"You must pay for this letter, for Dick has got your last with the direction; and any thing in his hands is irrecoverable!"
The health of Mrs. Sheridan, as we see by some of her letters, had been for some time delicate; but it appears that her last, fatal illness originated in a cold, which she had caught in the summer of the preceding year. Though she continued from that time to grow gradually worse, her friends were flattered with the hope that as soon as her confinement should take place, she would be relieved from all that appeared most dangerous in her complaint. That event, however, produced but a temporary intermission of the malady, which returned after a few days with such increased violence, that it became necessary for her, as a last hope, to try the waters of Bristol.
The following affectionate letter of Tickell must have been written at this period:—
"MY DEAR SHERIDAN,
"I was but too well prepared for the melancholy intelligence contained in your last letter, in answer to which, as Richardson will give you this, I leave it to his kindness to do me justice in every sincere and affectionate expression of my grief for your situation, and my entire readiness to obey and further your wishes by every possible exertion.
"If you have any possible opportunity, let me entreat you to remember me to the dearest, tenderest friend and sister of my heart. Sustain yourself, my dear Sheridan,
"And believe me yours,
"Most affectionately and faithfully,
"R. TICKELL."
The circumstances of her death cannot better be told than in the language of a lady whose name it would be an honor to mention, who, giving up all other cares and duties, accompanied her dying friend to Bristol, and devoted herself, with a tenderness rarely equalled even among women, to the soothing and lightening of her last painful moments. From the letters written by this lady at the time, some extracts have lately been given by Miss Lefanu [Footnote: The talents of this young lady are another proof of the sort of garet kind of genius allotted to the whole race of Sheridan. I find her very earliest poetical work, "The Sylphid Queen," thus spoken of in a letter from the second Mrs. Sheridan to her mother, Mrs. Lefanu—"I should have acknowledged your very welcome present immediately, had not Mr. Sheridan, on my telling him what it was, run off with it, and I have been in vain endeavoring to get it from him ever since. What little I did read of it, I admired particularly, but it will be much more gratifying to you and your daughter to hear that he read it with the greatest attention, and thought it showed a great deal of imagination.">[ in her interesting Memoirs of her grandmother, Mrs. Frances Sheridan. But their whole contents are so important to the characters of the persons concerned, and so delicately draw aside the veil from a scene of which sorrow and affection were the only witnesses, that I feel myself justified not only in repeating what has already been quoted, but in adding a few more valuable particulars, which, by the kindness of the writer and her correspondent, I am enabled to give from the same authentic source. The letters are addressed to Mrs. H. Lefanu, the second sister of Mr. Sheridan.