Frances Anne Kemble (Fanny Kemble) (1800-1893), the actress and author, was Charles Kemble’s elder daughter; she was born in London on the 27th of November 1809, and educated chiefly in France. She first appeared on the stage on the 25th of October 1829 as Juliet at Covent Garden. Her attractive personality at once made her a great favourite, her popularity enabling her father to recoup his losses as a manager. She played all the principal women’s parts, notably Portia, Beatrice and Lady Teazle, but Julia in Sheridan Knowles’s The Hunchback, especially written for her, was perhaps her greatest success. In 1832 she went with her father to America, and in 1834 she married there a Southern planter, Pierce Butler. They were divorced in 1849. In 1847 she returned to the stage, from which she had retired on her marriage, and later, following her father’s example, appeared with much success as a Shakespearian reader. In 1877 she returned to England, where she lived—using her maiden name—till her death in London on the 15th of January 1893. During this period Fanny Kemble was a prominent and popular figure in the social life of London. Besides her plays, Francis the First, unsuccessfully produced in 1832, The Star of Seville (1837), a volume of Poems (1844), and a book of Italian travel, A Year of Consolation (1847), she published a volume of her Journal in 1835, and in 1863 another (dealing with life on the Georgia plantation), and also a volume of Plays, including translations from Dumas and Schiller. These were followed by Records of a Girlhood (1878), Records of Later Life (1882), Notes on some of Shakespeare’s Plays (1882), Far Away and Long Ago (1889), and Further Records (1891). Her various volumes of reminiscences contain much valuable material for the social and dramatic history of the period.
Adelaide Kemble (1814-1879), Charles Kemble’s second daughter, was an opera singer of great promise, whose first London appearance was made in Norma on the 2nd of November 1841. In 1843 she married Edward John Sartoris, a rich Italian, and retired after a brief but brilliant career. She wrote A Week in a French Country House (1867), a bright and humorous story, and of a literary quality not shared by other tales that followed. Her son, Algernon Charles Sartoris, married General U. S. Grant’s daughter.
Among more recent members of the Kemble family, mention may also be made of Charles Kemble’s grandson, Henry Kemble (1848-1907), a sterling and popular London actor.
KEMBLE, JOHN MITCHELL (1807-1857), English scholar and historian, eldest son of Charles Kemble the actor, was born in 1807. He received his education partly from Dr Richardson, author of the Dictionary of the English Language, and partly at the grammar school of Bury St Edmunds, where he obtained in 1826 an exhibition to Trinity College, Cambridge. At the university his historical essays gained him high reputation. The bent of his studies was turned more especially towards the Anglo-Saxon period through the influence of the brothers Grimm, under whom he studied at Göttingen (1831). His thorough knowledge of the Teutonic languages and his critical faculty were shown in his Beowulf (1833-1837), Über die Stammtafel der Westsachsen (1836), Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici (1839-1848), and in many contributions to reviews; while his History of the Saxons in England (1849; new ed. 1876), though it must now be read with caution, was the first attempt at a thorough examination of the original sources of the early period of English history. He was editor of the British and Foreign Review from 1835 to 1844; and from 1840 to his death was examiner of plays. In 1857 he published State Papers and Correspondence illustrative of the Social and Political State of Europe from the Revolution to the Accession of the House of Hanover. He died at Dublin on the 26th of March 1857. His Horae Ferales, or Studies in the Archaeology of Northern Nations, was completed by Dr R. G. Latham, and published in 1864. He married the daughter of Professor Amadeus Wendt of Göttingen in 1836; and had two daughters and a son; the elder daughter was the wife of Sir Charles Santley, the singer.
KEMÉNY, ZSIGMOND, Baron (1816-1875), Hungarian author, came of a noble but reduced family. In 1837 he studied jurisprudence at Marosvásárhely, but soon devoted himself entirely to journalism and literature. His first unfinished work, On the Causes of the Disaster of Mohacs (1840), attracted much attention. In the same year he studied natural history and anatomy at Vienna University. In 1841, along with Lajos Kovács, he edited the Transylvanian newspaper Erdélyi Hiradó. He also took an active part in provincial politics and warmly supported the principles of Count Stephen Széchenyi. In 1846 he moved to Pest, where his pamphlet, Korteskedés és ellenszerei (Partisanship and its Antidote), had already made him famous. Here he consorted with the most eminent of the moderate reformers, and for a time was on the staff of the Pesti Hirlap. The same year he brought out his first great novel, Pál Gyulay. He was elected a member of the revolutionary diet of 1848 and accompanied it through all its vicissitudes. After a brief exile he accepted the amnesty and returned to Hungary. Careless of his unpopularity, he took up his pen to defend the cause of justice and moderation, and in his two pamphlets, Forradalom után (After the Revolution) and Még egysz ó a forradalom után (One word more after the Revolution), he defended the point of view which was realized by Deák in 1867. He subsequently edited the Pesti Napló, which became virtually Deák’s political organ. Kemény also published several political essays (e.g. The Two Wesselényis, and Stephen Szechenyi) which are among the best of their kind in any literature. His novels published during these years, such as Férj és nö (Husband and Wife), Szivörvényei (The Heart’s Secrets), &c., also won for him a foremost rank among contemporary novelists. During the ’sixties Kemény took an active part in the political labours of Deák, whose right hand he continued to be, and popularized the Composition of 1867 which he had done so much to bring about. He was elected to the diet of 1867 for one of the divisions of Pest, but took no part in the debates. The last years of his life were passed in complete seclusion in Transylvania. To the works of Kemény already mentioned should be added the fine historical novel Rajongok (The Fanatics) (Pest, 1858-1859), and Collected Speeches (Hung.) (Pest, 1889).
See L. Nogrady, Baron Sigismund Kemény’s Life and Writings (Hung.) (Budapest, 1902); G. Beksics, Sigismund Kemény, the Revolution and the Composition (Hung.) (Budapest, 1888).
(R. N. B.)