36 On the Want of Money. [JAN. 



not a drawer has been left unrummaged, or has not been subjected over 

 and over again to more than the strictness of a custom-house scrutiny. 

 Not the slightest rustle of a piece of bank-paper, not the gentlest pressure 

 of a piece of hard metal, but would have given notice of its hiding-place 

 with electrical rapidity, long before, in such circumstances. All the 

 variety of pecuniary resources, which form a legal tender on the current 

 coin of the realm, are assuredly drained, exhausted to the last farthing 

 before this time. But is there nothing in the house that one can turn 

 to account ? Is there not an old family-watch, or piece of plate, or a 

 ring, or some worthless trinket that one could part with ? nothing be- 

 longing to one's-self or a friend, that one could raise the wind upon, till 

 something better turns up ? At this moment an old-clothes man passes, 

 and his deep, harsh tones sound like an intended insult on one's distress, 

 and banish the thought of applying for his assistance, as one's eye 

 glanced furtively at an old hat or a great coat, hung up behind a closet- 

 door. Humiliating contemplations ! Miserable uncertainty ! One he- 

 sitates, and the opportunity is gone by ; for without one's breakfast, one 

 has not the resolution to do any thing I The late Mr. Sheridan was 

 often reduced to this unpleasant predicament. Possibly he had little 

 appetite for breakfast himself; but the servants complained bitterly on 

 this head, and said that Mrs. Sheridan was tometimes kept waiting for 

 a couple of hours, while they had to hunt through the neighbourhood, 

 and beat up for coffee, eggs, and French rolls. The same perplexity, in 

 this instance appears to have extended to the providing for the dinner ; 

 for so sharp-set were they, that to cut short a debate with a butcher's 

 apprentice about leaving a leg of mutton without the money, the cook 

 clapped it into the pot : the butcher's boy, probably used to such en- 

 counters, with equal coolness took it out again, and marched off with it 

 in his tray in triumph. It required a man to be the author of THE 

 SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL, to run the gauntlet of such disagreeable occur- 

 rences every hour of the day. There was one comfort, however, 

 that poor Sheridan had : he did not foresee that Mr. Moore would write 

 his Life I* 



* Taylor, of the Opera- House, used to say of Sheridan, that he could not pull off 

 his hat to him in the street without its costing him fifty pounds ; and if he stopped 

 to speak to him, it was a hundred. No one could be a stronger instance than he was 

 of what is called living from hand to mouth. He was always in want of money, though 

 he received vast sums which he must have disbursed ; and yet nobody can tell what 

 became of them, for he paid nobody. He spent his wife's fortune (sixteen hundred 

 pounds) in a six weeks' jaunt to Bath, and returned to town as poor as a rat. When- 

 ever he and his son were invited out into the country, they always went in two post- 

 chaises and four ; he in one, and his son Tom following in another. This is the secret 

 of those who live in a round of extravagance, and are at the same time always in debt 

 and difficulty they throw away all the ready money they get upon any new-tangled 

 whim or project that comes in their way, and never think of paying off old scores, which 

 of course accumulate to a dreadful amount. " Such gain the cap of him who makes 

 them fine, yet keeps his book uncrossed." Sheridan once wanted to take Mrs. Sheri- 

 dan a very handsome dress down into the country, and went to Barber and Nunn's to 

 order it, saying he must have it by such a day, but promising they should have ready 

 money. Mrs. Barber (I think it was) made answer that the time was short, but that 

 ready money was a very charming thing, and that he should have it. Accordingly, at 

 the time appointed she brought the dress, which came to five-and-twenty pounds, and 

 it was sent in to Mr. Sheridan : who sent out a Mr. Grimm (one of his jackalls) to say 

 he admired it exceedingly, -and that he was sure Mrs. Sheridan would be delighted 

 with it, but he was sorry to have nothing under a hundred pound bank-note in the 



