I did not like the place at which they were staying as much as they did, for though the country was very pretty, I had during the summer tour seen so much that surpassed it that I saw it at a disadvantage.  Then, I have no fancy for gypsying, and the greatest taste for all the formal proprieties of life, and what I should call “silver fork existence” in general; and the inconveniences of a small country inn, without really affecting my comfort, disturb my decided preference for luxury.  The principal diversion my ingenious mind discovered to while away my time with was a fiddle (an elderly one), which I routed out of a lumber closet, and from which, after due invocations to St. Cecilia, I drew such diabolical sounds as I flatter myself were never excelled by Tartini or his master, the devil himself.  I must now close this, for it is tea-time.

The play of “The Jew of Aragon,” the first dramatic composition of a young gentleman of the name of Wade, of whose talent my father had a very high opinion, which he trusted the success of his piece would confirm, I am sorry to say failed entirely.  It was the first time and the last that I had the distress of assisting in damning a piece, and what with my usual intense nervousness in acting a new part, my anxiety for the interests of both the author and the theatre, and the sort of indignant terror with which, instead of the applause I was accustomed to, I heard the hisses which testified the distaste and disapprobation of the public and the failure of the play, I was perfectly miserable when the curtain fell, and the poor young author, as pale as a ghost, came forward to meet my father at the side scene, and bravely holding out his hand to him said, “Never mind for me, Mr. Kemble; I’ll do better another time.”  And so indeed he did; for he wrote a charming play on the old pathetic story of “Griselda,” in which that graceful actress Miss Jarman played his heroine, and my father the hero, and which had an entire and well-deserved success.  I am obliged to confess that I retain no recollection whatever of the ill-fated play of “The Jew of Aragon,” or my own part in it, save the last scene alone; this, I recollect, was a magnificent Jewish place of worship, in which my father, who was the high priest, appeared in vestments such as I believe the Jewish priests still wear in their solemn ceremonies, and which were so closely copied from the description of Aaron’s sacred pontifical robes that I felt a sense of impropriety in such a representation (purely historical, as it was probably considered, and in no way differing from the costume accepted on the French stage in Racine’s Jewish plays).  And I think it extremely likely that the failure of the piece, which had been imminent all through, found its climax in the unfavorable impression made upon the audience by this very scene, in spite of my father’s noble and picturesque appearance.