Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/389

 before he died. His name, however, does not appear in the chronicle of Genest during this or the previous season. His death took place on 5 June 1822, at the Grove, near Durham. His remains were interred in the Chapel of the Nine Altars, Durham Cathedral, on 11 June. In addition to his son Henry Stephen Kemble, a daughter appeared with some success in Newcastle and Edinburgh. She subsequently married Captain Arkwright, a son of Sir Richard Arkwright [q. v.]

Kemble published ‘Odes, Lyrical Ballads, and Poems,’ Edinburgh, 1809, 8vo, with a portrait. Although praised by Christopher North, the contents, partly serious, partly humorous, and containing several theatrical addresses, are colourless and feeble.

Kemble was a fair, Mathews the elder says a good, actor. His readings of Macbeth and Hamlet are stated to have been intelligent. The latter part he played when eighteen stone in weight. When playing Job Thornberry in Colman the younger's ‘John Bull,’ and drawing tears from the audience, he was unable to stoop and pick up his waistcoat—a piece of indispensable ‘business.’ His Kent in ‘King Lear,’ Old Norval, and King Henry VIII were respectable performances. Sir Christopher Curry in ‘Inkle and Yarico’ was his great part. He was 5 ft. 9 in. in height, and had the Kemble physiognomy, though little of the Kemble hauteur, being jovial and good-natured.

Portraits of him by De Wilde as Bajazet in ‘Tamerlane’ and as Falstaff in the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ are in the Mathews collection in the Garrick Club.

[Genest's Account of the English Stage; Oxberry's Dramatic Biography; Biographia Dramatica; Gent. Mag. June 1822; Richardson's Local Historian's Table-book; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. i. 268; Memoirs of Mrs. Sumbel, late Wells, 3 vols. 1811; Georgian Era; Secret Hist. of the Green Room; Didbin's Edinburgh stage; Gilliland's Dramatic Mirror; Bernard's Recollections; Clark Russell's Representative Actors. For the period of Kemble's management of the Edinburgh Theatre see Jackson's History of the Scottish Stage and his Statement of Facts relative to Mr. Stephen Kemble, 1792, and Charles Lee Lewes's Memoirs, 4 vols. 1805. Jackson's works consist of a long arraignment of Kemble, who is defended by Lewes. See also Crito's Letter to the Managers of the Edinburgh Theatre, Edinburgh, 1800, 8vo, a furious attack on Kemble; and Letters respecting the Performances at the Theatre Royal, 12mo, 1800, a keen criticism attributed to Stewart Thriepland, advocate.] 

KEME, SAMUEL (1604–1670), puritan. [See .]

KEMP. [See also .]

KEMP, GEORGE MEIKLE (1795–1844), architect, was born at Moorfoot, by Gladsmuir Loch, in Midlothian, 25 May 1795. A few hours afterwards the family removed to Newhall in the same county; and there, in the Pentlands, till the age of fourteen, Kemp assisted his father, who was a shepherd, amusing himself while at work with the construction of mill-wheels. From 1809 to 1813 he was apprenticed to a carpenter at Redscaurhead, near Peebles. He then proceeded to Galashiels, where he had procured employment as a millwright. On the way Walter Scott gave him a lift in his carriage to Galashiels, though Kemp did not discover the name of the owner till he had been set down. Once afterwards, while sketching Melrose, he saw Scott, who looked over his shoulder; but Kemp was too timid to speak. Some of the drawings then made were used for Scott's monument.

While working as a journeyman at Galashiels, his business frequently took him to Melrose, Dryburgh, and Jedburgh. Afterwards, when employed in Edinburgh and Glasgow and in England, he made long journeys on foot to study Gothic architecture. In 1824 he reached London, and the next year he passed over into France, intending to travel through Europe, while maintaining himself as a millwright, and devoting any leisure to his favourite study. Though ignorant of French, he had made his way to Paris, when news of his mother's death recalled him to Scotland. Failing in an attempt to make a business of his own in Edinburgh, he devoted himself to the study of perspective, and the beauty and fidelity of his drawings soon brought him patrons, one of the earliest being William Burn [q. v.] For him Kemp constructed, in 1831–2, a large model in wood of a proposed new palace for the Duke of Buccleuch (still preserved at Dalkeith). Kemp was employed to prepare drawings for a projected volume of Scottish ecclesiastical remains, similar to Britton's ‘Cathedral Antiquities.’ Some of these drawings are in Messrs. Blackie's ‘Old Glasgow’ (pp. 101, 105, of 3rd ed. 1888). The plan failed, but kept him in congenial employment on a mechanic's wage for several years.

Kemp also prepared drawings for a proposed restoration of Glasgow Cathedral, which were lithographed for a volume privately printed in 1836. In the same year the first competition was held for the proposed Scott monument in Edinburgh, and the third prize was awarded to his design. The committee ordered a second trial, and in 1838 Kemp's design, meanwhile greatly improved, was adopted. The foundation-stone