As I Hear... Lamb’s Miss Kelly

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31653, 13 April 1968, Page 5

As I Hear... Lamb’s Miss Kelly

(By

J.H.E.S )

Just another of my pet coincidences. During the weekend, reading at random, in two books long untouched I came on the record of literary secrets kept for a century, one about Wordsworth’s illegitimate child by a French girl, the other about Charles Lamb’s proposal of marriage to his darling Fanny Kelly.

Wordsworth’s secret was not disclosed till 1916, though all the time known to members of his family. (Dorothy Wordsworth shows that relations with Annette Vallon were affectionately friendly; and she observed the resemblance between William and his daughter.) I was reminded of this episode in Wordsworth’s youth by Mr Philip Wayne, who in his introduction to the World’s Classics selection from Wordsworth’s letters says that in the full body of them there is “not a word” about it, though Ernest de Selincourt’s edition (10351939) ran to six large volumes. I have no evidence at hand and no time to look for any, but am inclined to suppose that letters referring to Annette and the child were suppressed by the family, or scissored, rather than that Wordsworth wrote nothing. A pity, either way; for the deeps of this deep man’s thought and feeling on the subject would be worth more than a shelf of psychiatry. 4- ¥ ¥

The second secret I was reminded of in the third volume of William Macdonald’s charming edition of the works of Charles Lamb: the one collecting his critical essays, his dramatic notices and recollections among them. These last are enough to show that Lamb bad a special and tender admiration for Fanny Kelly as an actress and as a woman. In one of his letters to Wordsworth, besides, he refers to her “divine plain face:” surely a lovely phrase. And a lover’s? It had been a long tradition, at second hand, that Lamb had proposed marriage to her; but the learned rejected it, since second-hand it was, since it was unsupported by collateral evidence, and since (some of them thought) Charles would never have

surrendered his care of his sister Mary for any other. Macdonald had been among these objectors and so had gone on public record. But when he was preparing this 1903 edition of the works and much was already in the printer’s hands, he came to read more critically than before two or three dramatic trifles and found intricated in them Lamb’s own “cryptogram of sorts,” revealing “over the heads of the audience" and ‘Tor Miss Kelly alone” the story of his proposal by letter, of her refusal “with a noble sincerity,” and of his accepting it as final. This third piece he specially pressed Leigh Hunt to insert in the “Examiner.” It was his last, and it ended on the words, “But what have we to gain by praising Miss Kelly?” * * *

How characteristic of Lamb, all this! Anyhow, Macdonald was right in reading the cryptogram; for, before he could do much about the copy in the printer’s hands, he read in the “Pall Mall Gazette” the now famous announcement that Mr John Hollingshead was about to print in “Harper’s Magazine” the text of Lamb’s letter of proposal to Fanny Kelly, as he did, settling the matter and contributing to literary biography one of its most moving documents. * * ¥

Macdonald did what he could; and, after all, what could the poor man do? He wrote to the “Pall Mall Gazette”, answering its editorial question how he would respond to this new evidence after having reasoned against the tradition of Lamb’s proposal, confessed himself in honest error, briefly recounted his discovery, and made his peace with publisher and printer and put the story as straight as he could in the introduction and notes to this vol. 11l of the Works. * *

What a long story! But I shall footnote it briefly. In the first of the three short pieces on which Macdonald exercised his detective skill, Lamb pretends to have heard

a “stranger who sate beside” him in the theatre say of Fanny Kelly, “What a lass that Were to go a-gipsying through the world with!” The phrase and the glow of it are of course nobody’s but Lamb’s, hiding himself as ever. Second, there is Macdonald, doing a remarkable piece of penetrative criticism and exploration and proving himself hitherto wrong; and then he finds himself anticipated in the proof by Mr John Hollingshead’s producing the conclusive document. Would a man bite his nails? I think a man would; but Macdonald took this ever so easily, with never a whimper; and I think be was a good man of a good period. * * *

I don’t know that this is so good a period; for, changing the subject abruptly, I decide that I am shocked by the report of a fashion show in Wellington, at which mannequins aged 7 to II paraded the catwalk in “beach wear and party dresses” as if they had been “modelling all their lives.” I am expected to admire and approve? I do not. Let me be vulgar and say that I snort and I spit. But, Lord lumme, what does that matter? I know so Well: nothing at all. All I can do is record the opinion that children are not helped in their growth by being turned into little peacocks or exhibitionists. ¥ ¥ ¥

Changing the subject abruptly again, I applaud Mr Lindsay, the Mayor of New York, who has hardened his face against New Yorkers driving their cars into the city. He means to: (i) Step-up action against illegally parked cars. They will be towed away and it will cost at least $5O to recover them from the pound. (ii) Build no more off-street city car parks. Since the private car-parks charge from $3 to $6 a day, the prohibitive effect may be telling. (ill) Air-condition the bus system. And I say, “Bless Mr Lindsay,” a good man, a wise man, a man who may teach us a bit of sense before it’s too late.