'I Succeed Best in Epistles of Mere Fun'

Charles Lamb died a bachelor at age fifty-nine. For his final thirty-eight years he served as caretaker for his sister Mary, who in 1796 fatally stabbed their mother. We seldom think of Lamb as romantic with a small “r,” as having a love life. Mary was his partner and collaborator. Together they published Tales from Shakespeare in 1807, a book that has remained in print for more than two centuries. Lamb proposed marriage once in his life. He was an admirer of the actress and singer Frances Maria Kelly. Having seen her the night before on the stage, Lamb writes to her on July 20, 1819, saying her performance “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.”

 

Has anyone ever proposed marriage so obliquely? And is he asking Kelly to marry “us” – that is, Lamb and his sister? And where is his inveterate sense of comedy? It gets worse: “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.” Count the negatives. Our eloquent Elia – he would soon write his first essay under that pseudonym – is tongue-tied.

 

Reading this letter, I’m embarrassed for Lamb but sympathetic. Anyone who has been romantically rebuffed can’t help but feel for the guy. At the time, he was forty-three and Kelly was twenty-eight. As insurance, he writes: “It is impossible I should feel injured or aggrieved by your telling me at once, that the proposal does not suit you.” Kelly’s reply, a masterpiece of tact and diplomacy, and written the same day, is a single long sentence:  

 

“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.”

 

She signs off as “Your obliged friend.” Within hours, Lamb replies to her reply, having regained some of his sense of humor:   

 

“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.”

 

Lamb died in 1834. Mary, who also never married, outlived him by thirteen years. Kelly died unmarried in 1882 at the age of ninety-two.