FIRE IN THE HEART

The love story of Fanny Kemble seemed a far cry from Henrietta Buckmaster's Deep River and Let My People Go, unless one happens to know that Fanny Kemble's advocacy of the cause of abolition was the rock on which her marriage to Pierce Butler foundered. This is a fascinating book, its first half a lively portrait of the London of the stage which was the lifeblood of the Kembles and the Siddons; its second half, the account of Fanny Kemble and her father, Charles Kemble, and their triumphant pilgrimage to the fabulous America -- a tour which ended in Fanny's marriage to the rich Philadelphian, Pierce Butler, slave owner, musician and lawyer. It was a love match- and it took great depths of love to weather the storms of Philadelphia's disapproval, of the family's distaste for the marriage, of the successive and violent issues over slavery. But it was this, in its most distasteful byproduct, on which the marriage broke- and Fanny returned to England and the career of her choice, her passionate romance a closed book.