11.]

REMINISCENCES OF ANGELO

grace and attraction to speech and person.

77

Richard

Brinsley's talents were not turned to the same account. It is believed that he refused to serve his father as a model orator, and this may have helped to embitter his father against him.

During the residence of the two boys in London their education was not neglected. Mr. Lewis Ker, who had been a physician in Ireland, and whose health was so impaired that he was obliged to abandon the practice of his profession, gave them lessons in classics and mathematics. They were instructed in fencing and riding by Angelo, a famous and accomplished teacher. The Angelo and Sheridan families were on a most friendly footing, having been intimately acquainted for many years. In the days of Mr. Sheridan's greatest prosperity, Angelo's son, Henry, had spent many happy hours as a visitor to his house in Dublin. A letter to him has been printed which Mr. Sheridan wrote in 1774 and in which he recommends the study of Richardson's works on the ground that "no author is better qualified both to improve the mind and regulate the heart." During the residence of the Sheridan family in London, after returning from France, Sheridan was a welcome guest at the Angelos' house, and Mr. Henry Angelo records that "his engaging manners and lively wit rendered him a delightful companion, and a general favourite with all whom he met at our family table." It was in return for Mr. Sheridan's kindness to his son Henry that Angelo gave Richard Brinsley careful instruction in the use of the small sword, and his proficiency

in handling this weapon stood him in good stead when he had to fight a duel.1

Mr. Sheridan kept a tight hand over his children. He was a strict disciplinarian, and he managed his household as sternly as he did a theatre. He exacted unquestioning obedience from those dependent upon him, while he took great offence if his superiors required submission from him. He "poured lava," as he said, upon those who had offended him. He was very methodical and precise in all his ways. He had morning prayers regularly, and on Sunday evenings he either commented on the sermon of the day or expounded a passage in the Bible. He was fond of Dr. Johnson's Ramblers, and his daughters were often wearied and disheartened with the task of reading them aloud, because he was exacting with regard to enunciation and cadence, and careful in correcting what he deemed their faults of speech.

The impression made on Richard Brinsley by life in his father's household was more agreeable than might be supposed, and it was fondly cherished during many years. In later days he called to see his father, but did not find him at home. His sister received him in the dining-room, where the cloth was laid, and he exclaimed: "Ah! I could fancy myself back among old times, seated with Charles and my sisters at this table, and my father looking round us, and giving his favourite toast: Healths, hearts and homes.' "2

1 "Reminiscences of Henry Angelo," vol. i., p. 74; vol. ii., p. 85. 2 "Memoirs of Mrs. Frances Sheridan," p. 350.

III.

LIFE AT BATH.

AT the end of 1770, Mr. Sheridan removed with his family from London to Bath, a city in which his lectures had been greatly liked and where he hoped to rise still higher in popular favour and to reap a far richer harvest. The attractions of Bath were then unique. Life there was most delightful to seekers after amusement, while those who aspired after fame and wealth enjoyed many advantages and found many excellent opportunities.

It is difficult to realize the condition of Bath during the Eighteenth century. No other city in England could then vie with it. It is still famous. and fashionable; its special beauties have neither faded nor failed; its healing springs have lost none of their magical virtues, yet its meretricious charms have vanished, and their departure cannot be noted without a slight feeling of regret. Whatever once delighted idlers in London could be found on a smaller scale and in an even more pleasant form in Bath, and those who were ailing in the larger city might hope to become well in the smaller. A renowned health resort is a paradise for hypo

chondriacs, and hypochrondriacs are generally wealthy persons who readily part with their money to regain the health which they fancy has been lost. They crowded to Bath, and, to use Horace Walpole's familiar phrase, they "went there well and returned home cured."1

When Bath was in its prime as a city of pleasure, the line of demarcation between classes was less tightly drawn and clearly defined than in London, and a plausible adventurer had a better chance of playing his game among credulous and foolish men and women in the watering-place than in the Capital. A handsome person and polished manners, a fluent tongue and an insinuating address, fine clothes and fine sentiments, constituted passports to admission into the best society of Bath for many years before Richard Brinsley Sheridan first saw it and for many more after he had ceased to be a resident. During his sojourn it was the favourite haunt of fortunehunters and of rascals who lived by their wits and their wickedness. Monte Carlo now represents in many particulars what Bath was in the years that are

gone.

The liveliest, the most attractive, and probably the most correct pictures of society in old Bath are to be found in old novels. Smollett, who practised

1 The conception of Bath at the present day in the mind of a Dorsetshire labourer is cleverly represented by Mr. Thomas Hardy in Far from the Madding Crowd: "The people of Bath,' continued Cain, 'never need to light their fires except as a luxury, for the water springs up out of the earth ready boiled for use. They drink nothing else there, and seem to enjoy it, to see how they swaller it down.'" Edition 1893, p. 223.

III.]

"AN IMPUDENT DOG"

81

as a physician there, repeatedly introduces the place into his works; Jane Austen has given a pleasanter account of it as seen at a later time; Walter Scott has recorded the impression which it made upon him when a little boy.

In Roderick Random it is stated how the hero escorted Miss Snapper to the Long-room; how Nash, the Master of the Ceremonies, displayed his bad breeding by asking the name of Tobit's dog, and was rightly and unexpectedly rebuffed by the answer, "his name was Nash and an impudent dog he was." In Peregrine Pickle it is narrated how Godfrey Gauntlett checkmated the sharpers at billiards and cards, and hoaxed the doctors.

The following passages in Humphrey Clinker are even more instructive, because they exhibit the views of a censorious elderly man on the one hand, and of a gushing young lady on the other. Matthew Bramble says in a letter to Dr. Lewis:-"Every upstart of a fortune, harnessed in the trappings of the mode, presents himself at Bath, as in the very focus of observation: Clerks and factors from the East Indies, loaded with the spoil of plundered provinces; planters, negro - drivers and hucksters from our American plantations, enriched they know not how; agents, commissaries and contractors who have fattened, in two successive wars, on the blood of the nation; usurers, brokers and jobbers of every kind; men of low birth and no breeding, have found themselves suddenly translated into a state of affluence, unknown to former ages; and no wonder that their brains should be intoxicated with pride,

VOL. I.

6