"AFFECTIONATELY YOURS, FANNY"
Sta,—In reference to Mr. C. E. Vulliamy's review of my biography of Fanny Kemble, Affectionately Yours, Fanny, may I protest against mis- representations which occur in his notice? Mr. Vulliamy deems it fortunate that Lawrence's sketch of Fanny appears as frontispiece, as "otherwise we should have depended uoon Mt. Gibbs. who tells us that 'Her skin was poor. . . . Her teeth were good' and adds that her carriage was due to her training Iv a sergeant in the Guards." Mr. Vulliamy does not appear to have read pages 46-47 of the book carefully, whereon these remarks occur. Wntten in the first person, printed between quotes, they are Fanny's own words from Records of a Girlhood (Bentley, 1879, Vol. I, pp. 134-39). Later Mr. Vulliamy says, quite recklessly, " Fanny knew very well that she depended on her looks. . . ." As quoted on page 46 of my biography, she knew no such thing, for she herself said that her looks were "quite sufficient to warrant my mother's satisfaction in saying, when I went on the stage, ' Well, my dear, they can't say we have brought you out to exhibit your beauty.' Plain I certainly was. . . ."
Your critic's statement that I " should have known that Trelawny could not have described the death of Byron at Missolonghi (misspelt by Mr. Gibbs), except by hearsay " implies a misstatement in my book. The sentence referred to reads " Edward Trelawny . . . described for her Byron's death at Misselonghi " and in this fail to discover the error ascribed to it by Mr. Vulliamy. On the spelling of Misselonghi, the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Briumica gives the alternatives of Misso- longhi and Mesolonghi. Miss Margaret Armstrong, in Fanny Kemble, A Passionate Victorian, and others I have read, employ the same spelling as myself, incorrectly perhaps according to Mr. Vulliamy, but inevitably, the spelling of place and proper names changing with the years. As Mr. Vulliamy is doubtless aware, there are nearly seventy English spellings of the name of Raleigh, at least twelve of Trelawny, and so on.—Yours
faithfully, HENRY GIBBS. 27, Abbey Road, St. J'ohn's Wood, N.W.8.
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