Summary: A path not taken.
Category: Het, slash, AU, fictional scholarship
Pairing: Archie/Kitty, Archie/Edrington/OFC
Rating: G
Spoilers/Warnings: none.
Notes
Disclaimer

Extract, Knowles´ Dictionary of Georgian Theatre, 1714-1830 (Third Edition), vol. II

Archibald Kennedy (1775? -1839)

Archibald "Archie" Kennedy is among the more interesting figures active in the London theatre of the late Georgian era. His origins remain shrouded in mystery. According to John Paddington, his first biographer, Kennedy was of noble birth, which was quite unusual at the time. Unfortunately, Paddington provided no specifics beyond indicating that Kennedy´s family was "of an aristocratic mien, well known in London circles." (see Paddington 1841) Recent scholarship has drawn a connection between this celebrated personage and one Archibald William Kennedy (1775 - 1802?), the third and youngest son of Reginald James Kennedy, the sixth Viscount of Ainsley (see Labell 1989). The Kennedy heirs have always disputed this identification, claiming that Ainsley´s son had entered His Majesty´s navy at an early age and had died while in the service, though the specifics of his death remain vague. It should be noted, however, that the records of the Admiralty make no mention of an Archibald Kennedy during the years that Ainsley´s son was purported to have been in service.

Although his childhood remains in question, his early career can be traced with reasonable certainty. Kennedy arrived in London at the age of seventeen (either in 1792 or 1793) with the intention of pursuing a career on the stage. Like many aspiring actors, he underwent an apprenticeship of sorts, undertaking various odd jobs including painting stage sets and selling tickets until an opportunity presented itself. It finally came when Kennedy was cast in a minor role in Kemble´s adaptation of Shakespeare´s All´s Well That Ends Well, staged at Drury Lane on 12 December 1794 (c.f. Kemble, John).

It was a propitious start for the young actor who soon adopted the stage name of Arthur Kendall. Kennedy proved well suited to the stage, having been gifted with a keen memory, an excellent set of lungs and striking good looks. Ironically, it was his appearance that would prove to be his greatest bane. Extant portraits reveal that Kennedy was fair and boyishly handsome. Regrettably, this ran counter to the fashion of the day that favored a darker, brooding aspect for the romantic leads to which Kennedy was most innately suited. He found himself trapped in a succession of secondary roles, at times passed over for leading roles in favor of less experienced actors. Growing increasingly frustrated at being perpetually cast in the role of the pretty, but hapless ne´er do well, or the loyal friend and confidante, Kennedy decided to take matters in hand and try his luck at writing as the most logical means of obtaining roles suited to his talents.

Kennedy soon learned that the life of a playwright was far more difficult than it appeared due to the complex system of patronage and the ever present need for financial backing. Still, Kennedy continued to write, now under the pen name of William Clayton, and reputedly produced a number of plays of varying quality. He later destroyed the majority of them. His earliest extant manuscript, His Lady´s Honor (Somerset House, London) is typical of Kennedy´s juvenilia, marked by crisp dialogue as well as an unfortunate tendency towards excessive drama that suggest the influence of Jacobean literature.

Kennedy eventually scraped together sufficient funds to stage his first play, The Question at Hand, a comedy in the manner of Sheridan. It debuted at the Little Haymarket on 23 April 1798 where, not surprisingly, it passed largely unnoticed. What critical response it did receive was mixed. Most agreed that Kennedy had a genuine flair for witty repartee, but that he also showed a blithe indifference towards the theatrical conventions of the day, a tendency that disconcerted many of the older and entrenched members of theatrical circles.

If the debut of his play did not attain the critical success to which Kennedy aspired, it did prove advantageous in another regard, for it brought Kennedy to the attention of the famed actress Katherine Cobham (1755-1834). Known to contemporaries as the "Incomparable Kitty" (c.f. Cobham, Katherine), Cobham was one of the most renowned comediennes of the Georgian age, who, along with her rival, the famous tragic actress Sarah Siddons, dominated the London stage in the time of George III. Recognizing Kennedy´s potential, Cobham took the young playwright under her wing, and, if contemporary sources are to be believed, into her bed as well.

This liaison marked the beginning of a long and mutually beneficial collaboration between the two. Cobham used her not inconsiderable clout to obtain patronage and financial backing for her protégé. In return, Kennedy wrote a string of comedies featuring strong female leads that were intended as star vehicles for actress. These plays were a rousing success for writer and star alike. Indeed, the parts written by Kennedy would provide Cobham with some of her most memorable roles, among them, the shrewd Madame Villeneuve in The Earl´s Complaint, the vivacious Widow Merrybottom in Primrose and Violet, and, of course, the meddlesome but devoted Mrs. Truelove in Our Scottish Acquaintance.

None of these plays, however, could match the success - or notoriety - of The Lady of Coventry. This play, which debuted at Drury Lane on 14 May 1800, starred the mature Cobham in the title role of Lady Godiva. The play´s most dramatic scene occurred in the third act when Cobham came onstage astride a horse, bare backed...and bare fronted as well. This ingenious bit of staging set tongues to wagging throughout London and made the play a veritable succès de scandale. Among the play´s most ardent admirers was the Prince of Wales who was so enamored of the play and its leading lady, he arranged for a private performance at his Pavilion in Brighton, much to the displeasure of Mrs. Fitzherbert, or so it is said. Shortly thereafter, Cobham is reputed to have become his mistress (to the even greater displeasure of Mrs. Fitzherbert). Although their romantic liaison was brief, lasting only a few months, Cobham was to remain an intimate of the Prince and counseled him on matters of art and theatre. She was accorded a small pension from the Crown in recognition of these services, which she continued to receive until her death in 1834 at the age of seventy-nine.

The success of The Lady of Coventry likewise established the twenty-five year old Kennedy as one of the most renowned playwrights of his generation. He quickly became sought after in fashionable London society and was associated, if somewhat peripherally, with the future Prince Regent´s set. As Kennedy began to move in more prestigious circles, he encountered new patrons who were eager to support his writing. By far the most important of these were the Earl and Countess of Edrington. Shortly after resigning his commission in the army in 1799, Frederick Agamemnon Chelton, the sixth Earl of Edrington (1767-1841) married Lady Millicent Bertram (1774-1849). Their marriage took London society by surprise in large part due to Edrington´s near legendary intractability on the subject of matrimony. Nevertheless, it appeared to be a love match founded upon a shared passion literature and the theatre. Their London residence, Chelton House, quickly became home to a dazzling literary salon frequented by the most brilliant artists and writers of the period

Kennedy appears to have first encountered the couple in the heady days following the success of The Lady of Coventry. Kennedy soon became a regular guest at Chelton House where he was much admired for his wit and charm. He often accompanied the couple to Stanwick Hall, the family seat in Somerset as well. Kennedy is said to have written a number of his most famous plays while in residence at Stanwick Hall, including The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, Country Matters and The News About Town. He staged a special performance of his new comedy The Cat and the Canary at Stanwick Hall in November 1804 in celebration of the couple´s fifth wedding anniversary and composed a one act pantomime The Prince from Beyond the Sea the following year in honor of the birth of their son, Edward Alexander Chelton, the seventh Earl of Edrington.

Although it was a passion for the theatre that formed the basis of the friendship between Kennedy and Edrington, the two men also shared similar political inclinations. As a member of Parliament, Edrington was a vocal detractor of William Pitt the Younger and his cabinet over the collapse of the Third Coalition It has long been believed that the scathing anti-Pitt satire Two Horses and Only Half an Arse was a collaborative effort between Edrington and Kennedy (see Meade 1923).

The earl´s politics, combined with Kennedy´s growing ascendancy in the London stage fuelled a small but hostile cabal against both men. While rumors had long abounded intimating that Kennedy and the Countess of Edrington were engaged in an adulterous affair, new and even more shocking rumors began to surface alleging a romantic liaison between Kennedy and Edrington and even Kennedy and both the earl and his wife. Kennedy responded to the accusations in his inimitable fashion with the play Entre-Nous, which made a mockery of the accusations. Widely recognized as Kennedy´s masterpiece, Entre-Nous brilliantly combined the lighthearted farce of his early works with a piercing wit and tangible sense of irony that seems to presage the work of Oscar Wilde some eighty years later. The play was hugely successful. It also marks the final collaboration between Kennedy and Cobham, who came out of retirement to play the role of the redoubtable Dowager Countess of Chadwick. A true tour de force, it is generally considered to be her crowning performance on the London stage.

Despite such lingering accusations, Kennedy was entering a period of unprecedented critical and financial success. In 1820, he founded the Herald Theatre near Covent Garden which was to be one of the most important venues for contemporary theatre until it was destroyed by fire in 1862. In 1821, he was inducted into the Royal Society of Literature that had founded by George IV the previous year (c.f. Royal Academy of Literature). Kennedy also tried his hand at writing dramas. These later works were moderately successful, though they lack the vitality and breezy charm of his comedies. Of the dramas, only Andromache´s Lament (1827) a poignant tale of sacrifice and bereavement, has had a lasting influence. Less known, but even more provocative, was his tragedy Achilles and Patroclus(1830). Also set during the Trojan War, this story of the profound friendship between the two Greek heroes carries a subtle undercurrent of homoeroticism that was piquant even to the fairly permissive Georgian audience. Not surprisingly, the play was banned during the conservative Victorian era. The play, while extremely demure by modern standards, has continued to fuel conjecture as to the precise nature of the friendship of Kennedy and Edrington (see Markham and Smith 1977).

In spite of his fame as a playwright, Kennedy never entirely abandoned his first love, acting. Until the end of his life, he continued to appear on stage in the plays that he wrote, though he now performed the broader secondary roles rather than the romantic leads he had initially crafted for himself. Tragically, this devotion to acting would be his undoing. During an open air performance of Our Scottish Acquaintance in Hyde Park on 12 May 1839, Kennedy contracted pneumonia following a sudden downpour. His health deteriorated rapidly and he died ten days later at Chelton House. The Earl and Countess of Edrington remained at his bedside throughout his illness. His obituary in the London Gazette pronounced that "Britannia weeps for the gifted son who is no more [...] the boards have fallen silent longing for the tread that has been stilled by the cold hand of Death."

Kennedy was buried in Highgate Cemetery in London. His funeral attended by a number of notable contemporary figures: the Earl and Countess of Edrington, the Duke and Duchess of Pembroke, Lord Holland, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Lord Hornblower, First Lord of the Admiralty; the authors Mary Wollstonecroft Shelley, Frederick Marryat and Charles Dickens; the actors Mary Ann Keeley and Frank Webster, and the actor/playwright Edward Stirling.

Kennedy never married and had no children. According to several of his intimates, Kennedy had been in the process of writing an autobiography at the time of his death. This manuscript, if it did exist, was presumably housed with Kennedy´s personal papers that he entrusted to his friends the Earl and Countess of Edrington. Unfortunately, these papers, along with Edrington´s personal library were tragically lost in a fire at Stanwick Hall in 1840, just six months after Kennedy´s death and three months prior to Edrington´s own death from a heart attack in January 1841. Their loss is regrettable due to the light that they would have shed not only upon this enigmatic and deeply private figure but also the history of the London stage in the early nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Kennedy left behind an impressive literary legacy that spans four decades and provides an invaluable introduction to the comedic style of the late Georgian era.

Notes:  Dedicated to my fellow fictional Hornblower historians for their inspiration and encouragement.