Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan

by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  The comments which Mr. Sheridan thought it necessary to make upon this narrative have been found in an unfinished state among his papers; and though they do not, as far as they go, disprove anything material in its statements, (except, perhaps, with respect to the nature of the wounds which he received,) yet, as containing some curious touches of character, and as a document which he himself thought worth preserving, it is here inserted.

  “To William Barnett, Esq.

  “Sir,

  “It has always appeared to me so impertinent for individuals to appeal to the public on transactions merely private, that I own the most apparent necessity does not prevent my entering into such a dispute without an awkward consciousness of its impropriety. Indeed, I am not without some apprehension, that I may have no right to plead your having led the way in my excuse; as it appears not improbable that some ill- wisher to you, Sir, and the cause you have been engaged in, betrayed you first into this exact narrative, and then exposed it to the public eye, under pretence of vindicating your friend. However, as it is the opinion of some of my friends, that I ought not to suffer these papers to pass wholly unnoticed, I shall make a few observations on them with that moderation which becomes one who is highly conscious of the impropriety of staking his single assertion against the apparent testimony of three. This, I say, would be an impropriety, as I am supposed to write to those who are not acquainted with the parties. I had some time ago a copy of these papers from Captain Wade, who informed me that they were lodged in his hands, to be made public only by judicial authority. I wrote to you, Sir, on the subject, to have from yourself an avowal that the account was yours; but as I received no answer, I have reason to compliment you with the supposition that you are not the author of it. However, as the name William Barnett is subscribed to it, you must accept my apologies for making use of that as the ostensible signature of the writer — Mr. Paumier likewise (the gentleman who went out with me on that occasion in the character of a second) having assented to everything material in it, I shall suppose the whole account likewise to be his; and as there are some circumstances which could come from no one but Mr. Mathews, I shall (without meaning to take from its authority) suppose it to be Mr. Mathews’s also.

  “As it is highly indifferent to me whether the account I am to observe on be considered as accurately true or not, and I believe it is of very little consequence to any one else, I shall make those observations just in the same manner as I conceive any indifferent person of common sense, who should think it worth his while to peruse the matter with any degree of attention. In this light, the truth of the articles which are asserted under Mr. Barnett’s name is what I have no business to meddle with; but if it should appear that this accurate narrative frequently contradicts itself as well as all probability, and that there are some positive facts against it, which do not depend upon any one’s assertion, I must repeat that I shall either compliment Mr. Barnett’s judgment, in supposing it not his, or his humanity in proving the narrative to partake of that confusion and uncertainty, which his well-wishers will plead to have possessed him in the transaction. On this account, what I shall say on the subject need be no further addressed to you; and, indeed, it is idle, in my opinion, to address even the publisher of a newspaper on a point that can concern so few, and ought to have been forgotten by them. This you must take as my excuse for having neglected the matter so long.

  “The first point in Mr. Barnett’s narrative that is of the least consequence to take notice of, is, where Mr. M. is represented as having repeatedly signified his desire to use pistols prior to swords, from a conviction that Mr. Sheridan would run in upon him, and an ungentlemanlike scuffle probably be the consequence. This is one of those articles which evidently must be given to Mr. Mathews: for, as Mr. B.’s part is simply to relate a matter of fact, of which he was an eye- witness, he is by no means to answer for Mr. Mathews’s private convictions. As this insinuation bears an obscure allusion to a past transaction of Mr. M.’s, I doubt not but he will be surprised at my indifference in not taking the trouble even to explain it. However, I cannot forbear to observe here, that had I, at the period which this passage alludes to, known what was the theory which Mr. M. held of gentlemanly scuffle, I might, possibly, have been so unhappy as to put it out of his power ever to have brought it into practice.

  “Mr. B. now charges me with having cut short a number of pretty preliminaries, concerning which he was treating with Captain Paumier, by drawing my sword, and, in a vaunting manner, desiring Mr. M. to draw. Though I acknowledge (with deference to these gentlemen) the full right of interference which seconds have on such occasions, yet I may remind Mr. B. that he was acquainted with my determination with regard to pistols before we went on the Down, nor could I have expected it to have been proposed. ‘Mr. M. drew; Mr. S. advanced, &c.:’ — here let me remind Mr. B. of a circumstance, which I am convinced his memory will at once acknowledge.”

  This paper ends here: but in a rougher draught of the same letter (for he appears to have studied and corrected it with no common care) the remarks are continued, in a hand not very legible, thus:

  “But Mr. B. here represents me as drawing my sword in a vaunting manner. This I take to be a reflection; and can only say, that a person’s demeanor is generally regulated by their idea of their antagonist, and, for what I know, I may now be writing in a vaunting style. Here let me remind Mr. B. of an omission, which, I am convinced, nothing but want of recollection could occasion, yet which is a material point in an exact account of such an affair, nor does it reflect in the least on Mr. M. Mr. M. could not possibly have drawn his sword on my calling to him, as…. [Footnote: It is impossible to make any connected sense of the passage that follows.]

  “Mr. B.’s account proceeds, that I ‘advanced first on Mr. M.,’ &c. &c.; ‘which, (says Mr. B.) I imagine, happened from the resistance it met with from one of those parts; but whether it was broke by that, or on the closing, I cannot aver.’ How strange is the confusion here! — First, it certainly broke; — whether it broke against rib or no, doubtful; — then, indeed, whether it broke at all, uncertain…. But of all times Mr. B. could not have chosen a worse than this for Mr. M.’s sword to break; for the relating of the action unfortunately carries a contradiction with it; — since if, on closing, Mr. M. received me on his point, it is not possible for him to have made a lunge of such a nature as to break his sword against a rib-bone. But as the time chosen is unfortunate, so is the place on which it is said to have broke, — as Mr. B. might have been informed, by inquiring of the surgeons, that I had no wounds on my breast or rib with the point of a sword, they being the marks of the jagged and blunted part.”

  He was driven from the ground to the White-Hart; where Ditcher and Sharpe, the most eminent surgeons of Bath, attended and dressed his wounds, — and, on the following day, at the request of his sisters, he was carefully removed to his own home. The newspapers which contained the account of the affair, and even stated that Sheridan’s life was in danger, reached the Linleys at Oxford, during the performance, but were anxiously concealed from Miss Linley by her father, who knew that the intelligence would totally disable her from appearing. Some persons who were witnesses of the performance that day, still talk of the touching effect which her beauty and singing produced upon all present — aware, as they were, that a heavy calamity had befallen her, of which she herself was perhaps the only one in the assembly ignorant.

  In her way back to Bath, she was met at some miles from the town by a Mr. Panton, a clergyman, long intimate with the family, who, taking her from her father’s chaise into his own, employed the rest of the journey in cautiously breaking to her the particulars of the alarming event that had occurred. Notwithstanding this precaution, her feelings were so taken by surprise, that in the distress of the moment, she let the secret of her heart escape, and passionately exclaimed, “My husband! my husband!” — demanding to see him, and insisting upon her right as his wife to be near him, and watch over him day and nig
ht. Her entreaties, however, could not be complied with; for the elder Mr. Sheridan, on his return from town, incensed and grieved at the catastrophe to which his son’s imprudent passion had led, refused for some time even to see him, and strictly forbade all intercourse between his daughters and the Linley family. But the appealing looks of a brother lying wounded and unhappy, had more power over their hearts than the commands of a father, and they, accordingly, contrived to communicate intelligence of the lovers to each other.

  In the following letter, addressed to him by Charles at this time, we can trace that difference between the dispositions of the brothers, which, with every one except their father, rendered Richard, in spite of all his faults, by far the most popular and beloved of the two.

  “London, July 3d, 1772.

  “DEAR DICK,

  “It was with the deepest concern I received the late accounts of you, though it was somewhat softened by the assurance of your not being in the least danger. You cannot conceive the uneasiness it occasioned to my father. Both he and I were resolved to believe the best, and to suppose you safe, but then we neither of us could approve of the cause in which you suffer. All your friends here condemned you. You risked every thing, where you had nothing to gain, to give your antagonist the thing he wished, a chance for recovering his reputation. Your courage was past dispute: — he wanted to get rid of the contemptible opinion he was held in, and you were good-natured enough to let him do it at your expense. It is not now a time to scold, but all your friends were of opinion you could, with the greatest propriety, have refused to meet him. For my part, I shall suspend my judgment till better informed, only I cannot forgive your preferring swords.

  “I am exceedingly unhappy at the situation I leave you in with respect to money matters, the more so as it is totally out of my power to be of any use to you. Ewart was greatly vexed at the manner of your drawing for the last L20. — I own, I think with some reason.

  “As to old Ewart, what you were talking about is absolutely impossible; he is already surprised at Mr. Linley’s long delay, and, indeed, I think the latter much to blame in this respect. I did intend to give you some account of myself since my arrival here, but you cannot conceive how I have been hurried, — even much pressed for time at this present writing. I must therefore conclude, with wishing you speedily restored to health, and that if I could make your purse as whole as that will shortly be, I hope, it would make me exceedingly happy.

  “I am, dear Dick, yours sincerely,

  “C. F. SHERIDAN.”

  Finding that the suspicion of their marriage, which Miss Linley’s unguarded exclamation had suggested, was gaining ground in the mind of both fathers, — who seemed equally determined to break the tie, if they could arrive at some positive proof of its existence, — Sheridan wrote frequently to his young wife, (who passed most of this anxious period with her relations at Wells,) cautioning her against being led into any acknowledgment, which might further the views of the elders against their happiness. Many methods were tried upon both sides, to ensnare them into a confession of this nature; but they eluded every effort, and persisted in attributing the avowal which had escaped from Miss Linley, before Mr. Panton, and others, to the natural agitation and bewilderment into which her mind was thrown at the instant.

  As soon as Sheridan was sufficiently recovered of his wounds, [Footnote: The Bath Chronicle of the 9th of July has the following paragraph: “It is with great pleasure we inform our readers that Mr. Sheridan is declared by his surgeon to be out of danger.”] his father, in order to detach him, as much as possible, from the dangerous recollections which continually presented themselves in Bath, sent him to pass some months at Waltham Abbey, in Essex, under the care of Mr. and Mrs. Parker of Farm Hill, his most particular friends. In this retirement, where he continued, with but few and short intervals of absence, from August or September, 1772, till the spring of the following year, it is probable that, notwithstanding the ferment in which his heart was kept, he occasionally and desultorily occupied his hours in study. Among other proofs of industry, which I have found among his manuscripts, and which may possibly be referred to this period, is an abstract of the History of England — nearly filling a small quarto volume of more than a hundred pages, closely written. I have also found in his early hand-writing (for there was a considerable change in his writing afterwards) a collection of remarks on Sir William Temple’s works, which may likewise have been among the fruits of his reading at Waltham Abbey.

  These remarks are confined chiefly to verbal criticism, and prove, in many instances, that he had not yet quite formed his taste to that idiomatic English, which was afterwards one of the great charms of his own dramatic style. For instance, he objects to the following phrases:— “Then I fell to my task again.”— “These things come, with time, to be habitual.”— “By which these people come to be either scattered or destroyed.”— “Which alone could pretend to contest it with them:” (upon which phrase he remarks, “It refers to nothing here:”) and the following graceful idiom in some verses by Temple: —

  “Thy busy head can find no gentle rest

  For thinking on the events,” &c. &c.

  Some of his observations, however, are just and tasteful. Upon the Essay “Of Popular Discontents,” after remarking, that “Sir W. T. opens all his Essays with something as foreign to the purpose as possible,” he has the following criticism:— “Page 260, ‘Represent misfortunes for faults, and mole-hills for mountains,’ — the metaphorical and literal expression too often coupled. P. 262, ‘Upon these four wheels the chariot of state may in all appearance drive easy and safe, or at least not be too much shaken by the usual roughness of ways, unequal humors of men, or any common accidents,’ — another instance of the confusion of the metaphorical and literal expression.”

  Among the passages he quotes from Temple’s verses, as faulty, is the following: —

  “ — that we may see,

  Thou art indeed the empress of the sea.”

  It is curious enough that he himself was afterwards guilty of nearly as illicit a rhyme in his song “When ’tis night,” and always defended it: —

  “But when the fight’s begun,

  Each serving at his gun.”

  Whatever grounds there may be for referring these labors of Sheridan to the period of his retirement at Waltham Abbey, there are certainly but few other intervals in his life that could be selected as likely to have afforded him opportunities of reading. Even here, however, the fears and anxieties that beset him were too many and incessant to leave much leisure for the pursuits of scholarship. However, a state of excitement may be favorable to the development of genius — which is often of the nature of those seas, that become more luminous the more they are agitated, — for a student, a far different mood is necessary; and in order to reflect with clearness the images that study presents, the mind should have its surface level and unruffled.

  The situation, indeed, of Sheridan was at this time particularly perplexing. He had won the heart, and even hand, of the woman he loved, yet saw his hopes of possessing her farther off than ever. He had twice risked his life against an unworthy antagonist, yet found the vindication of his honor still incomplete, from the misrepresentations of enemies, and the yet more mischievous testimony of friends. He felt within himself all the proud consciousness of genius, yet, thrown on the world without even a profession, looked in vain for a channel through which to direct its energies. Even the precarious hope, which his father’s favor held out, had been purchased by an act of duplicity which his conscience could not approve; for he had been induced, with the view, perhaps, of blinding his father’s vigilance, not only to promise that he would instantly give up a pursuit so unpleasing to him, but to take “an oath equivocal” that he never would marry Miss Linley.

  The pressure of these various anxieties upon so young and so ardent a mind, and their effects in alternately kindling and damping its spirit, could only have been worthily described by him who felt
them, and there still exist some letters which he wrote during this time, to a gentleman well known as one of his earliest and latest friends. I had hoped that such a picture, as these letters must exhibit, of his feelings at that most interesting period of his private life, would not have been lost to the present work. But scruples — over-delicate, perhaps, but respectable, as founded upon a systematic objection to the exposure of any papers, received under the seal of private friendship — forbid the publication of these precious documents. The reader must, therefore, be satisfied with the few distant glimpses of their contents, which are afforded by the answers of his correspondent, found among the papers entrusted to me. From these it appears, that through all his letters the same strain of sadness and despondency prevailed, — sometimes breaking out into aspirings of ambition, and sometimes rising into a tone of cheerfulness, which but ill concealed the melancholy under it. It is evident also, and not a little remarkable, that in none of these overflowings of his confidence, had he as yet suffered the secret of his French marriage with Miss Linley to escape; and that his friend accordingly knew but half the wretched peculiarities of his situation. Like most lovers, too, imagining that every one who approached his mistress must be equally intoxicated with her beauty as himself, he seems anxiously to have cautioned his young correspondent (who occasionally saw her at Oxford and at Bath) against the danger that lay in such irresistible charms. From another letter, where the writer refers to some message, which Sheridan had requested him to deliver to Miss Linley, we learn, that she was at this time so strictly watched, as to be unable to achieve — what to an ingenious woman is seldom difficult — an answer to a letter which her lover had contrived to convey to her.