She knew it. She helped with the accounts at Drury Lane; and she knew too that they could have lived in comfort – indeed, luxury – but for her husband’s wild extravagances.

There could be a way out of their difficulties. She herself could earn money. Her voice could have been her fortune and was on the way to becoming so before her marriage. She had been offered twelve hundred guineas to sing for twelve nights at the Pantheon but her husband’s pride would not allow her to do this.

It was something Elizabeth could not understand. How much more dishonourable to run up bills which one could not pay than to allow one’s wife to sing for money. But Richard had his pride. Pride indeed. One of the seven deadly sins. Pride insisted that he must consort with rich men, that he must gamble with them, that he must do all that they did, though they were rich and he must needs earn his living.

But she could not understand Sheridan; she could only love him.

She did not remind him that the theatre was doing well, that he himself had a brilliant future before him. She would have been happy to live as they had in those ecstatic days of their honeymoon in the tiny cottage at East Burnham; but that of course was not what Richard wanted. He needed the gay life of London – the theatrical world, the literary world, the wits, the men and women of brilliance to set off the sparks which lighted his talents.

‘It will have to be a superb performance,’ he said; and she was astonished at the manner in which he could throw aside all financial anxieties at the thought of the production. ‘We must go into rehearsal right away. Nothing but the best, Elizabeth.’

‘And will Mrs Robinson perform?’

He did not meet her eye. He wondered how much she knew of his relationship with the beautiful actress. He felt angry suddenly. He was a man of genius, wasn’t he? She could not expect to apply ordinary standards to him. She should know that however much he strayed he always came back to her. He would never cease to love her; he knew there was not a woman in the world like her. Wasn’t that enough? Mary Robinson was beautiful … in a different way from Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s beauty was of the heavenly variety – ‘as beautiful as an angel’, they had said of her. But a man of genius must experience the world. He cannot spend his life among angels.

He spoke irritably. ‘Of course. Of course. Why not? She’s our biggest draw.’

‘Of course,’ said Elizabeth calmly. ‘I merely wondered whether she was experienced enough.’

‘Experienced? She’s been playing for more than three years. Her Juliet was an immediate success.’

‘I see. So she will play Perdita.’

‘Perdita it shall be.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I can’t delay. I must tell them of this great honour. We must begin our preparations at once.’ He stood up uneasily. Was she wondering whether his affair with the actress was still going on? Did she know it had ever existed?

That was the trouble with these good women. One could never be sure how much they knew because they met all calamity, all disaster and the deceits of others, with a calm tolerance which, although it smoothed out the difficulties of life, could be damnably exasperating.

He embraced her with fervour and her response was immediate. She had sworn to love him and naturally she kept her vows.

‘I had to come home to tell my Elizabeth first of all,’ he said.

Then he was out of the house and as he called for his chair his anxieties fell from him. It was only when he entered the house that he remembered what it had cost and that a great deal of the furniture was not yet paid for. It was only when he was in the company of his wife that he remembered his sins.

Now to Mary Robinson. He imagined himself telling her the news.


* * *

When he had gone Elizabeth returned to the harpsichord, but instead of singing sat silent, thinking of her romantic elopement, of the transcending joy of those days when she had believed that when she and Richard were married they would live happily ever after. At least, she could console herself, she would never be happy without him.

Yet before he had come into her life she had lived serenely in her father’s house where everything was subservient to music. All day long the sounds of music had filled the house. Bath was such a gracious city; often here in London she dreamed of Bath. But Richard must be in London, naturally, for London was necessary to him. Here he had his theatre and he was in the centre of the gay life; here were the gaming houses, the clubs which he could not resist; here were the brilliant men like Charles James Fox whose company he so enjoyed.

But the old days had been sweet. She smiled to remember singing with her sister Mary; and her brother Tom’s playing of the violin when he was in the nursery had been declared nothing short of genius.

And how proud her father had been of his brilliant children – perhaps particularly of her! His ‘song bird’, he had called her, and she remembered well the day when he had said to her: ‘Elizabeth, I believe there never has been a sweeter voice than yours.’ How happy that had made her! And she had become famous – or almost – when she had sung in an oratorio before the King. Everyone had been talking of her voice then. And her sister Mary who had a beautiful voice of her own had said it was only a pale echo of Elizabeth’s.

Those were happy days when they had all been together in the big house in Bath and their father had taught singing. Then had come that fateful day when Mrs Sheridan, wife of a teacher of elocution, had come to the house for singing lessons; the friendship between the two families had begun and Richard was a constant visitor to the singing master’s house.

She had often thought of going into a convent and when the odious Major Matthews had pursued her and would not be repulsed she had felt the need for the sequestered life more than ever. She had a beauty which almost rivalled her musical talents and she knew that she would be pursued by men. Some in high places had their eyes on her. Horace Walpole had written in one of those letters which so many people seemed to read that the King had been unable to take his eyes from her when she had sung in the oratorio and had ogled her as much as he dared in so holy a place.

A convent promised a blissful retreat in which she could sing holy music for the comfort of its inmates. But Richard was there – the good friend, the gay young man with ambitions of which he talked to her and to whom she was able to confide her desire for the retired life. He was entirely sympathetic and she had wondered how this was possible since his ambitions lay in such a different direction.

When Sir Joshua Reynolds painted her as St Cecilia she was famous. None of the angels among whom he had placed her, so it was said, had a sweeter and more angelic face than hers. She was fragile, unworldly; and the desire to go into a convent was greater than ever; and then the doubts had come. Who had planted them in her mind but the young and virile companion of her childhood? What was the attraction between her and Richard? Why should one so worldly find such delight in the company of a woman whose ideal was a convent life?

Major Matthews had come into her life and even now she shuddered to recall him. How she loathed that man! He was coarse; he was sensuous; and her very remoteness from all that he was made him desire her the more. He was a man of means, and persistent, and she feared her father would want to make a match for her.

‘I must go into a convent,’ she told Richard. She knew of a convent in France, and if she could reach it she was certain she would be given sanctuary there.

Dear Richard. How chivalrous he was! She knew now that he was fighting against his own emotions. He realized the incongruity of a match between themselves; how would such a delicate creature fit in with his ambitions? But he could not allow her heart to be broken, her spirit quenched by the hateful Major Matthews. He must save her from that so he had conceived the plan for conducting her to her convent and with only her maid for company and as chaperone they had fled from Bath. It was a mad adventure; and before they had reached London Richard had declared his love for her. At that time it had seemed more important than ambition. And herself? She had made a discovery too. It was not life in a convent she wanted but life with Richard.

‘We must marry,’ said Richard, ‘for even if we did not wish to, now that we have eloped together there is no other course open to us.’

She smiled recalling it; that hasty marriage; the solemn words said before the priest, and no sooner was the ceremony over and they returned to the lodgings Richard had found for them than her father arrived in a great state of agitation, threatened to horsewhip Richard and carried his daughter back to Bath.

‘But we are married,’ she had insisted.

‘Doubtless a mock marriage,’ growled her father. ‘I know these scoundrels.’

But this was not a scoundrel. This was Richard, the friend of her childhood. Her father must realize this. He did and was somewhat mollified to recall it. He cared so much for me, she thought tenderly. He wanted my happiness above all things. He would never have forced me into marriage with Major Matthews. If she had not been so young and impetuous she would have known that. But perhaps she had deceived herself then. Perhaps at heart she had wanted to elope with Richard, had wanted to marry him all along. Could it be that she had always seen the prospect of life in a convent as an impossible dream?

Richard would always be surrounded by drama. She caught her breath with horror even now as she remembered hearing the news that Major Matthews had challenged him to a duel, that Richard had accepted the challenge and had been wounded. She had wanted to go to him at once but her father had restrained her and Richard had written to her – impassioned letters with that touch of brilliance which playgoers were finding so much to their taste.

And her father … her dear father had relented. ‘Since you feel as you do, there’d better be a proper ceremony and you can set up house together.’

And so they were married in a manner fitting her father’s position in Bath; and they went to live in the little cottage at East Burnham.

How many times during the years that followed had she thought of that little cottage and the happiness she had had there! Far more so than in this luxurious house in Great Queen Street. There had been no debts then, no knowledge of what the future with a brilliant man could be like. Romantically innocent she had believed that life would be one long round of bliss.

But he had soon begun to talk of London – wistfully at first. It was his Mecca; it was the centre of the literary world. There was no intellectual life at East Burnham. One must be in London.

‘And, Elizabeth my love, there is money. It has to be earned you know.’ London where the streets are paved with gold, the great city which was waiting to acclaim Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the only place where he could give free play to his talents.

And so … goodbye to the cottage where she had been so happy, and to Orchard Street where she learned about debts and witty men who took her husband from his own fireside to clubs where they gambled. To chocolate and coffee houses where men congregated to talk of the events of the day, to read the lampoons which were handed round about the famous and notorious, to laugh at the cartoons. ‘To live,’ said Richard.

It was to her that he read The Rivals. She was the first to sit entranced, her hands clasped together, and to call him a genius.

He accepted her verdict. He knew he had genius.

And the people accepted him. They saw The Rivals and decided they wanted more of Sheridan. Success came quickly, for he was only in his twenties, and the most talked of playwright and soon … manager of Drury Lane.

But oh the debts! The eternal demands for money! Why was it that as he grew more successful his debts increased and the more money he earned the more he needed?

‘The company we keep is too grand for us, Richard,’ she expostulated.

‘Too grand for the Sheridans!’

‘We cannot afford to entertain them, Richard. If they need such entertainment shouldn’t we tell them it is beyond our means.’

He had laughed at her, lifted her and held her above his head.

‘Now you look like an angel … looking down on a poor weak mortal. An avenging angel! My dearest St Cecilia, we cannot reach our rightful place in society unless we mingle with the ton. If we did not mingle with the rich and the noble we should soon be relegated to a back seat.’