Commonplace Book: Fanny Kemble's Diary

[ricardienne]

I picked up on a whim at the library book sale corner Fanny Kemble's Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, 1838-9 (ed. J.A. Scott, Brown Thrasher, 1984) written by the famous English actress who married a wealthy Philadelphian, whose family fortune owed to massive southern plantations. She was a confirmed abolitionist even before her marriage, and published -- after her divorce and return to England -- a journal from the period of her residence on her husband's plantation, written in the form of letters to a friend. She utterly fascinates me: there's quite a lot of self-righteous pronouncements (very entertainingly when about Americans) and Victorian moralizing, and many of her pronouncements on race and culture/"civilization" make one very uncomfortable. But she has some very pointed observations on the effects of racism in the North, and, throughout -- her capacity for snark and sarcasm! It is amazing.


On feeding children junk-food (p. 14, January 1839):

My only trial here was one which I have to encouter in whatever direction I travel in America, and which, though apparently a trivial matter in itself, has caused me infinite trouble, and no little compassion for the rising generation of the United States -- I allude to the ignorant and fatal practice of the women of stuffing their children from morning till night with every species of trash which comes to hand

On American conformity (p. 37-8)

Charleston has an air of eccentricity, too, and peculiarity, which formerly were not deemed unbecoming the wellborn and well-bred gentlewoman, which her gentility itself sanctioned and warranted -- none of the vulgar dread of vulgar opinion, forcing those who are possessed by it to conform to a general standard of manners, unable to conceive one peculiar to itself-- this "what-'ll-Mrs.-Grundy-say" devotion to conformity in small things and great, which pervades the American body-social from the matter of churchgoing to the trimming of women's petticoates -- this dread of singularity, which has eaten up all individuality amongst them, and makes their population like so many moral and mental lithographs, and their houses like so many thousand hideous brick twins.

I believe I am getting excited; but the fact is, that being politically the most free people on earth, the American are socially the least so; and it seems as though, ever since that little affair of establishing their independence among nations, which they managed so successfully, every American mother's son of them has been doing his best to divest himself of his own private share of that great public blessing, liberty.

On Charleston's curfew (p. 39):

...for the first time since my residence in this free country, the curfew (now obsolte in mine, except in some remote districts, where the ringing of an old church bell at sunset is all that remains of the tyrannous custom) recalled the associations of early feudal times, and the oppressive insecurity of our Norman conquerors. But truly it seemed rather anomalous hereabouts, and nowadays; though, of course, it is very necessary where a large class of persons exists in the very bosom of a community whose interests are now to be at variance and incompatible with those of its other members. And no doubt these daily and nightly precautions are but trifling drawbacks upon the manifold blessings of slavery (for which, if you are stupid, and cannot conceive them, see the late Governor McDuffie's speeches); still I should prefer going to sleep without the apprehension of my servants' cutting my throat in my bed, even to having a guard provided to prevent their doing so. However, this peculiar prejudice of mine may spring from the fact of my having known many instances in which servants were the trusted and most trustworthy friends of their employers, and entertaining, besides, some odd notions of the reciprocal duties of all the members of families one towards the other

But this bit I think is one of the most interesting, especially since Kemble was herself an actress, and from a family of Shakespearean actors.

On John Quincy Adams and Shakespeare staging (p. 121)

Did I ever tell you of my dining in Boston, at the H_____'s, on my first visit to that city, and sitting by Mr. John Quincy Adams, who, talking to me about Desdemona, assured me, with a most serious expression of sincere disgust, that he considered all her misfortunes as a very just judgment upon her for having married a "nigger?" I think, if some ingenious American actor of the present day, bent upon realizing Shakespeare's finest conceptions, with all the advantages of modern enlightenment, could contrive to slip in that opprobrious title, with a true South Carolinian antiabolitionist expression, it might really be made quite a point for Iago, as, for instance in his first soliloquy -- "I hate the nigger," given in proper Charleston or Savannah fashion, I am sure would tell far better than "I hate the Moor." Only think, E, what a very new order of interest the whole tragedy might receive, acted throughout from this standpoint, as the Germans call it in this country, and called Amalgamation, or the Black Bridal

Comments

[achyvi.livejournal.com]

If they replaced "I hate the Moor" with Kemble's suggestion, it would be extremely jarring and more than a little amazing (so long as it was a good production overall, so it would then avoid the whole "oh, it's just a schtick to try and shock people, ho-hum" aspect). It would definitely set the mood well for the any member of the audience that didn't know the plot already.

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- it would have shocked in a rather different way in Kemble's day, I think. Not because the word itself was shocking but because it would be 'modernizing' the play and giving it a firm contemporary context (also: I don't think that 'modern dress' Shakespeare was really a thing in the 19th century -- this would be fascinating to research), particularly since I imagine a lot of people probably really wanted to imaged Othello as "a Moor and NOT a black "...

[achyvi.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine our (generic sense) generation is the first one to do modern dress Shakespeare... although if it was overly shocking, maybe even if someone did modernize one, they wouldn't make a big deal out of the production just in case of twisted panties. Hmm!