Page:Eminent women of the age.djvu/501

Rh York, as Mrs. Charles Kean, it was remarked that many gray-haired men and women appeared among her audiences, lured to unfamiliar footlights by the desire to renew their intellectual association with the brilliant stage heroine of younger and brighter days. In 1839 she returned to England, with £10,000 as the fruit of her professional labors in America. Her first English reappearance was made at the Haymarket, where she was welcomed home almost rapturously by the English public. On the 4th of November, 1839, she appeared at Covent Garden, then under the management of Madame Vestris (afterwards Mrs. Charles Matthews, and since deceased), as the Countess, in Sheridan Knowles's drama of "Love," then acted for the first time, but repeated fifty times in the course of that season. In January, 1842, at Dublin, she was married to Charles Kean, with whom for twenty-six years she lived in perfect sympathy and happiness. Three months after their marriage they played a joint engagement, extending over a period of fifty-three nights, at the London Haymarket. "As You Like It," "The Gamester," and "The Lady of Lyons," may be mentioned as typical of the character of the pieces in which they performed. In August, 1845, they came to the United States, bringing with them Lovell's now well-known drama of "The Wife's Secret," written expressly for them, and in which they acted with singular excellence. In this piece, and in Shakspearean plays, Mr. and Mrs. Kean fulfilled a round of engagements in the principal cities of the Republic, with equal fame and profit. In the summer of 1847 they returned to England. Thenceforward, as before, Ellen Tree shared the labors and the fortunes of her husband. She had no separate career, nor did she desire it. In 1848 Mr. Kean was appointed by the Queen of England to be conductor of the Christmas theatrical performances at Windsor Castle, instituted by that sovereign and her lamented consort, the late Prince Albert,