He might have begun a fresh career, however, from this new starting-point, had he been so minded. But this success did not brace him to new effort, except a quietly ineffectual one to make the world forget the Stranger of John Kemble. His failing strength was probably the chief cause of his avoiding or refusing to appear in the same piece with Mr. Macready, of whom he rather rudely remarked--"He is no actor, sir; he is a player!" But the satirist himself was fast ceasing to be either. He had never recovered from the madness which he prophesied would follow his success in London. Gradually he lost all self-control, plunged into terrible excesses, courted rather than fell into evil company, took tribute, indeed, most willingly of the noble and intellectual who heaped rich gifts upon him, but he scorned or feared their society. He affected to feel that they invited him simply to stare at him, and that they would have despised him as a poor actor. He had not common sense enough to see that when the noble and intellectual opened their doors to him they rendered graceful homage to his genius,--and I have heard that where he _did_ accept such homage, and was himself subdued to the refinements of the society where it was liberally, yet delicately rendered, his easy bearing was that of a man who had not lost his self-respect, and his manners and conversation emphatically "charming." But this was under restraint, and to be thus "charming" was irksome to Edmund Kean; by this time it had become almost impossible, and he could charm only those on whom the magic was not worth expending. He had not broken his word to his wife--that she should ride in her carriage, nor to his son--that he should go to Eton,--but he had not made the first happier, nor the second the more attached to him. His home, indeed, was broken up, and in the season of 1824-25, after failing in the poor melodramatic part of Masaniello, came out the great scandal--that he loved his neighbour's wife better than his own. All its necessary consequences followed,--a fierce, an almost ruffianly hostility on the part of his audiences, damage to his fortune, and irretrievable ruin to his reputation.[119] Reckless and defiant as he was, he was glad to endure exile, for such was his voyage to, and sojourn in, America during this and the following year.