but the _worst_ life; that comedy, farce, opera, monody, and oration
were nothing, nothing to a pure conscience and a peaceful old age; that
they could not save him from shame and poverty--from debt, disgrace,
drunkenness--from grasping, but long-cheated creditors, who dragged his
bed from under the feeble, nervous, ruined old man. Poor Sheridan! his
end was too bitter for us to cast one stone more upon him. Let it be
noted that it was in the beginning of his decline, when, having reached
the climax of all his ambition and completed his fame as a dramatist,
orator, and wit, that the hand of Providence mercifully interposed to
rescue this reckless man from his downfall. It smote him with that
common but powerful weapon--death. Those he best loved were torn from
him, one after another, rapidly, and with little warning. The Linleys,
the 'nest of nightingales,' were all delicate as nightingales should be;
and it seemed as if this very time was chosen for their deaths, that the
one erring soul--more precious, remember, than many just lives--might be
called back. Almost within one year he lost his dear sister-in-law, the
wife of his most intimate friend Tickell; Maria Linley, the last of the
family; his own wife, and his little daughter. One grief succeeded
another so rapidly that Sheridan was utterly unnerved, utterly brought
low by them; but it was his wife's death that told most upon him. With
that wife he had always been the lover rather than the husband. She had
married him in the days of his poverty, when her beauty was so
celebrated that she might have wed whom she would. She had risen with
him and shared his later anxieties. Yet she had seen him forget, neglect
her, and seek other society. In spite of his tender affection for her
and for his children, he had never made a _home_ of their home. Vanity
Fair had kept him ever flitting, and it is little to be wondered at that
Mrs. Sheridan was the object of much, though ever respectful
admiration.[9] Yet, in spite of calumny, she died with a fair fame.
Decline had long pressed upon her, yet her last illness was too brief.
In 1792 she was taken away, still in the summer of her days, and with
her last breath uttering her love for the man who had never duly prized
her. His grief was terrible; yet it passed, and wrought no change. He
found solace in his beloved son, and yet more beloved daughter. A few
months--and the little girl followed her mother. Again his grief was
terrible: again passed and wrought no change. Yes, it did work some
change, but not for the better; it drove him to the goblet; and from
that time we may date the confirmation of his habit of drinking. The
solemn warnings had been unheeded: they were to be repeated by a
long-suffering God in a yet more solemn manner, which should touch him
yet more nearly. His beautiful wife had been the one restraint upon his
folly and his lavishness. Now she was gone, they burst out afresh,
wilder than ever.
[9: Lord Edward Fitzgerald was one of the most devoted of her admirers:
he chose his wife, Pamela, because she resembled Mrs. Sheridan.--See
Moore's Life of Lord Edward.]
For a while after these afflictions, which were soon completed in the
death of his most intimate friend and boyish companion, Tickell,
Sheridan threw himself again into the commotion of the political world.
But in this we shall not follow him. Three years after the death of his
first wife he married again. He was again fortunate in his choice.
Though now forty-four, he succeeded in winning the heart of a most
estimable and charming young lady with a fortune of £5,000. She must
indeed have loved or admired the widower very much to consent to be the
wife of a man so notoriously irregular, to use a mild term, in his life.
But Sheridan fascinated wherever he went, and young ladies like 'a
little wildness.' His heart was always good, and where he gave it, he
gave it warmly, richly, fully. His second wife was Miss Esther Jane
Ogle, daughter of the Dean of Winchester. She was given to him on
condition of his settling in all £20,000, upon her--a wise proviso with
such a spendthrift--and he had to raise the money, as usual.
His political career was sufficiently brilliant, though his real fame as
a speaker rests on his great oration at Hastings' trial. In 1806 he
satisfied another point of his ambition, long desired, and was elected
for the city of Westminster, which he had ardently coveted when Fox
represented it. But a dissolution threw him again on the mercy of the
popular party; and again he offered himself for Westminster: but, in
spite of all the efforts made for him, without success. He was returned,
instead, for Ilchester.
Meanwhile his difficulties increased; extravagance, debt, want of energy
to meet both, brought him speedily into that position when a man accepts
without hesitation the slightest offer of aid. The man who had had an
income of £15,000 a year, and settled £20,000 on his wife, allowed a
poor friend to pay a bill for £5 for him, and clutched eagerly at a £50
note when displayed to him by another. Extravagance is the father of
meanness, and Sheridan was often mean in the readiness with which he
accepted offers, and the anxiety with which he implored assistance. It
is amusing in the present day to hear a man talk of 'a debt of honour,'
as if all debts did not demand honour to pay them--as if all debts
incurred without hope of repayment were not dishonourable. A story is
told relative to the old-fashioned idea of a 'debt of honour.' A
tradesman, to whom he had given a bill for £200, called on him for the
amount. A heap of gold was lying on the table. 'Don't look that way,'
cried Sheridan, after protesting that he had not a penny in the world,
'that is to pay a debt of honour.' The applicant, with some wit, tore up
the bill he held. 'Now, Mr. Sheridan,' quoth he, 'mine is a debt of
honour too.' It is to be hoped that Sheridan handed him the money.
The story of Gunter's bill is not so much to his credit, Hanson, an
ironmonger, called upon him and pressed for payment. A bill sent in by
the famous confectioner was lying on the table. A thought struck the
debtor, who had no means of getting rid of his importunate applicant.
'You know Gunter?' he asked. 'One of the safest men in London,' replied
the ironmonger. 'Then will you be satisfied if I give you his _bill_ for
the amount?'--'Certainly.' Thereupon Sheridan handed him the neatly
folded account and rushed from the room, leaving the creditor to
discover the point of Mr. Sheridan's little fun.
Still Sheridan might have weathered through the storm. Drury Lane was a
mine of wealth to him, and with a little care might have been really
profitable. The lawsuits, the debts, the engagements upon it, all rose
from his negligence and extravagance. But Old Drury was doomed. On the
24th February, 1809, soon after the conclusion of the performances, it
was announced to be in flames. Rather it announced itself. In a few
moments it was blazing--a royal bonfire. Sheridan was in the House of
Commons at the time. The reddened clouds above London threw the glare
back even to the windows of the House. The members rushed from their
seats to see the unwonted light, and in consideration for Sheridan, an
adjournment was moved. But he rose calmly, though sadly, and begged that
no misfortune of his should interrupt the public business. His
independence, he said--witty in the midst of his troubles--had often
been questioned, but was now confirmed, for he had nothing more to
depend upon. He then left the House, and repaired to the scene of
conflagration.
Not long after, Kelly found him sitting quite composed in 'The Bedford,'
sipping his wine, as if nothing had happened. The musician expressed his
astonishment at Mr. Sheridan's _sang froid_. 'Surely,' replied the wit,
'you'll admit that a man has a right to take his wine by his own
fireside.' But Sheridan was only drowning care, not disregarding it. The
event was really too much for him, though perhaps he did not realize the
extent of its effect at the time. In a word, all he had in the world
went with the theatre. Nothing was left either for him or the principal
shareholders. Yet he bore it all with fortitude, till he heard that the
harpsichord, on which his first wife was wont to play, was gone too.
Then he burst into tears.
This fire was the opening of the shaft down which the great man sank
rapidly. While his fortunes kept up, his spirits were not completely
exhausted. He drank much, but as an indulgence rather than as a relief.
Now it was by wine alone that he could even raise himself to the common
requirements of conversation. He is described, _before_ dinner, as
depressed, nervous, and dull; _after_ dinner only did the old fire break
out, the old wit blaze up, and Dick Sheridan was Dick Sheridan once
more. He was, in fact, fearfully oppressed by the long-accumulated and
never-to-be-wiped-off debts, for which he was now daily pressed. In
quitting Parliament he resigned his sanctuary, and left himself an easy
prey to the Jews and Gentiles, whom he had so long dodged and deluded
with his ready ingenuity. Drury Lane, as we all know, was rebuilt, and
the birth of the new house heralded with a prologue by Byron, about as
good as the one in 'Rejected Addresses,' the cleverest parodies ever
written, and suggested by this very occasion. The building-committee
having advertised for a prize prologue Samuel Whitbread sent in his own
attempt, in which, as probably in a hundred others, the new theatre was
compared to a Phoenix rising out of the ashes of the old one. Sheridan
said Whitbread's description of a Phoenix was excellent, for it was
quite a _poulterer's description_.
This same Sam Whitbread was now to figure conspicuously in the life of
Mr. Richard B. Sheridan. The ex-proprietor was found to have an interest
in the theatre to the amount of £150,000--not a trifle to be despised;
but he was now past sixty, and it need excite no astonishment that, even
with all his liabilities, he was unwilling to begin again the cares of
management, or mismanagement which he had endured so many years. He sold
his interest, in which his son Tom was joined, for £60,000. This sum
would have cleared off his debts and left him a balance sufficient to
secure comfort for his old age. But it was out of the question that any
money matters should go right with Dick Sheridan. Of the rights and
wrongs of the quarrel between him and Whitbread, who was the chairman of
the committee for building the new theatre, I do not pretend to form an
opinion. Sheridan was not naturally mean, though he descended to
meanness when hard pressed--what man of his stamp does not? Whitbread
was truly friendly to him for a time. Sheridan was always complaining
that he was sued for debts he did not owe, and kept out of many that
were due to him. Whitbread knew his man well, and if he withheld what
was owing to him, may be excused on the ground of real friendship. All I
know is, that Sheridan and Whitbread quarrelled; that the former did
not, or affirmed that he did not, receive the full amount of his claim
on the property, and that, when what he had received was paid over to
his principal creditors, there was little or nothing left for my lord to
spend in banquets to parliamentary friends and jorums of brandy in small
coffee-houses.
Because a man is a genius, he is not of necessity an upright, honest,
ill-used, oppressed, and cruelly-entreated man. Genius plays the fool
wittingly, and often enough quite knowingly, with its own interests. It
is its privilege to do so, and no one has a right to complain. But then
Genius ought to hold its tongue, and not make itself out a martyr, when
it has had the dubious glory of defying common-sense. If Genius despises
gold, well and good, but when he has spurned it, he should not whine out
that he is wrongfully kept from it. Poor Sheridan may or may not have
been right in the Whitbread quarrel; he has had his defenders, and I am
not ambitious of being numbered among them; but whatever were now his
troubles were brought on by his own disregard of all that was right and
beautiful in conduct. If he went down to the grave a pauper and a
debtor, he had made his own bed, and in it he was to lie.
Lie he did, wretchedly, on the most unhappy bed that old age ever lay
in. There is little more of importance to chronicle of his latter days.
The retribution came on slowly but terribly. The career of a ruined man
is not a pleasant topic to dwell upon, and I leave Sheridan's misery for
Mr. J. B. Gough to whine and roar over when he wants a shocking example.
Sheridan might have earned many a crown in that capacity, if
temperance-oratory had been the passion of the day. Debt, disease,
depravity--these words describe enough the downward career of his old
age. To eat, still more to drink, was now the troublesome enigma of the
quondam genius. I say quondam, for all the marks of that genius were now
gone. One after another his choicest properties made their way to 'my
uncle's.' The books went first, as if they could be most easily
dispensed with; the remnants of his plate followed; then his pictures
were sold; and at last even the portrait of his first wife, by Reynolds,
was left in pledge for a 'further remittance.'
The last humiliation arrived in time, and the associate of a prince, the
eloquent organ of a party, the man who had enjoyed £15,000, a year, was
carried off to a low sponging-house. His pride forsook him in that
dismal and disgusting imprisonment, and he wrote to Whitbread a letter
which his defenders ought not to have published. He had his
friends--stanch ones too--and they aided him. Peter Moore, ironmonger,
and even Canning, lent him money and released him from time to time. For
six years after the burning of the old theatre, he continued to go down
and down. Disease now attacked him fiercely. In the spring of 1816 he
was fast waning towards extinction. His day was past; he had outlived
his fame as a wit and social light; he was forgotten by many, if not by
most, of his old associates. He wrote to Rogers, 'I am absolutely undone
and broken-hearted.' Poor Sheridan! in spite of all thy faults, who is
he whose morality is so stern that he cannot shed one tear over thy
latter days! God forgive us, we are all sinners; and if we weep not for
this man's deficiency, how shall we ask tears when our day comes? Even
as I write, I feel my hand tremble and my eyes moisten over the sad end
of one whom I love, though he died before I was born. 'They are going to
put the carpets out of window,' he wrote to Rogers, 'and break into Mrs.
S.'s room and _take me_. For God's sake let me see you!' See him!--see
one friend who could and would help him in his misery! Oh! happy may
that man count himself who has never wanted that one friend, and felt
the utter helplessness of that want! Poor Sheridan! had he ever asked,
or hoped, or looked for that Friend out of _this_ world it had been
better; for 'the Lord thy God is a jealous God,' and we go on seeking
human friendship and neglecting the divine till it is too late. He found
one hearty friend in his physician, Dr. Bain, when all others had
forsaken him. The spirit of White's and Brookes', the companion of a
prince and a score of noblemen, the enlivener of every 'fashionable'
table, was forgotten by all but this one doctor. Let us read Moore's
description: '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
sponging-house, when Dr. Bain interfered.' Who would live the life of
revelry that Sheridan lived to have such an end? A few days after, on
the 7th of July, 1816, in his sixty-fifth year, he died. Of his last
hours the late Professor Smythe wrote an admirable and most touching
account, a copy of which was circulated in manuscript. The Professor,
hearing of Sheridan's condition, asked to see him, with a view, not only
of alleviating present distress, but of calling the dying man to
repentance. From his hands the unhappy Sheridan received the Holy
Communion; his face, during that solemn rite,--doubly solemn when it is
performed in the chamber of death, 'expressed,' Smythe relates, '_the
deepest awe_' That phrase conveys to the mind impressions not easy to be
defined, not soon to be forgotten.
Peace! there was not peace even in death, and the creditor pursued him
even into the 'waste wide,'--even to the coffin. He was lying in state,
when a gentleman in the deepest mourning called, it is said, at the
house, and introducing himself as an old and much-attached friend of the
deceased, begged to be allowed to look upon his face. The tears which
rose in his eyes, the tremulousness of his quiet voice, the pallor of
his mournful face, deceived the unsuspecting servant, who accompanied
him to the chamber of death, removed the lid of the coffin, turned down
the shrowd, and revealed features which had once been handsome, but long
since rendered almost hideous by drinking. The stranger gazed with
profound emotion, while he quietly drew from his pocket a bailiff's
wand, and touching the corpse's face with it, suddenly altered his
manner to one of considerable glee, and informed the servant that he had
arrested the corpse in the king's name for a debt of £500. It was the
morning of the funeral, which was to be attended by half the grandees of
England, and in a few minutes the mourners began to arrive. But the
corpse was the bailiff's property, till his claim was paid, and nought
but the money would soften the iron capturer. Canning and Lord Sidmouth
agreed to settle the matter, and over the coffin the debt was paid.
Poor corpse! was it worth £500--diseased, rotting as it was, and about
to be given for nothing to mother earth? Was it worth the pomp of the
splendid funeral and the grand hypocrisy of grief with which it was
borne to Westminster Abbey? Was not rather the wretched old man, while
he yet struggled on in life, worth this outlay, worth this show of
sympathy? Folly; not folly only--but a lie! What recked the dead of the
four noble pall-bearers--the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale,
Earl Mulgrave, and the Bishop of London? What good was it to him to be
followed by two royal highnesses--the Dukes of York and Sussex--by two
marquises, seven earls, three viscounts, five lords, a Canning, a lord
mayor, and a whole regiment of honourables and right honourables, who
now wore the livery of grief, when they had let him die in debt, in
want, and in misery? Far more, if the dead could feel, must he have been
grateful for the honester tears of those two untitled men, who had
really befriended him to the last hour and never abandoned him, Mr.
Rogers and Dr. Bain. But peace; let him pass with nodding plumes and
well-dyed horses to the great Walhalla, and amid the dust of many a poet
let the poet's dust find rest and honour, secure at last from the hand
of the bailiff. There was but one nook unoccupied in Poet's Corner, and
there they laid him. A simple marble was afforded by another friend
without a title--Peter Moore.
To a life like Sheridan's it is almost impossible to do justice in so
narrow a space as I have here. He is one of those men who, not to be
made out a whit better or worse than they are, demand a careful
investigation of all their actions, or reported actions--a careful
sifting of all the evidence for or against them, and a careful weeding
of all the anecdotes told of them. This requires a separate biography.
To give a general idea of the man, we must be content to give that which
he inspired in a general acquaintance. Many of his 'mots,' and more of
the stories about him, may have been invented for him, but they would
scarcely have been fixed on Sheridan, if they had not fitted more or
less his character: I have therefore given them. I might have given a
hundred more, but I have let alone those anecdotes which did not seem to
illustrate the character of the man. Many another good story is told of
him, and we must content ourselves with one or two. Take one that is
characteristic of his love of fun.
Sheridan is accosted by an elderly gentleman, who has forgotten the name
of a street to which he wants to go, and who informs him precisely that
it is an out-of-the-way name.
'Perhaps, sir, you mean John Street?' says Sherry, all innocence.
'No, an unusual name.'
'It can't be Charles Street?'
Impatience on the part of the old gentleman.
'King Street?' suggests the cruel wit.
'I tell you, sir, it is a street with a very odd name!'
'Bless me, is it Queen Street?'
Irritation on the part of the old gentleman.
'It must be Oxford Street?' cries Sheridan as if inspired.
'Sir, I repeat,' very testily, 'that it is a very odd name. Every one
knows Oxford Street!'
Sheridan appears to be thinking.
'An odd name! Oh! ah! just so; Piccadilly, of course?'
Old gentleman bounces away in disgust.
'Well, sir,' Sheridan calls after him, 'I envy you your admirable
memory!'
His wit was said to have been prepared, like his speeches, and he is
even reported to have carried his book of _mots_ in his pocket, as a
young lady of the middle class _might_, but seldom does, carry her book
of etiquette into a party. But some of his wit was no doubt extempore.
When arrested for non-attendance to a call in the House, soon after the
change of ministry, he exclaimed, 'How hard to be no sooner out of
office than into custody!'
He was not an inveterate talker, like Macaulay, Sydney Smith, or
Jeffrey: he seems rather to have aimed at a striking effect in all that
he said. When found tripping he had a clever knack of getting out of the
difficulty. In the Hastings speech he complimented Gibbon as a
'luminous' writer; questioned on this, he replied archly, 'I said
_vo_-luminous.'
I cannot afford to be voluminous on Sheridan, and so I quit him.
BEAU BRUMMELL
Two popular Sciences.--'Buck Brummell' at Eton.--Investing his Capital.--
Young Cornet Brummell.--The Beau's Studio.--The Toilet.--'Creasing
Down.'--Devotion to Dress.--A Great Gentleman.--Anecdotes of Brummell.--
'Don't forget, Brum: Goose at Four!'--Offers of Intimacy resented.--Never
in love.--Brummell out Hunting.--Anecdote of Sheridan and Brummell.--The
Beau's Poetical Efforts.--The Value of a Crooked Sixpence.--The Breach
with the Prince of Wales.--'Who's your Fat Friend?'--The Climax is
reached.--The Black-mail of Calais.--George the Greater and George the
Less.--An Extraordinary Step.--Down the Hill of Life.--A Miserable Old
Age.--In the Hospice Du Bon Sauveur.--O Young Men of this Age, be warned!
It is astonishing to what a number of insignificant things high art has
been applied, and with what success. It is the vice of high civilization
to look for it and reverence it, where a ruder age would only laugh at
its employment. Crime and cookery, especially, have been raised into
sciences of late, and the professors of both received the amount of
honour due to their acquirements. Who would be so naïve as to sneer at
the author of 'The Art of Dining?' or who so ungentlemanly as not to
pity the sorrows of a pious baronet, whose devotion to the noble art of
appropriation was shamefully rewarded with accommodation gratis on board
one of Her Majesty's transport-ships? The disciples of Ude have left us
the literary results of their studies, and one at least, the graceful
Alexis Soyer, is numbered among our public benefactors. We have little
doubt that as the art, vulgarly called 'embezzlement,' becomes more and
more fashionable, as it does every day, we shall have a work on the 'Art
of Appropriation.' It is a pity that Brummell looked down upon
literature: poor literature! it had a hard struggle to recover the
slight, for we are convinced there is not a work more wanted than the
'Art of Dressing,' and 'George the Less' was almost the last professor
of that elaborate science.
If the maxim, that 'whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well,'
hold good, Beau Brummell must be regarded in the light of a great man.
That dressing is worth doing at all, everybody but a Fiji Islander seems
to admit, for everybody does it. If, then, a man succeeds in dressing
better than anybody else, it follows that he is entitled to the most
universal admiration.
But there was another object to which this great man condescended to
apply the principles of high art--I mean affectation. How admirably he
succeeded in this his life will show. But can we doubt that he is
entitled to our greatest esteem and heartiest gratitude for the studies
he pursued with unremitting patience in these two useful branches, when
we find that a prince of the blood delighted to honour, and the richest,
noblest, and most distinguished men of half a century ago were proud to
know him? We are writing, then, of no common man, no mere beau, but of
the greatest professor of two of the most popular sciences--Dress and
Affectation. Let us speak with reverence of this wonderful genius.
George Brummell was 'a self-made man.' That is, all that nature, the
tailors, stags, and padding had not made of him, he made for
himself--his name, his fame, his fortune, and his friends--and all these
were great. The author of 'Self-help' has most unaccountably omitted all
mention of him, and most erroneously, for if there ever was a man who
helped himself, and no one else, it was, 'very sincerely yours, George
Brummell.'