"Ce glorieux acteur, Des plus fameux héros fameux imitateur; Du théâtre Anglais, la splendeur et la gloire, Mais si mauvais acteur dedans sa propre histoire." [Illustration: KEAN AS SIR GILES OVERREACH.] CHAPTER XV. EDMUND KEAN. "It is, perhaps, not generally known," says Macaulay, when closing his narrative of the death of the great Lord Halifax, in 1695, "that some adventurers who, without advantages of fortune or position, made themselves conspicuous by the mere force of ability, inherited the blood of Halifax. He left a natural son, Henry Carey, whose dramas once drew crowded audiences to the theatres, and some of whose gay and spirited verses still live in the memory of hundreds of thousands. From Henry Carey descended that Edmund Kean who, in our own time, transformed himself so marvellously into Shylock, Iago, and Othello." This reminds me of an anecdote of Louis Philippe, when Duke of Orleans, who happened one day to speak of Louis XIV. as "my august ancestor." The remark was made to a young clerk in his household,--a future novelist and dramatist, Alexandre Dumas. This gentleman opened his eyes in amazement, knowing that the duke was legitimately descended from the brother of the "Grand Monarque." The duke, however, was thinking of the inter-marriages between members of his family and the illegitimate descendants of Louis XIV.; but he noticed the surprise of Dumas, and then calmly added:--"Yes, Dumas; _my august ancestor, Louis XIV.!_ to descend from him, only through his bastards, is, in my eyes at least, an honour sufficiently great to be worth boasting of!" In like manner Edmund Kean might have boasted of his descent from George Saville, Marquis of Halifax; but I think he was prouder of what he had achieved for himself through his genius, than of any oblique splendour derived to him from the author of the _Maxims_ and the great chief of the Trimmers,--if, indeed, he knew anything about him. A posthumous son of Henry Carey, well known as George Saville Carey, inherited much of his father's talents. After declining to learn the mystery of printing, he tried that of playing; produced little effect, but by singing, reciting, and above all by his imitations, lived a vagabond life, and managed to keep his head above water, with now and then a fearful dip into the mud below, for forty years; when paralysis depriving him of the means to earn his bread, he contrived to escape further misery here by strangling himself.[101] He was a man of great genius not unmixed with a tendency to insanity. He was cursed in one fair and worthless daughter, "Nance Carey," whose intimacy with Aaron Kean,--a tailor,--or as some say, Edmund Kean, a builder, but at all events brother to Moses Kean, a tailor, and as admirable a mimic as George Carey himself,[102]--resulted in her becoming the mother of a boy, her pitiless neglect of whom seems to have begun even before his birth. [Illustration: (Edmund Kean)]