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Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2

T >> Thomas Moore >> Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2




This scene, so singular in a public assembly, where the natural
affections are but seldom called out, and where, though bursts of temper
like that of Burke are common, such tears as those shed by Mr. Fox are
rare phenomena,--has been so often described in various publications,
that it would be superfluous to enter into the details of it here. The
following are the solemn and stern words in which sentence of death was
pronounced upon a friendship, that had now lasted for more than the
fourth part of a century. "It certainly," said Mr. Burke, "was
indiscretion at any period, but especially at his time of life, to
provoke enemies, or to give his friends occasion to desert him; yet, if
his firm and steady adherence to the British Constitution placed him in
such a dilemma, he would risk all, and, as public duty and public
prudence taught him, with his last words exclaim, 'Fly from the French
Constitution.'" [Mr. Fox here whispered, that "there was no loss of
friendship."] Mr. Burke said, "Yes, there _was_ a loss of
friendship;--he knew the price of his conduct;--he had done his duty at
the price of his friend; their friendship was at an end."

In rising to reply to the speech of Burke, Mr. Fox was so affected as to
be for some moments unable to speak:--he wept, it is said, even to
sobbing; and persons who were in the gallery at the time declare, that,
while he spoke, there was hardly a dry eye around them.

Had it been possible for two natures so incapable of disguise--the one
from simplicity and frankness, the other from ungovernable temper,--to
have continued in relations of amity, notwithstanding their disagreement
upon a question which was at that moment setting the world in arms, both
themselves and the country would have been the better for such a
compromise between them. Their long habits of mutual deference would have
mingled with and moderated the discussion of their present differences;
--the tendency to one common centre to which their minds had been
accustomed, would have prevented them from flying so very widely asunder;
and both might have been thus saved from those extremes of principle,
which Mr. Burke always, and Mr. Fox sometimes, had recourse to in
defending their respective opinions, and which, by lighting, as it were,
the torch at both ends, but hastened a conflagration in which Liberty
herself might have been the sufferer. But it was evident that such a
compromise would have been wholly impossible. Even granting that Mr.
Burke did not welcome the schism as a relief, neither the temper of the
men nor the spirit of the times, which converted opinions at once into
passions, would have admitted of such a peaceable counterbalance of
principles, nor suffered them long to slumber in that hollow truce, which
Tacitus has described,--"_manente in speciem amicitia_" Mr.
Sheridan saw this from the first; and, in hazarding that vehement speech,
by which he provoked the rupture between himself and Burke, neither his
judgment nor his temper were so much off their guard as they who blamed
that speech seemed inclined to infer. But, perceiving that a separation
was in the end inevitable, he thought it safer, perhaps, as well as
manlier, to encounter the extremity at once, than by any temporizing
delay, or too complaisant suppression of opinion, to involve both himself
and Mr. Fox in the suspicion of either sharing or countenancing that
spirit of defection, which, he saw, was fast spreading among the rest of
their associates.

It is indeed said, and with every appearance of truth, that Mr. Sheridan
had felt offended by the censures which some of his political friends had
pronounced upon the indiscretion (as it was called) of his speech in the
last year, and that, having, in consequence, withdrawn from them the aid
of his powerful talents during a great part of the present session, he
but returned to his post under the express condition, that he should be
allowed to take the earliest opportunity of repeating, fully and
explicitly, the same avowal of his sentiments.

The following letter from Dr. Parr to Mrs. Sheridan, written immediately
after the scene between Burke and Sheridan in the preceding year, is
curious:--

"DEAR MADAM,

"I am most fixedly and most indignantly on the side of Mr. Sheridan and
Mr. Fox against Mr. Burke. It is not merely French politics that produced
this dispute;--they might have been settled privately. No, no,--there is
jealousy lurking underneath;--jealousy of Mr. Sheridan's eloquence;
--jealousy of his popularity;--jealousy of his influence with Mr.
Fox;--jealousy, perhaps, of his connection with the Prince.

"Mr. Sheridan was, I think, not too warm; or, at least, I should have
myself been warmer. Why, Burke accused Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan of acts
leading to rebellion,--and he made Mr. Fox a dupe, and Mr. Sheridan a
traitor! I think _this_,--and I am sure, yes, positively sure, that
nothing else will allay the ferment of men's minds. Mr. Sheridan ought,
publicly in Parliament, to demand proof, or a retractation, of this
horrible charge. Pitt's words never did the party half the hurt;--and,
just on the eve of an election, it is worse. As to private bickerings, or
private concessions and reconciliations, they are all nothing. In public
all must be again taken up; for, if drowned, the Public will say, and
Pitt will insinuate, that the charge is well founded, and that they dare
not provoke an inquiry.

"I know Burke is not addicted to giving up,--and so much the worse for
him and his party. As to Mr. Fox's yielding, well had it been for all,
all, all the party, if Mr. Fox had, now and then, stood out against Mr.
Burke. The ferment and alarm are universal, and something must be done;
for it is a conflagration in which they must perish, unless it be
stopped. All the papers are with Burke,--even the Foxite papers, which I
have seen. I know his violence, and temper, and obstinacy of opinion,
and--but I will not speak out, for, though I think him the greatest man
upon the earth, yet, in politics I think him,--what he has been found, to
the sorrow of those who act with him. He is uncorrupt, I know; but his
passions are quite headstrong; [Footnote: It was well said, (I believe,
by Mr. Fox,) that it was lucky both for Burke and Windham that they took
the Royal side on the subject of the French Revolution, as they would
have got hanged on the other.] and age, and disappointment, and the sight
of other men rising into fame and consequence, sour him. Pray tell me
when they are reconciled,--though, as I said, it is nothing to the
purpose without a public explanation.

"I am, dear Madam,

"Yours truly,

"S. PARR."

Another letter, communicated to me as having been written about this
period to Sheridan by a Gentleman, then abroad, who was well acquainted
with the whole party, contains allusions to the breach, which make its
introduction here not irrelevant:--

"I wish very much to have some account of the state of things with you
that I can rely on. I wish to know how all my old companions and
fellow-laborers do; if the club yet exists; if you, and Richardson, and
Lord John, and Ellis, and Lawrence, and Fitzpatrick, &c., meet, and joke,
and write, as of old. What is become of Becket's, and the
supper-parties,--the _noctes coenaeque_? Poor Burgoyne! I am sure
you all mourned him as I did, particularly Richardson:--pray remember me
affectionately to Richardson. It is a shame for you all, and I will say
ungrateful in many of you, to have so totally forgotten me, and to leave
me in ignorance of every thing public and private in which I am
interested. The only creature who writes to me is the Duke of Portland;
but in the great and weighty occupations that engross his mind, you can
easily conceive that the little details of our Society cannot enter into
His Grace's correspondence. I have indeed carried on a pretty regular
correspondence with young Burke. But that is now at an end. _He_ is
so wrapt up in the importance of his present pursuits, that it is too
great an honor for me to continue to correspond with him. His father I
ever must venerate and ever love; yet I never could admire, even in him,
what his son has inherited from him, a tenacity of opinion and a violence
of _principle_, that makes him lose his friendships in his politics,
and quarrel with every one who differs from him. Bitterly have I lamented
that greatest of these quarrels, and, indeed, the only important one; nor
can I conceive it to have been less afflicting to my private feelings
than fatal to the party. The worst of it to me was, that I was obliged to
condemn the man I loved, and that all the warmth of my affection, and the
zeal of my partiality, could not suggest a single excuse to vindicate him
either to the world or to myself, from the crime (for such it was) of
giving such a triumph to the common enemy. He failed, too, in what I most
loved him for,--his heart. There it was that _Mr. Fox principally rose
above him_; nor, amiable as he ever has been, did he ever appear half
so amiable as on that trying occasion."

The topic upon which Sheridan most distinguished himself during this
Session was the meditated interference of England in the war between
Russia and the Porte,--one of the few measures of Mr. Pitt on which the
sense of the nation was opposed to him. So unpopular, indeed, was the
Armament, proposed to be raised for this object, and so rapidly did the
majority of the Minister diminish during the discussion of it, that there
appeared for some time a probability that the Whig party would be called
into power,--an event which, happening at this critical juncture, might,
by altering the policy of England, have changed the destinies of all
Europe.

The circumstance to which at present this Russian question owes its chief
hold upon English memories is the charge, arising out of it, brought
against Mr. Fox of having sent Mr. Adair as his representative to
Petersburg, for the purpose of frustrating the objects for which the
King's ministers were then actually negotiating. This accusation, though
more than once obliquely intimated during the discussions upon the
Russian Armament in 1791, first met the public eye, in any tangible form,
among those celebrated Articles of Impeachment against Mr. Fox, which
were drawn up by Burke's practised hand [Footnote: This was the third
time that his talent for impeaching was exercised, as he acknowledged
having drawn up, during the administration of Lord North, seven distinct
Articles of Impeachment against that nobleman, which, however, the advice
of Lord Rockingham induced him to relinquish] in 1793, and found their
way surreptitiously into print in 1797. The angry and vindictive tone of
this paper was but little calculated to inspire confidence in its
statements, and the charge again died away, unsupported and unrefuted,
till the appearance of the Memoirs of Mr. Pitt by the Bishop of
Winchester; when, upon the authority of documents said to be found among
the papers of Mr. Pitt, but not produced, the accusation was
revived,--the Right Reverend biographer calling in aid of his own view of
the transaction the charitable opinion of the Turks, who, he complacently
assures us, "expressed great surprise that Mr. Fox had not lost his head
for such conduct." Notwithstanding, however, this _Concordat_
between the Right Reverend Prelate and the Turks, something more is still
wanting to give validity to so serious an accusation. Until the
production of the alleged proofs (which Mr. Adair has confidently
demanded) shall have put the public in possession of more recondite
materials for judging, they must regard as satisfactory and conclusive
the refutation of the whole charge, both as regards himself and his
illustrious friend, which Mr. Adair has laid before the world; and for
the truth of which not only his own high character, but the character of
the ministries of both parties, who have since employed him in missions
of the first trust and importance, seem to offer the strongest and most
convincing pledges.

The Empress of Russia, in testimony of her admiration of the eloquence of
Mr. Fox on this occasion, sent an order to England, through her
ambassador, for a bust of that statesman, which it was her intention, she
said, to place between those of Demosthenes and Cicero. The following is
a literal copy of Her Imperial Majesty's note on the subject: [Footnote:
Found among Mr. Sheridan's papers, with these words, in his own
hand-writing, annexed:--"N. B. Fox would have lost it, if I had not made
him look for it, and taken a copy."]--

"Ecrivés au Cte. Worenzof qu'il me fasse avoir en marbre blanc le Buste
resemblant de Charle Fox. Je veut le mettre sur ma Colonade entre eux de
Demosthene et Ciceron.

"Il a delivré par son eloquence sa Patrie et la Russie d'une guerre a la
quelle il n'y avoit ni justice ni raisons."

Another subject that engaged much of the attention of Mr. Sheridan this
year was his own motion relative to the constitution of the Royal Scotch
Boroughs. He had been, singularly enough, selected, in the year 1787, by
the Burgesses of Scotland, in preference to so many others possessing
more personal knowledge of that country, to present to the House the
Petition of the Convention of Delegates, for a Reform of the internal
government of the Royal Boroughs. How fully satisfied they were with his
exertions in their cause may be judged by the following extract from the
Minutes of Convention, dated 11th August, 1791:--

"Mr. Mills of Perth, after a suitable introductory speech, moved a vote
of thanks to Mr. Sheridan, in the following words:--

"The Delegates of the Burgesses of Scotland, associated for the purpose
of Reform, taking into their most serious consideration the important
services rendered to their cause by the manly and prudent exertions of
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Esq., the genuine and fixed attachment to it
which the whole tenor of his conduct has evinced, and the admirable
moderation he has all along displayed,

"Resolved unanimously, That the most sincere thanks of this meeting be
given to the said Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Esq., for his steady,
honorable, and judicious conduct in bringing the question relative to the
violated rights of the Scottish Boroughs to its present important and
favorable crisis; and the Burgesses with firm confidence hope that, from
his attachment to the cause, which he has shown to be deeply rooted in
principle, he will persevere to exert his distinguished, abilities, till
the objects of it are obtained, with that inflexible firmness, and
constitutional moderation, which have appeared so conspicuous and
exemplary throughout the whole of his conduct, as to be highly deserving
of the imitation of all good citizens.

"JOHN EWEN, Secretary."

From a private letter written this year by one of the Scottish Delegates
to a friend of Mr. Sheridan, (a copy of which letter I have found among
the papers of the latter,) it appears that the disturbing effects of Mr.
Burke's book had already shown themselves so strongly among the Whig
party as to fill the writer with apprehensions of their defection, even
on the safe and moderate question of Scotch Reform. He mentions one
distinguished member of the party, who afterwards stood conspicuously in
the very van of the Opposition, but who at that moment, if the authority
of the letter may be depended upon, was, like others, under the spell of
the great Alarmist, and yielding rapidly to the influence of that
anti-revolutionary terror, which, like the Panic dignified by the
ancients with the name of one of their Gods, will be long associated in
the memories of Englishmen with the mighty name and genius of Burke. A
consultation was, however, held among this portion of the party, with
respect to the prudence of lending their assistance to the measure of
Scotch Reform; and Sir James Mackintosh, as I have heard him say, was in
company with Sheridan, when Dr. Lawrence came direct from the meeting, to
inform him that they had agreed to support his motion.

The state of the Scotch Representation is one of those cases where a
dread of the ulterior objects of Reform induces many persons to oppose
its first steps, however beneficial and reasonable they may deem them,
rather than risk a further application of the principle, or open a breach
by which a bolder spirit of innovation may enter. As it is, there is no
such thing as popular election in Scotland. We cannot, indeed, more
clearly form to ourselves a notion of the manner in which so important a
portion of the British empire is represented, than by supposing the Lords
of the Manor throughout England to be invested with the power of electing
her representatives,--the manorial rights, too, being, in a much greater
number of instances than at present, held independently of the land from
which they derive their claim, and thus the natural connection between
property and the right of election being, in most cases, wholly
separated. Such would be, as nearly as possible, a parallel to the system
of representation now existing in Scotland;--a system, which it is the
understood duty of all present and future Lord Advocates to defend, and
which neither the lively assaults of a Sheridan nor the sounder reasoning
and industry of an Abercrombie have yet been able to shake.

The following extract from another of the many letters of Dr. Parr to
Sheridan shows still further the feeling entertained towards Burke, even
by some of those who most violently differed with him:--

"During the recess of Parliament I hope you will read the mighty work of
my friend and your friend, and Mr. Fox's friend, Mackintosh: there is
some obscurity and there are many Scotticisms in it; yet I do pronounce
it the work of a most masculine and comprehensive mind. The arrangement
is far more methodical than Mr. Burke's, the sentiments are more
patriotic, the reasoning is more profound, and even the imagery in some
places is scarcely less splendid. I think Mackintosh a better
philosopher, and a better citizen, and I know him to be a far better
scholar and a far better man, than Payne; in whose book there are great
irradiations of genius, but none of the glowing and generous warmth which
virtue inspires; that warmth which is often kindled in the bosom of
Mackintosh, and which pervades almost every page of Mr. Burke's
book--though I confess, and with sorrow I confess, that the holy flame
was quite extinguished in his odious altercation with you and Mr. Fox."

A letter from the Prince of Wales to Sheridan this year furnishes a new
proof of the confidence reposed in him by His Royal Highness. A question
of much delicacy and importance having arisen between that Illustrious
Personage and the Duke of York, of a nature, as it appears, too urgent to
wait for a reference to Mr. Fox, Sheridan had alone the honor of advising
His Royal Highness in the correspondence that took place between him and
his Royal Brother on that occasion. Though the letter affords no
immediate clue to the subject of these communications, there is little
doubt that they referred to a very important and embarrassing question,
which is known to have been put by the Duke of York to the Heir-Apparent,
previously to his own marriage this year;--a question which involved
considerations connected with the Succession to the Crown, and which the
Prince, with the recollection of what occurred on the same subject in
1787, could only get rid of by an evasive answer.



CHAPTER V.

DEATH OF MRS. SHERIDAN.


In the year 1792, after a long illness, which terminated in consumption,
Mrs. Sheridan died at Bristol, in the thirty-eighth year of her age.

There has seldom, perhaps, existed a finer combination of all those
qualities that attract both eye and heart, than this accomplished and
lovely person exhibited. To judge by what we hear, it was impossible to
see her without admiration, or know her without love; and a late Bishop
used to say that she "seemed to him the connecting link between woman and
angel." [Footnote: Jackson of Exeter, too, giving a description of her,
in some Memoirs of his own Life that were never published, said that to
see her, as she stood singing beside him at the piano-forte, was "like
looking into the face of an angel."] The devotedness of affection, too,
with which she was regarded, not only by her own father and sisters, but
by all her husband's family, showed that her fascination was of that best
kind which, like charity, "begins at home;" and that while her beauty and
music enchanted the world, she had charms more intrinsic and lasting for
those who came nearer to her. We have already seen with what pliant
sympathy she followed her husband through his various pursuits,--
identifying herself with the politician as warmly and readily
as with the author, and keeping Love still attendant on Genius through
all his transformations. As the wife of the dramatist and manager, we
find her calculating the receipts of the house, assisting in the
adaptation of her husband's opera, and reading over the plays sent in by
dramatic candidates. As the wife of the senator and orator we see her,
with no less zeal, making extracts from state-papers, and copying out
ponderous pamphlets,--entering with all her heart and soul into the
details of elections, and even endeavoring to fathom the mysteries of the
Funds. The affectionate and sensible care with which she watched over,
not only her own children, but those which her beloved sister, Mrs.
Tickell, confided to her, in dying, gives the finish to this picture of
domestic usefulness. When it is recollected, too, that the person thus
homelily employed was gifted with every charm that could adorn and
delight society, it would be difficult, perhaps, to find any where a more
perfect example of that happy mixture of utility and ornament, in which
all that is prized by the husband and the lover combines, and which
renders woman what the Sacred Fire was to the Parsees,--not only an
object of adoration on their altars, but a source of warmth and comfort
to their hearths.

To say that, with all this, she was not happy, nor escaped the censure of
the world, is but to assign to her that share of shadow, without which
nothing bright ever existed on this earth. United not only by marriage,
but by love, to a man who was the object of universal admiration, and
whose vanity and passions too often led him to yield to the temptations
by which he was surrounded, it was but natural that, in the consciousness
of her own power to charm, she should be now and then piqued into an
appearance of retaliation, and seem to listen with complaisance to some
of those numerous worshippers, who crowd around such beautiful and
unguarded shrines. Not that she was at any time unwatched by
Sheridan,--on the contrary, he followed her with a lover's eyes
throughout; and it was believed of both, by those who knew them best,
that, even when they seemed most attracted by other objects, they would
willingly, had they consulted the real wishes of their hearts, have given
up every one in the world for each other. So wantonly do those, who have
happiness in their grasp, trifle with that rare and delicate treasure,
till, like the careless hand playing with the rose,


"In swinging it rudely, too rudely, alas,
They snap it--it falls to ground."


They had, immediately after their marriage, as we have seen, passed some
time in a little cottage at Eastburnham, and it was a period, of course,
long remembered by them both for its happiness. I have been told by a
friend of Sheridan, that he once overheard him exclaiming to himself,
after looking for some moments at his wife, with a pang, no doubt, of
melancholy self-reproach,--"Could anything bring back those first
feelings?" then adding with a sigh, "Yes, perhaps, the cottage at
Eastburnham might." In this as well as in some other traits of the same
kind, there is assuredly any thing but that common-place indifference,
which too often clouds over the evening of married life. On the contrary,
it seems rather the struggle of affection with its own remorse; and, like
the humorist who mourned over the extinction of his intellect so
eloquently as to prove that it was still in full vigor, shows love to be
still warmly alive in the very act of lamenting its death.

I have already presented the reader with some letters of Mrs. Sheridan,
in which the feminine character of her mind very interestingly displays
itself. Their chief charm is unaffectedness, and the total absence of
that literary style, which in the present day infects even the most
familiar correspondence. I shall here give a few more of her letters,
written at different periods to the elder sister of Sheridan,--it being
one of her many merits to have kept alive between her husband and his
family, though so far separated, a constant and cordial intercourse,
which, unluckily, after her death, from his own indolence and the new
connections into which he entered, was suffered to die away, almost
entirely. The first letter, from its allusion to the Westminster
Scrutiny, must have been written in the year 1784, Mr. Fox having gained
his great victory over Sir Cecil Wray on the 17th of May, and the
Scrutiny having been granted on the same day.

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