St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-01-27
TRADITIONS OF ACTORS.
Forgotten Stars of Other Days
The Kembies and Others.

The kembies and Others.
Brooklyn Eagle.
Most people are forgotten after they
die-sOme while they are sill alive.
This last is largely true of Frances
Anne Fanny Kemble. In any casual
company a majority would not have
known any time in recent years whether
she had joined the majority or not. This
was not only because of her advanced,
eighty-four. She quit the stage nearly
sixty years ago, at time of life when
most celebrated actors have barely be-
gun their triumphs. She is not
now known, save by tradition.
as all actress ut all, to any
but the survivors of a past generation.
She appeared Oh the platform from time
to time as reader. furnishing rare
illustrations of the possibilities OF this
sort Of entertainment and instruct ton.
She showed no disposition to return to
the stage, even after her separation
1888. There may have been natural
doubt whether she ever cared much for
lt-certainly she did not share with
most players sense of the necessity
of its work and stimulus. The active
members OF the profession were more
than once made aware of her lack of
sympathy, if not her absolute indiffer-
ence; and it may very well be that the
immediate motive, the relief of her
father, who as manager of COvent gar
den had encountered the disaster of an
unfortunate season, was the only lnf1u
ence that constrained her to hStrionic
calling. At all events, the impression
she produced in England and in this
country was instant and remarkable.
1t used to be said, long before the
war, that the institution OF slavery
diYted families and embittered kind
dred. Fanny Kemble's has been often
cited as case in point. A winter with
ia ton so shocked and distressed her by
its object lessons in the system that
differences between the married pair
enSued which ended in entire estrange-
ment. This story has been regarded,
in its length and breadth, with some
skepticism. 1t is argued that a
woman so Intelligent as she. with such
intellectual insight, with the imaglna
toll essential as an equipment for the
peISonation of character, and with con-
ScientiouSneSS so acute, would not need
to go to the South to get fair notion of
what slavery actually was; that either
she would not have gone at all, or go
ing, would not have been so easily
startled out of the properties. 1t was
therefore suspected that other int1u-
ences helped to work out the end, and
that the story was not wholly told by
her who recorded it in her journal.
Fanny KembIe's father, Charles Kem-
actor, but without the genius of his
sister, Mrs. Siddons, or of his brother,
John Philip Kemble. By the consent Of
the traditions, OH which the actor must
rely for fame with posterity, these were
great players. History can do little
more for the actor than to supply the
chronology of his career. 1t cannot
present his living, moving, palpltating
force to the remote reader. All beside
the bare biography tt can do is to
recall, in print or by word of
mouth, the tradition of the effect
produced upon the spectators. SO
it may not follow that player hailed
as great by his contemporaries would
now be regarded as so great. Changes
IN taste and education, in public Opin-
ion. must he allowed for. The name of
KembIe. if struck from the annals of
the British stage, would leave wide
gap. But it is not certain that II the
family could revisit the pale gllmpses
of the property moon, in this largely
naturalistic, realistic age, they would
stand exactly so high upon the boards.
Mrs. SiddOnS, who seems in the belief
of the judicioUs to have ranked her
brother, appears to have had her supreme
moments, to have delivered powerful
because impulsive, Irresistible, natural
passages. But the family, and eSpe
cially John Philip Kemble, belonged to
what is somewhat vaguely called the
sold school," which later generation
has seen without regret give place to
another school, not necessarily a new
one, inasmuch as it implies return to
irst and everlasting principles. The
old school, we may readily believe,
was to degree formal, conventional,
stogy, stilted, answering to Shake
speare's description of the actor who
"StrutS and frets his brief hour"
Whatever noteworthy X emble sue
cesses there were 1t is not improbable
that greater triumphs were reserved for
the English drama. Nobody can now
tell US, but is it not possible that no
small part of the impression at once
produced by Fanny KembIe, was owing
to the fact that, against the precise and
careful background of that "Old
school," she set upon the stage pict-
ure of youth and natural force and
vivacious Impulse which went far to
make the oldest frequenters of the the
alter. before or behind the footiights.
forget, in the fresh and breezy presence,
the odor of gas and the smell of paints.
Passing from the stage to The plat
form, some people said that Shakespeare
as read by Fanny Kenble was better
oxemplifed than he could be by the
most competent company. This is an
extreme view. There are other and in
telligent people who will acknowledge
that they never fail to derive enlighten-
ment from performance of one of his
plays, even by the poorest of players in
the shabbiest of theaters. But Fanny
Kemble, if she never had appeared upon
the stage or the platform, could not have
failed to disclose strong and uncom-
mon character in any circumstances of
life, as her books and papers further
show her to be a woman of rare intel
lectual gifts and training.