The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To MARY ELLEN THATCHER GERBINI GREVILLE,1 24 DECEMBER 1847 

Text from facsimile in Shapero Rare Books online catalogue, March 2020.

Address (envelope): Miss Greville

Devonshire Terrace

Friday Twenty Fourth December

1847.

Dear Miss Greville

I am extremely sorry for the cause of Miss Kelly’s2 non-appearance to-day. Pray assure her that I shall be happy to see her any morning in the week after next, between ten and one – except on the 6th or 7th3

            Faithfully Yours

                        Charles Dickens

• 1. Mary Ellen Thatcher Gerbini (1829-1914), daughter of Fanny Kelly; her origins are unclear. Born in Edinburgh, and lived thereafter with Kelly; she became generally known as "Miss Greville". Opinions differ as to whether she was an illegitimate daughter, possibly by the playwright and theatre manager Samuel Arnold (1774-1852), or adopted, perhaps at the behest of the clown, Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837), whose Memoirs CD published (1838), and in whose welfare Kelly had taken an interest.
• 2. Frances Maria (Fanny) Kelly (1790-1882; Dictionary of National Biography), well-known actress and singer; retired from Drury Lane 1835; also acted in monologues at the Strand 1833-9. Under the Duke of Devonshire's patronage, she built her own theatre, the Royalty, at 73 Dean St, Soho Square, opened 1840; it was used for plays, operas, and monologues, as well as for Miss Kelly's dramatic school, and was sometimes hired by amateurs, including CD, who used it to stage Every Man in His Humour in October 1845. CD also arranged benefit performances at the theatre for Miss Kelly in December 1845 and July 1847; see Pilgrim Letters 4, pp. 448-9, 454-5, and 482-3, and Pilgrim Letters 5, pp. 85, 114, 146. CD had also arranged play readings for his amateur company at Miss Kelly's theatre on 16 Nov 1847; see Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 195. See also Robert C. Hanna, "Frances Maria Kelly, Charles Dickens, and Miss Kelly's Theatre and Dramatic School", Dickensian 114 (2018): 278-93.
• 3. No full stop in MS. In Alan Wilson's unpublished book, Divine Plain Face: The Story of Fanny Kelly (1986), he quotes from a letter Miss Kelly wrote in Dec 1847 from her new residence in Moscow Road, Bayswater (having relocated there from Dean Street), asking the unidentified recipient to send “some honest and experienced person to fasten the slate on the roof of the Theatre.” Presumably Miss Kelly had requested permission to call on CD at his home, in order to request additional financial assistance. Knowing that CD was still renting her theatre, she could have expected him to be sympathetic to her plight; however, no payment to Kelly appears in CD's bank account in Jan 1848 (MS Messrs Coutts). There was a payment of £10 on 4 March 1848, probably for hire of her theatre.