Some Old Time Beauties | Page 7

of Mozart, and took at times his
father's place as conductor of the oratorios. His career was cut short by
drowning, in 1778.
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