The Knickerbocker Gallery/Edmund Kean
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H. T. Tuckerman.
Edmund Kean.
By H. T. Tuckerman.
The finest moral trait in Kean was a certain spirit, tenacity of purpose, and lofty confidence in himself, which differed widely from presumption or conceit: a kind of instinctive faith, that no force of circumstances or prescription ever quenched. This quality, more easily felt than described, seems the prerogative of genius in all departments of life, and is often the only explicable inspiration that sustains it amid discomfiture and privation. It runs, like a thread of gold, through the dark and tangled web of Kean's career—lends something of dignity to the most abject moment of his life, and redeems from absolute degradation his moments of most entire self-abandonment. Thus, when an obscure and provincial actor, performing Alexander the Great, he replied indignantly to the sarcasm of an auditor in the stage-box, who called him Alexander the Little: "Yes, Sir, with a great soul!" and exultingly told his wife, after his first great success in London, in reply to her anxious inquiry what Lord Essex thought of him: "D———n Lord Essex, the pit rose to me;" he felt that the appeal of genius was universal, and that which stirred in his blood demanded the response of humanity. This consciousness of natural gifts made him spurn the least encroachment upon his self-respect, however poverty weighed him down, and long before fame justified to the world his claims. He rushed for ever away from the house of his earliest protector, because of a careless remark of one of the company that disavowed his equality with the children of the family. Whenever an inferior part was allotted him, he fled to avoid the compromise of his feelings; and after his triumph was achieved, poured a bowl of punch over the stage-manager's head at Drury Lane, to punish his impertinent criticisms at the first rehearsal. The same proud independence led him to avoid the social honors of rank. He liked professional and literary men because he thought they truly relished and understood his art. The restraints, the cold uniformity, and the absence of vivid interest in the circles of the nobility, either oppressed or irritated him, and he chafed until free to give vent to his humor, passion, and convivial tastes among boon companions.
A fine audacity and that abhorrence of the conventional we find in hunters, poets, and artists—the instinctive self-assertion of a nature assured that its own resources are its best and only reliable means of success and enjoyment—thus underlaid Kean's wayward and extravagant moods; and while it essentially interfered with his popularity as a man, it was a primary cause of his triumph as an actor; for no histrionic genius more clearly owed his success to the will. In this regard he was a species of Alfieri. The style he adopted, the method he pursued, and the aim he cherished, were neither understood nor encouraged until their own intrinsic and overwhelming superiority won both the critics and the multitude. The taste in England had been formed by Kemble and his school: dignity, correctness, grave emphasis, and highly-finished elocution had become the standard characteristics. Kean was a bold innovator upon this system; he trusted to nature more than to art, or rather endeavored to fuse the two. Thus, while carefully giving the very shades of meaning to the words of Shakspeare, he endeavored to personify the character—not according to an eloquent ideal, but with human reality, as if the very life-blood of Othello and Lear, their temperaments as well as their experience, had been vitally transferred to his frame and brain. He seemed possessed with the character he represented; and, throwing mere technical rules to the winds, identified himself through passional sympathy, regulated by studious comtemplation, with the idiosyncrasies of those whose very natures and being be aspired to embody and develop.
Kean obeyed the instinct of genius, when, in opposition to the management at Drury Lane, arranging his débût, he exclaimed, "Shylock or nothing!" In that part there was scope for his intellectual energy, opportunity to give those magical shades of intensity and throw into those dark, acute features the infinite power of expression for which he was distinguished. A few weeks before that memorable evening, his first-born son had died in a provincial town, and in all the agony of his bereavement he had been obliged to act, to gain money to defray the funeral expenses. Thence he had gone up to town, and, owing to a misunderstanding of the contract, for months endured the pressure of actual want and the heart-sickness of hope deferred. The season was unpropitious, his spirits and energy were depressed by fasting, affliction, and neglect. While he was at rehearsal, his wife sold one of her few remaining articles of apparel to obtain him a dinner, fortified by which he trudged through the snow to the theatre. The series of triumphs succeeding this memorable night are well known. The overpowering reality of his personation gave Lord Byron a convulsive fit, caused an actress to faint on the stage, and an old comedian to weep, replenished the treasury of Drury Lane, electrified the United Kingdom, ushered in a new theatrical era, and crowned him with sudden prosperity and fame. His star, however, set in clouds; his last appearance in Lon- don was as melancholy as his first was brilliant; alienated from his family, the victim of excess—proud, sensitive, and turbulent—his domestic troubles were only reconciled just before his death, which came as a relief to himself and those with whom he was connected.
While the histrionic achievements of Kean identify his name with the progress of dramatic art, his actual life and habits pertain rather to a sphere without the limits of civilization. A wild vein belonged to his very nature, and seemed indicative of gipsy or savage blood. It gleamed sometimes from his extraordinary eyes, when acting, so as to appal, startle, and impress every class of observers. A man once cried out in the pit at the demoniacal glare of his optics, as Shylock meditating revenge on his creditor, "It is the devil!" His poet-biographer compares him to the van-winged hero of Paradise Lost; and West, the painter, declared he had never been so haunted by the look of a human face as by that of Kean. Something of this peculiar trait also exhibited itself in his action and tones, and made his audience thrill with the fierce energy of his soul. But while it thus subserved the purposes of art, and was, in fact, an element of his genius, it infected his private life with a reckless and half-maniacal extravagance that was fostered by his addiction to stimulants, an unprotected infancy, and the precarious and baffled tenor of his youth and early manhood.
When we bring home to ourselves this erratic behavior, combined with extreme vicissitudes of fortune, the career of Kean, as a man, seems almost as remarkable as it was as an actor. A stage-Cupid at two years of age, a circus-rider and harlequin, then an infant prodigy reciting Rolla; his very origin disputed; now the slave of a capricious, ignorant, and selfish woman; and now the wayward protege of a benevolent lady; arranging Mother Goose for one manager, and taking the part of a supernumerary for another; reduced to such poverty as to travel on foot, his wife trudging wearily at his side, and his boy clinging to his back; at one time swimming a river with his theatrical wardrobe in a bundle held by the teeth, and, at another, for whole days, half-famished, and his wife praying at her lonely vigils for a speedy release by death from hopeless suffering; to-day dancing attendance, for the hundredth time, at Drury Lane, to gain the ear of the director, and known among the bystanders only as "the little man with the capes;" and to-morrow, the idol of the town, his dressing-room besieged by lords—few chronicles in real life display more vivid and sudden contrasts than the life of Kean. The mercurial temper that belonged to him was liable, at any moment, to be excited by drink, sympathy, an idea, or an incident. One night it induced him to disturb the quiet household where he lodged, by jumping through a glass door; another, to seize the heads of the leaders attached to his majesty's mail-coach and attempt a wrestling-match. In Dublin, it winged his flight for hours through the dusky streets, with a mob of screaming constables at his heels. It inspired him to engage in midnight races on horseback. In more quiet manifestations, it induced him to make a pet of a lion, and a sacred relic of the finger-bone of Cook; and prompted him, to his wife's extreme annoyance, to retire to bed in the costume of a monkey. At one time it led him to muse for hours in a church-yard; and, at another, to try country-life on his estate at Bute, or haunt the "Red Lion" and the "Coal-Hole." In England it made him a volunteer jockey at a race; in Italy, a fascinating story-teller and mimic to the monks of road-side convents; and in America, caused him to be duly inaugurated chief of a tribe of Indians.
There is no actor of whom such instances of arrogance toward the public and individuals are related; but it is to be observed that they generally originated in exasperated feeling, caused by undeserved neglect or gross misappreciation; and charity will ever make allowance for the inevitable results of an incongruous and homeless childhood. Kean's father nearly ruined his son's physique by employing him, at a tender age, to figure in pantomime; timely surgical aid having only saved his limbs from utter deformity. The redeeming influences of his early years were the benevolent intervention of Dr. Drury, who, recognizing his promise, sent him to Eton; and the patient teachings of Miss Tidswell, an actress of Drury Lane. That he was born with a genius for the stage is evinced by the fact that at the age of thirteen his Cato and Hamlet satisfied provincial audiences; and his recitation of Satan's Address to the Sun, from Paradise Lost, won royal approbation at Windsor. His talent for feigning served him occasionally more practical benefit than that derived from its entertaining quality; as, when he was released from a rash engagement on board ship, as cabin-boy, for pretended deafness, and escaped the indignation of a London audience he wantonly disappointed, by a well-acted dislocation of the shoulder. If Kean's early circumstances were adverse to his moral, they were, in many respects, highly favorable to his professional development. The long apprenticeship he served to the stage, embracing every grade of character and almost all functions of a player, made him thoroughly at home on the boards, and induced much of his ease, tact, and facility; his circus experiences and habits of active life gave both vigor and suppleness to his frame; while the vagrant career ho led, brought him in view of all kinds of character and phases of life, by which he observantly profited to a degree that only those intimate with him fully realized. While in this country, his genius excited the intelligent admiration, and his recklessness the benevolent care, of a professional gentleman, who became his constant associate and friend. From him I learn that the versatility of Kean's accomplishments was quite as remarkable as the intensity of his acting and the extravagance of his moods. He would often enchain an intellectual circle at a fashionable party, by his exquisite vocalism, the effect of which was inexplicable to those who listened to his limited and unmusical voice; or by the rich anecdotes or shrewd comments of his table-talk; and when released from this to him intolerable social thraldom, work off the nervous reäction induced by so many hours of restraint, by throwing half-a-dozen summersets with the celerity and grace of a practised harlequin. He was, indeed, a compact embodiment of muscles and nerves; his agility and strength were such that his frame instantly obeyed his will from the bound of a gladiator to the expressive restlessness of quivering fingers. His voice ranged through every note and cadence of power and sensibility; now by a whisper of tenderness bringing tears from callous men, and the next moment, chilling their very hearts with the fierce tones of an imprecation. But these remarkable physical endowments would have merely subserved the narrow purposes of the athlete or the mimic, had they not been united to a mind of extraordinary sagacity and a face of unequalled expression; by virtue of these he rendered them the instruments of efficient art. The professors at Edinburgh were disappointed, after seeing him perform and hearing him converse, to find that he had no original theory of elocution to broach, and no striking principles of oratory to advocate. His touches were a composite and individual result, no more to be formally imparted than the glow of poetry or the zest of wit; they grew out of profound observation fused into a practical issue by the inspiration of genius.
Coleridge said that to see Kean act was like reading Shakspeare by lightning. The spell of his penetrating eyes and half-Jewish physiognomy was not more individual than his style of personation; and the attempt to transfer some of his points to another has almost invariably produced an incongruous effect. His excitable temperament was another secret of his magnetism and his foibles; while it enabled him wonderfully to engage the sympathies of an audience, it rendered him liable to be overcome by the least moral or physical excitement, and made him the slave of impulse. Regularly in New-York, every afternoon, he seized the copy of an evening journal inimieal to him, with the tongs, rang for a servant, and sent it away in this manner; while, at the same time, he scrupulously laid aside a guinea a week, during the whole of his sojourn, to reward the faithful services of a poor servant: often drawn by his kind guardian from a haunt of debauchery, just in time to appear on the stage, he would, at others, attire himself like a finished gentleman, mix in the most refined society, and manifest a noble scorn of money, and an absolute reverence for mental superiority, that excited involuntary respect. Kean, the dissolute man, the inebriated boon companion, quoting Latin, the generous and loyal friend, the funny mimic, and the great impersonator of Shakspeare, seemed like so many different beings, with something identical in the eyes, voice, and stature: and as marvellous a disparity marked his fortunes—it being scarcely credible that the same man whose appearance brought a solitary sixpence to the Dumfries theatre, is he who, glittering with the ornaments of Garrick, filled Drury Lane to suffocation for entire seasons; or that the luxurious apartments, crowded with men of note, are tenanted by him whose wife for years kept vigils of penury. It is creditable to Kean's magnanimity under these bewildering transitions, that he never played the tyrant; that he was uniformly kind to poor and inferior actors, and manifested a spirit above envy. After seeing old Garcia perform Otello in New-York, he sent him a costly gift in token of his admiration; he candidly acknowledged the superiority of Talma, and labored, with genuine zeal, to commemorate the histrionic fame of Cooke.
It is common to speak of great acting or vocalism as indescribable; and, to a certain extent, this is doubtless true; but distinctness of style is characteristic of genius in all things, and an intellectual observer can adequately report even the evanescent charms of dramatic personation when harmoniously conceived and efficiently embodied. Accordingly, we derive from the criticisms and reminiscences of Kean's intelligent admirers, a very clear idea of his general merits. It is obvious that these consisted of simplicity and earnestness; that, endowed with fiery passions and a sagacious intellect, he boldly undertook to represent Shakspeare, not according to any prescriptive model or rules of art, but through his individual reflection and sympathy. Like the great master of the written drama, he followed closely the intimations of nature; cast, as it were, self-consciousness away, and assimilated the actual elements of human life with his own action and expression. Hence the truth of his violent contrasts—the light and shade of art. Hence the frequency and effect of his brief, suggestive, and thrilling exclamations, that made a single word or interjection reveal infinite woe, joy, surprise, or madness. It is for the same reason, that, upon refined minds and earnest hearts, his acting unfolded ever new beauty and truth, as described by Dana, whose criticism, when Kean read, he exclaimed, "This man understands me." By this firm, and, if we may so say, subtle yet instinctive adherence to nature, a certain grandeur and effect, only yielded her genuine votaries, seemed to invest and glorify the actor, so that his most Incidental attitudes and by-play wore a reality undiscoverable in the most elaborate efforts of inferior performers. To the same principle we ascribe his versatility. Each character was a distinct study. Where his consciousness was at fault in suggesting the most authentic manner, tone, or expression, he had recourse to observation; he reflected deeply, and appeared to identify himself, by the process, with the being he was to enact, until his very soul became imbued with the melancholy of Hamlet the insanity of Lear, and the mental agony of Othello.