In a very early cast of the Garrick mask, still existing in London, the texture of the skin proves conclusively that it was taken from nature, and most probably from life.
In the “Guild Hall” of “The City of Lushington,” an ancient and very unique social club, which has met for many years in a dark and dingy little back room connected with the Harp Tavern, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, London, are still preserved the chair of Edmund Kean, the hole in the wall made by the quart pot he threw once, in a fit of gross insubordination, at a former “Lord Mayor,” and what is religiously considered by all the citizens of Lushington to be a death-mask of Kean himself. This cast is covered with glass and with dust and its history is lost in the mists of time. There is no record of it in the metropolitan archives, the corporation will not permit it to be reproduced, even by photography, and it bears but little resemblance to Kean, or to the mask in my possession, which also has no history, but which I believe to be authentic, and which is certainly very like the sketch of Kean done in oils by George Clint, and now in the possession of Mr. Henry Irving. This hurried sketch of Clint’s is said to be the only portrait for which Kean could be induced to sit. It was made in Kean’s bedroom in a few hours, and it is the groundwork of more than one finished portrait of the same subject by the same artist. The portrait of Kean by Neagle, now the property of The Players, has a similar tradition.
The Lushington cast is perhaps an early life-mask of the elder Kean, perhaps a life-mask, or a death-mask, of the younger Kean, more probably the mask of some defunct and commonplace and now forgotten mayor or alderman of Lushington, who did not even look like Kean.
EDMUND KEAN
The eye-witnesses of Kean’s theatrical performances were generally so much impressed by the force of his acting that they paid little attention to his personal appearance. We read in Leslie’s Autobiography that “he had an amazing power of expression in his face,” and “that his face, although not handsome, was picturesque;” a writer in the New Monthly Magazine in 1833 spoke of him as “a small man with an Italian face and fatal eye;” a writer in Blackwood, a few years later, called him “a man of low and meagre figure, of a Jewish physiognomy, and a stifled and husky voice;” while Miss Fanny Kemble said that “he possessed particular physical qualifications; an eye like an orb of light; a voice exquisitely touching and melodious in its tendencies, but in the harsh dissonance of vehement passion terribly true.” Barry Cornwall, in his poor Life of Kean, spoke of “his thin, dark face, full of meaning, taking, at every turn, a sinister or vigilant expression,” and as being “just adapted to the ascetic and revengeful Shylock.” And Henry Crabb Robinson said in 1814, “Kean’s face is finely expressive, though his mouth is not handsome, and he projects his lower lip ungracefully.”
The portrait of Kean by Helen Faucit, Lady Martin, is the best that has been presented to us. She met him once on the Green at Richmond when she was a child, and he a broken-down old man. “I was startled, frightened at what I saw,” she wrote: “a small pale man with a fur cap, and wrapped in a fur cloak. He looked to me as if come from the grave. A stray lock of very dark hair crossed his forehead, under which shone eyes which looked dark, and yet bright as lamps. So large were they, so piercing, so absorbing, I could see no other features.... Oh, what a voice was that which spoke! It seemed to come from far away—a long, long way behind him. After the first salutation, it said, ‘Who is this little one?’ When my sister had explained, the face smiled; I was reassured by the smile, and the face looked less terrible.”
Among the English-speaking actors of later days few have been better known and better liked, in America at all events, than John McCullough, Dion Boucicault, Lawrence Barrett, Henry Edwards, and Edwin Booth, the faces of all of whom I am able to present here. John McCullough, the first of this galaxy of stars to quit the stage of life, was a man of strong and attractive personality, if not a great actor; he had many admirers in his profession and many friends out of it. The cloak which Forrest dropped fell upon his shoulders, and in such parts as Virginius, Damon, and the Brutus of John Howard Payne, it was nobly worn. He was as modest, as simple, and as manly in character as are the characters he represented on the stage. Unhappily, mental disease preceded McCullough’s death, and during the last few years of his life those who loved him best prayed for the rest which is here shown on his face. The post-mortem examination revealed a brain of unusual size and of very high development. The death-mask was made by Mr. H. H. Kitson, of Boston.