Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan

by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Even, however, on the score of fidelity to Party, when we recollect that he more than once submitted to some of the worst martyrdoms which it imposes — that of sharing in the responsibility of opinions from which he dissented, and suffering by the ill consequences of measures against which he had protested; — when we call to mind, too, that during the Administration of Mr. Addington, though agreeing wholly with the Ministry and differing with the Whigs, he even then refused to profit by a position so favorable to his interests, and submitted, like certain religionists, from a point of honor, to suffer for a faith in which he did not believe — it seems impossible not to concede that even to the obligations of Party he was as faithful as could be expected from a spirit that so far outgrew its limits, and, in paying the tax of fidelity while he asserted the freedom of dissent, showed that he could sacrifice every thing to it, except his opinion. Through all these occasional variations, too, he remained a genuine Whig to the last; and, as I have heard one of his own party happily express it, was “like pure gold, that changes color in the fire, but comes out unaltered.”

  The transaction in 1812, relative to the Household, was, as I have already said, the least defensible part of his public life. But it should be recollected hove broken he was, both in mind and body, at that period; — his resources from the Theatre at an end, — the shelter of Parliament about to be taken from over his head also, — and old age and sickness coming on, as every hope and comfort vanished. In that wreck of all around him, the friendship of Carlton-House was the last asylum left to his pride and his hope; and that even character itself should, in a too zealous moment, have been one of the sacrifices offered up at the shrine that protected him, is a subject more of deep regret than of wonder. The poet Cowley, in speaking of the unproductiveness of those pursuits connected with Wit and Fancy, says beautifully —

  “Where such fairies once have danc’d, no grass will ever grow;”

  but, unfortunately, thorns will grow there; — and he who walks unsteadily among such thorns as now beset the once enchanted path of Sheridan, ought not, after all, to be very severely criticised.

  His social qualities were, unluckily for himself but too attractive. In addition to his powers of conversation, there was a well-bred good-nature in his manner, as well as a deference to the remarks and opinions of others, the want of which very often, in distinguished wits, offends the self-love of their hearers, and makes even the dues of admiration that they levy a sort of “Droit de Seigneur,” paid with unwillingness and distaste.

  No one was so ready and cheerful in promoting the amusements of a country-house; and on a rural excursion he was always the soul of the party. His talent at dressing a little dish was often put in requisition on such occasions, and an Irish stew was that on which he particularly plumed himself. Some friends of his recall with delight a day of this kind which they passed with him, when he made the whole party act over the Battle of the Pyramids on Marsden Moor, and ordered “Captain” Creevey and others upon various services, against the cows and donkeys entrenched in the ditches. Being of so playful a disposition himself, it was not wonderful that he should take such pleasure in the society of children. I have been told, as doubly characteristic of him, that he has often, at Mr. Monckton’s, kept a chaise and four waiting half the day for him at the door, while he romped with the children.

  In what are called Ver de Sociétié, or drawing-room verses, he took great delight; and there remain among his papers several sketches of these trifles. I once heard him repeat in a ballroom, some verses which he had lately written on Waltzing, and of which I remember the following:

  “With tranquil step, and timid, downcast glance,

  Behold the well-pair’d couple now advance.

  In such sweet posture our first Parents mov’d,

  While, hand in hand, through Eden’s bowers they rov’d;

  Ere yet the Devil, with promise foul and false,

  Turn’d their poor heads and taught them how to Walse.

  One hand grasps hers, the other holds her hip —

  * * * * *

  For so the Law’s laid down by Baron Trip.”

  [Footnote: This gentleman, whose name suits so aptly as legal authority on the subject of Waltzing, was at the time these verses were written, well known in the dancing circles.]

  He had a sort of hereditary fancy for difficult trifling in poetry; — particularly for that sort, which consists in rhyming to the same word through a long string of couplets, till every rhyme that the language supplies for it is exhausted, [Footnote: Some verses by General Fitzpatrick on Lord Holland’s father are the best specimen that I know of this sort of Scherzo.] The following are specimens from a poem of this kind, which he wrote on the loss of a lady’s trunk: —

  “MY TRUNK!

  “(To Anne.)

  “Have you heard, my deer Anne, how my spirits are sunk?

  Have you heard of the cause? Oh, the loss of my Trunk!

  From exertion or firmness I’ve never yet slunk;

  But my fortitude’s gone with the loss of my Trunk!

  Stout Lucy, my maid, is a damsel of spunk;

  Yet she weeps night and day for the loss of my Trunk!

  I’d better turn nun, and coquet with a monk;

  For with whom can I flirt without aid from my Trunk!

  * * * * *

  Accurs’d be the thief, the old rascally hunks;

  Who rifles the fair, and lays hands on their Trunks!

  He, who robs the King’s stores of the least bit of junk,

  Is hang’d — while he’s safe, who has plunder’d my Trunk!

  * * * * *

  There’s a phrase amongst lawyers, when nune’s put for tune;

  But, tune and nune both, must I grieve for my Trunk!

  Huge leaves of that great commentator, old Brunck,

  Perhaps was the paper that lin’d my poor Trunk!

  But my rhymes are all out; — for I dare not use st — k;

  ’Twould shock Sheridan more than the loss of my Trunk!”

  [Footnote 1: He had a particular horror of this word.]

  From another of these trifles, (which, no doubt, produced much gaiety at the breakfast-table,) the following extracts will be sufficient: —

  “Muse, assist me to complain,

  While I grieve for Lady Jane.

  I ne’er was in so sad a vein,

  Deserted now by Lady Jane.

  * * * * *

  Lord Petre’s house was built by Payne —

  No mortal architect made Jane.

  If hearts had windows, through the pane

  Of mine you’d see sweet Lady Jane.

  * * * * *

  At breakfast I could scarce refrain

  From tears at missing lovely Jane,

  Nine rolls I eat, in hopes to gain

  The roll that might have fall’n to Jane,” &c.

  Another written on a Mr. Bigg, contains some ludicrous couplets: —

  “I own he’s not fam’d for a reel or a jig,

  Tom Sheridan there surpasses Tom Bigg. —

  For lam’d in one thigh, he is obliged to go zig-

  Zag, like a crab — for no dancer is Bigg.

  Those who think him a coxcomb, or call him a prig,

  How little they know of the mind of my Bigg!

  Tho’ he ne’er can be mine, Hope will catch a twig —

  Two Deaths — and I yet may become Mrs. Bigg.

  Oh give me, with him, but a cottage and pig,

  And content I would live on Beans, Bacon, and Bigg.”

  A few more of these light productions remain among his papers, but their wit is gone with those for whom they were written; — the wings of Time “eripuere jocos.”

  Of a very different description are the following striking and spirited fragments, (which ought to have been mentioned in a former part of this work,) written by him, apparently, about the year 1794, and addressed to the Naval heroes of that period, to console them for the neglect t
hey experienced from the Government, while ribands and titles were lavished on the Whig Seceders: —

  “Never mind them, brave black Dick,

  Though they’ve played thee such a trick —

  Damn their ribands and their garters,

  Get you to your post and quarters.

  Look upon the azure sea,

  There’s a Sailor’s Taffety!

  Mark the Zodiac’s radiant bow,

  That’s a collar fit for HOWE! —

  And, then P — tl — d’s brighter far,

  The Pole shall furnish you a Star!

  Damn their ribands and their garters,

  Get you to your post and quarters,

  Think, on what things are ribands showered —

  The two Sir Georges — Y —— and H — !

  Look to what rubbish Stars will stick,

  To Dicky H —— n and Johnny D —— k!

  Would it be for your country’s good,

  That you might pass for Alec. H —— d,

  Or, perhaps, — and worse by half —

  To be mistaken for Sir R —— h!

  Would you, like C —— , pine with spleen,

  Because your bit of silk was green?

  Would you, like C —— , change your side,

  To have your silk new dipt and dyed? —

  Like him exclaim, ‘My riband’s hue

  Was green — and now, by Heav’ns! ’tis blue,’

  And, like him — stain your honor too?

  Damn their ribands and their garters,

  Get you to your post and quarters.

  On the foes of Britain close,

  While B —— k garters his Dutch hose,

  And cons, with spectacles on nose,

  (While to battle you advance,)

  His ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense.’”

  * * * * *

  [Footnote 1: This reminds me of a happy application which he made, upon a

  subsequent occasion, of two lines of Dryden: —

  “When men like Erskine go astray,

  The stars are more in fault than they.”]

  It has been seen, by a letter of his sister already given, that, when young, he was generally accounted handsome; but, in later years, his eyes were the only testimonials of beauty that remained to him. It was, indeed, in the upper part of his face that the Spirit of the man chiefly reigned; — the dominion of the world and the Senses being rather strongly marked out in the lower. In his person, he was above the middle size, and his general make was, as I have already said, robust and well proportioned. It is remarkable that his arms, though of powerful strength, were thin, and appeared by no means muscular. His hands were small and delicate; and the following couplet, written on a cast from one of them, very livelily enumerates both its physical and moral qualities: —

  “Good at a Fight, but better at a Play,

  Godlike in giving, but — the Devil to Pay!”

  Among his habits, it may not be uninteresting to know that his hours of composition, as long as he continued to be an author, were at night, and that he required a profusion of lights around him while he wrote. Wine, too, was one of his favorite helps to inspiration;— “If the thought, (he would say,) is slow to come, a glass of good wine encourages it, and, when it does come, a glass of good wine rewards it.”

  Having taken a cursory view of his Literary, Political, and Social qualities, it remains for me to say a few words upon that most important point of all, his Moral character.

  There are few persons, as we have seen, to whose kind and affectionate conduct, in some of the most interesting relations of domestic life, so many strong and honorable testimonies remain. The pains he took to win back the estranged feelings of his father, and the filial tenderness with which he repaid long years of parental caprice, show a heart that had, at least, set out by the right road, however, in after years, it may have missed the way. The enthusiastic love which his sister bore him, and retained unblighted by distance or neglect, is another proof of the influence of his amiable feelings, at that period of life when he was as yet unspoiled by the world. We have seen the romantic fondness which he preserved towards the first Mrs. Sheridan, even while doing his utmost, and in vain, to extinguish the same feeling in her. With the second wife, a course, nearly similar, was run; — the same “scatterings and eclipses” of affection, from the irregularities and vanities, in which he continued to indulge, but the same hold kept of each other’s hearts to the last. Her early letters to him breathe a passion little short of idolatry, and her devoted attentions beside his death-bed showed that the essential part of the feeling still remained.

  To claim an exemption for frailties and irregularities on the score of genius, while there are such names as Milton and Newton on record, were to be blind to the example which these and other great men have left, of the grandest intellectual powers combined with the most virtuous lives. But, for the bias given early to the mind by education and circumstances, even the least charitable may be inclined to make large allowances. We have seen how idly the young days of Sheridan were wasted — how soon he was left, (in the words of the Prophet,) “to dwell carelessly ,” and with what an undisciplined temperament he was thrown upon the world, to meet at every step that never-failing spring of temptation, which, like the fatal fountain in the Garden of Armida, sparkles up for ever in the pathway of such a man: —

  “Un fonte sorge in lei, che vaghe e monde

  Ha l’acque si, che i riguardanti asseta,

  Ma dentro ai freddi suoi cristalli asconde

  Di tosco estran malvagita secreta.”

  Even marriage, which is among the sedatives of other men’s lives, but formed a part of the romance of his. The very attractions of his wife increased his danger, by doubling, as it were the power of the world over him, and leading him astray by her light as well as by his own. Had his talents, even then, been subjected to the manège of a profession, there was still a chance that business, and the round of regularity which it requires, might have infused some spirit of order into his life. But the Stage — his glory and his ruin — opened upon him; and the property of which it made him master was exactly of that treacherous kind which not only deceives a man himself, but enables him to deceive others, and thus combined all that a person of his carelessness and ambition had most to dread. An uncertain income, which, by eluding calculation, gives an excuse for improvidence, [Footnote: How feelingly aware he was of this great source of all his misfortunes appears from a passage in the able speech which he delivered before the Chancellor, as Counsel in his own case, in the year 1799 or 1800: —

  “It is a great disadvantage, relatively speaking, to any man, and especially to a very careless, and a very sanguine man, to have possessed an uncertain and fluctuating income. That disadvantage is greatly increased, if the person so circumstanced has conceived himself to be in some degree entitled to presume that, by the exertion of his own talents, he may at pleasure increase that income — thereby becoming induced to make promises to himself which he may afterwards fail to fulfil.

  “Occasional excess and frequent unpunctuality will be the natural consequences of such a situation. But, my Lord, to exceed an ascertained and limited income, I hold to be a very different matter. In that situation I have placed myself, (not since the present unexpected contention arose, for since then I would have adopted no arrangements,) but months since, by my Deed of Trust to Mr. Adam, and in that situation I shall remain until every debt on earth, in which the Theatre or I am concerned, shall be fully and fairly discharged. Till then I will live on what remains to me — preserving that spirit of undaunted independence, which, both as a public and a private man, I trust, I have hitherto maintained.”] and, still more fatal, a facility of raising money, by which the lesson, that the pressure of distress brings with it, is evaded till it comes too late to be of use — such was the dangerous power put into his hands, in his six-and-twentieth year, and amidst the intoxication of as deep and quick draughts of fame as
ever young author quaffed. Scarcely had the zest of this excitement begun to wear off, when he was suddenly transported into another sphere, where successes still more flattering to his vanity awaited him. Without any increase of means, he became the companion and friend of the first Nobles and Princes, and paid the usual tax of such unequal friendships, by, in the end, losing them and ruining himself. The vicissitudes of a political life, and those deceitful vistas into office that were for ever opening on his party, made his hopes as fluctuating and uncertain as his means, and encouraged the same delusive calculations on both. He seemed, at every new turn of affairs, to be on the point of redeeming himself; and the confidence of others in his resources was no less fatal to him than his own, as it but increased the facilities of ruin that surrounded him.

  Such a career as this — so shaped towards wrong, so inevitably devious — it is impossible to regard otherwise than with the most charitable allowances. It was one long paroxysm of excitement — no pause for thought — no inducements to prudence — the attractions all drawing the wrong way, and a Voice, like that which Bossuet describes, crying inexorably from behind him “On, on!” [Footnote: “La loi est prononcee; il faut avancer toujours. Je voudrois retourner sur mes pas; ‘Marche, Marche!’ Un poids invincible nous entraine; il faut sans cesse avancer vers le precipice. On se console pourtant, parce que de tems en tems on rencontre des objets qui nous divertissent, des eaux courantes, des fleurs qui passent. On voudroit arreter; ‘Marche, Marche!’” — Sermon sur la Resurrection.] Instead of wondering at the wreck that followed all this, our only surprise should be, that so much remained uninjured through the trial, — that his natural good feelings should have struggled to the last with his habits, and his sense of all that was right in conduct so long survived his ability to practise it.

  Numerous, however, as were the causes that concurred to disorganize his moral character, in his pecuniary embarrassment lay the source of those blemishes, that discredited him most in the eyes of the world. He might have indulged his vanity and his passions, like others, with but little loss of reputation, if the consequence of these indulgences had not been obtruded upon observation in the forbidding form of debts and distresses. So much did his friend Richardson, who thoroughly knew him, consider his whole character to have been influenced by the straitened circumstances in which he was placed, that he used often to say, “If an enchanter could, by the touch of his wand, endow Sheridan suddenly with fortune, he would instantly transform him into a most honorable and moral man.” As some corroboration of this opinion, I must say that, in the course of the inquiries which my task of biographer imposed upon me, I have found all who were ever engaged in pecuniary dealings with him, not excepting those who suffered most severely by his irregularities, (among which class I may cite the respected name of Mr. Hammersley,) unanimous in expressing their conviction that he always meant fairly and honorably; and that to the inevitable pressure of circumstances alone, any failure that occurred in his engagements was to be imputed.