Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 by Frances Anne
Kemble is a series of journal entries that she wrote in the form of letters.
The editor suggests that she didn’t send them at all, that she crafted much of
the journal later from brief notes taken at the time, but I am not convinced
that she didn’t send the originals to her friend Elizabeth in Pennsylvania after all. It was commonplace
at that time to keep a letterbook, recording correspondence for later reference.
Her letters were so long that she may have just jotted summaries for some of
them, then elaborated on it all for publication over two decades later. This
English actress was also a prolific, eloquent writer, and her call for justice
and humanity rings clear.
 |
Author Sophia Alexander
with Fanny Kemble's Journal |
The journal begins with a moving
essay against the institution of slavery, even before she arrives in the
South: “the slaves of a kind owner may
be as well cared for, and as happy, as the dogs and horses of a merciful
master; but [their happiness] must again depend upon the complete perfection of
their moral and mental degradation… if they are incapable of profiting by
instruction, I do not see the necessity for laws inflicting heavy penalties on
those who offer it to them… the moment they are in any degree enlightened, they
become unhappy.”
Her goal is eventually clear as
she ventures to reside on a rice plantation with her Southern,
plantation-owning husband and two children: she intends to document the abuses
that she sees—or perhaps it was simply the purpose of the publication, with
some of the journal re-crafted to suit. Since the point of the journal’s
publication was to expose the cruelties of slavery, it makes sense that it
would begin with a powerful anti-slavery essay. Her accounts go from terrible
to worse to even worse so that you begin to question if the original wretched
hovel that is eventually likened to a palace in comparison to the later ones
was really so wretched after all. I’m sure
conditions were poor, but I’m still not quite sure just how loathsome they
really were. While the details left me waffling, Fanny’s powerful writing did convince
me more than ever before, in a visceral way, that slavery is a wretched, horrible
crime against humanity.
Almost ironically, I’m not
convinced, however, that she admits to all the crimes she’s privy to. I suspect
she’s trying to protect her daughters’ family’s reputation—for the girls’
custody was given to their father, Pierce Butler, at their divorce. I
personally believe she alludes to one, however, that may have fueled some of
her rage, and justifiably (if it’s true): Fanny readily admits to the
loveliness of a mulatto slave named Psyche—and relates an incident of Pierce
giving Psyche’s distraught husband away, almost as soon as they arrive at the
plantation. Later, Psyche is placed in an exalted position on a riverboat ride
that almost doesn’t make sense if she isn’t Mr. Butler’s concubine. Perhaps I’m
reading into it (was I supposed to?), but I could only imagine that Fanny was
seeing red.
Aside from my confusion as to the
precipitously ever-increasingly-devastating conditions that each group of
slaves that she sees lives in, the editor does point out a few factual inaccuracies,
even the dramatization of a killing of a neighbor that did not actually happen
while she was on the island, according to newspaper accounts of the day (it
happened months before she arrived). Unfortunately, she laments in the
published journal how she went to church the following Sunday after the
incident, where not a soul alluded to the tragedy, holding that up as proof of
how calloused they all were to the brutalities of their feudal existences. I’m
disappointed not to believe her entirely honest, because she writes forcefully with
an oh-so-important message. However, it really is possible that with twenty
years’ distance, she may have mistakenly recrafted some of those letters, remembering
only the stark details of the incidents that she knew were discussed in the letters,
according to her notes. After all, she didn’t witness the events for herself,
even in the journal. She may vividly recall that no one mentioned the event at
the church when she actually was there (so recently afterwards) and wondered
why the minister wasn’t better admonishing his flock not to commit such acts of
violence. I’m not convinced that her account is substantially different from
the truth, after all—and I well know how mixed up I can get over the details of
events that happened two whole decades ago!
Her candor is not my only point of
hesitation in recommending this journal. The other issue is actually a form of
brutal candor that she overuses—regarding her own prejudiced perceptions and
opinions of the slaves themselves. Often incredibly insulting, she seems to
feel superior in education, attractiveness, and morality even as she desires
them to know and believe they are her equals. She sometimes shows a certain
obtuseness when she claims that they believe they are inferior just because
they say so, as if not realizing that they are saying what they imagine she
wants to hear. She repeats her dismay at this often—though I wonder if she’s actually
just trying to draw a picture of the abject wretchedness of slave
existence. She seems far too clever not
to catch on… but then again, she seems to operate with a sort of forthright
zeal and very well may take others too much at face value.
I don’t often sense that she has
much real respect for the slaves, excepting a few of the more skilled and
knowledgeable workers. She’s overwhelmed
with pity, however—especially for the new mothers who have to go back to work
in the fields at just three weeks postpartum, the neglected elderly, etc. At
least a couple of the women (maybe several) have mulatto children, having been
raped by the overseer, as Fanny tells it—and even under the best-possible case
scenarios, power differentials make this deplorably problematic.
Fanny makes a powerful, convincing
argument in a letter included in the appendix that the brutal isolation of
these plantations negates the argument that practical reasons will preserve the
slaves: “it is sometimes clearly not
[in] the interest of the owner to prolong the life of his slaves; as in the
case of inferior or superannuated laborers… Who, on such estates as these,
shall witness to any act of tyranny or barbarity, however atrocious?... the
estate and its cultivators remaining… under the absolute control of the
overseer, who, provided he contrives to get a good crop of rice or cotton into
the market for his employers, is left to the arbitrary exercise of a will
seldom uninfluenced for evil by the combined effects of the grossest ignorance
and habitual intemperance… among a parcel of human beings as like brutes as
they can be made.”
I did find this journal fascinating.
The gorgeous, familiar landscape descriptions help to balance out the degrading
conditions of the slaves, keeping us from falling into absolute depression.
There are numerous anecdotes and observations, tales of visits to neighbors, and
accounts of the wilderness. The lines that amused me most, as I rather
identified with them, were these: “I sometimes despise myself for what seems to
me an inconceivable rapidity of emotion, that almost makes me doubt whether
anyone who feels so many things can really be said to feel anything… it is,
upon the whole, a merciful system of compensation by which my whole nature,
tortured as it was last night [her husband had forbidden her to bring him any
more complaints from the slaves], can be absorbed this morning in a perfectly
pleasurable contemplation of the capers of crabs and the color of mosses as if
nothing else existed in creation… I have no doubt that to follow me through
half a day with any species of lively participation in my feelings would be a
severe breathless moral calisthenic to most of my friends—what Shakespeare
calls ‘sweating labor.’ As far as I have hitherto had opportunities of
observing, children and maniacs are the only creatures who would be capable of
sufficiently rapid transitions of thought and feeling to keep pace with me.”
I’m inclined to believe that Fanny
adhered to the essential truths in writing this journal, and where she
stretched the truth, if on purpose, it was for a greater cause. Apparently some
have even credited its publication in 1863 with dissuading the British from
supporting the Confederacy in the American Civil War, so it very well may be
one of the most significant pieces of political propaganda that most of us have
never heard of!
Word of Warning: I enjoyed Fanny’s voice overall, but I am certain
I would have had much more trouble with much of it if I were black. As it was,
I was still sometimes ashamed of how overtly racist she sounded when she
expressed her aesthetic tastes, not entirely attributable to the situation she
found the slaves in. The slaves are described in the most degrading terms,
quite often. For that matter, the Irish
are, too, if not quite as often.
I also took issue with her brief condemnation
of the local white plantation women breastfeeding their own babies in a
prolonged fashion, the local standard being to nurse them past their second
summer. It was nice to learn that it was the norm, however, at the time.
Note: Their plantation home still stands on Butler Island
near Darien.
After I began reading Fanny’s journal last year, my husband and I ventured out
to see the property, which we believed to belong to the Nature Conservancy
(according to signs on the house and the land). I contacted this organization
upon seeing the rapidly dilapitating condition of the house, but it turns out
they no longer own it. I’m glad we got there while we still could. We saw so
much majestic wildlife there, as she describes in her journal as well. Fanny
talked about taking daily walks on the dikes through the rice patties, and so I
was delighted with walking the overgrown dikes myself, following in her
footsteps that way.
Additional Note: I purchased this
book at a Georgia
State Park gift shop, but
it seems that Fanny Kemble published many more memoirs in her lifetime, this
one simply being the most famous. I’m curious to read more. Perhaps I’ll start
with the one about her girlhood.
I’m also mildly curious to read
her daughter’s rebuttal to this journal—she spent far more time on the slave
plantation and married an English minister—though I’m not so keen to read a
vindication of slavery (if that’s what it is). Still, it would be interesting
to see where their accounts agree.
Extra-Special Additional Note: I’m
publishing this blog on Fanny’s 213th birthday, a sort of ‘Happy
Birthday!’ to the dynamic Ms. Kemble (born on the 27th of November in 1809).
