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4. Selections from Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839 (1863)
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4 Selections from Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839 (1863) Fanny Kemble frances anne “fanny” kemble (1809–1893) was born into a family of acclaimed Shakespearean actors in London on November 27, 1809. Raised primarily by an aunt, she was educated for several years in France. While in Paris, she studied French, Italian, and the Bible and was introduced to the poetry of Lord Byron and Dante, who influenced her early writing career. Kemble went on to become a prolific woman of letters in the Victorian era, writing plays, poetry, letters, journals, and memoirs. Kemble first gained notoriety at the age of twenty as Juliet in a Covent Garden Theater production of Romeo and Juliet. In 1832, in debt, the Kembles left England for America, hoping for a profitable American tour. After successfully opening in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, and Boston, Kemble began to socialize with such luminaries as Andrew Jackson, Catharine Maria Sedgwick (then America’s most famous woman novelist), and Dr. William Ellery Channing (proponent of New England liberalism), and performed for Dolly Madison and John Quincy Adams. She became a sensation, even inspiring “Fanny Kemble curls,” and kept a journal published 147 as Journal of a Residence in America in 1835. In 1834 she married a member of her devoted entourage, Pierce Meese Butler, enabling her to leave theater life and return to England, where she gained time to write. Kemble’s marriage, however, changed her life in other ways. Shortly after their marriage, Butler inherited two plantations in Georgia (Butler Island and Hampton Point), becoming one of the state’s premier slaveholders. Already committed to abolitionism as a result of her English upbringing, Kemble began reading and writing abolitionist tracts. After moving to Georgia in 1839, she became increasingly disturbed by the conditions of slavery and started writing an epistolary journal addressed to her friend Elizabeth Dwight Sedgwick (sister-in-law of novelist Catharine Maria Sedgwick); she kept the journal for almost four months (until the family moved north). In it she recorded her horrified responses to the treatment of slaves, especially women after childbirth. Kemble’s political differences with her husband grew, and she gave up her abolitionist writing for the sake of her family, despite an 1842 appeal by Lydia Maria Child to publish it. The couple finally divorced in 1848. Butler was awarded custody of their daughters and prevented Fanny from seeing them until they were married. Alone, she returned to her maiden name, to the stage, and to London. In 1863 Kemble, dismayed by proslavery sentiments and criticism of the North, decided to revise and publish her journal to discourage British support of the Confederacy. Kemble distributed Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838–1839 in England and America. Her narrative, appearing in the year of the Emancipation Proclamation, enjoyed much popularity, evidenced by two sizeable printings in the United States. In 1867 Butler died in debt and disgrace (due to his alleged gambling and infidelities, as well as Northern distrust of his Confederate sympathies), and Kemble moved back to Butler Island, living on various Butler properties until her return to London. In Rome in 1872, she met Henry James, who became a close friend. Kemble died in London on January 15, 1893, at the age of 84. Critics have discussed her journals primarily as historical evidence of a white woman’s awareness of the harsh lives of enslaved women and as a critique of repressive gender strictures (see biographies by John A. Scott and J. C. Furnas and Eleanor 148 fanny kemble [3.149.250.1] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 20:18 GMT) Boyle’s introduction to The Terrific Kemble). A sustained analysis of her journals as autobiographical writing has yet to be done. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, Franklin Square. 1863. To Elizabeth Dwight Sedgwick, this journal, originally kept for her, is most affectionately Dedicated. Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839 slavery the chief corner stone This stone (Slavery), which was rejected by the first builders, is become the chief stone of the corner of our new edifice. Speech of Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederate States: delivered March 21, 1861. Preface The following diary was kept in the winter and spring of 1838–9, on an estate consisting of rice and cotton plantations, in the islands at the entrance of the Altamaha, on the coast of Georgia. The slaves in whom I...