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 bookknowledge, 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. NOTE [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, 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 1819 MISS KELLY'S REPLY 666 529 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 Lamb at once wrote again, as follows:-] CHARLES LAMB TO FANNY KELLY F. M. KELLY. July 20th, 1819. DE EAR 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. NOTE [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 VOL. VI.-34 friends of the management, entitling them to free entry to the theatre. With this explanation the next sentence of the letter becomes clear. See Appendix II., page 973, for a letter to S. J. Arnold.] DR LETTER 238 CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE [No date. ? Summer, 1819.] R 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 [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, 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 Letter 243 on page 537. 1819 TOM HOLCROFT 531 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.] LETTER 289 CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOLCROFT, JR. [No date. Autumn, 1819.] D R Tom, Do not come to us on Thursday, for we are moved into country lodgings, tho' I am still at the India house in the mornings. See Marshall and Captain Betham as soon as ever you can. I fear leave cannot be obtained at the India house for your going to India. If you go it must be as captain's clerk, if such a thing could be obtain'd. For God's sake keep your present place and do not give it up, or neglect it; as you perhaps will not be able to go to India, and you see how difficult of attainment situations are. NOTE Yours truly C. LAMB. [Thomas Holcroft was the son of Lamb's friend, the dramatist. Apparently he did not take Lamb's advice, for he lost his place, which was some small Parliamentary post under John Rickman, in November, 1819. Crabb Robinson, Anthony Robinson and Lamb took up the matter and subscribed money, and Holcroft went out to India.] LETTERS 240 AND 241 CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH COTTLE [Dated at end: Nov. 5, 1819.] DE EAR Sir-It is so long since I have seen or heard from you, that I fear that you will consider a request I have to make as impertinent. About three years since, when I was one day at Bristol, I made an effort to see you, but you were from home. The request I have to make is, that you would very much oblige me, if you have any small portrait of yourself, by allowing me to have it copied, to accompany a selection of "Likenesses of Living Bards" which a most particular friend of mine is making. If you have no objections, and could oblige me by transmitting such portrait to me at No. 44 Russell Street, Covent Garden, I will answer for taking the greatest care of it, and returning it safely the instant the Copier has done with it. I hope you will pardon the liberty From an old friend and well-wisher, CHARLES LAMB. London 5th Nov. 1819. NOTE [Lamb's visit to Bristol was made probably when he was staying at Calne with the Morgans in 1816. The present letter refers to an extra illustrated copy of Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, which was being made by William Evans, of The Pamphleteer, and which is now in the British Museum. Owing to Cottle's hostility to Byron, and Byron's scorn of Cottle, Lamb could hardly explain the nature of the book more fully. See note to the following letter.] DE CHARLES LAMB TO JOSEPH COTTLE [Not dated. ? Late 1819.] EAR Sir-My friend whom you have obliged by the loan of your picture, having had it very exactly copied (and a very spirited Drawing it is, as every one thinks that has seen itthe copy is not much inferior, done by a daughter of Josephs, R.A.)-he purposes sending you back the original, which I must accompany with my warm thanks, both for that, and your better favor, the "Messiah," which, I assure you, I have read thro' with great pleasure; the verses have great sweetness and a New Testament-plainness about them which affected me very much. I could just wish that in page 63 you had omitted the lines 71 and '2, and had ended the period with "The willowy brook was there, but that sweet sound- two very sweet lines, and the sense perfect. And in page 154, line 68, "I come ordained a world to save, -these words are hardly borne out by the story, and seem scarce accordant with the modesty with which our Lord came to take his common portion among the Baptismal Candidates. They also anticipate the beauty of John's recognition of the Messiah, and the subsequent confirmation from the voice and Dove. |