Fanny Kemble - The Reluctant Celebrity
Fanny Kemble - A Reluctant Celebrity - short-listed for the 2005 Theatre Book Prize.
In autumn 1829, Charles Kemble, the actor-manager of Covent Garden Theatre in London’s West End faced bankruptcy. With a couple of week’s training, his nineteen year old daughter, Fanny, was thrust on stage as Shakespeare’s Juliet. Overnight she became a star.
 Fanny Kemble as Juliet with Mrs.Davenport as Nurse in Charles Kemble’s 1829 production of Romeo and Juliet. |
 Picture of Covent Garden in the early 19th century |
Performing together, Fanny and her father, Charles Kemble, became two of the world’s first “reality” celebrities, their family roles fascinating their audiences as much as those they played on stage. Before Victoria was Queen and when the Republic of the United States was barely half a century old, fans collected Fanny’s picture, mimicked her hair-styles and followed details of her personal life in the columns of newspapers from Edinburgh to Baltimore and London to New York.
In her first season Fanny Kemble was so popular at Covent Garden that the managers of one of the rival theatres, London’s Adelphi, were forced to take action. They hired Mademoiselle d’Gelk, the celebrated acting elephant. Mademoiselle d’Gelk proved a great success too. The Lord Provost of Edinburgh reported that the elephant “was nearly able to perform the parts of all the comic actors of the Adelphi theatre”. And through the spring of 1830 Mademoiselle d’Gelk and Miss Kemble “shared the town between them – each being the greatest in her line”.
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John Mitchell Kemble - Fanny Kemble’s elder brother who was a member of a group known as the “Apostles” at Cambridge and introduced her to Alfred Tennyson, Arthur Hallam and William Makepeace Thackeray. |
Young Fanny discovered Romanticism in the company of her elder brother, John Mitchell’s friends, who were students together at Cambridge University. The group included the future grand poet of the Victorian era, Alfred Tennyson. (Fanny was much taken with Tennyson’s dear companion, Arthur Hallam, for whom the poet wrote In Memoriam.) Concerned by the “fakery” of acting emotions, in their company young Fanny resolved to live her life with romantic sincerity.
Fanny’s celebrity gave her access to many of the great events of the day. She was a guest at the public debut of The Rocket at the opening of the Liverpool to Manchester Railway on Wednesday, 15th September, 1830. A VIP passenger on that historic journey, she witnessed the accident in which the Trade Minister, Huskisson, was hit by a passing engine and later died of his injuries.
While touring America in 1832 the young actress met writers, politicians and the President Andrew Jackson. In the midst of it all she fell in love with the wealthy Pierce Butler from Philadelphia. After a whirlwind courtship the pair married and she left the stage.
 Pierce Butler - a man whose reported beauty among his contemporaries seems to have escaped the artist. He was also rather rich. |
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A young wife in a strange land, Fanny Kemble Butler was shocked to discover that her new husband’s family money came from slave-worked rice plantations in Georgia.
When Pierce inherited the family’s Southern holdings in winter 1838, Fanny insisted on joining the inspection tour. Faced with the reality of slavery, Fanny Kemble’s code of Romantic sincerity was put to the ultimate test as she found herself forced to choose between romantic love and her sense of human justice.
If you would like to read an extract of the book. Click here to open a PDF file in a new window (2.3Mb).
