in verse from the Greek of a poor writer of late age, Aristaenetus. This
volume, which does little credit to either of its parents, was
positively printed and published in 1770, but the rich harvest of fame
and shillings which they expected from it was never gathered in. Yet the
book excited some little notice. The incognito of its authors induced
some critics to palm it even on such a man as Dr. Johnson; others
praised; others sneered at it. In the young men it raised hopes, only to
dash them; but its failure was not so utter as to put the idea of
literary success entirely out of their heads, nor its success sufficient
to induce them to rush recklessly into print, and thus strangle their
fame in its cradle. Let it fail, was Richard Sheridan's thought; he had
now a far more engrossing ambition. In a word, he was in love.
Yes, he was in love for a time--only for a time, and not truly. But, be
it remembered, Sheridan's evil days had not commenced. He sowed his wild
oats late in life,--alack for him!--and he never finished sowing them.
His was not the viciousness of nature, but the corruption of success.
'In all time of wealth, good Lord deliver us!' What prayer can wild,
unrestrained, unheeding Genius utter with more fervency? I own Genius is
rarely in love. There is an egotism, almost a selfishness, about it,
that will not stoop to such common worship. Women know it, and often
prefer the blunt, honest, common-place soldier to the wild erratic poet.
Genius, grand as it is, is unsympathetic. It demands higher--the highest
joys. Genius claims to be loved, but to love is too much to ask it. And
yet at this time Sheridan was not a matured Genius. When his development
came, he cast off this very love for which he had fought, manoeuvred,
struggled, and was unfaithful to the very wife whom he had nearly died
to obtain.
Miss Linley was one of a family who have been called 'a nest of
nightingales.' Young ladies who practise elaborate pieces and sing
simple ballads in the voice of a white mouse, know the name of Linley
well. For ages the Linleys have been the bards of England--composers,
musicians, singers, always popular, always English. Sheridan's love was
one of the most renowned of the family, but the 'Maid of Bath,' as she
was called, was as celebrated for her beauty as for the magnificence of
her voice. When Sheridan first knew her, she was only sixteen years
old--very beautiful, clever, and modest. She was a singer by profession,
living at Bath, as Sheridan, only three years older than herself, also
was, but attending concerts, oratorios, and so forth, in other places,
especially at Oxford. Her adorers were legion; and the Oxford boys
especially--always in love as they are--were among them. Halhed was
among these last, and in the innocence of his heart confided his passion
to his friend Dick Sheridan. At sixteen the young beauty began her
conquests. A rich old Wiltshire squire, with a fine heart, as golden as
his guineas, offered to or for her, and was readily accepted. But
'Cecilia,' as she was always called, could not sacrifice herself on the
altar of duty, and she privately told him that though she honoured and
esteemed, she could never love him. The old gentleman proved his worth.
Did he storm? did he hold her to her engagement? did he shackle himself
with a young wife, who would only learn to hate him for his persinacity?
Not a bit of it. He acted with a generosity which should be held up as a
model to all old gentlemen who are wild enough, to fall in love with
girls of sixteen. He knew Mr. Linley, who was delighted with the match,
would be furious if it were broken off. He offered to take on himself
all the blame if the breach, and, to satisfy the angry parent, settled
£1,000 on the daughter. The offer was accepted, and the trial for breach
of promise with which the père Linley had threatened Mr. Long, was of
course withheld. Mr. Long afterwards presented Mrs. Sheridan with
£3,000.
The 'Maid of Bath' was now an heiress as well as a fascinating beauty,
but her face and her voice were the chief enchantments with her ardent
and youthful adorers. The Sheridans had settled in Mead Street, in that
town which is celebrated for its gambling, its scandal, and its
unhealthy situation at the bottom of a natural basin. Well might the
Romans build their baths there: it will take more water than even Bath
supplies to wash out its follies and iniquities. It certainly is strange
how washing and cards go together. One would fancy there were no baths
in Eden, for wherever there are baths, there we find idleness and all
its attendant vices.
The Linleys were soon intimate with the Sheridans, and the Maid of Bath
added to her adorers both Richard and his elder brother Charles; only,
just as at Harrow every one thought Richard a dunce and he disappointed
them; so at Bath no one thought Richard would fall in love, and he _did_
disappoint them--none more so than Charles, his brother, and Halhed, his
bosom friend. As for the latter, he was almost mad in his devotion, and
certainly extravagant in his expressions. He described his passion by a
clever, but rather disagreeable simile, which Sheridan, who was a most
disgraceful plagiarist, though he had no need to be so, afterwards
adopted as his own. 'Just as the Egyptian pharmacists,' wrote Halhed, in
a Latin letter, in which he described the power of Miss Linley's voice
over his spirit, 'were wont, in embalming a dead body to draw the brain
out through the ears with a crooked hook, this nightingale has drawn out
through mine ears not my brain only, but my heart also.'
Then among other of her devotees were Norris, the singer, and Mr. Watts,
a rich gentleman-commoner, who had also met her at Oxford. Surely with
such and other rivals, the chances of the quiet, unpretending,
undemonstrative boy of nineteen were small. But no, Miss Linley was
foolish enough to be captivated by genius, and charmed by such poems as
the quiet boy wrote to her, of which this is, perhaps, one of the
prettiest:
'Dry that tear, my gentlest love;
Be hush'd that struggling sigh,
Nor seasons, day, nor fate shall prove
More fix'd, more true than I.
Hush'd be that sigh, be dry that tear;
Cease boding doubt, cease anxious fear:
Dry be that tear.
'Ask'st thou how long my love will stay,
When all that's new is past?
How long, ah Delia, can I say
How long my life will last?
Dry be that tear, be hush'd that sigh,
At least I'll love thee till I die:
Hush'd be that sigh.
'And does that thought affect thee too,
The thought of Sylvio's death,
That he who only breath'd for you,
Must yield that faithful breath?
Hush'd be that sigh, be dry that tear,
Nor let us lose our Heaven here:
Be dry that tear.'
The many adorers had not the remotest suspicion of this devotion, and
'gave her' to this, that, or the other eligible personage; but the
villanous conduct of a scoundrel soon brought the matter to a crisis.
The whole story was as romantic as it could be. In a three-volume novel,
critics, always so just and acute in their judgment, would call it
far-fetched, improbable, unnatural; in short, anything but what should
be the plot of the pure 'domestic English story.' Yet, here it is with
almost dramatic effect, the simple tale of what really befel one of our
most celebrated men.
Yes, to complete the fiction-like aspect of the affair, there was even a
'captain' in the matter--as good a villain as ever shone in short hose
and cut doublet at the 'Strand' or 'Victoria.' Captain Matthews was a
married man, and a very naughty one. He was an intimate friend of the
Linleys, and wanted to push his intimacy too far. In short, 'not to put
too fine a point on it' (too fine a point is precisely what never _is_
put), he attempted to seduce the pretty, innocent girl, and not dismayed
at one failure, went on again and again. 'Cecilia,' knowing the temper
of Linley père, was afraid to expose him to her father, and with a
course, which we of the present day cannot but think strange, if nothing
more, disclosed the attempts of her persecutor to no other than her own
lover, Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
Strange want of delicacy, undoubtedly, and yet we can excuse the poor
songstress, with a father who sought only to make money out of her
talents, and no other relations to confide in. But Richard Brinsley,
long her lover, now resolved to be both her protector and her husband.
He persuaded her to fly to France, under cover of entering a convent. He
induced his sister to lend him money out of that provided for the
housekeeping at home, hired a post-chaise, and sent a sedan-chair to her
father's house in the Crescent to convey her to it, and wafted her off
to town. Thence, after a few adroit lies on the part of Sheridan, they
sailed to Dunkirk; and there he persuaded her to become his wife. She
consented, and they were knotted together by an obliging priest
accustomed to these runaway matches from _la perfide Albion_.
The irate parent, Linley, followed, recaptured his daughter, and brought
Her back to England. Meanwhile, the elopement excited great agitation in
the good city of Bath, and among others, the villain of the story, the
gallant Captain Matthews, posted Richard Brinsley as 'a scoundrel and a
liar,' the then polite method of expressing disgust. Home came Richard
in the wake of Miss Linley, who rejoiced in the unromantic praenomen of
'Betsy,' to her angry parent, and found matters had been running high in
his short absence. A duel with Matthews seems to have been the natural
consequence, and up Richard posted to London to fight it. Matthews
played the craven--Sheridan the impetuous lover. They met, fought,
seized one another's swords, wrestled, fell together, and wounded each
other with the stumps of their rapiers in true Chevy-Chase fashion.
Matthews, who had behaved in a cowardly manner in the first affair,
sought to retrieve his honour by sending a second challenge. Again the
rivals--well represented in 'The Rivals' afterwards produced--met at
Kingsdown. Mr. Matthews drew; Mr. Sheridan advanced on him at first: Mr.
Matthews in turn advanced fast on Mr. Sheridan; upon which he retreated,
till he very suddenly ran in upon Mr. Matthews, laying himself
exceedingly open, and endeavouring to get hold of Mr. Matthews' sword.
Mr. Matthews received him at point, and, I believe, disengaged his sword
from Mr. Sheridan's body, and gave him another wound. The same scene was
now enacted, and a _combat à l'outrance_ took place, ending in mutual
wounds, and fortunately no one dead.
Poor little Betsy was at Oxford when all this took place. On her return
to Bath she heard something of it, and unconsciously revealed the secret
of her private marriage, claiming the right of a wife to watch over her
wounded husband. Then came the _dénouement_. Old Tom Sheridan rejected
his son. The angry Linley would have rejected his daughter, but for her
honour. Richard was sent off into Essex, and in due time the couple were
legally married in England. So ended a wild, romantic affair, in which
Sheridan took a desperate, but not altogether honourable, part. But the
dramatist got more out of it than a pretty wife. Like all true geniuses,
he employed his own experience in the production of his works, and drew
from the very event of his life some hints or touches to enliven the
characters of his imagination. Surely the bravado and cowardice of
Captain Matthews, who on the first meeting in the Park is described as
finding all kinds of difficulties in the way of their fighting,
objecting now to the ground as unlevel, now to the presence of a
stranger, who turns out to be an officer, and very politely moves off
when requested, who, in short, delays the event as long as possible,
must have supplied the idea of Bob Acres; while the very conversations,
of which we have no record, may have given him some of those hints of
character which made the 'Rivals' so successful. That play--his
first--was written in 1774. It failed on its first appearance, owing to
the bad acting of the part of Sir Lucius O'Trigger, by Mr. Lee; but when
another actor was substituted, the piece was at once successful, and
acted with overflowing houses all over the country. How could it be
otherwise? It may have been exaggerated, far-fetched, unnatural, but
such characters as Sir Anthony Absolute, Sir Lucius, Bob Acres, Lydia
Languish, and most of all Mrs. Malaprop, so admirably conceived, and so
carefully and ingeniously worked out, could not but be admired. They
have become household words; they are even now our standards of
ridicule, and be they natural or not, these last eighty years have
changed the world so little that Malaprops and Acreses may be found in
the range of almost any man's experience, and in every class of society.
Sheridan and his divine Betsy were now living in their own house, in
that Dull little place, Orchard Street, Portman Square, then an
aristocratic neighbourhood, and he was diligent in the production of
essays, pamphlets, and farces, many of which never saw the light, while
others fell flat, or were not calculated to bring him any fame. What
great authors have not experienced the same disappointments? What men
would ever be great if they allowed such checks to damp their energy, or
were turned back by them from the course in which they feel that their
power lies?
But his next work, the opera of 'The Duenna,' had a yet more signal
success, and a run of no less than seventy-five nights at Covent Garden,
which put Garrick at Drury Lane to his wit's end to know how to compete
with it. Old Linley himself composed the music for it; and to show how
thus a family could hold the stage, Garrick actually played off the
mother against the son, and revived Mrs. Sheridan's comedy of 'The
Discovery,' to compete with Richard Sheridan's 'Duenna.'
The first night 'The Rivals' was brought out at Bath came Sheridan's
father, who, as we have seen, had refused to have anything to say to his
son. It is related as an instance of Richard's filial affection, that
during the representation he placed himself behind a side-scene opposite
to the box in which his father and sisters sat, and gazed at them all
the time. When he returned to his house and wife, he burst into tears,
and declared that he felt it too bitter that he alone should have been
forbidden to speak to those on whom he had been gazing all the night.
During the following year this speculative man, who married on nothing
but his brain, and had no capital, no wealthy friends, in short nothing
whatever, suddenly appears in the most mysterious manner as a
capitalist, and lays down his £10,000 in the coolest and quietest
manner. And for what? For a share in the purchase of Garrick's moiety of
the patent of Drury Lane. The whole property was worth £70,000; Garrick
sold his half for £35,000, of which old Mr. Linley contributed £10,000,
Dr. Ford £15,000, and penniless Sheridan the balance. Where he got the
money nobody knew, and apparently nobody asked. It was paid, and he
entered at once on the business of proprietor of that old house, where
so many a Roscius has strutted and declaimed with more or less fame; so
many a Walking gentleman done his five shillings' worth of polite
comedy, so many a tinsel king degraded the 'legitimate drama,' in the
most illegitimate manner, and whose glories were extinguished with the
reign of Macready, when we were boys, _nous autres_.
The first piece he contributed to this stage was 'A Trip to
Scarborough,' Which was only a species of 'family edition of Vanbrugh's
play, 'The Relapse;' but in 1777 he reached the acme of his fame, in
'The School for Scandal.'
But alack and alas for these sensual days, when it is too much trouble
to think, and people go to the play, if they go at all, to feast their
eyes and ears, not their minds; can any sensible person believe that if
'The School for Scandal,' teeming as it does with wit, satire, and
character, finer and truer than in any play produced since the days of
Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Marlowe, were set on the boards of the
Haymarket at this day, as a new piece by an author of no very high
celebrity, it would draw away a single admirer from the flummery in
Oxford Street, the squeaking at Covent Garden, or the broad, exaggerated
farce at the Adelphi or Olympic? No: it may still have its place on the
London stage when well acted, but it owes that to its ancient celebrity,
and it can never compete with the tinsel and tailoring which alone can
make even Shakspeare go down with a modern audience.
In those days of Garrick, on the other hand, those glorious days of true
histrionic art, high and low were not ashamed to throng Drury Lane and
Covent Garden, and make the appearance of a new play the great event of
the season. Hundreds were turned away from the doors, when 'The School
for Scandal' was acted, and those who were fortunate enough to get in
made the piece the subject of conversation in society for many a night,
passing keen comment on every scene, every line, every word almost, and
using their minds as we now use our eyes.
This brilliant play, the earliest idea of which was derived from its
author's experience of the gossip of that kettle of scandal and
backbiting, Bath, where, if no other commandment were ever broken, the
constant breach of the ninth would suffice to put it on a level with
certain condemned cities we have somewhere read of, won for Sheridan a
reputation of which he at once felt the value, and made his purchase of
a share in the property of Old Drury for the time being, a successful
speculation. It produced a result which his good heart perhaps valued
even more than the guineas which now flowed in; it induced his father,
who had long been at war with him, to seek a reconciliation, and the
elder Sheridan actually became manager of the theatre of which his son
was part proprietor.
Old Tom Sheridan had always been a proud man, and when once he was
offended, was hard to bring round again. His quarrel with Johnson was an
instance of this. In 1762 the Doctor, hearing they had given Sheridan a
pension of two hundred a year, exclaimed, 'What have they given _him_ a
pension? then it is time for me to give up mine.' A 'kind friend' took
care to repeat the peevish exclamation, without adding what Johnson had
said immediately afterwards, 'However, I am glad that they have given
Mr. Sheridan a pension, for he is a very good man.' The actor was
disgusted; and though Boswell interfered, declined to be reconciled. On
one occasion he even rushed from a house at which he was to dine, when
he heard that the great Samuel had been invited. The Doctor had little
opinion of Sheridan's declamation. 'Besides, sir,' said he, 'what
influence can Mr. Sheridan have upon the language of this great country
by his narrow exertions. Sir, it is burning a farthing candle at Dover
to show light at Calais.' Still, when Garrick attacked his rival,
Johnson nobly defended him. 'No sir,' he said, 'there is to be sure, in
Sheridan, something to reprehend, and everything to laugh at; but, sir,
he is not a bad man. No, sir, were mankind to be divided into good and
bad, he would stand considerably within the ranks of the good.'
However, the greatest bully of his age (and the kindest-hearted man)
thought very differently of the son. Richard Brinsley had written a
prologue to Savage's play of 'Sir Thomas Overbury'--
'Ill-fated Savage, at whose birth was giv'n
No parent but the Muse, no friend but Heav'n;'
and in this had paid an elegant compliment to the great lexicographer,
winding up with these lines:--
'So pleads the tale that gives to future times
The son's misfortunes and the parent's crimes;
There shall his fame, if own'd to-night, survive,
Fix'd _by the hand that bids our language live_--
referring at once to Johnson's life of his friend Savage and to his
great Dictionary. It was Savage, every one remembers, with whom Johnson
in his days of starvation was wont to walk the streets all night,
neither of them being able to pay for a lodging, and with whom, walking
one night round and round St. James's Square, he kept up his own and his
companion's spirits by inveighing against the minister and declaring
that they would 'stand by their country.'
Doubtless the Doctor felt as much pleasure at the meed awarded to his
old companion in misery as at the high compliment to himself. Anyhow he
pronounced that Sheridan 'had written the two best comedies of his age,'
and therefore proposed him as a member of the Literary Club.
This celebrated gathering of wit and whimsicality, founded by Johnson
himself in conjunction with Sir J. Reynolds, was the Helicon of London
Letters, and the temple which the greatest talker of his age had built
for himself, and in which he took care to be duly worshipped. It met at
the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, every Friday; and from seven in
the evening to almost any hour of night was the scene of such talk,
mainly on literature and learning, as has never been heard since in this
country. It consisted at this period of twenty-six members, and there is
scarcely one among them whose name is not known to-day as well as any in
the history of our literature. Besides the high priests, Reynolds and
Johnson, there came Edmund Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and many another of
less note, to represent the senate: Goldsmith, Gibbon, Adam Smith,
Malone, Dr. Burney, Percy, Nugent, Sir William Jones, three Irish
bishops, and a host of others, crowded in from the ranks of learning and
literature. Garrick and George Colman found here an indulgent audience;
and the light portion of the company comprised such men as Topham
Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, Vesey, and a dozen of lords and baronets. In
short, they were picked men, and if their conversation was not always
witty, it was because they had all wit and frightened one another.
[Illustration: THE FAMOUS LITERARY CLUB.]
Among them the bullying Doctor rolled in majestic grumpiness; scolded,
dogmatized, contradicted, pished and pshawed; and made himself generally
disagreeable; yet, hail the omen, Intellect! such was the force, such
the fame of his mind, that the more he snorted, the more they adored
him--the more he bullied, the more humbly they knocked under. He was
quite 'His Majesty' at the Turk's Head, and the courtiers waited for his
coming with anxiety, and talked of him till he came in the same manner
as the lacqueys in the anteroom of a crowned monarch. Boswell, who, by
the way, was also a member--of course he was, or how should we have had
the great man's conversations handed down to us?--was sure to keep them
up to the proper mark of adulation if they ever flagged in it, and was
as servile in his admiration in the Doctor's absence as when he was there
to call him a fool for his pains.
Thus, on one occasion while 'King Johnson' tarried, the courtiers were
discussing his journey to the Hebrides and his coming away 'willing to
believe the second sight.' Some of them smiled at this, but Bozzy was
down on them with more than usual servility. 'He is only _willing_ to
believe,' he exclaimed. '_I do_ believe. The evidence is enough for me,
though not for his great mind. What will not fill a quart bottle will
fill a pint bottle. I am filled with belief.'--'Are you?' said Colman,
slily; 'then cork it up.'
As a specimen of Johnson's pride in his own club, which always remained
extremely exclusive, we have what he said of Garrick, who, before he was
elected, carelessly told Reynolds he liked the club, and thought 'he
would be of them.'
'_He'll be of us!_' roared the Doctor indignantly, on hearing of this.
'How does he know we will _permit_ him? The first duke in England has no
right to hold such language!'
It can easily be imagined that when 'His Majesty' expressed his approval
of Richard Brinsley, then a young man of eight-and-twenty, there was no
one who ventured to blackball him, and so Sheridan was duly elected.