Young Fanny Kemble: As Seen in an Old Diary

by M. A. DEWOLFE HOWE

1

ALL manner of things may be learned from old diaries — not only matters of definite record, but odds and ends of miscellaneous lore. A single instance, possibly not at all surprising to others but certainly so to me, has come to light in a manuscript journal of the year 1833, in which I have found passages of considerable interest. The young woman who wrote it was obviously a person of intelligence and cultivation. She made frequent references to a house on Chestnut Street in Boston, and she invariably spelled Chestnut Chesnut.

To identify the inhabitants of the house, I looked at a Boston Directory of 1833. There I found Chesnut and no other spelling for the name of the street. How about maps of the time? Still Chesnut. How about Philadelphia? Again an old map, and again Chesnut. Then to the Oxford English Dictionary, and behold! until about 1820 Chesnut was the accepted spelling. From that abundant source I learned also that Dr. Johnson had slipped the t into an alternative spelling of the word in his Dictionary. For all this lore, I have the old diary to thank.

That document led me also to look into Boston newspapers for April and May, 1833. Some of the yellowed pages of manuscript had to do with Fanny Kemble, fresh from those triumphs on the London stage which had averted the bankruptcy of her father’s Covent Garden Theatre. The Boston engagement was but one brief episode in the long theatrical life of Charles Kemble, For his daughter Fanny it fell within the fourth of the five years on the stage ended by her ill-starred marriage with Pierce Butler, of Philadelphia and Georgia. She hated the profession of an actress. “Horror, horror,” she wrote in her American journal, “how I do loathe my most impotent and unpoetical craft!” Under the spur of necessity she did indeed recur to it in England for a fraction of the forties before discovering, even before her divorce, that she could employ her great talents, both enjoyably and profitably, in the “Shakespearean Readings” with which for some twenty years she delighted an enthusiastic public on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Boston newspapers, from which I have strayed for a moment, proved an unrewarding quarry. There was hardly an approach to theatrical criticism. The Advertiser and Patriot went so far on April 17, 1833, as to say of Charles Kemble’s appearance in Hamlet, “His acting is chaste and dignified, and made a strong impression on his audience. Last evening,” it went on to say, “Miss Kemble appeared in the character of Bianca in the Tragedy of Fazio, and was enthusiastically received by a very crowded house. Mr. Kemble sustained that of Fazio with much power.”

It fell to a correspondent of the Advertiser, signing himself A.Z., in communications early in the Kembles’ engagement, to display the qualities of a dramatic critic. “Their visit to this city,” he wrote, “I consider as a public advantage. It temporarily redeems one of the amusements of the people from its ordinary degradation, and shows to those who have the direction of it, and to the public, what the stage might be and ought to be — what it would be, whenever the patronage of this opulent and enlightened metropolis is judiciously and liberally directed to the object.”

Another journal of “this opulent and enlightened metropolis,” the infant Transcript, merely reprinted from the London Athenœum two stanzas of Tom Hood’s amusing rhymes on his experience at Fanny Kemble’s farewell performance at Co vent Garden, before this American tour, when she threw a bouquet into the audience and Hood, poor fellow, after a struggle involving serious injury to his clothes and person, secured only a Bachelor’s Button.

Perhaps the papers of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, where the Kembles had appeared before visiting Boston, rose more adequately to the occasion. Perhaps there were local counterparts of the Boston announcement that in view of the demand for boxes at the Tremont Theatre, and in order to circumvent the speculators who were buying them up for reselling, the management offered one half of them at auction. This offer does not appear to have led to wild extravagance, since the Advertiser of May 10 announced that “the highest premium paid yesterday for boxes at the Tremont Theatre was six dollars — total $46.” From Fanny Kemble’s own journal during her stay in Boston — at the Tremont House directly opposite the Tremont Theatre — we learn of the pleasure she took in looking from her window at the line of ticket purchasers crowding the approach to the box office. Such were the pushing and jostling, she delighted to learn, that some of those in the turbulent line smeared their clothes with molasses, sugar, and the like to keep others, in decent raiment, at a safe distance.

From the Transcript on the day of the Kembles’ leaving Boston, May 18, one learns of another crowd assembled early outside the Tremont House, to wave farewell and pelt with flowers the departing favorite. All they saw was her father with a friend or two, mounting a coach heavily laden with baggage. Later they were to learn that Fanny had slipped away in a private carriage drawn by two horses. It was a grievous disappointment, especially to a large number of excited girls. “Every young girl, who could,” wrote Colonel Henry Lee when Fanny Kemble died sixty years later, “sported Fanny Kemble curls. To be thought to look like Fanny Kemble was their aspiration.”

It was by no means only the young girls who fell under the spell of Fanny Kemble — herself only twenty-four in 1833. The romantic story of the saving of her father’s fortune had preceded her, and wffien she came, in all the vitality of intelligence and passion, and all the charm that her inherited and other associations in London could add to her native graces, it is no wonder that a society not completely removed from colonialism, nor grown into a sophistication that was yet to come, should have taken her to its heart.

Fanny Kemble’s appeal was to young and old alike. Students of the Harvard Law School saved all their money to spend it on her performances. Again there is the testimony of Colonel Lee: “As for us Harvard students, we all went mad. So long as funds held out, there was a procession of us hurrying breathless over the road to Boston, as the evening shades came on; then a waiting in the narrow entrance alley, packed like sardines in a box, until at last we were borne along, with peril to flesh and raiment, into the pit, where we sat on the unbacked benches, absorbed, scarce knowing when and where we were, and regardless of our sometimes sansculotte condition.”

When Judge Story, the great Harvard teacher of law, was asked how he reconciled his Puritanism with his admiration for this actress, he replied, “I don’t try to. I only thank God that I’m alive in the same era with such a woman.”

2

Now at last for the manuscript diary to which I referred at the beginning of these discursive remarks. It was kept from March 12 to August 21 of 1833 by the youngest daughter of President Josiah Quincy of Harvard, Anna Cabot Lowell Quincy, so named for an intimate friend of her mother. In 1840, about the age of thirty, she became Mrs. Robert C. Waterston. At the time of these entries she was a girl not far beyond twenty, with gifts that expressed themselves later in verse and devoted friendships. The keeping of diaries was very much a family habit. This one was undertaken for the purpose of keeping her older sisters Margaret (Mrs. D. B. Greene) and Abigail informed about domestic happenings during their absence on a long journey to the South.

The very first, page sets the tone of the journal and states its object: —

“The last image of you, my dear Margy, which is left upon my imagination was the broad disk of your prodigious black cloak, as you scrambled into that vast and uncertain region called the inside of a stage coach, and even that vision was soon shrouded from my aching sight, and the last wheel of your equipage as it departed rolled methought merryly away, one good omen at least for your journey. Like the uncertainty of what is before you does the vacant pages of my journal book glare in my face, and as little do those who go as those who stay know what is to come, but as I do not mean to sentimentalize I will leave the future to the fates and in recording each passing hour, either sad or gay, leave at least some remembrance of what has occurred during the time you are far awa’. After your departure we ‘packed up our tatters,’ not, thank fortune, to follow a drum, but. to be driven by a Major [family coachman], and soon after bidding adieu for the last time to Chesnut [sic, as throughout the journal] Street . . . fled back to the classic shades.”

These, for the diarist’s family, were then the surroundings of Wadsworth House in Cambridge. Professors and students, ladies of Cambridge, President Jackson rising from a sickbed to take his honorary degree at Harvard, Edward Trelawney shedding his Byronic light through report from Saratoga — these and others drift in and out of the story, touching on many social and academic events of the time. No single topic recurs more frequently than the excitement produced by the appearance of Fanny Kemble and her father at the Tremont Theatre in Boston, and here no other topic will figure.

It would be tedious, even if it were possible, to identify every person incidentally mentioned in the narrative. Suffice it to say that two older sisters of the diarist, Susan and Sophia, were at home, that 50 “Chesnut” Street was the Boston house of her sister Mrs. Greene, in which her brother Edmund was living before his marriage, later in the year, with Lucilla Parker, and that her brother Josiah was already married to Mary Jane Miller — two matrimonial items accounting for the names of Parker and Miller in the narrative that follows.

Here are the Kemble portions of the diary: —

TUESDAY,April 17th. [Miswritten for 16th]
Sophia and I went into town. Went first to Mrs. Parker’s. Found that they had been the evening before to see Kemble in Hamlet — Miss K’s first appearance was to be this evening, and I “was wild” to see her. Everything, of course, in true Star confusion about the tickets, all things uncertain, but if possible determined to go to the Theatre first and then to a party at Mrs. Harry Otis’ [Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis]. Sophia waited in town in hopes of finding Papa arrived, but no stages came in and there the hapless child remained all day in hat and cloak, a victim to uncertainties. As the day wore on and nothing was heard of the tickets, I began to give up all hopes of them. However, thought I would dress for Mrs. Otis’ before Sophia went out of town, and lucky it was I did so, for just as I was ready, and at nearly half past six, Josiah flew in and said he had three tickets in No. 5. This was delightful and at a little before seven, Susan, Josiah and I drove to the Theatre.
We wore just in time and found excellent seats. The play was “Fazio” or “The Italian Wife,” a tragedy of the deepest kind with much stage effect, though miserably written. . . .
[The play of Fazio, published in 1815, was an early production of H. H. Milman, still pursuing his studies at Oxford. It does not relate itself at all obviously to his later work as the historian of Jews and Early Christians, the biographer of Gibbon, and the Dean of St. Paul’s.]
The play was one admirably calculated to show off Miss Kemble, who entirely equalled, indeed passed my expectations. Her grace, the expression of her countenance, her shrieks, her starts, are admirable. Her voice has rather too much stage tone, but there are tones of it which went to my heart. Her great power, however, is in her attitudes and her expression — and her laugh of agony and insanity was truly horrific. The moment which I think produced most effect on the house, was at the moment when Fazio is to be led off to execution in the prison. She has just been imploring the Jailor to delay a few moments, in the most passionate manner, when the bell tolls, the sound of which seemed to turn her into marble. She stood rivetted to the spot — her eyes fixed, her cheek pale and ashen. Fazio embraces her but she is entirely insensible of it, and he is led off the stage leaving her the solitary figure. She stood, I should think, five moments — a perfect statue — and the deathlike stillness that reigned over the crowded audience, every person seeming to hold their breath, was very striking. “She stood the bloodless image of despair” until the bell tolled again. At that sound the full sense of her wretchedness seemed to rush upon her mind — and nearly to destroy it. She gave a start, which everyone seemed to feel, and with one of her thrilling screams of agony, rushed from the stage.
It was a most tremendous affair altogether, and although I did my best to hold up my head like a person of fashion and to conceal my tender feelings, it was in vain, and the more I tried the more I cried. Miss Hodgkinson, who sat next to me, was even more overset. She is quite intimate with Miss Kemble, having come out in the same ship with her from England, — it was the first time, however, that she had ever seen her on the stage, and if it had been her own sister she could not have seemed more deeply interested in her. Then the curtain fell. Miss H. and I turned our weeping glance on each other, and neither could resist a smile at the idea of our being fit to be seen at Mrs. Otis’. However, as Bianca herself was to be there, we determined to go. Exchanging a few half smot hered expressions of our “tearful joy,”we prepared to leave the box.
John God man came to the box door, and gave his arm to the weeping fair one,— I was almost ashamed that he or anyone should see how much I was affected, and did my best to stop my tears, which however were flowing in full force when we stopt at Mrs. Otis’ door. We remained in the take off room until I looked rather less frightful, but I fear did not shine that evening. Susan and I then descended, Josiah being with us, found the room filled with the usual variety of an Otis party, Miss Kemble, of course, the universal topic. Talked to Lieut. Sawyer, Mr. Miers, Mr. —— [name illegible] etc., etc., but remember nothing worth repeating — went into the other room with Mr. Sawyer. Talked to that wiseacre Mr. Church.
Mr. Church introduced some friend to me, a handsome, but uninteresting youth, but if your future happiness depends upon knowing his name, I fear in my heart it is blighted, for, like Betty Williams, I only know it began with a B. but whether a humble B. or a honey B. I know not. With Mr. B. I went back into the other room and found that Miss Kemble had arrived. I however could not then catch a glimpse of her, the crowd round her being dense — not over civil it appeared to me, for tho’ accustomed to be the object of general attention, it must be a very different thing being stared at in a private party where she appears as a young Lady, and when on the stage. She was sitting down in a window close to the door where she entered, appearing extremely modest and unassuming, and I could hardly believe that this delicate, gentle, subdued, shadowy creature, was the Bianca who had been exhibiting such power, and who had made me feel so much. Mr. Kemble is a fine looking man, very much of a gentleman and very little of the actor about him. Miss Kemble drops the character of Actress entirely, and tho’ doubtless her manner in company is one of her fine pieces of acting, still she chooses her part well, and plays it with good effect. Towards the end of the evening when there was hardly anyone near her, I went up to speak to Miss Hodgkinson, who was standing by her. She introduced me to Miss Kemble, as I wanted to see her and was not up to staring without speaking. We exchanged a few commonplaces, but her voice was so low that I could hardly hear a word she said. She is not handsome off the stage. She has very fine eyes, with very black eyelashes and eyebrows, and fine teeth. Her complexion is coarse and her other features not remarkable. Her head is well shaped and hair dressed like Mrs. Cobb’s who, by the way, I think she resembles a little. She appeared like any other young lady, but had a very intelligent expression when she spoke. We were very glad to have an opportunity of seeing her off the stage, and were very agreeably impressed. Soon after this took leave, John Codman went to the carriage with me and I was glad to show him that I could “wipe away my tears,” The party was quite a pleasant one, but I had been so wrought up by the play, that I could hardly come down to the commonplaces of a party and beaux and nonsense. Returned to Chesnut St.

WEDNESDAY, April 18th. [Miswritten for 17th] . . .
Seven o’clock again found us in No. Five, at the Theatre. Mary Jane, Josiah, Lucilla, Miss Tidmarsh, Sophia, Edmund and myself. House again crowded and fashionable. Soon after the play began, Mary Jane discovered to her horror that she had forgotten her pocket handkerchief, and of all articles, a handkerchief is the most necessary in beholding “The Stranger.” What was to be done? To wipe away the tears of tragedy with a pair of gloves was indeed dreadful. I offered half of mine, well knowing that I should need it all, but of course she could not take it, and Josiah’s silk one was almost as unsentimental as the gloves. In this dilemma, I applied to the other ladies, and found to our satisfaction that the provident Sophia had brought two, remembering Douglas. [Remembered now, if at all, by “My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills,”] This was a relief, and all went on. You, I believe, saw Macready in “The Stranger” and will remember that is really heart-rending. [Macready had visited Boston in 1827.]
Mr. Kemble performed the Stranger very well. The other characters were very well supported and Mrs. Haller, particularly in the last scenes, was admirable, and so touching was it that it drew “iron tears” down the cheeks even of the men in the pit. Many of the gentlemen wept, and those who did not were as pale as ashes. I need say nothing about the Ladies — they were nearly dissolved. I never saw a house more universally affected, through the vain attempts to disguise it, by ominous snuffling and applications of white handkerchiefs. The last scene was really too much, — where the Stranger forgives, but forever parts with Mrs. Haller. Their children arc brought in, and her shriek of agony at the sight of them was realty electric. Then she falls prostrate at her husband’s feet, and the curtain drops. The handkerchiefs were then doubly useful, and the tears we shed were almost more than ought to be wasted on imaginary sorrows.
Mary Jane and I were utterly deprived even of the power of speaking, and only exchanged a weeping glance at each other. Mr. Chaplain appeared at the box door, but not even Mr. Chaplain could check the briny tears, and for my life I could not speak a word in reply to his inquiries as to how I was pleased and, seeing my forlorn state of mind, he politely desisted from talking, and gave me his arm to support my trembling steps. Edmund had the other ladies under his protection, and when we reached the door, he consigned the four weeping damsels to Mr. Chaplain’s care while he went to find the carriage, tho’ in the agitation of the moment, Edmund entirely forgot. Mr. C.’s name and with various wavings of the hand and repetitions of Mr. was obliged to leave it unremembered. We were at last safely deposited in the carriage . . . and sped out to Cambridge. We of course had been much delighted with the evening.

3

TUESDAY, April 23rd.
Morn’g. Received Abby’s letter from Charlotte, with which we were greatly amused. In the afternoon Sophia and I went to town. In the evening went to a party at Mrs. T. W. Ward’s for Miss Kemble. It was a very handsome party indeed. Carpet up in one room, very good music, but a dreadful dearth of beaux. Miss Kemble looked remarkably handsome — there is something exceedingly striking in her face, it is one of those that haunt you after you have seen it like some Sibyl or enchantress. I do not know whether it is an agreeable expression, but nothing can be finer than her large black eyes, or more expressive than her flexible mouth. Her frame is very muscular and seems made to express the strongest emotions. She is grace personified and her dancing was perfection, uniting great skill and animation with perfect grace and ladylike deportment. She is indeed a creature gifted most highly, and I should think deserved what has been said of her, that “she is the most remarkable woman of the age.” Mr. Kemble was very much fatigued by the part he had been performing, and they staid but a very short time, which was not over and above civil — considering the party was made for her. We passed quite an amusing evening.

FRIDAY, 26th.
Mama and Sophia paid visits. In the evening Mama, Sophia and I went in to the Theatre, Edmund and Mrs. Parker with us. The play was Fazio, which I had seen before, but was even more struck by Miss Kemble’s wonderful powers than at its first representation — perhaps from knowing the story I was not as much interested, and therefore could attend more entirely to her astonishing force, grace, and expression. Mr. Kemble has injured himself by some accident and was quite lame, which I regretted on Mama’s account, as he is as graceful as his daughter. The house was very full and fashionable and all universally touched or rather impressed, for there is nothing of the same kind of touching scenes as in the “Stranger.” It was astonishing, “grand magnifique,” but did not go to the heart like Mrs. Haller. Came out to Cambridge by moonlight and passed an agreeable evening.

MONDAY, 29th.
Morning Mr. Wells called — very agreeable indeed. Evening Sophia and I went to town to a party at Mrs. Crowninshield’s. House extremely elegant, the most so, I think, of any house in Boston. It was a supper party and every thing in the highest style — all the ladies and gentlemen very fashionable. Talked a long time to Tom Dwight, then to Mr. Hooper, John Codman, Mr. B. Crowninshield, with whom I went into the other room, there found Miss Kemble and her father. Miss K. looked very well, not as handsome as I have seen her, elegantly dressed. She had just come from acting Mrs. Beverly in the “Gamester,” and consequently somewhat fatigued. . . .
Went in to supper with Mr. Crowninshield — very superb. After supper talked to Mr. Church, who was as silly as usual, then to Mr. Chaplain who seemed in such a bewildered state of mind that I hardly knew what to make of it, but set it down as “another mystery.” . . . The handsome Silsbee next approached and we took two or three turns around the apartments, and soon after took leave. It was quite a pleasant evening. Sophia went out of town, but I stayed as I wanted to go to the Fair Exhibition the next day.
[The Fair described in the journal of the next day was held in Faneuil Hall, for t he benefit of the Perkins Institution for the Blind. There is no intimation that Fanny Kemble attended it; yet it would be a pity to lose a concluding bit of the narrative, in which a certain flavor of the time is preserved: “The gentlemen then walked home with us and truly Mr. Storer had somewhat of a tramp of it from Faneuil Hall to 50 Chesnut Street. The wind was a perfect gale, and the robes of the fair ones were elevated nearly to their heads. Mr. Storer endeavored to hold mine down, but we at last left them to their fate. Notwithstanding this little contretemps, we had a very pleasant walk.”]

TUESDAY, April 30th.
. . . After dinner took a nap, and after a short visit to Louisa, at Mr. Hubbard’s, went to Mr. Parker’s to accompany Lucilla and Edmund to the Theatre to see the Kembles in “Much Ado about Nothing.” Found E. Grant in the parlour — had a few strains of sentiment. After tea Edmund, Lucilla, Miss Tidmarsh and myself walked to the Theatre. Arrived quite early, had quite a good box. Before the play began Mr. Chaplain came round and favored with a few words, tho’ by the way he almost frightened me out of my wits. I had just seen him on the opposite side of the house, gazing in an absent manner thro’ a box door, and before I could have t hought it possible he could have turned round, he spoke directly in my ear, causing me to jump in an unbecoming manner. A horde of fierce barbarians soon after rushed into the next box, displacing Mr. Chaplain, and leaving me to my meditations. . . .
The play now commenced and we were extremely delighted with Mr. Kemble’s Benedict. He was perfect — I cannot imagine anything better, such a perfectly gentlemanly and characteristic performance, so delicate and yet so playful and spirited. The change from Benedict the determined bachelor to “Benedict the married man” was admirable, sustained by every look and motion. Miss Kemble as Beatrice was spirited, but is affected, I think, in Comedy, which is certainly not her forte. She looked very handsome, most elegantly dressed. There is a great deal that is very disagreeable in the play, but still I can never regret having seen the inimitable Benedict.
Our comfort, too, was somewhat disturbed by our next neighbors, the next box being partly filled by a parly of half sort of gentlemen, who had been dining together and who had apparently “passed the genial bowl” more freely than soberly. They were fortunately too much stupefied to be noisy, but were very disagreeable. We staid to the after piece which was very good, “Raising the Wind” in which Barrett acted Jeremy Diddler extremely well. The Theatre, however, struck me this evening as more disagreeable than in any of our late frequent visits to it. Something, perhaps, must be allowed for the impression of our next neighbors, the less fashionable aspect of the audience, and the disagreeableness of the scenes in parts of the play, but still, it is certainly, even at the best, no fit place for “an elegant female.”

MONDAY,May 13th.
. . . Evening Susan and I went in to town to go to see Miss Kemble, in Julia. (The Hunchback) [Here indeed was a novelty — a play by Sheridan Knowles acted for the first time in London only the year before.] Went first to Mrs. Miller’s, had an interview with Mrs. Russell and Louisa. . . . Edmund joined us and at seven proceeded to the Theatre. Were in No. 3, an excellent box. House full but very unfashionable. The play entirely depends upon the performance of Julia, and she did it admirably. She looked exceedingly handsome dressed as usual most magnificently. Kemble had contrived to make himself look like a perfect fright. He acted the part of Clifford (Julia’s lover) and looked about old enough to be her grandfather. He was most unbecomingly attired, with long corkscrew ringlets hanging over his face. He has really nothing to say, in his part, and I should hardly have known him. Smith, as Hunchback, did tolerably, but all the weight of the play fell on Julia. She acted admirably, the celebrated “do it” was pronounced in a voice which almost made the audience start, and the tone in which she uttered the other celebrated sentence, “Clifford, why don’t you speak to me?” was one of her finest expressions. With all this, she was very little applauded, and there was but one round of applause given to her the whole evening. She seemed excessively exhausted before it was over, and I really felt provoked at the audience for not exerting themselves more. As the curtain fell, I mentally took a final adieu of the fair magician, who certainly has exercised some power over our minds, and certainly during her performances, over our feelings.
There is nothing in the world more beautiful, more striking, than such a gifted, graceful woman, yet while we feel proud of her powers, we cannot but regret to see them only employed in acting; however, if she is satisfied, we have no reason 1o wish it otherwise. So farewell, Fanny Kemble, I thank you for the pleasure and the pain you have given me. You will be long remembered. . . .

In point of time, though not of source, there is an entry in another diary, recording a singular coincidence of the feeling that acting, after all, left much to be desired. This other diary, published long ago, was written by Fanny Kemble herself. On April 15, 1833, the very day of Charles Kemble’s first appearance in Boston, in the part of Hamlet, his daughter, sitting in the Tremont House, looking out on the gravestones of the Granary Burying Ground, wrote in her journal: —

“My father’s Hamlet is very beautiful. ‘Tis curious that when I see him act I have none of the absolute feeling of contempt for the profession that I have while acting myself. What he does appears indeed like the work of an artist; and t hough I always lament that he loves it as he does and has devoted so much care and labor to it as he has, yet I certainly respect acting more while I am seeing him act than at any other time. Yet surely, after all, acting is nonsense, and as I sit here opposite the churchyard, it seems to me strange that when I come down into that darkness, I shall have eaten bread, during my life, earned by such means.”

Had Anna Quincy only known what Fanny Kemble was writing on the very day before she first saw her on the stage, she would hardly have added to her reservations upon the profession of acting, “However, if she is satisfied, we have no reason to wish it otherwise.”