father on 4 April 1833 at Canterbury. Miss Kelly's withdrawal from the company at Drury Lane Theatre was precipitated by her ambition to carry out an early project for counteracting the prejudice against her profession which had found vigorous expression in the article ‘Actress’ in the third edition of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ published in 1797. She desired to establish a dramatic school for the judicious training of young women. She began by taking the New Strand Theatre, where, to show her capacity for the task, she gave an entertainment in monologue, which became very popular. With this she afterwards travelled through the country. In 1839 she began building at the back of her private residence, No. 73 Dean Street, Soho, a model theatre (now the Royalty), intended solely for the purposes of her dramatic school. She was persuaded to open the house on 24 May 1840 as a regular theatre, but closed it again after five nights, in consequence of the failure of some of the machinery. The dramatic school, however, flourished, and she reopened the theatre and gave occasional performances for seven or eight years. Subsequently she gave a course of Shakespearean readings at various places. She fell into debt, and her theatre was at last seized by the landlord. She wrote an account of the affair to the ‘Times,’ and was assured by Lord Brougham that the seizure was illegal. Her age and the public want of taste ultimately decided her to give up the struggle. She had been patronised all along by the Duke of Devonshire. She had lost the whole of her savings, amounting to nearly 16,000l. She continued to give Shakespearean readings, and to receive a few remaining pupils in the new home to which, in 1850, she had retired at Bayswater. Thence, a few years afterwards, she removed to Ross Cottage, Feltham, Middlesex, where she died 6 Dec. 1882. She was buried (16 Dec.) in Brompton cemetery. In answer to a memorial to the prime minister (Mr. Gladstone), signed by most of the leading actors, artists, and authors of the time, she was awarded a royal grant of 150l. a very few days before her death. It was spent upon raising a suitable memorial over her grave. Miss Kelly herself told the present writer that some years before her retirement from the stage Charles Lamb made her an offer of marriage, which, though she was devoted to him and his sister, she felt bound to decline on account of their constitutional malady.
[Many of the facts stated in this memoir are derived from the writer's personal recollections, and from those of Miss Kelly's adopted daughter, Miss Mary Ellen Greville; reference may be also here made to Michael Kelly's Reminiscences, 2 vols. 1826; Charles Lamb's Works; Times, 11 Dec. 1882; Genest's English Stage, ix. and x.]
KELLY, GEORGE (fl. 1722–1747), Jacobite conspirator, born in 1688 in Connaught, was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, graduated B.A. in 1706, and took deacon's orders. About 1718, after preaching at Dublin a sermon in favour of the Pretender, he was threatened with a prosecution and retired to Paris, where he became a successful adventurer in Law's Mississippi scheme. He went by the alias of James Johnson, and Atterbury employed him as an amanuensis in his correspondence with the Pretender. He subsequently came to London, and was arrested at his lodgings there in Little Ryder Street (21 May 1722), on suspicion of treasonable practices against the government. He contrived to burn his papers, and as it was feared by his friends that his conviction would compromise Atterbury, every effort was made to defeat the prosecution. On 3 May 1723, upon the third reading of the bill of pains and penalties against Kelly in the House of Lords, a rider allowing him to depart his majesty's dominions on giving security not to return again without license. This was rejected by 83 votes to 38. The third reading was then passed by 79 votes to 41. Kelly's speech in his defence was printed, and went through four editions. He was ordered to be imprisoned in the Tower during the king's pleasure. There he became a great favourite, and was allowed much freedom. He thus managed to escape on 26 Oct. 1736.
In 1724 Kelly printed by subscription a translation of Castelnau's ‘Memoirs of the English Affairs during the Reigns of Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth,’ 1724, fol.. He also translated from the French of J. Morabin ‘The History of Cicero's Banishment,’ 8vo, London, 1725; 2nd edit. 1742. It was also issued in 1736 as ‘An Inquiry into the Life and Writings of Cicero,’ in order to draw a parallel between the case of Atterbury and that of Cicero. In 1729 Kelly issued proposals for printing by subscription a translation, by himself and two friends, of Cicero's ‘Letters to Atticus’ in two quarto volumes.
[Life published by Curll; Dublin Graduates, 1869; Cobbett and Howell's State Trials, xvi. 323; Lords' Protests (Rogers); Parl. Hist. viii. 245, 268.]
