ON a certain evening in March, 1772, the fashionable folk of Bath
were as earnestly on pleasure bent as they were wont to be at this
season--and every other. The Assembly Rooms were open, a performance was
going on at the theatre, the Cave of Harmony was as musical as Pyrrha's
Grotto, a high-class concert was taking place under the conductorship of
the well-known Mr. Linley, and the Countess of Huntingdon was holding a
prayer meeting. For people who took their diversions _à la carte_, there
was a varied and an abundant menu. Chairs containing precious structures
of feathers, lace, and jewels towering over long faces powdered and
patched and painted _à la mode_, were swinging along the streets in
every direction, some with a brace of gold-braided lackeys by each of
the windows, but others in charge only of the burly chairmen.
Unobtrusive among the latter class of conveyance was one that a young
gentleman, a tall and handsome lad, called from its rank between
Pierrepont Street and the South Parade. He gave the bearers instructions
to hasten to the house of Mr. Linley in the Crescent, and to inquire if
Miss Linley were ready.
If she were not, he told them that they were to wait for her and carry
out her directions. The fellows touched their hats and swung off with
their empty chair.
The young man then went to a livery stable, and putting a few
confidential inquiries to the proprietor, received a few confidential
replies, accentuated by a wink or two, and a certain quick uplifting of
a knuckly forefinger that had an expression of secretiveness of its own.
“Mum's the word, sir, and mum it shall be,” whispered the man. “I stowed
away the trunk, leaving plenty of room for the genuine luggage--lady's
luggage, Mr. Sheridan. You know as well as I can tell you, sir, being
young but with as shrewd knowingness of affairs in general as might be
looked for in the son of Tom Sheridan, to say nought of a lady like your
mother, meaning to take no liberty in the world, Mr. Dick, as they call
you.”
“I'm obliged to you, Denham, and I'll not forget you when this little
affair is happily over. The turn by the 'Bear' on the London Road, we
agreed.”
“And there you'll find the chaise, sir, and as good a pair as ever left
my stable, and good luck to you, sir!” said the man.
Young Mr. Sheridan then hastened to his father's house in King's Mead
Street, and was met by an anxious sister in the hall.
“Good news, I hope, Dick?” she whispered.
“I have been waiting for you all the evening. She has not changed her
mind, I hope.”
“She is as steadfast as I am,” said he. “If I could not swear that she
would be steadfast, I would not undertake this business on her behalf.
When I think of our father----”
“Don't think of him except as applauding your action,” said the girl.
“Surely every one with the least spark of generosity will applaud your
action, Dick.”
“I wouldn't like to say so much,” said Dick, shaking his head. “Mathews
has his friends. No man could know so much about whist as he does
without having many friends, even though he be a contemptible scoundrel
when he is not employed over a rubber.”
“Who will dare to take the part of Mr. Mathews against you, Dick?” cried
his sister, looking at him proudly as the parlour candles shone upon
him. “I would that I could go with you as far as London, dear, but that
would be impossible.”
“Quite impossible; and where would be the merit in the end?” said Dick,
pacing the room as he believed a man of adventure and enterprise would
in the circumstances. “You may trust to me to place her in safety
without the help of any one.”
“I know it, Dick, I know it, dear, and I am proud of you,” said she,
putting her arms about his neck and kissing him. “And look you here,
Dick,” she added, in a more practical tone. “Look you here--I find that
I can spare another five pounds out of the last bill that came from
Ireland. We shall live modestly in this house until you return to us.”
He took the coins which she offered to him wrapped up in a twist of
newspaper; but he showed some hesitation--she had to go through a form
of forcing it upon him.
“I hope to bring it back to you unbroken,” he murmured; “but in affairs
of this sort it is safest to have a pound or two over, rather than
under, what is barely needful. That is why I take your coins,--a loan--a
sacred loan. Good-bye, I returned only to say good-bye to you, my
dearest sister.”
“I knew your good heart, Dick, that was why I was waiting for you.
Good-bye, Dick, and God bless you.”
He was putting on his cloak in the hall. He saw that the pistols were
in its pockets, and then he suffered his sister to give him another kiss
before he passed into the dark street.
He felt for his pistols, and with a hand on each he felt that he was
indeed fairly launched upon a great adventure.
He made his way to the London road, and all the time he was wondering if
the girl would really come to him in the Sedan chair which he had sent
for her. To be sure she had promised to come upon this evening, but he
knew enough of the great affairs of this world to be well aware of the
fact that the sincerest promise of a maid may be rendered worthless
by the merest freak of Fate. Therefore, he knew that he did well to
be doubtful respecting the realisation of her promise. She was the
beautiful Miss Linley--every one in Bath knew her, and this being so,
was it not likely that some one--some prying person--some impudent
fellow like that Mathews who had been making love to her, although
he had a wife of his own in Wales--might catch a glimpse of her face
through the glass of the chair when passing a lamp or a link, and be
sufficiently curious to follow her chair to see whither she was going?
That was a likely enough thing to happen, and if it did happen and the
alarm of his flight with her were given, what chance would he have of
carrying out his purpose? Why, the chaise would be followed, and even if
it was not overtaken before London was reached, the resting-place of the
fugitives would certainly be discovered in London, and they should be
ignominiously brought back to Bath. Yes, unless Mathews were the
pursuer, in which case----
Mr. Richard Brinsley Sheridan grasped more firmly the butt of the pistol
in the right-hand pocket of his cloak. He felt at that moment that
should Mathews overtake them, the going back to Bath would be on the
part only of Mathews.
But how would it be if Mr. Linley had become apprised of his daughter's
intention to fly from Bath? He knew very well that Mr. Linley had
the best of reasons for objecting to his daughter's leaving Bath. Mr.
Linley's income was increased by several hundred pounds by reason of the
payments made to him on account of his daughter's singing in public,
and he was--very properly, considering his large family--fond of money.
Before he had to provide for his family, he took good care that his
family--his eldest daughter particularly--helped to provide for him.
Doubtless these eventualities were suggested to him--for young Mr.
Sheridan was not without imagination--while on his way through the dark
outskirts of the beautiful city to the London Road. The Bear Inn was
just beyond the last of the houses. It stood at the junction of the
London Road and a narrower one leading past a couple of farms. It was
here that he had given instructions for the chaise to wait for him, and
here he meant to wait for the young lady who had promised to accompany
him to London--and further.
He found the chaise without trouble. It was under the trees not more
than a hundred yards down the lane, but the chair, with Miss Linley,
had not yet arrived, so he returned to the road and began to retrace his
steps, hoping to meet it, yet with some doubts in his mind. Of course,
he was impatient. Young gentlemen under twenty-one are usually impatient
when awaiting the arrival of the ladies who have promised to run away
with them. He was not, however, kept in suspense for an unconscionably
long time. He met the chair which he was expecting just when he had
reached the last of the lamps of Bath, and out of it stepped the muffled
form of Miss Linley. The chairmen were paid with a lavish hand, and Dick
Sheridan and Betsy Linley walked on to the chaise without exchanging any
but a friendly greeting--there was nothing lover-like in their meeting
or their greeting. The elopement was not that of a young woman with her
lover; it was, we are assured, that of a young woman anxious to escape
from the intolerable position of being the most popular person in the
most fashionable city in England, to the peaceful retreat of a convent;
and the young man who was to take charge of her was one whom she had
chosen for her guardian, not for her lover. Dick Sheridan seems to have
been the only young man in Bath who had never made love to Elizabeth
Linley. His elder brother, Charles by name, had discharged this duty on
behalf of the Sheridan family, and he was now trying to live down his
disappointment at being refused, at a farmhouse a mile or two away. The
burden was greater than he could bear when surrounded by his sisters in
their father's house in King's Mead Street.
[Illustration: 0277]
Elizabeth Linley was certainly the most popular young woman in Bath; she
certainly was the most beautiful. The greatest painters of her day made
masterpieces of her portrait, and for once, posterity acknowledges that
the fame of her beauty was well founded. So spiritual a face as hers is
to be seen in no eighteenth-century picture except that of Miss Linley;
one has need to go back to the early Italian painters to find such
spirituality in a human face, and then one finds it combined with
absolute inanity, and the face is called Divine. Reynolds painted her as
Saint Cecilia drawing down angels, and blessedly unconscious of her own
powers, thinking only of raising herself among angels on the wings
of song. His genius was never better employed and surely never more
apparent than in the achievement of this picture. Gainsborough painted
her by the side of her younger brother, and one feels that if Reynolds
painted a saint, Gainsborough painted a girl. It was Bishop O'Beirne,
an old friend of her family and acquainted with her since her childhood,
who said: “She is a link between an angel and a woman.”
And this exquisite creature had a voice of so sympathetic a quality that
no one could hear it unmoved. Her father had made her technique perfect.
He was a musician who was something more than painstaking. He had taste
of the highest order, and it is possible to believe that in the training
of his eldest daughter he was wise enough to limit his instruction to
the technicalities of his art, leaving her to the inspiration of her own
genius in regard to the treatment of any theme which he brought before
her.
At any rate her success in the sublimest of all oratorios was far beyond
anything that could be achieved by an exhibition of the finest technical
qualities; and Mr. Linley soon became aware of the fact that he was the
father of the most beautiful and the most highly gifted creature that
ever made a father miserable.
Incidentally she made a great many other men miserable, but that was
only because each of them wanted her to make him happy at the expense
of the others, and this she was too kind-hearted to do. But the cause of
her father's grief was something different. It was due to the fact
that the girl was so sensitive that she shrank from every exhibition of
herself and her ability on a public platform. It was an agony to her to
hear the tumultuous applause that greeted her singing at a concert or in
an oratorio. She seemed to feel--let any one look at the face which
is to be seen in her portrait, and one will understand how this could
be--that music was something too spiritual to be made the medium only
for the entertainment of the multitude. Taking the highest imaginable
view of the scope and value and meaning of music, it can be understood
that this girl should shrink from such an ordeal as the concert platform
offered to her every time she was announced to sing. No more frivolous
and fashionable a population than that of Bath in the second half of
the eighteenth century was to be found in any city in the world; and
Elizabeth Linley felt that she was regarded by the concert-goers as no
more than one of the numerous agents they employed to lessen the ennui
of an empty day. The music which she worshipped--the spirit with which
her soul communed in secret--was, she felt, degraded by being sold to
the crowd and subjected to the patronage of their applause.
Of course when she spoke to her father in this strain he sympathised
with her, and bemoaned the fate that made it necessary for him to
have her assistance to save her mother and brothers and sisters from
starvation. And so for several years she was an obedient child, but
very weary of the rôle. She sang and enchanted thousands. She did not,
however, think of them; her mind dwelt daily upon the tens of thousands
who regarded her (she thought) as fulfilling no nobler purpose than to
divert them for half an hour between taking the waters and sitting down
to faro or quadrille.
But it was not alone her distaste for the publicity of the platform that
made her miserable. The fact was that she was distracted by suitors. She
had, it was said, accepted the offer of an elderly gentleman named Long,
the wealthy head of a county family in the neighbourhood; and Foote,
with his usual vulgarity, which took the form of personality, wrote
a play--a wretched thing even for Foote--in which he dealt with an
imaginarily comic and a certainly sordid situation, with Miss Linley
on the one side and Mr. Long on the other. Serious biographers have not
hesitated to accept this situation invented by the notorious _farceur_,
who was no greater a respecter of persons than he was of truth, as a
valuable contribution to the history of the Linley family, especially
in regard to the love affair of the lovely girl by whose help they were
made famous. They have never thought of the possibility of her having
accepted Mr. Long in order to escape from her horror of the concert
platform. They have never suggested the possibility of Mr. Long's
settling a sum of money on her out of his generosity when he found out
that Miss Linley did not love him.
It was not Mr. Long, however, but a man named Mathews--sometimes
referred to as Captain, occasionally as Major--who was the immediate
cause of her running away with young Sheridan. This man Mathews was
known to be married, and to be in love with Elizabeth Linley, and yet
he was allowed to be constantly in her company, pestering her with his
attentions, and there was no one handy to horsewhip him. Sheridan's
sister, who afterwards married Mr. Lefanu, wrote an account of this
curious matter for the guidance of Thomas Moore, who was preparing his
biography of her brother. She stated that Miss Linley was afraid to tell
her father of Major Mathews and his impossible suit, and so she was “at
length induced to consult Richard Sheridan, whose intimacy with Major
Mathews, at the time, she thought might warrant his interference.” And
then we are told that “R. B. Sheridan sounded Mathews on the subject and
at length prevailed on him to give up the pursuit.”
That is how the adoring sister of “R. B. Sheridan,” who had been talking
to Elizabeth Linley of him as of a knight-errant, eager to redress the
wrongs of maidens in distress, wrote of her brother! He “sounded Mathews
on the subject.” On what subject? The subject was the pursuit of an
innocent girl by a contemptible scoundrel. How does the knight-errant
“sound” such a person when he sets out to redress the maiden's
ill-treatment? One R. B. Sheridan, a dramatist, gives us a suggestion as
to what were his ideas on this point: “Do you think that Achilles or my
little Alexander the Great ever enquired where the right lay? No, sir,
they drew their broadswords and left the lazy sons of peace to settle
the rights of the matter.” Now young Sheridan, who is reported by his
sister as “sounding” Mathews, was no coward. He proved himself to be
anything but afraid of Mathews, so that one must, out of justice to him,
assume that the only attempt he would have made to “sound” the scoundrel
at this time would be through the medium of a sound hiding.
It is at such a point as this in the biography of an interesting man
that one blesses the memory--and the notebook--of the faithful Boswell.
Thomas Moore was quite intimate with Richard Brinsley Sheridan, but
he never thought of asking him for some information on this particular
incident in his life, the fact being that he had no definite intention
of becoming his biographer. We know perfectly well how Boswell would
have plied Johnson with questions on the subject, had it ever come
to his ears that Johnson had undertaken to play the rôle of a
knight-errant.
“Pray, sir, what did you say to Mathews when you sounded him?”
“Do you think, sir, that in any circumstances a married gentleman who is
showing marked attentions to a virtuous young lady should be sounded by
a young gentleman who has been entrusted with the duty of protecting the
lady?”
Alas! instead of the unblushing indelicacy of Boswell, who hunted for
trifles as a pig hunts for truffles, we are obliged to be content with
the vagueness of a sister, whose memory, we have an uneasy feeling, was
not quite so good as she thought it was.
And from the memory of this sister we have an account of the amazing
elopement of Richard Sheridan with Elizabeth Linley.
When the young gentleman put her into the chaise that was waiting for
them on the London road, Miss Linley had never thought of him except as
a kind friend. She had accepted his services upon this occasion as she
would those of a courier to conduct her to London, and thence to France,
where she intended to enter a convent. The Miss Sheridans had lived in
France, and had some friends at St.
Quentin, who knew of a very nice clean convent--an establishment which
they could strongly recommend, and where she could find that complete
seclusion which Miss Linley longed for, and their brother Dick was
thought to be a very suitable companion for her on her way thither. Mrs.
Lefanu (_née_ Sheridan), who wrote out the whole story in after years,
mentioned that her chivalrous brother was to provide a woman to act as
her maid in the chaise; but as not the least reference to this chaperon
is to be found in the rest of the story, we fear that it must be assumed
either that her brother forgot this unimportant detail, or that the
detail was unavoidably detained in Bath. What is most likely of all is
that the solitary reference to this mysterious female was dovetailed,
somewhat clumsily, into the narrative, at the suggestion of some
Mrs. Grundy, who shook her head at the narrative of so much chivalry
unsupported by a responsible chaperon. However this may be, the shadowy
chaperon is never alluded to again; she may have faded away into the
mists of morning and London, or she may have vanished at the first
turnpike. Nothing was seen or heard of her subsequently.
The boy and the girl reached London in safety, and drove to the house
of a Mr. Ewart, a relation of the Sheridans, to whom Dick offered the
explanation of his unconventional visit on the very plausible grounds
of his being engaged to the young lady, a great heiress, whom he was
hastening to France to marry. Of course the Ewart family were
perfectly satisfied with this explanation; and another friend, who had
indisputable claims to consideration, being, we are told, “the son of
a respectable brandy merchant in the City,” suggested that they should
sail from London to Dunkirk, “in order to make pursuit more difficult.”
How such an end could be compassed by such means is left to the
imagination of a reader. The young pair, however, jumped at the
suggestion, and reached Dunkirk after an uneventful crossing.
It is at this point in the sister's account of the itinerary of this
interesting enterprise that she mentions that Richard suddenly threw
away the disguise of the chivalrous and disinterested protector of the
young lady, and declared that he would not consent to conduct her to the
convent unless she agreed to marry him immediately. Mrs. Lefanu's exact
words are as follows: “After quitting Dunkirk Mr. Sheridan was more
explicit with Miss Linley as to his views on accompanying her to
France.”
This is certainly a very lawyer-like way of condoning the conduct of
a mean scoundrel; but, happily for the credit of Richard Brinsley
Sheridan, it is the easiest thing in the world to discredit his sister's
narrative, although she adds that he urged on the girl what would seem
to a casual observer of society in general to be perfectly true--“she
must be aware that after the step she had taken, she could not appear
in England but as his wife.” As the sequel proved this alleged statement
was quite untrue! She did appear in England, and not as his wife, and
no one seemed to think anything the worse of her on account of her
escapade. But to suggest that Sheridan took advantage of the trust
which the innocent girl had reposed in him to compel her to marry him,
a penniless minor with no profession and very little education, is
scarcely consistent with an account of his high-mindedness and his sense
of what was chivalrous.
And then the sister pleasantly remarks that “Miss Linley, who really
preferred him greatly to any person, was not difficult to persuade, and
at a village not far from Calais the marriage ceremony was performed
by a priest who was known to be often employed upon such occasions.”
Whoever this clergyman may have been, it is impossible for any one to
believe that in the discharge of his office he was kept in constant
employment; for “such occasions” as answered to the account given by
the Sheridan sister of the nuptials of the young couple, must have been
extremely rare.
And yet Moore, on whom the responsibilities of a biographer rested very
lightly, was quite content to accept as strictly accurate the narrative
of Mrs. Lefanu, contradicted though it was by subsequent events in which
both her brother and Miss Linley were concerned. Moore does not seem to
have troubled himself over any attempt to obtain confirmation of one
of the most important incidents in the life of the man of whom he was
writing.
He made no attempt to discover if the accommodating priest at the
village near Calais was still alive when he was compiling his biography
of Sheridan, and it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that he was
still alive; nor did this easy-going Irish master of melodies consider
that it devolved on him to try to find some record of the marriage in
question.
Now what happened after this remarkable union? The narrative of the
sister is quite as circumstantial as one could wish it to be, and even
more imaginative. But whatever qualities of excellence it possesses,
it certainly does not carry to a reader any conviction of accuracy.
It states that the interesting young couple went to Lille instead of
carrying out their original intention of going to St. Quentin, and
that Miss Linley--now Mrs. Sheridan, of course--“immediately secured an
apartment in a convent, where it was settled she was to remain either
till Sheridan came of age or till he was in a situation to support
a wife. He remained a few days at Lille to be satisfied that she was
settled to her satisfaction; but, whether from agitation of mind or
fatigue, she was taken ill, and an English physician, Dr. Dolman, of
York, was called in to attend her. From what he perceived of her case he
wished to have her more immediately under his care than he could in the
convent, and he and Mrs. Dolman most kindly invited her to their house.”
This would seem to have been very kind indeed on the part of the doctor
and his wife, but it so happened that a letter turned up some years ago
which the late Mr. Fraser Rae was able to print in the first volume of
his admirable _Life of Sheridan_, and this letter makes it plain
that wherever Mrs. Sheridan (_née_ Linley) may have been, she was not
sojourning with the Dolmans. It is from Dr. Dolman himself, and it was
addressed to “Monsieur Sherridan, Gentilhomme Anglois, à l'Hôtel de
Bourbon, Sur la Grande Place.” It recommends the administering of
certain powders in a glass of white wine twice daily, and sends
“compliments and wishes of health to your lady.”
The question then remains: Was the lady at this time an inmate of the
convent, and did the doctor expect “Monsieur Sherridan” to go to this
institution twice a day in order to administer the powders to his lady?
Would not the doctor think it somewhat peculiar that the husband should
be at the Hôtel de Bourbon and his lady an inmate of the convent?
These questions must be left to be answered according to the experience
of life of any one interested in the matter. But it is worth noticing
that, on the very day that he received the missive from Dr. Dolman,
Sheridan wrote to his brother at Bath and mentioned that Miss Linley--he
continued to call her Miss Linley--was now “fixing in a convent, where
she has been entered some time.” Does the first phrase mean that she was
already in the convent, or only about to take up her residence there?
However this question may be answered, it is clear that Sheridan
expected to leave her behind him at Lille, for he adds, “Everything
is now so happily settled here I will delay no longer giving you that
information, though probably I shall set out for England without knowing
a syllable of what has happened with you.”
So far, then, as his emprise in regard to the lady was concerned, he
considered the incident to be closed. “Though you may have been ignorant
for some time of our proceedings, you could never have been uneasy,” he
continues hopefully, “lest anything should tempt me to depart, even in a
thought, from the honour and consistency which engaged me at first.”
Some people have suggested that Sheridan, when he drew the character
of Charles Surface, meant it to be something of an excuse for his own
casual way of life. But it must strike a good many persons who believe
that he induced the innocent girl, whom he set forth to protect on her
way to a refuge from the infamous designs of Mathews, to marry him, that
Sheridan approached much more closely to the character of Joseph in this
correspondence with his brother. A more hypocritical passage than that
just quoted could hardly have been uttered by Joseph Surface. As a
matter of fact, one of Joseph's sentiments is only a paraphrase of this
unctuous assumption of honour and consistency.
But this criticism is only true if one can believe his sister's story of
the marriage. If it is true that Sheridan set out from England with
Miss Linley with the intention of so compromising her that she should
be compelled to marry him, at the same time pretending to her and to his
brother to be actuated by the highest motives in respect of the ill-used
girl, it is impossible to think of him except with contempt.
Happily the weight of evidence is overpoweringly in Sheridan's favour.
We may think of him as a rash, an inconsiderate, and a culpably careless
boy to take it upon him to be the girl's companion to the French
convent, but we refuse to believe that he was ever capable of acting the
grossly disingenuous part attributed to him by his sister, and accepted
without question by his melodious biographer. There are many people,
however, who believe that when a man marries a woman, no matter in what
circumstances, he has “acted the part of a gentleman” in regard to her,
and must be held to be beyond reproach on any account whatsoever so far
as the woman is concerned. In the eyes of such censors of morality, as
in the eyes of the law, the act of marriage renders null and void all
ante-nuptial deeds; and it was probably some impression of this type
which was acquired by Sheridan's sister, inducing her to feel sure
(after a time) that her brother's memory would suffer if his biographer
were to tell the story of his inconsiderate conduct in running away with
Elizabeth Linley, unless it was made clear that he married her the first
moment he had to spare. She tried to save her brother's memory by
persuading her own to accommodate itself to what she believed to be her
brother's emergency. She was a good sister, and she kept her memory well
under control.
But what did the father of the young lady think of the matter? What did
the people of Bath, who were well acquainted with all the actors engaged
in this little comedy, think of the matter? Happily these questions can
be answered by appealing to facts rather than to the well-considered
recollections of a discreet lady.
We know for certain that Mr. Linley, who was, as one might suppose,
fully equipped to play the part of the enraged father of the runaway
girl, turned up at the place of her retreat--he had no trouble in
learning in what direction to look for her--and having found her and the
young gentleman who had run away with her, did he, under the impulse
of his anger, fanned by his worldly knowledge, insist with an uplifted
horsewhip upon his marrying her without a moment's delay? Mr. Linley
knew Bath, and to know Bath was to know the world. Was he, then, of the
same opinion as that expressed (according to his sister's narrative) by
young Sheridan to persuade Miss Linley to be his bride--namely, that it
would be impossible for her to show her face in Bath unless as the wife
of Richard Brinsley Sheridan?
Nothing of the sort. Whatever reproaches he may have flung at his
daughter, however strong may have been his denunciation of the conduct
of the man who had run away with her, they had not the effect either of
inducing his daughter or her companion to reveal to him the fact that
they had been married for several days, or of interrupting the friendly
relations that had existed for nearly two years between himself and
young Sheridan. The dutiful memory of Miss Sheridan records that Mr.
Linley, “after some private conversation with Mr. Sheridan, appeared
quite reconciled to his daughter, but insisted on her returning to
England with him (Mr. Linley) to fulfil several engagements he had
entered into on her account. The whole party set out together the next
day, Mr. Linley having previously promised to allow his daughter to
return to Lille when her engagements were over.”
The comedy of the elopement had become a farce of the “whimsical” type.
Nothing more amusing or amazing has ever been seen on the vaudeville
stage. The boy and the girl run off together and get married. The
infuriated father follows them, ruthlessly invades their place of
refuge, and then, “after some private conversation” with his daughter's
husband, who does not tell him that he is her husband, says to the young
woman, “My dear, you must come home with me to sing at a concert.”
“Certainly, papa,” replies the girl. “Wait a minute, and I'll go too,”
cries the unconfused husband of the daughter. “All right, come along,”
says the father, and they all take hands and sing the ridiculous trio
which winds up the vaudeville after it has run on inconsequentially for
a merry forty minutes--there is a _pas de trois_, and the curtain falls!
Alas, for the difference between Boswell the bald and Moore the
melodious! The bald prose of Boswell's diaries may have made many of
the personages with whom he dealt seem silly, but that was because
he himself was silly, and, being aware of this fact, the more
discriminating of his readers have no great difficulty in arriving
at the truth of any matter with which he deals. He would never have
accepted unreservedly such a narrative as that which Moore received
from Mrs. Lefanu (_née_ Sheridan), and put into his own language, or as
nearly into his own language as he could. But Moore found it “so hard to
narrate familiar events eloquently,” he complained. He actually thought
that Mrs. Lefanu's narrative erred on the side of plausibility! The
mysterious elopement, the still more mysterious marriage, and the
superlatively mysterious return of the fugitives and the irate father
hand-in-hand, he regarded as events so commonplace as not to be
susceptible of lyrical treatment. But the most farcical of the doings
of his own _Fudge Family_ were rational in comparison with the familiar
events associated with the flight to France of his hero and heroine. The
_Trip to Scarborough_ of Sheridan the farce-writer was founded on
much more “familiar events” than this extraordinary trip to Lille, as
narrated for the benefit of the biographer by Mrs. Lefanu.
What seems to be the truth of the whole matter is simply that Sheridan
undertook to be a brother to Elizabeth Linley, and carried out his
compact faithfully, without allowing anything to tempt him to depart,
as he wrote to Charles, “even in thought from the honour and consistency
which engaged [him] at first.” It must be remembered that he was a
romantic boy of twenty, and this is just the age at which nearly every
boy--especially a boy in love--is a Sir Galahad. As for Miss Linley,
one has only to look at her portrait to know what she was. She was not
merely innocent, she was innocence itself.
When Mr. Linley appeared at Lille he accepted without reserve the
explanation offered to him by his daughter and by Sheridan; and,
moreover, he knew that although there was a school for scandal located
at Bath, yet so highly was his daughter thought of in all circles, and
so greatly was young Sheridan liked, that no voice of calumny would be
raised against either of them when they returned with him. And even if
it were possible that some whisper, with its illuminating smile above
the arch of a painted fan, might be heard in the Assembly Rooms when
some one mentioned the name of Miss Linley in connection with that of
young Sheridan and with the trip to Lille, he felt convinced that such
a whisper would be robbed of its sting when every one knew that the girl
and the boy and the father all returned together and on the best terms
to Bath.
As the events proved, he had every right to take even so sanguine a view
of the limitations of the range of the Pump Room gossips. On the return
of the three from Lille no one suggested that Sheridan and Miss Linley
should get married. No one except the scoundrel Mathews suggested that
Sheridan had acted badly or even unwisely, though undoubtedly he had
given grounds for such implications. The little party returned to Bath,
and Miss Linley fulfilled her concert and oratorio engagements, went
into society as before, and had at her feet more eligible suitors than
had ever knelt there. We have it on the authority of Charles Sheridan,
the elder brother, that in Bath the feeling was that Richard had acted
as a man of honour in taking the girl to the convent at Lille. Writing
to their uncle, Mr. Chamberlaine, he expressed surprise that “in
this age when the world does not abound in Josephs, most people are
(notwithstanding the general tendency of mankind to judge unfavourably)
inclined to think that he (Richard) acted with the strictest honour in
his late expedition with Miss L., when the circumstances might allow of
their being very dubious on this head without incurring the imputation
of being censorious.”
This testimony as to what was the opinion in Bath regarding the
expedition is extremely valuable, coming as it does from one who was
never greatly disposed to take a brotherly or even a friendly view of
Richard's conduct at any time--coming as it does also from a man who had
been in love with Miss Linley.
At any rate this escapade of young Mr. Sheridan was the most fortunate
for him of any in which he ever engaged, and he was a man of many
escapades, for it caused Elizabeth Linley to fall in love with him, and
never was a man beloved by a sweeter or more faithful woman. To know how
beautiful was her nature one has only to look at her face in either of
the great portraits of her which are before us to-day. No characteristic
of all that is held to be good and gracious and sympathetic--in one
word, that is held to be womanly, is absent from her face. No man that
ever lived was worthy of such a woman; but if only men who are worthy of
such women were beloved by them, mankind would be the losers. She loved
Sheridan with the truest devotion--such devotion as might be expected
from such a nature as hers--and she died in the act of writing to him
the love-letter of a wife to her dearly loved husband.
They did not get married until a year after the date of their flight to
the Continent, and then they were described as bachelor and spinster.
Neither of them ever gave a hint, even in any of the numerous letters
which they exchanged during this period, that they had gone through
the ceremony of marriage at that village near Calais. More than once a
strained situation would have been relieved had it been possible to make
such a suggestion, for now and again each of the lovers grew jealous of
the other for a day or two. But neither said, “Pray remember that you
are not free to think of marrying any one. We are husband and wife,
although we were married in secret.” Neither of them could make such an
assertion. It would not have been true. What seems to us to be the truth
is that it was Sir Galahad who acted as protector to his sister when
Richard Brinsley Sheridan went with Elizabeth Linley to France.