Politesse and the Woman at Risk: The Social Comedies of Marie-Thérèse De Camp

Abstract

The actress and playwright Marie-Therese De Camp (1774-1838) is described--by biographers of her more famous daughter, the actress, diarist, and playwright, Fanny Kemble--as dedicated to outdoor pursuits (principally angling and riding), moody, and, later in life, eccentric in her behavior. (1) She is additionally recorded as unimpeachably chaste, virtuous, and respectable, a habitual member of the London's Swiss congregation. Despite this reputation, the whiff of scandal touched her in 1795 when, as one of the young leading lights of the company of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, she caught the inebriated attentions of the theater's actor-manager, John Philip Kemble. He burst into her dressing room and pressed his unwanted attentions upon the young lady--an incident that both Ellen Donkin and Claire Tomalin quite justifiably describe as an attempted rape. (2) The resulting furor attracted swift help and little damage seemed done to either party. However, immediately thereafter Kemble apologized in a remarkably public manner. The Times ran an announcement: I, JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE, of the Theatre Royal, Drury-lane, do adopt this method of publicly apologizing to Miss DECAMP, for the very improper and unjustifiable Behaviour I was lately guilty of towards her; which I do further declare her Conduct and Character had in no instance authorised, but; on the contrary, I do know and believe both to be irreproachable.--January 27, 1795. (3) The affair seemed to be over until, in 1800, Charles Kemble, John Philip's younger brother, announced his desire to marry his vivacious costar, De Camp. The elder Kemble at first refused to allow the match, eventually agreeing to it only if the couple would wait until Charles's thirtieth birthday. Thus, despite both being successful actors, in command of excellent incomes, and potentially independent, Charles Kemble and Marie-Therese De Camp waited the allotted span to marry, on 2 July 1806, with the blessing of the Kemble clan, and the determinedly patriarchal John Philip giving the bride away. (4) The odd collision of the indecorous and the prudent, the foolish and the circumspect that we see in John Philip Kemble's early association with his future sister-in-law frames not only De Camp's biography but also the lifestyle of the family into which she married, a family that worked hard to secure its status as respectable pillar of late Georgian and Regency Britain, despite the source of their fortune resting in the somewhat dubious world of the stage. (5) Particularly revealing as regards the mythology of the Kembles are the subjective opinions of De Camp's daughter, Fanny, who ascribes to her family the values of polite society, order and respectability earned and learned by them all: Whatever qualities of mind or character I inherit from my father's family I am persuaded that I am more strongly stamped with those I derived from my mother, a woman, who, possessing no specific gift in such perfection as the dramatic talents of the Kembles, had in a higher degree than any of them the peculiar organisation of genius. To the fine senses of a savage rather than a civilised nature, she joined an acute instinct of criticism in all matters of art, and a general quickness and accuracy of perception, and a brilliant of expression that made her conversation delightful. Had she possessed half the advantages of education which she and my father laboured to bestow on us, she would, I think, have been one of the most remarkable persons of her time. (6) De Camp's vividness of expression, as well as her keen eye for the rules, regulations, and affectations of the polite society to which success, fortune, and studied respectability admitted the Kembles, is the very stuff of her dramas. De Camp's plays are set in polite and respectable society, but they are emboldened by the threat of expulsion from it and a narrative interest in seduction plots, the nature of reputation, and in the complex role of the young gentlewoman at moral risk. …