Frances Anne Kernble is still the best remembered of the sojourners in her beloved Happy Valley, because, like the adorable Dolly Madison, she never scorned the least of the charming amenities of life. [1] Even Hawthorne, the "silent man " as he spoke of himself, delighted to see her come flying down on a large black horse -sometimes she would snatch up little Julian for a gallop; and the cynical Charles Sumner confessed to the piquant pleasure of her company on a ride to Pittsfield, and begged this " sympathetic, noble, and unaccommodating " woman to be his cicerone over the beautiful lanes and wild paths of Berkshire.

As early as 1838 Fanny Kemble writes at the " Old Red Inn": "The village hostelry was never so graced before; it is having a blossoming time, with sweet young faces shining about it in every direction , looking out upon that prospect from the, hill-top." She speaks of "making common cause in the eating and living way" with Mary and Fanny Appleton, at the hotel for a week. (Mary married Robert, son of Sir James Mackintosh, and the lamented, Fanny the poet Longfellow.)

Many stories are told of Fanny Kemble during her various sojourns at the "Old Red Inn " and the Curtis Hotel, planted, on the site of the tavern of 1773. She did not purchase her, cottage, "The Perch, " until 1850, the year Hawthorne arrived.

One day Mrs. Kemble, while waiting for her " spach-cock" to be served, following an ante-breakfast canter over hill and dale, gave some directions at the desk about her favorite horse, and added, " You should remove your hat; gentlemen always remove their hats in my presence." " But I am not a gentleman, ma'am, I'm a butcher. " This pleased her so much that she was his friend forever afterward.

Mrs. Kemble annotated a volume of her poems for Mr. William O. Curtis; the blanks of dedication are filled in "To Mrs. St. Leger," "To Mrs. Norton,"etc. A sonnet to her aunt Mrs. Siddons finishes:

" Think only that I loved ye passing well
And let my follies slumber in the past."
The remarkable portrait of Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Kemble by Briggs hangs in the Boston Athenaeum. The distinction which Mrs. Kemble's grandson Owen Wister has achieved in the literary world revives anew the interest in her life and letters.

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