Charles Lamb - The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

Page 216,line 10 from foot. Great house in the Haymarket. This was the King's Theatre (afterwards His Majesty's) where Mozart's "Don Giovanni" was produced in 1817, with Ambrogetti, the buffo, in the caste. Lamb's friend, William Ayrton, was the moving spirit in this representation.

Page 217.II.—Miss Kelly at Bath.

Felix Farley's Bristol Journal , January 30, 1819. The present article has been set up from that paper. Usually, however, it has been set up from Leigh Hunt's copy in The Examiner , February 7 and 8, 1819, where it was quoted with the following introduction:—

The Reader, we are sure, will thank us for extracting the following observations on a favourite Actress, from a Provincial Paper, the Bristol Journal . We should have guessed the masterly and cordial hand that wrote them had we met with it in the East Indies. There is but one praise belonging to Miss Kelly which it has omitted, and which it could not supply;—and that is, that she has had finer criticism written upon her, than any performer that ever trod the stage.

The letter was written to John Mathew Gutch (see notes to Lamb's essay on "George Wither"), who in 1803 became proprietor of Felix Farley's Bristol Journal . Miss Kelly was at Bath in 1819 at the end of January and first half of February.

Page 217,first line of essay. Our old play-going days. The Lambs lodged with Gutch, who was then a law-stationer, at 34 Southampton Buildings, in 1800. Lamb was there alone for some time, during his sister's illness, and it is probably to this period that he refers.

Page 217,second line. Mrs. Jordan. See note above. Miss Kelly played many of Mrs. Jordan's parts.

Page 217,third line. Dodd and Parsons. See note to "The New Acting," page 465.

Page 217,fourth line. Smith or Jack Palmer. William Smith (1730?-1819), known as Gentleman Smith. Lamb perhaps saw him on the night of May 18, 1798, his sole appearance for ten years; otherwise his knowledge of his acting could be but small. On that occasion Smith played Charles Surface in "The School for Scandal," Joseph Surface being Jack Palmer's great part (see the Elia essay on "The Artificial Comedy," for an analysis of Palmer's acting).

Page 217,sixth line. Miss Kelly. See note to "The New Acting," page 466. Frances Maria Kelly (1790–1882) made her début at the age of seven in "Bluebeard" (the music by her uncle, Michael Kelly), at Drury Lane, in 1798. She was enrolled as a chorister of Drury Lane in 1799. She made her farewell appearance at Drury Lane in 1835.

Page 218,line 20. Yarico. In "Inkle and Yarico," 1787, by George Colman the younger (1762–1836).

Page 218,line 11 from foot. A Phœbe or a Dinah Cropley. Phœbe, in "Rosina," by Mrs. Frances Brooke (1724–1789). I do not find a Dinah Cropley among Miss Kelly's parts. She played Dinah Primrose in O'Keeffe's "Young Quaker"—Lamb may have been thinking of that.

Page 218,line 5 from foot. " The Merry Mourners. " "Modern Antiques; or, The Merry Mourners," 1791, by John O'Keeffe. It was while playing in this farce on February 17, 1816, that Miss Kelly was fired at by a lunatic in the pit. Some of the shot is said to have fallen into the lap of Mary Lamb, who was present with her brother.

Page 218,foot. Inebriation in Nell. Nell, in "The Devil to Pay," 1731, originally by Charles Coffey (d. 1745), but much adapted. Nell was one of Mrs. Jordan's great parts.

Page 219,line 2. Our friend C. Coleridge, who was also at Christ's Hospital with Gutch. He says, in Biographia Literaria : "Men of Letters and literary genius are too often what is styled in trivial irony 'fine gentlemen spoilt in the making.' They care not for show and grandeur in what surrounds them, having enough within … but they are fine gentlemen in all that concerns ease and pleasurable, or at least comfortable, sensation." In one of his lectures on "Poetry, the Drama and Shakespeare" in 1818, Coleridge says: "As it must not, so genius can not, be lawless;" which is the reverse of Lamb's recollection.

Page 219.III.—Richard Brome's "Jovial Crew."

Examiner , July 4 and 5, 1819. Signed ****. Richard Brome's "Jovial Crew; or, The Merry Beggars," was first acted in 1641, and continually revived since then, although it is now no longer seen. Indeed our opportunities are few to-day of seeing most of the plays that Lamb praised. The revival criticised by Lamb began at the English Opera House (the Lyceum) on June 29, 1819.

Page 219,line 7 from foot. Lovegrove. William Lovegrove (1778–1816), a famous character actor. He ceased to be seen at except rare intervals after 1814.

Page 219,line 5 from foot. Dowton. See note to "The New Acting," page 465.

Page 220,line 3. Wrench. Benjamin Wrench (1778–1843), a comedian of the school of Elliston.

Page 220,line 6. Miss Stevenson. This actress afterwards became Mrs. Wiepperts.

Page 220,line 12. She that played Rachel. Miss Kelly. Lamb returned to his praise of this piece and of Miss Kelly in it in a note to the "Garrick Plays," but he there credited her with playing Meriel.

Page 220,line 15 from foot. " Pretty Bessy. " In the old ballad "The Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green," Bessie was the daughter of Henry, son of Simon de Montfort.

Page 220,line 6 from foot. Society for the Suppression of Mendicity. Lamb returned to the attack upon this body in his Elia essay "On the Decay of Beggars," in 1822.

It has recently come to light that Charles Lamb proposed marriage to Miss Kelly on July 20, 1819, and was refused; and this proposal is so intimately associated with two of the Examiner articles that I place the story of it here.

On July 4th appeared Lamb's article on "The Jovial Crew" with Miss Kelly as Rachel. To read this article in ignorance of the critic's innermost feelings for the actress is to experience no more than the customary intellectual titillation that is imparted by a piece of rich appreciation from such a pen; but to read it knowing what was in his mind at the time is a totally different thing. What before was mere inspired dramatic criticism becomes a revelation charged with human interest. Read again the passage from "But the Princess of Mumpers , and Lady Paramount , of beggarly counterfeit accents, was she that played Rachel ," down to "'What a lass that were,' said a stranger who sate beside us, speaking of Miss Kelly in Rachel , 'to go a gypseying through the world with.'" Knowing what we do of Charles Lamb's little ways, we can be in no doubt as to the identity of the stranger who was fabled to have sate beside him.

Miss Kelly would of course read the criticism, and being a woman, and a woman of genius, would probably be not wholly unaware of the significance of a portion of it; and therefore perhaps she was not wholly unprepared for Lamb's letter of proposal, which he wrote a fortnight later.

"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 harrassing yourself to please a thankless multitude, who know nothing of you, & begin at last to live to yourself & your friends?