The First Drama School. Fanny Kelly of Drury Lane. Dean Street 1840.

Sir. I witnessed, on Tuesday morning last, the utter demolition of the Fixedia's fittings and furniture of my theatre and dramatic school in Deen Street. And now only by courtesy of the Sheriff's Officer am permitted a day or two to remove and find space for this ponderous and for any other than its original appropriation, useless property. Before I am myself, for ever expelled from the building I have raised for the purest purposes and towards which I have for the last 15 years devoted my whole fortune. Mind and time. Hello and welcome to the history of actor training in the British Drama School. This is a special festive edition of the podcast. It's actually Christmas night in Wivenerho. So this is Christmas, Christmas Day, Christmas, it's called Christmas Day, whatever it's called, Christmas 2020 in suburban Essex. Ooh, it's been a very nice day actually. It's been nice weather. It's been a nice sunny day. So this podcast, I'm failing, the reason why I'm doing it on Christmas Day is several reasons, but partly because I failed. To do it a couple of days ago, I really wanted to make a podcast about the origins of the British Drama School in the 19th century. So there are two major figures. Sarah Thorne towards the end of the 19th century really in Margate. Sarah Thorne runs a pretty successful school in a theatre in Margate and perhaps I'll do a podcast about Sarah Thorne at some point. And that's a proper pre-professional, institutional drama training. I'm not sure it's really a drama school in the sense we mean it. It was partly there to replace the kinds of trainings that happened in stock companies. So you would pay Sarah Thorne a few quid and you would go off to Margate and you would do some fencing and some stuff and then you would take little parts and watch rehearsals and walk on. So it was a very sort of practical thing. But earlier, much earlier in the 19th century, there was this woman called Francis Maria Kelly, Fanny Kelly. And Fanny Kelly is somebody whose name I came across when I was starting to do some preliminary research about the Drama School and often in people's PhDs and entries in encyclopedias, there'd be a line about this woman Fanny Kelly. It opened the first drama school on Dean Street in Soho or sometimes people would say, open the first drama school in the Strand Theatre. And that was that and I thought, "Well, that's interesting." And assumed there would be really nothing to it, not much to know and not much to say. And I assumed that this woman Fanny Kelly had just had a school in theatre. Taking a few students. But what I found out was that Fanny Kelly is attempt and it is a last and perhaps this makes it a good festive story. A completely failed attempt to establish a drama school was much more elaborate and detailed and much more ambitious than you might imagine. It was a really serious endeavour and cost her a fortune. We'll find out later how much money she lost. But in today's terms, the figure comes out as a number in the millions. So that's going to be our podcast tonight. We're going to look at the history of Fanny Kelly's theatre. Before we do that, I should probably just spend a few moments sketching the history of the first actor trainings in the British theatre, which actually were in the restoration. So although we're going to spend most of this podcast talking about Fanny Kelly, I would like to go back and look a little bit at the restoration period. And also just pausing briefly, I just like to say that I'd like to dedicate this episode to all of those students and artists and actors and young people who I know are really struggling at the moment with lockdown and the various restrictions around the particular lockdowns. I'd say many people understanding listening to this podcast will really understand and recognize. And I know that no people themselves or be suffering in this way. I don't know whether people understand this, maybe they do, I think there's lots of different ways to struggle. But I know some people very, very close to my heart who are finding this period incredibly difficult, incredibly hard, and a full of sadness and anger and hurt. And the thing that they've lost, I think is something very close to their sense of who they are, their self-esteem, the place where they meet people. So for musicians and actors and performers and dancers of all kinds, I think this is a very, very fierce agony this time. And I think for people who are also students and maybe students in those performing arts, or compounded in a way which is just horrible and horrifying. And of course, I broadly support, completely support the attempt to protect health services and lower death rates. I support it, but I would just like to take a moment to recognize how hard this has been for people, people I love, students I know, students I teach. So thinking about that and thinking about Fanny Kelly who had an awful, torid time and yet finished her life a ripe old age in dignity and I'm not sure we'll get to it in part one, but later there's a wonderful story about how Fanny Kelly responds to the offer of a grant from the civil list when she was in her 90s. Anyway, we'll get there, but I wanted to mention first of all that there were these restoration nurseries and probably run by a man named George Jolly who by all accounts was a man who really shouldn't have been running drama schools. Not the first or ponos, hopefully, hopefully will be the last person completely unqualified to run a drama school. George Jolly sounds like an interesting character had survived the interregnum playing, traveling players on the continent, but was a man who was perfectly capable of beating the hell out of somebody who got in his way. But in a complex history that I'm not going to go into here, he ended up running the restoration nurseries and the nurseries were training grounds or training schools to feed the theatres that were around and allowed at the time. We won't spend much time talking about them, but rather wonderfully, there are some accounts or an account of Samuel Peep's and his wife and their servant Deb Willitz, the famous or infamous, Deb Willitz who Peep's is going to have an affair with a little bit later than this. So this is not long after Samuel Peep's has hired Deb Willitz to be his wife's maid servant. They're having a jolly time going and seeing plays. And so one night they decide that it might be fun to go and see the nursery theatres, the drama school where they've never been before. They tried, I think, earlier and failed. So I'm going to read you two accounts on two consecutive nights. So we're back now in the restoration period going to the drama school with Samuel Peep's. I was so excited about that that I just spilled a cup of tea on my foot. So yeah, the schools may have been open for something like six years. They may have opened in something like 1662. It's a complex history and I think not very well understood, but this is what I'm known. On the night of Monday the 24th and Tuesday the 25th of February, 1668, Samuel Peep's goes to the nursery. So this is Samuel Peep's at the drama school in 1668. That's a long time ago, isn't it? 350 years ago, whatever it is. So he was dropping a friend back at the exchange and we pick it up. So this is Peep's diary. Probably somewhere in Hatten Gardens, probably. Hence to the change, back again leaving him and took my wife and Deb home and there to dinner alone and after dinner, so we're after Samuel Peep's had his dinner, I took them to the nursery. This is the theatre company of young actors in training, where none of us ever were before. Where the house is better and the music better than we looked for and the acting not much worse. That's good. So we're all going well. The acting not much worse because I expected as bad as could be and I was not much mistaken for it was so. However, I was pleased well to see it once. It being worth the man's seeing to discover the different ability and understanding of people and the different growth of people's abilities by practice. I think it's rather a beautiful phrase that. The different growth of people's abilities by practice. Is a completely fascinating question. Their play was a bad one called Geronomo Is Mad again, a tragedy. Now there's no play in the English repertoire called Geronomo Is Mad again. There is a play called Geronomo Is Mad again, also known as the Spanish tragedy by Thomas Kid, so quite an important early Elizabethan tragedy, so probably Peeps sees the Spanish tragedy. Here was some good company by us, who did make mighty sport at the folly of their acting, which I could not neither refrain from sometimes, though I was sorry for it. So they mock the acting and Samuel Peeps feels guilty. This is a very peepsy and kind of a thing. He behaves exactly the same way over his affairs. He misbehaves and then he feels guilty, so they mock the actors and feel guilty. So away hence home, way to the office and to business a while, and then home to supper and to read and then to bed. I used to find it completely weird that Samuel Peeps goes to the office after a night out. And now, I mean when I was young, when I was in my 20s and I first read this, now I find it less weird because of course it's not at all uncommon for people to come back from the theatre or the cinema or whatever, and before they go to bed to do a few emails. So even to try and do a bit of something. So I guess that's what Peeps does. A bit later in the account, there's this curious little moment. He says, "I was pretty serviced this day at the playhouse door, where giving six shillings into the fellow's hand for us three, so it must have been two shillings ahead to go and see the nursery players. The fellow by leisure domain." That means for a slight of hand, isn't it? "Did convey one away, and with so much grace faced me down that I did give him but five. That though I knew," that I knew the contrary, "yet I was overpowered by his so grave and serious demanding the other shilling that I could not deny him, but was forced by myself to give it him." So Peeps was ripped off at the door, fascinating. Anyway, next I had a pretty, pretty not a great night, but the next day he goes back. So I buy water with him to the new exchange, and there we parted, and I took my wife and Deb up and to the nursery where I was yesterday. And there saw the Mac to comedy, a pastoral, the faithful shepherd, having the curiosity to see whether they did a comedy better than a tragedy. But they do it both alike, in the meanest manner, that I was sick of it, but only for to satisfy myself once in seeing the manner of it, but I shall see them no more, I believe." So that was the beginning of the British drama school to two crappy nights. I mean, maybe it was wonderful, and Peeps was just being cruel. There's also a reference in a poem by Dryden, a sort of mock heroic satire, attack on Shadwell called McFlecknow. And that also talks about a nursery at drama school at the Barbecan curiously, where of course the Guildhall is now, more or less. So there's something here that says, "Where once Vasscaughts and Mother Stumpets keep and undisturbed by watch in silence sleep. Near these, a nursery erects its head, where queens are formed, and future heroes bred, where unfledged actors learn to laugh and cry, where infant punks, their tender voices try, and little maximins, the gods defy." So that's, there we go, so they're the Barbecan. So there were these nurseries. That's 1670, so then there's nothing for over 150 years until Fanny Kelly starts her projects. So there's so much wonderful stuff to know about Fanny Kelly. She really was cool. And there's quite a lot of material about her. There's there are letters. There's lots of stuff in the newspapers. She herself, her device is a one woman's show called "Dramatic Recollections." So there's a huge amount of material in there. I suppose that the key fact, so that she was born in 1790 in Brighton, she was the daughter of an actor who elopes when she's young. And he was the brother of Michael Kelly, who's a really important figure of the 19th century theatre. In fact, it was in her uncle Michael Kelly's opera "Blue Bid," which is a well-known piece that she first performed as seven years old. So she starts acting in Drey Lane in 1797. There's an account of that in dramatic recollections, which I think I'll read at some point, although not today. She performs in all of the major theatres. Of course, she tours the province here. She has spend spend time in Glasgow and Dublin and all kinds of other places. But most of her career is at Drey Lane, which is a huge theatre, especially after it's rebuilt, a vast theatre. It was rebuilt, certainly several times. But in Fanny Kelly's time, after a huge fire in 1809, the reconstructed theatre was built in 1812. And Fanny Kelly performs there as one of the leading actors until 1835. So from seven years old until 1835 when she's 45 years old. So that's 37 years acting on the stage of Drey Lane. Over that time she has all kinds of adventures, two of the most fascinating ones, which actually connect, are that she was shot at. So a man called George Barnett developed a sort of complicated, stalkery, love affair with Fanny Kelly and tries to shoot her. That happened on 17 February 1816. I'll read you a little bit of a story about this. Halfway through the first act when Little Knight and Fanny were adroitly working the packed house into Rawls of Murth, there was a sudden commotion in the pit, quite near to where Charles and Mary Lamb were sitting as Miss Kelly's guests. Before anyone could stop him, Barnett leapt to his feet, brandishing the joling pistol with which he had challenged Fanny. Taking Wilde. He fired. And the screams from the audience which followed the flash and report died to a shocked hush as their favourite, as Fanny Kelly, faulted and collapsed on the stage. Night rushed forward to catch her as she fell and half carried, half dragged her to the safety of the wings. In a brief struggle, Barnett was disarmed and quickly taken away by the patrol summoned from Bow Street. In the wings, Fanny, trembling and shaken by her ordeal, was quickly revived. The shot had gone high and wide. Some of it in fact, ricocheted back into the auditorium and actually fell into the lap of Mary Lamb. Fanny insisted on going, and she goes back on stage of course she does and finishes the evening. A few years later, Mary Lamb, by the way, as I'm sure you know, was a fairly important figure, married the sister of Charles Lamb. Together they wrote "Tales from Shakespeare" by Charles and Mary Lamb, which you can find in most bookshops today, I would think, sort of condensed but really clever versions of Shakespeare's stories. Mary Lamb had stabbed her mother to death with a knife, quite a few years before this, and a rower induced partly by Mary's shouting at an apprentice, knitter in their house. So she was an interesting character. Charles Lamb was one of the foremost, or sort of became, considered a foremost literary figure of the time, a famous essayist, wrote essays under the name of Eliya, which has a sort of pun in it, think about lying. I think that's controversial or contested, but anyway that's what some people think. And Charles Lamb will write an essay about Fanny Kelly. He calls it the story of Barbara S, but it's a story that Fanny Kelly tells him about her childhood, and will propose to Fanny Kelly in a rather sort of curious exchange of letters. So that's interesting stuff about Fanny Kelly, attempted assassinations and relationships with Charles Lamb. She also knew Byron. She organizes a benefit performance for Gromaldi, the clown Joe Gromaldi towards the end of his life, and has a very busy and interesting time. She has the normal succession of lovers and suitors. She never marries. She has an adopted daughter that sort of pops up, that no one quite knows where she comes from. Most biographers seem to think it probably is a child of Fanny Kelly, so she was probably raising an illegitimate child in the time we're about to reach. But anyway, she has this magnificent career, and then in 1833 she retires from Jury Lane. I mean, actually, you have for last performances in 1835, but before that, that she takes over the Royal Strand Theatre, which is a new theatre, and starts training actors there and teaching pupils and putting on her one-woman show. So she's raising money in the 1830s, teaching and performing geratic recollections. The first really long one-woman at home monologue show in history, certainly in the history of English language theatre. I don't know about other world theatres. You can get dramatic recollections. It's got some wonderful stuff in it. It's quite like the monologues of Ruth Draper. So Fanny Kelly plays many characters. She often plays people meeting people. The stage is often full of life. And she raises quite a lot of money by doing this. And during the 1830s, starts building a theatre, a model theatre out the back of her house on Dean Street or her two houses. She takes on two properties on Dean Street in Soho and starts erecting a little model theatre. So just to put this in context, this is the first attempt to have a serious institutional, pre-professional drama school in Britain since the restoration nurseries, whatever happened to them in the 1660s, 1670s. She's doing this on her own as an unmarried, entrepreneurial actor. She's also doing it for quite strong political reasons. When you read about Fanny Kelly and when you listen to the way she speaks and the thing she says, clearly a huge sense of mission and purpose. I mentioned a few moments ago that she rejects a proposal from Charles Lamb. So Charles Lamb is in love with Fanny Kelly. He invites her to come and be his wife to give up acting and to move him with him and Mary, interestingly. And Fanny Kelly writes this very task response. I'll just read a tiny bit of Fanny Kelly's letter to Charles Lamb. This was several years before the drama school, but it will give you a sense of the kind of person she is. So in his proposal, Charles Lamb is 1819. Charles Lamb says, "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, him and Mary, and throw off forever the whole burden of your profession. I neither expect or wish you to take notice of this which I am writing in your present overoccupied and hurried state. But to think of it at your leisure, I have quite income enough." And then he makes a nice marriage proposal for a man at the beginning of the 19th century. I mean, funny to think he'd seen Fanny Kelly shot at in Covent Garden. And he talked in the letter about her being in a distress state. I don't think anyone knows quite what was going on. Anyway, Fanny Kelly brilliantly says this. She was living at the time on Henrietta Street, so she writes on the 20th of July 1819, "This is the letter. It starts like this. An early and deep-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, and decidedly decline your proposal, believe me, I am not insensible to the high honour, etc. So she says nice, soothing things to Charles Lam. But I really, again, it's a brilliant thought, isn't it, to say she's talking about the theatre. She's talking about the drama. An early and deep-rooted attachment has fixed my heart on one from whom no worldly prospect can well induce me to withdraw it." That's painful, isn't it? The agony of that, of being committed to a life in the theatre. And Fanny Kelly's commitment extends to teaching. Some of this has a very particular morality to it. Fanny Kelly often refers to the hazard to young women of trying to begin as actors. And there was sort of a mid-20th century tradition of being a bit cross with 19th century actors for trying to sort of gentrify their profession to make it proper and respectable. I think I remember reading Stella Adler railing against this period. And sort of I suppose connecting in that, the roots of some kind of repression or English acting style which she disliked. That's very understandable from mid-20th century perspective. But I think if Stella Adler had spent some time reading accounts of what life was actually like in the 18th and early 19th century theatre, she maybe would have felt differently because clearly there were huge amounts of abuse. I mean some of it looks quite fun. There's lots of drinking and noughtiness. But I read the biography of Gromaldi that was one published a few years ago and in that biography it becomes clear that what's going on in these theatres is something which is very close to sexual abuse and really sort of pedophilia or certainly on the boundary of that. So Fanny Kell is desire to protect young women. And I think indeed young men from that experience is not some kind of moralistic, puritanical sort of uptightness. I think it's different. Anyway so we should probably move towards the drama school itself. So the project in the Strand does I think it does fine. I think she breaks even their accounts. I think Fanny Kell is surviving. But it's not quite what she wants. So she starts building this theatre out the back of her home on Dean Street. So let's imagine if you will, imagine with me that it's Sunday May the 24th, 1840. When you open the paper and you read this, you read, "Oh what do we do?" I fancy going to a show on Monday and you read, "Miss Kell is Theatre in Dramatic School, 73, Dean Street, so her Square. Licensed by the Lord Chamberlain and under the patronage of his grace, the Duke of Devonshire. Will be opened to the public on Monday May the 25th, or tomorrow we can go to a show. The performances will commence with an appropriate address to be spoken by Miss Kelli. I'll read you that address in a moment." After which a piece in one act translated from the French to be called and then there's a list of the shows. So it's Summer and Winter. The Sargent's wife, which was Fanny Kelli's best things, and conclude with the admired drama of the Midnight Hour. So three shows. They used to do long nights in the theatre. This is not unusual at this time. Doors to be opened at half past seven. Got to get to Dean Street by half past seven. Commence at eight. Tickets to the first tier of boxes and stores. Seven shillings each. To the public seats and family boxes. Five shillings each. Private boxes to be had nightly of Mr Mitchell, Old Bond Street, and at the office of the theatre. Oh, we could get a private box. Do you fancy going with me to see Miss Kelli's new theatre and dramatic school? No, it makes much of a deal of this, but if you look at the actual amplables, you'll see the name Lee Morton is in those shows. Lee Morton is the stage name of Dion Bousicot, who's going to become, of course, a huge figure in the 19th century. Fanny Kelli gives him one of his first gigs in London. That winter, he's going to write London Assurance, which was still being still performed occasionally today. It was performed at the National, I don't know, 15 years ago. Bousicot makes and loses and makes squillians. And eventually himself opens a drama school on the inner theatre in America. His son, who is also called Dion Bousicot, is going to be involved in the setting up of Arda of the Academy of Dramatic Art 64 years after the night. I'm going to tell you about. Try to see if Lee Morton, Dion Bousicot, wrote anything about this experience, but I can't find anything, which is really frustrating. I wonder if somewhere in a box there's some kind of an account. So anyway, an interesting night you would have seen if you had gone to the theatre that night, a young Dion Bousicot. So I can read you now two things, which are fun. So as Monday night, we've gone to see the show. One is I'd like to read you Fanny Kelli's address from the stage that night before the show starts. And then I'll read you an account, kind of a long review, really, of that evening. And then things will get sad. So before things get sad, let's be happy. So Fanny Kelli has spent years, years and years and years saving. She says somewhere that she had about 20,000 pounds at this point. That's millions. That's a million or two stashed away from acting and teaching. So she's built this really be you cool little theatre you'll hear about in a second. It's not just a barn. This is a really serious enterprise. I was wondering earlier, when was the next time somebody purpose built an institution for training actors? I mean, Lambda is recently splashed 28 point, whatever million on building it space. The Royal Welsh College, I think, is in a specially built space. I've never been there. I think the Bristle Ludwig moved. Maybe there are others. I'm not sure. When was the first time somebody actually built an entire brand spanking new institution? Well, Fanny Kelli did during the 1830s and it's about to open. So here we go. Last night, this new and beautiful little was opened to the public. Previous to the commencement of the entertainment, the strength of the company came forward and sang "God save the Queen," I guess Lee Mortimer had been there singing "God save the Queen," after which Miss Kelly appeared, led forward by the stage manager, Mr. G. Bennett, and as soon as the enthusiastic welcome she experienced allowed her to proceed delivered the following address in her own simple, graceful, and most expressive manner. She was known for being a simple, graceful and truthful actor. She says really interesting things in other places about truth in acting. She talks about Sarah Siddons, weeping on her shoulder in King John, I think. I'll do that another time. Anyway, this is so this is Fanny Kelly on this Monday night. She says, "My friends, after innumerable delays and difficulties, all at length overcome by intrepid perseverance and patience. I at last present myself before you in this little theatre of my own, with the fervent hope of doing some service yet in the cause of the English drama and still devoting myself to an art in which you have kindly welcomed me on from my very childhood upwards." Fought your dears of it. "I trust you will like the mode in which you find me at home. It's her home. Her little house was out the back." "Well, the theatre's out the back. It's built in her yard." "I mean, at home is also a sort of a metaphor, but for her it's literal. But you will think the portion of my house which is devoted to your comfort and reception is so arranged as to unite elegance with ease and fit it for audiences whose minds and hearts are in the drama." The stage and its appointments as such as will afford us the means of giving dialogue a fair chance of being heard and scenic effects a power of being properly produced. "The scenery has been introduced for the ordering of the scenery which I shall hope will, from its merits, receive your approbation. I am now only taking my first step on the path I trust successfully to tread. The little fortunes of my long and not unlabored life are all in this venture, and I will not easily relax in my endeavors to form a dramatic school for good acting within the walls of this little theatre." And she goes on to say a few more. "A few more things, but she's giving us quite a lot there." During the delivery of this address this is how I have as described, Ms. Kelly's feelings frequently overpowered her. The earnest plaudits of her auditory, as people are listening, has often cheered her on to the conclusion. So there she is giving a speech. So this little theatre that's cost her maybe in today's terms millions of pounds has opened. The press that weekend is pretty good. There's a few kind of sniping comments. Somebody talks about the midnight hour starting at midnight so they couldn't be there and the first thing is not very good. But there's, you know, it's mixed, but pretty good. This is a fairly typical, fairly lengthy example. So I'm about to reduce something. So what I'm going to read now is from the morning post. On the 2nd of June 1840, it's a sort of, a feature piece than a review. So this gives a fairly detailed account of this theatre. What you're going to hear next contains some really important information. The article does it well, but Ms. Kelly's theatre was not own. It was small and theatres at the time were often huge. Drury Lane, where Fanny Kelly had made her name and fortune, was vast. It was a vast theatre. This is a small theatre, it's a little model theatre. So anyway, this is the account. The pretty little theatre, which Ms. Kelly so successfully opened on Monday night, contains something more to interest the public in its favour than the generality of theatres can pretend to. It is not merely thrown open as a place of amusement. It is also intended to be rendered instrumental to the cultivation of professional talent. According to a plan which Ms. Kelly has long and enthusiastically devoted herself to mature, and which she has now happily brought to a practical commencement. Under very distinguished patronage. This dramatic school is, we believe, the uppermost idea in Ms. Kelly's mind. And we can fully appreciate the advantages which, thus aided, she possesses for discovering whatever capabilities may be found amongst the youthful aspirants who present themselves eager to develop their powers and win reeds and plaudits. Fame and wealth at the hands of an admiring public. Well, that's still like people. I can only go to drama school, isn't it? We pretend it isn't. But anyway, a little bit of that. Going on. Her own style of acting is so free from mannerism, artifice or affectation. In short, so natural, so natural that pupils must, if they have a spark of kindred genius within them, feel it elicited by sympathy. So just being around Ms. Kelly is going to teach her to act. Her successful experience, too, in her profession renders her an authority on whose tact and discrimination every reliance may be placed. But in fact, Ms. Kelly has, in her educational perspectives, now lying before us, so plainly and fairly stated the case that we cannot better illustrate the subject than in her own words. Look, we're about to open. You still get perhaps perspectives, don't you? Do you send off, or do you send off for a perspective? So if you'd have sent off for a perspective to Ms. Kelly's theatre in 1840, you would have got this. It's written in a strange way, but anyway, it reads, "Ms. Kelly has embarked a considerable capital in erecting a small but comodious theatre attached to her own residence in which talent may be cultivated and practical knowledge advanced by courses of lectures, daily readings and stage studies." Those who have it in intention to adopt the theatrical profession will be directed in that line of art to which their talents may incline them, and it is proposed that in the gradual introduction of candidates for public notice merit alone shall take the lead. The best adapted powers being brought to bear upon the best productions of our established dramatists. There is one point to which Ms. Kelly has directed the most anxious consideration and in the accomplishment of which she still is and must continue to be most actively engaged. Namely, the necessity of providing resources for those who whilst preparing for the profession are without the means of subsistence. Too many, this is so amazing, remember this is the first prospectus for the first proper institutional will ignore the strand and will ignore the nursery theatres, drama schools in Britain and she's worried about people who don't have enough cash. Too many possessing considerable talent urged by necessity rush into humble and even disreputable positions in the profession from which they never rise for one of those advantages which time and cultivation would have afforded them. You wonder how much she's seen that, people who had talent, people who had facility, people who would have gone far being sort of forced to do terrible sleazy perhaps things in order to get by. So she doesn't want that to happen. She has others through some path which affords a temporary footing, monopolise a station they have not talent to adorn and in either case the results to female candidates is at least dangerous, if not, penicious. In their after course through life, to avoid this evil, Ms. Kelly has devoted a branch of the establishment to the intellectual improvement and the industrious occupation of the youthful pupils of both sexes. According to each, a fair proportion of the funds are rising from their own exertions. Not quite sure what this means, but she's got a scheme anyway, thus every one will possess a power to provide against the chance of failure in the dramatic art by the exercise of some ability which in another walk of life may be esteemed both useful and respectable. She's got a whole plan. She's got to teach them a sort of a second skill while they're studying to be actors. Hmm, we should understood this. Something like that, isn't it? Thus Ms. Kelly ventures once again before the public as a humble but faithful labourer in the dramatic art, with those who would recall the stage from a state of degradation to all its intellectual and moral usefulness, and we heartily wish her success. So there you go, that's going on. And then there's more though. So now the article is going to talk about the stage machinery. So this is the thing about Ms. Kelly's theatre. Not only is it the first fully self-built institutional space for training young actors, but it's also really funky. It's got incredible stage machinery. So now we're going to hear about this would have been a really cool theatre. Listen to this. So far for the system on which this admirable undertaking has been matured, we must now, injustice, say a few words of the improved machinery by which the stage business is conducted. With a degree of dispatch, precision, economy, silence, safety and efficiency never before attained in any theatre, it is beautifully simple in its plan. It's constructed almost entirely of wrought and cast iron and brass, which offers considerable additional security in the building against the risk of fire. Don't forget theatres were always burning down. In fact, they all burnt down. So the oldest theatres in Britain now are the theatre royal barricain Edmunds. and there's one up in Richmond, Yorkshire, and they're both, I mean, actually from around this time, I think. slightly earlier, slightly earlier, but there's nothing from the 18th century, there's nothing from the 17th century. they all burn down, so this is a big deal. And it works by one third of the hands required on a stage in the old construction. So smooth and harmonious is the action of all the parts that two children might, instead of the men who stand at the wheel, if set to turn the winches, one at each side of the stage, change, so children might do this, change in a few seconds all the scenes, lower a new drop, raise the old one, adjust the wings and board us to match, and simultaneously turn away the old wings and bring new ones into their places, all by the same motion, the single turn of the winch. Sounds amazing. You turn a winch and this stuff happens, theatre spins around, unless the spectator watch narrowly, the whole movement will take place like magic, before he is aware. Then these wings, at the same time, retire or advance, expanding or contracting the space of the stage, so as to suit the dimensions of the scene, whether it be a palace or a cottage. The old lumbering flats, or rather half flat scenes, which slidding grooves and slapped against each other, sometimes in the middle of a window or a portrait, are altogether done away with, and the ordinary accompaniment of bustle, blunders and murmurs are got rid of in their train. Some beautiful sunlight effects are produced by a new disposition of the gas lights, and truly, the scenes are worthy of them. And then, talks about some stage painting, stuff, and just skipping on we'll read, we must not forget the mechanism of the stage itself, which may be fairly pronounced, reformed. This tiny new theatre of, fairly chemicalist, is reforming the stage. There are no props beneath to break up the elasticity of its surface, and the traps are no longer so in the dangerous sense of the word. Ingenious, and even comfortable little carriages slide in a railroad beneath each, and send forth or receive the supernatural visitors, whose exits or entrances take place through these awful apertures. And when these minor openings to the lower world are insufficient, the whole stage can sink deep enough, as it would appear, to swallow down a fairy palace, and rise again in a moment with a power sufficient to throw up a mountain. We fear that our readers would not be much the wiser, if we were to attempt to describe how all these new and beautiful effects are accomplished, and how so many mechanical advantages are brought about. We can well believe that they have been the fruit of much patient consideration on the part of the ingenious inventor, Mr. McDonald's Stevenson. I think related to a later Stevenson is going to do things with, with steam trains, who appears to have bestowed as much scientific calculation on the movements as a watchmaker would upon a favourite repeater, as a beautiful, and unique piece of mechanism we can confidently say that its construction will cause as much admiration in the practical mechanic as the stage effect it produces excites the dramatic amateur. Our readers will have ample opportunity of appreciating all these points of dramatic reform after the cessation of the bustle of racing and driving incidents to the present week, during which Miss Kelly has closed her house, judiciously determining that it would be folly to rival the attractions of Epsom. And this is something going wrong here. So after five nights, Fanny Kelly closes her dramatic school. It opens again a year later than it opens again. She tries reviving her dramatic recollection. She does a few other bits and pieces. She teaches students she struggles on. There are rumors that she's gone abroad. She gets ill. She gets so ill that she actually puts out a sick note. She releases attached to the bill that was meant to invite audiences an account of how will she is. So Fanny Kelly's 50th point, I'm going to tell you perhaps what went wrong in a moment. But this is rather poignant. This is a copy of Certificate from 1840. In December, she was trying to do her famous one-woman show again, presumably to raise money and she can't. So she publishes this. She puts it in a special edition of her play bill. She releases her doctor's note. This is what he said. "Dim Adam, since seeing you, I think it right again to urge you upon the necessity of postponing the opening of your theatre. The continuance of your indisposition and the violence of your cough together with great exertion have so weakened you that I'm confident you greatly overrides your powers if you think it possible to perform the task you have proposed for yourself. And your appearance upon the stage under present circumstances would not only be attended by personal risk to yourself, but would be painfully witnessed by the public. I therefore strongly advise you're closing the theatre for a short period, and by care and attention I have no doubt you will, in a few days, be able to undertake your duties with advantage to yourself and pleasure to your friends." So that's in 1840. So the question is, "What happened?" So what's going wrong? Why does Fanny Kelly's theatre, which opens with such excitement in 1840 with this extraordinary stage machinery and a young Dion Boussico in the cast and all kinds of wonderful people supporting her? What goes wrong? Now what I'm about to read you is called the Legend of the Horse. And the Legend of the Horse is the some degree an accepted account and it's also contested. So there's a scholar, I think actor and historian, who's now I think at Central called Gilly Bush Bailey, and she thinks this probably isn't true, but the accounts start in the 19th century and they're picked up by various biographers. So let's just decide there's probably at least some truth in this. So what went wrong in that first week? Well. This is an account from Ellie Holman's book about Fanny Kelly called Lamb's Barbara S, because Lamar wrote this essay about it. The theatre opened on the 25th of March 1840 with a drama by Maurice Barnett called Summer and Winter, in which the manager S and the author sustained the principal parts. But the wonderful stage machinery utterly failed to justify the claims of the inventor. A distracting clamor behind the scenes reached the ears of the audience and it eventually transpired that instead of one man being able to operate the arrangement, as had been predicted, in fact what was predicted as a child, instead of one man. The services of a horse were required to set the cog wheels in motion. In the small theatre of two private boxes, 59 stalls and 150 circle seats, the trampling of the horse and the accompanying groans and squeaks of the machinery, so irritated successive audiences that at the end of the fifth night the actors outnumbered the spectators. The house was then closed and for several months efforts were made to remove the iron bars and bolts and stanchions, which had been embedded in the walls to secure the fittings of this earliest contrivance for mechanical scene shifting. It seemed as if the theatre would have to be pulled down, but eventually, at great cost, the apparatus was removed. The expense, delay and loss of prestige occasioned by this unfortunate experiment seriously affected the progress of Miss Kelly's School of Dramatic Art. And it goes on to talk about what happens. So maybe that's what happened. It seems like a believable story. It's a disaster. A complete disaster. And interesting, the Fanny Kelly rips it all out. She's not giving up. She keeps going. And the theatre, to limp song, as I say, for about 10 more years. And then this letter appears in the Times. This is sad. This is a weeping song. This is a sad story for Christmas evening. So I'm going to read you Fanny Kelly's letter, sad letter. This is from winter 1849 from the 17th November 1849. Fanny Kelly writes to the Times. Sir, as I have not, I hope, at any time she's moving towards 16 now. Sir, as I have not, I hope at any time, impertainately thrust myself before the public. Either in my professional or private character. I trust I may be excused if, unconsciously, I now appear to do so by indulging an irresistible desire to draw, through my powerful meat, through the powerful medium of your columns. The attention of my friends to the peculiar hardship of my present position. As I can in no other way so well extend the statement to those who beyond the immediate circle of my intimate acquaintances, I flatter myself may take some interest in my welfare. And a conviction of that integrity I have had credit for through a long and arduous. professional life. Sir, I witnessed, on Tuesday morning last, the utter demolition of the fixtures, fittings and furniture of my theatre and dramatic school in Dean Street. Before I am myself, forever expelled from the building I have raised for the purest purposes, and towards which I have for the last fifteen years devoted my whole fortune, mind and time. Now sir, as it would deeply wound my proud heart to be pitied or blamed as a rash enthusiast or idle speculator, I wish to arrest at once conjecture and mist representation to which all seeming failure is liable by stating that my whole property has been arrested from me by my ground landlord on default of the instalment of £160 due to him in June last upon a rear of rent, for which I had signed to him an all-powerful document. She goes on to explain in some detail what happened. She owes the money, she admits she owes the money, but she says she can get it in a few weeks and that when she signed the document, she made a verbal oral agreement that that would be adhered to. Now this £160 that Fanny Kelly is short of, remember this property has absorbed, well, she's going to tell us in a minute about 16,000, that's millions. I won't give you the full detail, but she goes on to say, "The peculiar feature of the case and the hardship of which I complain is this, that when I signed this fearful document, I distinctly stated in presence of his solicitor and my own that I could not fulfil my promise as to the first instalment, having no dependable resources until the end of November, the present month, and that therefore I signed depending on the fact that I was perfectly understood and should be treated with the same consideration as on a former occasion when I had placed myself equally in his power." The result, however, is that on default of the said instalment of £160, he has only 18 days before the time prayed for, sees the property to which in the cost for building and the operation of the purposes for which it was designed, I have sacrificed from first to last £16,000. Should you, sir, feel kindly disposed and think it? Well, so my thumb was over that page, to gratify my wish in allowing space in any form for the substance of my letter, I shall consider myself infinitely obliged, I am Sir Eurebedeon Servant, FM Kelly. Well, she loses her theatre. She's forced to move out to base water with her daughter, she takes private students for a while, and then eventually she moves out to sorry and lives in gentile poverty until she's in her 90s. Then, Henry Irving comes to offer her money from the civil list, she rejects it, saying she doesn't need charity, she asks them to bring her a cow, she says she's been told if she drinks milk, she'll live forever, and then she dies a few weeks later, and she's buried in Brompton Cemetery, bizarrely the same cemetery that Sarah Thorn, the other great drama school, teacher, manager, actor, director of the 19th century is also buried there. So if you want to, you can go to Brompton Cemetery and you could see Fanny Kelly's Gravestone. What's written on the grave was written by Henry Irving. He didn't know Fanny Kelly until the end of her life, but he wrote, he wrote this on her grave, and I'll put a picture of the Gravestone that I took on the podcast thing, so if he wants to look, you can see, but it's hard to read, but it says, Frances Maria Kelly, born 15th of October, 1790, died 6th of December, 1882, aged 92 years. The world recognized the great artist, those who knew her loved the true and noble woman. So there we go, that's the story kind of of the first two British drama schools, the nurseries of the restoration, and then Fanny Kelly's school on disastrous drums, on Dean Street. Maybe what went on there wasn't disastrous. I don't know, as I say, it's hard to know. There's a few accounts of the Strand, the lecturers come and do things, but offered to all of us who were struggling in this difficult time, also offered to all my friends and colleagues. Those of you who know me a bit know that I used to work at a drama school called Lambda, and Lambda went through huge changes this year, and large numbers of staff who I think were brilliant people, were really forced out of that institution. And when I was reading Fanny Kelly's story there, I was kind of picturing what it was like to pick up stuff in the staff room at Lambda and head off into an unknown, an unknown future. So there you go, that account of Fanny Kelly is for everyone who's struggling at the moment. And my former colleagues at Lambda, hope you're all keeping well. Happy Christmas, everybody. If you want to drop me a line, you always can rob at [email protected]. Be lovely to hear from anyone who has anything to say. People have written emails, which is fantastic. Look forward to podcasting. Is that a, anyway, with you all all next year. Hope is a better year. Really hope it's a better year. Take care. Bye.