Whether that event took place in an otherwise unoccupied chamber in Gray's Inn, which had been lent to her vagabond father, or in a poor room in Castle Street, Leicester Square, or in a miserable garret in Ewer Street, Southwark,--for all of which there are respective claimants, Miss Carey's son had a narrow escape from being born in the street. But for Miss Tidswell, the actress, and another womanly gossip or two, this would have happened. It seemed all one to "Nance Carey," who having performed _her_ part in this portion of the play, deserted her child, and left him to the cruelty, caprice, or humanity of strangers. Little Edmund Kean, born in 1787, or in the following year,[103] for the date is uncertain, had a hard life of it from the first. In a loving arm he never was held,--a loving eye never looked down upon him. Had he not been a beautiful child, perhaps the charity of Miss Tidswell and of whomsoever else extended it to him, would have failed. It is certain that they took the earliest opportunity of deriving profit from him; and before he was three years old, Edmund Kean figured as a Cupid in one of Noverre's ballets at the Opera House. He owed his election to this dignity to his rare personal beauty, an endowment which went for nothing in his subsequent appointment, when four or five years of age, to act as one of the imps attendant on the witches in "Macbeth." John Kemble was then supreme at Drury Lane, and, of course, little conscious that among the noisy and untractable young imps, the wildest by far would prove to be, what Mrs. Siddons would have called, one of those new idols which the public delight to set up, in order to mortify their old favourites! One night the goblins fell over one another in the cavern-scene, Edmund going down first, out of weakness, or of mischief. This led to the dismissal of the whole troop; and some good Samaritan then sent young Kean to school. In Orange Court, Leicester Square, was the fountain whence he drew his first and almost only draught of learning. In that dirty locality may be found the shrine of three geniuses. There, Holcroft was born, Opie was housed, and Edmund Kean instructed. Thereafter comes Chaos; and it is only by glimpses that the whereabout of the naturally-gifted but most unhappy lad can be detected. A little outcast, with his weak legs in "irons," day and night, he sleeps between a poor married couple whose sides are hurt by his fetters. Miss Tidswell takes him, ties him to a bedpost, to secure his attention, teaches him elocution, and corrects him a little too harshly, though out of love. He dances and tumbles at fairs and in taverns, performs wonderful feats, is kicked and starved, thrives nevertheless,--and conceives that there is something within him which should set him above his fellows in hard work and lean fare. And then, when he is becoming a bread-winner, he is claimed by his evil genius, Nance Carey.