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Page 7
But it was his beautiful daughter Eliza, born in 1754, who made the
sensation of the time, when she sang with her sister, afterwards Mrs.
Tickell. "A nest of nightingales," the family was termed. Walpole
writes, in 1773: "I was not at the ball last night, and have only been
to the opera, where I was infinitely struck with the Carrara, who is
the prettiest creature upon earth. Mrs. Hartley I own to still find
handsomer, and Miss Linley, to be the superlative degree. The king
admires the last, and ogles her as much as he dares to do in so holy a
place as an oratorio, and at so devout a service as 'Alexander's
Feast.'" Musical prominence and personal beauty in this maid of but
twenty made her an attractive flower in bloom to others than the king.
The wits and gallants of the gay city sought and courted her. The
family of Tom Sheridan, the Irish actor, and then a teacher of
elocution in Bath, was intimate with the Linley family. Richard, who
was born in Dublin in 1751, his elder brother Charles, and Nathaniel
Halhed, a companion and literary partner with Richard, all admired the
daughter Eliza. Halhed went to India,--afterwards becoming a judge
there,--and Charles Sheridan retired from the race, and left the
literary youth to win as pure a heart as ever cheered incipient genius
to works of worth. She was lauded in verse by her young Irish suitor,
and championed in deed. He asserts his constancy in a poem, of which
the first stanza is--
"Dry that tear, my gentlest love;
Be hushed that struggling sigh;
Nor seasons, day, nor fate shall prove
More fixed, more true than I.
Hushed be that sigh, be dry that tear;
Cease boding doubt, cease anxious fear;
Dry be that tear."
He proves his devotion by his action when appealed to by his
divinity.
A certain Captain Matthews, one of a numerous breed in Bath in those
days,--that is, a fashionable scoundrel and a married man,--made
himself obnoxious to Miss Linley by improper addresses. He annoyed and
harassed her, threatening to destroy himself unless she gratified him,
and later attempted to sully her reputation by calumnies. This brought
about the culmination of her attachment to Sheridan. She fled her
father's house and sought the protection of her lover. Accompanied by
a chaperon, they left for France. After some romantic adventures, they
were married in March, 1772, at a little village near Calais; but it
was a wedding without the wherewithal to maintain a home, so the bride
entered a convent, and, later, the house of an English physician,
until literature should be remunerative. The eloping lady's father
sought the runaways; and, after some explanations, they returned with
him to England. It was shortly after this that Sheridan fought two
duels with Matthews, being wounded in the later one to such an extent
that his recovery was doubtful. "Sweet Betsy" claimed the right of a
wife to tend her hurt husband, and so revealed the fact of the
marriage in France. The old actor rejected his impulsive son, but
Linley's aversion to the union of his daughter being at last set
aside, the pair were re-married in England in April, 1773.
The sweet singer had been admired by another, an elderly suitor of
much fortune, whom her father had approved, but to whom she was
averse. This gentleman now became the benefactor of the pair. He
settled a moiety of three thousand pounds on the bride. Her father
retained half of this as compensation for the loss of the services of
his daughter. On the balance, the youthful couple lived. Sheridan had
entered himself a student of the Middle Temple shortly before his
marriage. Though their income was small, he would not allow his wife
to accept several proffered professional engagements; he did not wish
his helpmeet to become a servant of the public. This action incited
some discussion, and much acrimonious comment, in her family and among
their friends. Johnson upheld his course. Sheridan, in this instance,
understood himself and understood the times. He knew of the flippant
attitude of the young blades of the town toward all public performers;
so he sought to save her, who was so sacred to him, from such insult,
insincere adulation, and insinuation as she had heretofore suffered
from. They retired to a cottage at East Burnham; and there she, who
had received the plaudits of the public as a vocalist, won as noble a
name in the character of the ideal wife, one in whom were united all
the attributes of loveliness,--temper, manners, virtues, and
surpassing beauty. What the then public lost, later generations have
gained in the picture of that lovable woman, making a golden age of
happiness for her greatly-gifted husband in the little cottage at East
Burnham.
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