Fanny Kemble to Pierce Butler

Frances Anne (Fanny) Kemble was born on November 27, 1809 in London, England. From one of England's most prominent family of actors, she took to the stage herself to save her family from financial ruin. Though a brilliant actress, the stage was not the true love of Fanny Kemble -- her first love was for literature and writing. Throughout her life she would be a prolific and accomplished writer of plays, journals, poetry, letters, and memoirs.

In addition to acting and writing, Kemble spoke French fluently, read widely, and was an accomplished musician. She loved the natural world and had a passion for vigorous exercise, especially riding.

In 1832, Fanny set out on a two-year theater tour in America, where she was received with great enthusiasm. Audiences were enraptured, and she was soon being introduced to political and cultural dignitaries.

One of her most ardent admirers was a man named Pierce Butler. Born into a wealthy and prominent Philadelphia family in 1806, Pierce was the grandson of Revolutionary War veteran Major Pierce Butler. Major Butler was a U.S. Senator from South Carolina and the author of the Constitution's fugitive slave clause. He owned two plantations in Georgia: one on St. Simon's Island, where sea-island cotton was grown, and one on Butler Island, where rice was grown. He also owned a mansion in Philadelphia and a country home near the city. In 1812, Major Butler owned 638 slaves and was one of the wealthiest men in the United States. Pierce Bulter, the grandson, stood to inherit this fortune (and to become one of the largest slaveholders in the nation) when he met Fanny Kemble in 1832.

Pierce Butler became infatuated with Fanny Kemble after seeing her perform. He followed her devotedly while she toured. He was charming, solicitous. Fanny fell in love with him, and they were married in 1834 in Philadelphia. In marrying Pierce, Fanny escaped the life of the theater and her family's precarious finances and entered a life of wealth. At that time, she would later state, she did not know the source of this wealth.

The marriage was a volatile one, and after it ended in divorce, she returned to the stage, giving solo readings of Shakespearean plays. Throughout her life, Fanny continued to perform dramatic readings, to travel, and to publish her journals. Fanny Kemble died peacefully in London on January 15, 1893.

London, December 1842 or early 1843

Having loved you well enough to give you my life when it was best work giving --having made you the center of all my hopes of earthly happiness -- having never loved any human being as I have loved you, you can never be to me like any other human being, and it is utterly impossible that I should ever regard you with indifference.

My whole existence having once had you for its sole object, and all its thoughts, hopes, affections having, in their full harvest, been yours, it is utterly impossible that I should ever forget this--that I should ever forget that you were once my lover and are my husband and the father of my children. I cannot behold you without emotion; my heart still answers to your voice, my blood in my veins to your footsteps.