It sends a pang through our heart as we hear Mrs. Siddons say in later life, with a sigh, to Rogers the poet: “After I became famous, none of my sisters loved me so well.” What a price to pay for fame! “Conversation” Sharp was frequently consulted by her upon private affairs. She wept to him over the ingratitude her sisters showed her. Money was lent and never repaid; the prestige of her name was borrowed to obtain theatrical engagements, but she never was thanked; every obligation seemed only to cause a feeling of bitterness. Perhaps the fault lay a little on her side as well as on theirs. Tact and graciousness were not her strong points. She was absent-minded, all her attention being concentrated on the study and comprehension of her profession, which gave her a proud, self-contained manner, alienating unconsciously those who surrounded her and were dependent on her. Her children adored her, but her brothers and sisters stood, to a certain extent, in awe of her. All of them, stimulated by the examples of the two eldest, went on the stage, but none possessed her genius, or John Kemble’s talent and industry. The affectionate comradeship in art that existed between Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble is one of the pleasantest features in both their lives.
He was educated, as we have seen, principally at the Roman Catholic College at Douay, where he became remarkable for his elocution, every now and then astonishing his masters and schoolfellows by delivering speeches in scholastic Latin, and learning with the greatest facility books of Homer and odes of Horace. We are told that his noble cast of countenance, his deep melodious voice, and the dignity of his delivery, impressed his comrades considerably; especially in the scene between Brutus and Cassius, which he got up for their benefit. It is a curious proof of his want of facility that, although he was extremely fond of the study of language, grammar being all his life his favourite light reading, he never was able to master any language but his own. He read Italian, Spanish, and French, but spoke none of them, in spite of his education in France and his long residence later at Lausanne. He had no ear, and it never could have been an easy task to him to learn the rhythm of Shakespeare. We know the story of old Shaw, conductor of the Covent Garden orchestra, who vainly endeavoured to teach him the song in the piece of Richard Cœur de Lion, “O Richard—O mon roi!” “Mr. Kemble, Mr. Kemble, you are murdering the time, Sir!” cried the exasperated musician; on which Kemble made one of the few jokes ever perpetrated by him: “Very well, Sir, and you are for ever beating it.”
After six years’ residence at Douay he made up his mind that he was not suited to the church, and left for England, determined to follow his father’s profession. He landed at Bristol in that very December, 1775, that his sister made her unfortunate “first appearance” before the London public. Dreading his parents’ wrath, he made his way to Wolverhampton, and there joined a company under the direction of a Mr. Crump and a Mr. Chamberlain. After going through all the humiliations and privations of a penniless actor, but also after enjoying the valuable hours of study and stern discipline of a stroller’s life, we find the future Hamlet, by the aid of his sister, Mrs. Siddons, enabled to get his foot on the first round of the ladder. Mr. Younger, manager of the Liverpool Theatre, gave him an engagement in 1778. We find him afterwards playing at Wakefield with Tate Wilkinson’s York company, and actually permitted to act Macbeth at Hull. By the aid of quiet industry and determination he was working his way to the goal he had in view. He perpetrated a tragedy, Belisarius, that was given on the same occasion at Hull, wrote poetry which he burnt, gave lectures on oratory, and, in fact, passed through the curriculum necessary to the full completion of his powers.
On the 30th September 1783, John Kemble first appeared in London, at Drury Lane, as Hamlet. The fiery criticisms launched against this performance by the press, show that at least it was distinguished by originality. Whatever its faults might be, they were unanimous in declaring his reading to be scholarly and refined. He is said, in studying the part of Hamlet, to have written it out no less than forty times. Some time elapsed before he appeared in the same piece as his sister; other actors had possession of the parts, and he had to bide his time. That patient waiting on opportunity, however, was one of the great Kemble gifts; there was no impatience, no complaining, but a steady, dogged power of perseverance, with the profound conviction of their own capabilities to make use of fortune when it came. At last he appeared as Stukeley to his sister’s Mrs. Beverley, in The Gamester. Finely as the part was played, the sister, not the brother, carried away the honours of the performance.
After this, on several benefit nights they were able to appear together, Kemble replacing Smith in the character of Macbeth to Mrs. Siddons’s Lady Macbeth, and both of them acting later in Othello, he as the Moor, she as Desdemona. This was not a distinct success. At last, however, his power found its legitimate development. On the occasion of his sister’s benefit in January 1788, he acted Lear to her Cordelia. The town was electrified, and declared him equal to Garrick. Boaden tells us “that he never played it so grandly or so touchingly as on that night.”
His really great gift was his large and cultivated understanding, that enabled him to grasp the spirit of the author he sought to interpret, giving a new emphasis and truth to scenes that were hackneyed and stale by a conventional method of rendering. This was particularly the case with Shakespeare, whose beauties he and his sister first revealed to their generation. The difference, however, between them was that he possessed superlative talent, she possessed genius. In speaking to Reynolds the dramatist, she defined completely the difference between them, “My brother John, in his most impetuous bursts, is always careful to avoid any discomposure of his dress or deportment, but in the whirlwind of passion I lose all thoughts of such matters.”
He is said to have nourished a tender affection for the “Muse”—beautiful, clever, fascinating, stuttering Mrs. Inchbald. When her husband died, it was universally said he would marry her. Fanny Kemble tells an incident that occurred long after Kemble was married. Mrs. Inchbald and Miss Mellon were sitting by the fire-place in the green-room, waiting to be called upon the stage. The two were laughingly discussing their male friends and acquaintances from the matrimonial point of view. John Kemble, who was standing near, at length jestingly said to Mrs. Inchbald, who had been comically energetic in her declarations of whom she could or would or never could or would have married, “Well, Mrs. Inchbald, would you have had me?” “Dear heart,” said the stammering beauty, turning her sweet sunny face up to him, “I’d have j-j-j-jumped at you!”
The lady he did eventually marry was no beauty and no “Muse,” but, much to the indignation of Mrs. Siddons, as people said at the time, a very ordinary young woman, daughter of a Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins, prompter and actress at Drury Lane. Priscilla, however, made him a good wife, and he never had cause to regret his choice.
The next brother to John, Stephen, although almost born on the stage, had none of the requisites either of talent or facility to make him a good actor. Only a few days before John’s first appearance in London, Stephen appeared before the public as Othello. It was said that the manager had made a mistake, and had engaged the “big” instead of the “great” Mr. Kemble. Stephen’s great boast all his life was that he was the only actor who could play Falstaff “without stuffing.” His qualifications were those of a boon companion rather than of an actor. He very soon quitted the London stage and became manager of a provincial theatre.
Frances, the great actress’s second sister, inherited a considerable portion of the family beauty, but little dramatic power, and what she had was rendered inoperative by her unconquerable shyness. Mrs. Siddons first brought her out at Bath. The papers vented their spleen against the elder sister on the younger. It was natural, they said, that she should wish to bring her forward, but they hoped she had learned, by the utter failure of her attempt, not to “cram incapable actresses down the throats of the public.” One of the theatrical critics, Steevens, fell in love with her; but his proposals being rejected, he became her bitterest enemy.