'We Are Not in Little England Now': Charles and Ellen Kean in Civil-War America

In 1859, exhausted after nine years of proprietorship of the Princess's Theatre, Charles Kean withdrew from management with an eye on a speedy, patrician retirement. He was then forty-eight and his wife and co-star Ellen Tree, fifty-four. During subsequent tours of the provinces, however, it became clear that the lifestyle which Charles imagined demanded thousands of pounds more capital than he had invested. The shortfall he determined to raise by a tour of Australia, a junket subsequently extended to include the United States and Canada. Kean's party left England on 6 July 1863, arriving in Melbourne on 24 September. With a nine-month Australian tour behind them, they crossed the Pacific by sailing ship, leaving Sydney on 9 July 1864 and docking in San Francisco on 1 October. After playing some weeks in San Francisco, they travelled north to Portland, Oregon, and Victoria, British Columbia, returning to San Francisco for a series of farewell performances before proceeding south to Panama, Jamaica, and Havana, from where they sailed to New York in March of 1865. Over the next year they toured widely in the east, mid-west, and south of the United States, with occasional excursions into Canada. Richer by between $67,000 and $83,750, they returned to England in April of 1866. (1) Unfortunately, Charles died before he could enjoy his hard-won financial independence, but Ellen reaped the benefits until her death in 1880. Throughout their wanderings, the Keans maintained a regular correspondence with their only child, Mary, who, at the age of twenty, was left behind in London to manage their affairs. To her they confided with remarkable frankness the details of their everyday domestic, professional, and social experience. The correspondence survives in three major caches. The letters written from Australia, thirty-seven in all and owned by the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, were published by J.M.D. Hardwick in his Emigrant in Motley (London, 1954), (2) and are consequently well known. The Keans' letters from America, on the other hand, have received relatively little notice. This essay is designed to alert researchers to this valuable, but underused, resource, to indicate its provenance, to outline its contents, and to suggest three areas of research potential, among others. In the absence of published versions of the correspondence, I have, wherever possible, privileged Charles's and Ellen's first-person revelations over critical commentary. I have not attempted to reconstruct the Keans' wanderings in detail, a task already undertaken with varying emphases by Hardwick, Carson, and Strahan. (3) Nor have I ventured upon cultural analysis, an intriguing challenge, but one better suited to follow than accompany an effort at archival description. I try, however, to provide sufficient historical, biographical, and cultural markers to render the narrative coherent and the issues clear. The Collections The Pacific-coast phase of the tour is recounted in a recently-discovered volume of twenty-six letters in the Performing Arts Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. (4) The binding appears identical to that of the volume owned by the Alexander Turnbull Library. (5) The cover title, engraved in gold lettering, reads: Manuscript Journal/ of/ Mr. & Mrs. CHARLES J. KEAN/ DESCRIPTIVE OF THEIR/ THEATRICAL TOUR IN CALIFORNIA/ This title is repeated on the title page with the addition: With extension along the western coast of America/ from Vancouver Island down to Panama. And across the Isthmus to the West Indies./ Also/ giving a graphic account of the political and/ social life in the places visited./ Mainly contained in a series/ of lengthy letters written by/ them to their daughter Mary,/ &c./1864-65. Many of the letters are indeed lengthy, running to as much as eight, twelve, eighteen, and even, in one case, twenty-three pages. …

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