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　　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:—] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5