Chapter One God Almighty's Nobility In 1815, not long before the battle of Waterloo, the French actor Talma called at a house near Covent Garden in the heart of London. At the front door he was received, not by the well-known actor he was calling upon, but by the actor's daughter, a precocious child of five. When the girl asked who he was, Talma declared in a resonant voice that he was a tragic actor and a celebrated one. "So is my uncle," the child replied, "and so is my father." The small girl was Fanny Kemble, who was herself to win great fame as an actress. More than sixty years later she remembered--or claimed to remember--how she told the Frenchman on the doorstep, not only how famous were her relatives, but how exasperating was her newborn sister, Adelaide. Fanny announced that Adelaide had the touch of the tragic actress, because she cried all day long. This reminiscence about her sister's trying behavior was probably a mirror of Fanny's own emotions. While it is highly unlikely that, at the age of five, she likened her bawling baby sister to a would-be actress, her story reveals what she thought about this interloper in her nursery. Though Fanny loved her sister, she also saw her as a competitor--which Adelaide proved to be. Adelaide Kemble was to become the finest English opera singer of her time. The sisters were born into one of the most remarkable families of the British stage. Their grandparents, most of their uncles and aunts, and many of their cousins were actors. The largest share of the family's fame, however, rested on three who were head and shoulders above the rest: John Philip Kemble, the girls' uncle; Charles Kemble, their father; and Sarah Siddons, their aunt. Leigh Hunt, the critic and essayist, who knew and observed the family closely, was one of many who looked on these three Kembles with a respect approaching awe. On stage they were incomparable artists. In drawing rooms they were polished guests, the equals in manners and education of a duke or duchess. Hunt called them "God Almighty's nobility," and he was quick to point out that they were welcomed into the best circles of English society. That the Kembles were so welcomed was extraordinary because the stage was then a disreputable profession, and the Kembles sprang from the lowest rung of the theatrical ladder. In the public mind, actors stood on three rungs. There were those at the top, who played in the best London theatres and were sometimes acceptable in society; those in the middle, who acted in the provinces in established companies and were respected within the profession but socially unacceptable outside it; and those at the bottom, who roamed the countryside in disreputable troupes, performing in inns and barns. The great Kembles were born into one of these raffish strolling troupes, which placed them, in the social hierarchy of the time, only a notch above tramps and performing bears. Roger Kemble, the father of John Philip, Sarah, and Charles and grandfather of Fanny and Adelaide, was a Hereford barber. In 1752, at the age of thirty-one, he joined a strolling troupe, having fallen in love with one of its actresses. Onstage he had few theatrical skills, but offstage he was adept at playing the gentleman. Meeting him in old age, the theatrical biographer James Boaden declared that Roger Kemble looked and spoke like a seventeenth-century bishop, and that "his countenance excited reverence beyond any that I have ever seen." Roger Kemble had grown up believing that he was descended from a distinguished Catholic family, the Kembles of Wiltshire and Herefordshire, who numbered among their ranks the Blessed John Kemble, a Catholic priest martyred in 1678 and beatified by the pope. Roger believed passionately in his aristocratic, sainted ancestry. A large part of his gentlemanly bearing derived from this belief, and his children's air of good breeding was similarly colored by it. The family was deeply disappointed when, years later, the Royal College of Arms was unable to verify the Kembles' aristocratic background. Roger did not stay long with his first troupe. After a few months he joined another, where he fell in love with the manager's daughter, a strong-willed, handsome girl named Sarah Ward. Roger proposed marriage and was accepted, but Sarah's father withheld his consent. A convert to Methodism--which condemned Catholics and actors--John Ward refused to have a papist actor as a son-in-law. For almost a year the deadlock continued. In 1753, while the troupe was playing in Cirencester, Sarah defied her father and married Roger. When Ward heard what she had done, he is supposed to have told her: "Well at least you haven't disobeyed me by marrying an actor; the devil himself couldn't make an actor out of your husband." Sarah Kemble was never backward in doing as she pleased. When James Boaden met her in her old age, he was equally struck by her strength of character and her forceful conversation and referred to her as the "old lioness." Conversation was a talent that Sarah passed down to her grandchildren, especially to Fanny. On John Ward's death, Roger inherited the company, but it was Sarah who ran it. A demanding woman, she expected the best from her employees and her children, eight of whom survived infancy. Though it was usual for children from theatrical families to follow in their parents' footsteps, this was far from Sarah's aim. She considered the life too hard and too risky. The troupe was almost continually on the road--a night here and a night there, and then on with the wagons to the next town. Companies of actors were required by law to perform in licensed theatres. Since strolling players acted only in unlicensed venues, they risked fines or imprisonment at every performance. Sarah wanted something better for her children. As she trudged in the wake of the wagons, she vowed she would educate and elevate her offspring. But beggars could not be choosers. The troupe was continually short of players, and all eight of Sarah's children appeared on stage when they were young. The eldest two were exceptionally talented, as even their mother was forced to admit. In resolving to educate her children, Sarah Kemble eventually had her way. Somehow money was found to send the eldest son, John Philip, to school: first to a Catholic school in Staffordshire, and then, like his namesake, the Blessed John, to the celebrated English Catholic college in Douai, France. His father hoped that the boy would become a priest, but John Philip was willful. At nineteen he ran off to join a band of actors. So outstanding was his talent that within eight years he was a leading player at the foremost theatres in London and on his way to becoming, in Byron's phrase, the "most supernatural" of actors. The eldest daughter, Sarah, was sent to a girls' school in Worcester, leaving at sixteen to become a lady's companion. It was hoped she would make a satisfactory marriage; but being her mother's daughter, she had a mind of her own. At eighteen she insisted in quick succession on becoming an actress and marrying a mediocre actor named William Siddons. Two years later, when she was twenty and heavily pregnant, she was spotted in a Cheltenham theatre by a London talent scout. Sarah was playing Rosalind in As You Like It , which required her to dress as a boy. The sight of her "big belly" poking through her doublet at first so tickled the scout that he hardly noticed her acting. But after a few scenes he ceased to see her belly. By the next post he wrote to David Garrick, the celebrated actor-manager at the Theatre Royal in London's Drury Lane, to announce that he had found a potential star. Sarah Siddons rushed to join Garrick's company, but the work demanded more skill than she had so far acquired. Defeated, she retired to the provinces. Seven years later she returned to Drury Lane, transformed. On October 10, 1782, she made her second London debut, playing Isabella in The Fatal Marriage . The performance made theatrical history. For more than three hours, Mrs. Siddons's mesmeric face and superb voice held the audience spellbound. She projected innocence, despair, and madness with electrifying intensity. Spectators were bathed in tears. One woman, desperately trying to hold back sobs, fell into a convulsion and "stayed in that miserable state for a considerable time after the curtain dropt." Within months a Siddons cult was sweeping the country. Vast crowds were prepared to wait all day outside the theatre in the hope of buying a ticket. Each night giant waves of emotion surged back and forth between actress and audience. The effect was addictive. Once seen, Sarah Siddons had to be seen over and over again. Writers and painters could not stop singing her praises. Samuel Johnson called her a "prodigious fine woman." Joshua Reynolds signed his portrait of Sarah on the edge of her gown, saying that he wanted to go "down to posterity on the hem of her garment." The essayist Willam Hazlitt was so carried away by her Lady Macbeth that he wrote: "It seemed almost as if a being of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on her brow, passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine; she was tragedy personified." For thirty years, Sarah Siddons was queen of the British stage and the popular imagination. Wrote one rapturous observer: "Were a Wild Indian to ask me, What was like a queen? I would have bade him look at Mrs. Siddons." The youngest of Mrs. Siddons's brothers was Charles, the father of Fanny and Adelaide. Twenty years younger than Sarah, he was born in 1775, just as his sister was beginning her phenomenal career. Like John Philip, Charles was packed off to school at Douai. On returning home he was found a respectable post as a clerk. Though he longed to act, Charles seemed to have no talent. A tall, skinny youth, he was so awkward it seemed he would trip over his feet every time he stepped on stage. Refusing to accept his family's warnings, Charles joined a troupe. A year later, at the age of eighteen, he applied for work at the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane, where his brother, John Philip, was the powerful actor-manager and his sister, Sarah Siddons, the leading lady. Though his acting initially verged on hopeless, the performers absorbed him into their company; and over the following ten years he disciplined his gawky arms and legs to reveal a "fine majestic figure" capable of performing with flair in leading roles. As Leigh Hunt put it, Charles was the "nearest approach to Shakespeare's gentleman, and to heroes of romance." At the Drury Lane theatre Charles Kemble met his future wife: a delightful dark-haired, dark-eyed actress a year older than himself named Marie Thérèse De Camp. Marie Thérèse claimed to have aristocratic blood: she maintained that her great-grandfather was the French Marquis de Fleury. More relevant, she sprang from a French theatrical family in the service of the Austrian empress, Maria Theresa, who was reputedly her godmother and was certainly her namesake. Marie Thérèse's father, George De Camp, was a flute player at the imperial court theatre in Vienna, where her uncle was ballet master and her aunt, Simonet, was a well-known dancer. At the age of two Marie Thérèse moved from Vienna to London, where her father found work in the theatre orchestra at Drury Lane. By the age of six, she was dressed in tights and spangles and playing a cupid at the opera house. By the age of eight, in pink satin breeches and a powdered wig, she was performing in French plays in a juvenile troupe managed by a Monsieur de Texier. By the time she was nine, her father was dead, and her stage earnings were helping to support two little sisters and a younger brother. Her mother became the housekeeper to a nobleman, and it was in his house that Marie Thérèse, known as the "little French fairy," first danced before the Prince of Wales--the future King George IV--and his unofficial wife, Maria Fitzherbert. Thereafter, according to her elder daughter, Marie Thérèse became one of their favorites, and was "fondled and petted and played with, passing whole days in Mrs. Fitzherbert's drawing room." Occasionally the prince would place her "under a huge glass bell, made to cover some large group of precious Dresden china." There her small figure and flashing face produced a "more beautiful effect than the costly work of art." A girlhood passed in theatrical circles and among the more profligate of the aristocracy could have been corrupting, but Marie Thérèse was determined to retain her respectability. Her younger daughter would later marvel that her mother passed through the "two worst extremities of society" yet "remained honourable in deed, and uncontaminated in thought." This was not to say that Marie Thérèse was priggish or cold. On the contrary, she was highly emotional. Desperate for security and love, she was prone to tantrums and jealousy. Both her daughters later testified that hers was a "passionate, vehement, susceptible and suffering nature." At the age of eighteen, Marie Thérèse appeared at the Haymarket Theatre in a novel version of The Beggar's Opera in which men and women exchanged roles. Her dancing, her soprano voice, and her superb legs clad in tight male breeches caused a sensation. Leigh Hunt praised her "beautiful figure, fine large dark eyes, and elevated features, fuller of spirit than softness but still capable of expressing great tenderness." As a singer, dancer, and actress combined, she had few rivals in England. Soon after The Beggar's Opera , Marie Thérèse met Charles Kemble. She is said to have fallen in love with him on sight, but he did not respond. She tried to arouse his affection, displaying the "wildest and most passionate love," but their natures were poles apart. Charles, according to his younger daughter, was a "mild and gently amiable person of cultivated tastes and refined habits--with a great deal of natural tenderness, but a man of the world without one particle of romance or passion--and utterly incapable of answering and comprehending a nature" such as Marie Thérèse's. He could take his pick of women and had no wish to settle down. Nevertheless Marie Thérèse persisted and eventually won him over. In 1800 they became engaged. The engagement displeased Charles's older brother and mentor, John Philip, who was said to be "violent against it." No reason was given, but the cause may be guessed. Five years before, in January, 1795, a drunken and amorous John Philip had forced his way into Marie Thérèse's dressing room. She had called for help and been rescued--some say by her brother, some say by Charles. On January 27, readers of the London Times were intrigued to see a formal announcement signed by John Philip Kemble apologizing for his "improper and unjustifiable behavior" toward a woman of irreproachable character. Why he so freely confessed his sin is not known, but one imagines that pressure was brought to bear by the De Camp brothers. If so, it is not difficult to see why he disliked the idea of Charles marrying a De Camp. When the engagement was announced, John Philip declared that he would not support the marriage until Charles turned thirty. He seems to have believed that the couple would not be prepared to wait another five years. Marie Thérèse, however, would not capitulate. She told a confidante that she could "never form an idea of being happy with any other man." On July 2, 1806, after nearly six years of delays and deferments, Marie Thérèse and Charles were married at St. George's Church in Bloomsbury. As might have been predicted, they did not live happily ever after. In her new life Marie Thérèse was utterly absorbed in her husband, but he was less so in her. Marriage failed to curb his wandering eye. Charles was "run after in the most shameless way by many of our fine ladies," wrote his younger daughter, so "you may imagine what her jealous sufferings were." Deeply wounded by her husband's infidelity, especially since she herself had waited so long and faithfully to marry him, Marie Thérèse grew possessive, cruel-tongued, and addicted to tantrums. Year after year she tried to wrest from Charles the love and reassurance that her passionate nature craved and from which his calmer and less committed nature shrank. When she died an obituarist close to the family observed that she was well cast as the jealous, tempestuous Lucy Lockit in The Beggar's Opera . Noting that Marie Thérèse was "excellent company," he regretted that her tongue was so often "barbed." Even her elder daughter, who took a most charitable view of her mother, conceded that Marie Thérèse possessed a "savage rather than a civilized nature." Outsiders seldom saw Marie Thérèse's tantrums and tirades. To them she appeared to be a most entertaining woman: shrewd and amusing, generous by nature, polished in manner, and with a striking turn of phrase. This was the more remarkable since French, not English, was her native tongue. Her elder daughter maintained that she spoke English with "more originality and vivacity than any Englishwoman I have ever known." Outsiders also commented on Marie Thérèse's independent will, though independence was not rare in women of the stage. In theatrical culture they were expected to negotiate their own salaries, look after their own money, and even manage their own theatres. This degree of emancipation was a century or so ahead of women's gains in other professions. Marie Thérèse took power and independence as her due, a belief that she passed on to her daughters. She had no intention of giving up her career after marriage. It was accepted that actresses should perform throughout pregnancy and give birth, as it were, between performances. Marie Thérèse's son, John Mitchell, was born a bare nine months after the marriage. Probably he was not her first child. Decades later, her elder daughter, Fanny, set out to chronicle the family history and recorded that Marie Thérèse's eldest child was a boy called Philip, who had died in earliest infancy. She did not realize that she was thereby revealing that Philip must have been illegitimate. By the time John Mitchell was born, Sarah Siddons, John Philip, and Charles Kemble were acting exclusively at the Theatre Royal at Covent Garden. John Philip had bought a one-sixth share in that theatre for twenty-three thousand pounds. The sum was colossal, but John Philip considered that the theatre was an incomparable asset. The theatre's power came from its partial monopoly of the "legitimate" drama. Back in the time of Charles II, playwrights had been among the most vocal critics of the king and his ministers. To curb their voices, Parliament resolved that all theatres should be licensed. Licenses were restricted to two in London--at Covent Garden and Drury Lane--and a few in Ireland, Scotland, and the provinces. Over the years, ways were found to evade this law, and by the Kembles' time scores of unlicensed theatres were putting on plays, thanks to a legal loophole whereby performances containing singing and dancing could be legally classed as concerts. These upstart theatres irritated the monopolists but had failed to dint their power. In London the theatres in Covent Garden and Drury Lane reigned supreme, and of the two, Covent Garden was the more splendid. Set in the magnificent market square designed by the famous architect Inigo Jones, it seemed more like a temple than a playhouse: a temple dedicated to Melpomene, the Greek muse of tragedy, and to Sarah Siddons, her high priestess. To approach the theatre doors, playgoers pushed through a press of bodies: women selling oranges, little boys hawking playbills, garishly dressed prostitutes, and a crowd of loiterers. Inside they found a world of magic. A great horseshoe of galleries soared to the roof, holding close to three thousand people. In a time when private houses were dimly lighted, the brightness inside the theatre seemed miraculous. It came from rows of mirror-backed crystal chandeliers hanging from the front of the boxes. Once those myriad candles were lit, the radiance was as dazzling as noonday sunshine. When the curtain rose and powerful footlights shed their rays over the stage, the theatre seemed like a vast temple of light. (Continues...) Excerpted from FANNY & ADELAIDE by ANN BLAINEY. Copyright (c) 2001 by Ann Blainey. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
