CAROLINE'S ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND 29 



as compensation, paid her father a thousand pounds 

 for the loss of her services at concerts. It was an 

 eminently discreditable business all round. But the 

 young lady did not want admirers, especially in a 

 family which migrated to Bath in 1771. Two of its 

 members were Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his 

 elder brother, Charles, both of them as poor as their 

 itinerant father, but as foolishly proud, though with 

 better reason. The girl preferred Richard, and in 

 that showed her good sense. But she was said to be 

 so thorough a flirt, that she was at the same time 

 giving Charles to understand he was the favoured 

 suitor. 1 At last, knowing that her father's consent to 

 a marriage with Richard would be refused, she eloped 

 with him to France, and was placed by him in a con- 

 vent. Brought back by her father, she was married 

 to Sheridan on April 13, 1773. While this comedy 

 was proceeding at Bath, Herschel made a brief run 

 across to Hanover in April 1772, and returned for 

 his sister in August. He was able to settle a small 

 annuity on his mother in compensation for the loss 

 Caroline's removal would entail on the household. 

 She felt herself to be her mother's slave, to be bought 

 and sold. After a journey of ten days, they reached 

 London on the 26th of August, where, " when the shops 

 were lighted up, they went to see all that was to be 

 seen, of which she only remembered the opticians' 

 shops, for she did not think they looked at any other." 



1 "Mrs. Sheridan is with us," Hannah More writes to her sister at 

 Bristol in 1778, "and her husband comes down on evenings. I find I 

 have mistaken this lady ; she is unaffected and sensible ; converses and 

 reads extremely well, and writes prettily." Mrs. Sheridan was nine or 

 ten years younger than Hannah More. 



