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 The grave of Charles Kemble and his daughter Fanny Kemble at Kensal Green Cemetery, London. Picture by Androom (10 Aug 1997) |
Kemble, Fanny |
| ACTOR, POET, ABOLITIONIST (ENGLAND) |
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BORN 27 Nov 1809, London: Newman Street, Oxford Road - DIED 17 Jan 1893, London: 86 Gloucester Place BIRTH NAME Kemble, Frances Anne GRAVE LOCATION London: Kensal Green Cemetery, Harrow Road, Kensal Green (055/PS (11981)) |
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Frances Anne Kemble was the daughter of actor Charles Kemble and his French wife Marie-Thérèse de Camp. She was educated in Paris and lived for a while in Edinburgh with Henry Siddons and his wife Harriet. Her father managed the Covent Garden Theatre in London. When he faced severe financial difficulties, Fanny debuted as an actress as Julia (while her father played Mercutio) on October 5, 1829 at the Covent Garden Theatre in London. Despite her reluctance she was an instant success. She played many important female Shakespeare parts and in 1832 she wrote the play "Francis the First". Together with her father she toured the US. There she met E.J. Trelawny, who told her his fantastic tales about Byron and Shelley, whom he had known in Italy. He had his eye on her, but in 1834 she married the rich American Pierce Butler in Philadelphia and she retired from the stage. Two years after the marriage her husband inherited plantations that made him the owner of a large number of slaves. Fanny saw their misery with her own eyes and became a formidable opponent of slavery. They had two daughters, but after years of quarrels and reconciliations the disastrous marriage broke up. Fanny left the Butlers and returned to England and travelled to Italy. She published her experiences in "Year of Consolation" (1847). Butler filed for divorce on 7 April 1848. She returned to America to defend herself and the divorce was finalized in September 1849. Fanny was not allowed to see her daughters until they were 21 years old. To her distress, her sister Adelaide was opposed to her divorce and although she supported Fanny publicly, they quarreled privately. She had briefly returned to the stage in England 1847 as Mrs. Butler, with moderate success. It was not because she wanted to act again, but because she was forced to make herself a living. By that time smallpox had damaged her beauty and, by her own admission, she had become a 'stout woman'. After that she turned to lecturing on Shakespeare like her father had done and successfully toured in the USA. Her lectures enabled her to buy an American home around 1850, The Porch in Lenox, Massachusetts. However, in 1850 she left for England, and she did not return to the USA until 1856 to live there. In 1863 her "Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation" had an enormous impact on the abolition debate and it influenced the European public opinion in favor of the northern states. In 1877 she returned to London to live with her daughter Frances. In 1879 Adelaide suddenly died. Fortunately, they had recently spent a pleasant holiday together. In 1878 a dear friend, Harriet St. Leger, died as well. She had met Harriet in 1826. Harriet was fourteen years older and owned Ardgillan Castle near Dublin. Although they rarely met over the years, they remained close friends and corresponded intensively for over fifty years. In 1874 Harriet had fallen ill and she had returned thousands of letters from Fanny, so that Fanny could use them for writing her memoirs. Fanny burned most of the letters that she had written during her marriage. Fanny died in 1893 in London, and she was buried in the grave of her father at Kensal Green Cemetery in London. Apart from publishing her memoirs, she had written poetry and had translated work from Schiller and other authors. Autobiographical publications: "Records of a Girlhood" (1878); "Records of Later Life "(1882); "Far Away and Long Ago" (1889); "Further Records" (1891). Family • Father: Kemble, Charles • Sister: Kemble, Adelaide • Brother: Kemble, John Mitchell Related persons • admired Byron, George Noel Gordon • was a friend of Combe, George • was sculpted by Macdonald, Lawrence • was a friend of Martineau, Harriet • was a friend of Norton, Caroline • is nephew/niece of Siddons, Sarah • admired Siddons-Murray, Harriet • corresponded with Thackeray Ritchie, Anne • was a friend of Trelawny, Edward John Events |
| 5/10/1829 | Debut of Fanny Kemble as Juliet at Covent Garden, London. She became popular immediately and this enabled her father Charles Kemble to straighten out his losses as a theatre manager. |
| 9/12/1829 | Fanny Kemble appears in "Venice Preserved" at Covent Garden. It was her first appearance in this play. |
| 25/1/1830 | Fanny Kemble appears in "The Grecian Daughter" at Covent Garden. It was her second appearance as Euphrasia in this play. Charles Kemble played Evander. [Kemble, Charles] |
| 28/4/1830 | Fanny Kemble appears in "Isabella: or, The Fatal Marriage" at Covent Garden. It was her first appearance as Isabella in thay play. Charles Kemble played Biron. [Kemble, Charles] |
| 15/3/1832 | Premiere of Fanny Kemble's play "Francis the First" at Covent Garden in London. The original cast of the tragedy included herself, her father Charles Kemble, Daniel Egerton, George Bennett, William Abbott, Robert Keeley, John Duruset, James Prescott Warde, Harriette Taylor and Ellen Kean. The play was a brief success. [Kemble, Charles] |
| 22/6/1832 | Last performance of Fanny Kemble at Covent Garden as Julia in "The Hunchback". She was going to tour in the USA with her father. |
| 7/12/1846 | Fanny Kemble drinks from the fountain of Trevi in Rome. It was raining fast but she noted that 'for those who drink of it sweet waters return' and she knelt and drank all the same. |
| 16/2/1847 | Fanny Kemble returns to the stage in Manchester. She played Julia in "The Hunchback". Her dear friend Henry Greville was in the audience and this gave her some comfort. Thirteen years earlier she had ended her short but very successful acting career after marrying Pierce Butler. She was, in her own words, a stout woman now and she was not very pretty anymore. But she was received well by the public and she performed in Manchester until 27 February 1847. |
| 4/3/1847 | Fanny Kemble performs in Liverpool |
| 14/3/1847 | Fanny Kemble performs in Dublin |
| 25/3/1848 | Fanny Kemble gives her first public Shakespeare reading in London. These readings were very successful and she continued them for many years. |
| 2/9/1876 | Fanny Kemble visits the grave of her aunt Adelaide in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was a few days after she left Lenox for good. Some time before she had commissioned a stone for the grave of her aunt who had died in 1834. She noted that Mount Auburn cemetery had changed from a wild picturesque piece of irregular ground to a marble wilderness. She managed to find the grave of Adelaide de Camp and was overtaken by emotion. |
| 0/1/1877 | Fanny Kemble crosses the Atlantic Ocean for the last time. She left the USA to spend the rest of her life in England. She travelled on the White Star steamer Brittanic. |
| Images |
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The grave of Charles Kemble and his daughter Fanny Kemble at Kensal Green Cemetery, London. Picture by Androom (10 Aug 1997) |
Sources • Crawford, Anne and others, The Europa Biographical Dictionary of British Women, Europa Publications Ltd, London, 1983 • Clinton, Katherine, Fanny Kemble's Civil Wars, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001 • Jenkins, Rebecca, Fanny Kemble, A Reluctant Celebrity, Simon & Schuster, London, 2005 • Marshall, Dorothy, Fanny Kemble, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1977 • Paths of Glory, The Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery, London, 1997 • Ransome, Eleanor, The Terrific Kemble, A Victorian Self-Portrait from the writings of Fanny Kemble, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1978 • Schöne, Günter, Bühnenstars, Florian Noetzel, Wilhelmshaven, 1998 • Wright, Constance, Fanny Kemble and the Lovely Land, Robert Hale and Company, London, 1974 • University of Miami Archival Collections - Archival Collections • The Civil War of the United States: Fanny Kemble, born November 27, 1809 • Francis the First (play) - Wikipedia (EN) |
