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Reviews in American History 29.4 (2001) 546-549



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Fanny Kemble and the South's Peculiar Institution

Loren Schweninger


Catherine Clinton. Fanny Kemble's Civil Wars. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. 302 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $26.00 (cloth); $14.95 (paper).

When she arrived along the Georgia sea island coast in 1838 with her husband and two small children, Fanny Kemble was an international celebrity. Born into the most celebrated theatrical family in England, Kemble was still in her teens when she became the talk of London for her performances as Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Her meteoric rise and her father's business failures prompted Kemble, her father, and an aunt to accept an invitation to tour the United States. In 1832, she portrayed Bianca in Fazio in New York City. The audience was "moved, astonished and delighted" (p. 53). After a month on stage in New York, Kemble journeyed to Philadelphia, where she attracted large and enthusiastic audiences. During her stay in the city she was showered with "romantic attentions" (p. 56) by various gentlemen, including Pierce Butler, heir to one of the largest slaveholding fortunes in the United States.

Infatuated with the actress, Butler followed Kemble from city to city, attended most of her performances, assisted with travel and hotel arrangements, even played the flute in the orchestra pit. Described as "a man of good family and fortune," Butler became desperately enamored with Kemble, who, according to one observer, added "rare charms of person, brilliant accomplishments and high culture" to "the sorcery of the stage" (p. 63). After a two-year courtship, Butler won Kemble's hand in marriage.

Catherine Clinton's Fanny Kemble's Civil Wars is masterful biography, beautifully written, always interesting. Part of the author's success is derived from the subject itself. Kemble was an extraordinary woman who fought to maintain her independence and individuality despite the prescribed norms of her day. But despite her strong will, forceful personality, and notorious temper, she was also a kind and generous person. Nearly everyone who met her mentioned her intellectual and theatrical gifts. The famous New York mayor and diarist Philip Hone described her as "deserving of her reputation--a good figure, easy manner, sprightly and intelligent, self-possessed, [End Page 546] not very handsome but with features animated and expressive, and calculated for great stage effects" (p. 52).

The author seems equally at ease discussing the theater in early-nineteenth- century England, the lives of various members of the Kemble clan, Fanny's early stage career, the political and economic changes that occurred in the United States during her numerous stays (eighteen in all), and the social, cultural, and legal barriers confronting women during the nineteenth century. Clinton takes Kemble from her early successes through old age, when, at the age of eighty, she wrote her first novel! The author also discusses Kemble as a celebrity, how she met Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, Washington Irving, and other American notables, as well as members of the English royalty and Henry James, who eventually became one of her best friends.

Clinton is at her best analyzing the relationship between Kemble and Pierce Butler. Shortly after their marriage, Butler demanded that Kemble give up the stage--it was not a suitable profession for a woman of standing--and, unlike his personality during their courtship, now became autocratic and demanding. Despite the birth of two daughters, Sarah and Frances, called Fan or Fanny, born on the same day three years apart, the two fought constantly. Butler's attitude toward marriage (and women) was typical of southern white males during the antebellum years: he believed women should obey and acquiesce to their husbands without question. Indeed, a wife's greatest fault, after infidelity, was disobedience. At the same time he saw no inconsistency in drinking, gambling, and taking other sexual partners, including a woman rumored to be one of his slaves. Their relationship was complicated by the fact that Kemble was, as one observer noted, superior to her husband in "all intellectual endowments" and equal...

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