It was Lamb's whim in his essays to be frequently misleading, setting his signals at full speed ahead when they should have been set at danger, or, at least, at caution. Thus in his charming essay "Barbara S----" (how unconsciously one invariably uses this adjective in speaking of anything Lamb wrote), after telling the story of a poor little stage waif receiving by mistake a whole sovereign instead of the half a one justly due for a week's pay, and how she was tempted to keep it, but did not, he adds, "I had the anecdote from the mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford." Here seemed to be plain sailing, and grave editors pointed out who Mrs. Crawford was: they told her maiden name, and for good measure threw in the names of her several husbands. But Lamb, in a letter to Bernard Barton in 1825, speaking of these essays, said: "Tell me how you like 'Barbara S----.' I never saw Mrs. Crawford in my life, nevertheless 'tis all true of somebody." And some years later, not long before he died, to another correspondent he wrote: "As Miss Kelly is just now in notoriety,"--she was then giving an entertainment called "Dramatic Recollections" at the Strand Theatre,--"it may amuse you to know that 'Barbara S----' is all of it true of her, being all communicated to me from her own mouth. Can we not contrive to make up a party to see her?"
There is another reference to Miss Kelly, which, in the light of our subsequent knowledge, is as dainty a suggestion of marriage with her as can be found in the annals of courtship. It appeared in "The Examiner" just a fortnight before Lamb's proposal. In a criticism of her acting as Rachel in "The Jovial Crew," now forgotten, Lamb was, he says, interrupted in the enjoyment of the play by a stranger who sat beside him remarking of Miss Kelly, "What a lass that were to go a gypsying through the world with!"
Knowing how frequently Lamb addressed Elia, his other self, and Elia, Lamb, may we not suppose that on this occasion the voice of the stranger was the voice of Elia? Was it unlikely that Miss Kelly, who would see the criticism, would hear the voice and recognize it as Lamb's? I love to linger over these delicate incidents of Lamb's courtship, which was all too brief.