re of the woman who had
befriended her in her trouble. When he was but three years old he was
brought, amongst a number of other children, to Michael Kelly who
was then bringing out the opera of _Cymon_ at the Opera House in the
Haymarket, and, thanks to his personal beauty, he was selected for
the part of Cupid. Shortly afterwards he found his way to Drury Lane,
where the handsome baby--for he was little more--figured among the
imps in the pantomime. Taught here the tricks of the acrobat, he had
at four years old acquired such powers of contortion that he was fit
to rank as an infant phenomenon. But the usual result followed: the
little limbs became deformed, and had to be put in irons, by means
of which they regained that symmetry with which nature had at first
endowed them. Three years afterwards, in March, 1794, John Kemble was
acting Macbeth at Drury Lane; and, in the "cauldron scene," he engaged
some children to personate the supernatural beings summoned by the
witches from that weird vessel. Little Edmund with his irons was the
cause of a ridiculous accident, and the attempt to embody the ghostly
forms was abruptly abandoned. But the child seems to have been
pardoned for his blunder, and for a short time was permitted by the
manager to appear in one or two children's parts. Little did the
dignified manager imagine that the child--who was one of his
cauldron of imps in _Macbeth_--was to become, twenty years later, his
formidable rival--formidable enough to oust almost the representative
of the Classical school from the supremacy he had hitherto enjoyed on
the Tragic stage. In Orange Court, Leicester Square, where Holcroft,
the author of _The Road to Ruin_, was born, Edmund Kean received
his first education. Scanty enough it was, for it had scarcely begun
before his wretched mother stepped in and claimed him; and, after her
re-appearance, his education seems to have been of a most spasmodic
character. Hitherto, the child's experience of life had been hard
enough. When only eight years of age he ran away to Portsmouth, and
shipped himself on board a ship bound to Madeira. But he found his
new life harder than that from which he had escaped, and, by dint of
feigning deafness and lameness, he succeeded in procuring his removal
to an hospital at Madeira, whence, the doctors finding his case
yielded to no remedies, the authorities kindly shipped him again to
England. He insisted on being deaf and lame: indeed, so deaf th