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There was excitement and expectation among the play-goers of New York, in the early days of September, 1832.
Stars, new to the firmament of
America, were about to appear,--a great event in those simple days, when
Europe supplied us with almost all we ever had of public pleasure.
Charles Kemble, brother of
Mrs. Siddons the peerless, and of
John Kemble the magnificent, was-coming to
America, accompanied by his daughter, “
Fanny Kemble,” the most brilliant of the recent acquisitions to the
London stage.
Charles Kemble was then an exceedingly stout gentleman, of fifty-seven, fitter to shine in
Falstaff than in Hamlet; yet such is the power of genuine talent to overcome the obstacles which nature herself puts in its way, that he still played with fine effect some of the lightest and most graceful characters of the drama.
He played Hamlet well, and Benedick better, when he must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds; and people forgot, in admiring the charm of his manner, and the noble beauty of his face, that he had passed his prime.
His daughter, at this period, was just twenty-one years of age, and stood midway in her brief and splendid theatrical career, which had begun two years before, and was to end two years after.
The play selected for the first appearance of the young actress in
America was
Fazio.
The old
Park theatre was
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the place.
It was the evening of Tuesday, September the 18th, 1832.
Charles Kemble had appeared the night before to a crowded house in his favorite part of Hamlet, which he performed with that finish and thoroughness characteristic of all the family of the Kembles.
On this evening the house was still more crowded, and the weather was oppressively warm.
At half past 6
Miss Kemble went to the theatre to prepare for the ordeal before her. To give time for the audience to assemble and settle in their seats, the farce of Popping the Question was first performed.
It was a night of mishaps.
When she reached the theatre, she discovered that the actor (a novice from
London) who was to play the principal male part in the tragedy of
Fazio was so completely terror-stricken at the prospect before him that he gasped for breath, and he excited the pity, even more than the alarm, of the lady whose performance he was about to mar. She did her best to reassure him, but with small success.
When they were about to take their place upon the stage just before the curtain rose, he was in an absolute panic, and appeared to be choking with mere fright.
She hastily brought him some lemonade to swallow, and was immediately obliged to take her place with him in the scene.
According to the custom of actresses who play the chief part in
Fazio, she sat with her back to the audience.
The curtain rose.
As the back of one young lady bears a striking resemblance to that of another, and as she was dressed with perfect plainness, the audience did not recognize her, and remained silent.
The actor supporting her, who had calculated upon the usual noisy reception, and was still in the last extremity of terror, stood stock still gazing at the heroine, evidently waiting for the audience to do
their part before he began his. The hint was taken at length, or, probably, some friends of the lady recognized her, and then the whole assembly clapped their hands and used their voices, according to the established
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custom on such occasions.
Her reception, indeed, was in the highest degree cordial,--such as New York has ever delighted to bestow upon distinguished talent, from whatever part of the world it may have come.
The play began.
The frightened actor broke down in his second speech.
Miss Kemble prompted him, but he was too completely terrified to understand her, and he spoiled the situation.
This happened so frequently that the great actress was prevented, not merely from exerting her powers, but from fixing her mind upon her part at all; for, what with prompting her distracted
Fazio, and his total obliviousness of what actors call “the business” of the scene, she became at length almost as much frightened as he was, and she thought that her total and ignominious failure was inevitable.
It is a curious thing, however, that a performer upon the stage may be enduring a martyrdom of this kind, and scarcely a soul in the audience suspect it. I remember once being close to the stage when
Edwin Booth was playing Hamlet, and the king was so intoxicated that it was with real difficulty that he kept himself upright upon his throne, and he had to be prompted at every other word.
Mr. Booth was on the rack during the whole of the first scene in which he appears, and kept up a running fire of the most emphatic observations upon the conduct of his royal uncle.
It was with the greatest difficulty that the scene was carried on; and yet, I was informed by persons in front of the house, that they had not observed anything extraordinary, except that the king was a very bad actor, which in
that part is as far as possible from being extraordinary.
And so it was with
Miss Kemble.
She struggled through the first two acts with her miserable
Fazio.
She was rid of him at the beginning of the third act, and from that time began to play with freedom and effect.
Her success was complete.
Every point of that intense and passionate performance
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was heartily applauded, and when the curtain went down at the close of the fifth act, she was summoned to reappear as vociferously as heart could wish.
This was the beginning of a most brilliant and successful engagement in New York.
Here, as everywhere, her crowning triumph was in the part of
Julia, in
Sheridan Knowles' play of the
Hunchback, a play which was written expressly for her, and in which she gained her greatest
London success.
Most of those telling “points,” which are repeated by every actress whenever this play is performed, were originated by
Miss Kemble, and never failed, or can fail, to produce a powerful effect upon an audience whenever they are respectably made.
This young lady came rightly by her dramatic talent.
She was a member of a family which, for three generations, had contributed to the
English stage its brightest ornaments.
Roger Kemble, the first of the family who is known to fame, born in 1721, himself an actor and manager, was the father of twelve children, five of whom embraced his profession and became eminent in it. His eldest child,
Sarah Kemble, married at the age of eighteen an actor of a country company, named
Siddons, and became the greatest actress that ever lived.
John Philip Kemble, the eldest son of Roger, was perhaps, upon the whole, the greatest actor of modern times.
George Stephen Kemble, another son of the country manager, was also an excellent actor, and is now remembered chiefly for his performance of
Falstaff, which he was fat enough to play without stuffing.
Elizabeth Kemble, a sister of
Mrs. Siddons, married an actor named
Whitlock, with whom she came to the
United States, where she rose to the first position on the stage, and had the honor of performing before
General Washington and the other great men of that day. She made a fortune in
America, and retired to
England in
1807 to enjoy it. Finally, there was
Charles Kemble, the
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youngest child of Roger except one, an actor of great note on the
English stage for many years.
It was by no means the intention of
Roger Kemble that all his children should pursue his own laborious vocation.
On the contrary he was much opposed to their going upon the stage, and in some instances took particular pains to prevent it. This was the case with Charles, who received an excellent education, and for whom a place was procured in the London post-office.
But it seemed as natural for a Kemble to act, as it is for an eagle to soar.
They all appear to have possessed just that combination of form, feature, voice, presence, and temperament, which are fitted to charm and impress an audience.
Charles Kemble was soon led to try the stage, upon which he rose gradually to a high, but never to the highest, position.
He was the best light comedian of his time, and has perhaps never been surpassed in such characters as Benedick, Petruchio, Charles Surface, Cassio, Faulconbridge,
Edgar, and Marc Antony.
He was also an excellent, though not a great, Hamlet.
In due time he married a popular actress,
Miss De Camp, who began her dramatic career as a member of the ballet troupe of the
Italian Opera House in
London.
Two daughters were the fruit of this union,--
Frances Anne Kemble, the subject of this memoir, and
Adelaide Kemble,--both of whom, after a short but striking career upon the stage, married gentlemen of fortune and retired to private life.
Six weeks before the evening on which
Miss Kemble made her first appearance in
London, neither she nor her parents had ever thought of her attempting the stage.
Charles Kemble was then manager of Covent Garden Theatre, one of the two great theatres of
London.
The plays which he presented did not prove attractive; the season threatened to end in disaster; and he looked anxiously about him for the means of restoring to the theatre its former prestige.
His eldest
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daughter, Frances, was then eighteen years of age. Except that she had frequently heard her aunt,
Mrs. Siddons, read the plays of
Shakespeare, and had lived from her infancy in a family of actors, she had made no special preparation for the stage.
She inherited, however, that fine presence, that admirable self-possession, that magnificent and flexible voice, for which the Kembles were distinguished.
It suddenly occurred to the family that this brilliant and saucy girl, perhaps a little spoiled by parental fondness, might prove a great actress and save the failing fortunes of the family.
The experiment was tried.
In October, 1829, she made her first appearance.
The play selected for the occasion was Romeo and Juliet, in which her father played the part of Romeo, her mother that of the nurse, and herself, Juliet.
Her success was so remarkable, it was so evident that she possessed in an eminent degree the talent of the family, that, when the curtain descended at the close of the evening, she was felt to be, both before and behind the curtain, an established favorite.
Her first success was followed by other triumphs.
As Portia, in the Merchant of
Venice, as Bianca, in the tragedy of
Fazio, as
Lady Teazle, in the
School for Scandal, and in other parts of similar calibre, she shone without a rival; since, whatever may have been wanting in the artist was amply atoned for, in the public mind, by the youthful grace and beauty of the woman.
The house was nightly filled to overflowing.
Her father was saved from bankruptcy, and the old popularity of the theatre was fully restored.
A play which she had written in her seventeenth year, entitled Francis the First, was produced, and attained a certain success.
Sheridan Knowles, then at the height of his renown as a dramatist, and in the full vigor of his powers, wrote for her his master-piece, the
Hunchback, in which her popularity was almost beyond precedent.
It was after two years of such a life as this, when she was
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twenty-one years of age, that her father and herself crossed the
Atlantic to make the usual tour of the
American theatres.
New York, as we have seen, gave her a cordial welcome, and sent her forth to the other cities relieved of all anxiety, to continue a career which was nothing but triumph.
Fortunately for our present purpose, she kept a diary of this tour, the publication of which, in 1835, was one of the agreeable literary events of the year.
Thirty-five years ago I The lifetime of but a single generation!
And yet, what a different country does this diary reveal to us from the
United States of to-day!
What a different person, too, was the dashing, vivacious, and spoiled child of the public of 1832, from the patient, mature, and lofty character which
Mrs. Kemble has since attained!
Her diary was amusing when it was published, but it is today a lesson in history.
She lived, during her first engagement in New York, at the
American Hotel, on the corner of Barclay Street and Broadway, which was then considered the most elegant hotel in the city.
She gives nevertheless a sorry account of it: The rooms were “a mixture of French finery and Irish disorder and dirt,” and there was a scarcity, not only of servants, food, and space, but even of such common articles as knives and forks.
“The servants,” she adds, “who were just a quarter as many as the house required,
had no bedrooms allotted to them, but slept about anywhere in the public rooms, or on sofas, in drawing-rooms let to private families.
In short, nothing can exceed the want of order, propriety, and comfort in this establishment, except the enormity of the tribute it levies upon pilgrims and wayfarers through the land.”
To give the reader an idea, at once, of the character of
Miss Kemble's style at the time, and of the startling changes which time has wrought in the country, I will here transcribe the account she gives of her first journey from New York to
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Philadelphia, which occurred on the 8th of October, 1832.
The steamboat started from the foot of Barclay Street at half-past 6 in the morning, which obliged the young lady and her father to get up long before daylight.
This steamboat, which excited the special wonder of the party from its magnitude and splendor, conveyed them as far as
Perth Amboy.
“At about half-past 10,” she continues,
we reached the place where we leave the river, to proceed across a part of the State of New Jersey, to the Delaware.
The landing was beyond measure wretched; the shore shelved down to the water's edge; and its marshy, clayey, sticky soil, rendered doubly soft and squashy by the damp weather, was strown over with broken potsherds, stones, and bricks, by way of pathway; these, however, presently failed, and some slippery planks, half immersed in mud, were the only roads to the coaches that stood ready to receive the passengers of the steamboat.
Oh, these coaches!
English eye hath not seen, English ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of Englishmen to conceive, the surpassing clumsiness and wretchedness of these leathern inconveniences!
They are shaped something like boats, the sides being merely leathern pieces removable at pleasure, but which in bad weather are buttoned down to protect the inmates from the wet. There are three seats in this machine; the middle one having a movable leather strap, by way of a dossier, which runs between the carriage doors, and lifts away, to permit the egress and ingress of the occupants of the other seats.
Into the one facing the horses D-- and I put ourselves; presently, two young ladies occupied the opposite one; a third lady and a gentleman of the same party sat in the middle seat, into which my father's huge bulk was also squeezed; finally, another man belonging to the same party ensconced himself between the two young ladies.
Thus the two seats were
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filled each with three persons, and there should by rights have been a third on ours; for this nefarious black hole on wheels is intended to carry nine.
However, we profited little by the space; for, letting alone that there is not really and truly room for more than two human beings of common growth and proportions on each of these seats, the third place was amply filled up with baskets and packages of ours, and huge undouble-up coats and cloaks of my father's.
For the first few minutes I thought I must have fainted from the intolerable sensation of smothering which I experienced.
However, the leathers having been removed, and a little more air obtained, I took heart of grace and resigned myself to my fate.
Away walloped the four horses, trotting with their front and galloping with their hind legs; and away went we after them, bumping, jumping, thumping, jolting, shaking, tossing, and tumbling, over the wickedest road, I do think, the cruelest, heard-heartedest road that ever wheel rumbled upon.
Through bog, and marsh, and ruts, wider and deeper than any Christian ruts I ever saw, with the roots of trees protruding across our path, their boughs every now and then giving us an affectionate scratch through the windows; and, more than once, a half-demolished trunk or stump lying it the middle of the road lifting us up, and letting us down again, with most awful variations of our poor coachbody from its natural position.
Bones of me I what a road I Even my father's solid proportions could not keep their level, but were jerked up to the roof and down again every three minutes.
Our companions seemed nothing dismayed by these wondrous performances of a coach and four, but laughed and talked incessantly, the young ladies at the very top of their voices and with the national nasal twang.
The conversation was much of the genteel shopkeeper kind, the wit of the ladies and the gallantry savoring strongly of tapes and yard measures,
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and the shrieks of laughter of the whole set enough to drive one into a frenzy.
The ladies were all pretty; two of them particularly so, with delicate, fair complexions, and beautiful gray eyes.
How I wish they could have held their tongues for two minutes! We had not long been in the coach before one of them complained of being dreadfully sick.
This, in such a place and with seven near neighbors!
Fortunately, she was near the window, and, during our whole fourteen miles of purgatory, she alternately leaned from it, overcome with sickness, then reclined languishingly in the arms of her next neighbor, and then starting up with amazing vivacity, joined her voice to the treble duet of her two pretty companions, with a superiority of shrillness that might have been the envy and pride of Billingsgate.
'Twas enough to bother a rookery!
The country through which we passed was woodland; flat and without variety, save what it derived from the wondrous richness and brilliancy of the autumnal foliage.
Here, indeed, decay is beautiful; and nature appears more gorgeously clad in this her fading mantle, than in all the summer's flush of bloom in our less favored climates.
I noted several beautiful wild-flowers growing among the underwood, some of which I have-seen adorning with great dignity our most cultivated gardens.
None of the trees had any size or appearance of age; they are the second growth, which have sprung from the soil once possessed by a mightier race of vegetables.
The quantity of mere underwood, and the number of huge black stumps, rising in every direction a foot or two from the soil, bear witness to the existence of fine forest timber.
The few cottages and farm-houses which we passed reminded me of similar dwellings in France and Ireland; yet the peasantry here have not the same excuse for disorder and dilapidation as either the Irish or French.
The farms had the same desolate, untidy, untended look; the gates broken, the fences
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carelessly put up or ill-repaired; the firming utensils sluttishly scattered about a littered yard, where the pigs seem to preside by undisputed right; house-windows broken and stuffed with paper or clothes; dishevelled women and barefooted, anomalous-looking human young things.
None of the stirring life and activity which such places present in England and Scotland; above all, none of the enchanting mixture of neatness, order, and rustic elegance and comfort, which render so picturesque the surroundings of a farm, and the various belongings of agricultural labor in my own dear country.
The fences struck me as peculiar.
I never saw any such in England.
They are made of rails of wood placed horizontally, and meeting at obtuse angles, so forming a zigzag wall of wood, which runs over the country like the herring-bone seams of a flannel petticoat.
At each of the angles, two slanting stakes, considerably higher than the rest of the fence were driven into the ground, crossing each other at the top so as to secure the horizontal rails in their position.
There was every now and then a soft, vivid strip of turf along the roadside that made me long for a horse.
Indeed, the whole road would have been a delightful ride, and was a most bitter drive.
At the end of fourteen miles, we turned into a swampy field, the whole fourteen coachfuls of us, and by the help of heaven, bag and baggage were packed into the coaches that stood on the railway ready to receive us. The carriages were not drawn by steam, like those on the Liverpool railway, but by horses, with the mere advantage in speed afforded by the iron ledges, which, to be sure, compared with our previous progress through the ruts, was considerable.
Our coachful got into the first carriage of the train, escaping, by way of especial grace, the dust which one's predecessors occasion.
This vehicle had but two seats in the usual fashion, each of which held four of us. The whole inside
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was lined with blazing, scarlet leather, and the windows shaded with stuff curtains of the same refreshing color; which, with full complement of passengers, on a fine, sunny, American summer's day, must make as pretty a little miniature hell as may be, I should think.
The baggage-wagon, which went before us a little, obstructed the view.
The road was neither pretty nor picturesque, but still fringed on each side with the many-colored woods, whose rich tints made variety even in sameness.
This railroad is an infinite blessing; 'tis not yet finished, but shortly will be so, and then the whole of that horrible fourteen miles will be performed in comfort and decency in less than half the time.
In about an hour and a half; we reached the end of our railroad part of the journey, and found another steamboat waiting for us, when we all embarked on the Delaware.
Again, the enormous width of the river, struck me with astonishment and admiration.
Such huge bodies of water mark out the country through which they run as the future abode of the most extensive commerce and greatest maritime power in the universe.
The banks presented much the same features as those of the Raritan, though they were not quite so flat, and more diversified with scattered dwellings, villages, and towns.
We passed Bristol and Burlington, stopping at each of them to take up passengers.
I sat working, having finished my book, not a little discomfited by the pertinacious staring of some of my fellow-travellers.
One woman in particular, after wandering round me in every direction, at last came and sat down opposite me, and literally gazed me out of countenance.
One improvement they have adopted on board these boats is, to forbid smoking, except in the forepart of the vessel.
I wish they would suggest that if the gentlemen would refrain from spitting about, too, it would be highly agreeable to the female part of the community.
The universal practice
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here of this disgusting trick makes me absolutely sick; every place is made a perfect piggery of,--street, stairs, steamboat, everywhere,--and behind the scenes, and on the stage at rehearsal.
I have been shocked and annoyed beyond expression by this horrible custom.
To-day, on board the boat, it was a perfect shower of saliva all the time; and I longed to be relieved from my fellowship with these very obnoxious chewers of tobacco.
At about four o'clock we reached Philadelphia, having performed the journey between that and New York (a distance of a hundred miles), in less than ten hours, in spite of bogs, ruts, and all other impediments.
The manager came to look after us and our goods, and we were presently stowed into a coach which conveyed us to the Mansion House, the best reputed inn in Philadelphia.
Such was travelling in the
United States, between our two largest cities, only thirty-five years ago!
Such was
Miss Kemble in the twenty-second year of her age!
Some of the incidents of her tour in
America were very amusing.
Being exceedingly fond.
of riding on horseback, she gave a great impetus to the fashion of ladies' indulging in that pleasure.
Particularly at
Philadelphia, there was great hunting for good saddle-horses, which,
Miss Kemble assures us in her diary, scarcely existed in the country at that time.
A particular cap which she wore when riding was imitated and sold as “the Kemble cap.”
She appears, at that time, to have had a contempt for the beautiful art which she practised, and by which her family had become so distinguished.
“How I do loathe the stage!”
she exclaims.
“These wretched, tawdry, glittering rags flung over the breathing forms of ideal loveliness; these miserable, poor, and pitiful substitutes for the glories with which poetry has invested her magnificent and fair creations.
What a mass of wretched, mumming mimicry acting is!
Pasteboard and paint, for
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the thick breathing orange-groves of the south; green silk and oiled parchment, for the solemn splendor of her noon of night; wooden platforms and canvas curtains, for the solid marble balconies and rich dark draperies of Juliet's sleeping chamber, that shrine of love and beauty; rouge, for the startled life-blood in the cheek of that young passionate woman; an actress, a mimicker, a sham creature,
me, in fact, or any other one, for that loveliest and most wonderful conception, in which all that is true in nature and all that is exquisite in fancy are moulded into a living form!
To
act this!
To
act Romeo and Juliet Horror I horror!
How I do loathe my most impotent and unpoetical craft!”
Ah I how necessary it is to know precisely in what mood, and in what circumstances, a passage was written, before we can tell how far it expresses the author's real and habitual sentiment.
The sentences just quoted signify, chiefly, that she had been just playing Juliet to a most awkward and abominable
Romeo.
In the last scene of the play, she tells us, she was so mad with the mode in which all the other scenes had been performed, that, lying over
Romeo's dead body, and fumbling for his dagger, which she could not find, she thus addressed her dead lover:--
“Why, where
the devil
is your dagger,
Mr.--?”
In truth, she was not a little proud of her honorable and arduous vocation.
She was not insensible to the magic of that art which enables an audience to forget that they are looking upon pasteboard and rouge, and to forget, also, that it is not the veritable
Juliet who is moving them to rapture and to tears.
Some of the best passages in
Miss Kemble's diary are subtle disquisitions upon the art of acting.
She had another mishap with her Romeo at
Baltimore.
The play went off pretty well on this occasion, she says in her humorous way, “except that they broke one man's collar bone, and nearly dislocated a woman's shoulder, by flinging
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the scenery about.”
She gives the following absurd account of the conclusion of the play:--
My bed was not made in time, and when the scene drew, half a dozen carpenters, in patched trowsers and tattered shirt-sleeves, were discovered smoothing down my pillows and adjusting my draperies.
The last scene is too good not to be given verbatim:--
Romeo.
Rise, rise, my Juliet,
And from this care of death, this house of horror,
Quick let me snatch thee to thy Romeo's arms.
Here he pounced upon me, plucked me up in his arms like an uncomfortable bundle, and staggered down the stage with me.
Juliet
（aside). Oh, you've got me up horridly that'll never do; let me down, pray let me down! Romeo.
There, breathe a vital spirit on thy lips,
And call thee back, my soul, to life and love!
Juliet
（aside). Pray put me down; you'll certainly throw me down if you don't set me on the ground directly.
In the midst of “ cruel, cursed fate,” his dagger fell out of his dress; I, embracing him tenderly, crammed it back again, because I knew I should want it at the end.
Romeo.
Tear not our heart-strings thus!
They crack I they break!
Juliet Juliet! (dies).
Juliet
（to corpse). Am I smothering you? Corpse
(to Juliet). Not at all; could you be so kind, do you think, as to put my wig on for me?
it has fallen off. Juliet
（to corpse). I'm afraid I can't, but I'll throw my muslin veil over it. You've broken the phial, haven't you?
（Corpse nodded).
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Juliet
（to corpse). Where's your dagger? Corpse
（to Juliet). 'Pon my soul, I don't know.
It is curious to notice how prompt this young lady, who sometimes affected such a horror of the stage, was to defend it when attacked by another.
She had a long conversation once with
Dr. Channing on this subject, who thought that detached scenes and passages well declaimed could serve as a good substitute for the stage.
The young actress at once took fire.
“My horror,” she says, “was so unutterable at this proposition, and my amazement so extreme that he should make it, that I believe my replies were all but incoherent.
What! take one of
Shakespeare's plays bit by bit, break it piecemeal, in order to make recitals of it!
Destroy the marvellous unity of one of his magnificent works to make patches of declamation! . . I remember hearing my Aunt Siddons read the scenes of the witches in
Macbeth, and while doing so was obliged to cover my eyes, that her velvet gown, modern cap, and spectacles might not disturb the wild and sublime images that her magnificent voice and recitation were conjuring up around me.”
Miss Kemble's dramatic career in the
United States was troubled by only one disagreeable incident, which occurred while she was playing an engagement at
Washington.
On returning to her hotel, one evening, from her usual ride, she found a man sitting with her father, and her father in a towering passion.
“There, sir,” said
Mr. Kemble, when she came in, “there is the young lady to speak for herself.”
And truly the young lady did so in a highly spirited manner.
“Fanny,” continued her father, “something particularly disagreeable has occurred; pray can you call to mind anything you said during the course of your Thursday's ride
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which was likely to be offensive to
Mr.--, or anything abusive of this country?”
Miss Kemble, who comprehended the situation at a glance, untied her bonnet, and replied, with haughty nonchalance, that she did not recollect a word she had said during her whole ride, and should certainly not give herself any trouble to do so.
“ Now, my dear,” said her father, his own eyes flashing fire, “don't put yourself into a passion; compose yourself and recollect.
Here is a letter I have just received.”
He read the letter, which proved to be a ridiculous and dastardly anonymous one, to the effect, that
Miss Kemble had said during the ride in question, that she did not choose to ride an American gentleman's horse, and had offered the owner two dollars for the hire of it, and had otherwise spoken most disrespectfully of the
American people.
The letter proceeded to state that, unless something was done in the way of explanation or apology, she should be hissed off the stage that night the moment she appeared.
The evening came.
The pit was littered with handbills from the same malicious and cowardly hand.
The only effect was, that every time she appeared during the play the audience received her with a perfect uproar of applause.
At the end of the second act, one of the handbills was brought to
Mr. Kemble, who immediately went with it before the audience, and denounced it as an infamous falsehood.
The play proceeded, and, when
Miss Kemble next came upon the scene, the audience rose to their feet, waved their hats, and gave a succession of such thundering cheers, that she burst into tears, and had extreme difficulty in going on with her part.
Nor was this all. The public, justly indignant at this contemptible act of inhospitality to eminent artists from a foreign land, crowded the theatre during the rest of their engagement, and gave them two benefits of such an overwhelming
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character, that a smart Yankee remarked, “He shouldn't wonder if
Mr. Kemble had got up the whole thing himself.”
This visit to
America had more important and lasting consequences than
Miss Kemble had anticipated.
Among the most ardent of her American admirers was a young gentleman of large fortune and ancient family, residing in a spacious mansion in
Philadelphia.
Pierce Butler was his name.
He was a descendant of the famous
Pierce Butler of
South Carolina, whose history was so familiar to the public seventy years ago, but has long since been forgotten.
Major Pierce Butler came to
America before the Revolutionary war with one of the regiments sent over by the tory government to overawe rebellious
Boston.
He was an Irishman by descent, a scion of the ancient family, the head of which was the
Duke of
Ormond.
Instead of assisting an obstinate and ignorant king to subdue the most loyal of his subjects, he had the good sense to embrace their cause.
He resigned his commission, sold his property in
Great Britain, and settled in
South Carolina, where he purchased a very large estate in lands suited to the culture of rice and cotton.
There he lived and flourished, a leading planter and politician, from about the year 1780 until the time of his death in 1822.
lie was a democrat of the most decided type, a warm adherer of
Jefferson, and a main stay of successive democratic administrations.
It was the son of this distinguished man, the heir of his name and his estates, who was captivated by
Miss Kemble's talents.
His admiration of the actress became, at length, a passion for the woman, and he offered her his hand.
According to the usual English view of such matters, it was a brilliant offer; for, in
England, no splendor of talent or fame, no worth of character, no extent of learning,
nothing, is considered to place an individual on a par with one who possesses a large quantity of inherited land.
This young man was at the head of society at
Philadelphia.
His estates in
South
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Carolina he visited but seldom, and he lived at the
Quaker capital the life of elegant and inglorious ease which is so captivating to the imagination of the toiling and anxious multitude.
Miss Kemble was so little acquainted with him and his affairs that she did not know the nature of his property.
She did not know that he derived his whole income from the unrequited toil of slaves, extorted from them by the lash.
She did not know that he owned one slave.
It so happened that she had brought with her from her English home a
particular abhorrence of slavery, and the feeling was increased in
America by what she casually heard of the condition and treatment of the negroes.
Several passages in her diary, written before she ever saw the face of this
Pierce Butler, prove her utter detestation of slavery.
But who can avoid his destiny?
In an evil hour, she turned her back upon her noble art, upon the public that admired and honored her, upon her country, too, and gave her hand to this democratic lord of seven hundred slaves.
All the world congratulated her. She was thought to have made a most brilliant match,--
side, the woman of genius and feeling, the heir of an illustrious name, which she had proved herself worthy to bear!
For a time, all went well.
Children were born.
Women of a certain calibre are not long in discovering the quality of their husbands; and it is highly probable, that
Frances Anne Kemble had taken the measure of
Pierce Butler before the events occurred which led to their estrangement.
In the fourth year of their marriage, in December, 1838, the family, for the first time since the marriage, went together to spend the winter upon the
Butler plantations in
South Carolina.
She recorded her impressions at the time in a diary, according to her custom, which diary has been recently published.
What a contrast between this work, written in 1839, and her other diary written in 1832 and 1833!
In the first, there is a good
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deal of immaturity, a little affectation, perhaps, and, occasionally, a certain lack of the refinement and dignity which belong to the well-bred woman.
We see the favorite actress a little spoiled by her sudden and great celebrity, though full of the elements of all that is high and great in the character of woman.
In the second diary, we find those elements developed.
Disappointment,--the greatest a woman can know,--the discovery that her mate is not her equal, had imparted a premature maturity and an unusual depth of reflection to the matron of twenty-seven.
Her record of this winter's residence in
South Carolina, among her husband's slaves, is the best contribution ever made by an individual, to our knowledge, of the practical working of the slave system in the
United States. One of her friends cautioned her not to go down to her husband's plantation “prejudiced” against what she was to find there.
“Assuredly,” she replied, “I
am going prejudiced against slavery, for I am an Englishwoman, in whom the absence of such a prejudice would be disgraceful.
Nevertheless, I go prepared to find many mitigations in the practice to the general injustice and cruelty of the system,--much kindness on the part of the masters, much content on that of the slaves.”
She was disappointed.
She discovered that slavery was
all cruelty.
The very kindness shown to slaves did but aggravate their sufferings, because that kindness was necessarily fitful and capricious, and was liable at any moment to terminate.
With those fresh and honest eyes of hers she looked through all the sophistry of the masters, and saw the system exactly as it was.. They told her, for example, that the large families of the slaves were a proof of their good treatment and welfare.
“No such thing,” she replied.
“If you will reflect for a moment upon the overgrown families of the half-starved Irish peasantry and English manufacturers, you will agree with me
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that these prolific shoots by no means necessarily spring from a rich or healthy soil.
Peace and plenty are certainly causes of human increase, and so is recklessness; and this, I take it, is the impulse in the instance of the
English manufacturer, the Irish peasant, and the negro slave. . . None of the cares, --those noble cares, that holy thoughtfulness which lifts the human above the brute parent,--are ever incurred here by either father or mother.
The relation indeed resembles, as far as circumstances can possibly make it do so, the short-lived connection between the animal and its young.
The father, having neither authority, power, responsibility, nor charge in his children, is, of course, as among brutes, the least attached to his offspring; the mother, by the natural law which renders the infant dependent on her for its first year's nourishment, is more so; but, as neither of them is bound to educate or to support their children, all the unspeakable tenderness and solemnity, all the rational, and all the spiritual grace and glory of the connection is lost, and it becomes mere breeding, bearing, suckling, and there an end. But it is not only the absence of the conditions which God has affixed to the relation which tends to encourage the reckless increase of the race; they enjoy, by means of numerous children, certain positive advantages.
In the first place, every woman who is pregnant, as soon as she chooses to make the fact known to the overseer, is relieved of a certain portion of her work in the field, which lightening of labor continues, of course, as long as she is so burdened.
On the birth of a child certain additions of clothing and an additional weekly ration are bestowed on the family; and these matters, small as they may seem, act as powerful inducements to creatures who have none of the restraining influences actuating them which belong to the parental relation among all other people, whether civilized or savage.
Moreover, they have all of them a most distinct and perfect knowledge of
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their value to their owners as property; and a woman thinks, and not much amiss, that the more frequently she adds to the number of her master's live-stock by bringing new slaves into the world, the more claims she will have upon his consideration and good-will.
This was perfectly evident to me from the meritorious air with which the women always made haste to inform me of the number of children they had borne, and the frequent occasions on which the older slaves would direct my attention to their children, exclaiming, ‘Look, missis!
Little niggers for you and massa; plenty little niggers for you and little missis!’
A very agreeable apostrophe to me, indeed, as you will believe.”
Of the cruelty committed upon this estate she gives ample details, which need not be repeated here.
Her husband's negroes were considered fortunate by those upon surrounding plantations, and yet almost everything that she saw and heard during her residence among them filled her with grief and horror.
What surprised her very much was, the low
physical condition of the colored people, and the great mortality among the children.
This was partly owing to insufficient and innutritious food, but chiefly to the incessant childbearing of the women.
She found mothers who were fifteen years of age, and grandmothers who were thirty.
She found women in middle life who had borne from twelve to sixteen children.
One cause of intense misery was compelling the women to return to their labor in the field three weeks after confinement.
In short, the whole system, and all its details and circumstances, excited in her nothing but the most profound and passionate repugnance.
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth will speak, and, especially, a woman's mouth!
She remonstrated with her husband upon the cruelties practised almost in his very presence.
She might as well have addressed her remonstrances to one of his own palmetto-trees.
Once, when she
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had related to him a peculiarly aggravated atrocity committed upon the mother of a family, he replied, that, no doubt, the punishment inflicted upon the woman was “
disagreeable.”
At other times, he would say, “Why do you listen to such stuff?
Why do you believe such trash?
Don't you know the niggers are all d — d liars?”
At length, he commanded her never to speak to him upon the subject again, never to try to stand between a defenceless female slave and the overseer's withering lash. -This was almost beyond bearing.
Read one passage from her diary:--
I have had an uninterrupted stream of women and children flowing in the whole morning to say, “Ha, de missis.”
Among others, a poor woman called Mile, who could hardly stand for pain and swelling in her limbs; she had had fifteen children; nine of her children had died; for the last three years she had become almost a cripple with chronic rheumatism, yet she is driven every day to work in the field.
She held my hands, and stroked them in the most appealing way, while she exclaimed, “O my missis!
my missis!
me neber sleep till day for de pain,” and with the day her labor must again be resumed.
I gave her flannel and sal-volatile to rub her poor swelled limbs with; rest I could not give her,--rest from her labor and her pain,--this mother of fifteen children.
I went out to try and walk off some of the weight of horror and depression which I am beginning to feel daily more and more, surrounded by all this misery and degradation that I can neither help nor hinder.
In addition to all this, she could not be ignorant that her young husband degraded himself and dishonored her, as the young planters of the
South were accustomed to degrade themselves, and dishonor their wives.
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I shall not dwell here upon what followed.
The difference of opinion, or rather of feeling, upon this subject of slavery — so vital to them as slave-owners — ended at last in complete and bitter estrangement.
A separation followed.
Mrs. Kemble retired to the beautiful village of
Lennox in
Massachusetts, where she occasionally had the pleasure of associating with her children, and where she was the delight and ornament of a large circle.
Nor was the public entirely deprived of the benefit of her talents.
Inheriting from her father an amplitude of person which time did not diminish, she was no longer fitted to resume her place upon the stage.
She has given, however, as every one knows, series of readings from
Shakespeare and other authors, in the principal cities of the
United States and
Great Britain. One happy year she spent in
Italy, and, according to her habit, made her residence there the subject of a volume of poetry and prose, which she entitled “A year of consolation.”
During our late civil war she resided in
England.
She was true to the country of her adoption, and rendered to it the most timely and valuable services.
In the midst of the hostility against the
North which prevailed among the educated classes in
England, she wrote a most eloquent and powerful vindication of the
United States for the “London times;” and, about the period when the question of Emancipation was agitating all minds, she gave to the public her Southern diary, which had been in manuscript more than twenty years. The last two sentences of this work will serve to show that at the darkest period of the war, when all but the stoutest hearts felt some misgivings as to the final result, this brave and high-minded woman had undiminished faith in the final triumph of the right.
They are these:--
Admonished by its terrible experience, I believe the nation will reunite itself under one government, remodel the 1.25
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Constitution, and again address itself to fulfil its glorious destiny.
I believe that the country sprung from ours — of all our just subjects of national pride the greatest-will resume its career of prosperity and power, and become the noblest as well as the mightiest that has existed among the nations of the earth.
Mrs. Kemble is now fifty-seven years of age, but neither the vigor of her body nor the brilliancy of her talents has undergone any perceptible diminution.
Her readings have been, for nearly twenty years, among the most refined and instructive pleasures accessible to the public, and they still attract audiences of the highest character.
I had the pleasure of hearing her read in the
city of New York, in March, 1868.
It was the coldest night of the year; the streets were heaped high with snow, and a cutting north-west wind was blowing.
Notwithstanding these adverse circumstances, which thinned every place of amusement in the city, more than a thousand people assembled in Steinway Hall to listen once more to this last and best of the Kembles.
The play was
Coriolanus, one of the most effective for her purpose, in the whole range of the drama.
When she presented herself upon the platform and took her usual seat behind a small low table, she looked the very picture of one of the noble Roman matrons whose grand and passionate words she was about to utter.
As she sat, she appeared to be above the usual stature of women, although in fact she is not. Her person, although finely developed, has in no degree the appearance of corpulence.
Her hair, naturally dark, has been so delicately touched by time, that the frost of years looks like a sprinkling of the powder which has lately been in fashion again.
Her face is fill and ruddy, indicating high health, and her features are upon that large and grand scale for which her family have been always remarkable, and which call to mind the fact that
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the Romans once ruled in
England.
Her voice is exceedingly fine, being ample in quantity as well as harmonious and flexible.
On this occasion, she was attired in a dress of plain black silk, relieved only by a narrow
lace collar around the neck, which was fastened by a small plain gold pin. Nothing can exceed the force, beauty, and variety of her reading; she is perhaps the only person, who has yet practised this art, that can hold a large audience attentive and satisfied during the reading of a play.
Like all genuine artists,
Mrs. Kemble marks an habitual respect for the public whom she serves.
Her low courtesy to the audience, and her pleasant, respectful way of addressing them when she has occasion to do so, are in striking contrast with the ridiculous and insolent airs which some of the spoiled children of the opera sometimes give themselves.
Her dress varies with the play she is to read.
When the
Midsummer Night's Dream is the play, she wears a bridal dress of white silk adorned with lace.
Her self-possession in the presence of an audience is complete, and although she exerts herself to please them with far more than the energy of a novice, no one is aware of the fact, and she seems to enchant us without an effort.
