The Amenities of Book-Collecting and Kindred Affections

by A. Edward Newton

And early in the following year he had printed in a provincial journal an appreciation of her acting, comparing her, not unfavorably, with Mrs. Jordan, who, in her day, then over, is said to have had no rival in comedy parts.

Lamb’s earliest reference to Miss Kelly, however, appears to be in a letter to the Wordsworths, in which he says that he can keep the accounts of his office, comparing sum with sum, writing “Paid” against one and “Unpaid” against t’other (this was long before the days of scientific bookkeeping and muchvaunted efficiency), and still reserve a corner of his mind for the memory of some passage from a book, or “the gleam of Fanny Kelly’s divine plain face.” This is an always quoted reference and seems correctly to describe the lady, who is spoken of by others as an unaffected, sensible, clear-headed, warm-hearted woman, plain but engaging, with none of the vanities or arrogance of the actress about her. It will be recalled that Lamb had no love for blue-stocking women, and speaking of one, said, “If she belonged to me I would lock her up and feed her on bread and water till she left off writing poetry. A female poet, or female author of any kind, ranks below an actress, I think.” This shortest way with minor poets has, perhaps, much to recommend it.

It was Lamb’s whim in his essays to be frequently misleading, setting his signals at full speed ahead when they should have been set at danger, or, at least, at caution. Thus in his charming essay “Barbara S——” (how unconsciously one invariably uses this adjective in speaking of anything Lamb wrote), after telling the story of a poor little stage waif receiving by mistake a whole sovereign instead of the half a one justly due for a week’s pay, and how she was tempted to keep it, but did not, he adds, “I had the anecdote from the mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford.” Here seemed to be plain sailing, and grave editors pointed out who Mrs. Crawford was: they told her maiden name, and for good measure threw in the names of her several husbands. But Lamb, in a letter to Bernard Barton in 1825, speaking of these essays, said: “Tell me how you like ‘Barbara S——.’ I never saw Mrs. Crawford in my life, nevertheless ’tis all true of somebody.” And some years later, not long before he died, to another correspondent he wrote: “As Miss Kelly is just now in notoriety,”—she was then giving an entertainment called “Dramatic Recollections” at the Strand Theatre,—“it may amuse you to know that ‘Barbara S——’ is all of it true of her, being all communicated to me from her own mouth. Can we not contrive to make up a party to see her?”

There is another reference to Miss Kelly, which, in the light of our subsequent knowledge, is as dainty a suggestion of marriage with her as can be found in the annals of courtship. It appeared in “The Examiner” just a fortnight before Lamb’s proposal. In a criticism of her acting as Rachel in “The Jovial Crew,” now forgotten, Lamb was, he says, interrupted in the enjoyment of the play by a stranger who sat beside him remarking of Miss Kelly, “What a lass that were to go a gypsying through the world with!”

Knowing how frequently Lamb addressed Elia, his other self, and Elia, Lamb, may we not suppose that on this occasion the voice of the stranger was the voice of Elia? Was it unlikely that Miss Kelly, who would see the criticism, would hear the voice and recognize it as Lamb’s? I love to linger over these delicate incidents of Lamb’s courtship, which was all too brief.

But what of Mary? I think she cannot but have contemplated the likelihood of her brother’s marriage and determined upon the line she would take in that event. Years before she had written, “You will smile when I tell you I think myself the only woman in the world who could live with a brother’s wife, and make a real friend of her, partly from early observations of the unhappy example I have just given you, and partly from a knack I know I have of looking into people’s real character, and never expecting them to act out of it—never expecting another to do as I would in the same case.”

Mary Lamb was an exceptional woman; and even though her brother might have thought he kept the secret of his love to himself, she would know and, I fancy, approve. Was it not agreed between them that she was to die first? and when she was gone, who would be left to care for Charles?

Before I come to the little drama—tragedy one could hardly call it—of Lamb’s love-affair as told in his own way by his letters, I may be permitted to refer to two letters of his to Miss Kelly, one of them relatively unimportant, the other a few lines only, both unpublished, which form a part of my own Lamb collection. These letters, before they fell from high estate, formed a part of the “Sentimental Library” of Harry B. Smith, to whom I am indebted for much information concerning them. It will be seen that both these letters work themselves into the story of Lamb’s love-affair, which I am trying to tell. So far as is known, four letters are all that he ever addressed to the lady: the two above referred to, and the proposal and its sequel, in the collection of Mr. Huntington of New York, where I saw them not long ago. I have held valuable letters in my hand before, but these letters of Lamb! I confess to an emotional feeling with which the mere book-collector is rarely credited.