Every reader of the charming Records of a Girlhood and Recollections of Later Life, must have felt some curiosity about the personality of the friend to whom those letters of our English Sevigné were addressed. I have before me as I write an excellent reproduction in platinotype from a daguerreotype of herself which dear Harriet gave me some twenty years ago. The pale, kind, sad face is, I think inexpressibly touching; and the woman who wore it deserved all the affection which Fanny Kemble gave her. She was a deep and singularly critical thinker and reader, and had one of the warmest hearts which ever beat under a cold and shy exterior. The iridescent genius of Fanny Kemble in the prime of her splendid womanhood, and my poor young soul, overburdened with thoughts too great and difficult for me, were equally drawn to seek her sympathy.
It happened once, somewhere in the early Fifties, that Mrs. Kemble was paying a visit to Miss St. Leger at Ardgillan, and we arranged that she should bring her over some day to Newbridge to luncheon. I was, of course, prepared to receive my guest very cordially but, to my astonishment, when Mrs. Kemble entered she made me the most formal salutation conceivable and, after being seated, answered all my small politenesses in monosyllables and with obvious annoyance and disinclination to converse with me or with any of my friends whom I presented to her. Something was evidently frightfully amiss, and Harriet perceived it; but what could it be? What could be done? Happily the gong sounded for luncheon, and, my father being absent, my eldest brother offered his arm to Mrs. Kemble and led her, walking with more than her usual stateliness across the two halls to the dining-room, where he placed her, of course, beside himself. I was at the other end of the table but I heard afterwards all that occurred. We were a party of eighteen, and naturally the long table had a good many dishes on it in the old fashion. My brother looked over it and asked: “What will you take, Mrs. Kemble? Roast fowl? or galantine? or a little Mayonnaise, or what else?”
“Thank you,” replied Mrs. Kemble, “If there be a potato!”
Of course there was a potato—nay, several; but a terrible gêne hung over us all till Miss Taylor hurriedly called for her carriage, and the party drove off.
The moment they left the door after our formal farewells, Harriet St. Leger (as she afterwards told me) fell on her friend: “Well, Fanny, never, never will I bring you anywhere again. How could you behave so to Fanny Cobbe?”
“I cannot permit any one,” said Mrs. Kemble, “to invite a number of people to meet me without having asked my consent; I do not choose to be made a gazing-stock to the county. Miss Cobbe had got up a regular party of all those people, and you could see the room was decorated for it.”
“Good Heavens, what are you talking of?” said Harriet, “those ladies and gentlemen are all her relations, stopping in the house. She could not turn them out because you were coming, and her room is always full of flowers.”
“Is that really so?” said Mrs. Kemble, “Then you shall tell Fanny Cobbe that I ask her pardon for my bad behaviour, and if she will forgive me and come to see me in London, I will never behave badly to her again?”
In a letter of hers to Harriet St. Leger given to me after her death, I was touched to read the following reference to this droll incident:—
“Bilton Hotel,