"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 night. 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.