Woolner's Bust

Marble bust of John Mitchell Kemble, by Thomas Woolner RA (1825-92). The Library, Trinity College, Cambridge.

In 1861 Kemble's closest friend, W. B. Donne, wrote to Fanny Kemble: 'There is in hand a project for erecting a memorial to your late brother John. If we can raise £250 it is proposed to have a bust by Woolner, which will be presented to Trinity College, Cambridge, and put up in the Library. The names already on the committee are numerous and good, and I hope the issue will be prosperous, for it were a great pity that such a scholar as he was should be uncommemorated.' (C. B. Johnson, William Bodham Donne and his Friends (London, 1905), p. 257.)

A small printed leaflet, headed 'Kemble Memorial', announces the formation of a Committee, comprising 50 persons, with W. B. Donne, and Professor W. Lloyd Birkbeck, Professor of the Laws of England, University of Cambridge, as its Hon. Secretaries. Reference is made to the monument which had been erected to Kemble in Dublin, and contributions are invited from those who might wish 'to record their high esteem for [Kemble's] learning, and for his numerous contributions to Teutonic Philology and the early History and Archaeology of England'. A list is given of 39 subscriptions, most for sums of less than 5 guineas, but rising to two of £10 and two of 10 guineas. The total raised or promised at this stage was about £125.

Woolner completed the bust, and on 4 November 1866 wrote to the Master of Trinity (William Whewell): 'I sent the Kemble Bust off a day or two back, and Mr Donne promised me he would write you a formal letter on the subject.' <Check for this letter in Trinity Library.>

It would appear to have proved difficult, five years or more after Kemble's death, to raise the balance of the target sum (£250), by the required number of further individual subscriptions of one or two guineas. At some point, after the completion of the bust and its acceptance by Trinity, Donne and Birkbeck issued a second leaflet, headed 'Kemble Memorial', as follows: 'The Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, having consented to receive the Bust executed by Mr. Woolner, for their Library, the Committee hope that many more Subscriptions will be received, as the funds in hand are not sufficient to defray the expenses of the Bust, and that all Subscriptions hitherto promised, will be paid as soon as possible, as the Account will shortly be closed.' 

A third leaflet headed 'Kemble Memorial', dated 27 June 1867, is reproduced below. Donne reports formally on the memorial, and brings its administration to a close. He enlarges upon the circumstances of Kemble's death in Dublin, and explains how the money raised from Kemble's friends in Ireland and England had so far exceeded the cost of the memorial in Dublin that it had been decided to commission a suitable memorial in England, to be placed in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. 

Donne was evidently well pleased with Woolner's work:

'It is due to Mr Woolner, to state the imperfect character of the materials, with which he had to work. He had never seen Mr Kemble: beyond a sketch or two, taken at various times, no portrait of him existed; the only vouchers were a mask and a photograph taken after death, and a profile in lithograph, from a drawing made many years previously by Mr Richard Lane, A.R.A. From such mere rudiments, Mr Woolner has succeeded in producing a bust, not only admirable in point of art, but which conveys a fair idea of Mr Kemble as he was in life.' (For the profile in lithograph, and the photograph, see Iconography.)

A total of 65 subscriptions had been collected by the time the list was closed, generating a fund of about £215. Of this sum, £30 had been paid in respect of the memorial in Dublin (1862-3). Woolner was paid the balance, after printing and other costs, of £157. The subscribers to the Kemble memorial included the Rev. Professor Joseph Bosworth, of the University of Oxford, with whom Kemble had clashed in the 1830s. Bosworth gave 10 guineas, which made him, with Hudson Gurney, one of the two who gave the most.

For the 'Kemble Memorial' (1867), click on thumbnails below to view larger images.

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October 2011