Happy in his successes, he was thrice happy in his pretty and accomplished wife. Maria Theresa Decamp was one year his junior; and, like himself, was born in the purple. Miss Decamp's real name is said to have been De Fleury. She was a Viennese by birth. Her family belonged to the ballet and the orchestra, and she herself, at six years of age, was dancing Cupid in Noverre's ballets at the London Opera House; and, ultimately, was a leading, very young lady in those at the Circus, now the Royal Surrey. From the sawdust of the Transpontine Theatre she was transferred, on the recommendation of the Prince of Wales, it is said, to figure in similar pieces, at Colman's house in the Haymarket. She was reserved, however, for better things than this: but Miss De Camp was not to attain them without study; she had to learn English--to speak and to read it; music, and other accomplishments. By a genius all this may be speedily effected; and Miss De Camp, in the season of 1786-87, appeared at Drury Lane as Julie, in "Richard Coeur de Lion," her future brother-in-law playing the King. At this time she was scarcely in her teens; but she was full of such promise, that she bade adieu for ever to ballet and the sawdust of the Royal Circus, and henceforth, and for upwards of thirty years, belonged to the regular drama. A score of years was to elapse before she was to change her name; but long previously she had made that first name distinguished in theatrical annals. She had exhibited unusual merit in singing and acting Macheath to the Polly of Charles Bannister, and the Lucy of Johnstone; and she created characters with which her name is closely associated in the memory of playgoers or playreaders. She was the original Floranthe in the "Mountaineers," Judith in the "Iron Chest," Irene in "Bluebeard," Maria in "Of Age To-morrow," Theodore in "Deaf and Dumb," Lady Julia in "Personation," Arinette in "Youth, Love, and Folly," Variella in the "Weathercock," and Morgiana in the "Forty Thieves." And while the glory she derived from this last performance was still at its brightest, Miss De Camp in 1806 married Mr. Charles Kemble--some rather tempestuous wooing, for so tender and gallant a stage-lover, but for which he rendered public apology, not impeding the match.[73] In the year of her marriage Mrs. C. Kemble joined the Covent Garden Company, and on making her appearance as Maria in the "Citizen," she was congratulated, on the part of the audience, by three distinct rounds of applause. Between this period and 1819, when she withdrew from the stage, she created two parts in which she has had no successor, Edmund in the "Blind Boy," and Lady Elizabeth Freelove in "A Day after the Wedding;" and, in the last year of her acting, Madge Wildfire in the "Heart of Mid-Lothian."