied Shakespearian characters, and while residing with her joined the company of Saunders, Bartholomew Fair. There he gave imitations of the nightingale and monkey, of the form and movement of the snake; and at Bartholomew Fair he acted the part of Tom Thumb. Soon afterwards, hearing that his mother was acting at Portsmouth, he set out from London for the seaport named; but on reaching it discovered that the information given him concerning Anna Carey was incorrect. His situation was trying, for he was destitute and friendless. Young Kean, however, had a bold heart, and a brain full of resources. He hired, on credit, a room in one of the Portsmouth taverns, and announced an entertainment consisting of “Selections from ‘Hamlet,’ ‘Richard III.,’ and ‘Jane Shore,’ with a series of acrobatic performances, and some exquisite singing, and all by Master Carey, of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.” The entertainment was sufficiently successful for it to be repeated, and having paid all expenses, the entertainer found himself three pounds in pocket. Edmund Kean at this time was fourteen years old.
Reciting Rolla’s “address to the Peruvians” one evening before an audience at Sadler’s Wells, a country manager, then present, was so much impressed by the declamation of the lad, that young Kean received an offer to play leading characters for twenty nights at the York Theatre. The offer was accepted, he was highly successful, and for many years from the time of that York engagement, the future tragedian of Drury Lane underwent the vicissitudes peculiar to the life of the old-fashioned stroller. It was not long ere he encountered the famous showman, Richardson, who speedily made terms with the precocious and versatile youth. It turned out that Anne Carey was in the company. She proposed that her son should join with her in her labours, and that she should receive his earnings. But they did not long labour together, and parted, not to meet again till Kean made his great success in 1814 at Drury Lane. While with a manager named Butler, at Northampton, Kean played walking gentlemen, Harlequin, and sang comic songs for a salary of fifteen shillings a week. While attached to Butler’s company, he enacted the character of Octavian, in the ‘Mountaineers’ with such ability, that a gentleman connected with the Haymarket, who saw the performance, undertook to procure the young tragedian an engagement, provided that he could reach London to appear at a specified time. Kean, being without money, could only have travelled on foot, and the journey to London by such means would have taken up so much time, that he despairingly saw that the engagement must remain unfulfilled. Butler, with the greatest good nature, said “that he would defray the expenses of a stage-coach journey.” Kean, overcome with emotion, exclaimed, “If ever fortune smiles upon my efforts, I will not forget you.”
The Haymarket engagement proved humiliating, the young actor being cast for very insignificant parts. However, in one character, Ganem, in the ‘Mountaineers,’ by the admirable manner in which he spoke certain words, he drew forth such unmistakable applause, that he availed himself of a recommendation addressed to John Kemble. In an interview with that celebrity, Kean found the eminent tragedian so chilling and unsympathetic in manner, that the poor fellow hurried from the theatre stung to the quick by his inauspicious reception. He again visited the provinces, and again experienced many privations, disappointments, humiliations, and rebuffs. Fate appeared to frown upon him; but it must be remembered that Kean was young, exceedingly small of stature, unconventional in his style of acting, and thoroughly original in every assumption that he undertook. Moreover, his temper was violent, haughty, and sensitive.
It was during those days, when Edmund Kean, as a strolling player, was learning his art, and was making acquaintance with poverty in its most bitter forms, that he acquired those habits of intemperance which afterwards effected his ruin. After the engagement at the Haymarket, he acted at Tunbridge Wells, Portsmouth, Haddesden, Birmingham, and Edinburgh. More than once in these journeyings he exhibited at fairs and public houses; and for a short time he earned a scanty income in the capacity of usher at a school in Hertfordshire. In 1807 at Belfast, he played with Mrs. Siddons; and as Jaffier in ‘Venice Preserved’ made a strong impression. But the tragedienne’s opinion of him was not flattering; for on first seeing him, she remarked, “he was a horrid little man,” and criticising his enaction in Otway’s pathetic drama said, “He plays the part very, very well, but there is too little of him wherewith to make a great actor.” Notwithstanding taunts, impecuniosity, heart-burnings, and neglect, the young aspirant studied laboriously, and allowed no opportunity to slip by which he might gain increased knowledge of stage art, and of human nature; but during his hard apprenticeship, he was forced to have recourse to many shifts, and to endure much suffering. After playing an engagement in Kent, he accepted another for a single night at Braintree, in Essex.
On the day that the performance was to take place at Braintree, the actor stood, without a farthing in his pocket, on the Kent bank of the Thames. Bound to fulfil his engagement, it was necessary for him to cross the river; and his impecunious condition precluded all possibility of hiring a boat. The strong-willed stroller was not to be daunted. He threw off his clothes, tied them into a bundle, which he held in his teeth, plunged into the river, and speedily reached the shore. With his clothes saturated with water, half-famished, and tired in every limb, he yet went on for “Rolla,” before the Braintree audience. While performing he fainted, and an illness of fever and ague was the consequence of his swimming expedition. On recovering he tramped all the way to Swansea, and played in that town. He was then in his twentieth year. Proceeding to Gloucester, he became a member of Beverley’s company, and was advertised to play Young Rapid. The usual means had been taken to attract an audience, but at the time for the rising of the curtain there were only two persons in the auditorium; so the eighteenpence taken at the doors were returned to the couple of playgoers, and the theatre lights extinguished. A few nights Kean performed with a lady who had left the scholastic profession for that of the stage, and this lady, Miss Chambers, afterwards became Mrs. Kean. When at Stroud, Master Betty was announced to perform Hamlet and Norval; Kean found himself cast for Laertes and Glenalvon. The actor could not brook what he deemed an indignity,—that of playing secondary characters to a mere boy; and for three days and three nights, he was away from the theatre, every individual connected with it being ignorant of his whereabouts. On reappearing he said, “I have been in the fields, in the woods, I am starved; I have eaten nothing but turnips and cabbages since I’ve been out; but I’ll go again, and as often as I see myself put in such characters. I won’t play second to any man living, except to John Kemble.” In the summer of 1808, Kean married Mary Chambers, the wife being nine years older than the husband. Soon after the marriage, Beverley told them that he intended dispensing with their services, and they soon had to drain the cup of poverty to its dregs. To the honour of the woman he had taken to his heart, she cheered and soothed him in his tremendous struggle. He suffered not only the pangs of poverty, but too often the stings of hostile criticisms from provincial scribes, utterly unable to appreciate his passionate and original renderings of dramatic characterization. At Birmingham he thought himself and his wife well paid, when during an engagement they each received a pound for their weekly services. So ably did he act that Stephen Kemble made proposals to negotiate a London engagement; but Kean deemed that further experience was necessary before he should attempt a metropolitan appearance in leading characters. Terrible toil and terrible suffering had to be undergone ere he was to reach the pinnacle of success.