Born, in London, 27 Nov. 1809. First appearance at Covent Garden Theatre, 5 Oct. 1829; acted there till 1832. Tragedy, “Francis I.,” produced at Covent Garden, 15 March 1832. Acted with her father in America, 1832–34. Married Pierce Butler, 7 Jan. 1834. Separated from him, 1846. Visit to England, 1847; acted in Manchester and London. Acted in America, autumn 1847 to spring 1848. Obtained divorce from husband, 1848. First Public Reading in London, April 1848; in Philadelphia, Oct. 1849. Resumed maiden name. Lived at Lenox, Mass., 1849–68; lived near New York, 1868–69. Gave public Readings in America, 1856–60, 1866–68. In Europe, 1869–73. In America, 1873–77. Returned to London, 1877. Died there, 15 Jan. 1893. Works: “Francis the First,” 1832; “Journal of F. A. Butler,” 1835; “The Star of Seville,” 1837; “Poems,” 1844; “A Year of Consolation,” 1847; “Plays,” 1863; “Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation,” 1863; “Poems,” 1866 [1865]; “Records of a Girlhood,” 1878; “Records of Later Life” (3 vols.), 1882; “Notes upon some of Shakespeare’s Plays,” 1882; “Poems,” 1883; “Far Away and Long Ago,” 1889; “Further Records” (2 vols.), 1890.

Personal

  In those days Mrs. Kemble had certain dresses which she wore in rotation whatever the occasion might be. If the black gown chanced to fall upon a gala day she wore it, if the pale silk gown fell upon a working day she wore it; and I can still hear an American girl exclaiming with dismay as the delicate folds of a white silk embroidered with flowers went sweeping over the anemones in the Pamphili Gardens. Another vivid impression I have is of an evening visit Mrs. Kemble paid Mrs. Browning in the quiet little room in the Bocca di Leone, only lit by a couple of tapers and by the faint glow of the fire. I looked from one to the other: Mrs. Browning welcoming her guest, dim in her dusky gown unrelieved; Mrs. Kemble upright, and magnificent, robed on this occasion like some Roman empress in stately crimson edged with gold. It happened to be the red dress day, and she wore it…. Mrs. Kemble once asked me suddenly what colour her eyes were, and confused and unready I answered “light eyes.” At this moment indeed they looked like amber, not unlike the eyes of some of those captive birds one sees in their cages sitting alone in the midst of crowds. Mrs. Kemble laughed at my answer. “Light eyes! Where are your own? Do you know that I have been celebrated for my dark eyes?” she said; and then I looked again and they were dark and brilliant, and looking at me with a half-amused, half-reproachful earnestness.

  It is vain to talk of Mrs. Kemble at all if we are to lack assurance in saying, for those who had not the privilege of knowing her as well as for those who had, that she was one of the rarest of women. To insist upon her accomplishments is to do injustice to that human largeness which was the greatest of them all, the one by which those who admired her most knew her best. One of the forms, for instance, taken by the loyalty she so abundantly inspired was an ineradicable faith in her being one of the first and most original of talkers. To that the remembering listener turns as, on the whole, in our bridled race, the fullest measure and the brightest proof. Her talk was everything, everything that she was or that her interlocutor could happen to want; though indeed it was often something that he couldn’t possibly have happened to expect…. The finest comedy of all, perhaps, was that of her own generous whimsicalities. She was superbly willing to amuse, and on any terms; and her temper could do it as well as her wit. If either of these had failed her eccentricities were always there. She had, indeed, so much finer a sense of comedy than anyone else that she herself knew best, as well as recked least, how she might exhilarate. I remember that at the play she often said: “Yes, they’re funny; but they don’t begin to know how funny they might be!”… If she had not lived by rule (on her showing), she would have lived infallibly by riot. Her rules and her riots, her reservations and her concessions, all her luxuriant theory and all her extravagant practice; her drollery that mocked at her melancholy; her imagination that mocked at her drollery; and her wonderful manners, all her own, that mocked a little at everything: these were part of the constant freshness which made those who loved her love her so much.

  Of personal beauty, so important a desideratum in the career of an actress, she could scarcely claim a share. The majestic dignity of form and beauty of feature which distinguished Mrs. Siddons had not descended to her. A little woman, inclined to a stoutness too great for her height, her hopes of beauty were destroyed early in her girlhood by an attack of small-pox, which, as she herself records, “rendered my complexion thick and muddy and my features heavy and coarse, leaving me so moderate a share of good looks as quite to warrant my mother’s satisfaction in saying when I went on the stage, ‘Well, my dear, they can’t say we have brought you out to exhibit your beauty.’ Plain I undoubtedly was, but I by no means always looked so: and so great was the variation in my appearance at different times, that my comical friend, Mrs. Fitzhugh, once exclaimed, ‘Fanny Kemble, you are the ugliest and the handsomest woman in London!’” The justice of this somewhat paradoxical pronouncement was in great measure borne out by the fact, that in Fanny Kemble there was visible a certain grace of deportment and bearing, which, innate and hereditary as it was, she shared in some degree with the greater members of her family, while her countenance was both expressive and pleasing.

Actor and Reader

  We are just now in the full flush of excitement about Fanny Kemble. She is a most captivating creature, steeped to the very lips in genius. You will not see her till the middle of April. Do not, if you can bear unmixed tragedy, do not fail to see her Belvidera. I have never seen any woman on the stage to be compared with her, nor even an actor that delighted me so much. She is most effective in a true woman’s character, fearful, tender, and true. On the stage she is beautiful, far more than beautiful; her face is the mirror of her soul. I have been to see her: she is a quiet gentlewoman in her deportment.

  I heard Mrs. Butler read on Monday the “Merchant of Venice,” and to-day “Much Ado about Nothing.” It is wonderful what an effect she produces; it is like seeing the whole play admirably acted, and delightful to hear the beautiful poetry, which is usually so murdered on the stage, spoken by her melodious voice, and with her subtle expression.

  Mrs. Kemble lacked the stature and perfect symmetry of Mrs. Siddons, but she had the noble head, the effulgent eyes, the sensitive mouth and flexible nostrils, the musical voice, the dignified and graceful gestures, which distinguished her aunt; and, in addition, the sense of humor, the mobile temperament quick as flame, the poetic sensibility, which characterized her mother…. So endowed, she soared at once to heights reached by others only after years of toil, substituting feeling for simulation, spontaneous action for studied gesture and movements, the intuition of poetic and dramatic genius for the training of talent; and this abandonment of herself to inspiration, “letting her heart go, while she kept her head,” gave a vividness and pathos to her personations never equaled on the English stage in our day.

  No public reader in this country has been so successful. None is so gratefully remembered. Charles Dickens, though reading scenes drawn, possibly, from the experience of his own life, was not worthy to be named beside her. To many, her readings are the memory of a life-time. In various cities, with intense delight I heard her read “Romeo and Juliet,” “Twelfth Night,” “Richard III.,” “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” and “King Lear.” Would that I could have heard her in her favorite, “The Tempest!” In every reading she captivated her audience. Her simplicity was charming. Sitting alone, behind the reading desk, she began invariably with the unpretentious words, “I have the honor to read—;” and for two hours or more, with rare exceptions, she held the fixed attention of her audience. Though masculine in her appearance and intellect, she had a feminine appreciation of the fitness of things. Her dress was appropriate and very suggestive. For “Romeo and Juliet” there was the moonlight gleam and shadow of white satin; for “Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” velvet of a mossy green; in “King Lear,” the sombre richness of black velvet; in “King Richard the Third,” black velvet, her breast crossed by a broad, blue ribbon. There seemed to be no end to the variety of her characterizations. You could see the personages in her face and hear them in her voice. Her energy seemed inexhaustible. Her voice had a remarkable compass and power. It took on, at will, the strident roughness of a tavern brawler, or the velvet softness of Juliet’s tone or the delicate purity of Titania’s. Few actors could express such a range of passion as she did in “Lear,” or such sustained vigor, with no trace of rant as did she in “King Richard the Third.”… I doubt if, as a dramatic reader, we shall ever listen to her like again.

Poems

  Her dramas, “Francis the First” and the “Star of Seville,” were written when she was very young, and do not retain possession of the stage, though superior to many pieces which in this respect have been more fortunate. The volume of her shorter poems published in Philadelphia in 1844 entitles her to be ranked with the first class of living English poetesses. Their general tone is melancholy and desponding; but they are vigorous in thought and execution, and free from the sickly sentiment and puerile expression for which so much of the verse of the day is chiefly distinguished. She has written besides the works mentioned “A Journal,” which was published on her return from this country to London. It is a clever, gossiping book, with such absurdities of opinion as might have been expected from a commentator on national character of her age and position: very amusing and very harmless.

  More than once we have had occasion to express admiration of Mrs. Butler’s various and vigorous ability; but we own that the present volume, though including no piece of considerable length or in any ambitious form, has raised our estimate of her as a poetess. She has never before written so simply or so strongly. Never before has she dealt so boldly with the realities of life, and yet never before in our judgment did she display an equal richness of imaginative power. It is very rarely that a woman’s poetry—real poetry—does not betray its source in her personal experiences and emotions. With whatever art she may endeavor to envelop it, the self peeps through wherever the inspiration reaches its height. But here there is no attempt at concealment. It is impossible not to feel that we have before us the fragments of an autobiography in verse…. It is a long time since we have met with any love-verses equal to these. We pity the oldest who does not feel young again as he reads.

  I believe that in the course of a few years, when time shall have sobered down the perhaps too-vividly painted lines of her mental character and shall have corrected her hasty estimates of the world and of humanity, Mrs. Butler will rank with the foremost poets of our land.

  Her versification is very bold and vigorous, and her rhythm is often melodious beyond any other writer of equal strength. Her sonnets, especially when she forgets herself, are among the finest in our language and it is easy to see that, if a more apprehensive future uplifted her thoughts, those of a personal character would be closely allied to some of Milton’s. As it is, she is nobly disdainful of all mawkishness or artificial conceit. She dashes at her main idea with an honest earnestness which one can scarcely help believing is a principal trait of her character.

  Her poems are marked by thought, by fancy, and by great love of nature and art. She has written in many metres and almost always with a sense of distinction and of ease. Her sonnets are very finished—some of them, indeed, will compare with the most successful of those written by any, say the half-dozen or so who stand supreme in this department of poetry. Much of her work is autobiographical and bears the impress of her changeful life.

General

  The whole intention of this is to express my deep regret at having, in a late letter, used such undue harshness in speaking of the lady best known to us as Fanny Kemble. I formed a hasty judgment of her character and talents, from reading a criticism on her “Journal in America,” in which all the most repulsive points of her writings are brought out in full array, without producing one instance of good feeling or good taste, or of any strong indication of good principle, that so frequently occur in her Journal. All this penitence of mine has been produced merely by reading half of the first volume; yet I hope it is a repentance not to be repented of. But, lest you think me too amiable in my penitence, as I was too severe in my censure, I must add that I still think it a very injudicious publication. I am willing to allow the errors are all upon the surface, and accompanied with many compensating qualities. The Journal was well enough to write, but by no means to publish without much pruning and softening.

  Read Mrs. Butler’s Diary [“Journal”]: it is much better than the reviews and papers will allow it to be: what is called vulgarity is useful and natural contempt for the exclusive and superfine.

  The great merit of the work [“A Year of Consolation”] consists in the admirable descriptions of scenery and nature which it contains. Her sense of beauty—of the beauty of color especially—is very keen; and in conveying impressions to her reader she uses language with uncommon skill. A single expression, or even word, dashed with an apparently careless hand upon the canvas, produces a fine effect.

  Her various books, springing in every case but two or three straight from the real, from experience, personal and natural, humorous and eloquent, interesting as her character and life were interesting, have all her irrepressible spirit, or if the word be admissible, her spiritedness. The term is not a critical one, but the geniality (in the German sense) of her temperament makes everything she wrote what is called good reading. She wrote exactly as she talked, observing, asserting, complaining, confiding, contradicting, crying out and bounding off, always effectually communicating. Last not least, she uttered with her pen as well as with her lips the most agreeable, uncontemporary, self-respecting English, as idiomatic as possible and just as little common.

  When we review Fanny Kemble’s achievements, her acting, her reading, her writing, her personal influence, we must accord her genius. As to her writings, her Journal is sometimes saucy, as written by a young girl who had gone forth from home for the first time, but how graphic her pictures of places and people, how sparkling with wit and full of feeling, with a sad undertone, for an early disappointment had already shaded her young days; her Poems, written for the most part after joy and hope had vanished, so charged with anguish; her Year of Consolation, breathing the atmosphere of Italy, and imparting the refreshment and fitful happiness she enjoyed; her Residence on a Georgian Plantation, as pathetic and cruel as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and fateful to her, haunted by the sin of such possession; her Notes upon some of Shakespeare’s plays and upon the stage, so discriminating, especially her remarks upon the Dramatic and Theatrical. But the most valuable of all her writings are the Records of her Girlhood and of her Later Life; for these, beginning with a reminiscence of her earliest years, are soon succeeded by what is much more reliable, a record, not reverting to, but running along with, her life from day to day, incidentally revealed by letters to her dearest friend, communicating events and outpouring her inmost thoughts and feelings.

  Mrs. Kemble’s vivid impress upon society and the stage during the century just gone out does not need recall. Englishwoman to the heart’s core, her lot was cast in America at a period when its crudities overwhelmed her sensitive spirit with distaste. Her journal of “Life on a Georgian Plantation” dropped vitriol upon the then festering sore of the slave question in the South. But her two volumes of reminiscences of her own life are among the most readable and agreeable of their class. She won fame upon the stage in England and America, returning to it after an interval of married life. Her charm as a reader of Shakespeare’s plays is recalled with enthusiasm by those fortunate enough to have heard her. When she died several years ago in London, that bounding vitality and originality of hers, cloaked and masked in the lendings of old age and feebleness, must have seemed to lookers-on but another part she had assumed, to be cast aside at the curtain’s call with a mock at the apparent submission of her powers to decay.