Records of a Girlhood

My mother bids me say that you certainly will suppose she is mad, or else Mother Hubbard's dog; for when you called she was literally ill in bed, and this evening she cannot have the pleasure of receiving you, because she is engaged out, here in our own neighborhood, to a very quiet tea. She bids me thank you very much for the kindness of your proposed visit, and express her regret at not being able to avail herself of it. If you can come on Thursday, between one and two o'clock, I shall be most happy to see you. Thank you very much for Lamb's "Dramatic Specimens;" I read the scene you had copied from "Philaster" directly; how fine it is! how I should like to act it! Mr. Harness has sent me the first volume of the family edition of the "Old Plays." I think sweeping those fine dramas clean is a good work that cannot be enough commended. What treasures we possess and make no use of, while we go on acting "Gamesters" and "Grecian Daughters," and such poor stuff! But I have no time for ecstasies or exclamations. Yours ever most truly,

    F. A. Kemble.

I have said that hardly any new part was ever assigned to me that I did not receive with a rueful sense of inability to what I called "do anything with it." Julia in "The Hunchback," and Camiola in "The Maid of Honor," were among the few exceptions to this preparatory attack of despondency; but those I in some sort choose myself, and all my other characters were appointed me by the management, in obedience to whose dictates, and with the hope of serving the interests of the theater, I suppose I should have acted Harlequin if I had been ordered to do so.

Lady Teazle and Mrs. Oakley were certainly no exceptions to this experience of a cold fit of absolute incapacity with which I received every new part appointed me, and my studying of them might have been called lugubrious, whatever my subsequent performance of them may have been. My mother was of invaluable assistance to me in the process, and I owe to her whatever effect I produced in either part. She had great comic as well as pathetic power, and the incisive point of her delivery gave every shade of meaning of the dialogue with admirable truth and pungency; her own performance of Mrs. Oakley had been excellent; I acted it, even with the advantage of her teaching, very tamely. Jealousy, in any shape, was not a passion that I sympathized with; the tragic misery of Bianca's passion was, however, a thing I could imagine sufficiently well to represent it; but not so Mrs. Oakley's fantastical frenzies. But the truth is that it was not until many years later and in my readings of Shakespeare that I developed any real comic faculty at all; and I have been amused in the later part of my public career to find comedy often considered my especial gift, rather than the tragic and pathetic one I was supposed at the beginning of it to possess.

The fact is that except in broad farce, where the principal ingredient being humor, animal spirits and a grotesque imagination, which are of no particular age, come strongly into play, comedy appears to me decidedly a more mature and complete result of dramatic training than tragedy. The effect of the latter may, as I myself exemplified, be tolerably achieved by force of natural gifts, aided but little by study; but a fine comedian must be a fine artist; his work is intellectual, and not emotional, and his effects address themselves to the critical judgment and not the passionate sympathy of an audience. Tact, discretion, fine taste, are quite indispensable elements of his performance; he must be really a more complete actor than a great tragedian need be. The expression of passion and emotion appears to be an interpretation of nature, and may be forcibly rendered sometimes with but little beyond the excitement of its imaginary experience on the actor's own sensibility; while a highly educated perfection is requisite for the actor who, in a brilliant and polished representation of the follies of society, produces by fine and delicate and powerful delineations the picture of the vices and ridicules of a highly artificial civilization.

Good company itself is not unapt to be very good acting of high comedy, while tragedy, which underlies all life, if by chance it rises to the smooth surface of polite, social intercourse, agitates and disturbs it and produces even in that uncongenial sphere the rarely heard discord of a natural condition and natural expression of natural feeling.

Of my performance of Mrs. Oakley I have but one recollection, which is that of having once, while acting it with my father, disconcerted him to such a degree as to compel him to turn up the stage in an uncontrollable fit of laughter. I remember the same thing happening once when I was playing Beatrice to his Benedict. I have not the least notion what I did that struck my father with such irrepressible merriment, but I suppose there must have been something in itself irresistibly ludicrous to him, toward whom my manner was habitually respectfully deferential (for our intercourse with our parents, though affectionate, was not familiar, and we seldom addressed them otherwise than as "sir" and "ma'am"), to be pelted by me with the saucy sallies of Beatrice's mischievous wit, or pummeled with the grotesque outbursts of poor Mrs. Oakley's jealous fury.

Our personal relation, which thus rendered our performance of comedy together especially comical to my father, added infinitely to my distress in all tragedies in which we acted together; the sense of his displeasure or the sight of his anguish invariably bringing him, my father, and not the part he was acting, before me; and, as in the play of "The Stranger" and the pathetic little piece of "The Deserter," affecting me with almost uncontrollable emotion.

    Great Russell Street, April 10, 1831.

My dearest H–,

I owe you something like an explanatory note after that ejaculatory one I sent you the other day. You must have thought me crazy; but indeed, since all these late alarming reports from Spain, until the news came of John's safety, I did not know how much fear and anxiety lay under the hope and courage I had endeavored to maintain about him.

From day to day I had read the reports and tried to reason with regard to their probability, and to persuade my mother that we had every cause for hoping the best; and it was really not until that hope was realized that it seemed as if all my mental nerves and muscles, braced to the resistance of calamity, had suddenly relaxed and given way under the relief from all further apprehension of it. I have kept much of my forebodings to myself, but they have been constant and wretched enough, and my gratitude for this termination of them is unspeakable.

I heard last night a report which I have not mentioned to my mother for fear it should prove groundless. Horace Twiss showed me a note in which a gentleman assured him that John had positively taken his passage in a Government vessel, and was now on his way home; even if this is true, I am afraid to tell my mother, because if the vessel should be delayed a day or two by weather or any other cause, her anxiety will have another set of apprehensions to feed upon, and to prey upon her with. She desires her best love to you; she likes your pamphlet on "The Education of the People" very much, at the same time that it has not convinced her that instruction is wholesome for the lower orders; she thinks the dependence of helplessness and ignorance a better security (for them, or for those above them, I wonder?) than the power of reasoning rightly and a sense of duty, in which opinion, as you will believe, I do not agree.

Thank you for your account of your visit to Wroxton Abbey [the seat of the Earl of Guilford]; it interested me very much; trees are not to me, as they seem to be to you, the most striking and beautiful of all natural objects, though I remember feeling a good deal of pain at the cutting down of a particular tree that I was very fond of.

At the entrance of Weybridge was a deserted estate and dilapidated mansion, Portmore Park, once a royal domain, through which the river ran and where we used to go constantly to fish. There was a remarkably beautiful cedar tree whose black boughs spread far over the river, and whose powerful roots, knotted in every variety of twist, formed a cradle from which the water had gradually washed away the earth. Here I used to sit, or rather lie, reading, or writing sometimes, while the others pursued their sport, and enjoying the sound and sight of the sparkling water which ran undermining my bed and singing treacherous lullabies to me the while. For two years this tree was my favorite haunt; the third, on our return to Weybridge from London, on my running to the accustomed spot, I found the hitherto intercepted sun staring down upon the water and the bank, and a broad, smooth, white tabula rasa level with the mossy turf, which was all that remained of my cedar canopy; and though it afforded an infinitely more commodious seat than the twisted roots, I never returned there again.

To-morrow we dine with the F–s, and there is to be a dance in the evening; on Wednesday I act Constance; Thursday there is a charade party at the M–s'; Friday I play Mrs. Beverley; and Monday and Wednesday next, Camiola. I hope by and by to act Camiola very well, but I am afraid the play itself can never become popular; the size of the theater and the public taste of the present day are both against such pieces; still, the attempt seemed to me worth making, and if it should prove successful we might revive one or two more of Massinger's plays; they are such sterling stuff compared with the Isabellas, the Jane Shores, the everything but Shakespeare. You saw in my journal what I think about Camiola. I endeavor as much as I can to soften her, and if I can manage to do so I shall like her better than any part I have played, except my dear Portia, who does not need softening.

I am too busy just now to read "Destiny" [Miss Ferrier's admirable novel]; my new part and dresses and rehearsals will occupy me next week completely. I have taken a new start about "The Star of Seville" [the play I was writing], and am working away hard at it. I begin to see my way through it. I wish I could make anything like an acting play of it; we want one or two new ones so very much.

My riding goes on famously, and Fozzard thinks so well of my progress that the other day he put me upon a man's horse—an Arab—which frightened me half to death with his high spirits and capers; but I sat him, and what is more, rode him. Tuesday we go to a very gay ball a little way out of town; Saturday we go to a party at old Lady Cork's, who calls you Harriet and professes to have known you well and to remember you perfectly.

Now, H–, as to what you say of fishing, if you are bloody-minded enough to desire to kill creatures for sport, in Heaven's name why don't you do it? The sin lies in the inclination (by the bye, I think that's half a mistake). Never mind, your inclination to fish and my desire to be the tigress at the Zoological Gardens have nothing whatever in common. I admire and envy the wild beast's swiftness and strength, but if I had them I don't think I would tear human beings to bits unless I were she, which was not what I wished to be, only as strong and agile as she; do you see? I am in a great hurry, dear, and have written you an inordinately stupid letter; never mind, the next shall be inconceivably amusing. Just now my head is stuffed full of amber-colored cashmere and white satin. My mother begs to be kindly remembered to Mrs. Kemble. Always affectionately yours,

    F. A. K.

My determination to soften the character of Camiola is another indication of my imperfect comprehension of my business as an actress, which was not to reform but to represent certain personages. Massinger's "Maid of Honor" is a stern woman, not without a very positive grain of coarse hardness in her nature. My attempt to soften her was an impertinent endeavor to alter his fine conception to something more in harmony with my own ideal of womanly perfection. I was a very indifferent actress and had not begun to understand my work, nor was Mr. Macready far wrong when, many years after, he spoke to me as "not knowing the rudiments of my profession."

JOURNAL, 1831

Thursday, April 21st.—Walked in the square, and studied Lady Teazle. The trees are thickly clothed with leaves, and the new-mown grass, even in the midst of London, smelt fresh and sweet; I was quite alone in the square, and enjoyed something like a country sensation. I went to Pickersgill, and Mrs. Jameson came while I was sitting to him; that Medora of his is a fine picture, full of poetry. We dined with the Harnesses; Milman and Croly were among the guests (it was a sort of Quarterly Review in the flesh). I like Mr. Milman; not so the other critic.

Friday, 22d.—Visiting with my mother; called on Lady Dacre, who gave me her pretty little piece of "Wednesday Morning," with a view to our doing it for my father's benefit. It is really very pretty, but I fear will look in our large theater as a lady's water-color sketch of a landscape would by way of a scene. I walked in the square in the afternoon, and studied Lady Teazle, which I do not like a bit, and shall act abominably. At the theatre to-night the house was not very full, and the audience were unpleasantly inclined to be political; they took one of the speeches, "The king, God bless him," and applied it with vehement applause to his worthy Majesty, William IV.

Saturday, 23d.—After my riding lesson, went and sat in the library to hear Sheridan Knowles's play of "The Hunchback." Mr. Bartley and my father and mother were his only audience, and he read it himself to us. A real play, with real characters, individuals, human beings, it is a good deal after the fashion of our old playwrights, and does not disgrace its models. I was delighted with it; it is full of life and originality; a little long, but that's a trifle. There is a want of clearness and coherence in the plot, and the comic part has really no necessary connection with the rest of the piece; but none of that will signify much, or, I think, prevent it from succeeding. I like the woman's part exceedingly, but am afraid I shall find it very difficult to act.

After dinner there was a universal discussion as to the possibility and probability of Adorni's self-sacrifice in "The Maid of Honor," and as the female voices were unanimous in their verdict of its truth and likelihood, I hold it to be likely and true, for Dante says we have the "intellect of love," and Cherubino (a very different kind of authority) says the same thing; and I suppose we are better judges of such questions than men. The love of Adorni seems to me, indeed, more like a woman's than a man's, but that does not tell against its verisimilitude. Our love is characterized generally by self-devotion and self-denial, but the qualities which naturally belong to our affection were given to Adorni by his social and conventional position. He was by birth and fortune dependent on and inferior to Camiola, as women are by nature dependent on and inferior to men; and so I think his love for her has something of a feminine quality.

In the evening went with my mother to a party at old Lady Cork's. We started for our assembly within a few minutes of Sunday morning. Such rooms—such ovens! such boxes full of fine folks and foul air! in which we stood and sat, and looked and listened, and talked nonsense and heard it talked, and perspired and smothered and suffocated. On our arrival, as I was going upstairs, I was nearly squeezed flat against the wall by her potent grace, the Duchess of St. Albans. We remained half an hour in the steaming atmosphere of the drawing-rooms, and another half-hour in the freezing hall before the carriage could be brought up; caught a dreadful cold and came home; did not get to bed till two o'clock, with an intolerable face-ache and tooth-ache, the well-earned reward of a well-spent evening.

[The career of the Duchess of St. Albans was, as far as worldly circumstances went, a curious one. As Miss Mellon she was one of my mother's stage contemporaries; a kind-hearted, good-humored, buxom, rather coarse actress, with good looks, and good spirits of a somewhat unrefined sort, which were not without their admirers; among these the old banker, Mr. Coutts, married her, and dying, left her the sole possessor and disposer of his enormous wealth. My mother, who had always remained on friendly though not intimate terms with her old stage-mate, went to see her in the early days of her widowhood, when Mrs. Coutts gave her this moderate estimate of her "money matters:" "Ah, I assure you, dear Mrs. Charles, the reports of what poor, dear Mr. Coutts has left me are very much exaggerated—not, I really believe, more than a few hundred thousand pounds. To be sure" (after a dejected pause), "there's the bank—they say about fifty thousand a year."

This small fortune and inconsiderable income proved sufficient to the moderate desires of the young Duke of St. Albans, who married this destitute widow, who thenceforth took her place (and a large one) in the British aristocracy, and chaperoned the young Ladies Beauclerc, her husband's sisters, in society. She was a good-natured woman, and more than once endeavored to get my father and mother to bring me to her balls and magnificent parties. This, however, they steadily declined, and she, without resenting it, sent her invitations to my youngest brother alone, to whom she took a great fancy, and to whose accepting her civilities no objection was made. At her death she left her great wealth to Mr. Coutts's granddaughter, Miss Burdett Coutts, the lady whose excellent use of her riches has made her known all over the world as one of the most munificently charitable of Fortune's stewards.

The Duchess of St. Albans was not without shrewd sense and some humor, though entirely without education, and her sallies were not always in the best possible taste. Her box at Covent Garden could be approached more conveniently by crossing the stage than by the entrance from the front of the house, and she sometimes availed herself of this easier exit to reach her carriage with less delay. One night when my father had been acting Charles II., the Duchess of St. Albans crossing her old work-ground, the stage, with her two companions, the pretty Ladies Beauclerc, stopped to shake hands with him (he was still in his stage costume, having remained behind the scenes to give some orders), and presenting him to her young ladies, said, "There, my dears; there's your ancestor." I suppose in her earlier day she might not have been a bad representative of their "ancestress."]

Monday, April 25th.—Finished studying Lady Teazle. In the evening at the theater the house was good, but the audience was dull and I was in wretched spirits and played very ill.

Dall was saying that she thought in two years of hard work we might—that is, my father and myself—earn enough to enable us to live in the south of France. This monstrous theater and its monstrous liabilities will banish us all as it did my uncle Kemble. But that I should be sorry to live so far out of the reach of H–, I think the south of France would be a pleasant abode: a delicious climate, a quiet existence, a less artificial state of society and mode of life, a picturesque nature round me, and my own dear ones and my scribbling with me—I think with all these conditions I could be happy enough in the south of France or anywhere.

The audience were very politically inclined, applied all the loyal speeches with fervor, and called for "God save the King" after the play. The town is illuminated, too, and one hopes and prays that the "Old Heart of Oak" will weather these evil days, but sometimes the straining of the tackle and the creaking of the timbers are suggestive of foundering even to the most hopeful. The lords have been vindicating their claim to a share in common humanity by squabbling like fishwives and all but coming to blows; the bishops must have been scared and scandalized, lords spiritual not being fighting men nowadays.

After the play Mr. Stewart Newton, the painter, supped with us—a clever, entertaining man and charming artist; a little bit of a dandy, but probably he finds it politic to be so. He told us some comical anecdotes about the Royal Academy and the hanging of the pictures.

The poor, dear king [William IV.], who it seems knows as much about painting as una vacca spagnuola, lets himself, his family, and family animals be painted by whoever begs to be allowed that honor. So when the pictures were all hung the other day, somebody discovered in a wretched daub close to the ceiling a portrait of Lady Falkland [the king's daughter], and another of his Majesty's favorite cat, which were immediately lowered to a more honorable position, to accomplish which desirable end, Sir William Beechey [then president of the academy] removed some of his own paintings. On a similar occasion during the late King George IV.'s life, a wretched portrait of him having been placed in one of the most conspicuous situations in the room, the Duke of Wellington and sundry other distinguished cognoscenti complimented Sir Thomas Lawrence on it as his; this was rather a bitter pill, and must have been almost too much for Lawrence's courtierly equanimity.

Wednesday, April 27th.—To the riding school, where Miss Cavendish and I discoursed on the stay-at-home sensation, and agreed that it is bad to encourage it too far, as one may narrow one's social circle till at last it resolves itself into one's self.

Wrote to thank Dr. Thackeray [provost of King's College, Cambridge, and father of my life-long friend A– T–] for the Shakespeare he has sent me, and Lady Dacre for her piece of "Wednesday Morning." In the evening they all drove out in the open carriage to see the illuminations; I stayed at home, for the carriage was full and I had no curiosity about the sight. The town is one blaze of rejoicing for the Reform Bill triumph; the streets are thronged with people and choked up with carriages, and the air is flashing and crashing with rockets and squibs and crackers, to the great discomfort of the horses. So many R's everywhere that they may stand for reform, revolution, ruin, just as those who run may choose to read, or according to the interpretation of every individual's politics; the most general acceptation in which they will be taken by the popular understanding will assuredly be row.

Friday, 29th.—Went off to rehearsal without any breakfast, which was horrible! but not so horrible as my performance of Lady Teazle promises to be. If I do the part according to my notion, it will be mere insipidity, and yet all the traditional pokes and pats with the fan and business of the part, as it is called, is so perfectly unnatural to me that I fear I shall execute it with a doleful bad grace. It seems odd that Sir Peter always wears the dress of the last century, while the costume of the rest of the dramatis personæ is quite modern. Indeed, mine is a ball dress of the present day, all white satin and puffs and clouds of white tulle, and garlands and wreaths of white roses and jasmine; it is very anomalous, and makes Lady Teazle of no date, as it were, for her mariners are those of a rustic belle of seventeen hundred and something, and her costume that of a fine lady of the present day in the height of the present fashion, which is absurd.

Mrs. Jameson paid me a long visit; she threatens to write a play; perhaps she might; she is very clever, has a vast fund of information, a good deal of experience, and knowledge and observation of the world and society. She wanted me to have spent the evening with her on the 23d, Shakespeare's birth and death day, an anniversary all English people ought to celebrate. Lady Dacre called, in some tribulation, to say that she had committed herself about her little piece of "Wednesday Morning," and that Lady Salisbury, who wants it for Hatfield, does not like its being brought out on the stage.

Lady Dacre says Lady Salisbury is "afraid of comparisons" (between herself and me, in the part), I think Lady Salisbury, would not like "our play" to be made "common and unclean" by vulgar publicity. In the evening I went to the theater to see a new comedy by a Spaniard. The house was literally empty, which was encouraging to all parties. The piece is slightly constructed in point of plot, but the dialogue is admirably written, and, as the work of a foreigner, perfectly surprising. I was introduced to Don Telesforo de Trueba, the author, an ugly little young man, all hair and glare, whiskers and spectacles; he must be very clever and well worth knowing, Mr. Harness took tea with us after the play.

[The comedy, in five acts, of "The Exquisites" was a satirical piece showing up the ridiculous assumption of affected indifference of the young dandies of the day. The special airs of impertinence by which certain officers of a "crack" regiment distinguished themselves had suggested several of the most telling points of the play, which was in every respect a most remarkable performance for a foreigner.]

Saturday, April 30th.—Received a letter from John; he has determined not to leave Spain at present; and were he to return, what is there for him to do here? In the evening to Mrs. C–'s ball; it was very gay, but I am afraid I am turning "exquisite," for I didn't like the music, and my partners bored me, and the dancing tired me, and my journal is getting like K–'s head—full of naked facts, unclothed with a single thought.

Sunday, May 1st.—As sulky a day as ever glouted in an English sky. The "young morn" came picking her way from the east, leading with her a dripping, draggled May, instead of Milton's glorious vision.

After church, sundry callers: Mr. C– bringing prints of the dresses for "Hernani," and the W–s, who seem in a dreadful fright about the present state of the country. I do not suppose they would like to see Heaton demolished.

In the evening we went to the Cartwrights'. It is only in the morning that one goes there to be tortured; in the evening it is to eat delicious dinners and hear delightful music.

Hummel, Moscheles, Neukomm, Horsley, and Sir George Smart, and how they did play! à l'envi l'un de l'autre. They sang, too, that lovely glee, "By Celia's Arbor." The thrilling shudder which sweet music sends through one's whole frame is a species of acute pleasure, very nearly akin to pain. I wonder if by any chance there is a point at which the two are one and the same thing!

Tuesday, May 3d.—I wrote the fourth scene of the fifth act of my play ["The Star of Seville"], and acted Lady Teazle for the first time; the house was very good, and my performance, as I expected, very bad; I was as flat as a lady amateur. I stayed after the play to hear Braham sing "Tom Tug," which was a refreshment to my spirit after my own acting; after I came home, finished the fifth act of "The Star of Seville." "Joy, joy for ever, my task is done!" I have not the least idea, though, that "heaven is won."

Wednesday, May 4th.—A delightful dinner at the B–s', but in the evening a regular crush; however, if one is to be squeezed to death (though 'tis an abolished form of torture), it may as well be in good company, among the fine world, and lots of pleasant people besides: Milman, Sotheby, Lockhart, Sir Augustus Calcott, Harness, Lady Dacre, Joanna Baillie, Lady Calcott, etc.

Friday, May 6th.—Real March weather: cold, piercing, damp, wretched, in spite of which I carried Shakespeare to walk with me in the square, and read all over again for the fiftieth time all the conjectures of everybody about him and his life. How little we know about him, how intimately we seem to know him! I had the square all to myself, and it was delicious: lilac, syringa, hawthorn, lime blossoms, and new-mown grass in the midst of London—and Shakespeare to think about. How grateful I felt for so much enjoyment! When I got home, corrected the proof-sheets of "Francis I.," and thought it looked quite pretty in print.

Out so late dancing, Wednesday and Thursday nights, or rather mornings, that I had no time for journal-writing. What a life I do lead!