What Edwin will want to hear is a story he’s already heard about a hundred times, the story of Father’s early feud with the famous actor Edmund Kean. Edwin doesn’t mind. As with all Father’s performances, Edwin watches for new interpretations of old lines. Father has an audience of three men, all seemingly well versed in the theater and hardly drunk at all. Edwin takes them for journalists, which might explain Father’s warm reception. Just part of the show.
The basement is large, but brightly lit through a careful arrangement of hurricane lamps and mirrors aligned with other mirrors. Edwin can see his father’s famous profile, like the head on a coin, with his flat nose and unkempt hair, reflected and repeating, smaller and more distant with each iteration, an endless line of Fathers. The pocked surfaces refract the light and wreath his head in rays and halos, as if he were a saint.
“Garrett here saw Kean as Shylock,” Father tells Edwin. No introductions take place, but only one of these men is old enough to have seen Edmund Kean act. “In New York,” Father adds, “not London,” as if an important distinction has been made.
The arm of the chair grows less comfortable. Edwin shifts his weight, which his father takes as inattention. The reprimand comes in the form of Father’s fingers, a vise closing over Edwin’s arm.
Edwin recalls that Kean had gone to New York when the scandals surrounding his affair and divorce drove him from London, but found the audiences of the New World even more prudish than those of the Old. Father’s own scandal is still more of a whisper than a roar and Edwin wonders at this. Perhaps his long-established madness has provided some inoculation. Perhaps being a famous atheist who carries a murderer’s skull in his trunk has reduced bigamy and illegitimacy to the realm of ho-hum.
“Of course, Kean was a magnificent Shylock,” Father says, all generosity. He raises his glass with such enthusiasm he splashes bourbon down his front, the smell momentarily eclipsing the cigars, sweat, and horseshit. Father drops Edwin’s arm to pull out his handkerchief, pat at his vest. Edwin sees this for what it is—a nice bit of stage business creating a pause, a pause that could be filled by someone complimenting Father’s own Shylock. No one does. “Perfect part for him. Being himself such a vengeful man,” Father adds, the moment of charity over.
What follows is a convoluted tale of two theaters—Covent Garden and Drury Lane—the two most prestigious venues in London. Father was under contract at the first when Kean lured him away to play at the second. Kean professed himself quite dazzled by this new young talent. But it soon became clear that Kean’s real motive was to forestall any competition Father might have provided. He was kept in supporting roles, frequently sent out to play parts he was unprepared for, and in all ways, at all times, meant to show to disadvantage against the great Edmund Kean. “He came not to praise, but to bury me,” Father says.
First, Covent Garden declared Father in breach and when he left Kean’s employment to fulfill that earlier contract, Drury Lane did the same.
At that time, Kean had a group of rabid supporters who called themselves the Wolves Club. Rumors began to circulate that they intended to drive Father from the stage. Kean responded by taking offense. The gentlemanly Wolves would never behave in such a way and the club had been long disbanded besides.
In the mirror, Father turns his head towards his own reflection. His dark eyes catch the lantern light and shine like a cat’s in the dark. His voice sharpens. “Someone was baying for my blood,” he says.
The reporters, if they are reporters, take a drink in sudden unison, as if choreographed. It strikes Edwin as strange, this Greek chorus of gesture, though he’s noticed that life with Father often feels staged.
When Father performed next, in the role of Richard III, a mob awaited him, creating such a pandemonium that he couldn’t be heard. He tried to communicate through placards—Grant Silence to Explain and Can Englishmen Condemn Unheard? The response was a continued din. Whistles blew, feet stamped, men shouted, women fainted.
The Wolves invaded the boxes. Driven back, they beat on the doors with their canes. Fisticuffs broke out and spilled into the street. Chairs and spectacles and noses were broken. The play proceeded briefly in pantomime, but eventually the company gave up and moved directly into the afterpiece, a farce in which Father did not appear. Father went home （to his wife, as Edwin now knows）。 The angry audience outlasted him by many hours.
Over the next week, though the number of Father’s supporters grew at each attempt, his detractors continued to shout him down. Roses from his supporters rained down on the stage, orange peels from the Wolves. Every show was an occasion for riot until, finally, at long last, rioting became a bore for everyone involved.
Father empties his glass. Another appears at his elbow. He says that, when finally able to perform, his interpretation of Richard was well received.
Modest Father! Surely Father’s Richard was a triumph. In fact, in London, Father has never ceased to be compared unfavorably to Kean. Rosalie would have known this, but Edwin doesn’t and wouldn’t believe it if he did. No role is so completely Father’s own as that of the murdering and murdered king. Over the course of his long career, he will play Richard 579 times.
This story has been changed from earlier renditions, less by Father’s artistry and more by context. When orange peels were the worst missiles being thrown, Father could make this story quite funny. But now it plays against the backdrop of the Astor Place riot in New York, a class war disguised as a disagreement over who was the better Shakespearean actor—the British William Charles Macready, representing the upper crust, or the American Edwin （for whom Edwin is named） Forrest, the workingman’s choice. The melee left some twenty to thirty people dead; no one knows the number with certainty. Scores more were injured. Many were bystanders, some children, shot by soldiers firing randomly into the crowd. Macready was forced to escape in disguise while Forrest’s followers tried but failed to burn down the hated Astor Place Opera House, built so that wealthy theater lovers wouldn’t have to mingle with the lower classes.
The parts that used to be funny no longer seem so. No one mentions the riot, but there is a long silence in which each man attends to his own glass. When Garrett speaks again, he appears to have changed the subject. “Did you ever see Ira Aldridge act?” he asks.
“The African? No,” Father says.
“I saw him play Othello at Covent Garden. He was glorious. And the audience knew it, if the critics did not.”
Suddenly Edwin is having trouble following the conversation.
An African? As Othello? He must have misheard.
“Kean was a great admirer of Aldridge,” Garrett says, so he hasn’t changed the subject after all. Clearly, despite Father’s story, Garrett remains a great admirer of Kean’s and wants Father to know this. “Do you know what Coleridge, the poet, said about Kean? Coleridge said that watching Kean act was like reading Shakespeare by lightning flashes.”
“No, I never heard that before.” Father’s voice is mild and possibly only Edwin hears the sarcasm. Because everyone has heard that and if there were an exception, it would not be Father. Two days ago, on the street, a man had told Father that the weather was very fine. Father had fallen to his knees. “Your powers of observation astonish me,” he’d said. “Fine weather indeed. And you the one to notice! I bow before you, sir.” His tone then had been much the same.