“Octr. Jubilee Day, Westbourne Farm, Paddington.
“My Dear Harriet,
“Mrs. Sterling has kindly undertaken to deliver a parcel to you, which consists of a Book directed to you at Westbourne, and a little Toy apiece for my dear little Girls. I would give you an account of our Theatrical Situation if my right hand were not so weak that it is with difficulty that I hold my pen—I believe you saw it blistered at Liverpool, and I am sorry to say it is but little better for everything I have try’d to strengthen it. However, the papers give, as I understand, a tolerably accurate account of this barbarous outrage to decency and reason, which is a National disgrace: where it will end, Heaven knows, and it is now generally thought, I believe, that it will not end without the interference of Government, and, if they have any recollection of the riots of the year ’80, it is wonderful they have let it go thus far. I think it very likely that I shall not appear any more this season, for nothing shall induce me to place myself again in so painful and so degrading a situation. Oh, how glad am I that you and my dear Harry are out of it all! I long to hear how you are going on; tell me very soon that you are all well and prosperous, and happy. I find Mr. Harris is going to leave his house in Marlbro’ Street, and you will have to let it to some other tenant at the end of his term—I forget how long he took it for. There is a Print of Mrs. Fitzhugh’s Picture coming out very soon; I am told it will be the finest thing that has been seen for many years. The Picture is more really like me than anything that has been done, and I shall get one for you and send it by the first opportunity. I have been amusing myself with making a model of Mrs. Fitzhugh, which everybody says is liker than anything that ever yet was seen of that kind. I hope there is modelling Clay to be had in Edinburgh, for, if it be possible, I will model a head of my dear Harry when I go there. Give him my love and my blessing. Accept the same for yourself and the darling children. Remember me kindly to all our friends, but most afftly. to dear Miss Dallas and the family of Hume. Patty will write to you by Mrs. Sterling; her letter will, I hope, be better written and more entertaining than mine. God bless you my dearest Harriet.
“Comps. whether it was his Waft, or himself.
“To Mrs. H. Siddons.”
The riots were renewed on various occasions again, and though the frightened managers, by the aid of apologies and humiliations of all sorts, staved off a repetition of violence, the fate of the new house as a paying concern was sealed; it had been a mistake artistically and financially from the first, and soon ceased to be used as a theatre. A poodle drove Goethe’s and Schiller’s plays from the stage of the Weimar Theatre, the “dog Carlo” and Master Betty drove Macbeth and Coriolanus from Covent Garden; in both instances, the public was justified in its conclusions, but not in the manner in which it expressed them. By their suppression of all applause and the restrictions they laid on their audience, the potentates of Weimar stopped all dramatic spontaneity; by the size and unwieldiness of the theatre they built, and the banishment of the lower part of the audience to a distance from the stage, the proprietors of Covent Garden deprived their art of the indispensable verdict of the ordinary public. The Kembles’ school of dramatic art also was passing away. They had substituted for the naturalness and variety of Garrick’s style a measured and stately dignity. This stateliness was now destined to be succeeded by the impetuosity and spontaneous passion of Kean.
We have seen that one of the boys introduced by John Kemble into the Witches’ Scene in Macbeth, and subsequently turned away for disobedience, was named Edmund Kean. This little imp, undeterred by hardship, degradation, and misery, had developed into one of the greatest geniuses that ever trod the English stage. Many are the stories given of Mrs. Siddons’s first meeting with Kean, but all are unanimous that it was by no means a creditable performance so far as the young actor was concerned. It was in Ireland, either at Belfast or Cork. Kean had been engaged to act with her. As usual, instead of learning his part, he employed the interim between her arrival and the play in drinking with some friends, with such success that when he came upon the stage the whole of his part had vanished from his memory; he was, therefore, obliged to improvise as he went on. Needless to say, his performance was a tissue of nonsense, sentences without meaning, drunken absurdities of all sorts. The audience was not a critical one, but Mrs. Siddons’s disgust may be imagined. The next play to be performed was Douglas, and in this Kean played Young Norval. Whether he was ashamed, and wished to show the great actress that he, too, was an actor, it is impossible to say, but he imparted such pathos and spirit to the part, that she was surprised into admiration. After the play (Kean himself tells us) she came to him, and patting him on the head, said: “You have played well, Sir. It’s a pity, but there’s too little of you to do anything.”
When the “little man” arrived in London, Kemble and Mrs. Siddons announced their intention of honouring with their presence the new actor’s performance of Othello. A relative of Kean, who was very anxious about the result of the Kemble decision, placed herself in a box opposite, to observe the effect the performance produced on them. The Queen of Tragedy sat erect and looked cold; Mr. Kemble gave a grave attention. But as the young actor warmed to his part, Mrs. Siddons showed a pleased surprise, and at last leaned forward, her fine head on her arm, quite engrossed in the scene, while Kemble expressed continual approbation, turning to his sister as each point told. At the triumphant close of the performance, Kean’s friend approached the Kembles’ box. Mrs. Siddons would not allow that this extraordinary genius was the lad that had acted with her before. “Perhaps,” she said, “he had assumed the name of Kean.” “Then the present one has every right to drop it,” said Kemble; “he is not Kean, but the real Othello.” Yet Kemble must have known that night that a greater than he had arisen. It must have been a noteworthy scene, those two remarkable figures of a by-gone age, sitting in judgment on “the little gentleman who,” as Kemble said, “was always so terribly in earnest,” while he fretted and fumed on that stage, where he was destined to initiate a new ideal of dramatic art.
Macready gives an interesting account of his first meeting the great actress whom every young aspirant looked up to with such awe. It was at Newcastle; the Gamester and Douglas were the plays selected, and the young actor received the appalling information that he was to act with her. With doubt, anxiety, and trepidation he set about his work, the thought of standing by the side of the great mistress of her Art hanging over him in terrorem. At last she arrived, and he received orders to go to the Queen’s Head Hotel to rehearse. The impression, he says, the first sight of her made on him recalled the page’s description of the effect of Jane de Montfort’s appearance on him in Joanna Baillie’s tragedy. It was
So queenly, so commanding, and so noble.