Sheridan was the hero of debt.  He lived on it.  Though he received large sums of money in one way or another, no one knew what became of it, for he paid nobody.  It seemed to melt away in his hands like snow in summer.  He spent his first wife’s fortune of L1,600 in a six weeks’ jaunt to Bath.  Necessity drove him to literature, and perhaps to the stimulus of poverty we owe “The Rivals,” and the dramas which succeeded it.  With his second wife he obtained a fortune of L5,000, and with L15,000 which he realized by the sale of Drury Lane shares, he bought an estate in Surrey, from which he was driven by debt and duns.  The remainder of his life was a series of shifts, sometimes brilliant, but oftener degrading, to raise money and evade creditors.  Taylor, of the Opera-house, used to say that if he took off his hat to Sheridan in the street, it would cost him fifty pounds; but if he stopped to speak to him, it would cost a hundred.

One of Sheridan’s creditors came for his money on horseback.”  That is a nice mare,” said Sheridan.  “Do you think so?” “Yes, indeed;—­how does she trot?” The creditor, flattered, told him he should see, and immediately put the mare at full trotting pace, on which Sheridan took the opportunity of trotting round the nearest corner.  His duns would come in numbers each morning, to catch him before he went out.  They were shown into the rooms on each side of the entrance hall.  When Sheridan had breakfasted, he would come down, and ask, “Are those doors all shut, John?” and on being assured that they were, he marched out deliberately between them.

He was in debt all round—­to his milkman, his grocer, his baker, and his butcher.  Sometimes Mrs. Sheridan would be kept waiting for an hour or more while the servants were beating up the neighbourhood for coffee, butter, eggs, and rolls.  While Sheridan was Paymaster of the Navy, a butcher one day brought a leg of mutton to the kitchen.  The cook took it and clapped it in the pot to boil, and went upstairs for the money; but not returning, the butcher coolly removed the pot lid, took out the mutton, and walked away with it in his tray.[1] Yet, while living in these straits, Sheridan, when invited with his son into the country, usually went in two chaises and four—­he in one, and his son Tom following in the other.

[Footnote 1:  Haydon—­Autobiography, vol. ii., p. 104.]

The end of all was very sad.  For some weeks before his death he was nearly destitute of the means of subsistence.  His noble and royal friends had entirely deserted him.  Executions for debt were in his house, and he passed his last days in the custody of sheriffs’ officers, who abstained from conveying him to prison merely because they were assured that to remove him would cause his immediate death.[2]

[Footnote 2:  Memoirs of the Life of Sir S. Romilly, vol. iii., p. 262.]