USA > New York > Old New York : or, Reminiscences of the past sixty years > Part 23
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We had a doubtful case of royalty on our boards at the Old Park Theatre, during the man- agement of Simpson and Price, without even the play-goers being well apprised of the fact. This occurrence took place in the person of Mrs. Alsop, who had been sent out by the manager, Price, from London. She signalized herself by her performance of the Actress of All Work, and by some efforts in comedy of tolerable acceptance. She needed more grace and beauty than nature had favored
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her with, yet her mental qualities were much above mediocrity. Like the opium eaters, De Quincy and Coleridge, and the well-remembered declaimer, Ogilvie, the Scotch orator, and many others, she demanded the liberal use of narcotics to elevate her for the time being in her mimic pro- fession. The consequence was impaircd health, followed by great dejection of spirits and prostra- tion of strength. But other causes still more potent led to her hasty loss of life. She was a daughter of Mrs. Jordan, whose relationship with the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William the Fourth, is recorded history. Aware of her origin, and necessitated in a foreign land to derive her precarious maintenance from the stage, after a few months she terminated her earthly career by an overdose of laudanum. When I arrived at her lodgings she was just breathing her last. She died in Greenwich street, near Dey ; and Spiller, the comedian, and myself, sought a burial spot for her. The requirement of a doctor's certificate for the cause of death was not then exacted as now- adays. I give these particulars to counteract errors, as it has been stated she closed her career during a tour through the Southern States. My indignation was somewhat awakened at the occur- rence of this unhappy woman's end ; anguish of mind, I think, must have wrought the work of destruction. Contrary to my usual practice with
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the poor, I sent a medical charge to His Majesty for services rendered ; but like most bills against those Hanoverian monarchs, it remains non-ac- cepted up to the present hour. I necessarily act, as I am informed the mercantile world sometimes do, place it among my deferred stock, though I am ready to sell out upon application.
Still a little later, and a flood of histrionic talents seems almost to have overwhelmed us, in the persons of Kean, Mathews, and Macready. He who would draw the veritable portraiture and histrionic powers of these remarkable men, might justly claim psychological and descriptive instincts of the highest order. They were not all of equal or of like merits. They were all, however, ele- vated students, under difficulties, and long strug- gled against the assaults of a vituperative press and an incredulous public ; they all in the end secured the glories of a great success. With Kean I may say I was most intimate. He won my feelings and admiration from the moment of my first interview with him. Association and obser- vation convinced me that he added to a mind of various culture the resources of original intellect ; that he was frank and open-hearted, often too much so, to tally with worldly wisdom. I was taught by his expositions in private, as well as by his histrionic displays, that the great secret of the actor's art depended upon a scrutinizing analysis
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of the mutual play of mind and matter, the reflex power of mental transactions on organic structure. His little, but well-wrought, strong frame, seemed made up of a tissue of nerves. Every sense ap- peared capable of immediate impression, and each impression having within itself a flexibility truly wondrous. The drudgery of his early life had given a pliability to his muscular powers that ren- dered him the most dexterous harlequin, the most graceful fencer, the most finished gentleman, the most insidious lover, the most terrific tragedian. The Five Courts could not boast a more skilful artist of the ring, and Garrick, if half that is said be true, might have won a grace from him. He had read history, and all concerning Shakspeare was familiar to him : times, costumes, habits, and the manners of the age. He had dipped into phrenology, and was a physiognomist of rare dis- cernment. His analysis of characters who visited him, to do homage to his renown, often struck me with astonishment. His eye was the brightest and most penetrating any mortal could boast, an intellectual telegraph. Dr. Young, borrowing, I suppose, from Aristotle, says that terror and pity are the two pulses of tragedy ; that Kean had these at command, every spectator of his Richard and Sir Giles, of his Lear and his Othello, is ready to grant. His transitions from gay to grave, vielded proofs of his capacity over the passions.
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He knew almost instinctively the feelings of the house, whether an appreciating audience was as- sembled or not, and soon decided the case, often by the earliest efforts he wrought. He was proud as the representative of Shakspeare, but told me a hundred times that he detested the profession of the actor. He loved Shakspeare, though the hardest study to grapple with, because, among other reasons, when once in memory he was a fixture, his language, he added, was so stickable. Though I was with him almost daily during his visits among us, I never knew him to look at the writings of the great poet, save once with King John, for any preparation for the stage ; he very seldom attended rehearsals, and yet, during all his performances here, he never once disappointed the public, even when I knew him suffering from bodily ills that might have kept a hero on his couch. There is something marvellous in that function, memory. The metaphysician, Dugald Stewart, was astounded when Henderson, after reading a newspaper once, repeated such a por- tion as seemed to him wonderful. A like oc- currence took place with our Hodgkinson. He made a trifling wager that within an hour he could commit to memory a page of a newspaper, cross reading, and he won. Kean told me that the parts of modern dramas, such, for example, as De Montfort, Bertram, and the like, could not
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thus be retained. Henderson told Dugald Stewart that habit produced that power of retention. Has the memory, like that peculiar faculty of calcula- tion which Zerah Colburn possessed, some ano- malous function not yet unravelled ?
It is well known that Kean, at one period of his histrionic career, enjoyed the unbounded ad- miration of the Scotch metropolis ; and it is re- corded that the Highland Society honored him with a magnificent sword for his highly wrought performance of Macbeth. He on several occasions adverted to the circumstance of old Sir John Sin- clair's flattering correspondence on the subject. Kean, if report be true, was invited to a choice meeting at Edinburgh, where were summoned many of the philosophers, professors, and critics usually congregated in that enlightened city. Scott and Wilson, I take it, were of the number, headed by the octogenarian, Henry Mackenzie, the " Man of Feeling," president of the Highland Society. It was easy to foresee, that such an op- portunity would not be permitted to escape such a scholastic board without some interrogatories being put to the great dramatic hero, on the genius of Shakspeare, and on the eloquence which elucidated him. The old professors of rhetoric had too long handled the square and compass in their Chiro- mania not to feel desirous of hearing if some new postulates might not be assumed, whose excellence
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might advance their science. My old friend, James Pillans, of the High School, broached the subject. Kean had little to disclose ; yet that little had to suffice. He had no harangue on eloquence to de- liver. He maintained that Shakspeare was his own interpreter, by his intensity and the wonder- ful genius of his language. Shakspeare, he con- tinued, was a study ; his deep and scrutinizing research into human nature, and his sublime and pathetic muse, were to be comprehended only by a capacity alive to his mighty purposes. He had no rhetorician's laws to expound. If a higher estimate was at any time placed upon his perform- ances than upon those of some others who fulfilled the severe calling of the actor, he thought it might be due in part to the devotion which he bestowed on the author, and the conceptions engendered by reflection. I have overlooked, said he, the school- men, and while I assume no lofty claims, I have thought more of intonation than of gesticulation. It is the utterance of human feelings which rises superior to the rules which the professor of rhet- oric enjoins. It is the sympathy of mental im- pression that acts. I forgot the affections of art, and relied upon the emotions of the soul. It is human nature that gives her promptings. Kean rejected the cadence, or very rarely had recourse to it : it was at war with a successful termination of speech. Sententious thought is cut off, and too
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often loses its effective power by that rule. He considered the low modulation at the end too often destructive to a full comprehension of the sentence. Popular oratory seems more and more to reject it as an obsolete law, and I think, from daily observation, that our living exemplars of oratorical power, as Everett, Hawks, and others, practically carry out Kean's innovation.
I interrogated Kean, at one of those intel- lectual recreations which now and then occurred in New York, if no other writer could be pointed out whose language might awaken similar emotions by elucidation. The funeral service of the Church, he replied, will demonstrate the capabilities of the speaker. When a new candidate for histrionic patronage waits at Old Drury, he is perhaps tested by the committee to declaim the speech over the dead body of Cæsar, or the opening address of Richard the Third, or perhaps something from that mawkish lover, Romeo ; or he may be re- quested to read a portion of the funeral service of the Church ; this last answers as well as any thing from Shakspeare. We have nothing higher in eloquence ; nothing more effective, and the quali- fications of the speaker are often by such a crite- rion determined upon.# I myself shall only add
* It is only within a few months that Garrick's work, Direc- tions for the reading of the Liturgy, has been republished in London.
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that Kean was controlled by an inherent sagacity, and, as events proved, that sagacity was convincing. The turmoils of the mind which lcd to such re- sults, he could not expound. Aided by a masterly judgment, he knew where the golden treasures of the poet were buried, and his genius know how and when to bring them to light, and to give them their peculiar force.
Kean's success was not equal in all characters, and he frankly declared it. But how often has this proved to be the case with others ! Kemble could not excel in Richard the Third or in Sir Edward Mortimer, and Kean could not approach
the excellence of Kemble's Coriolanus.
Miss
O'Neil, when she played Mrs. Haller, proved that the pathetic had scarcely entered the bosom of Mrs. Siddons. Kean's scope was too wide for any mor- tal to cherish a design so presumptuous as univer- sal success ; but the impartial and well-informed historiographer of the stage will allow, that no predecessor in Kean's vocation ever excelled in so great a degree in such numerous and diversified delineations of the products of the dramatic art. And to what cause for such success are we to look, but to that vast capacity which original genius had planted within him ; to that boldness that dreaded not a new path, to that self-reliance which trained him, by untiring industry, to his assigned duty ; to that confidence which he cherished, that
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EDMUND KEAN.
the artificial school of form and mannerism, with its monotonous tone, was rebellious to flexible nature, and must in time yield to those diviner agents residing in the human breast ? In the mechanics of ordinary life there might be such laws, and admiration excited at the regularity of the pendulum, but the intellectual was a subtle ether not to be thus controlled. The service in which he had enlisted, as interpreter and expositor of the Bard of Avon, demanded that the passions have fair play, and that it were an absurdity to restrain the emotions of the soul by the laws of the pedagogue. His heart was his prompter-his mental sagacity his guide. Never has an actor appeared who owed less to the acting of others ; he disdained imitation ; he was himself alone. Need we have doubted the ultimate success of such heroism ?
How vastly is his merit enhanced when we consider the renowned individuals who had had possession of the stage for some one or two ages prior to his entrée in London, whose memories still lingered there, and further recollect the abili- ties of those, too, who, at the very time when he made his debut at Old Drury, were still the actual properties of the dramatic world, and had secured the homage of the British nation : the Kembles, Young, Mrs. Siddons, and we may add, Miss O'Neil. The verdict had gone forth that these
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artists could do no wrong ; yet the little man, who had feasted sumptuously on herring at a shilling a week, who had studied Shakspeare at the Cock and Bottle, who had enacted him amidst the clanking chains of a prison, appears as Shylock. The actors and the audience, one and all, dismiss every doubt ; a new revelation is unfolded, and the intellect of the most intellectual critics is ex- hausted in ink and paper in laudation ; the poly- glot is ransacked for new phrases of approbation. The little man, but mighty actor, assumes a suc- cession of Shakspearian characters, and London is taken, as if by storm. Hazlitt declares that Mr. Kean's appearance is the first gleam of genius breaking athwart the gloom of the stage ; the dry bones shake, and the mighty Kemble exclaims, " He acts terribly in earnest !" Coleridge says, " To see Kean act is reading Shakspeare by light- ning ;" and Byron, the immortal bard, bursts forth :
- " Thou art the sun's bright child !
The genius that irradiates thy mind
Caught all its purity and light from heaven.
Thine is the task, with mastery most perfect, To bind the passions captive in thy train ! Each crystal tear, that slumbers in the depth Of feeling's fountain, doth obey thy call ! There's not a joy or sorrow mortals prove, Or passion to humility allied,
But tribute of allegiance owes to thee.
The shrine thou worshippest is Nature's self- The only altar genius deigns to seek.
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Thine offering-a bold and burning mind, Whose impulse guides thee to the realms of fame, Where, crowned with well-earned laurels, all thine own, I herald thee to immortality."
To demonstrate that his empire was not alone, Shakspeare and the lofty tragic writers, he as- sumed comedy ; he gave us the Duke Aranza, Octavian, Sylvester, Daggerwood, Luke, etc., and played Mungo, and Tom Tug ; with most ex- pressive power he enacted the fine tragedy, the Jew of Malta, and for the afterpiece sang sweetly Paul, exhibiting the variety and extent of his dra- matic capabilities without loss of his mighty fame as the greatest living tragedian. I attribute Kean's unrivalled success in so wide a range of characters somewhat to his extraordinary capacity for obser- vation. He individualized every character he as- sumed-we saw not Mr. Kean. Wherever he was, he was all eye, all ear. Every thing around him, or wherever he moved, fell within his cogni- zance.
He might have been called the peripatctic philosopher. He was curious in inquiring into causes. He echoed the warbling of birds, the sounds of beasts, imitated the manner and the voices of numerous actors ; studied the seven ages, and said none but a young man could perform old King Lear ; was a ventriloquist, sang Tom Moore's Melodies with incredible sweetness, and was him-
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self the composer of several popular airs. Thus qualified, he drew his materials fresh from obser- vations amid the busy scenes of life, where he was ever a spectator. Garrick declared that he would give a hundred pounds to utter the exclamation "Oh !" as did Whitefield. What might he not have given to pronounce the curse on Regan as did Mr. Kean, or to be able to rival the pathos of his Othello ?
The Lake Poets, as they were called, took a new road in their strides towards Parnassus, but that road is now mainly forsaken, and remains almost unvisited. Kean, with loftier aspirations and still more daring, essayed a new reading of Shakspeare ; there was large by-play, but no still life in him ; he rejected the monotonous and so- porific tone ; he left the artificial cadence and the cold antique to Kemble. The passions with which the Almighty has gifted mortals were his reliance, and as these will last while life's blood courses through the heart, so long will endure the his- trionic school which Kean founded.
That Kean's first visit to the United States was a complete triumph none will deny ; that his second, after his disasters in London, by which his own folly and crime had made him notorious, now rendered the American people less charitable to his errors, and less cordial in their support of his theatrical glory, is also an admitted fact ; yet his
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return among us gave demonstrations enough to prove that his professional merits were still recog- nized as of the highest order : he might have re- pined at the departure of those halcyon days of 1820-21, yet there were testimonials enough nightly accompanying his career in 1825-26, to support him in his casual sinking of the spirits, and perhaps at times to nullify that contrition that weighed so heavily at the heart. His devo- tion as an actor was not less earnest than when I first knew him. His Sir Giles in New York abated not of the vehemence and terror that char- acterized it as I had witnessed it at Old Drury in London, in 1816. The sarcastic parts of this great drama yielded the richest opportunities for the display of his acting powers, and of an utter- ance most natural as the outpouring of a con- summate villain. There were sometimes with him moments of renewed study, and he threw himself into several new characters which he had not pre- viously represented here ; his Jew of Malta, his Zanga, his De Montfort, and Paul, were of the number. His Othello was received with louder plaudits than ever, and his Lear, as an inspiration beyond mortals, was crowned with universal praises. Kean often told me that he considered his third act in Othello his most satisfactory performance within the range of his histrionic career. "Such," I said, " seems to be the public verdict ; yet I
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have been more held in wonder and admiration at your King Lear ; your discourse with Edgar con- centrates a body of mental philosophy." " The real insanity and decrepitude of that old monarch, of fourscore and upwards," said Kean, "is a most severe and laborious part. I often visited St. Luke's and Bethlehem hospitals in order to com- prehend the manifestations of real insanity ere I appeared in Lear. I understand you have an asy- lum for lunatics ; I should like to pay it a visit, and learn if there be any difference in the insanity of John Bull and of you Americans." He was promised an opportunity.
A few days after, we made the desired visit at Bloomingdale. Kean, with an additional friend and myself, occupied the carriage for a sort of philosophical exploration of the city on our way thither. On the excursion he remarked he should like to see our Vauxhall. We stopped ; he en- tered the gate, asked the doorkeeper if he might survey the place, gave a double somerset through the air, and in the twinkling of an eye stood at the remote part of the garden. The wonder of the superintendent can be better imagined than described. Arriving at the Asylum, with suitable gravity he was introduced to the officials, invited to an inspection of the afflicted inmates, and then told, if he would ascend to the roof of the build- ing, a delightful prospect would be presented to
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his contemplation : many counties, and an area of sea, rivers, and lands, mountains and valleys, embracing a circuit of forty miles in circumference. His admiration was expressed in delicious accents. " I'll walk the ridge of the roof of the Asylum !" he exclaimed, "and take a leap ! it's the best end I can make of my life," and forthwith started for the western gable end of the building. My associate and myself, as he hurried onward, seized him by the arms, and he submissively returned. I have ever been at a loss to account for this sud- den freak in his feelings ; he was buoyant at the onset of the journey ; he astonished the Vauxhall doorkeeper by his harlequin trick, and took an in- terest in the various forms of insanity which came before him. He might have become too sublimated in his feelings, or had his senses unsettled (for he was an electrical apparatus) in contemplating the mysterious influences acting on the minds of the deranged, for there is an attractive principle as well as an adhesive principle in madness ; or a crowd of thoughts might have oppressed him, arising from the disaster which had occurred to him a few days before with the Boston audience, and the irreparable loss he had sustained in the plunder of his trunks and valuable papers, while journeying hither and thither on his return to New York. We rejoiced together, however, when we found him again safely at home, at his old lodg-
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ings, at the City Hotel. I asked him in the even- ing how he studied the phrases of disordered intel- lect ; he replied, by the eye, as I control my lion. I cannot do better with this part of my subject than quote from an able article on Kean's Lear, as it appeared in Blackwood. Of this most genuine of his performances of Shakspeare, the writer says : " The genius of Shakspeare is the eternal rock on which the temple of this great actor's reputation must now rest ; and the 'obscene birds' of criti- cism may try in vain to reach its summit and defile it, and the restless waves of envy and igno- rance may beat against its foundation unheeded, for their noise cannot be heard so high."
There are a thousand stories afloat concerning Kean. I shall swell the number with one or two derived from personal knowledge. The criticisms of the American papers on his acting were little heeded by him ; he said after an actor has made a severe study of his character he feels himself be- yond the animadversions of the press. While here, however, a periodical was published by the poet Dana, called the " Idle Man." A number, in which his dramatic talents were analyzed, was placed in Kean's hand ; having read it deliberately, he exclaimed, with much gratification, " This writer understands me ; he is a philosophical man ; I shall take his work across the water." On sev- eral alternate nights he played the same round of
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characters with the distinguished Cooper ; and two parties were naturally created by it. He soon saw that Cooper had his friends, and noticing the caption of the respective papers, after one or two successive days, he ordered his man Miller regularly to handle the opposition gazette with a pair of tongs, and convey it away from his pres- ence. He said he never read attacks.
Kean had early determined to erect a monu- ment to the memory of the actor he most es- teemed, George Frederick Cooke. We waited upon Bishop Hobart for permission to carry out the design. Kean struck the attention of the Bishop by his penetrating eyes and his refined address. "You do not, gentlemen, wish the tablet inside St. Paul's ?" asked the bishop. " No, sir," I replied, " we desire to remove the re- mains of Mr. Cooke from the strangers' vault and erect a monument over them on some suitable spot. in the burial-ground of the church. It will be a work of taste and durability." "You have my concurrence then," added he, " but I hardly knew how we could find a place inside the church for Mr. Cooke." The monument was finished on the 4th of June, 1821, the day Mr. Kean terminated his first visit to America. He repaired in the afternoon to pay his last devotion to it. He was singularly pleased with the eulogistic lines on Cooke :
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" Three Kingdoms claim his birth, Both Hemispheres pronounce his worth."
Tears fell from his cyes in abundance, and as the evening closed he walked Broadway, listened to the chimes of Trinity, returned again to the churchyard, and sang, swceter than ever, "Those Evening Bells," and "Come o'er the Sea." I gazed upon him with more interest than had ever before been awaked by his stage representations. I fancied (and it was not altogether fancy) that I saw a child of genius on whom the world at large bestowed its loftiest praises, while he himself was deprived of that solace which the world cannot give, the sympathies of the heart.
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