Fanny Kemble to Pierce Butler
    On October 5, 1829, a 20 year old actress named Fanny Kemble made her stage début at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in London. She was gifted with a beautiful voice and enchanting eyes, and was an instant hit in the part of Juliet in Shakespeare's story of "star-cross'd lovers", Romeo and Juliet. Fanny did not know that she too was soon to become a "star-cross'd lover". Three years later, she embarked on an American tour and met the philadelphia business heir to a Georgia cotton fortune. Her poignant letter, recalling the strength of their love, was written in 1842, eight years after they married.
    Fanny had no instinctive love of acting. She went on stage out of loyalty to her father, Charles Kemble, the nearly bankrupt actor-manager of the Theatre Royal, in an effort to augment the family fortunes. In 1832 she joined with her father in a potentially profitable American tour.
    The United States was still a raw, young country, and Fanny kept a journal of all she saw, the hotels she visited, the things people said and did. She was a mixture of womanly independence and Old World pride, and her comments were often harsh. Received well by American audiences, she gradually adjusted to the new country. It was in Philadelphia, in October 1832, that the general adulation which she inspired everywhere became a more powerful emotion for Pierce Butler, a member of the audience. He was quickly obsessed by Fanny, and she responded warmly to his flattering attentions. Whenever her schedule allowed the time, they went riding together, and Pierce followed her tours to Baltimore, New York, and Boston. In Pierce's company Fanny began to consider making the United States her new home. On June 7, 1834, they were married in Philadelphia. The decision was hard for Fanny. Her family's fortunes were closely tied to her popularity on the stage. Like Juliet, forced to choose between family and lover, she chose the lover. She gave up her acting career in favor of staying with Pierce, but she also wept at her wedding. To soften the blow to her father, she gave him the small fortune that she had earned on the tour. Financially, she had made herself totally dependent on Pierce.
    Charles Kemble returned to England and the newlyweds settled into life in Philadelphia. Fanny, who was pregnant within a few months, turned her attention to her written impressions of America and began to prepare them for publication. Pierce, reacting to her gibes against his country, suggested she tone down the more hurtful observations. In a clash between tackful silence and uncompromising conscience, Fanny defended her right to say what she really thought. So bitter were their differences surrounding publication of The Journal of a Residence in America that Fanny threatened to leave Pierce then and there. Pierce refused to take her threats too seriously, attributing them to postpartum depression after the birth of their daughter Sarah in May 1835. It was not a good start, and worse was to come.
    Though a Philadelphian, Pierce was heir to a cotton fortune in Georgia. In 1838, Fanny paid her first visit to the family plantation on Butler's and St. Simon's Islands just off the coast. She was appalled by the conditions of the slaves and b their subservience, and ashamed that she depended on their labor for her well-being. She wrote,

"Their nakedness clothes me, and their heavy toil maintains me in a luxurious idleness."
Finding herself unable to help them or to influence her husband to change his behavior radically, she began to contemplate leaving Pierce and returning to England. As she wrote,

"This is no place for me, since I was not born among slaves and cannot bear to live among them."
On their return to Philadelphia, Fanny gave birth to their second child, Frances Anne (named after Fanny, and known to the family as Fan). In the weeks that followed, the tensions and squabbling between Fanny and Pierce continued. Although they lived in the same house, they reserved most of what they had to say for letters, perhaps the easiest way of communicating things that they found difficult to say face-to-face. Aware that their marriage was in trouble, they both confided in their friend, Elizabeth Sedgwick. It is clear from Pierce's letter to Elizabeth that he believed in the bond of affection between himself and his wife:

"I have never doubted the continuance and strength of her love for me and she should never have doubted mine. I know that our feelings are as strong as when we first loved but cemented and made holy by the birth of our two daughters."
He went on to assure her,

"If we are not happy together, less happy should we be apart."
    In 1841, because Fanny's father was very ill, the Butlers and their daughters left the United States for London, where Pierce soon proved himself a spendthrift. Even the suggestion that the part of Fanny's journal covering the South should be published outraged Pierce. Fanny was mortified. Publication would earn much-needed money, for Pierce had yet to inherit his fortune, and his spending was steadily draining their resources. For a year, upheaval followed upheaval. The letter from which the extract is taken dates from this period, when Fanny--torn between love and her need for independence--decided yet again to leave Pierce. However, she stayed, and they returned to Philadelphia, where their lack of money forced them to live in a boarding house.
    Finally, in October 1845, Fanny, worn down by years of emotional turmoil, left for England, her marriage in shreds. During their last months together she accused Pierce of adultery, quoting as evidence some letters that she found in his desk; but this accusation was never substantiated and may have been simply an expression of her anger. From the beginning, their love for each other was frustrated by the incompatibility of their temperaments. Their efforts to reconcile differences were thwarted by Fanny's determination not to be made an obedient and dependent wife. Neither could make their love work for the other. Fanny wrote to Pierce,

"I have only to regret that I am not other than I am, perhaps I might have been happier than I am, and possessed qualities more acceptable to you than those with which nature and education have endowed me."
    In 1848, Pierce began divorce proceedings. The settlement secured the children's financial future but limited Fanny's access to her daughters. Neither Pierce nor Fanny married again. In 1864, Fanny's book Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, was published in London. On her 80th birthday, Fanny was shown an 1829 engraving of herself as the star-crossed lover, Juliet. She said only,

"I had quite forgotten it."





Text from
Famous Love Letters
Messages of Intimacy and Passion
Edited by Ronald Tamplin