Liston was at first master of St. Martin’s Grammar School, Leicester Square, but became a popular actor, and at the time of her writing was appearing at Covent Garden. But by far the best actor she records having seen is Kean. “We were quite satisfied with Kean, I cannot imagine better acting, but the part was too short and excepting him and Miss Smith,—and she did not quite answer my expectation,—the parts were ill-filled and the play heavy. We were too much tired for the whole of _Illusion_ (_Nourjahad_), which has three acts; there is a great deal of finery and dancing in it, but I think little merit. Elliston was Nourjahad, but I think it is a solemn sort of part, not at all calculated for his powers. There was nothing of the best Elliston about him, I might not have known him but for his voice,” and later, “I shall like to see Kean again excessively, and to see him with you too. It appeared to me as if there were no fault in him anywhere; and in his scene with Tubal there was exquisite acting.” In another place she says that so great was the rage for seeing Kean that only a third or fourth row could be got, and that “he is more admired than ever.” This is very different from Miss Mitford’s account of her first impressions of the great actor: “Well, I went to see Mr. Kean and was thoroughly disgusted. This monarch of the stage is a little insignificant man, slightly deformed, strongly ungraceful, seldom pleasing the eye, still seldomer satisfying the ear—with a voice between grunting and croaking, a perpetual hoarseness which suffocates his words, and a vulgarity of manner which his admirers are pleased to call nature ... his acting will always be, if not actually insupportable, yet unequal, disappointing and destructive of all illusion.” But, as in her account of Darcy and Elizabeth, we have seen that Miss Mitford preferred the stereotyped and conventional to the natural, of which Jane Austen was so ardent an admirer, therefore we cannot feel much surprise at the difference between the two opinions. Jane evidently enjoyed good acting, but was critical and not a great lover of the drama unless it was very well done; this we might expect, for naturalness was her admiration, and naturalness she would only find in first-rate performers such as Kean. CHAPTER XVII FANNY AND ANNA The nephews and nieces at Godmersham were rapidly growing into men and women. Edward and George on leaving Winchester went to Oxford; the luxurious way in which they were brought up evidently sometimes annoyed their aunt, who was accustomed to see the younger generation more repressed; she says of them— “As I wrote of my nephews with a little bitterness in my last, I think it particularly incumbent on me to do them justice now, and I have great pleasure in saying they were both at the Sacrament yesterday; now these two boys, who are out with the foxhounds, will come home and disgust me again by some habit of luxury or some proof of sporting mania.”