A Georgian Pageant

by Frank Frankfort Moore

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!