CHAPTER V. MIDDLE AGE. THE middle of life is the testing-ground of character and strength. There are many who hold a foremost place in the heat of youth, but sink behind when that first energy is played out; and there are many whose follies happily die, and whose true strength is only known when serious existence with its weights and responsibilities comes upon them. Many are the revelations of this sober age. Sins which were but venial in the boy grow fatal in the man. The easy indolence, the careless good-fellowship, the rollicking humour which we laugh at while we condemn them in youth, become coarser, vulgarer, meaner in maturity, and acquire a character of selfishness and brutality which was not theirs in the time of hope. In Sheridan's age, above all others, the sins of a Charles Surface were easily pardoned to a young man. He was better liked for being something of a rake; his prodigality and neglect of all prudent precautions, his rashness in every enterprise, his headlong career, which it was always believed something might turn up to guide into a better development at the end, were proofs of the generosity and truth of a character concealing nothing. All this was natural at fiveand-twenty. But at thirty-five, and still more at forty, the world gets weary of Charles Surface. His light heartedness becomes want of feeling-his rashness unmanly folly—his shortcomings are everywhere judged by a different standard; and the middle-aged man, whom neither regard for his honour, his duty, nor his family can curb and restrain, who takes his own way, whoever suffers, and is continually playing at the highest stakes for mere life, is deserted by public opinion, and can be defended by his friends with only faltering excuses. Sheridan had been such a man in his youth. He had dared everything, and won much from fate. Without a penny to begin with, or any of that capital of industry, perseverance, and determination which serves instead of money, he got possession of and enjoyed all the luxuries of wealth. He did more than this: he became one of the leading names in England, foremost on imperial occasions, and known wherever news of England was prized or read; and through all his earlier years the world had laughed at his shifts, his hair-breadth escapes, the careless prodigality of nature, which made it certain that by a sudden and violent effort at the end he could always make up for all deficiencies. It was a jest that "Of wit, of taste, of fancy, we'll debate, And in the artificial world of the theatre the recklessness of the man and all his eccentricities had something in them which suited that abode of strong contrasts and effects. But after a course of years the world began to get tired of always waiting for Sheridan, always finding that he had forgotten his word and his appointments, and never read, much less answered, his letters. There came a moment when everybody with one accord ceased and even refused to be amused by these eccentricities any longer, ** and found them to be stale jests, insolences, and characterised by a selfish disregard of everybody's comfort but his own. This natural protest no doubt was accompanied by a gradual development of all that was most insupportable in Sheridan's nature. The entire absence in him of the faculty of self-control grew with his advancing years; but it was not till Providence had interposed and deprived him of the wife who, in her sweet imperfection, had yet done much for him, that any serious change happened in his fortunes. He lost his father in 1788, very shortly after his great triumph. There is no very evident sign that Thomas Sheridan ever changed his mind in respect to his sons, or ceased to prefer the prim and prudent Charles, who had bidden his brother not to be so foolishly moved by thoughts of fame as to neglect the substantial advantages which office might ensure to him. But it was Richard who attended upon the old man's death-bed, moved with an almost excessive filial devotion and regret, and buried him, and intended to place a fine inscription over him, written by no hand but that of Dr. Parr, the best of scholars. It was never done; but Charles Sheridan (who was present, however, neither at the sick-bed nor the grave) had already intimated the conviction of the family that in Dick's case the will had to be taken for the deed. This loss, however, was little to the greater blow which he suffered a few years later. Mrs. Sheridan is one of those characters who, without doing anything to make themselves remarkable, yet leave a certain fragrance behind them as of something fine, and tender, and delicate. The reader will remember the letter referred to in the first chapter, in which she recounts her early troubles to her sympathising friend, a pretty and sentimental composition, with a touch of Evelina (who was the young lady's contemporary) in its confidences, and still more of Lydia Languish, whose prototype she might well have been. And there is a certain reflection of Lydia Languish throughout her life, softened by the cessation of sentimental dilemmas, but never without a turn for the romantic. That she was a good wife to Sheridan there seems little doubt: the accounts of the theatre kept in her handwriting, the long and careful extracts made and information prepared by her to help him-even the appeals to her on every side, from her father, anxious about the theatre and its business, up to Mr. Burke, in the larger political sphere, all confident that she would be able to do what nobody else could do, keep Sheridan to an appointment-show what her office was between him and the world. Within doors, of all characters for the reckless wit to enact, he was the Falkland of his own drama, maddening a more hapless Julia, driving her a hundred times out of patience and out of heart with innumerable suspicions, jealousies, harassments of every kind. And no man who lived the life he was living, with the most riotous company of the time, could be a very good husband. He left her to go into society alone, in all her beauty and charm-the St. Cecilia of many worshippers-still elegant, lovely, and sentimental, an involuntary siren, accustomed to homage, and perhaps liking it a little, as most people, even the wisest, do. There could be no want of tenderness to her husband in the woman who wrote the letter of happy pride and adoration quoted in the last chapter; and yet she was not herself untouched by scandal, and it was whispered that a young, handsome, romantic Irishman, in all the glory of national enthusiasm, and with the shadow of tragedy already upon him, had moved her heart. It is not necessary to enter into any such vague and shadowy tale. No permanent alienation appears to have ever arisen between her and her husband, though there were many painful scenes, consequent upon the too finely - strung nerves, which is often another name for irritability and impatience, of both. Sheridan's sister, who lived in his house for a short time after her father's death, gives us a most charming picture of this sweet and attractive woman: "I have been here almost a week in perfect quiet. While there was company in the house I stayed in my room, and since my brother's leaving us for Margate I have sat at times with Mrs. Sheridan, who is kind and considerate, so that I have entire liberty. Her poor sister's children are all with her. The girl gives her constant employment, and seems to profit by being under so good an instructor. Their father was here for some days, but I did not see him. Last night Mrs. S. showed me a picture of Mrs. Tickell, which she wears round her neck. . . . Dick is still in town, and we do not expect him for some time. Mrs. Sheridan seems now quite reconciled to those little absences which she knows are unavoidable. I never saw any one so constant in employing every moment of her time, and to that I attribute, in a great measure, the recovery of her health and spirits. The education of her niece, her music, books, and work occupy every moment of the day. After dinner the children, who call her mamma-aunt, spend some time with us, and her manner to them is truly delightful." Mrs. Tickell was Mrs. Sheridan's younger sister, and died just a year before her. In the mean time she had taken immediate charge of Tickell's motherless children, and the pretty "copy of verses" which she dedicated to her sister's memory embellishes and throws light upon her own: "The hours, the days pass on; sweet spring returns, |