“Dreadful Unquietness:” Fanny Kemble Hated Celebrity Life

Fanny Kemble (1809-1893)

Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

In May of 1835, British actor Fanny Kemble experienced both the high and low of celebrity. In Philadelphia on the day her long-awaited book about her tour in the United States became available, excited fans rushed print shops and crowded on street corners to hear Kemble’s words read out loud. They became annoyed, however, as they heard her declare American shopkeepers too familiar and horses ill-trained. Reviewers quickly criticized the book in print and a parody called My Conscience! ridiculed Kemble as spoiled. She immediately went from beloved artist to ungrateful sham. As the New York Courier put it, Kemble “acquired a reputation for talents she never possessed and an eccentricity of character she only apes.”

Parodies of Fanny Kemble 

Top: title page from My Conscience!

Bottom: image and poem by James Akin, courtesy of the Library of Congress

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Kemble squandered an amazing outpouring of goodwill for her talents by publishing this frank assessment of the United States. Fans in cities all up the Atlantic Coast went wild for her in the early 1830s. They sold out her shows and showered her with flowers. Young women copied her fashion choices and curled their hair in ringlets like she did. Anna Quincy attended five of her performances in Boston, crying profusely at all of them. She wrote in her diary after the last one: “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. . . . So farewell, Fanny Kemble, I thank you for the pleasure and the pain you have given me. You will be long remembered.”

Fanny Kemble with ringlets

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

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Kemble affected men also. Admirers named race horses and tulips in her honor. They mooned after her and wrote her love notes. She admitted in her journal that these she had “treasured up as specimens of the purely funny in composition, but which began to take up too much room” so she destroyed them. Robert E. Lee, while a West Point cadet, found her irresistible. Lawyer Ralph Lockwood wrote a novel just so he could dedicate it to her, asking in return only for the opportunity to kiss her hand.

Kemble, however, just wanted to be left alone. She complained to a friend in 1833 of the “dreadful unquietness” of her life as a celebrity. She preferred the solitude of a scholar but she belonged to a great English family dynasty of theater people. She was destined for the stage. Kemble debuted in 1829 in London with no formal training and only a few weeks preparation; she was nineteen years old. Her family was in economic trouble and they hoped she would provide a spark of young talent. It worked. Kemble and her father set out in 1832 to conquer America and secure the family fortune. Peabody’s Parlour Journal out of New York City explained in 1834 just how successful the venture had been:

“Such is the brief but bright history of a young lady, who, though now only in her twenty-second year, has acquired a lustre of enduring reputation of which we have no example in the annals of her sex; difficult as it is to estimate how much of the subtle essence of immortal fame, Time the great arbiter of destiny, will distill over, from mere passing popularity. Yet a glance at the causes of Miss Kemble’s celebrity, will enable us at once to see, that it is superior to the ordinary influence of fluctuating notoriety, and in its very nature must flourish in undecaying strength.”

Parody of Kemble on her morning ride.

Peabody’s Parlour Journal, Jan. 18, 1834

Kemble, however, did not want celebrity. She left the stage at the height of her popularity to marry a rich American fan. She saw marriage as an escape from work she had quickly grown to despise and that interfered with her writing. Her husband, Pierce Butler, owned enslaved people and the pair fought about this and other matters; they divorced in 1849. Kemble returned to the stage for dramatic readings of Shakespeare, needing money on which to live. She also published a dozen popular works of literature and memoir, most famously a Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation. She retained fame most of her life with newspapers reporting on her activities. She never again, however, experienced the frenzy of the early 1830s and she liked it that way.

Sources

Butler, Frances Anne [Fanny Kemble]. Journal. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1835.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Journal/TpurbS1BbvgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=fanny+kemble+journal&printsec=frontcover
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Dec_1_1832_July_17_1833/oqoMAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=fanny+kemble+journal+%22volume+2%22&printsec=frontcover

David, Deidre. Fanny Kemble: A Performed Life. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

“Fanny Kemble’s Book.” Virginia Free Press, May 21, 1835, 2 [reprint from New York Courier]. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026784/1835-05-21/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=1832&sort=date&rows=20&words=Fanny+Kemble&searchType=basic&sequence=0&index=14&state=&date2=1835&proxtext=%22fanny+Kemble%22&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=3

Howe, Marc A. DeWolfe. “Young Fanny Kemble as Seen in an Old Diary.” Atlantic Monthly 174 (December 1944): 97-102.

Jenkins, Rebecca. Fanny Kemble: A Reluctant Celebrity. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005.

“Memoir of the Dramatic Life of Miss Fanny Kemble” Peabody’s Parlour Journal, January 18, 1834, 1-2; Feb. 1, 1834, 3; Feb. 15, 1834, 3. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044092842210&view=1up&seq=55&size=125

My Conscience!: Fanny Thimble Cutler’s Journal of a Residence in America. Philadelphia: Alexander Turnbull, 1835. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t9d50x81z&view=1up&seq=9

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