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Records of a Girlhood by Frances Anne Kemble
page 17 of 960 (01%)
entertaining and surprising manner. Ludicrous stories; personal mimicry;
the most admirable imitation of national accent--Scotch, Irish, and
French (he spoke the latter language to perfection, and Italian very
well); a power of grimace that equaled Grimaldi, and the most
irresistibly comical way of resuming, in the midst of the broadest
buffoonery, the stately dignity of his own natural countenance, voice,
and manner.

He was a cultivated musician, and sang French and Italian with taste and
expression, and English ballads with a pathos and feeling only inferior
to that of Moore and Mrs. Arkwright, with both which great masters of
musical declamation he was on terms of friendly intimacy. Mr. Young was
a universal favorite in the best London society, and an eagerly sought
guest in pleasant country-houses, where his zeal for country sports, his
knowledge of and fondness for horses, his capital equestrianism, and
inexhaustible fund of humor, made him as popular with the men as his
sweet, genial temper, good breeding, musical accomplishments, and
infinite drollery did with the women.

Mr. Young once told Lord Dacre that he made about four thousand pounds
sterling per annum by his profession; and as he was prudent and moderate
in his mode of life, and, though elegant, not extravagant in his tastes,
he had realized a handsome fortune when he left the stage.

Mr. Young passed the last years of his life at Brighton, and I never
visited that place without going to see him, confined as he latterly was
to his sofa with a complication of painful diseases and the weight of
more than seventy years. The last time I saw him in his drawing-room he
made me sit on a little stool by his sofa--it was not long after my
father, his life-long friend and contemporary's death--and he kept
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