The Press.
London, England, 1854-11-18 00:00:00

1100

DEATH OF CHARLES KEMBLE.—We announce with
ranch regret the death of Mr. Charles Kern ble, which
event took place on Sunday last, at the age of
seventy-nine. The deceased was born at Brecknock,
in South Wales, in 1775. Few actors of the old
school are so well remembered by the present race
of playgoers as Charles Kemble, whose personations
of the higher class of comedy were brought down to
a comparatively late date, and are still spoken of
with admiration as histrionic portraitures of unique
merit. The youngest of the great branch of the
Kemble family, he shared with his illustrious brother
John and his stately sister the honours which attach
so pre eminently to the name. Many of the parts
which he filled may be said to have virtually left the
stage when age and infirmity occasioned his re-
tirement into private life ; and we shall probably
never see the Mirabels, Doricourts, Absolutes, and
Charles Surfaces of the drama again realised with
such exquisite tact and refinement. Mr. Charles
Kemble's professional history was marked by the
usual vicissitudes which belong to the actor's career.
He is said to have originally began the world as a
clerk in the Post-office, after having completed his
education at Donay in 1762; but that a taste for
theatricals influencing him, as it did other members
of the family, he made his debut at Sheffield as
Orlando in As You Like It. His early efforts, how-
ever, were anything but successes, and he was de-
scribed by a critic of the day as " a tall, awkward
youth, with a hatchet face, a figure badly propor•
tioned, and of weak limbs, his acting being evidently
worse than his appearance." About the year 1800,
however, he began to challenge a different sort of
estimate ; and joining, in 1803, his brother John in
the proprietary and management of Covent-garden
Theatre, he gradually rose to that eminence as a de-
lineator of polite comedy which no other actor ever
rivalled. Certain of his tragic personations were
also of unquestionable excellence ; and his Falcoln-
bridge, Pierre, Romeo, and others, are yet fondly and
honourably mentioned. He was induced to reappear
on the stage in the year 1840, and play a brief round
of characters ; but the venerable actor was all but
unequal to the task, and, though some of the old
genius was still visible, the trembling voice and
stooping figure betokened the extent of the physical
decay, and the exhibition did not long continue.
For some years past Mr. Charles Kemble had been
the %ictini of an incurable deafness ; this, however,
did not prevent his taking an interest in the dramatic
art. He married, in 1806, Miss Teresa Decamp.
His children, Mrs. Butler, Mrs. Sartoris, and the
Rev, John Kemble, the eminent Saxon scholar, have
nobly maintained the intellectual glory of the house.
Among the many valuable lives which the opera-
rations in the Crimea have cost us, not the least to
be lamented is that of LIEUTENANT-COLONEL C. C.
ALEXANDER, who succeeded Brigadier-General Tylden
as Commanding Royal Engineer of the army in the
East. Colonel Alexander owed his first sword to the
Duke of Kent, and his commission as second-lieute-
nant was dated July 20, 1818. From that time his
life was one of active service, in Canada, at the Cape,
St. Helena (where he was charged with the duty of
superintending the exhuming of the body of Napo-
leon), in the West Indies, and the Channel Islands,
where he was on duty when selected for service in
the East. He died of appoplexy in his tent, where
be had flung himself on his bed, without undressing,
for a short sleep after his return from the trenches.
His death was, no doubt, due to over-exertion—to
mental and bodily wear and tear in the construction
of those English fleldworks before Sebastopol of
which Sir J. Burgoyne reported to Lord Raglan that
he had never known works better executed. To
Colonel Alexander we owe those trenches and bat-
teries, constructed under singular difficulties of
ground, but which, tested by the Russian artillery as
fleldworks never were before, have so stoutly and
successfully stood the trial. Among the friends of
Colonel Alexander there is but one regret beyond
those inseparable from such bereavement—that he
did not live to see the achievement to the consumma-
tion of which he had so much contributed; but if his
death lacked the glory of the battle-field, it was not
the less a soldier's death, encountered at his post, in
harness, front to the foe.
THE REV. DR. JOHN Ilt'HE SPRY, Rector of the
extensive parish of St. Marylebone, died on Saturday
afternoon, at his residence in Devonshire-Place. The
deceased was in early life a student of Oriel College,
Oxford, in which university lie achieved some distinc-
tion, in 1825. On the death of Archdeacon Heslop,
he was presented by Lord Liverpool, then Prime
Minister, to the rectory of Marylebone, worth at that
time upwards of 2,0001. a year. Three years after-
wards, namely, in 1828, he was presented by the
Duke of Wellington, then at the head of the Govern-
ment, to a canonry residentiary in Canterbury Cathe-
dral, worth upwards of 1,0001. a year. Both of those
valuable appointments he held up to the time of his
death, and they are now in the gift of Lord Aberdeen.