Transcriber's note
The spellings in this book are inconsistent in the original, andhave not been corrected except in the index, as explicitly noted below.
Records of a Girlhood
BY
FRANCES ANN KEMBLE
SECOND EDITION.
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1880.
COPYRIGHT, 1879,BYHENRY HOLT & CO.
John A. Gray, Agent,
Type-Setting Machinery,
16 & 18 Jacob Street,
New York.
PREFATORY NOTE.
Considerable portions of this work originally appeared in the AtlanticMonthly, but there is added to these a large amount of new matter nothitherto published, and the whole work has been thoroughly revised.
IIIIIIIVVVIVIIVIIIIXXXIXIIXIIIXIVXVXVIXVIIXVIIIXIXXXXXIIndex
CHAPTER I.
A few years ago I received from a friend to whom they had been addresseda collection of my own letters, written during a period of forty years,and amounting to thousands—a history of my life.
The passion for universal history (i.e. any and every body's story)nowadays seems to render any thing in the shape of personalrecollections good enough to be printed and read; and as the publicappetite for gossip appears to be insatiable, and is not unlikely sometime or other to be gratified at my expense, I have thought that my owngossip about myself may be a