The trial of Hastings lasted till 1794, and Sheridan was constant in attendance. On 14 May in that year he replied to the arguments of Plumer and Law, counsel for Hastings, relative to his charge concerning the begums, and the speech which he then delivered was described by Professor Smyth, who heard it, as an extraordinary rhetorical triumph (Memoir of Mr. Sheridan, p–5). While the trial was in progress Sheridan suffered much domestic affliction. His father died at Margate on 14 Aug. 1788. Sheridan thereupon took charge of his sister Elizabeth, and, on her marriage with Henry Lefanu, provided for her maintenance. His wife died at Hot Wells on 28 June 1792. He remarried on 27 April 1795, his second wife being Esther Jane, eldest daughter of Newton Ogle, dean of Winchester.
He was unremitting in the discharge of his parliamentary duties, and he gave special attention to finance, saying to Pitt, on 11 March 1793, that he did not require to watch with vigilance all matters relating to the public income and outlay, as ‘he had uniformly acted on that principle upon all revenue questions.’ He laboured to abate the rigour of the game laws and to repress the practice of gaming. Whenever a question relating to social improvement and progress was before the house he gave his support to it, and when, in 1787, the convention of Scottish royal boroughs had failed in getting a sympathiser with their grievances, they enlisted him in their service, and they thanked him in after days for his earnestness in their cause, which he twelve times upheld in the house. What he had vainly urged between 1787 and 1794 was effected for the Scottish burgesses in 1833 in a reformed parliament. The parliamentary reform which rendered this improvement possible had been advocated by Sheridan, and, when others despaired of its attainment, he wrote, on 21 May 1782, to Thomas Grenville: ‘We were bullied outrageously about our poor parliamentary reform; but it will do at last in spite of you all’ (Courts and Cabinets of George III, i. 28).
When the revolution in France tried men’s souls in Great Britain and made many friends of progress recant in a panic the convictions of their wiser years, Sheridan stood firm with Fox in maintaining the right of the French to form their own government, and upheld, with him, the duty of this country to recognise and treat with any government which exercised authority there. The Earl of Mornington (afterwards Marquis Wellesley) made an elaborate appeal to the house on 21 Jan. 1794 to prosecute the war with France till the French should have discarded their republican principles. The reply on this occasion was one of Sheridan’s finest debating speeches, and a most able argument against illegitimate interference with the domestic concerns of France. He was quite as ready, however, to oppose the French when they began to propagate their principles by the sword. The fleets at Portsmouth and the Nore mutinied in May and June 1797, partly at the instigation of French agents. Then Sheridan gave warm support and good advice to the government, and largely contributed to the removal of the danger which menaced the country. Dundas said on behalf of the ministry that ‘the country was highly indebted to Sheridan for his fair and manly conduct’ (Parliamentary Hist. xxxvi. 804). When invasion was threatened in 1803 by Bonaparte, he urged unconditional resistance, and declared in the house on 10 Aug. that no peace ought to be made so long as a foreign soldier trod British soil. Moreover he urged the house to encourage the volunteers who had assembled in defence of their homes, while he set the example by acting as lieutenant-colonel of the St. James’s volunteer corps. The revolt of the Spaniards against the French invaders was lauded by him, and he was earnest in urging the government to send Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards Duke of Wellington) to represent ‘the enthusiasm of England’ in the cause of Spain struggling against the yoke of Bonaparte. His last speech in parliament, which was delivered on 21 June 1812, ended with a heart-stirring appeal to persevere in opposing the tyranny to which Bonaparte was subjecting Europe, and with the assertion that, if the British nation were to share the fate of others, the historian might record that, when after spending all her treasure and her choicest blood the nation fell, there fell with her ‘all the best securities for the charities of human life, for the power and honour, the fame, the glory, and the liberties of herself and the whole civilised world.’
Sheridan was conspicuous and energetic among the opponents of the union between Great Britain and Ireland. He said on 23 Jan. 1799, when the subject was formally brought before the house, ‘My country has claims upon me which I am not more proud to acknowledge than ready to liquidate to the full measure of my ability.’ He held that the bargain concluded in 1782 between the two countries was final, and also that, if a new arrangement were to be made, it should be based on ‘the manifest, fair, and free consent and approbation of the parliaments of the two countries.’ Twenty-five members of parliament followed his lead. Mr. Lecky affirms that he fought ‘a hopeless battle in opposition with conspicuous earnestness and courage’ (History of England in Eighteenth Century, viii. 356).
After the union was carried and Addington had succeeded Pitt as prime minister, it was in Sheridan’s power, as it may have been previously, to enter the House of Lords by changing the party to which he had belonged since entering political life, but he then declined, as he phrased it, ‘to hide his head in a coronet’ (Memoir of Lady Dufferin, by her son, ). He sometimes dined with Addington when he was premier, and Addington records that one night Sheridan said to him, ‘My visits to you may possibly be misunderstood by my friends; but I hope you know, Mr. Addington, that I have an unpurchasable mind’ (Life of Lord Sidmouth, ii. 105). When Pitt died in 1806 and the ministry of ‘all the talents’ was formed, Sheridan held the office in it of treasurer of the navy, with the rank of privy councillor. After Fox’s death in the same year he succeeded him as member for Westminster; but he was not called, as he had a right to anticipate he would have been, to lead the whig party in the commons.
He was rejected for Westminster at the general election in 1807, and found a seat at Ilchester which he held till 1812. He had been proposed in 1807 as a candidate for the county of Wexford without his knowledge, and his election seemed assured, as the electors expressed their readiness to vote for ‘the great Sheridan.’ Mr. Colclough, who proposed him as a fellow candidate, was challenged by Mr. Alcock, one of his opponents, to fight a duel, and was shot through the heart. The supporters of both Colclough and Sheridan consequently held aloof from the poll, and Mr. Alcock and Colonel Ram were declared to have been duly elected (Personal Sketches of his Own Times, by Sir Jonah Barrington, i. 302, 305). Sheridan endeavoured in 1812 to be returned again for Stafford; but the younger generation of burgesses was as little disposed as the elder to vote for any candidate unless he paid each of them the accustomed fee of five guineas, and, as Sheridan had not the money, he lost the election.
As a dramatic writer Sheridan had no equal among his contemporaries, and as manager and chief proprietor of Drury Lane Theatre he maintained the popularity of the theatre and obtained from it an average income of 10,000l. In 1791 the theatre was pronounced unsafe, and it had to be pulled down and rebuilt, and the new house was much larger than the old one. The estimated cost was 150,000l.; this was exceeded, however, by 75,000l. While the theatre was rebuilding, the company played at the theatre in the Haymarket, and the expenses there exceeded the receipts. The first performance in the new building took place on 21 April 1794. With mistaken chivalry Sheridan rashly undertook to defray out of his own pocket the liabilities which had been incurred owing to the expenses exceeding the estimate. Whatever prospect he may have had of achieving this chivalrous but quixotic undertaking was dashed to the ground on 24 Feb. 1809, when the new theatre was destroyed by fire. When the news reached the House of Commons that the theatre was burning, the unusual compliment was paid him by Lord Temple and Mr. Ponsonby of moving the adjournment of the debate ‘in consequence of the extent of the calamity which the event just communicated to the house would bring upon a respectable individual, a member of that house.’ While grateful for the kindness displayed towards himself, he objected to the motion on the ground that ‘whatever might be the exten
t of the individual calamity, he did not consider it of a nature to interrupt their proceedings.’ Two years later the house displayed a like feeling of admiration and sympathy. It was then proposed to authorise the building of another theatre, and Sheridan contended that the proprietors of the Drury Lane patent ought to be the persons entrusted with this privilege. His conduct with regard to Drury Lane Theatre was eulogised by political opponents as well as by political friends, General Tarleton calling upon the house ‘to consider the immortal works of Mr. Sheridan and the stoical philosophy with which in that house he had witnessed the destruction of his property. Surely some indulgence was due to such merit’ (Parl. Debates, xix. 1142, 1145).
None of the many effective speeches which Sheridan delivered in the house did him more honour, or has given him more deserved credit, than those relating to the liberty of the public press at a time when the press had fewer friends among statesmen than at present. He was magnanimous in upholding the liberty of unfettered printing, because, as he declared to Sir Richard Phillips, his life had been made miserable by calumnies in the newspapers. The greater his magnanimity and statesmanship, then, in declaring, as he did in the House of Commons on 4 April 1798, ‘that the press should be unfettered, that its freedom should be, as indeed it was, commensurate with the freedom of the people and the well-being of a virtuous State; on that account he thought that even one hundred libels had better be ushered into the world than one prosecution be instituted which might endanger the liberty of the press of this country.’ At a later day he condemned the conduct of the benchers of Lincoln’s Inn, and shamed them into rescinding a regulation which they had passed for excluding from the bar any member of the inn who contributed to newspapers.
His monetary affairs, after the burning of Drury Lane Theatre in 1809, were greatly involved, and the sums owing to him were withheld while his creditors clamoured for payment. A committee, presided over by Mr. Whitbread, for rebuilding the theatre gave him shares for much of the amount due to him, but by retaining 12,000l. in cash hindered him from being returned to parliament for Stafford, and caused him to be arrested for debt in August 1813, when he became an inmate of a sponging-house in Took’s Court, Cursitor Street, till Whitbread handed over the sum required. It was not known till after Whitbread’s self-inflicted death, on 6 July 1815, that a disease of the brain was the explanation of some actions which would have been otherwise inexplicable. Sheridan’s own health had been impaired several years before his life ended. He had long suffered from insomnia; in his later years varicose veins in his legs gave him much pain and made walking difficult. He had always been a jovial companion, and few who enjoyed his society could have surmised that in private he was subject to fits of depression which made life a burden. In common with his contemporaries he frequently drank wine to excess, yet without drinking as much as many others, a small quantity affecting him more seriously. Sir Gilbert Elliot records that at a dinner in 1788 Sheridan drank much wine, but that Grey drank far more. Sheridan preferred claret till his later and darker years, and then brandy had a baneful fascination for him. Nevertheless, he weaned himself from the bad habit, and he became very temperate latterly, drinking nothing but water.
Mental worries about the health of his elder son Tom, who went to the Cape of Good Hope in 1813, without being cured there of consumption, and about the means wherewith to satisfy the demands of inexorable creditors, to which an abscess in the throat added a physical torment, compelled him to take to his bed in the spring of 1816. He was then occupying the house at 17 Savile Row. A writ was served upon him when he could no longer leave the house, and the sheriff’s officer consented to remain there, and, by so doing, hindered other creditors from giving further annoyance. It was incorrectly announced in the newspapers that Sheridan was in dire poverty, and offers of assistance were made; but these were declined because they were not required. Sheridan died on 7 July 1816. Several years afterwards the story was circulated by Croker, on the authority of George IV, to the effect that Sheridan died a neglected pauper. The story is the reverse of the truth. Charles Brinsley, the son of Sheridan by his second marriage, wrote from Fulham Palace, on Sunday, 16 July 1816, where his mother and he were staying, to his half-brother at the Cape, nine days after their father’s death, that ‘you will be soothed by learning that our father’s death was unaccompanied by suffering, that he almost slumbered into death, and that the reports which you may have seen in the newspapers of the privations and the want of comforts which he endured are unfounded; that he had every attention and comfort that could make a deathbed easy.’ Mrs. Parkhurst, who was acquainted with the Sheridans, wrote to Dublin from London to Mrs. Lefanu, his elder sister, a fortnight after his death: ‘Mr. Sheridan wanted neither medical aid, the attention of true affection, the consolations of piety, nor the exertions of friendship. He had three of the first physicians of London every day; his wife, his son, and his brother-in-law were constantly with him; the bishop of London (Howley, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury) saw him many times, and (Lord) Lauderdale did all he could for the regulation of his affairs.’
The funeral was arranged by Lord Lauderdale and Peter Moore , member for Coventry, both being Sheridan’s old and attached friends, and the coffin was taken, for the sake of convenience, to Peter Moore’s house in Great George Street. The remains were laid in Westminster Abbey, and the funeral was on a far grander scale than those of Pitt and Fox, the flower of the nobility uniting with the most notable men of letters and learning in paying the last homage to Sheridan. The Duke of Wellington and his brother, the Marquis Wellesley, who were absent, expressed in writing their regret that their absence was unavoidable.
As a dramatist Sheridan carried the comedy of manners in this country to its highest pitch, and his popularity as a writer for the stage is exceeded by that of Shakespeare alone. As an orator he impressed the House of Commons more deeply than almost any predecessor, and as a politician in a venal age he preserved his independence and purity. He left debts which were trifling compared with those of Pitt, and which, unlike those of Pitt, were defrayed by his family. He never received a pension, though he was as much entitled to one as Burke. The Prince of Wales induced him to accept the office of receiver of the duchy of Cornwall, with a salary of about 800l., and this he enjoyed for the last few years of his life. His widow and his son by her inherited a property in land which he had bought, and which sufficed to maintain them during the remainder of their lives.
Throughout life Sheridan was the victim of misrepresentation. He declared to Sir Richard Phillips in his closing years that his life ‘had been miserable by calumnies.’ To these words, taken from a manuscript by Sir Richard supplied to Moore, but suppressed, may be added the following from a manuscript which Sheridan left behind him: ‘It is a fact that I have scarcely ever in my life contradicted any one calumny against me … I have since on reflection ceased to approve my own conduct in these respects. Were I to lead my life over again, I should act otherwise.’ After his death many stories about him have been circulated and accepted as genuine, though they are counterfeit. They begin when he was seven years old, and end when he was in his coffin; the first being that his mother told Samuel Whyte he was an ‘impenetrable dunce,’ a statement for which not a shadow of proof has been given; and the last that he was arrested for debt when laid out for burial, a statement which is as ridiculous and unauthentic as the other. The story is often told of his hoaxing the House of Commons, and many correspondents of ‘Notes and Queries’ have exercised their ingenuity in describing the kind of spurious or imitation Greek which he is assumed to have used, the truth being that he once corrected Lord Belgrave, who misapplied a passage of Demosthenes, which he had quoted in the original. He is finely characterised in a few words written by Mrs. Parkhurst in the letter from which a quotation has been made above: ‘He took away with him a thousand charitable actions, a heart in which there was no hard part, a spirit free from envy and malice, and he is gone in the undiminished brightness of
his talent, gone before pity had withered admiration.’ On the morning after his death the ‘Times’ eulogised him as a member of the legislature in terms which could not be justly applied to many of his colleagues and contemporaries: ‘Throughout a period fruitful of able men and trying circumstances [he was regarded] as the most popular specimen in the British senate of political consistency, intrepidity, and honour.’
Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan Page 168
