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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




"MY DEAR SIR,

"_July 31._

"The caution you recommend proceeds from that attentive kindness which
Hester always receives from you, and upon which I place the greatest
reliance for her safety. I so entirely agree with your apprehensions on
the subject, that I think it was very giddy in me not to have been struck
with them when she first mentioned having slept with her friend. Nothing
can abate my love for her; and the manner in which you apply the interest
you take in her happiness, and direct the influence you possess in her
mind, render you, beyond comparison, the person I feel most obliged to
upon earth. I take this opportunity of saying this upon paper, because it
is a subject on which I always find it difficult to speak.

"With respect to that part of your note in which you express such
friendly partiality, as to my parliamentary conduct, I need not add that
there is no man whose good opinion can be more flattering to me.

"I am ever, my dear Bain,

"Your sincere and obliged

"R. B. SHERIDAN."]--thought it right to communicate to her the
apprehensions that he felt. From that moment, her attentions to the
sufferer never ceased day or night; and, though drooping herself with an
illness that did not leave her long behind him, she watched over his
every word and wish, with unremitting anxiety, to the last.

Connected, no doubt, with the disorganization of his stomach, was an
abscess, from which, though distressingly situated, he does not appear to
have suffered much pain. In the spring of this year, however, he was
obliged to confine himself, almost entirely, to his bed. Being expected
to attend the St. Patrick's Dinner, on the 17th of March, he wrote a
letter to the Duke of Kent, who was President, alleging severe
indisposition as the cause of his absence. The contents of this letter
were communicated to the company, and produced, as appears by the
following note from the Duke of Kent, a strong sensation:--

_Kensington Palace, March_ 27, 1816.

"MY DEAR SHERIDAN,

"I have been so hurried ever since St. Patrick's day, as to be unable
earlier to thank you for your kind letter, which I received while
presiding at the festive board; but I can assure you, I was not unmindful
of it _then_, but announced the afflicting cause of your absence to
the company, who expressed, in a manner that could not be
_misunderstood_, their continued affection for the writer of it. It
now only remains for me to assure you, that I appreciate as I ought the
sentiments of attachment it contains for me, and which will ever be most
cordially returned by him, who is with the most friendly regard, my dear
Sheridan,

"Yours faithfully,

"_The Right Hon. R. B. Sheridan_.

"EDWARD."

The following letter to him at this time from his elder sister will be
read with interest:--

"MY DEAR BROTHER,

"_Dublin, May 9, 1816._

"I am very, very sorry you are ill; but I trust in God your naturally
strong constitution will retrieve all, and that I shall soon have the
satisfaction of hearing that you are in a fair way of recovery. I well
know the nature of your complaint, that it is extremely painful, but if
properly treated, and no doubt you have the best advice, not dangerous. I
know a lady now past seventy four, who many years since was attacked with
a similar complaint, and is now as well as most persons of her time of
life. Where poulticing is necessary, I have known oatmeal used with the
best effect. Forgive, dear brother, this officious zeal. Your son Thomas
told me he felt obliged to me for not prescribing for him. I did not,
because in his case I thought it would be ineffectual; in yours I have
reason to hope the contrary. I am very glad to hear of the good effect
change of climate has made in him;--I took a great liking to him; there
was something kind in his manner that won upon my affections. Of your son
Charles I hear the most delightful accounts:--that he has an excellent
and cultivated understanding, and a heart as good. May he be a blessing
to you, and a compensation for much you have endured! That I do not know
him, that I have not seen you, (so early and so long the object of my
affection,) for so many years, has not been my fault; but I have ever
considered it as a drawback upon a situation not otherwise unfortunate;
for, to use the words of Goldsmith, I have endeavored to 'draw upon
content for the deficiencies of fortune;' and truly I have had some
employment in that way, for considerable have been our worldly
disappointments. But those are not the worst evils of life, and we have
good children, which is its first blessing. I have often told you my son
Tom bore a strong resemblance to you, when I loved you preferably to any
thing the world contained. This, which was the case with him in childhood
and early youth, is still so in mature years. In character of mind, too,
he is very like you, though education and situation have made a great
difference. At that period of existence, when the temper, morals, and
propensities are formed, Tom had a mother who watched over his health,
his well-being, and every part of education in which a female could be
useful. _You_ had lost a mother who would have cherished you, whose
talents you inherited, who would have softened the asperity of our
father's temper, and probably have prevented his unaccountable
partialities. You have always shown a noble independence of spirit, that
the pecuniary difficulties you often had to encounter could not induce
you to forego. As a public man, you have been, like the motto of the
Lefanu family, '_Sine macula_,' and I am persuaded had you not too
early been thrown upon the world, and alienated from your family, you
would have been equally good as a private character. My son is eminently
so. * * *

"Do, dear brother, send me one line to tell me you are better, and
believe me, most affectionately,

"Yours,

"ALICIA LEEANU."

While death was thus gaining fast on Sheridan, the miseries of his life
were thickening around him also; nor did the last corner, in which he now
lay down to die, afford him any asylum from the clamors of his legal
pursuers. Writs and executions came in rapid succession, and bailiffs at
length gained possession of his house. It was about the beginning of May
that Lord Holland, on being informed by Mr. Rogers, (who was one of the
very few that watched the going out of this great light with interest,)
of the dreary situation in which his old friend was lying, paid him a
visit one evening, in company with Mr. Rogers, and by the cordiality,
suavity, and cheerfulness of his conversation, shed a charm round that
chamber of sickness, which, perhaps, no other voice but his own could
have imparted.

Sheridan was, I believe, sincerely attached to Lord Holland, in whom he
saw transmitted the same fine qualities, both of mind and heart, which,
notwithstanding occasional appearances to the contrary, he had never
ceased to love and admire in his great relative;--the same ardor for
Right and impatience of Wrong--the same mixture of wisdom and simplicity,
so tempering each other, as to make the simplicity refined and the wisdom
unaffected--the same gentle magnanimity of spirit, intolerant only of
tyranny and injustice--and, in addition to all this, a range and vivacity
of conversation, entirely his own, which leaves no subject untouched or
unadorned, but is, (to borrow a fancy of Dryden,) "as the Morning of the
Mind," bringing new objects and images successively into view, and
scattering its own fresh light over all. Such a visit, therefore, could
not fail to be soothing and gratifying to Sheridan; and, on parting, both
Lord Holland and Mr. Rogers comforted him with the assurance that some
steps should be taken to ward off the immediate evils that he dreaded.

An evening or two after, (Wednesday, May 15,) I was with Mr. Rogers,
when, on returning home, he found the following afflicting note upon his
table:--

"_Saville-Row_.

"I find things settled so that 150_l_. will remove all difficulty. I
am absolutely undone and broken-hearted. I shall negotiate for the Plays
successfully in the course of a week, when all shall be returned. I have
desired Fairbrother to get back the Guarantee for thirty.

"They are going to put the carpets out of window, and break into Mrs.
S.'s room and _take me_--for God's sake let me see you.

"R. B. S."

It was too late to do any thing when this note was received, being then
between twelve and one at night; but Mr. Rogers and I walked down to
Saville-Row together to assure ourselves that the threatened arrest had
not yet been put in execution. A servant spoke to us out of the area, and
said that all was safe for the night, but that it was intended, in
pursuance of this new proceeding, to paste bills over the front of the
house next day.

On the following morning I was early with Mr. Rogers, and willingly
undertook to be the bearer of a draft for 150_l_. [Footnote: Lord
Holland afterwards insisted upon paying the half of this sum,--which was
not the first of the same amount that my liberal friend, Mr. Rogers, had
advanced for Sheridan.] to Saville-Row. I found Mr. Sheridan good-natured
and cordial as ever; and though he was then within a few weeks of his
death, his voice had not lost its fulness or strength, nor was that
lustre, for which his eyes were so remarkable, diminished. He showed,
too, his usual sanguineness of disposition in speaking of the price that
he expected for his Dramatic Works, and of the certainty he felt of being
able to arrange all his affairs, if his complaint would but suffer him to
leave his bed. In the following month, his powers began rapidly to fail
him;--his stomach was completely worn out, and could no longer bear any
kind of sustenance. During the whole of this time, as far as I can learn,
it does not appear that, (with the exceptions I have mentioned,) any one
of his Noble or Royal friends ever called at his door, or even sent to
inquire after him!

About this period Doctor Bain received the following note from Mr.
Vaughan:--

"MY DEAR SIR,

"An apology in a case of humanity is scarcely necessary, besides I have
the honor of a slight acquaintance with you. A friend of mine, hearing of
_our friend_ Sheridan's forlorn situation, and that he has neither
money nor credit for a few comforts, has employed me to convey a small
sum for his use, through such channel as I think right. I can devise none
better than through you. If I had had the good fortune to have seen you,
I should have left for this purpose a draft for 50_l_. Perhaps as
much more might be had if it will be conducive to a good end--of course
you must feel it is not for the purpose of satisfying troublesome people.
I will say more to you if you will do me the honor of a call in your way
to Saville-Street to-morrow. I am a mere agent.

"I am,

"My dear Sir,

"Most truly yours,

"23, _Grafton-Street_.

"JOHN TAYLOR VAUGHAN.

"If I should not see you before twelve, I will come through the passage
to you."

In his interview with Dr. Bain, Mr. Vaughan stated, that the sum thus
placed at his disposal was, in all, 200_l_.; [Footnote: Mr. Vaughan
did not give Doctor Bain to understand that he was authorized to go
beyond the 200_l_.; but, in a conversation which I had with him a
year or two after, in contemplation of this Memoir, he told me that a
further supply was intended.] and the proposition being submitted to Mrs.
Sheridan, that lady, after consulting with some of her relatives,
returned for answer that, as there was a sufficiency of means to provide
all that was necessary for her husband's comfort, as well as her own, she
begged leave to decline the offer.

Mr. Vaughan always said, that the donation, thus meant to be doled out,
came from a Royal hand;--but this is hardly credible. It would be safer,
perhaps, to let the suspicion rest upon that gentleman's memory, of
having indulged his own benevolent disposition in this disguise, than to
suppose it possible that so scanty and reluctant a benefaction was the
sole mark of attention accorded by a "gracious Prince and Master"
[Footnote: See Sheridan's Letter, page 268.] to the last, death-bed wants
of one of the most accomplished and faithful servants, that Royalty ever
yet raised or ruined by its smiles. When the philosopher Anaxagoras lay
dying for want of sustenance, his great pupil, Pericles, sent him a sum
of money. "Take it back," said Anaxagoras--"if he wished to keep the lamp
alive, he ought to have administered the oil before!"

In the mean time, the clamors and incursions of creditors increased. A
sheriff's officer at length arrested the dying man in his bed, and was
about to carry him off, in his blankets, to a spunging-house, when Doctor
Bain interfered--and, by threatening the officer with the responsibility
he must incur, if, as was but too probable, his prisoner should expire on
the way, averted this outrage.

About the middle of June, the attention and sympathy of the Public were,
for the first time, awakened to the desolate situation of Sheridan, by an
article that appeared in the Morning Post,--written, as I understand, by
a gentleman, who, though on no very cordial terms with him, forgot every
other feeling in a generous pity for his fate, and in honest indignation
against those who now deserted him. "Oh delay not," said the writer,
without naming the person to whom he alluded--"delay not to draw aside
the curtain within which that proud spirit hides its sufferings." He then
adds, with a striking anticipation of what afterwards happened:--"Prefer
ministering in the chamber of sickness to mustering at

'The splendid sorrows that adorn the hearse;'

I say, _Life_ and _Succor_ against Westminster-Abbey and a
Funeral!"

This article produced a strong and general sensation, and was reprinted
in the same paper the following day. Its effect, too, was soon visible in
the calls made at Sheridan's door, and in the appearance of such names as
the Duke of York, the Duke of Argyle, &c. among the visitors. But it was
now too late;--the spirit, that these unavailing tributes might once have
comforted, was now fast losing the consciousness of every thing earthly,
but pain. After a succession of shivering fits, he fell into a state of
exhaustion, in which he continued, with but few more signs of suffering,
till his death. A day or two before that event, the Bishop of London read
prayers by his bed-side; and on Sunday, the seventh of July, in the
sixty-fifth year of his age, he died.

On the following Saturday the Funeral took place;--his remains having
been previously removed from Saville-Row to the house of his friend, Mr.
Peter Moore, in Great George-Street, Westminster. From thence, at one
o'clock, the procession moved on foot to the Abbey, where, in the only
spot in Poet's Corner that remained unoccupied, the body was interred;
and the following simple inscription marks its resting-place:--


"RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN,

BORN, 1751,

DIED, 7th JULY, 1816.

THIS MARBLE IS THE TRIBUTE OF AN ATTACHED

FRIEND,

PETER MOORE."


Seldom has there been seen such an array of rank as graced this Funeral.
[Footnote: It was well remarked by a French Journal, in contrasting the
penury of Sheridan's latter years with the splendor of his Funeral, that
"France is the place for a man of letters to live in, and England the
place for him to die in."] The Pall-bearers were the Duke of Bedford, the
Earl of Lauderdale, Earl Mulgrave, the Lord Bishop of London, Lord
Holland, and Lord Spencer. Among the mourners were His Royal Highness the
Duke of York, His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, the Duke of Argyle,
the Marquisses of Anglesea and Tavistock; the Earls of Thanet, Jersey,
Harrington, Besborough, Mexborough, Rosslyn, and Yarmouth; Lords George
Cavendish and Robert Spencer; Viscounts Sidmouth, Granville, and
Duncannon; Lords Rivers, Erskine, and Lynedoch; the Lord Mayor; Right
Hon. G. Canning and W. W. Pole, &c., &c. [Footnote: In the train of all
this phalanx of Dukes, Marquisses, Earls, Viscounts, Barons, Honorables,
and Right Honorables, Princes of the Blood Royal, and First Officers of
the State, it was not a little interesting to see, walking humbly, side
by side, the only two men whose friendship had not waited for the call of
vanity to display itself--Dr. Bain and Mr. Rogers.]

Where were they all, these Royal and Noble persons, who now crowded to
"partake the gale" of Sheridan's glory--where were they all while any
life remained in him? Where were they all, but a few weeks before, when
their interposition might have saved his heart from breaking,--or when
the zeal, now wasted on the grave, might have soothed and comforted the
death-bed? This is a subject on which it is difficult to speak with
patience. If the man was unworthy of the commonest offices of humanity
while he lived, why all this parade of regret and homage over his tomb?

There appeared some verses at the time, which, however intemperate in
their satire and careless in their style, came, evidently, warm from the
heart of the writer, and contained sentiments to which, even in his
cooler moments, he needs not hesitate to subscribe:--


"Oh it sickens the heart to see bosoms so hollow,
And friendships so false in the great and high-born;--
To think what a long line of Titles may follow
The relics of him who died, friendless and lorn!

"How proud they can press to the funeral array
Of him whom they shunn'd, in his sickness and sorrow--
How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day,
Whose pall shall be held up by Nobles to-morrow!"

The anonymous writer thus characterizes the talents of Sheridan:--

"Was this, then, the fate of that high-gifted man,
The pride of the palace, the bower, and the hall--
The orator, dramatist, minstrel,--who ran
Through each mode of the lyre, and was master of all.

"Whose mind was an essence, compounded, with art,
From the finest and best of all other men's powers;--
Who rul'd, like a wizard, the world of the heart,
And could call up its sunshine, or draw down its showers;--

"Whose humor, as gay as the fire-fly's light,
Play'd round every subject, and shone, as it play'd;--
Whose wit, in the combat as gentle as bright,
Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade;--

"Whose eloquence brightened whatever it tried,
Whether reason or fancy, the gay or the grave,
Was as rapid, as deep, and as brilliant a tide,
As ever bore Freedom aloft on its wave!"

* * * * *

Though a perusal of the foregoing pages has, I trust, sufficiently
furnished the reader with materials out of which to form his own estimate
of the character of Sheridan, a few general remarks may, at parting, be
allowed me--rather with a view to convey the impressions left upon
myself, than with any presumptuous hope of influencing the deductions of
others.

In considering the intellectual powers of this extraordinary man, the
circumstance that first strikes us is the very scanty foundation of
instruction, upon which he contrived to raise himself to such eminence
both as a writer and a politician. It is true, in the line of authorship
he pursued, erudition was not so much wanting; and his wit, like the
laurel of Caesar, was leafy enough to hide any bareness in this respect.
In politics, too, he had the advantage of entering upon his career, at a
time when habits of business and a knowledge of details were less looked
for in public men than they are at present, and when the House of Commons
was, for various reasons, a more open play-ground for eloquence and wit.
The great increase of public business, since then, has necessarily made a
considerable change in this respect. Not only has the time of the
Legislature become too precious to be wasted upon the mere gymnastics of
rhetoric, but even those graces, with which true Oratory surrounds her
statements, are but impatiently borne, where the statement itself is the
primary and pressing object of the hearer. [Footnote: The new light that
as been thrown on Political Science may also, perhaps, be assigned as a
reason for this evident revolution in Parliamentary taste. "Truth." says
Lord Bacon, "is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the
masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the present world half so stately
and daintily as candle-lights;"--and there can be little doubt that the
clearer and important truths are made, the less controversy they will
excite among fair and rational men, and the less passion and fancy
accordingly can eloquence infuse into the discussion of them. Mathematics
have produced no quarrels among mankind--it is by the mysterious and the
vague, that temper as well as imagination is most roused. In proof of
this while the acknowledged clearness almost to truism, which the leading
principles of Political Science have attained, has tended to simplify and
tame down the activities of eloquence on that subject. There is still
another arena left, in the science of the Law, where the same
illumination of truth has not yet penetrated, and where Oratory will
still continue to work her perplexing spells, till Common Sense and the
plain principles of Utility shall find their way there also to weaken
them.] Burke, we know, was, even for his own time, too much addicted to
what falconers would call _raking_, or flying wide of his game; but
there was hardly, perhaps, one among his great contemporaries, who, if
beginning his career at present, would not find it, in some degree,
necessary to conform his style to the taste for business and
matter-of-fact that is prevalent. Mr. Pitt would be compelled to curtail
the march of his sentences--Mr. Fox would learn to repeat himself less
lavishly--nor would Mr. Sheridan venture to enliven a question of
evidence by a long and pathetic appeal to Filial Piety.

In addition to this change in the character and taste of the House of
Commons, which, while it has lowered the value of some of the
qualifications possessed by Sheridan, has created a demand for others of
a more useful but less splendid kind, which his education and habits of
life would have rendered less easily attainable by him, we must take also
into account the prodigious difference produced by the general movement,
at present, of the whole civilized world towards knowledge;--a movement,
which no public man, however great his natural talents, could now lag
behind with impunity, and which requires nothing less than the versatile
and _encyclopaedic_ powers of a Brougham to keep pace with it.

Another striking characteristic of Sheridan, as an orator and a writer,
was the great degree of labor and preparation which his productions in
both lines cost him. Of this the reader has seen some curious proofs in
the preceding pages. Though the papers left behind by him have added
nothing to the stock of his _chef-d'oeuvres_, they have given us an
insight into his manner of producing his great works, which is, perhaps,
the next most interesting thing to the works themselves. Though no new
star has been discovered, the history of the formation of those we
already possess, and of the gradual process by which they were brought
"firm to retain their gathered beams," has, as in the instance of The
School for Scandal, been most interestingly unfolded to us.

The same marks of labor are discoverable throughout the whole of his
Parliamentary career. He never made a speech of any moment, of which the
sketch, more or less detailed, has not been found among his papers--with
the showier passages generally written two or three times over, (often
without any material change in their form,) upon small detached pieces of
paper, or on cards. To such minutiae of effect did he attend, that I have
found, in more than one instance, a memorandum made of the precise place
in which the words "Good God, Mr. Speaker," were to be introduced. These
preparatory sketches are continued down to his latest displays; and it is
observable that when from the increased derangement of his affairs, he
had no longer leisure or collectedness enough to prepare, he ceased to
speak.

The only time he could have found for this pre-arrangement of his
thoughts, (of which few, from the apparent idleness of his life,
suspected him,) must have been during the many hours of the day that he
remained in bed,--when, frequently, while the world gave him credit for
being asleep, he was employed in laying the frame-work of his wit and
eloquence for the evening.

That this habit of premeditation was not altogether owing to a want of
quickness, appears from the power and liveliness of his replies in
Parliament, and the vivacity of some of his retorts in conversation.
[Footnote: His best _bon mots_ are in the memory of every one. Among
those less known, perhaps, is his answer to General T----, relative to
some difference of opinion between them on the War in Spain:--"Well,
T----, are you still on your high horse?"--"If I was on a horse before, I
am upon an elephant now." "No, T----, you were upon an _ass_ before,
now you are upon a _mule_."

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