Records of my life / By the late John Taylor, esq. Complete in one volume.

  • John Taylor
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Records of my life / By the late John Taylor, esq. Complete in one volume. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to him of this kind, not as appearing to believe such remarks, but to know whether they received a confirmation from me. On such occasions, I never abated in my reverence for Garrick, but always discountenanced such insidious flattery, and to the best of my recol¬ lection and ability, asserted the wonderful powers of the departed actor. Kemble always listened to my panegyric on his great prede¬ cessor with apparent conviction, but I cannot help believing that he would have liked me much better if I had never seen Garrick. Kemble, with all his professional judgment, skill, and experience, like all other mortals, was sometimes induced to mistake the natural direction of his powers, and to suppose that he was as much patron¬ ized by the comic as by the tragic muse. When I called on him one morning, he was sitting in his great chair with his nightcap on, and, as he told me, cased in flannel. Immediately after the cus¬ tomary salutation, he said, “ Taylor, I am studying a new part in a popular comedy, and I should like to know your opinion as to the manner in which I am likely to perform it.” “ As you tell me it is a comic part,” said I, “ I presume it is what you style intellectual comedy, such as the chief characters in Congreve, Wycherley, and Yanburgh.” “What do you think,” said he, “of Charles, in the ^School for Scandal?’” “Why,” said I, “Charles is a gay, free, spirited, convivial fellow.” “ Yes,” said he, “ but Charles is a gentle¬ man.” He tried the part, but his gayety did not seem to the town to be of “ the right flavour.” It was said by one of Mr. Kemble’s favourite critics in a public print, that his performance was “Charles’s restora¬ tion,” and by another, that it was rather “ Charles’s martyrdom.” Another time he attempted a jovial, rakish character in one of Mrs. Behn’s licentious comedies, from which, however, he expunged all the offensive passages ; but he was not successful.* I met him one day as I was hurrying home to dress for dinner abroad, and he strongly pressed me to go and dine with him, alleging that as Pop (Mrs. Kemble) was out of town, he should be lonely and dull. I told him I was positively engaged, and should hardly be in time. 41 Well, then,” said he, “ I’ll go home and study a pantomime.” It is * Kemble certainly believed that he possessed comic talents, and as far as a strong sense of humour and a disposition to enjoy jocularity could tend to excite such a conviction, he might naturally yield to self-deception. My lively friend George Colman, whose exuberant gayety spares nobody, and to whose satirical turn I have often been a witness and a victim, being asked his opinion of Kemble’s “ Don Felix,” said that it displayed too much of the Don and too little of the Felix. Kemble : could bear jocular remarks on his acting with unaffected good-humour. I remem¬ ber that after we became tolerably well acquainted, and were one day talking on the 1 subject of his Hamlet, I perhaps too freely said, “ Come, Kemble, I’ll give an imitation of your Hamlet.” “ I’ll be glad,” said he, “ to improve by the reflec¬ tion.” I then raised my right hand over my forehead, as connoisseurs do when looking at a picture, and looking intently as if some object was actually before me,,] and referring to the platform scene, exclaimed, “ My father,” and then bending my band into the form of an opera-glass, and peeping through it, continued, “ Methinks I see my father.” He took this freedom in good part, and only said, “Why, [ Taylor, I never used such an action.” “ No,” said I, but from your first action everybody expected that the other would follow.” Whenever he spoke of his great predecessor, he never failed to say “ Mr. Garrick.”