Kemble, Fanny (Frances Anne)

1809

1893

Fanny Kemble was born in London on 27 November 1809, the eldest daughter of the actors Charles Kemble and his wife Maria Theresa (née De Camp). She was the niece of the great actors John Philip Kemble and his sister Sarah Siddons. All are noticed on these pages. It is said that Frances had no liking for the stage but went upon it to help save her father from bankruptcy. Heavily in debt, Charles Kemble was managing the company at Covent Garden when Fanny made her debut there as Juliet (G0372) on 5 October 1829, with her father acting Mercutio and her mother acting Lady Capulet. Fanny was a great success and followed Juliet with Lady Teazle, Portia (G0373), Isabella, Euphrasia, Calista and Belvidera. In 1830 she was the original Julia in Knowles’s “The Hunchback”. She was so popular that her father was soon out of debt. In September 1832 she and her father went to America, where they toured for two years, winning acclaim. In June 1834 in New York she married Pierce Butler, a Philadelphian who was also a Georgia plantation owner, retired from the stage and lived on Butler Island and in Philadelphia. Butler’s infidelity and his ownership of slaves led to a divorce in 1849, and Fanny returned to England and the stage, acting sometimes with Macready and giving readings from Shakespeare with her sister Adelaide Kemble Sartoris. The last of these readings was given in New York in October 1868. Fanny retired to a cottage in Lenox, Massachusetts, where she wrote poems and reminiscences. There she became one of the first to take up the fashion of wearing what came to be known as ‘bloomers.’ Subsequently, in 1877, she returned to London, where she died on 15 January 1893 and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. Fanny Kemble was a strong and intelligent woman, independent, with a forceful personality. And she possessed her full share of the famed Kemble beauty. Audiences were enthralled by her acting, and had she been more determined to follow a stage career perhaps she could have risen to the level of esteem accorded to her aunt Sarah Siddons. She was a passionate abolitionist, who fought a private war with her husband over slavery. Pierce Butler lost much in the American Civil War, including his Philadelphia mansion and his slave property; he was arrested for treason. After the war he returned to Butler Island to manage the plantation with the help of his former slaves, now sharecroppers. He died of malaria in August 1867. Fanny Kemble’s books include “Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838-39” (1863, edited with an introduction by John A. Scott, 1961). “Fanny Kemble’s Journals” were edited with an introduction by Catherine Clinton (2000). Biographies of her were written by Margaret Armstrong, “Fanny Kemble, a Passionate Victorian” (1938), Henry Gibbs, “Affectionately Yours, Fanny” (1947) and “Fanny Kemble” (1967), and J. C. Furnas, “Fanny Kemble” (1982). (OCT, EB)