Records of a Girlhood

by Fanny Kemble

F. A. K.

To Mrs. Jameson.

Baltimore, January 11, 1833.

Thank you across the sea, dear Mrs. Jameson, for your letter of the 1st of November. I had been wondering, but the day before it reached me, whether you had ever received one I wrote to you on my first arrival in New York, or whether you were accusing me of neglect, ingratitude, forgetfulness, and all the turpitudes that the delay of a letter sometimes causes folk to give other folk credit for. My occupations are incessant, or rather, I should say, my occupation, for to my sorrow I have but one. 'Tis not with me now as in the fortunate days when, after six rehearsals, a piece ran, as the saying is, twenty nights, leaving me all the mornings and three evenings in the week at my own disposal. Here we rush from place to place, at each place have to drill a new set of actors, and every night to act a different play; so that my days are passed in dawdling about cold, dark stages, with blundering actors who have not even had the conscience to study the words of their parts, all the morning. All the afternoon I pin up ribbons and feathers and flowers, and sort out theatrical adornments, and all the evening I enchant audiences, prompt my fellow-mimes, and wish it had pleased Heaven to make me a cabbage in a corner of a Christian kitchen-garden in—well, say Hertfordshire, or any other county of England; I am not particular as to the precise spot.... Whenever I can I get on horseback; it is the only pleasure I have in this world; for my dancing days are drawing to a close. But I mean to ride as long as I have a hand to hold a rein, or a leg to put over a pommel. By the by, I ought to beg your pardon for the last sentence; I ought to have said a foot to put into a stirrup; for if you are not ashamed of having legs you ought to be—at least, we are in this country, and never mention, or give the slightest token of having such things, except by wearing very short petticoats, which we don't consider objectionable.... I am glad you have furbished up and completed your little room, because it is a sign you mean to stay where you are, and I like to know where to find you in my imagination.... I have just seen dear Washington Irving, and it required all my sense of decent decorum to prevent my throwing my arms round his neck, he looked so like a bit of home, England.

You will be glad to hear that we are thriving, in body and estate. We are all well, and our work is very successful. The people flock to see us, and nothing can exceed the kindness which we meet with everywhere and from everybody.... I read nothing whatever since I am in this blessed land. The only books I have accomplished getting through have been Graham's "History of North America," Knickerbocker's "History of New York," which nearly killed me with laughing; "Contarini Fleming," which is very affected and very clever; sundry cantos of Dante, sundry plays of Shakespeare, sundry American poems [which are very good], and old Captain John Smith's quaint "History of Virginia." As fast as I gather my wits together for any steady occupation, I am whisked off to some new place, and do not recover from one journey before I have to take another. The roads here shake one's body, soul, thoughts, opinions, and principles all to pieces; I assure you they are wicked roads.

Our theater, Covent Garden, is, we understand, going to the dogs. I cannot help it any more, that is certain, and feel about that as about all things that have had their day—it must go. Taglioni is like a dream, and you must not abuse Mademoiselle Mars to me. I never saw her but twice—in "L'Ecole des Vieillards" and "Valérie"—and I thought her perfection in both.... If I do not leave off, you will be blind for the next fortnight with reading this crossed letter. I wish you success most heartily in all you undertake, and am truly and faithfully yours,

Fanny Kemble.

[Washington Irving was intimately acquainted with my father and mother, and a most kind and condescending friend to me. He often told me that when first he went to England, long before authorship or celebrity had dawned upon him, he was a member of a New York commercial house, on whose affairs he was sent to Europe. It was when he was a mere obscure young man of business in London that he had been introduced to my mother, whose cordial kindness to him in his foreign isolation seemed to have made a profound impression on him; for when I knew him, in the days of his great literary celebrity and social success, he often referred to it with the warmest expressions of gratitude. I think, of all the distinguished persons I have known, he was one of the least affected by the adulation and admiration of society. He remained quite unchanged by his extreme social popularity. Simple, unaffected, unconstrained, genial, kindly, and good, he seemed so entirely to forget his own celebrity, that one almost forgot it too in talking to him. I remember his coming, the day after my first appearance at Covent Garden, to see us, and congratulated my parents on the success of that terrible experiment. I, who was always delighted to see him, ran to fetch the pretty new watch I had received from my father the night before, and displayed its beauties with an eager desire for his admiration of them. He took it and slowly turned it about, commending its fine workmanship and pretty enamel and jewelry; then putting it to his ear, with a most mischievous look of affected surprise, he exclaimed, as one does to a child's watch, "Why, it goes, I declare!"

To my great regret and loss, I saw Mademoiselle Mars only in two parts, when, in the autumn of her beauty and powers, she played a short engagement in London. The grace, the charm, the loveliness, which she retained far into middle age, were, even in their decline, enough to justify all that her admirers said of her early incomparable fascination. Her figure had grown large and her face become round, and lost their fine outline and proportion; but the exquisite taste of her dress and graceful dignity of her deportment, and sweet radiance of her expressive countenance, were still indescribably charming; and the voice, unrivaled in its fresh melodious brilliancy, and the pure and perfect enunciation, were unimpaired, and sounded like the clear liquid utterance of a young girl of sixteen. Her Celimène and her Elmire I never had the good fortune to see, but can imagine, from her performance of the heroine in Casimir de la Vigne's capital play of "L'Ecole des Vieillards," how well she must have deserved her unrivaled reputation in those parts.

It is remarkable that one of the most striking points in Madame d'Orval was suggested by herself to the author. De la Vigne, according to the frequent usage of French authors, was reading his piece to the great actress, upon whom its success was mainly to depend, and when he came to the scene where the offended but unjustly suspicious husband recounts to his wife the details of his duel with the young duke whose attentions to her had excited his jealousy, and that when, full of the tenderest anxiety for his safety, she flies to meet him, and is repulsed by the bitter irony of his speech, beginning, "Rassurez-vous, madame, le duc n'est point blessé," Mademoiselle Mars, having listened in silence till the end of D'Orval's speech, exclaimed, "Mais, quoi! je ne dis rien, elle ne dit rien!" De la Vigne, who had made the young woman listen in speechless anguish to the bitter and unjust reproach conveyed by her husband's first words and his subsequent account of the duel, said, in some surprise at Mademoiselle Mars' suggestion, "Mais quoi encore—que peut-elle dire? que voudriez-vous qu'elle dise?" "Ah, quelquechose!" cried Mademoiselle Mars, clasping her hands in the imagined distress of the situation; "rien—deuxmots seulement. 'Ah, monsieur!' quand il dit, 'Rassurez-vous, madame, le duc n'est point blessé.'" "Eh bien! dites, dites comme cela," cried De la Vigne, amazed at all the expression the exquisite voice and face had given to the two words. And so the scene was altered, and the long recital of D'Orval was broken by the reproachful "Ah, monsieur!" of his wife, and seldom has the utterance of such an insignificant exclamation affected those who heard it so keenly. For myself, I never can forget the sudden, burning blush that spread tingling to my shoulders at all the shame and mortification and anguish conveyed in the pathetic protest of that "Ah, monsieur!" of Mademoiselle Mars.