LETTER 249
CHARLES LAMB TO FANNY KELLY
20 July, 1819.
Dear Miss Kelly,—We had the pleasure, pain I might better call it, of seeing you last night in the new Play. It was a most consummate piece of Acting, but what a task for you to undergo! at a time when your heart is sore from real sorrow! it has given rise to a train of thinking, which I cannot suppress.
Would to God you were released from this way of life; that you could bring your mind to consent to take your lot with us, and throw off for ever the whole burden of your Profession. I neither expect or wish you to take notice of this which I am writing, in your present over occupied & hurried state.—But to think of it at your leisure. I have quite income enough, if that were all, to justify for me making such a proposal, with what I may call even a handsome provision for my survivor. What you possess of your own would naturally be appropriated to those, for whose sakes chiefly you have made so many hard sacrifices. I am not so foolish as not to know that I am a most unworthy match for such a one as you, but you have for years been a principal object in my mind. In many a sweet assumed character I have learned to love you, but simply as F.M. Kelly I love you better than them all. Can you quit these shadows of existence, & come & be a reality to us? can you leave off harassing yourself to please a thankless multitude, who know nothing of you, & begin at last to live to yourself & your friends?
As plainly & frankly as I have seen you give or refuse assent in some feigned scene, so frankly do me the justice to answer me. It is impossible I should feel injured or aggrieved by your telling me at once, that the proposal does not suit you. It is impossible that I should ever think of molesting you with idle importunity and persecution after your mind [was] once firmly spoken—but happier, far happier, could I have leave to hope a time might come, when our friends might be your friends; our interests yours; our book-knowledge, if in that inconsiderable particular we have any little advantage, might impart something to you, which you would every day have it in your power ten thousand fold to repay by the added cheerfulness and joy which you could not fail to bring as a dowry into whatever family should have the honor and happiness of receiving you, the most welcome accession that could be made to it.
In haste, but with entire respect & deepest affection, I subscribe myself
C. LAMB.
[It was known, on the authority of the late Mr. Charles Kent, that Fanny Kelly, the actress, had received an offer of marriage from Lamb; but my own impression was that it was made much later in life than this letter, first printed in 1903 by Mr. John Hollingshead, indicates. Miss Kelly, who at this time was engaged at the Lyceum, would be twenty-nine on October 15; Lamb was forty-four in February. His salary was now £600 a year.
Lamb had long admired Miss Kelly as an actress. In his Works, published in 1818, was this sonnet:—
To Miss Kelly
You are not, Kelly, of the common strain,
That stoop their pride and female honour down
To please that many-headed beast the town,
And vend their lavish smiles and tricks for gain;
By fortune thrown amid the actors' train,
You keep your native dignity of thought;
The plaudits that attend you come unsought,
As tributes due unto your natural vein.
Your tears have passion in them, and a grace
Of genuine freshness, which our hearts avow;
Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot trace,
That vanish and return we know not how—
And please the better from a pensive face,
And thoughtful eye, and a reflecting brow.
That Lamb had been pondering his offer for some little time is suggested, Mr. Macdonald remarks, by a passage in one of his articles on Miss Kelly in The Examiner earlier in this month, where he says of her as Rachel, in "The Jovial Crew," probably with full knowledge that it would meet her eye and be understood (a truly Elian method of love-lettering), "'What a lass that were,' said a stranger who sate beside us … 'to go a gipseying through the world with.'"
This was Miss Kelly's reply:—
Henrietta Street, July 20th, 1819.
An early & deeply rooted attachment has fixed my heart on one from whom no worldly prospect can well induce me to withdraw it, but while I thus frankly & decidedly decline your proposal, believe me, I am not insensible to the high honour which the preference of such a mind as yours confers upon me—let me, however, hope that all thought upon this subject will end with this letter, & that you will henceforth encourage no other sentiment towards me than esteem in my private character and a continuance of that approbation of my humble talents which you have already expressed so much & so often to my advantage and gratification.
Believe me I feel proud to acknowledge myself
Your obliged friend
F. M. Kelly.
Lamb at once wrote again as follows:—]
Letter 250
Charles Lamb to Fanny Kelly
July 20th, 1819.
Dear Miss Kelly,—Your injunctions shall be obeyed to a tittle. I feel myself in a lackadaisacal no-how-ish kind of a humour. I believe it is the rain, or something. I had thought to have written seriously, but I fancy I succeed best in epistles of mere fun; puns & that nonsense. You will be good friends with us, will you not? let what has past "break no bones" between us. You will not refuse us them next time we send for them?
Yours very truly, C. L.
Do you observe the delicacy of not signing my full name?
N.B. Do not paste that last letter of mine into your Book.
[Writing again of Miss Kelly, in the "Hypocrite," in The Examiner of August 1 and 2, Lamb says: "She is in truth not framed to tease or torment even in jest, but to utter a hearty Yes or No; to yield or refuse assent with a noble sincerity. We have not the pleasure of being acquainted with her, but we have been told that she carries the same cordial manners into private life."
Miss Kelly died unmarried at the age of ninety-two.
"Break no bones." Here Lamb makes one of his puns. By "bones" he meant also the little ivory discs which were given to friends of the management, entitling them to free entry to the theatre. With this explanation the next sentence of the letter becomes clear.]
Letter 251
Charles Lamb to Thomas Noon Talefourd(?)
[August, 1819.]
Dear T. We are at Mr. Bays's, Hatter, Trumpington Street, Cambridge. Can you come down? You will be with us, all but Bed, which you can get at an Inn. We shall be most glad to see you. Be so good as send me Hazlit's volume, just published at Hone's, directed as above. Or, much better, bring it. Yours, hic et ubique,
C. Lamb.
[The little note printed above (by permission of the Master of Magdalene) proves that Lamb was in Cambridge in 1819. The evidence is that the only book by Hazlitt which Hone published was Political Essays, with Sketches by Public Characters, printed for William Hone, 45 Ludgate Hill, 1819. If then Hazlitt's book determines the year, we may take the testimony of the sonnet "Written at Cambridge, August 15, 1819" as to the month, especially as Lamb at that time always took his holidays in the summer; and this gives us August: a peculiarly satisfactory conclusion for Cambridge men, because it shows that it was to Cambridge that he went for comfort and solace after Miss Kelly's refusal.
The letter has still further value in adding another Lamb domicile to the list, Mr. Bays's house being still in existence although no longer in Trumpington Street, but King's Parade.
"T." may easily have been Talfourd, who had just been writing an enthusiastic review of Lamb's John Woodvil in The Champion and was only too happy to serve his hero in any way. But it might be Tom Holcroft.]
Letter 252
Charles Lamb to S. T. Coleridge
[No date. ? Summer, 1819.]
Dr C. Your sonnet is capital. The Paper ingenious, only that it split into 4 parts (besides a side splinter) in the carriage. I have transferred it to the common English Paper, manufactured of rags, for better preservation. I never knew before how the Iliad and Odyssey were written. Tis strikingly corroborated by observations on Cats. These domestic animals, put 'em on a rug before the fire, wink their eyes up and listen to the Kettle, and then PURR, which is their Poetry.
On Sunday week we kiss your hands (if they are clean). This next Sunday
I have been engaged for some time.
With remembces to your good Host and Hostess
Yours ever C. Lamb.
[The sonnet was Coleridge's "Fancy in Nubibus; or, The Poet in the Clouds," printed in Blackwood, November, 1819, but now sent to Lamb in manuscript, apparently on some curious kind of paper.
This is the sonnet:—
O! it is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
Or let the easily persuaded eyes
Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low
And cheek aslant see rivers flow of gold
'Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go
From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land!
Or, list'ning to the tide, with closed sight,
Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand
By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.
See next letter to Coleridge.
Possibly it is to this summer that an undated note to Crabb Robinson belongs (in the Dr. Williams' Library) in which Lamb says they are setting out to see Lord Braybrooke's house at Audley End.]